"Truism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appeared in 1764, and had excited the applause of Europe. The world was clearly ready for a fundamental reconstruction of legislative theories. Under the influence of such studies Bentham formulated his famous principle—a principle which to some seemed a barren truism, to others a mere epigram, and to some a dangerous falsehood. Bentham accepted it not only as true, but as expressing a truth of extraordinary fecundity, capable of guiding him through the whole labyrinth of political and legislative speculation. His 'fundamental axiom' is that 'the ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... against the baleful effects of new-fangled systems of philosophy, or gravely descanting on the immense importance of instilling sound principles of morality into the mind. It would not be a bold conjecture, but an obvious truism to say, that all the great changes which have been brought about in the moral world, either for the better or worse, have been introduced not by the bare statement of facts, which are things already known, and which must always operate nearly in the same manner, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... besides, a special moral or doctrinal significance in the making of such conversation with one's self at all. The Logos, the reasonable spark, in man, is common to him with the gods—koinos auto pros tous theous—cum diis communis. That might seem but the truism of a certain school of philosophy; but in Aurelius was clearly an original and lively apprehension. There could be no inward conversation with one's self such as this, unless there were indeed some one else, aware of our actual thoughts and feelings, pleased or displeased at [48] ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... be, to call Happiness the Chief Good is a mere truism, and what is wanted is some clearer account of its real nature. Now this object may be easily attained, when we have discovered what is the work of man; for as in the case of flute-player, statuary, or artisan of any kind, ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... things, but in persons; in the actions of human beings; and just in proportion as we understand human beings, shall we understand the laws which they have obeyed, or which have avenged themselves on their disobedience. This may seem a truism: if it be such, it is one which we cannot too often repeat to ourselves just now, when the rapid progress of science is tempting us to look at human beings rather as things than as persons, and at abstractions (under the name of laws) rather as persons than as things. Discovering, to our just ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... said Phillip adroitly. And much as we speak of the uncertainties of this world, the latter remark might be accepted as a truism in regard to the pecuniary affairs ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... how passions originate in the mind. But, if people would consider the nature of substance, they would have no doubt about the truth of Prop. vii. In fact, this proposition would be a universal axiom, and accounted a truism. For, by substance, would be understood that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself—that is, something of which the conception requires not the conception of anything else; whereas modifications exist in something external to themselves, and a conception ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... was a copy-book maxim which had been just too accurately copied. It was a platitude which they had always held in theory unexpectedly put into practice. The tyrants did not hate democracy because it was a paradox; they hated it because it was a truism which seemed in some danger ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... extravagances and irregularity in private life. He gives more space to William Adolphus than to Wetter! So difficult it is even for superior minds to remain altogether unaffected by the lustre of rank; the old truism could not be ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... their conduct is not very dignified, I should like a corps of the same kind of sharp-shooters in our legislative assemblies when honorable gentlemen are addressing their constituents and not the assembly, repeating in lengthy, windy, clumsy paragraphs what has been the truism of the newspaper press for months previous, wickedly wasting the time that was given us to learn something for ourselves, and help our fellow-creatures. In the French Chamber, if a man who has nothing to say ascends ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... simply printed books. The vaster proportion of what is printed is not literature. It may be statements of fact and items of information; it may be sound science and unimpeachable record; it may be truism; it may be platitude; it is often sheer bathos or doggerel. We do not count these things as literature. A good deal of singing, piano-beating and tin-whistling is not music. It is only in virtue of a certain fine quality that books are literature. According to Emerson, literature ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... "sensations supply the conditions for the existence of thought or knowledge." If this implies that sensations supply the conditions for the existence of our memory of sensations or of our thoughts about sensations, it is a truism which it is hardly worth while to state so solemnly. If it implies that sensations supply anything else, it is obviously erroneous. And if it means, as the context would seem to show it does, that sensations are the subject-matter of all thought or knowledge, then it is no less contrary to fact, ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... you are slow." Jimmy made the statement, not as one voices a newly discovered fact, but as one iterates a time-worn truism. He sat on a girder of the Limberlost bridge, and scraped the black muck from his boots in a little heap. Then he twisted a stick into the top of his rat sack, preparatory to his walk home. The ice had broken on the river, ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... roared with laughter at this truism, but were quieted by the shout of a boy that the preacher was a-coming; whereupon the reverend gentleman elbowed his way through the guests to the quiet couple, and requested them to stand up. A few hurried words by the clergyman, a few bashful replies from the young people, and the two were ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... of the body, called the tongue, and also language or speech, just like our word "tongue," which has both significations. In the former sense it applies alike to man and beast; in the latter it is mere truism to say that it applies to man only. Jibh, in Hindi and Hindustani, means the tongue only in the sense of the member of the body, never in the sense of speech; hence it is equally applicable to man or brute. Ask any physician who has practised in India ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... persecutions, the torturings, the domestic hatreds, the petty spites, with ALL creeds equally blood-guilty, one cannot but be amazed that the concurrent voice of mankind has not placed bigotry at the very head of the deadly sins. It is surely a truism to say that neither smallpox nor the plague have brought the same ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... it must be admitted, harmonises well with our modern tolerance, our modern zeal for reform; and yet it rests upon a fundamental fallacy. No one, of course, denies the {149} moulding power of heredity and environment; no one denies such an obvious truism as that we cannot expect to grow fine specimens of humanity in the reeking slum or the sweater's workshop. But as environment is a greater power than heredity, so there is only one power greater than environment—and that is our power to alter environment. "But that," protests the determinist, ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... Hutton, the entire surface of the continents must be worn away. Should it be continued LONG ENOUGH! And with that thought there flashes on his mind an inspiring conception—the idea that solar time is long, indefinitely long. That seems a simple enough thought—almost a truism—to the twentieth-century mind; but it required genius to conceive it in the eighteenth. Hutton pondered it, grasped its full import, and made it the basis of his hypothesis, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... impression which grew deeper with closer examination. The emphatic declaration of Christ, "My Father is greater than I," especially arrested my attention. Could I really expound this as meaning, "My Father, the Supreme God, in greater than I am, if you look solely to my human nature?" Such a truism can scarcely have deserved such emphasis. Did the disciples need to be taught that God was greater than man? Surely, on the contrary, the Saviour must have meant to say: "Divine as I am, yet my heavenly Father is greater than I, even when you take cognizance ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... that a mind capable of forming proverbs could not have been entirely insensible to it. We may define a proverb to be a moral statement, instructive in object, and epigrammatically expressed. It is always somewhat controversial, and when it approaches a truism scarcely ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... though knowledge be power, it is only one of the powers of the world; that there are others as strong, and often much stronger; and the assertion either means but a barren truism, not worth so frequent a repetition, or it means something that you would find it very difficult ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... a fully composed canvas in two for the sake of the frames. "It is the fate of sequels," as Stevenson said in his dedication of Catriona, "to disappoint those who have waited for them." Besides, life is essentially continuous.—It may not be inept to state a truism of this kind in a world of novels where the climax of life, if not indeed its very conclusion, is held to be reached on the day of marriage! There is often, of course, more than one true passion of love in a man's life; and even ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... marks a critical point in political economy. Malthus's opponents, as Mr. Bonar remarks,[217] attacked him alternately for propounding a truism and for maintaining a paradox. A 'truism' is not useless so long as its truth is not admitted. It would be the greatest of achievements to enunciate a law self-evident as soon as formulated, and yet previously ignored or denied. Was this the case of Malthus? Or did he really startle the world ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... are working and attending regularly to office business. Look to that and to your health at present. Depend upon it, there is nothing like work. Fix your teeth in it. Work is medicine. A truism! Truisms, whether they lie in the depths of thought, or on the surface, are at any ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... It sounds a truism, but it is worth attention. Unlike the rest of us, labouring people are unable to shirk any of life's discomforts by "getting a man" or "a woman," as we say, to do the disagreeable or risky jobs ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... pauperism is not an accident in the constitution of states, but an indefeasible necessity; or, in the scriptural words, that 'the poor shall never cease out of the land.' This theory or great canon of social philosophy, during many centuries, drew no especial attention from philosophers. It passed for a truism, bearing no particular emphasis or meaning beyond some general purpose of sanction to the impulses of charity. But there is good reason to believe, that it slumbered, and was meant to slumber, until Christianity arising and moving forwards should call it into a new life, as a principle suited ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... may be recognized by two characteristics,—it must be brief, and it must have an unexpected turn of thought. This turn of thought may spring from an apparent contradiction, from the solemn assertion of a truism, from a play on words, or from other sources. There is an apparent contradiction ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... the circulation of the blood; it is the business of lesser men to apply the discovery to practical ends. It takes a Whitney to invent the cotton gin, but the dullest negro roustabout can operate it. Why multiply illustrations of a truism? Theory, you perceive, calls for other and higher gifts than application. The man who can formulate the eternal laws of social evolution can safely leave it to others to put his laws ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... his own possibilities must make no mistake here. He must realize that the whole process is that of bringing the universal within the grasp of the individual by raising the individual to the level of the universal and not vice-versa. It is a mathematical truism that you cannot contract the infinite, and that you can expand the individual; and it is