"Axiom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... subjects which the Church had sanctioned. In nearly every case the treatment of the subject is subordinated to the general architectural plan and symmetry. At Saint-Trophime there was the limit of space, the axiom that a door must be a door, and doubtless many allowable subjects. But within these necessary bounds the unknown sculptor recognised few conventionalities. The usual place for the portrayal of the Last Judgment, the tympanum, was too small for his conception of the scene; ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... relation to the rest of the world we have always assumed almost as an axiom that America has nothing to do with Europe, is only in the faintest degree concerned with its politics and developments, that by happy circumstance of geography and history we are isolated and self-sufficing, able to look with calm detachment ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the representatives of the families, her favourite object would have been, in either case, equally secure. Here was a plain, easy road to her object; but it was too direct for Mrs. Beaumont. With all her abilities, she could never comprehend the axiom that a right line is the shortest possible line between any two points:—an axiom equally true in morals and in mathematics. No, the serpentine line was, in her opinion, not only the most beautiful, but the most ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... kept asunder by the two political systems of which they each offered a living expression, their private rivalry would still have made them enemies. Epochs put their mark on men. These two individuals proved the truth of that axiom by the opposing historic tints that were visible in their faces, in their conversation, in their ideas, and in their clothes. One, abrupt, energetic, with loud, brusque manners, curt, rude speech, dark in tone, in hair, in look, terrible ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... class do not keep money long, and when the proceeds of the robbery had been wasted at cards and in drink they separated. As in fulfilment of the axiom that a murderer is sure to revisit the scene of his crime, one of the men found himself at the Ocmulgee, a long time afterward, in sight of the new town—Macon. In response to his halloo a skiff shot ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... study, he said: "That is the best I can do; I shall never write a better sermon." I have been told that when a man says he has reached the topmost effort of his abilities, it presages his end, and the march of events seemed to verify the axiom. ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... would not deny but you are in the right, and yet there is this to be said. The Greeks of whose painting, truly, we have next to nothing. In all the work of theirs known to us did what lay before them as well as ever they could. They stayed not to theorise over this axiom and that, that formula and this. They said rather, 'You wish for the presentment of a man with a boil on his leg? Well.' And they ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... future, this system must be swept away root, branch and stock. To such lengths has national fanaticism driven the Magyars that in 1906 it was possible for an ex-Premier of Hungary, speaking in open Parliament amid the applause of the majority, to lay down the following axiom: "The legal State is the aim: but with this question we can only concern ourselves when we have already assured the national State.... Hungary's interests demand its erection on the most extreme Chauvinist lines." ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... Esquimau spears a seal, he prepares to conquer or to die. If he does not haul the animal out of the hole, there is every probability that it will haul him into it. But the Esquimau has laid it down as an axiom that a man is more than a match for a seal; therefore he ties the line round his waist,—which is very much like nailing the colours to the mast. There seems to be no allowance made for the chance of an obstreperously large ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... this axiom in silence. As a matter of fact he was somewhat staggered by the information thus airily imparted. But he did not question the truth of it. He only wondered that he had never ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... charitable persons—and no more than a recognition of a great constitutional axiom—to assume, in the absence of proof to the contrary, that every British subject is an honest man. Now, if we had gone to Lord Castlemallard for his character—and who more competent to give him one—we know very well what we should have ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... this should be. The first principle, on which the theory of a science of history can be plausibly argued, is that all actions whatsoever arise from self-interest. It may be enlightened self-interest, it may be unenlightened; but it is assumed as an axiom that every man, in whatever he does, is aiming at something which he considers will promote his happiness. His conduct is not determined by his will; it is determined by the object of his desire. Adam Smith, in laying the foundations of political economy, expressly eliminates every other ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... nothing abashed. A handsome face and a bold air had made conquests easy to him. It was an axiom of his that a girl who worked for her living by that fact proclaimed flirtation to be agreeable to her—at all events with such as he. Chance had so shaped affairs that this was the first time his theory had found disproof. He saw she was offended; so much the more tickling; ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... laid down by Governor Kossuth as the basis of his action—that each State has a right to dispose of her own destiny, and regulate her internal affairs in her own way, without the intervention of any foreign power—is an axiom in the laws of nations which every State ought to recognize and respect.... It is equally clear to my mind, that any violation of this principle by one nation, intervening for the purpose of destroying the liberties of another, is such an infraction of the ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... Axiom.—Inasmuch as women are always willing and able to explain their strong points, they leave us to guess at their ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... so seldom possible to derive happiness from the exercise of the sympathies, that it is not wonderful if they count for little in an Englishman's scheme of life. In most other countries the paramount importance of the sympathies as a constituent of individual happiness is an axiom, taken for granted rather than needing any formal statement; but most English thinkers always seem to regard them as necessary evils, required for keeping men's actions benevolent and compassionate. Roebuck was, or appeared to be, this kind of Englishman. He saw ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... German historian, who has striven to say some kind words about Frederick William's Government before the collapse at Jena, prefaces his apology by the axiom that from a Prussian monarch one ought to expect, not French, English, or Russian policy, but only Prussian policy. The claim may well be challenged. Doubtless, there are some States concerning which it would be true. Countries such as Great Britain and Spain, whose areas are clearly defined by ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... of 1904, it had been an undisputed axiom in naval warfare that a territorial attack upon an enemy's coast by a fleet was foredoomed to failure unless that enemy's fleet had been either crippled beyond effective action, or securely blockaded in distant ports. As an axiom secondary ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... gain a point, without apparent coercion, or a sacrifice of truth or honor, depends upon the successful qualities that go toward the building up of a complete and harmonious personality. It is an axiom in psychology that to attain the highest success, one must first understand, and, understanding, conquer the bad, and develop the good features in one's own temperament, before attempting to rule the conduct of any other person. You must understand yourself before you attempt to understand your ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... "Casting pearls before swine" by "What is the use of the peacock strutting in the jungle?" "Can these stones become bread?" by "Can the earth become grain?" "Neither can salt water yield sweet," by a very elaborate axiom, "You may plant the bitter cucumber in a bed of sago, manure it with honey, water it with molasses, and train it over sugar cane, but it will be the bitter cucumber still," and "Clear water cannot be ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... reaction; but it follows naturally that the more strain brought to bear upon the nervous system in endurance, the greater must be the reaction when the load is lifted. Indeed, so well is this known in the medical profession, that it is a surgical axiom that the patient who most completely controls his expression of pain will be the greatest sufferer from the subsequent reaction. While there is so much pain to be endured in this world, a study of how best to bear it certainly is not out of place, ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... him a brute to his wife or neglectful of his social duties. As moralists we condemn the drunkard, not the results of his conduct, which may be this or that according to circumstances. To regard Mill's principle as a primary moral axiom is, therefore, contradictory. It nullifies all law, moral or other, so far as it extends. But if Mill's admission as to the 'unfavourable opinions' is meant to obviate this conclusion, his theory ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... studied harder than ever, and the study now was unchecked by any fear of possible consequences. I had nothing left of the old faith save belief in "a God", and that began slowly to melt away. The Theistic axiom: "If there be a God at all he must be at least as good as his highest creature", began with an "if", and to that "if" I turned my attention. "Of all impossible things", writes Miss Frances Power Cobbe, "the most impossible must surely be that a ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... only confirmed me in the conclusions announced in my Crania Americana, that all the American nations, excepting the Eskimaux, are of one race, and that this race is peculiar and distinct from all others. The first of these propositions may be regarded as an axiom in ethnography; the second still gives rise to a diversity of opinions, of which the most prevalent is that which would merge the American race in ...
— Some Observations on the Ethnography and Archaeology of the American Aborigines • Samuel George Morton
... the universe are also divergent. According to the Bible the outer world is the creation, by God, out of nothing. To the Brahman of all times the idea of pure creation has seemed absurd. Ex nihilo nihil fit is an axiom of all their philosophies. Whether it be the Vedantin who tells us that the material universe is the result of Brahm invested with illusion, or the Sankya philosopher who attributes it to prakriti—the power of nature; or the Veisashika sage who traces it to eternal atoms; they ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... or group of citizens on the one hand, and the government on the other whether that government be a monarchy, a republican or representative government, or a pure democracy. In such case it would seem clear that one party should not have the power to decide the question. It is an axiom that neither party to a controversy should be the judge in the matter. The legislature that enacts a statute claimed by a citizen to be beyond its powers and to deprive him of some right guaranteed to him by the constitution, ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... is the art of husbanding one's strength. 32. To refrain from intercepting an enemy whose banners are in perfect order, to refrain from attacking an army drawn up in calm and confident array:—this is the art of studying circumstances. 33. It is a military axiom not to advance uphill against the enemy, nor to oppose him when he comes downhill. 34. Do not pursue an enemy who simulates flight; do not attack soldiers whose temper is keen. 35. Do not swallow bait offered ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... is, I think, an axiom universally received that quantities of the same kind may be added together and make one entire sum. Mathematicians add lines together: but they do not add a line to a solid, or conceive it as making one sum ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... Nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of it! The senior partner of Hatch & Buckley had been quick to note this condition of mind and to reap the profits that came therefrom. Monomania means money, was a business axiom in that gentleman's office, but he had pumped the stream dry and Von Barwig was now at the end of his resources. By some strange process of thought, Von Barwig recognised this fact, but it seemed to him to mean that because his money had come to an end his ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... the plague of life seems to be an accepted axiom amongst English ladies of the upper middle class. When I hear them discussing their grievances over their afternoon tea, I wish them no worse fate than to have the management of an Australian household for a week. It ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... its undercurrent, and of ten the little undercurrents pre-eminently shape the events themselves. The truth of this axiom is illustrated principally in the recall of the resolute, indefatigable, far and clear-sighted patriot and statesman, General Butler. To jump to a conclusion without much ado, the recall of Butler from New Orleans is due principally, if not even exclusively, ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... Chronicle and the Daily News, of which I have only seen one article for a long time back, appeared to be maintaining what I hold. That we ought to be strictly neutral (not armed and threatening neutrals) seems to be an axiom; but at the same time I look at the crisis with much hope and little or no fear. To declaim against L. N.'s treachery is only a way of playing into the wrong hands, i.e. supporting Austria. He has pledged himself to expel her from Italy and ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... pointed out that in any case his acquaintance with Cuba was altogether too recent to have enabled him to form even the most elementary opinion on the question, at the same time mentioning as a general axiom that Englishmen were usually regarded as cherishing a weakness in favour of good government and the ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... condition which alone met the problem, and which the successful steam-engine must possess. He abandoned all else for the time as superfluous, since this was the key of the position. This is the law he then laid down as an axiom—which is repeated in his specification for his first patent in 1769: "To make a perfect steam engine it was necessary that the cylinder should be always as hot as the steam which entered it, and that ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... and swore, that, in the course of his wanderings among the damned, he found Cicero kindling fires, Hannibal selling egg-shells, and Julius Caesar cleaning stoves. The story holds good in regard to the mighty personages in Washington, but the axiom does not. Men whose fame fills the land, when they are at home or spouting about the country, sink into insignificance when they get to Washington. The sun is but a small potato in the midst of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... truth of his favourite axiom, drove off at such a furious rate over great stones left in the middle of the road by carmen, who had been driving in the gudgeons of their axle-trees to hinder them from lacing, [Opening; perhaps from LACHER, to loosen.] that Lord Colambre thought life and limb in imminent ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... I jes' can 'member de Yankees comin' through, but I 'members dere wus a lot of 'em wearin' blue clothes. I wus born at Kerney Upchurch's plantation twelve miles from Raleigh. He wus my marster an' Missus Enny wus his wife. My father wus named Axiom Wilder and my mother wus Mancy Wilder. De most I know 'bout slavery dey tole it to me. I 'members I run when de Yankees come close to me. I wus 'fraid ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... a received opinion, a thing taken for granted, an axiom in horticulture, that melon seed is the better for being old. Mr. Marshall says, that it ought to be "about four years old, though some prefer it much older." And he afterwards observes, that "if new seed only can be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... slender hand. "By subtle drinking I mean the drinking of choice wine, and did you ever taste anything more delicate than this juice of the vines of Anthylla that your illustrious brother has set before us? Your paradoxical axiom commends you at once as a powerful thinker and as the benevolent giver of the best ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... It is an old axiom of war that new weapons of attack are invariably met by new methods of defence. So it was with the convoy system which gave the death-blow to German hopes of a submarine victory. In order to understand this new method it is necessary ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... the hope, which his intense interest in the fate of his country had inspired, that the United States might act in behalf of Hungary, he yet returned again and again to the subject. On one occasion he said; "I take it for an axiom that there exist interests common to every nation comprised within the boundaries of the same civilization. I take it equally for certain that among these common interest none is of higher importance than the principles of international law." Nor did he hesitate to say that ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... and if people will read with attention what he has written, they will soon understand the great difference existing between him and the author of the "Maxims." Without even speaking of that which separates prose from poetry, an axiom from a hasty expression, grave from gay, maxims from satire, the difference is still enormous. Lord Byron had not received from nature, any more than the author of the "Maxims," the gift of seeing things in a roseate hue. On the contrary, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... the trite axiom with the respect due one who has met and grappled successfully with his one great chance. His well-fed appearance, his genial, contented smile, gave an impression of prosperity even when his linen was frayed and his elbows glossy; now in the ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... two sailors, and young Kerr. Apparently they did not think it necessary to take with them any colonists, or Indian scouts. It is a curious characteristic of the average Britisher who finds himself in a new land, that he appears to regard it as an axiom that he must necessarily know much more than the average colonist; can, in fact, teach that person "how to suck eggs." The colonist, of course, on his part—and in the majority of cases with justice—regards the "new chum," or "tender ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... foresee, is strictly an evolution. Socialists of this school reason from no assumed first principle, like the French, who start from "social equality," or like Herbert Spencer, who lays it down as an axiom that "every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the like freedom of every other man;" but basing themselves squarely on experience,—not individual but universal experience,—they can, and do present clear-cut, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... Margaret Fuller was, or would have done even as wisely as he? And how long is it since a wiser era has dawned upon the world (its light not yet fully welcomed), in which attention first to physical development to the exclusion of the mental, is an axiom in education! Was it so deemed forty years ago? Nor has it been considered that so gifted a child would naturally, as she did, seek the companionship of those older than herself, and not of children who had little in unison ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... sleep," is an axiom which Buvat might, from experience, have added to the list of his true proverbs. Either from fear or hunger, Buvat passed a very disturbed night, and it was not till near morning that he fell asleep; even then his slumbers ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... developed two striking pictures of the inconsistency of human nature. The author of the Declaration of Independence lays down at the very first this axiom: "We hold this truth to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." And yet this man, with members of others who signed the famous document, was a slave-holder, and contributed to the maintenance of a system which ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... mustn't be too hard on her. We never know what we may be brought to ourselves." For it was Aunt Tipping's unformulated axiom that, whatever cock-and-bull stories misfortune may tell, there is always some ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... an effect is defined by the power of its cause, in so far as its essence is explained or defined by the essence of its cause. (This axiom is evident from III.vii.) ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... resourceful man. He has an axiom which carries the thought-kernel that what man has done, man can do, and it doesn't cut any figure with Perry whether a fellow knows how to ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... which found their way from all sides to this rendezvous of misery. Certainly, there are many different ways of being honest and virtuous; and the "Monograph of Virtue" has no other basis than this social axiom.[*] A man is false to his conscience; he fails, apparently, in delicacy; he forfeits that bloom of honor which, though lost, does not, as yet, mean general disrepute; at last, however, he fails decidedly in honor; if he falls into the hands of the correctional police, ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... usurper (and that Edward is one in Scotland our annals and his tyrannies declare), they sell their birthright and become unworthy the name of men? In that deed they abjure the gift with which God had intrusted them; and justly, the angels of his host depart from them. You know the sacred axiom, Virtue is better than life! By that we are commanded to preserve the one at the expense of the other; and we are ready to obey. Neither the threats nor the blandishments of Edward have power to shake the resolves of those who draw the sword ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... not to imagine that John Bulmer debated an exposure of de Soyecourt. "Live and let live" was the Englishman's axiom; the exuberant Cazaio was dead, his men were either slain or dispersed, and the whole tangle of errors—with judicious reservations—had now been unravelled to Gaston's satisfaction. And Claire de Puysange was now Duchess of Ormskirk. Why, then, meddle with Destiny, who appeared, after all, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... Wiart, agreeing to this very evident axiom, and more than ever convinced that the story was a lie. Meeus was dead and the men had come to report. They had delayed on the road to hold some jamboree of their own, and this lie about the white men was ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... essentially different from that desire of pleasing, which is so natural and so consistent even with the greatest modesty, in that it always builds on some falsity, mistaken for a means of pleasing, though nothing can more surely defeat that intention; there is not an axiom more true than that the graces are incompatible with affectation. They vanish at the first appearance of it: and the curse of affectation is, that it never but lets itself be seen, and wherever it is seen, it is sure to offend, and to frustrate its ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... your letter on the 26th February, and am much obliged to you for all the trouble you have taken about the arias, which are quite accurate in every respect. "Next to God comes papa" was my axiom when a child, and I still think the same. You are right when you say that "knowledge is power"; besides, except your trouble and fatigue, you will have no cause for regret, as Madlle. Weber certainly deserves your kindness. I only wish that you could hear her sing my new ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... becoming an axiom in anthropology that what is needed is not discursive treatment of large subjects but the minute discussion of special themes, not a ranging at large over the peoples of the earth past and present, but a detailed examination of limited areas. This work I am undertaking for Australia, and in ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... things, but there was no answer to his principal question: By what right do some people punish others? Not only was there no answer, but all reasoning tended to explain and justify punishment, the necessity of which was considered an axiom. Nekhludoff read much, but only by fits and starts, and the want of an answer he ascribed to such superficial reading. He, therefore, refused to believe in the justice of the answer which constantly ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... see it too, with my help, that we may both enjoy it together." But he uses no compulsion; with those who turn a deaf ear to him he is powerless. Science on the other hand tries to compel belief by irresistible processes of logic; the scientist's axiom is that if the premises be true the conclusion must follow, and he pours scorn upon all who refuse assent to his interpretations, denouncing them as ignorant, superstitious, if not wilfully blind and perverse. Mystery, according to the ancients the beginning of philosophy, ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... superfluous or insufficient. Taken literally, it is true and worthless;—because what all have asserted, always, and in all places, supposing of course that the means of judging were in their power, may be assumed to be some indisputable axiom, such as never will be disputed any more than it has been disputed hitherto. But take it with any allowance, and then it is of no use in settling a question: for what most men have asserted, most commonly, and in most places, ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... development of Greece, and the other the consummation of the hopes and visions of the most spiritual people that the world has ever known. Both Socrates and Jesus believed in God, and both have taught the world, with no uncertain sound, of their faith in immortal life. The latter was clearly an axiom with Jesus, for He said to His disciples in effect, "If there had been any question about it I would have told you;" and almost with his last breath Socrates compelled his disciples to think of him as immortal, for he told them that, though ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... accepted as an axiom that young ladies had no object in life but to be ornamental—no mission but matrimony. The "accomplishments" were the sum total of a genteel education, though charged as "extras" on the half-yearly accounts; and all the finished creature had to do, after once "coming out," was to sit down ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... partially impelled by surrounding physical circumstances, and partially by its own second suggestions, growing out of those primary impressions received from nature. The moral influence, the historian asserts, is the weakest of the three, which control the destiny of man. Not an axiom now current, but was known and taught in the days of Plato, of Zoroaster, and of Confucius; yet how wide the gap intervening between the civilization of the different eras! Moral without intellectual culture, is nothing; but ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... multiplying power and number. Many other races have exceeded them in this particular. But no sooner do we come abreast of the latter day time than we find the laws of centuries changed. In thermal science it is an axiom that heat expands all bodies, and of course that cold contracts them. But to this general rule there is one beautiful and benevolent exception: it is in water; for if we start with water at thirty-two degrees, we find ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... the axiom of St. Augustine: "securus judicet orbis terrarum, a universally accepted judgment can be safely followed." Especially do we feel secure with the history of the chosen people of God before us arid its sacrifice ordained by the law; with the sanction of ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... perfect happiness cannot be attained by man, except he has suffered a certain amount of pain; so that, in order to attain to perfect happiness, man must of necessity experience suffering—a theory founded on the much misunderstood axiom, that nothing can exist save by contrast. But supposing, for the sake of argument, that this axiom, according to its everyday interpretation, is an axiom, i.e. a true saying, then God, the Creator of all things, must have created evil—evil ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... mycophagists will take note that a fleshy fungus which may be good eating at noon may undergo such changes in a few hours as to be anything but good eating at night. Many instances have been recorded of the rapidity of growth in fungi; it may also be accepted as an axiom that they are, in many instances, equally as ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... diverse cases of wealth. But spoliation is assumed, not proved. My own conviction that most wealth is quite blameless, whether under the general or specific accusation, is based on no comprehensive axiom, but simply on the knowledge of a number of particular fortunes and of their owners. Such a road towards truth is highly unromantic. The student of particular phenomena is unable to pose as the champion of the race. But the method has the modest advantage of resting ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... disappointing failure. As matters stand now, we do not cure syphilis. We simply cloak it, gloss it over, keep it under the surface. Nobody knows how much syphilis is cured, partly because nobody knows how much syphilis there really is, and partly because it is almost an axiom that few, except persons of high intelligence and sufficient means, stick to treatment until they can be discharged as cured. Take into consideration, too, the fact that the older methods of treating syphilis were scarcely equal to the task of curing the disease, and it ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... shape than any other. Religion becomes its pretext. Ignorance makes it easy, and interest makes it necessary, to represent the native race as savages outside the pale of law and morals, against whom any violence and treachery is justifiable. The legend grows and becomes a permanent political axiom, distorting and abasing the character of those who act on it and those who, suffering from it, and retaliating against its consequences, construct their counter-legend of the inherent wickedness of the dominant race. If left to themselves, white races, of diverse nationalities, thrown together ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... which was nearly unknown to the republics of antiquity—which was introduced into the world almost by accident, like so many other great truths—and misunderstood by several modern nations, is at length become an axiom in the political science of the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... this little axiom and passed a whole week in delight, grouping around this harmless epigram the crowd of ideas which came to him unconsciously and which he was astonished to find that he possessed. His humorous mood yielded at last to the claims of serious investigation. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... It is something more than a human axiom, that milk is for babes; and as this forms the basis of nearly all the food from which their nourishment is derived, it is necessary to observe, that the best way of using it is without either skimming or boiling it. The cream is the most nutritious balsamic part of milk, and to deprive ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... the basis of all love is sexual attraction. Without sexual attraction, in greater or lesser degree, there can be no love. Where the former is entirely lacking the latter can have no existence. This you may take as an axiom. Some may call it love, but on analyzing it you will find that it is no such thing. It may be friendship, it may be gratitude, it may be respect, it may be pity, it may be habit, it may even be a desire or a readiness to love or to be loved, but it is not love. Experience ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... is set for the most distant of land views, beach scenes and boats in the middle distance off-shore. You will learn by costly overexposures that water views require much less light than landscapes. Photographers have an axiom that "water is as bright as the sky itself." So at "64," which is proper exposure for the most distant of land panoramas, you begin ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... Friendly Societies. Useful thing for coming General Election to be remembered as advocate of cause of Working Man. Bestowed much care on terms of Resolution; invited Government to encourage more general voluntary provision for sickness and old age. Then adroitly dragged in the axiom that "Sound principles of provident Insurance should be included in the subjects prescribed by the Education Code for instruction in elementary schools." That meant to draw OLD MORALITY; ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... especial uses, and are only to be resorted to on especial occasions. Still, the worthy master, who had begun life on the forecastle, without any previous knowledge of usages, and who had imbibed the notion that "manners make the man," taken in the narrow sense of the axiom, was a devotee of what he fancied to be good breeding, and one of his especial duties, as he imagined, in order to put his passengers at their ease, was to introduce them to each other; a proceeding which, it is hardly necessary to say, had ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... the statement of some of the consequences which follow from Mr. Spencer's view—already explained—as to how the higher warrant, by which we know the Indestructibility of Matter to be an axiom, a self-evident truth, originated. In his chapter upon "Ultimate Scientific Ideas" he says that Space and Time are "wholly incomprehensible," and that "Matter ... in its ultimate nature, is as absolutely ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... life there's hope," came Frank's brave reply in his favorite axiom. "We'll live to fly the old Golden Eagle ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... jealous chronicler, guided by blind passion and never by reason while these moods were on him, has been held up as an authority that may be relied upon as to the doings and sayings of Napoleon and his immediate followers at the "Abode of Darkness." It is a well-known axiom that persons who speak or write anything while jealousy or temper holds them in its grip may not be counted as reliable people to follow, and that is exactly what happened in Gourgaud's case. He was the Peter of the band ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... wealth, can exist; the material triumphs of civilization are always the result of the application of primitive ideas. Thought is invariably the point of departure and the goal of all social existence. The history of Montegnac is a proof of that axiom of social science. When at last the administration was able to concern itself with the needs and the material prosperity of this region of country, it cut down this strip of forest, and stationed a detachment of gendarmerie near the ravine, which escorted the mail-coaches between the two ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... seventy.[49] The colossi of Abu Simbel, without being of quite such formidable proportions, face the river in imposing array. To say that the decline of Egyptian art began with Rameses II. is a commonplace of contemporary criticism; yet nothing is less true than an axiom of this kind. Many statues and bas-reliefs executed during his reign are no doubt inconceivably rude and ugly; but these are chiefly found in provincial towns where the schools were indifferent, and where the artists had no fine examples before them. At Thebes, at Memphis, at Abydos, ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... prompted thereto, he said, by the confidence which the dissenters reposed in the disposition of the house to do justice to the injured, and to afford relief to the oppressed. This motion was warmly supported by Fox, who laid it down as an axiom of policy, that no human government had any jurisdiction over opinions as such, and more especially over religious opinions. Fox supported this view by weighty arguments; but the motion was opposed by Pitt on the same ground ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... that very strongly,' said Dalmaine, his masculine accent more masculine than ever after the plaintive piping. 'I even fear that Mr. Egremont is doing wrong in making his lectures free. We may be sure they are well worth paying to hear, and it's an axiom in all dealing with the working class that they will never value anything that they don't ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... infrequently, was to the effect that—in London—one might live under an umbrella if one lived under it in the right neighbourhood and on the right side of the street, which axiom is the reason that a certain child through the first six years of her life sat on certain days staring out of a window in a small, dingy room on the top floor of a slice of a house on a narrow but highly fashionable London street and looked on at the ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sure that the god was in the right. I am by no means certain that the true limits of the critical duty are not grossly misunderstood. Excellence, in a poem especially, may be considered in the light of an axiom, which need only be properly put, to become self-evident. It is not excellence if it requires to be demonstrated as such; and thus, to point out too particularly the merits of a work of Art, is to admit that ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... prevent anybody else from striking into the conversation. It may be further remarked, that Miss Knag still aimed at youth, although she had shot beyond it, years ago; and that she was weak and vain, and one of those people who are best described by the axiom, that you may trust them as far as you can ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... spent the remainder of their time over dinner until the evening when they recommenced their pranks by torchlight. After the peddlers, they commenced operations on the ladies of the town, to whom, by a thousand dodges, they gave only that which they received, according to the axiom of Justinian: Cuiqum jus tribuere. "To every one his own juice;" and afterwards jokingly said to the ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... use future permanence to present effect. It is so serviceable a pigment for so many purposes, especially in admixture, that its sin of fugacity is overlooked. Hence we find indigo constantly mentioned in works on painting, their authors forgetting or not caring to remember that wholesome axiom, a fugitive colour is not rendered durable by being compounded. Artistically, it is adapted for moonlights, and when mixed with a little lamp black, is well suited for night clouds, distant cliffs, ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... friends, the Law and the Word. But these will always accompany us, and we may rely upon them in all worlds and under all conditions. This Law of Unity is what in natural science is known as the Law of Continuity, and the Ancient Wisdom has embodied it in the Hermetic axiom "Sicut superius, sicut inferius; sicut inferius, sicut superius"—As above, so below; as below, so above. It leads us on from stage to stage, unfolding as it goes; and to this unfolding there is no end, for it is the Eternal Life finding ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... axiom is understood by the French author, and in an imaginative, not a didactic way, though his imagination is not strong enough to ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... the common brotherhood of humanity. Organized and maintained for the purpose of conserving, developing and protecting life; such a government, would at all times be guided by the beacon light of the axiom, 'That the injury of one is the concern of all.' It would wisely measure its strength and perfection as a government, by the strength and perfection of ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... heaven; but if there was trouble in the village—a sick child, a husband in prison for rabbit snaring, a dead baby, a little boy's pinafore set fire—Vixen and her pony were always to the fore; and it was an axiom in the village that, where Miss Tempest did "take," it was very good for those she took to. Violet never withdrew her hand' when she had put it to the plough. If she made a promise, she always kept it. However long the sickness, however ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... years been changing to a storage for trunks instead of vegetables. The old-fashioned housewife exclaims at the lack of storage in the house of to-day, and we are eliminating it still more. A twentieth-century axiom is, "Throw or give away everything you have not immediate or prospective use for." It is as true of household furniture as of books; only the very best is of any value second-hand. Our young people may have heirlooms, but they will buy ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... "the great axiom" of philosophy. That we may distinctly comprehend its meaning, and understand its bearing on the subject under discussion, we must ascertain the sense in which he uses the words "phenomenal" and "relative." The importance ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... brotherly friendship with nature and all creatures. Trees, flowers, animals, wild and tame, even the stars are represented as comrades of children. That animals are only human beings in disguise is an axiom in the fairy tales. Animals are humanized, that is, the kinship between animal and human life is still keenly felt, and this reminds us of those early animistic interpretations of nature which subsequently led ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... revolts at crime. Still, from an artificial civilization have originated wants, vices, and false tastes, which occasionally become so powerful as to stifle within us all good feelings, and ultimately to lead us into guilt and wickedness. From this view of things, then, comes the axiom that if you visit to discover the author of any bad action, seek first to discover the person to whom the perpetration of that bad action could be in any way advantageous. Now, to apply it in your case,—to whom could ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... as an axiom, that whatever conduces to augment the sum of human happiness, must be an object of solicitude to the conscientious and intelligent physician. He will be anxious that his fellow citizens should be sober, peaceable, and virtuous; that they should be industrious, ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... in which you cross the threshold of married life depends your future happiness. It is not a small matter to lay the first stone of an edifice. A husband's first kiss"—I felt a thrill run down my back—"a husband's first kiss is like the fundamental axiom that serves as a basis for a whole volume. Be prudent, Captain. She is there beyond that wall, the fair young bride, who is awaiting you; her ear on the alert, her neck outstretched, she is listening to each of your ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... to religion and morals, we must follow strenuously the norm of reason rightly applied, as of the highest faculty of the mind; which law of thinking and perceiving, if it be applied to prove any positive religion (theological Rationalism) lays it down as an axiom that religion is revealed to men in no other manner than that which is agreeable both to the nature of things and to reason, as the witness and interpreter of divine providence; and teaches that the subject-matter of every supposed supernatural revelation, ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... reverence, and steal only from the public, while the latter, less scrupulous, steal unblushingly from one another. This truth is as old as Homer, and its proofs are as capable of demonstration as a mathematical axiom. Should the alliance between the two professions be questioned, the following case ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... natural classification would eventually be found to stand upon a basis of physiology. Therefore all the systems of classification up to the earlier part of the present century went upon the apparent axiom, that characters which are of most importance to the organisms presenting them must be characters most indicative of natural affinities. But the truth of the matter was eventually found to be otherwise. For it was eventually ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... was when her "uncle" paid her clandestine visits. Her life seemed to be in a terrible tangle—more than that, in a syrtis,—but I did not take a hand in further crushing her. She had been kind to me during my indisposition, and except in extreme cases, "live and let live" was an axiom I had learned to carefully regard. Knowledge of the slight chance of circumstances or opportunity—which too frequently is the only difference between a good person and a bad one, success and failure—reminds one to be very lenient ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... throne was established at the time when the heavens and earth became separated." This has long been an axiom of Japanese belief, but it has been somewhat modified of late years, even the assertion of it by the Sovereign himself. A leading Japanese statesman who has written an article on the subject of the Emperor and his place in the Constitution has asserted that he is "Heaven descended, ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... temper never helps in a contest of strength or skill. Agnes herself was trying to prove that axiom; but Trix had never ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... a genius sometimes takes his fits of abstraction for stupidity, and having the man's interests at heart she endeavors to arouse him from his lethargy by chiding him. Occasionally he arouses enough to chide back; and so it has become an axiom that genius is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... (DH ], without its like anywhere else in the Old Testament? On the contrary, there is no other place besides this at which God dwells and suffers Himself to be seen; no place but this alone where man can draw near to Him and seek His face with offerings and gifts. This view is the axiom that underlies the whole ritual legislation of the middle part of the Pentateuch. It is indicated with special clearness by the LPNY (HL MW(D (before the tabernacle), introduced at every turn in the ordinances ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... they say, Corny," continued Herman Mordaunt; "and this Mr. Pitt, the great commoner, as some persons call him, is bent on making the British empire feel the truth of the axiom. Everything is alive in the colonies, and the sluggish period of Lord Loudon's command is passed. Gen. Abercrombie, an officer from whom much is expected, is now at the head of the King's troops, and there is every prospect of an active ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... published a political pamphlet, entitled The False Alarm[325], intended to justify the conduct of ministry and their majority in the House of Commons, for having virtually assumed it as an axiom, that the expulsion of a Member of Parliament was equivalent to exclusion, and thus having declared Colonel Lutterel to be duly elected for the county of Middlesex, notwithstanding Mr. Wilkes had a great majority of votes[326]. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... animal, not to punish the vices which we have taught him, in vain efforts to subdue a strength incalculably greater than ours—which by resolute cruelty we have forced him to employ in resisting our unjust demands. Baucher lays it down as an axiom that no horse is naturally vicious, but that his vices are acquired through bad management. One may possess a higher temper than another, to be sure, but spirited horses are those which turn out best under his method of training. The ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... The old axiom, "I will go to sleep on it," has a greater significance than is generally attributed to it, for sleep and dreams have more to do in shaping your lives than you have any idea of. You can go to school in sleep and study anything you are studying ...
— The Secret of Dreams • Yacki Raizizun
... an axiom with the regular army of our own country and those of foreign nations, that soldier and discipline are synonymous. Meaning thereby the blind discipline ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... had a right to do as it pleased. The governor early saw, not only the fallacies, but the danger of this doctrine; and he wrote several communications himself, in order to prove that it was false. If true, he contended it was true altogether; and that it must be taken, if taken as an axiom at all, with its largest consequences. Now, if a majority has a right to rule, in this arbitrary manner, it has a right to set its dogmas above the commandments, and to legalize theft, murder, adultery, and all ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... quoth La Bruyere, 'must be charming indeed, whose husband does not repent, ten times a day, that he is a married man.' Sir Henry Wellwood would have scoffed at the axiom. The 'idol of his soul' was still an idol; although, like the votaries of old, he had managed to discover that it was not wholly formed of precious metals; that its feet were of clay! He still fancied himself the happiest of mortals; particularly when Henrietta, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... instance to show that the parent is often as bad an educator as the school itself. In this case the school would have taken as little notice of the boy's natural bent as his father. It would, in all probability, never have discovered it at all. But it has become so much an accepted axiom that children are to be manufactured into anything that happens to suit the taste or convenience of their guardians, that it probably never occurred to the parent in question that he was committing a cruel and foolish act in forcing his son out of the path into which the boy's natural ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... which has hitherto baffled the ingenuity of scientific and practical men, and attaining the "desideratum of lowering boats evenly, and of rapidly disengaging the tackles," by a self-acting contrivance. Mr Lacon takes as his principle the well-known axiom in mechanics, that what is gained in power is lost in time; and although he approves of the method at present in use, as being the best for hoisting up boats: he (seeing that the hoisting need never be a hurried operation) substitutes two single ropes or chains, which, being secured ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... civilization and strength of the country, diversifying our industry, and practising those lordly virtues that conquer success, and turn the world's dread laugh into admiring recognition? The white race has yet work to do in making practical the political axiom of equal rights, and the Christian idea of human brotherhood; but while I lift mine eyes to the future I would not ungratefully ignore the past. One hundred years ago and Africa was the privileged ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... political reformer in the eighteenth century could do otherwise—but, unlike his contemporaries, the Major was a stout Christian, and insisted that as the whole plan of Christianity was founded on the equality of all mankind, political rights must have the same foundation. By the political axiom that "no man shall be taxed but with his own consent, given either by himself or his own representative in Parliament," Cartwright may be quoted as one who had some perception of what democracy meant in England; but he is off the track again in arguing that personality, and not ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... A third axiom was, "Don't be a family man; nothing ages one like matrimonial felicity and paternal ties. Never multiply cares, and pack up your life in the briefest compass you can. Why add to your carpet-bag of troubles the contents of a lady's imperials and bonnet-boxes, and the travelling ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of art. And I appeal to any one, whether it is not absurd to receive the pleasant savors Nature gives us, and enjoy and reject those smells and colors that the seasons afford us, because forsooth they blossom with delight, if they have no other external profit or advantage. Besides, we have an axiom against you, for if (as you affirm) Nature makes nothing in vain, those things that have no other use were designed on purpose to please and to delight. Besides, observe that to thriving trees Nature hath given leaves, both for the preservation of the ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... advice," he said, "is this: try the case without the Judge; or, in other words, assume the legal functions of this defaulting personage in the bag-wig who is at present engaged in distending himself illegally with our Puddin'. For mark how runs the axiom: ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... cannot be cultivated and tended by a third party—that is an axiom. It either springs to life inevitably or, metaphorically speaking, it doesn't turn a hair. The well-meaning person who introduces one friend to another with the supreme assurance that they will both get on splendidly together, usually begins by making two people enemies. ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... negation of will and of desire is the only road to deliverance," and "the individual life is a misfortune from which impersonal contemplation is the only enfranchisement," etc. But the principle that life is an evil and annihilation a good lies at the root of the system, and this axiom I have never dared to enunciate in any general way, although I have admitted it here and there in individual cases. What I still like in the misanthrope of Frankfort, is his antipathy to current prejudice, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... be safely assumed as an axiom in the government of states that the greatest wrongs inflicted upon a people are caused by unjust and arbitrary legislation, or by the unrelenting decrees of despotic rulers, and that the timely revocation of injurious and oppressive measures is the greatest good that can be conferred upon a ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... therefore a great mistake when Orthodoxy or Rationalism reverses the axiom of John, and instead of saying, "Life is the light of man," tells us that "Light is the life of man." Knowledge comes from life. Belief comes from knowledge, and not ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... Madame Marneffe had got her circle together with prudent deliberation; only men whose opinions and habits agreed foregathered there, men whose interest it was to hold together and to proclaim the many merits of the lady of the house. Scandal is the true Holy Alliance in Paris. Take that as an axiom. Interests invariably fall asunder in the end; vicious ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... Plornish, who, having intimated that he wished to speak to her privately, in a series of coughs so very noticeable as to favour the idea that her father, as regarded her seamstress occupation, was an illustration of the axiom that there are no such stone-blind men as those who will not see, obtained an audience with her on the common staircase ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... out that only one-half of mankind can appropriate that axiom," said Mr. Stackpole. "How can a woman ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... axiom, upon which the entire basis of civilization necessarily rests, is challenged by a ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... several ways of departure. We selected the main highway for our trunks, but for ourselves the Pass of the Three Crosses; the Deacon and the Deaconess in a mountain waggon, and I on foot. It should be written as an axiom in the philosophy of travel that the easiest way is best for your luggage, and the hardest ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... questions cannot be answered by those who believe in the appearance or creation of only a few forms of life, or of some one form alone. It has been maintained by several authors that it is as easy to believe in the creation of a million beings as of one; but Maupertuis's philosophical axiom "of least action" leads the mind more willingly to admit the smaller number; and certainly we ought not to believe that innumerable beings within each great class have been created with plain, but deceptive, marks of descent from a ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... to take Thursday in change for Wednesday,—and just as I begin to wonder whether she can have received my letter at all, or whether she may not have been vexed by it into taking a vengeance and adhering to her own devices; (for it appealed to her esprit de sexe on the undeniable axiom of women having their way ... and she might choose to act it out!) just as I wonder over all this, and consider what a confusion of the elements it would be if you came and found her here, and Mr. Chorley at the door perhaps, waiting for some of the light of ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... the workingmen considered machinery their deadly foe, to be gotten rid of by all means. The simple axiom that machinery, factories, mines, land, together with every other means of production, if only in the hands of the entire community, would serve for the comfort and happiness of all, instead of being a curse, was a book of seven seals for the people ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... with a good deal of occupation beyond the support of the twelve judges; and, though the proposition that the State has no business to meddle with anything but the administration of justice, seems sometimes to be regarded as an axiom, it can hardly be said to be intuitively certain, inasmuch as a great many people absolutely repudiate it; while, as yet, the attempt to give it the authority of a revelation has ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... surrender," he said, quietly, with the quiet of a man who enunciates a mathematical axiom. "You know ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... whole life lived again, an entire world embraced anew, as he came forward and uttered the significant yet simple words: "To your own kindness and the ceaseless efforts of my associates, our artists, you owe this accomplishment. What I have yet to say to you can be put into a few words, into an axiom. You have seen now what we can do. It remains for you to will! And if you will, then we have a ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... men brave and independent. As thou callest on me to show thee where and in what manner thou hast misrepresented thy teacher, and as thou seemest to set an equal value on eloquence and on reasoning, I shall attend to thee awhile on each of these matters, first inquiring of thee whether the axiom is Socratic, that it is never becoming to get drunk, unless in the ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... will never find in Nature two objects identically alike. In the Natural Order two and two never make four; to do so, four exactly similar units must be had, and you know how impossible it is to find two leaves alike on the same tree, or two trees alike of the same species. This axiom of your numeration, false in visible nature, is equally false in the invisible universe of your abstractions, where the same variance takes place in your ideas, which are the things of the visible world extended by means of their relations; so that the variations here are even more marked than ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... monarchy and the authority of princes. Even in a speech to the parliament where he begged for supply, and where he should naturally have used every art to ingratiate himself with that assembly, he expressed himself in these terms: "I conclude, then, the point touching the power of kings, with this axiom of divinity, that, as to dispute what God may do, is blasphemy; but what God wills, that divines may lawfully and do ordinarily dispute and discuss. So is it sedition in subjects to dispute what a king may do in the height of his power. But just kings will ever ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... I feel the difficulty of complying with your request; although I am not certainly unaccustomed to literary composition, or a total stranger to the stores of history and tradition, which afford the best copies for the painter's art. But although sicut pictura poesis is an ancient and undisputed axiom—although poetry and painting both address themselves to the same object of exciting the human imagination, by presenting to it pleasing or sublime images of ideal scenes; yet the one conveying ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... figure was regarded by logicians as the only perfect type of syllogism, because the validity of moods in this figure may be tested directly by their complying, or failing to comply, with a certain axiom, the truth of which is self-evident. This axiom is known as the Dictum de Omni et Nullo. It may be ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... the impractical man is two fold. First, his powers of observation are so deficient that it is difficult for him to obtain facts. It is an axiom of conscious life that there is pleasure and satisfaction in the use of well-developed powers and a disinclination to use powers which are deficient in development. Because it is difficult for the impractical man to obtain facts, he has little desire ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... other spheres, let us make clear what is meant by such dynamical elements of Christianity. The doctrine of the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection was put before the world by Darwin in 1859, and within the half century has been accepted almost as an axiom by the whole civilised world. Undoubtedly that doctrine has proved itself dynamical. On the other hand, a few years earlier than the publication of The Origin of Species, another body of new doctrine was propounded to Britain and the world, and strongly urged by its upholders, ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... their object before another general election supervened would depend on the security of his hold on the local Liberal organisation; and that would depend on his personal ability as a politician and—very largely—on his unscrupulousness. For it may, I think, be stated as an axiom that no man can long retain his hold as "boss" of the machine in a large city except by questionable methods,—methods which sometimes involve dishonesty. He must—no matter whether he likes it or not—use his patronage and his power ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... two following passages from the "Novum Organum,"—the first being taken from the Ninety-ninth Axiom of the First Book. "Then only will there be good ground of hope for the further advance of knowledge, when there shall be received and gathered together into natural history a variety of experiments, which are of no use in themselves, but to discover causes and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... one all-inclusive order, regulating and controlling everything that is. This is the Law of the series. The stars in their courses move in the serial order, and the leaves clothing the trees obey the same cosmic code. Fourier's first axiom was: The series distribute the Harmonies. That is to say, the operation of the Law of the series brings about harmonious results. The stars traverse serenely their proper orbits, influencing each other in a perfect balance of harmonious relations. The ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... Axiom: Hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of virtue. But I include in the word bourgeois, the bourgeois in blouses as well the ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... and gave ourselves up. For the nonce, however, three weeks would pass, and with them all our woes. The idea of eighteen weeks occurred to nobody; it would have been too farcical, too puerile. That starvation must have killed us long ere the period had fled, would have been our axiom, if it were pertinent to the issue, when the 'pros' and 'cons' of the situation were being eagerly discussed on the opening days of a Siege that was to send the fame of the Diamond City farther than ever did its diamonds. A few weeks would ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... starvation and cold. This picture is unfortunately true in the main; at any rate, there is sufficient truth about it to account for the element of sentimental fiction escaping unnoticed, and thus it comes to be regarded as an axiom that the Chinese woman is low, very low, in the scale of humanity and civilisation. The women of the poorer classes in China have to work hard indeed for the bowl of rice and cabbage which forms their daily food, but not more so than women of their own station in other ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... their bona fide opinions, much less that they should profess to do so. Rather let each side hoodwink judge and jury as best it can, and let truth flash out from collision of defence and accusation. When either side will not collide, it is an axiom of controversy that it desires to prevent the truth ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... generate steam, then, only two steps are required: 1st, procure the heat, and 2nd, transfer it to the water. Now, you have it laid down as an axiom that when a body has been transferred or transformed from one place or state into another, the same work has been done and the same energy expended, whatever may have been the intermediate steps or conditions, or whatever the apparatus. Therefore, ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co. |
