"Indefeasible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Constitution of 1776 contained the declaration "that, when any government shall have been found inadequate or contrary to these purposes [the purposes enumerated in the Bill of Rights], a majority of the community hath an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal." The Revolutionary constitution of Pennsylvania contained a similar ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... Government that he gave them access to twelve kingdoms and two seas, while Spain acquired by the treaty access only to two kingdoms and one sea. The new world, however, east or west, from the Antilles to the Moluccas, was the private and indefeasible property of his Catholic Majesty. On religious matters, it was agreed that English residents in Spain should not be compelled to go to mass, but that they should kneel in the street to the Host unless ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the question of liberty. On Benthamite principles there could be no question here of indefeasible individual right. There were even, as we saw, possibilities of a thorough-going Socialism or of an authoritarian paternalism in the Benthamite principle. But two great considerations told in the opposite direction. One arose from the circumstances of the day. Bentham, originally ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... fighting for his own hand, striving for dear life against every other individual, was ingrained in their minds by the inveterate bitterness of their own experience; when Emily had become a woman, and was gone forth to wrest from the adverse world her own subsistence, her right to what she earned was indefeasible, and affection itself protested against her being mulcted for their advantage. As for the slight additional expense of her presence at home during the holidays, she must not be above paying a visit to her parents; the little inconsistency was amiable enough. Father ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... case I must observe to you in which recrimination has peculiar poignancy. If you have had it in your power to confer obligations on any one, never cease reminding them of it: and let them feel that you have acquired an indefeasible right to reproach them without a possibility of their retorting. It is a maxim with some sentimental people, "To treat their servants as if they were their friends in distress."—I have observed that people of this cast make themselves amends, by treating their friends in ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... kingdom of France, and for the souls of all the faithful departed." For this, the king granted Berford's Hall, formerly Charleston's Inn, which Chicheley's trustees had granted to him so as to obtain a royal grant and indefeasible title. Richard Andrews, the king's secretary, like Chicheley himself a scholar of Winchester and fellow of New College, was named as first warden. A papal bull for the college was obtained on the 21st of June 1439; and further patents for endowments from the 11th ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... the Hindu system, Indra and the other inferior deities were not the possessors of Swarga, or heaven, by indefeasible right. They accordingly viewed with jealousy, and even alarm, any extraordinary persistency by a human being in acts of penance, as it raised him to a level with themselves; and, if carried beyond a certain point, enabled ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... dense as it was discreditable to the land of their birth and breeding. Are these people included (on account of having his favourite sine qua non of a fair skin) in the US of this apostle of skin-worship, in the indefeasible right to political power which is denied to Blacks by reason, or rather ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... to set forth certain principles for the state's organization, but they seek above all to draw the boundary line between state and individual. According to them the individual is not the possessor of rights through the state, but by his own nature he has inalienable and indefeasible rights. The English laws know nothing of this. They do not wish to recognize an eternal, natural right, but one inherited from their fathers, "the old, undoubted ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... the wedge like the stroke of a hammer. Sometimes they drove it: oftener the wedge stayed still where it was. But it never slipped back. When it was stubbornest, and the days seemed to lose their weight, when Valerie's hold seemed indefeasible, when the woods were quick with memory, when Anthony heard an old faint sigh in the wind, and the laughter of a brook fluted the note of a soft familiar voice, then more than once that strange, cool, silvery call had stolen out ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... first person, no doubt, is a source of relief to a novelist in the matter of composition. It composes of its own accord, or so he may feel; for the hero gives the story an indefeasible unity by the mere act of telling it. His career may not seem to hang together logically, artistically; but every part of it is at least united with every part by the coincidence of its all belonging to one man. When he ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... as faith and piety. Was anything wanting to perfect him in the unresisting gentleness of the dove? If so, his guardian angel saw to it when he sent him back in chains from the scenes of his triumph. He then and there, by his meekness, established his indefeasible right to the name Columbus—the right ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... payment." It has drowned the most heavenly ecstacies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... element in effective literature, a force in the cause of reform, the qualities Punch personifies have been and are of no slight service. And herein those qualities have an indefeasible title to regard. Let there be no vinegar-faced, wholesale denunciation of them, because sometimes their pranks are wild and overleap the fences of propriety. Rather let appreciation of their worthiness accompany all reproving checks upon their extravagances. Let nimble fun, explosive ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... usually enjoyed by any subjects of an Oriental king. Rank in Parthia being hereditary and not simply official, the "megistanes" were no mere creatures of the monarch, but a class which stood upon its own indefeasible rights. As they had the privilege of electing to the throne upon a vacancy, and even that of deposing a duly elected monarch, the king could not but stand in wholesome awe of them, and feel compelled to treat them with ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... submission. The doctrine, in fact, denies all human government, and allows the people no voice in the management of their own affairs, and gives no place for human activity. It stands opposed to all republicanism, and makes power an hereditary and indefeasible right, not a trust which he who holds it may forfeit, and of which he may be deprived ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... whole generations of faggot and torture, are extinct in this age of light, there seems only to remain fair arguments founded in reason, and these can only be brought as evidences upon the trial: The culprit himself, by indefeasible right divine, will preside as the judge. Upon a close enquiry it will be found, that his sentiments are as much his private property, as the coat that covers him, or the ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... must needs quarrel with their own Shadows? And who (continues he) but is deeply sensible, that one great Source of the Uneasiness and Misery of human Life, especially amongst those of Distinction, arises from nothing in the World else, but too severe a Contemplation of an indefeasible Contexture of our external Parts, or certain natural and invincible Disposition to be fat or lean? When a little more of Mr. SPECTATOR'S Philosophy would take off all this; and in the mean time let them observe, that there's not one of their Grievances of this ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... our rulers have said, that English diplomacy can no longer recognise "nationalities," but only existing "governments." God grant that they may see in time that the assertion of national life, as a spiritual and indefeasible existence, was for centuries the central idea of English policy; the idea by faith in which she delivered first herself, and then the Protestant nations of the Continent, successively from the yokes of Rome, of Spain, of France; and that they may reassert that most ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... what precisely Hellenism implied as it was brought to Asia by Alexander and practised by his successors. Politically it implied recognition by the individual that the society of which he was a member had an indefeasible and virtually exclusive claim on his good will and his good offices. The society so recognized was not a family or a tribe, but a city and its proper district, distinguished from all other cities and their districts. The ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... seems to be, that the right of a son to come into the place of his father, whether in respect to property, power, or social rank, is not a natural, inherent, and indefeasible right, but a privilege which society accords, as a matter of convenience and expediency. In England, expediency is, on the whole, considered to require that all three of these things, viz., property, rank, and power, in certain ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... else; the birds and beasts, and even the lowest forms of life, might, under some form, in some world, live again; but no priest had ever promised, nor any poet ever dreamed, that the title of a man's past selves to a life immortal is as indefeasible as that ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... sense of duty, and his indefeasible conviction that his Father in heaven would not forsake him whilst pursuing a course in obedience to his will, and designed to advance the welfare of his children. As this furnishes the key to Livingstone's future life, and the ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... dispute. Both parties are contending for the inspiration—so far they are agreed; the question between them arises upon quite another point, viz., as to the mode of that inspiration, whether incarnating its golden light in the corruptibilities of perishing syllables, or in the sanctities of indefeasible, word-transcending ideas. Now, upon that question, the apostolic words, torture them how you ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... destined to achieve the deliverance or the triumph of the church. If the judges of Israel were occasional and temporary magistrates, the kings of Judah derived from the royal unction of their great ancestor an hereditary and indefeasible right, which could not be forfeited by their own vices, nor recalled by the caprice of their subjects. The same extraordinary providence, which was no longer confined to the Jewish people, might elect Constantine and his family as the protectors of the Christian world; and the devout ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... exercises penal jurisdiction over all its members, no matter where they may reside. A removal from the geographical jurisdiction will not, in this case, release the individual from personal jurisdiction. The allegiance of a member to his lodge is indefeasible. ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... questions were not necessarily improper in themselves, and we can imagine circumstances in which they might be not only proper but decisive. But, the circumstances being what they were, the narrower expediencies of ordinary politics were outweighed by one of those supreme and indefeasible expediencies which are classified as moral. These are, in other words, the higher, wider, more binding, and transcendent part of the master ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... like a living thing; and at last Leon arose in his might, and burst with inimitable conviction into his great song, "Y a des honnetes gens partout!" Never had he given more proof of his artistic mastery; it was his intimate, indefeasible conviction that Castel-le-Gachis formed an exception to the law he was now lyrically proclaiming, and was peopled exclusively by thieves and bullies; and yet, as I say, he flung it down like a challenge, he trolled it forth ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... interest. The essence of Fitzjames's argument was a revival of his old challenge to Newman. He took occasion of a pamphlet by Manning to ask once more the very pertinent question: You claim to represent an infallible and supernatural authority which has indefeasible rights to my allegiance; upon what grounds, then, is your claim based? To establish it, you have first to prove that we have such a knowledge of God as will enable us to draw special inferences as to particular institutions; next, that Christ was an incarnation of that God; then, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... fervour which shows itself in a man's work rather than in his conduct. It was Mr. Slide's taste to be an advanced reformer, and in all his operations on behalf of the People's Banner he was a reformer very much advanced. No man could do an article on the people's indefeasible rights with more pronounced vigour than Mr. Slide. But it had never occurred to him as yet that he ought to care for anything else than the fight,—than the advantage of having a good subject on which to write slashing articles. Mr. Slide was an energetic but not a thoughtful man; but ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... as brief and intelligible a manner as any will can appear, till it is explained by the learned, I have disposed of my real and personal estate: but, as I am an adept, I have by birth an equal right to give also an indefeasible title to my endowments and qualifications; which I do in ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... confiscations. But the matter was one of great difficulty. In many cases land had been allotted by Cromwell in payment for money received; in others the grantees had sold their holdings to purchasers who had paid in cash, regarding the original grant as indefeasible. A reconfiscation of such lands would obviously have worked a great injustice; and it is a common maxim of law that between two claimants each with a good title the one in possession is to be preferred. Still it ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... will cleave to society for ever. And the way in which a corn-law—that is, a restraint upon the free importation of corn—affects the case, is this:—Relieving the domestic farmer from that part of his anxiety which points to the competition of foreigners, it confines it to the one natural and indefeasible uncertainty lying in the contingencies of the weather. Releasing him from all jealousy of man, it throws him, in singleness of purpose, upon an effort which cannot be disappointed, except by a power ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... humanity. Of course, we are all very glad to do these things, you know,—we who have human feelings—but woman has no right to them, based upon her need—particularly if she be a woman who insists, as I do, upon her indefeasible right to sing bass. I know that it helps things along for a woman to look after a man's linen and buttons, and do his fine work generally, because she seems to have a kind of natural knack at the business. I am aware that it is exceedingly pleasant to hear a woman sing treble, ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... his work Needham was associated with Buffon, and the results of their experiments fitted in admirably with the great French naturalist's hypothesis of "organic molecules," according to which, life is the indefeasible property of certain indestructible molecules of matter, which exist in all living things, and have inherent activities by which they are distinguished from not living matter. Each individual living organism is formed ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... ancient sword, which he dug out of the ground and presented to Attila. That magnanimous, or rather that artful, prince accepted, with pious gratitude, this celestial favor, and, as the rightful possessor of the sword of Mars, asserted his divine and indefeasible claim to the dominion of the earth. If the rites of Scythia were practised on this solemn occasion, a lofty altar, or rather pile of fagots, three hundred yards in length and in breadth, was raised in a spacious ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... that if the great majority of the nation adhere to the new form, the United States will approve thereof; because, in the first place, we have no right to prescribe to this country the government they shall adopt, and next, because the basis of our own Constitution is the indefeasible right of the people to ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... could wish in a woman. If there were a stupider one to be found, I would set out to seek her. This girl, whose name is Dinah, will never criticise me; she will never contradict me; I shall be her Upper Chamber, her Lords and Commons. In short, Paul, she is indefeasible evidence of the English genius; she is a product of English mechanics brought to their highest pitch of perfection; she was undoubtedly made at Manchester, between the manufactory of Perry's pens and the workshops for steam-engines. It eats, it drinks, ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... rock, rock solid, firm as a rock; firmly seated, firmly established &c. v.; deep-rooted, ineradicable; inveterate; obstinate &c. 606. transfixed, stuck fast, aground, high and dry, stranded. [movable object rendered unmovable] stuck, jammed; unremovable; quiescent &c. 265; deterioration &c. 659. indefeasible, irretrievable, intransmutable[obs3], incommutable[obs3], irresoluble[obs3], irrevocable, irreversible, reverseless[obs3], inextinguishable, irreducible; indissoluble, indissolvable[obs3]; indestructible, undying, imperishable, incorruptible, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... listen to with reverence. Freedom of religious opinion brings on, I suppose, freedom of political creed; for I had no sooner renounced the Pope's infallibility, than I began to question the doctrine of hereditary and indefeasible right. In short, strange as it may seem, I came out of a Parisian convent, not indeed an instructed Whig and Protestant, but with as much inclination to be so as if I had been bred up, like you, within the Presbyterian sound ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... ravens. It was in vain; the prisoner knew nothing. The seven hundred Pyrotists could not subvert the proofs of the accusation because they could not know what they were, and they could not know what they were because there were none. Pyrot's guilt was indefeasible through its very nullity. And it was with a legitimate pride that Greatauk, expressing himself as a true artist, said one day to General Panther: "This case is a master-piece: it is made out of nothing." The seven hundred Pyrotists despaired of ever clearing up this ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... whatsoever. Despotism, if it means anything that is at all defensible, means a mode of government bound by no written rules, and coerced by no controlling magistracies or well-settled orders in the state. But if it has no written law, it neither does nor can cancel the primeval, indefeasible, unalterable law of Nature and of nations; and if no magistracies control its exertions, those exertions must derive their limitation and direction either from the equity and moderation of the ruler, or ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... reflections; and you may change creeds and dogma by authority, or proclaim a new religion with the sound of trumpets, if you will; but here is a man who has his own thoughts, and will stubbornly adhere to them in good and evil. He is a Catholic, a Protestant, or a Plymouth Brother, in the same indefeasible sense that a man is not a woman, or a woman not a man. For he could not vary from his faith, unless he could eradicate all memory of the past, and, in a strict and not a conventional meaning, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... suggested this singular claim at the instance of his friend Reeves. The ground he took was that, having been born a British subject, he had a right to reassume his allegiance at pleasure; or rather that it was indefeasible, and never could be parted with. The claim appears to have caused some sensation among the crown lawyers. It was certainly unfounded and injudiciously asserted. Lord Liverpool pronounced it monstrous; and it probably increased the suspicion and ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... Undoubtedly it is the most precious heirloom of our race, and as such we must reverence and guard it. Nor must we islanders talk as though we hold it in fee-simple, and allowed our trans-Atlantic kinsfolk merely a conditional usufruct of it. Their property in it is as complete and indefeasible as our own; and we should rejoice to accept their aid in the conversation and renovation (equally indispensable processes) of this ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... impregnated any of the allied nations, whose ideas of personal liberty and dignity would oppose an insurmountable obstacle to that severe discipline which was essential to military success. Great Britain, they believed, would cling to her ingrained notions of the indefeasible right of the British workman to strike and of the British citizen to hold back from military service. And the telegrams announcing that in the United Kingdom the cries of "business as usual," "sport as usual," "strikes as usual," ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... rules and the proprieties. Of course it is not intended to compare 'The Robbers' with the riper works of Shakspere. That would be absurd, and yet no more absurd than to gird at Schiller for doing what we pardon or even admire in Shakspere. Like every great dramatist Schiller has an indefeasible right to demand that we take his point of view, make his assumptions and enter into the spirit of his creation. And when we do this, how magnificently he carries us along! What animation in the dialogue everywhere, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... and I have done. Whoever believes as I do in the indefeasible sanctity of honestly acquired moveable property, is logically bound to hold equally sacred the rights of bequest and inheritance. With whatever is exclusively your own, you may surely do anything you please except harm; nor need even harm be ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... common sense, not from custom, and shall draw its precepts from an eternal code. The principle of the higher law signifies Revolution. No government founded on positive enactments only can stand before it, and it points the way to that system of primitive, universal, and indefeasible rights which the lawyers of the Assembly, descending from Domat, prefixed ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... is my own confident belief that the words of Christ, and his words alone (the primal indefeasible truths of Christianity), shall not pass away, so I cannot presume to say that men may not attain to a clearer, at the same time more full, comprehensive, and balanced sense of those words, than has as yet been generally received in the Christian world. As all else is transient and mutable, ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... some money or some merit. But it was of use to a man to be a cousin of the House of Vipont, though without any money, without any merit at all. It was of use to be part and parcel of a British institution; it was of use to have a legitimate indefeasible right to share in the administration and patronage of an empire, on which (to use a novel illustration) "the sun never sets." You might want nothing for yourself; the Colonel and the Marquess equally wanted nothing for themselves but man is ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... clergy of Scotland, indeed, who, excepting a few, have lately, by a sudden stroke, cut off all ties of allegiance to the house of Stuart, and resolved to pray for our present lawful Sovereign by name, may be thought to have confirmed this remark; as it may be said, that the divine indefeasible hereditary right which they professed to believe, if ever true, must be equally true still. Many of my readers will be surprized when I mention, that Johnson assured me he had never in his life been ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... the Pope above the king, the party that aimed at internal improvement by means the exact opposite of those which had preserved the Church in the past, were feckless enthusiasts. They reverted to the old tradition of indefeasible authority wielding irresistible force; and in the person of Caraffa, Bishop of Chieti, afterwards Archbishop of Naples, cardinal, and Pope, under the name of Paul IV, they now came to the front. It was reported from Ratisbon ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... had sufficiently enjoyed the surprise of his guest, he called his attention to Miss Bertram's affairs. 'I was in hopes,' he said, 'though but faint, to have discovered some means of ascertaining her indefeasible right to this property of Singleside; but my researches have been in vain. The old lady was certainly absolute fiar, and might dispose of it in full right of property. All that we have to hope ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... from the violence and power by which the house of Lancaster supported their present possession of the crown, they proceeded to give a decision. Their sentence was calculated, as far as possible, to please both parties: they declared the title of the duke of York to be certain and indefeasible; but in consideration that Henry had enjoyed the crown, without dispute or controversy, during the course of thirty-eight years, they determined that he should continue to possess the title and dignity during the remainder of his life; that the administration of the government, meanwhile, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... who are about equally developed; but my address to-day will be mainly occupied with our duty toward those who are or seem to be wholly undeveloped. The fundamental principle of Ethics is that every human being possesses indefeasible worth. It is comparatively easy to apply the principle of anticipating our neighbor's latent talents to the highly gifted, to the great authors, scientists, statesmen, artists, and even to the moderately gifted, for their worth is, in part, already manifested in their lives. But it is not ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... (s. 3) that "when the access and use of light to and for'' (any building) "shall have been actually enjoyed therewith for the full period of 20 years without interruption, the right thereto shall be deemed absolute and indefeasible, any local usage or custom to the contrary notwithstanding, unless it shall appear that the same was enjoyed by some consent or agreement, expressly made or given for that purpose by deed or writing.'' The statute ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... against the inalienable and indefeasible rights of every American citizen to attempt to destroy the Government under which we were born. It is a crime against constitutional freedom and the hopes of the friends of freedom throughout the wide world to ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... the South, Jefferson Davis, at about this time, presented in the Senate, as their ultimatum, a set of resolutions. These called for the recognition of slave-property as an indefeasible right of territorial settlers, entitled to congressional protection; for the enforcement of the fugitive slave law, and the repeal of the "personal liberty laws" by which it was hindered or nullified in many States; and in general, for the rebuke of ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... and therefore he sent them both back for England at the return of the ships the same year."[98:1] Neither then nor afterward was there any trace of doubt in the minds of the New England settlers, in going 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 ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... question the apparent necessity and indefeasibleness of established facts; and it is often an indispensable part of his argument to show how those powerful feelings had their origin, and how those facts came to seem necessary and indefeasible. There is therefore a natural hostility between him and a philosophy which discourages the explanation of feelings and moral facts by circumstances and association, and prefers to treat them as ultimate elements of human nature; ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... probably sinking a well. When this has been done—when he has thus given a pledge of his intentions by depositing on the land the value of a certain amount of labor, he cannot be removed. He cannot be removed for a term of years, and then if he pays the price of the land it becomes his own with an indefeasible title. Many such settlements are made on the purchase of warrants for land. Soldiers returning from the Mexican wars were donated with warrants for land—the amount being 160 acres, or the quarter of a section. The localities of such lands were not specified, but the privilege granted was ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... to the State. If it could not afford the requisite funds, he expounded in an unpublished essay how a few hundred English artificers might teach the Indians to arm themselves against the Spaniards. By an able and generous argument he reconciled the indefeasible right of the natives to their territory with the industrial colony he was planning. As the State could in no shape be induced to interest itself, he maintained the English connexion with Guiana at his private charge. In the ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... held together, its centre and seat of government would be far northward and westward of Washington. But the artist keeps right on, firm of heart and hand, drawing his outlines with an unwavering pencil, beautifying and idealizing our rude, material life, and thus manifesting that we have an indefeasible claim to a more enduring national existence. In honest truth, what with the hope-inspiring influence of the design, and what with Leutze's undisturbed evolvement of it, I was exceedingly encouraged, and allowed these ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... world of life? Are there no shadowings, in that reciprocal influence between soul and soul, of some mysterious chain which links together the human family in its two extremes, giving to the very lowest an indefeasible claim on the highest, so that we cannot be independent if we would, or indifferent even to the very meanest, without violation of an imperative law of our nature? And does it not at least hint of duties and affections towards the most ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... his example that of one who in each emergency will take the lead; at a crisis where toil is needful, by endurance; or in the battle-lists of bravery by prowess; or when the function of the counsellor is uppermost, by the soundness of his judgment. Of such a man I say, he has obtained by warrant indefeasible ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon
... "will absolutely abolish all economic distinctions, and prevent the possibility of their ever again arising." And how would it accomplish this end? "By making," says the writer, "an equal provision for all an indefeasible condition of citizenship, without any regard whatever to the relative specific services of the different citizens. The rendering of such services on the other hand," the writer goes on, "instead of being left to the option of the citizen, ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... is evident, that though preference was naturally and properly given to hereditary claims, the monarchy of Scotland, as well as of England, was in principle "elective". The doctrine of hereditary, of divine, of indefeasible "right", is ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless and indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, naked, shameless, direct, ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... in a certain degree, mad on this subject. He did think that because the young girl had given him a promise—had said to him a word or two which he called a promise—she was now of right his bride; that there belonged to him an indefeasible property in her heart, in her loveliness, in the inexpressible tenderness of her young springing beauty, of which no subsequent renouncing on her part could fairly and honestly deprive him. That others should oppose the match was intelligible to ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... part animated by selfishness of their own; but it none the less had justice and right behind it. In any argument on fundamental principles, the colonists always had the better of it. Their rights as free men and as chartered communities were indefeasible, were always asserted, and never given up. They did not hesitate to disregard the more unjust of England's exactions and restrictions; it was only by such defiance that they maintained their life. And ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... never have emerged, and whose mark can now be effaced; ultimately, too, these things have searched our inner nature to its very depths and exposed its bed-rock foundation. They have convinced us that this idea of ultimate separation is an illusion, and that in truth we are all indefeasible and indestructible parts of one great Unity in which "we live and move and have our being." That being so, it is clear that there remains in the end a self-consciousness which need by no means be abandoned, which indeed only comes to its true fruition and understanding ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter |
