"Self-evident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 to say that he ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... weak to withstand the pressure of a powerful expiratory blast, the theory of the vocal action therein embodied met with immediate acceptance. This idea is so plausible that it appeals to the thoughtful investigator as self-evident, and seems to call for no proof. The doctrine of breath-control was at once adopted, by the most influential vocal scientists, as the basic principle ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... derangement of the life process, it is self-evident that disease is not confined to one organ alone, but that ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... self-evident, that they point at Self-liking and the Instinct of Sovereignty. But what is singular in these Laws is, that in their Operation they are the reverse ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... She had found herself compelled, as wife of the Bishop, to assent to the self-evident proposition which had been made. She was a quiet, silent little woman, whom the Bishop had married in the days of his earliest preferment, and who, though she was delighted to find herself promoted to the society of the big people in the diocese, had never quite lifted ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... Teachers come into this world out of the Unknown, bringing the essence of their Truth with them. We know well what they will teach: in some form or another it will be Theosophy; it will be the old self-evident truths about Karma and the two natures of man. But how they will teach it: what kind of sugar-coating or bitter aloes they will prescribe along with it: —that, I think, depends on reactions from the age they come in and the people ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... identical, for such, as has been said already, afford no room for discrimination; but neither on the other side are they words only remotely similar to one another; for the differences between these last will be self-evident, will so lie on the surface and proclaim themselves to all, that it would be as superfluous an office as holding a candle to the sun to attempt to make this clearer than it already is. It may be desirable to trace and fix the difference between scarlet and crimson, for ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... and will not cause gas in the stomach or 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 or some ...
— How to Eat - A Cure for "Nerves" • Thomas Clark Hinkle
... kind of history is the Philosophical. No explanation was needed of the two previous classes; their nature was self-evident. It is otherwise with the last, which certainly seems to require an exposition or justification. The most general definition that can be given is, that the philosophy of history means nothing but the thoughtful consideration of it. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... it's self-evident. She's exactly as much in love with Trent as she was a year ago, and she's fighting against it every hour of her life. And ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... sermon, in the hope of finding some portions of it which I could either mimic or parody. I remember one sermon in particular, which the preacher devoted to a proof of God's existence. My own mental comment was, "If anything could make me such a fool as to doubt this self-evident truth, your arguments and the inflections of your voice would certainly make me do so." I heard another preacher indulge in a long half-hour of sarcasm at the expense of "the shallow infidel, who pointed ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... very different character from those which are connected with an investigation of the science of number, or any other abstract science. Mathematical and numerical investigations advance from principles which are clearly defined, and almost universally acknowledged to be self-evident; the reasoning also is of such a kind as to preclude the admission of error. In theology the case is different. There, it is difficult to define with accuracy the points from which the reasoning commences, and also to exclude, ...
— Thoughts on a Revelation • Samuel John Jerram
... such, so self-evident to one who possesses it, seems to be wanting, except in rudimentary fashion, in a great many people. They are probably few, however, who do not feel some stirrings when they look through the stained glass of a cathedral window or upon the red of Venetian ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... referred to, but the suggestions made regarding Third and Fourth Hand bidding can be readily adapted to comply with its self-evident requirements. ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... mystic himself is characterized by a personal experience through which the ordinary limitations of life and the passionate pursuits of the soul are transcended, and a self-evident conviction is attained that he is in communion, or even in union, with some self-transcending Reality that absolutely satisfies and is what he has always sought. "This is He, this is He," the mystic exclaims: "There ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... brethren, the disenslaved Brazilians, frame their declaration of independence I hope they will insert this missing link: "We hold these truths to be self-evident—that all monarchs are usurpers and descendants of usurpers, for the reason that no throne was ever set up in this world by the will, freely exercised, of the only body possessing the legitimate right to set it up—the numerical mass ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 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 ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Such a phantasy did not need proof of its own existence, or of that of its object. It possessed self-evidence. Its occurrence was attended with yielding and assent on the part of the soul. For it is as natural for the soul to assent to the self-evident as it is for it to pursue its proper good. The assent to a griping phantasy was called "comprehension," as indicating the firm hold that the soul thus took of reality. A gripping phantasy was defined as one ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... 