precisely on these lines that evolution works. The laws of nature cannot be altered in the least degree; but we can come into such a realization of our own relation to the ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... to this. He regarded it as a truism unworthy of notice; he evidently felt that a comparison between ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... perhaps noisily and indignantly, to so obvious a truism; but our own efforts in the same direction will not bear us out. Able men in England employ themselves in matters of a more practical character; and while we refuse to avail ourselves of what has been done elsewhere, no book, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... may be doubted whether the originality of the phrase "Antiquitas saeculi juventus mundi" is, after all, worth speculating upon. In the sense in which Lord Bacon used it, it is rather a naked truism than a wise aphorism. It does not even necessarily convey the intended meaning; nor, if unaccompanied by an explanation, would it be safe from a widely different interpretation. A previous correspondent of "NOTES AND QUERIES" had termed ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... and this knowledge would first lend to his general love of pleasure any point of application in the governance of life or in benevolent legislation. Some concrete image of a happy human world would take the place of the futile truism that pleasure is good and pain evil. This is, of course, what utilitarian moralists meant to do, and actually did, in so far as their human sympathies extended, which was not to the highest things; ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... singular assurance, has declared poetry the most philosophical of all writings—but it required a Wordsworth to pronounce it the most metaphysical. He seems to think that the end of poetry is, or should be, instruction; yet it is a truism that the end of our existence is happiness; if so, the end of every separate part of our existence, everything connected with our existence, should be still happiness. Therefore the end of instruction should be happiness; and happiness is another name for pleasure;—therefore the end ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... that the tautological sentiments of Mr. Puzzle are not still inculcated? Nay, the whole play furnishes a capital instance of the truism that the world changes but little, and, furthermore, that the mould of nigh two centuries cannot spoil the wit of sparkling Steele. Ah, Dick! Dick! you may have been a sorry dog, with your toasts and your taverns, yet 'tis a thousand pities that a few dramatists of to-day cannot ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... terrorem! We all talk about morality; but try some measure of reform, and you will find that every man sees the necessity of it for his neighbour only. Goodness is happiness, and sin is disease. The truism is as old as the hills, and as evident; but if men were in earnest, do you suppose they would go on for ever choosing sin and its ghastly companion as they do? Do you know, there are moments when I think that even their reverence for the purity of women ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... that this great moral question is no question confined to the narrow limits of the home, but a question of the rise and fall of nations. This is a truism of history. All history teaches us that the welfare and very life of a nation is determined by moral causes; and that it is the pure races that respect their women and guard them jealously from defilement that are the tough, ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... legitimized. It is easy to sneer at political and mathematical ladies, and quote Lord Byron—but O leave those angry common-places to others!—they do not come well from you. Do not force me to remind you, that women have achieved enough to silence them forever,[4] and how often must that truism be repeated, that it is not a woman's attainments which make her amiable or unamiable, estimable or the contrary, but her qualities? A time is coming, perhaps, when the education of women will be considered, with a view to their future destination as the mothers and nurses of legislators and statesmen, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... of limited faculties can have a style of high excellence ought to be a truism. Through a certain equilibrium among his faculties, and assiduous literary culture, such a one may excel colleagues who move on the same bounded plane; but that is all. From the shallowest utterance, where, thoughts and feelings lying just below ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... good thing produced, so much money is put into everybody's pocket, is the one simple and primal truth for the public to know, and for economists to teach. How many of them have taught it? Some have; but only incidentally; and others will say it is a truism. If it be, do the public know it? Does your ordinary English householder know that every costly dinner he gives has destroyed forever as much money as it is worth? Does every well-educated girl—do even the women in high political position—know that every fine dress they wear ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... of a wide question put into the mouth of a person despised and rebuked by the best characters in the play, is not likely to contain any cautiously formed and cherished opinion of the dramatist. At first sight this may seem almost a truism; but we have only to remind our readers that one of the passages oftenest quoted with admiration, and indeed separately printed and illuminated, is "The Seven Ages of Man," a passage full of inhuman contempt for humanity and unbelief in its destiny, in which not one of the seven ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... not only ridiculed by the whole of Asia, but would have been equally ridiculed by Greece and Rome. The result of this would be that the condition of our social, civil, and political affairs would be incalculably improved. The Salic law would be unnecessary; it would be a superfluous truism. The European lady, strictly speaking, is a creature who should not exist at all; but there ought to be housekeepers, and young girls who hope to become such; and they should be brought up not to be arrogant, but to be domesticated ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... in the proposition, in itself a truism but which receives here a novel significance, that nothing in creation obeys its like, and that he who would mount by the backs of his fellow men must show some reason why they should lend them. In the olden time, we are reminded, such reasons ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... we return to common sense. And for this reason we may be inclined to do less than justice to Plato,—because the truth which he attains by a real effort of thought is to us a familiar and unconscious truism, which no one would any longer think ...
— Sophist • Plato
... is absolutely essential to a successful surprise. This is a military truism all the world over, but applies with special force amongst the Pathan tribes on the North-West Frontier of India, as indeed it did amongst the Boers, and for probably a very similar reason. They were not always ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... Rubicon. It is not thirty years since one of the first of American statesmen told the national Senate that "Julius Caesar struck down Roman liberty at Pharsalia," and probably there was not one man in his audience who supposed that he was uttering anything beyond a truism, though they must have been puzzled to discover any resemblance between "the mighty Julius" and Mr. Martin Van Buren, the gentleman whom the orator was cutting up, and who was actually in the chair while Mr. Calhoun was seeking to kill him, in a political sense, by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... things, have united in ascribing to the human mind everywhere certain possibilities. But one class of men have dissented from this view—the slave-holders of all ages. A justification of slavery has been sought in the alleged belief of the inferiority of the persons enslaved; while the broad truism of the possibilities of the human mind was confessed in all legislation that sought to prevent slaves from acquiring knowledge. So the slave-holder asserted his belief in the mental inferiority of the Negro, and then advertised his lack of faith ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... truism to say that the whole is made up of its parts, but all the same we often lose sight of this in our ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... subject escaped that eternal scribbler's attention; and if his abilities had equalled his disposition, he would probably have become the Juvenal of his age. Upon this occasion, however, he appears to have soared on rather a higher wing than usual; and the moral of his lay is the truism which has since been so ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous
... a truism that man epitomizes the universe. Therefore, the law of growth, which science names evolution, may be studied and applied with equal precision and accuracy to the individual; to a body of individuals called a nation; ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... to-day. And it is asserted with great probability that The Prince has had a more direct action upon real life than any other book in the world, and a larger share in breaking the chains and lighting the dark places of the Middle Ages. It is a truism to say that Machiavellism existed before Machiavelli. The politics of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, of Louis XI. of France, of Ferdinand of Spain, of the Papacy, of Venice, might have been dictated by the author of The Prince. But Machiavelli was the first to observe, to compare, ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... answer with a hackneyed truism," Dick said. "There can be no love that is not free. Always, please, remember the point of view is that of the higher types. And the point of view answers you, Dar. The vast majority of individuals must be held to law and ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... tongue as the other—and with much proficiency at the piano. Browning already played duets with his little son, while the happy mother looked smilingly on. Mrs. Browning was one who lived daily her real life. For there is much truth in the Oriental truism that our real life is that which we do not live,—in our present environment, at least. She always gave of her best because she herself dwelt in the perpetual atmosphere of high thought. Full of glancing humor and playfulness of expression, never scorning homely conditions, she yet ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... to the truism, 'better late than never!' and to the addition of the comment that Nellie is only thirty and that but ten years of your lives have been wasted; if you hurry and save the remainder, you should have fifty apiece coming to ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... come and must come wherever man can set his wishes and his hopes. The only way not to be disappointed when a thing turns out against you, is not to have really cared how the thing went. It is not a truism to remark that this is impossible if you did care. Of course you are not disappointed at failing of attaining an end which you did not care whether you attained or not; but men seek very few such ends. If a man has worked day and night for six weeks in canvassing ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... themselves the best possible preventives against worry. They dignify life above worry. Worry is undignified, petty, paltry. Where you know you have something to do worth doing, you are conscious of the Divine Benediction, and who can worry when the smile of God rests upon him? This is a truism almost to triteness, and yet how few fully realize it. It is the unworthy potterers with life, the dabblers in life-stuff, those who blind themselves to their high estate, those who are unsure of their footing who worry. ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... holds of reductions in hours of work has become a truism among trade unionists, who recognize that any reduction of hours of work eventually, though not perhaps immediately, results in a readjustment of wages, whether week-workers or piece-workers or both be involved, till the original money wage at any rate is reached, supposing, ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... universal, and a plain contradiction of Christ speaking of Himself as the co-eternal Son; 'My Father is greater than I'. Speaking of himself as the co-eternal Son, I say;—for how superfluous would it have been, a truism how unworthy of our Lord, to have said in effect, that "a creature is less than God!" And after all, Creeds assuredly are not to be imposed 'ad libitum'—a new Creed, or at least a new form and choice of articles and expressions, at the pleasure of individuals. Now where is the authority ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... often said that we have no satisfactory translation of "Don Quixote." To those who are familiar with the original, it savours of truism or platitude to say so, for in truth there can be no thoroughly satisfactory translation of "Don Quixote" into English or any other language. It is not that the Spanish idioms are so utterly unmanageable, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... other. "But I never heard any preacher, in any country, tell his congregation anything else. And people always listen with attention. In countries where rain is entirely unknown, it is not a truism to say that 'when it rains it is damp.' On the contrary, in such countries that statement would be regarded as requiring demonstration, and once demonstrated, it would be treasured and taught as an interesting ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... did you expect?" he demanded. "I tell you, Cicily," he continued, in the tone of one arguing with labored patience to convince a child of some truism, "that business is too big, too serious, too strong for a ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... watched his client's face as he uttered this profound truism, and the face being as open and genuine as was Snooks' character, it said plainly enough "Yes, I have a ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... in knowing my wife's peculiarities. And I have made some study of Grant. He admits already that he is under suspicion. Why, if he is innocent? Mind you, I pay little heed to the crude disposal of the body. Horace, I think, has a truism that art lies in concealing art. My wife's presence in Steynholme was no secret. She would have been missed from the inn. Search would be made. The murder must be revealed sooner or later, and the murderer himself was aware that by no twisting or turning could his name escape association ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... become of the Posthaec meminisse juvabit of the poet, if a principle of fluctuation and reaction is not inherent in the very constitution of our nature, or if all moral truth is a mere literal truism? We are not, then, so much to inquire what certain things are abstractedly or in themselves, as how they affect the mind, and to approve or condemn them accordingly. The same object seen near strikes us more powerfully than at a distance: things thrown into masses give a greater blow to the ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... love of truth that made him a subtle and searching analyst, even in what the dull world considers trifles; for he knew that nothing in literature is in itself trifling—that it is often but a hairsbreadth that divides a truism from a discovery. He was the more original, because he sought rather after the True than the New. No two minds are ever the same; and therefore any man who will give us fairly and frankly the results of his own impressions, uninfluenced by the servilities ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... no fear of my thinking you the owner of a cold heart. I am more than three parts disposed, however, to be ferocious with you for ever writing down such a preposterous truism. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... proved a truism that old saying, "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world," and also that the burden of war falls upon women. It is they who give up their sons to their country and send their husbands and boys to the front to serve as fodder ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... an evident truism, although it is often misunderstood, we ought to end by remarking that chance is an occasion for, not an agent ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... school of philologists has sprung up, who are sometimes accused of putting words in the place of things. It seems to be true, that whether applied to language or to other branches of knowledge, the Darwinian theory, unless very precisely defined, hardly escapes from being a truism. If by 'the natural selection' of words or meanings of words or by the 'persistence and survival of the fittest' the maintainer of the theory intends to affirm nothing more than this—that the word 'fittest to survive' survives, he adds not much to the knowledge of language. But if he means ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... of course, a mere truism to say that the corporation is the creature of the state, that the state is sovereign. There should be a real and not a nominal sovereign, some one sovereign to which the corporation shall be really and not nominally responsible. At present if we pass laws nobody ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... Barry-Smith descended to a truism. "It is usually better not to," said she, with the air of an authority. And latterly, addressing the facade of Notre Dame, "You see, Mr. Barry-Smith being so ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... are as true to-day as when the above truism emanated from that most wonderful of all human intellects. Every age and generation, as well as every changing religious or political condition, has brought with it its own peculiar and essentially differing current literature, which, as a rule, continued a brief season, and ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... enough, and much more than enough, to make it a tyranny to them, and a detriment to society, that they should not be allowed to compete with men for the exercise of these functions? Is it not a mere truism to say, that such functions are often filled by men far less fit for them than numbers of women, and who would be beaten by women in any fair field of competition? What difference does it make that there may be men somewhere, fully employed about ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... all our knowledge is relative,—in other words, that we know things only under such conditions as the laws of our cognitive faculties impose upon us,—is a statement which looks at first sight like a truism, but which really contains an answer to a very important question,—Have we reason to believe that the laws of our cognitive faculties impose any conditions at all?—that the mind in any way reacts on the objects ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... "A very evident truism!" said Clarendon—"what I lament most, is the injudicious method certain persons took to change this order of things, and diminish the desagremens of the mixture we speak of. I remember well, when Almack's was first set up, the intention was to keep away the rich ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the fellows who are writing in America to-day is that they write too much—or rather, publish too much. A writer should be very glad to accept a small income for many years; he should deliberately keep his fortunes within bounds; and take his time. All this would have been a truism fifty years ago; the machinery for the other thing didn't exist, and something in the way of a natural condition kept him in the simple path. But I don't find fault with the machinery; the wider field and the larger figures are a direct boon to us. They do, however, impose ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... published in 1647: "There are many particulars relating to the construction of instruments which are unknown to modern artificers, as, namely, that the best strings are made when the north and the worst when the south wind blows," a truism well understood by experienced string manufacturers. Thomas Mace, in his curious book on the Lute, enters at some length into the question of strings, and speaks in glowing terms of his Venetian Catlins. ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... taken from the Saturday Review, December 13th, 1879:—"It has been repeated until the remark has become accepted as a sort of truism that the Gipsies are a mysterious race, and that nothing is known of their origin. And a few years ago this was true; but within those years so much has been discovered that at present there is really no more mystery attached to the ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... or Treves, or perhaps with both. They have made objection to your proposed generosity, and put forward the argument that you are but temporary trustee of the Cologne Archbishopric; that you must guard the rights of your successor; and this truism could not help but appeal to that quality of equity which distinguishes you, so a conference of the prelates has been called, and a majority of that Court will decide whether or not the town of Linz shall be tendered to me. Perhaps a suggestion will ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... and attempts to demonstrate his position. But how? By proving that a "substance" cannot be produced. And why may not "a substance" be produced? Because, by the definition, "a substance" is that which is "self-existent." In other words, a self-existent substance cannot be created,—a truism which scarcely required the apparatus of a geometrical proof by means of propositions, scholia, and corollaries, or, as Professor Saisset says, with laconic naivete, "ce qui a a peine besoin d'etre demontre." But, while the only proof that is offered extends ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... light upon the life of the observer himself and of his fellow human beings. This is true of any two human beings, but if the two happen to be people of commanding character and genius it becomes a truism which it would be almost ludicrous to question. Let us apply this to the study not of one individual but of one society by another, and let us take the case in point, in which the two societies happen to be great civilizations. ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... the Hammer of Thor. Compare, for example, the French and the Caucasian methods of expressing the fact that the consequences of bad advice fall on the advised and not on the adviser. The Frenchman is satisfied to simply state the obvious truism that advisers are not payers, but the mountaineer, with forcible and graphic imagery, declares that "He who instructs how to jump does not tear his mouth, but he who jumps breaks his legs." Again: the German has in his proverbial storehouse no more vivid illustration of the wilfulness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... has been a woman at least," said Miss Amory. "I have been a sort of feminine automaton. I have been respectable and she has not. All good women are not respectable and all respectable women are not good. That's a truism so absolute that it is a platitude, and yet there still exist people to whom it would appear a novel statement. That poor creature has loved and had her heart broken. She has suffered the whole gamut of things. She ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... truism that the farther north the land, the greater the fertility, if there be any fertility at all. There is first the supply of unfailing moisture, with a yearly subsoiling of humus unknown to arid lands. Canada is super-sensitive about her winter climate—the ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... these properly to a landsman, I would say, for the sake of easier comprehension, that the theory of a 'bend' is based on the good- natured truism contained in the old adage, 'One good turn deserves another'; while a second proverb, 'Safe bind, safe find,' will equally justify the existence of the 'hitch'; but if the inquirer be not satisfied with either of these definitions or explanations, whichever term he may choose to apply ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... but it is not the only, no, nor if comparison be at all allowable, the highest and most efficient; unless, indeed, the term evidence is itself confined to grounds of conviction offered to the senses, but then the position is a mere truism. ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... make for intellectual enlightenment and social improvement. The difference between the Protestant north and the rest of Roman Catholic Ireland, as between the Protestant and Romish cantons in Switzerland; is a truism almost proverbial. And without the little leaven of such influence as the better educated and more enlightened gentry may possess, the Irish peasant will be even more superstitious, more blinded by prejudice ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... however, is with these same medical magazines, which delight in discovering mares' nests for no other apparent purpose than to make mankind uncomfortable. They will persist in disregarding the time-honored axiom that "everybody knows more than anybody," a truism which Dr. Spahr elaborated in his declaration that "the common observation of common people is more trustworthy than the statistical investigations of the most unprejudiced expert"— even though he be a ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... satisfactorily the author's concept? No matter in what abundant measure such a performer may possess the good qualities of earnestness, conviction and sincerity, he is not an artist. "Poeta nascitur, non fit," has long been accepted as a truism; and similarly, it is supposed that the artist also is born, not made. But seeing that the mechanical side of any art is learned by experience, study, or observation—still to quote the definition—without which an adequate manifestation of that ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... Cocaigne do not satisfy me. They are all well enough in their way; and I admit the truism that in seeking bed and board two heads are better than one. Yes, Anaitis makes me an excellent wife. Nevertheless, her diversions do not satisfy me, and gallantly to make the most of life is not enough. No, it ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... headstone in a corner of the ground, inscribed with the name of Susan Meynell, who died July 14th, 1835, much lamented; and then the text about 'the one sinner that repenteth,' and so on," said Mr. Sheldon, as if he did not care to dwell on so hackneyed a truism. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... on Justification in 1837; it was aimed at the Lutheran dictum that justification by faith only was the cardinal doctrine of Christianity. I considered that this doctrine was either a paradox or a truism,—a paradox in Luther's mouth, a truism in Melanchthon's. I thought that the Anglican Church followed Melanchthon, and that in consequence between Rome and Anglicanism, between high Church and low Church, there was no real intellectual difference on ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... married?"—"Non, Monsieur, elle n'est pas encore epousee: mais je lui dis qu'elle ne sera jamais heureuse avant qu'elle le soit." The daughter, who had overheard the conversation, came forward, and looking archly over her shoulder, replied—"ou malheureuse, mon pere!" A sort of truism, expressed by her with singular epigrammatic force, to which there ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... all truism," cried Beatrice. "Ah, sister, I am tired of all this; for eleven years the sea has been singing the same songs; those waves rise and fall as they did a hundred years since; the birds sing the same story; the sun shines the same; even the shadow of the great elms fall over the meadow ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... to any young sportsman, firstly, as to the value of not following up a wounded animal at once, and, secondly, as to taking every kind of precaution when you do. How often is sport spoiled from the want of appreciating the truism that a wall is no stronger than its weakest point. The importance of carefully guarding and refusing to be decoyed away from the pass into the main forest is of such consequence that I proceed to ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... to adultery and divorce. Even the most perverse ascetic of the Middle Ages scarcely ventured to make a statement so flagrantly opposed to the experiences of humanity, and the fact that a distinguished gynecologist of the twentieth century can make it, with almost the air of stating a truism, is ample justification for the emphasis which it has nowadays become necessary to place on the art of love. "Uxor enim dignitatis nomen est, non voluptatis," was indeed an ancient Pagan dictum. But it is not in harmony with ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... circumstances under which battles were fought in his own time; and so in 1806 at Jena he smashed to pieces the Prussian force, which came against him in all the pride of inherited traditions, handed down from one of the greatest generals of his age. While it is almost a truism to say that what is appropriate to one age is not suited to another, it is only men of the type of Napoleon and Gordon who are quick enough to see the necessity for a change of method, and sufficiently resourceful to adopt new plans. Ninety-nine generals out of a hundred would never have thought ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... smiled sadly, but scornfully, and said another truism. "What good would that do? From Sheridan down, what army officer's statement has any weight whatever with the Indian Bureau,—when it ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... It is very well to tell us that 'Injustice pays itself with frightful compound interest,' but there are reasons for suspecting that Mr. Carlyle's definition of the just and the unjust are such as to reduce this and all his other sentences of like purport to the level of mere truism and repetition. If you secretly or openly hold that to be just and veracious which is successful, then it needs no further demonstration that penalties of ultimate failure are exacted for injustice, because it is precisely the ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... quickly was she multiplied in real life that she seemed to have stepped from the book and the frame, ready-made, into the street and the drawing-room. And there is nothing wonderful about this. It is a truism to say that the genuine creations in fiction take their places in general apprehension with historical characters, and sometimes they live more vividly on the printed page and on canvas than the others in their pale, contradictory, and incomplete ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... so often said, that from a proverb it has become a truism; but it must continue to be the refrain of those who write upon art. The subject is so long, and its ramifications are so intricate, that it is difficult to include them all ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... the end, illuminated from the outside, as it were, by Francesca Campodonico's faithful friendship and sweet influence. All causes of disagreement, considered as forces in married life, are relative in their value to the comparative solidity of the characters on which they act—a truism which ought to be the foundation of social charity, but is not. Reanda could not be blamed for his brittle sensitivenesses, nor Gloria for a certain coarse-grained streak of cruelty, which she had inherited from her father, and which had combined strangely ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... of intuitive investigation that the 'spirit of scepticism' primarily arises, is equally true; though not, perhaps, at the first blush, so apparent. In this sense, the statement of Mr. Buckle is simply one half of a truism, the other half of which, not enunciated by him, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... these doings of theirs are not great. Shall I write the commonplace that rings in sequence in my ear, and draws on my hand—"are not Great, for they are not (in the broad human and ethical sense) Good"? I write it, and ask forgiveness for the truism, with its implied uncharitableness of blame; for this trite thing is ill understood and little thought upon by any of us, and the implied blame is divided among us all; only let me at once partly modify ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... and observation into a single saying. It is the very opposite of dissertation and declamation; its distinction is not so much ingenuity, as good sense brought to a point; it ought to be neither enigmatical nor flat, neither a truism on the one hand, nor a riddle on the other. These wise sayings, said Bacon, the author of some of the wisest of them, are not only for ornament, but for action and business, having a point or edge, whereby knots in business are pierced and discovered. And ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... are again forced to notice the truism thrusting itself forward so often and conspicuously; that law was essentially made by the great criminals of society, and that, thus far it has been a frightful instrument, based upon force, for legalizing theft on a large scale. By law the great criminals absolve themselves and ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... 1760.] the matter which fulfils the promise of this latter clause constituting by far the most interesting and original portion of his work: for while the influence of opinions on words is so little called in question, that the assertion of it sounds almost like a truism, this, on the contrary, of words on opinions, would doubtless present itself as a novelty to many. And yet it is an influence which has been powerfully felt in every region of human knowledge, in science, in art, in morals, in theology. The reactive energy of words, ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... the subject to be thought about need in itself be difficult. Were one to say that thoughts about hydrostatics and pneumatics are difficult to the multitude, or that mental efforts in regions of political economy or ethical philosophy are beyond ordinary reach, one would only pronounce an evident truism, an absurd platitude. But let any man take any subject fully within his own mind's scope, and strive to think about it steadily, with some attempt at calculation as to results. The chances are his mind will fly off, will-he-nill-he, ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... never saw him without a book in his hand. So he has come back at last. I am very glad. He is a good fellow, a little too reserved and self-contained, too fond of brooding over some beautiful truism of Plato's when he ought to be thinking of deep drainage and a new school-house; but a good fellow for all that, and always ready with his cheque-book. Let us go ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... by the aggregation of such men that a nation becomes prosperous. It must never therefore be forgotten, that it is not the possession of knowledge, but the use which we make of it, that confers distinction. For no truism is more incontrovertible than this, that knowledge which we cannot or do not use, ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... which lies before us, any how we cannot undo the past. English Literature will ever have been Protestant. Swift and Addison, the most native and natural of our writers, Hooker and Milton, the most elaborate, never can become our co-religionists; and, though this is but the enunciation of a truism, it is not on ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... these rollers and those of the previously described machines being in the lessened diameters of the mule rollers, and consequently attenuating the cotton to a much greater extent. It is a truism well understood by those in the trade, that the finer the rovings are the better the raw cotton must be, and the more drawing-out they will stand in any one machine. One inch of roving put up behind the rollers of a mule spinning medium numbers ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... and classify a number of persons by any physical characteristic (stature, weight) we find that the results always fall under a curve of probable error. That they should do so is, in fact, a truism. If a number of persons with different degrees of power and resistance are acted on by the same influences, it is most probable that the greatest number of them will reach the same and a mean degree of self-realization, and others in proportion ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... engravings, as well as by their paintings. If I could report a dinner-table conversation, I might be tempted to say something of my talk with Mr. Oliphant. I like well enough conversation which floats safely over the shallows, touching bottom at intervals with a commonplace incident or truism to push it along; I like better to find a few fathoms of depth under the surface; there is a still higher pleasure in the philosophical discourse which calls for the deep sea line to reach bottom; but best of all, when one is in the right mood, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... peaks from which the panorama of the Maladetta chain can be best seen is the Pic d'Entecade, a noted point for an object-lesson of the mountains' relief. Some of us accordingly resolve to ascend it. We have at last begun to recognize the truth of a truism,—that of early rising among the mountains. Always given in all "Advice to Pedestrians," in all "Physicians' Holidays," in all hand-books and guides, it had worn off into a commonplace, founded chiefly, it seemed, on a priori health-saws and on repetition. But there is ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... his wonderful successes, that looked like conjuring, had been gained by plodding logic, by clear and commonplace French thought. The French electrify the world not by starting any paradox, they electrify it by carrying out a truism. They carry a truism so far—as in the French Revolution. But exactly because Valentin understood reason, he understood the limits of reason. Only a man who knows nothing of motors talks of motoring without petrol; only a man who knows nothing ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... of being made a desirable abiding-place, and that the evil of the world is the fruit of bad education and bad institutions. This cheerful doctrine now strikes on the ear as a commonplace and a truism. A hundred years ago in France it was a wonderful gospel, and the beginning of a new dispensation.... Into what fresh and unwelcome sunlight it brought the articles of the old theology... Every social improvement since has been the outcome of that new doctrine in one form or another.... The ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener |