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 for co-operative action in defence of the ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... attention of young Mr. Benjamin Disraeli in Montague Place. Neither of these distinguished men can honestly be said ever to have acquired what is called the legal mind, a mental equipment which the younger of them had once the effrontery to define as a talent for explaining the self-evident, illustrating the obvious and expatiating on the commonplace. 'By adopting the law,' says Borrow, 'I had not ceased to be Lavengro.' He learnt Welsh when he should have been reading Blackstone. He studied German under the direction of the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... brief sketch of the campaigns of the war. It is not cheerful reading for an American, nor yet of interest to a military student; and its lessons have been taught so often by similar occurrences in other lands under like circumstances, and, moreover, teach such self-evident truths, that they scarcely need to be brought to the notice of an historian. But the crowning event of the war was the Battle of New Orleans; remarkable in its military aspect, and a source of pride to every American. It is well ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... resulting from this requisition of unanimous concurrence in alterations of the confederation, must be known to every member in this convention; it is therefore needless to remind them of them. Is it not self-evident, that a trifling minority ought not to bind the majority? Would not foreign influence be exerted with facility over a small minority? Would the honorable gentleman agree to continue the most radical defects in the old system, because the petty State of ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... that His death was the crowning revelation of the love of God for man. And it is well to remind ourselves of our need of such a revelation. We speak sometimes as though the love of God was a self-evident truth altogether independent of the facts of New Testament history. "God is love"—of course, we say; this at least we are sure of, whatever becomes of the history. But this jaunty assurance will not bear looking into. The truth is that, apart from Christ, we have no certainty of the love of ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... must be self-evident to everyone present that it is the most important question that can possibly occupy the mind of man—how much like God we can be—how near to God we can come on earth preparatory to our being perfectly like Him, and living, ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... maid poisoned her employer's family we should hang her. Then again, the English reader would say, how do we know that the man is a clubman? Have we ascertained this fact definitely, and if so, of what club or clubs is he a member? Well, we don't know, except in so far as the thing is self-evident. Any man who has romance enough in his life to be poisoned by a pretty housemaid ought to be in a club. That's the place for him. In fact, with us the word club man doesn't necessarily mean a man who belongs to a club: it is defined as a man who is arrested in a gambling den; or fined ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... minutes for Kennedy, in his most engaging and plausible manner, to state the hypothetical reason of our call. Though it was perfectly self-evident from the start that Mrs. Martin would throw cold water on anything requiring an outlay of money Craig accomplished his full purpose of securing an interview with Mr. Haswell. The invalid lay propped up in bed, and as we entered he heard us and turned his sightless eyes ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... indispensable condition. The food of laborers and the materials of production have no productive power; but labor can not exert its productive power unless provided with them. There can be no more industry than is supplied with materials to work up and food to eat. Self-evident as the thing is, it is often forgotten that the people of a country are maintained and have their wants supplied, not by the produce of present labor, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... 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 of his clothes, and his ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... 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
... 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 just powers from the consent ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... a youthful ebullition, and we might be tempted at first to look upon it as something venial and pass it by in silence. Reflection, however, should lead us to the opposite conclusion. There is nothing that a college faculty cannot afford to pardon sooner than disorder. The reason is almost self-evident. There is nothing that ruins so effectually the general tone of the college and demoralizes all the students, good and bad. Vice moves in rather narrow circles—much more narrow than those in authority are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... search out texts for homilies in defence of our own particular views of life. The world's literature stands unaffected, though Archdeacon Farrar use it for chapter-headings and Sir John Lubbock wield it as a mallet to drive home self-evident truths. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... three thousand miles away into the seclusion of the wilderness, of their indefeasible moral right to pick their own company. There was abundant opportunity for mistake and temptation to wrong-doing in the exercise of this right, but the right itself is so nearly self-evident as to need ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... persons and influences that had worked upon Jacob Delafield since his college days, was felt in good earnest by not a few of Delafield's friends. For he was a person rich in friends, reserved as he generally was, and crotchety as most of them thought him. The mixture of self-evident strength and manliness in his physiognomy with something delicate and evasive, some hindering element of reflection or doubt, was repeated in his character. On the one side he was a robust, healthy Etonian, who could ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... me in its narrow cage on my melancholy journey home, and was touched to find that it quickly repaid my care and became very much attached to me. Minna greeted me with great joy when she saw this beautiful grey parrot, for she regarded it as a self-evident proof that I should do something in life. We already had a pretty little dog, born on the day of the first Rienzi rehearsal in Dresden, which, owing to its passionate devotion to myself, was much petted by all who knew me and visited my house during those years. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... "You ask what is self-evident," answered Pyrrhus. "If we can conquer the Romans, there is no city, Greek or barbarian, that can resist us, and we shall gain possession of the whole of Italy, a country whose size, richness, and ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... clothing modern sea-commanders and naval courts-martial with powers which exceed the due limits of reason and necessity. Nor is this the only instance where right and salutary principles, in themselves almost self-evident and infallible, have been advanced in justification of things, which in themselves are just as ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... at present want is a man sedulous in visiting; for preaching is in reality but a small part of a minister's duty.' Nay, ministers, especially ministers of but a few twelvemonths' standing, have themselves in some cases caught up the remark, as if it embodied a self-evident truth; and while they dare tell, not without self-complacency, that their discourses—things written at a short sitting, if written at all—cost them but little trouble, they add further, as if by way of apology, that they are, however, 'much occupied otherwise, and that preaching is in reality ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... was so entirely self-evident there was no need for her to make formal expression of it to Dorothy, yet, as she had promised herself to be "just like other girls" Tavia felt the obligation ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... the prince of philosophers, but I do not always share his opinion. Aristotle and the other philosophers have planted the tree of science, but the latter has not by any means put forth all its branches or matured all its fruit." This thought, though it seems to us self-evident, was of great moment in the age of scholasticism. Bacon spent ten years in prison; but in spite of everything, he was so much under the influence of scholasticism that he considered it the task of philosophy to adduce evidence for the truth of ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... a truth evident to all men has no need of proof. That is an assumption of this sort:—"If it be desirable to be wise, it is proper to pay attention to philosophy." This proposition requires proof. For it is not self-evident. Nor is it notorious to all men, because many think that philosophy is of no service at all, and some think that it is even a disservice. A self-evident assumption is such as this:—"But it is desirable to be wise." And because this is of itself evident from the simple fact, and is at once ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... the point, that I have been surprised 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, ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... method; by tracing from ideas clearly conceived the consequences which were formally involved in them. What, then, were these ideas—these verae ideae, as he calls them—and how were they to be obtained? If they were to serve as the axioms of his system, they must be self-evident truths, of which no proof was required; and the illustration which he gives of the character of such ideas is ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... 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, ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... a self-evident fact. I know that, and she is your ladylove. But I want to know all about her, and, first ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... must live in it and feel with it. He must so familiarize himself with all the details, as in a manner to become a child of that epoch; for he can present a really living image of only that which is living in himself. That this requires a deep and earnest study of history is self-evident. Historical Romance demands the study of the historian, together with the creative imagination of the poet. For the free embodiment of the poet can blossom only from out the studio of the historian, as the flower from the seed; as, by a reciprocal organic action, the hyacinth is derived ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... asked here. It is supported by reasons as broad as the nature of man, and as numerous as the wants of society. Man is the only government-making animal in the world. His right to a participation in the production and operation of government is an inference from his nature, as direct and self-evident as is his right to acquire property or education. It is no less a crime against the manhood of a man, to declare that he shall not share in the making and directing of the government under which ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... economical without parsimony and liberal without prodigality, and generally to follow such rules of wisdom as tend to render life prosperous, and human conduct acceptable to society. All such rules are self-evident, and grow necessarily out of the general principle which demands of the functions of the body to subserve the attainment of self-sanctification. But we must now speak precisely of this sanctification, to point out briefly ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... quite as final as might appear to somebodies perhaps. At least it does not prevent my going on to agree with the saying of Spiridion, ... do you remember?... 'Tout ce que l'homme appelle inspiration, je l'appelle aussi revelation,' ... if there is not something too self-evident in it after all—my sole objection! And is it not true that your inability to analyse the mental process in question, is one of the proofs of the fact of inspiration?—as the gods were known of old by not being ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... the appearance of the water-course to indicate that the river had not flowed there a few years previously; in some parts beds of sand and gravel were spread out; in others, the solid rock had been worn into a broad channel, which in one spot was about 40 yards in breadth and 8 feet deep. It is self-evident that a person following up the course of a stream will always ascend at a greater or less inclination. Mr. Gill therefore, was much astonished when walking up the bed of this ancient river, to find himself suddenly going downhill. He imagined that the downward slope had a fall ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... notes" was a debatable point, but that somebody was taking everything takable on the premises soon became a self-evident proposition; and this was uncomfortable for more reasons than one. Mr. Smith and I almost quarrelled about it. He would not believe it to be Chang-how, and I was determined it should not be Anarky. Said he, "Anarky is taking advantage ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not by any means self-evident upon the face of it that an institution like the liberty of speech is right or just. It is not natural or obvious to let a man utter follies and abominations which you believe to be bad for mankind any more than it is natural or obvious to let a man dig up ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... were published in England, were little read, and universally decried. The critics were always hard at work, proving that he was no poet, and demonstrating in the most logical manner that he was quite incapable of reasoning on the commonest topic. In addition to all this, his ignorance was self-evident; and though he was very fond of quoting Greek, they doubted whether he was capable of reading the original authors. The general impression of the English public, after the lapse of some years, was, that Herbert was an abandoned being, of profligate habits, opposed to all the institutions of ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... seem to be so self-evident that maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with maximum prosperity for the employee, ought to be the two leading objects of management, that even to state this fact should be unnecessary. And yet there is no question that, throughout ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... stirring up a very sufficient number of protestations for having ventured to deduce, from a collection of self-evident facts, a judgment which I still maintain. It may well be believed, moreover, that I was not wrong, since the Government and the Municipal Council have, this year, taken the initiative of adding to the ceremonies and to the diversions usual on the 14th of July, the ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... branch—Literature—is not so easily disposed of. In fact, the separating of the literature from the language, you will say, is a self-evident absurdity. That, however, only shows that you have not looked carefully into examination papers. I am not concerned with what the a priori imagination may suppose to be Literature, but with the actual questions put by examiners under that name. I find ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... perhaps be dismissed with a single citation from the Supreme Court. Said Mr. Justice Bradley, in the Legal Tender Cases: "As a government it [the United States] was invested with all the attributes of sovereignty.... It seems to be a self-evident proposition that it is invested with all those inherent and implied powers which, at the time of adopting the Constitution, were generally considered to belong to every government as such, and as being essential to the exercise of ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... (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, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... describes his natural rights,—defines society as a compact,—declares that no generation has a right to bind its successors, (a doctrine which Mr. Jefferson, and some foolish people after him, thought a self-evident truth,)—hence, no family has a right to take possession of a throne. An hereditary rule is as great an absurdity as an hereditary professorship of mathematics,—a place supposed by Dr. Franklin to exist in some German university. Paine grew bolder as he advanced: "If ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... a purer air. Driven by storms beyond sight of land, the sailor steers by the stars; and our fathers, compelled to explore the whole subject of social rights and duties, derived their government from what they called self-evident truths. Despite the brilliant and vehement eloquence of Mr. Choate, they did not deal in glittering generalities, and the Declaration of Independence was not the passionate manifesto of a revolutionary war, but the calm and simple statement of a new ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... fact that, from his point of view, chipmunks must live, and why should they not have eggs for breakfast? Doubtless, in squirrel philosophy, it is a self-evident truth that birds were created to supply the tables of their betters in fur, and the pursuit of eggs and nestlings adds the true sportsman's zest to the enjoyment of them. So long, therefore, as the law that "might makes right" prevails in higher quarters, ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... self-evident," acknowledged the Emperor uneasily, "but the logical development is one which this diffident Monarch hesitates to commit to ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... 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 ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... ultimate principle which our minds can reach. Most of us accept this persuasion as almost of the nature of an axiom, and hence the mere suggestion that our own volitions are really uncaused appears to us of the nature of a self-evident absurdity. A little thought, however, is enough to show that the only ground of reason which this strong prepossession can rest upon, is the assumption that the principle of causality is logically prior to that of ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... 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
... 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
... open). During the last five years furs have been increasingly fashionable, and to this end no one cause has contributed so strongly as the automobile. The exhilarating motion makes necessary clothing of compact texture. This truth is self-evident and does not require the involved chain of reasoning by which a friend over our milkless teacups last night strove to prove that by all laws of the game the auto ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... not peevishly but as one who indorses, unnecessarily, a self-evident fact. "They've lived here on Angel Island as long as we have. But they haven't made good yet, and we have. Why, just imagine them working on ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... 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 public ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... self-evident propositions, they produced a pause in the discourse; for men do not deal with new ideas as freely as they ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... evil spirits from the human tabernacles of which they had unwarrantably taken possession; how could Christ have done this had He not first subdued the "strong man," the master of devils, Satan himself? And yet those ignorant scholars dared to say in the face of such self-evident refutation of their own premises, that the powers of Satan were subdued by Satanic agency. There could be no agreement, no truce nor armistice between the contending powers of Christ and Satan. Offering a suggestion ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... dark picture drawn of the continued and brutal violence, as well as the flagrant unfaithfulness, of the tenants. Matthew's version gives emphasis to the increasing harshness of treatment of the owner's messengers, as does Mark's. First comes beating, then wounding, then murder. The interpretation is self-evident. The 'servants' are the prophets, mostly men inferior in rank to the hierarchy, shepherds, fig-gatherers, and the like. They came to rouse Israel to a sense of the purpose for which they had received their distinguishing prerogatives, and their reward had been contempt and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... That we demand of the captain of the steamer 'City of Memphis,' that we be allowed the same privileges on this boat that others enjoy. 'We hold these truths to be self-evident,' that one man is just as good as another, no matter what his rank. We demand that we be allowed to eat at the table in the cabin, to sleep in the state-rooms, to drink at the bar if we so elect, and to go to any place ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... departure of Don Luis de Bracamonte, asking you to be pleased to send a governor for those places, for Don Luis said that he would remain there only until the arrival of your Majesty's appointee—a thing that was self-evident, even had he not said it. Had it not been for placing a captain before one whom your Majesty had honored with the title of master-of-camp, I would have given those forts in charge to Captain Don Andres Perez Franco, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... annihilate itself, because the result would be that there would be no deposits. A practical law which I recognise as such must be qualified for universal legislation; this is an identical proposition and, therefore, self-evident. Now, if I say that my will is subject to a practical law, I cannot adduce my inclination (e.g., in the present case my avarice) as a principle of determination fitted to be a universal practical law; for this is so far from being fitted for a universal legislation that, if put in the ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... It is self-evident that a narrow pallet requires a wide tooth, and a wide pallet a narrow or thin tooth wheel; in the ratchet wheel we have a metal point passing over a jeweled plane. The friction is at its minimum, because there is less adhesion than with the club tooth, but we must emphasize ...
— An Analysis of the Lever Escapement • H. R. Playtner
... will fight among themselves is self-evident; that Christian nations shall defend themselves from the assaults of savages is also obvious; but that two Christian nations should go to war for anything, on any ground whatever, is to my mind inexplicable ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... along their lines and the flitting movements of the enemy make post commanders suppose a mass attack is coming; and that the British Legation and the western Russo-American front, together with the American posts on the Tartar Wall, work together. It is, of course, self-evident from what I have written that the first, or Continental and Japanese lines, are having by far the worst time. For, apart from the American posts on the Tartar Wall, no outposts in the second section are as yet in direct touch with the ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... agree. Take up the points on which there can be little chance for differences of opinion. You will find the other man will get in the habit of agreeing with your propositions and that his antagonism weakens. State facts that are right and truthful, and are so plain that the truth will be self-evident. ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... have not yet forgotten the rule which was given to them arbitrarily without proof by their masters; others construct a universal axiom from their experience with simple numbers, where the fourth number is self-evident, as in the case of 2, 4, 3, 6; here it is evident that if the second number be multiplied by the third, and the product divided by the first, the quotient is 6; when they see that by this process the number is produced which they ...
— On the Improvement of the Understanding • Baruch Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza]
... the mother of Ruskin. Of his early training, his reading of doctrinal and argumentative works, and of his isolation from material things in the thought that there were "two and only two absolute and luminously self-evident beings in the world," himself and his Creator, it is better to read his own record in the Apologia, which is a kind of ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... which you have to earn a living, or snatch your baby from your breast—to say nothing of a thousand ingenious forms of torture inflicted just because "He sees that it is best for you," after having led you to see otherwise—that you cannot trust a God like that must be more or less self-evident. If you are part of His Self-Expression He cannot practise futilities through your experience and personality. He must be kind with a common-sense kindness, loving with a common-sense love. Whatever explanation of our sufferings and failures there may be we must not shuffle them ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... comparative parsimony of description and narration, to be her true method as she grew as a fiction-maker: the early unpublished story "Susan," and the first draught of "Sense and Sensibility," had the epistolary form of Richardson, the more undramatic nature of which is self-evident. As for characterization itself, she is with the few: she has added famous specimens—men and women both—to the natural history of fiction. To think of but one book, "Pride and Prejudice," what an inimitable study of a foolish woman is Mrs. ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... clothes. But if he should ever marry it was clear to him that he must have a house like other people, and that he must give dinner parties. He did not reason this out in his mind—he never reasoned anything out in his mind—it was all clear and self-evident to him. Therefore, after a while, the question began to arise—why should he not marry Helena Langley? He knew perfectly well that if she wished to be married to him Sir Rupert would not offer the slightest objection. Any man whom his daughter ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... as compensating, by certain attractive qualities in the nature of amiability and sincerity, for occasional exhibitions of what the English rated as social impropriety and bad taste. Often, at the English lofty derision of colonials, at the English air of self-evident superiority, the English pretence of politely concealed shock or pain or offence at some infringement of a purely superficial conduct-code of their own arbitrary fabrication, he ground his teeth in silence; ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... institutions and antagonistic laws. There being such a universal law, if any human constitution and laws differing from it could have any authority, then that universal law could not be supreme. That supreme law is necessarily based on the equality of nations, of races, and of men. It is a simple, self-evident basis. One nation, race, or individual, may not oppress or injure another, because the safety and welfare of each is essential to the common safety and welfare of all. If all are not equal and free, then who is entitled to be free, and what evidence of ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... her genius remains as individual here as the genius of Blanche of Castile and Pierre de Dreux in the transepts. That the three lancets were her own taste, as distinctly as the Trianon was the taste of Louis XIV, is self-evident. They represent all that was dearest to her; her Son's glory on her right; her own beautiful life in the middle; her royal ancestry on her left: the story of her divine right, thrice-told. The pictures are all personal, like ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... philanthropists, and more than a century had to elapse before the mass of the people grasped and applied them. That freedom was a right, that the very first of the natural rights of man was to be free and to belong only to himself, would seem to be self-evident, and yet thousands of years had to pass before the glorious thought was generally accepted, and the nations of the earth had ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... thousands, of 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 ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... VALUE.—Marx claimed that practically all wealth has been created by the laborers alone, and that all persons other than laborers are parasites. To those who have carefully studied Chapter VIII the error of this claim must appear self-evident, nevertheless, this concept of value is the basis of all socialist attacks upon government and industry. Marx developed ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... with her stronger neighbour on the East, unless she adds to her forces and is helped by her allies. Thus the hostility to Germany, from this aspect also, is based on England's most important interests, and we must treat it as axiomatic and self-evident. ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... The work involved in this eliminating process is exceedingly detrimental to the various organs and to the individual. To overeat is to overwork, and to overwork a machine or an animal is not only poor economy but bad judgment. If the digestive apparatus is required to work overtime, it is a self-evident assumption that the various organs will not digest efficiently the food necessary for ordinary existence. If the necessary nourishment is not adequately digested, the general health will suffer as a consequence. If the general health is below standard the individual will not be competent ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... whether God exists; (2) what is, or rather what is not, the manner of His existence; (3) how He acts through His knowledge, will, and power. Under the first heading we shall ask whether God's existence is self-evident, whether it can be demonstrated, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... danger of over-growth is, therefore, small. Besides, where change of one sort is going on very rapidly; where the limbs are growing and the bones knitting more firmly, where the strength of bodily endurance, as well as of bodily activity, is daily becoming greater; it is self-evident that, if the inward changes which ought to accompany these outward ones are making no progress, there cannot but be derangement and deformity in the system. And, therefore, when I look around, I cannot but wish generally that the change from childhood to manhood in ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... east, or even south-east by east of the French Capital. Our base, Havre, lay to the north-west, with the enemy in between. It was unnecessary to say anything further. The facts spoke for themselves. The British Army was up against it, none could tell what would happen next. One duty, however, was self-evident, and that was to watch ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... tall, particularly thin, and exceedingly skinny personages: very upright, and very yellow. Miss Amelia Crumpton owned to thirty-eight, and Miss Maria Crumpton admitted she was forty; an admission which was rendered perfectly unnecessary by the self-evident fact of her being at least fifty. They dressed in the most interesting manner—like twins! and looked as happy and comfortable as a couple of marigolds run to seed. They were very precise, had the strictest possible ideas of propriety, wore ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... a considerable amount of plant-food. We have taken far more nitrogen, phosphoric acid, potash, etc., out of the soil, than we have returned to it in the shape of manure. Consequently, the soil must contain less and less of plant-food every year. And yet, while this is a self-evident fact, it is, nevertheless, true that many of these self-same farms are more productive now than when first cleared, or at any rate more productive than they were twenty-five or thirty ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... founded the school of pleasure, and maintained that the sole search worthy of man was that of happiness, and that it was his duty to make himself happy; that in consequence, it having been sufficiently proved and being even self-evident, that happiness cannot come to us from without, but must be sought within ourselves, it is necessary to study to know ourselves thoroughly (and this was from Socrates) in order to decide what are the states ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... so untrammelled by prejudice it was self-evident that helpless philanthropists like Orlando G. Spence were just as much the natural diet of the strong as the lamb is of the wolf. It was pleasanter to eat than to be eaten, in a world where, as yet, there seemed to be no third alternative; and any ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... 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 ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... marks the progress of public opinion that, whereas the Indian Government only ventured to take power to prevent inopportune publication with many apologies, and as a temporary measure, the Parliament assumed it as self-evident that "forged, scandalous, seditious, libellous, and unlicensed papers, pamphlets, and books" had no right to exist, and should be nipped in the bud by the appointment of licensers. Twelve London ministers, therefore, were nominated to license books in divinity, which was equivalent to enacting ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... had belonged to the Force exactly as long as had the First Sergeant himself, which was from the dawn of the Force's existence. And John G. is a gentleman and a soldier, every inch of him. Horse-show judges have affixed their seal to the self-evident fact by the sign of the blue ribbon,[70-1] but the best proof lies in the personal knowledge of "A" Troop, soundly built on twelve years' brotherhood. John G., on that diluvian night, was twenty-two years old, and still every whit as clean-limbed, alert, and plucky ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... whether in some quality of inherent rationality or in some utilitarian test of practicability, the truth itself has some attributes so far unquestioned and of which we may feel certain as being inherent, necessary, and self-evident. ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... correspondence. This is mentioned with a view to direct your mind to the consideration of that course of causes and effects by which we are enabled to reason on what wo call moral and physical principles. And a hope is entertained that due regard will be paid to this self-evident fact, that nothing ever took place without an ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... logic, as defined in the Introductory Chapter, is to ascertain how we come by that portion of our knowledge (much the greatest portion) which is not intuitive: and by what criterion we can, in matters not self-evident, distinguish between things proved and things not proved, between what is worthy and what is unworthy of belief. Of the various questions which present themselves to our inquiring faculties, some receive an answer from direct consciousness, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... rule should govern us in dealing with those whom we call unbelievers, with heathen, and with all who do not accept our religious views. The Jews are with us as a perpetual lesson to teach us modesty and civility. The religion we profess is not self-evident. It did not convince the people to whom it was sent. We have no claim to take it for granted that we are all right, and they are all wrong. And, therefore, in the midst of all the triumphs of Christianity, ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... remained in the park of Buzanval with the National Guards under the galling fire from the Prussian intrenchments, and later, when he got back to the city, he spoke of their courage in the highest terms. It was undisputed that the Guards fought bravely on that occasion; after that was it not self-evident that all the disasters of the army were to be attributed solely to the imbecility and treason of its leaders? In the Rue de Rivoli he encountered bands of men shouting: "Hurrah for the Commune! down with Trochu!" It was the leaven of revolution beginning to work again ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... over-estimate the evidence in its favour. We do not know the truth of these doctrines; we only know that they are probably true, and that probability is and must be enough for us; we must not torture our guesses into a sham appearance of infallible reasoning, nor call them self-evident because we cannot prove them, nor try to transfer the case from the court of reason to the court of ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen |
