"Truism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in art counts, next to actual genius, heavier than all other qualities, is such a truism that it is often forgotten. In the enormous mass of mediocre work which is turned out annually by artists of technical talent seldom is there encountered a strong, well-defined personality. Imitation has been called ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... Byron—but O leave those angry common-places to others!—they do not come well from you. Do not force me to remind you, that women have achieved enough to silence them forever,[4] and how often must that truism be repeated, that it is not a woman's attainments which make her amiable or unamiable, estimable or the contrary, but her qualities? A time is coming, perhaps, when the education of women will be considered, with a view to their future destination as the mothers and nurses of legislators ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... it up. It was a mere truism. Nothing under canvas could be expected to make a port on such an idle night of dreamy splendour and spiritual stillness. We would have to glide idly to and fro, keeping our station within the appointed bearings, ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... ultimate analysis of the first step in arithmetical notation. Many of them would open their eyes were you to tell them, for instance, that the number of fingers on your two hands may be just as correctly expressed by the figures 11, 12, 13, 14, or 15, as by the figures 10,—a truism perfectly familiar to every one acquainted with the generalizations of higher arithmetic. Yet it is up-hill work to make the matter quite clear to a beginner. We may wisely therefore give our children at first an ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... from various texts in the Jewish and Christian sacred books, substituting for Jupiter flinging his thunderbolts the Almighty wrapped in thunder and sending forth his lightnings. Through the Middle Ages this was fostered until it came to be accepted as a mere truism, entering into all medieval thinking, and was still further developed by an attempt to specify the particular sins which were thus punished. Thus even the rational Florentine historian Villani ascribed floods and fires to the "too great pride of the city ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... causes. It may be the result of a controversy which has conclusively settled the question, establishing to the satisfaction of all parties a clear preponderance of argument or fact in favor of one opinion, and making that opinion a truism which is accepted by all enlightened men, even though they have not themselves examined the evidence on which it rests. Thus, if any one in a company of ordinarily educated persons were to deny the motion of the earth, or the circulation of the blood, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... North, and in another in those of the South. As early as the opening of the nineteenth century, the social tendencies of the two regions were already so far alienated that they involved differences which would scarcely admit of reconciliation. It is a truism to say that these differences gradually were concentrated around fundamentally different conceptions of labor—of slave labor in the South, of ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... God cannot reverse morality, may mean either that it would be inconsistent with his immutability to reverse the laws he had himself established, or that he is compelled by his nature to impose certain rules, and no others. The first supposition is a truism; the second is not proved. For, since Mr. Mansel has discarded as a fiction any 'absolute law of duty,' it is hard to conjecture whence he could derive any compulsory choice of rules. Why God commands some things in preference to others—whether from ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... This truism, which is in the mouths of thousands while it is in the hearts of scarcely any, was well meant by Sir Wycherly, however plainly expressed. It merely drew from the youth the simple answer that—"he was born in the colonies, and had colonists ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... followed the utterance of this truism, amid which arose from the other end of the table the piping tones of Mlle Remanjon's voice ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... architecture before. To those who have, much of what is stated in them will be well known or self-evident; but they must not be indignant at a simplicity on which the whole argument depends for its usefulness. From that which appears a mere truism when first stated, they will find very singular consequences sometimes following,—consequences altogether unexpected, and of considerable importance; I will not pause here to dwell on their importance, nor on that of the thing itself to be done; for I believe most readers will ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... from the moment of its publication until to-day. And it is asserted with great probability that The Prince has had a more direct action upon real life than any other book in the world, and a larger share in breaking the chains and lighting the dark places of the Middle Ages. It is a truism to say that Machiavellism existed before Machiavelli. The politics of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, of Louis XI. of France, of Ferdinand of Spain, of the Papacy, of Venice, might have been dictated by the author of The Prince. But Machiavelli was the first to observe, to compare, ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... ROBINSON, author of The Plan of Campaign. It is rather a long tale to tell, for it takes 432 pages in the unravelling. It ends with a beautiful avowal that "the heart is no more unchanging than the mind, and that love's not immortal, but an illusion." As the utterer of this truism is a young married woman, it would seem that the foundation is laid for a sequel to Disenchantment that might be appropriately ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... be useful. Apart from this truism, I believe that all study of past conditions and activities will eventually result, if not in the better management of present conditions and activities (as all partisan historians have hoped, from Machiavelli to Macaulay), at all events in a greater ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... would be idle. As Helmholtz has said, "Apprehension by the senses supplies directly or indirectly, the material of all human knowledge, or at least the stimulus necessary to develop every inborn faculty of the mind." And Herbert Spencer, has this to say of this phase of the subject, "It is almost a truism to say that in proportion to the numerousness of the objects that can be distinguished, and in proportion to the variety of coexistences and sequences that can be severally responded to, must be the number and rapidity and variety of the changes ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... everything there is a time and a season, and then how does the glory of a thing pass from it, even like the flower of the grass! This is a truism, but it is one of those which are continually forcing themselves upon the mind. Many years have not passed over my head, yet during those which I can call to remembrance, how many things have I seen flourish, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... all time has brought forth. This, however, did not shake his faith in the poet's greatness; and to reconcile what to some would appear contradictory positions, he proposes the fact, I might say the truism, that the greatest man is not the most original, but the "most indebted" man. This, in the sense in which it is true, is saying no more than that the educated man is better than the savage; but, in the apologetic sense intended, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... are working and attending regularly to office business. Look to that and to your health at present. Depend upon it, there is nothing like work. Fix your teeth in it. Work is medicine. A truism! Truisms, whether they lie in the depths of thought, or on the surface, are at any rate ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... belief in the sanctity of the verbal arrangement was sound to the core, and he hazarded the opprobrium of our stern conventional system. To him, Lady Hamilton had an enduring charm which influenced his wild, weak, generous soul, and was in fact an inspiration to him. It is a truism that the life-story of all men has its tragedy and romance, and in this, Nelson's was only similar to others; and who ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... which we especially strove to give expression, through these laws and through executive action, was that a right is valueless unless reduced from the abstract to the concrete. This sounds like a truism. So far from being such, the effort practically to apply it was almost revolutionary, and gave rise to the bitterest denunciation of us by all the big lawyers, and all the big newspaper editors, who, whether sincerely or for hire, gave expression to the views of the privileged classes. Ever ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... a truism to declare that human nature is about as complicated a piece of machinery as could be found in the human world. And yet I do not know why it should be considered so. All things and all men do not run in grooves. A man to be a criminal need not be hopelessly bad in every other sense. I ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... have been equally ridiculed by Greece and Rome. The result of this would be that the condition of our social, civil, and political affairs would be incalculably improved. The Salic law would be unnecessary; it would be a superfluous truism. The European lady, strictly speaking, is a creature who should not exist at all; but there ought to be housekeepers, and young girls who hope to become such; and they should be brought up not to be arrogant, but to be domesticated ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... tiger or a horn on his nose like a rhinoceros. All was swallowed up in an ultimate certainty that the President was wrong and that the barrel-organ was right. There clanged in his mind that unanswerable and terrible truism in ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... as without a sense of security we could not enjoy it; we answer, that, if it be meant only that the mind should be in such a state as to enable us to receive an unembarrassed impression, it seems to us superfluous,—an obvious truism placed in opposition to an absurd impossibility. We needed not to be told, that no pleasurable emotion is likely to occur while we are unmanned by fear. The same might be said, also, in respect to the Beautiful: for who was ever alive to it under a paroxysm of terror, ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... so often said, that from a proverb it has become a truism; but it must continue to be the refrain of those who write upon art. The subject is so long, and its ramifications are so intricate, that it is difficult to include them all ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... Mark understood that she assented to his truism, and they walked on as silent as the long shadows that followed them. A quarter of a mile from the high road the path reached the edge of the wold and dipped over into a wood which was sparse just ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... does suggest is that, as the process of natural evolution goes on, men will be competent to decide what they want; and if they do not want any particular thing, they will not have it. This is all very harmless; but it is so commonplace a truism that it is hardly worth while ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... be raised, it must be let go; and this perfectly obvious truism brings me at once to the subject of the degradation of the sea language in the daily press of ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... in the form of a truism, part of the children born in any district in a given year are doomed by heredity to a premature death; and if they die in one year they will not be alive to die ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... with laughter at this truism, but were quieted by the shout of a boy that the preacher was a-coming; whereupon the reverend gentleman elbowed his way through the guests to the quiet couple, and requested them to stand up. A few hurried words ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... whether Marksedge would serve no purpose save the elucidation of this truism, and ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... materialism of the West upon the spirituality of the East,—this to us seems to be the principal aim of Khalid. But often in his wanderings and divagations of thought does he give us fresh proof of the truism that no two opposing elements meet and fuse without both losing their original identity. You may place the bit of contentment in the mouth of ambition, so to speak, and jog along in your sterile course between the vast wheat fields groaning under the thousand-toothed plough and the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... this truism is, it is constantly violated in teaching reading in the rural school. For the course in reading usually consists of a series of five readers, expected to cover seven or eight years of study. These readers contain less than one hundred pages of reading matter ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... his disposition, he would probably have become the Juvenal of his age. Upon this occasion, however, he appears to have soared on rather a higher wing than usual; and the moral of his lay is the truism which has since been so beautifully expressed, ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous
... Ali-Tomas, "we hope that you and your participants will enjoy Singhalut. It is a truism that, in order to import, we must export; we wish to encourage a pleasurable response to the 'Made in Singhalut' tag on ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... perhaps noisily and indignantly, to so obvious a truism; but our own efforts in the same direction will not bear us out. Able men in England employ themselves in matters of a more practical character; and while we refuse to avail ourselves of what has been done elsewhere, no book, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... all truism," cried Beatrice. "Ah, sister, I am tired of all this; for eleven years the sea has been singing the same songs; those waves rise and fall as they did a hundred years since; the birds sing the same story; the sun shines the same; even the shadow of the great elms fall over the ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... addicted to extravagances and irregularity in private life. He gives more space to William Adolphus than to Wetter! So difficult it is even for superior minds to remain altogether unaffected by the lustre of rank; the old truism ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... did happen, I confine myself to facts, eschewing imputations. It is a truism that life is full of coincidences, but whether these events comprised a coincidence, or not, each reader must decide for himself, according to his cynicism or his faith in ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... have taught all men this truth, which looks like a truism, and yet was as good as unknown to writers of history and others, till so taught: that the bygone ages of the world were actually filled by living men, not by protocols, state-papers, controversies, ...
— A Guide to the Best Historical Novels and Tales • Jonathan Nield
... the consequence of individual advancement. The whole cannot be pure, unless the individuals composing it are pure. Society at large is but the reflex of individual conditions. All this is but the repetition of a truism, but truisms have often to be repeated ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... "We must define the words truth and untruth," he said; "but, subject to that definition, I have no hesitation in enunciating the truism, that a Church is not from ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... pungent phrasing of a shrewd observation. It may be recognized by two characteristics,—it must be brief, and it must have an unexpected turn of thought. This turn of thought may spring from an apparent contradiction, from the solemn assertion of a truism, from a play on words, or from other sources. There is an apparent ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... poetry, which attest the cultivation of the audience no less than the genius of the author; a people, in a word, whom the stagirite unconsciously individualized when he laid down a general proposition, which nowhere else can be received as a truism—that the common people are the most exquisite judges of whatever in art ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... are writing in America to-day is that they write too much—or rather, publish too much. A writer should be very glad to accept a small income for many years; he should deliberately keep his fortunes within bounds; and take his time. All this would have been a truism fifty years ago; the machinery for the other thing didn't exist, and something in the way of a natural condition kept him in the simple path. But I don't find fault with the machinery; the wider field and the larger figures are a direct boon to us. They do, however, impose an ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Chief Justice [119] Reeves, ventures upon a smart truism which we can discuss for him, but of course not in the sense in which he has meant it. "Exceptions," our author remarks, "are supposed proverbially to prove nothing, or to prove the very opposite of what they appear ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... terrorem! We all talk about morality; but try some measure of reform, and you will find that every man sees the necessity of it for his neighbour only. Goodness is happiness, and sin is disease. The truism is as old as the hills, and as evident; but if men were in earnest, do you suppose they would go on for ever choosing sin and its ghastly companion as they do? Do you know, there are moments when I think that even ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... telegraphs, public utilities, and every provision conducing to comfort and common-sense living, than any other land pretending to civilization. It is a fact that outside of Shanghai, Canton, Pekin and Tientsin, the people do not want many of the products of the outer world; but it is a truism that much profit accrues from teaching Asiatics ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... Hammer of Thor. Compare, for example, the French and the Caucasian methods of expressing the fact that the consequences of bad advice fall on the advised and not on the adviser. The Frenchman is satisfied to simply state the obvious truism that advisers are not payers, but the mountaineer, with forcible and graphic imagery, declares that "He who instructs how to jump does not tear his mouth, but he who jumps breaks his legs." Again: the German has in his proverbial storehouse no more ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... being essentially gregarious, and business teaching the truism that a cent saved is a cent gained, hackney coaches are comparatively little used by the men; for it must be remembered that idlers in this country are an invisible minority of the community! The natural consequence is, that they are clean and expensive. The ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... of course, in knowing my wife's peculiarities. And I have made some study of Grant. He admits already that he is under suspicion. Why, if he is innocent? Mind you, I pay little heed to the crude disposal of the body. Horace, I think, has a truism that art lies in concealing art. My wife's presence in Steynholme was no secret. She would have been missed from the inn. Search would be made. The murder must be revealed sooner or later, and the murderer himself ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... "the plebe at West Point has had to rough it. You are all familiar with the truism that a soldier must learn to obey before he is fit for command. In much the same way, I fancy, the plebe must travel a rough road before he is thoroughly broken in and fitted to enjoy the delights of full equality and recognition with ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... condition of commercial and industrial well-being is financial confidence. If the Public Exchequer of a country lacks confidence, it is a truism to say that consequently commercial confidence must be gravely impaired. The magnates of Lombard Street and Wall Street would view their Irish clients with unpleasant reserve. Irish bankers would in turn restrict advances ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... is, for himself, the keystone and the occasion of this universal edifice. "Nothing, not God," he says, "is greater to one than oneself is;" a statement with an irreligious smack at the first sight; but like most startling sayings, a manifest truism on a second. He will give effect to his own character without apology; he sees "that the elementary laws never apologise." "I reckon," he adds, with quaint colloquial arrogance, "I reckon I behave no prouder ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... what I undertake. The art of dealing with boys is very different from the art of dealing with men, the capacity for subordinate command is very different from the capacity for supreme command. Of course, it is a truism to say that if a man can obey thoroughly and loyally he can probably command. But then, again, there is a large class of people, to which I believe myself to belong, who are held to be, in the words of ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... is founded upon a very real attitude of hostility on the part of his companions. The lack of sympathy between the English poet and the public is so notorious that Edmund Gosse is able to state as a truism: While in France poetry has been accustomed to reflect the general tongue of the people, the great poets of England have almost always had to struggle against a complete dissonance between their own aims and interests and those of the nation. The result has been ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... Maxim.— N. maxim, aphorism; apothegm, apophthegm[obs3]; dictum, saying, adage, saw, proverb; sentence, mot[Fr], motto, word, byword, moral, phylactery, protasis[obs3]. axiom, theorem, scholium[obs3], truism, postulate. first principles, a priori fact, assumption (supposition) 514. reflection &c (idea) 453; conclusion &c (judgment) 480; golden rule &c. (precept) 697; principle, principia[Lat]; profession of faith &c. (belief) 484; settled ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... declared intention of the United States in annexing the Hawaiian Islands is to give them the benefits of the most advanced civilization, and it is a truism that the progress of civilization in every country is measured by the approach of women toward the ideal of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... question put into the mouth of a person despised and rebuked by the best characters in the play, is not likely to contain any cautiously formed and cherished opinion of the dramatist. At first sight this may seem almost a truism; but we have only to remind our readers that one of the passages oftenest quoted with admiration, and indeed separately printed and illuminated, is "The Seven Ages of Man," a passage full of inhuman contempt for ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... a philosophic bias, is inclined to quarrel with the obvious human congruity of Shakespeare's utterances. What is the use of this constant repetition of the obvious truism: "When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... how passions originate in the mind. But, if people would consider the nature of substance, they would have no doubt about the truth of Prop. vii. In fact, this proposition would be a universal axiom, and accounted a truism. For, by substance, would be understood that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself—that is, something of which the conception requires not the conception of anything else; whereas modifications exist in something ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... to a landsman, I would say, for the sake of easier comprehension, that the theory of a 'bend' is based on the good- natured truism contained in the old adage, 'One good turn deserves another'; while a second proverb, 'Safe bind, safe find,' will equally justify the existence of the 'hitch'; but if the inquirer be not satisfied with either of these definitions or explanations, whichever term he may ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... judgment to bear on his perplexities. The average man, if asked to form an opinion on any difficult point, will probably arrive at a saner decision during the first pipe after breakfast than at any other given hour of the day. Excellent physiological reasons account for this truism. The sound mind in a sound body is then working under ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... principle to knowledge has been a benefactor to the world. But there is a danger that, in his first enthusiasm, he may not recognize the proportions or limitations to which his truth is subjected; he does not see how far he has given birth to a truism, or how that which is a truth to him is a truism to the rest of the world; or may degenerate in the next generation. He believes that to be the whole which is only a part,—to be the necessary foundation ...
— Philebus • Plato
... classes is the annihilation of reasoning. Thus, after wandering in many diverging paths, we return to common sense. And for this reason we may be inclined to do less than justice to Plato,—because the truth which he attains by a real effort of thought is to us a familiar and unconscious truism, which no one would any longer think either of ...
— Sophist • Plato
... is greater than I," especially arrested my attention. Could I really expound this as meaning, "My Father, the Supreme God, in greater than I am, if you look solely to my human nature?" Such a truism can scarcely have deserved such emphasis. Did the disciples need to be taught that God was greater than man? Surely, on the contrary, the Saviour must have meant to say: "Divine as I am, yet my heavenly Father is greater than ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... degree of surprise was justified. It is a truism of social life that far more distinctiveness is attached to the seemingly democratic severity of evening dress than to any other class of masculine garniture. Medenham now looked exactly what he was—a man born and bred in the purple. ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... justice in all circumstances you must have not only an infallible law, but also an infallible judge and an infallible method of criminal administration. It is a truism to say that this is an impossibility, and every now and again society will have to submit to be shocked by the revelation of a palpable miscarriage of justice. At the same time it is important to take every possible precaution ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... "Yes." "Upon what ground? The ground of their enmity? The ground of the wrong they do us?" "No." "In virtue of cruelty, heartlessness, injustice, disrespect, misrepresentation?" "Certainly not. Humanum est errare is a truism; but it possesses, like most truisms, a latent germ of worthy truth. The very word errare is a sign that there is a way so truly the human that, for a man to leave it, is to wander. If it be human to wander, yet the wandering is not ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... truism, at least I hope it does, for then you will surely not refuse to act upon it; and to consider farther, how, as architects, you are to keep yourselves in contemplation of living creatures and ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... into the world amidst lightning and thunder, the Mighty Hunter of the Zodiac, Zagreus the Golden or ruddy-faced. The Mysteries taught the doctrine of Divine Unity; and that Power whose Oneness is a seeming mystery, but really a truism, was Dionusos, the God of Nature, or of that, moisture, which is the life of Nature, who prepares in darkness, in Hades or Iasion, the return of life and vegetation, or is himself the light and change evolving their varieties. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... representative of good things. That, for every good thing produced, so much money is put into everybody's pocket, is the one simple and primal truth for the public to know, and for economists to teach. How many of them have taught it? Some have; but only incidentally; and others will say it is a truism. If it be, do the public know it? Does your ordinary English householder know that every costly dinner he gives has destroyed forever as much money as it is worth? Does every well-educated girl—do even the women in high political position—know ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... and a study of the workings of the human mind supports one proposition which many of the great captains of war have accepted as a truism. "There are no bad troops: there are only bad leaders." Taking on percentage what we already know of our average American raw material, as it had proved itself in every war, and as it has been studied in such a laboratory as the camp at Cape Sabine, no exception ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... composed of the same mineral substances that are found in normal blood. Therefore, our physical welfare and our capacity to resist disease is clearly dependent upon the condition of our fields. We must always bear this in mind—the old truism—that, ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... pressure of any motive, was to meet triumphantly a searching test. It was in truth a "sifting," and though a few picturesque rascals had the courage to go into exile while a few saints may have been deterred, it is a truism to say that the pioneers were made up of brave men and ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... doctrine merely means that men are the victims of circumstances and surroundings, it is a truism. It is luckier to be born heir to a peerage and L100,000 than to be born in Whitechapel. Past and present Chancellors of the Exchequer have gone far in removing much of this discrepancy in fortune. Again, a disaster ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... mother to this truism; "but, those who go down to the sea in ships, as the Psalmist says, see the perils of the deep, and lead a venturesome calling! Besides, Eric, I must tell you that I—I do not feel myself so strong as I was when you first left home and became ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... other. "But I never heard any preacher, in any country, tell his congregation anything else. And people always listen with attention. In countries where rain is entirely unknown, it is not a truism to say that 'when it rains it is damp.' On the contrary, in such countries that statement would be regarded as requiring demonstration, and once demonstrated, it would be treasured and taught as an interesting scientific fact. Now ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... any cost; but we have not found for it a definite place in a philosophy of life. Superficial though he be, our friend has indicated a need: we must take the question philosophically—but in the great and true sense. It is a truism of philosophy and science that the world is a harmonious whole, and that with the increase of knowledge, laws can be discovered to explain the order and the unity of the universe. Accordingly, if we are to justify our own position ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... the heaven-born genii and inspired young scriveners of the day much of this will appear paradox; it will appear so even to the higher order of our critics; but it was a truism twenty years ago, and it will be a re-acknowledged truth in ten more. In the mean time, I will conclude with two quotations, both intended for some of my old classical friends who have still enough of Cambridge about them to think themselves honoured by having had ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... call Happiness the Chief Good is a mere truism, and what is wanted is some clearer account of its real nature. Now this object may be easily attained, when we have discovered what is the work of man; for as in the case of flute-player, statuary, or artisan of any kind, or, more generally, all ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... it must be admitted, harmonises well with our modern tolerance, our modern zeal for reform; and yet it rests upon a fundamental fallacy. No one, of course, denies the {149} moulding power of heredity and environment; no one denies such an obvious truism as that we cannot expect to grow fine specimens of humanity in the reeking slum or the sweater's workshop. But as environment is a greater power than heredity, so there is only one power greater than environment—and that is our ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... practice of therapeutics. My quarrel, however, is with these same medical magazines, which delight in discovering mares' nests for no other apparent purpose than to make mankind uncomfortable. They will persist in disregarding the time-honored axiom that "everybody knows more than anybody," a truism which Dr. Spahr elaborated in his declaration that "the common observation of common people is more trustworthy than the statistical investigations of the most unprejudiced expert"— even though he be a distinguished M.D. I have before me an essay by George Troup Maxwell, M.D., of Florida, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... human nature which is absolutely and universally true? We know of only one: and that is not only true, but identical; that men always act from self-interest. This truism the Utilitarians proclaim with as much pride as if it were new, and as much zeal as if it were important. But in fact, when explained, it means only that men, if they can, will do as they choose. When we see the actions of a man we know with certainty what he thinks his interest ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... blessings of literature to the heart when wearied with business and the cares of life. Crabbe's verses on such topics are by no means ineffective. He had caught perfectly the trick of the school so soon to pass away. He is as fluent and copious—as skilful in spreading a truism over a dozen well-sounding lines—as any of his predecessors. There is little new in the way of ideas. Crabbe had as yet no wide insight into books and authors, and he was forced to deal largely in generalities. But he showed that he had already some idea of style; and if, when he had ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... though I should be indeed surprised to hear that the absolute one is also many. For example, I, being many, that is to say, having many parts or members, am yet also one, and partake of the one, being one of seven who are here present (compare Philebus). This is not an absurdity, but a truism. But I should be amazed if there were a similar entanglement in the nature of the ideas themselves, nor can I believe that one and many, like and unlike, rest and motion, in the abstract, are capable either of ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... draw their sombre life. It is common, for instance, for religious moralists to insist on the great spiritual truth, that wicked thoughts and impulses, which circumstances prevent from passing into wicked acts, are still deeds in the sight of God; but the living truth subsides into a dead truism, as enforced by commonplace preachers. In "Fancy's Show-Box," Hawthorne seizes the prolific idea; and the respectable merchant and respected church-member, in the still hour of his own meditation, convicts himself of being a liar, cheat, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... grasps the meaning of the following truism and determines to practice it, is well on her way to happiness and success. "It is the man that has a system in both life and business that wins the battles." The struggle of life has become so strenuous that ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... faint motion of acquiescence, which she instantly swept aside. "At least I think I can make you see why. (If you're sure he can't hear?) Why, it's just this—Pellerinism is in danger of becoming a truism. Oh, it's an awful thing to say! But then I'm not afraid of saying awful things! I rather believe it's my mission. What I mean is, that we're getting into the way of taking Pellerin for granted—as we do the air we breathe. ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... hazy recollection of their afterthought. Of all despotisms, save me from a military one, and soldiers who slay Kings are the worst of despots. If there were no Kings, there would be few soldiers, Joan. Put that valuable truism away among the other wise saws that govern your life. You will appreciate its truth, and the even greater truth of its converse, when you are a Queen. But soldiers are stupid creatures, obviously so, since killing is no argument, or the word ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... which Miss Rodney was forcing upon her acceptance, but she was no longer moved by active resentment. To be told that she cooked badly had long ceased to be an insult, and was becoming merely a worrying truism. That she lived in dirt there seemed no way of denying, and though every muscle groaned, she began to look upon the physical exertion of dusting and scrubbing as part of her lot in life. Why she submitted, Mrs. Turpin could not have told you. And, as ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... It is almost a truism that the farther north the land, the greater the fertility, if there be any fertility at all. There is first the supply of unfailing moisture, with a yearly subsoiling of humus unknown to arid lands. Canada is super-sensitive about her winter climate—the depth and intensity ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... the aggregation of such men that a nation becomes prosperous. It must never therefore be forgotten, that it is not the possession of knowledge, but the use which we make of it, that confers distinction. For no truism is more incontrovertible than this, that knowledge which we cannot or do not use, is ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... and Pittsburg? If M. Bourget merely means that there is a tendency to homogeneity in the case of modern cities which was not compatible with the picturesque though uncomfortable reasons for variety in more ancient foundations, his remark amounts to a truism. For his implied comparison with European cities to have any point, he should be able to assert that the recent architecture of the different cities of Europe is more varied than the contemporary architecture of the United States. This seems to me emphatically not ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... animals have a kind of language is nowadays admitted to be a truism, but this is more evident among mammals and birds, and, reviewing the classes of the former, we find a more or less defined ascending complexity and increased number of varying sounds as we pass from the lower forms—kangaroos and moles—to the higher herb-and-flesh-eaters, ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... persecutions, the torturings, the domestic hatreds, the petty spites, with ALL creeds equally blood-guilty, one cannot but be amazed that the concurrent voice of mankind has not placed bigotry at the very head of the deadly sins. It is surely a truism to say that neither smallpox nor the plague have brought the same ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... references to the Rubicon. It is not thirty years since one of the first of American statesmen told the national Senate that "Julius Caesar struck down Roman liberty at Pharsalia," and probably there was not one man in his audience who supposed that he was uttering anything beyond a truism, though they must have been puzzled to discover any resemblance between "the mighty Julius" and Mr. Martin Van Buren, the gentleman whom the orator was cutting up, and who was actually in the chair while Mr. Calhoun was seeking to kill him, in a political sense, by quotations ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... about so subtilely and gradually that she was almost unaware of it herself, this inward change in herself. Nora had by nature a quick and active mind, but she had also many inherited prejudices. It is a truism that it is much harder to unlearn than to learn, and for her it was harder, in the circumstances, than for the average person. Not that she was more set in her ways than other people, but that she had accepted from her childhood ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... practically a truism that those who offer the excuse that they have not the time are really the ones ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... any pledge, expressed or implied, from offering to the king any advice that the course of circumstances might render necessary for the welfare and security of any part of his majesty's extensive empire." As it has been observed, this was a constitutional truism, a principle not to be denied without attacking the constitution itself. As, however, this motion, if carried, would have been followed by other resolutions, implying a want of confidence in men who had given such advice to his majesty, &c, the new cabinet determined ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the term I only went home for two days, and then had to start off on a tutorship. It is no use pretending that I went without vigorous protests. I said that I had never tutored anybody in my life, and was met by the answer that everything had to have a beginning, which is such an appalling truism that it ought never to be uttered. I then stated that I was sorry for the boy who had me as a tutor, though I meant, of course, that I was sorry for myself, and my mother replied that she should miss me very much, but that she had talked the whole thing over with my father, and they ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... it was a copy-book maxim which had been just too accurately copied. It was a platitude which they had always held in theory unexpectedly put into practice. The tyrants did not hate democracy because it was a paradox; they hated it because it was a truism which seemed in ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... that a "substance" cannot be produced. And why may not "a substance" be produced? Because, by the definition, "a substance" is that which is "self-existent." In other words, a self-existent substance cannot be created,—a truism which scarcely required the apparatus of a geometrical proof by means of propositions, scholia, and corollaries, or, as Professor Saisset says, with laconic naivete, "ce qui a a peine besoin d'etre demontre." But, while the only proof that is offered extends no further than to self-existent ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... think how often the offices of theologian and preacher are spoken of as if they were identical. Now, the functions of theologian and preacher stand widely apart. To the reflective mind this sounds like repeating a truism; yet what a world of confused thought and ignorant criticism would be cleared from the subject if this fact were ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... that the factors of modesty are numerous. To attempt to explain modesty by dismissing it as merely an example of psychic paralysis, of Stauung, is to elude the problem by the statement of what is little more than a truism. Modesty is a complexus of emotions with their concomitant ideas which ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... on Justification in 1837; it was aimed at the Lutheran dictum that justification by faith only was the cardinal doctrine of Christianity. I considered that this doctrine was either a paradox or a truism,—a paradox in Luther's mouth, a truism in Melanchthon's. I thought that the Anglican Church followed Melanchthon, and that in consequence between Rome and Anglicanism, between high Church and low Church, there was no real intellectual difference on the point. ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... could report a dinner-table conversation, I might be tempted to say something of my talk with Mr. Oliphant. I like well enough conversation which floats safely over the shallows, touching bottom at intervals with a commonplace incident or truism to push it along; I like better to find a few fathoms of depth under the surface; there is a still higher pleasure in the philosophical discourse which calls for the deep sea line to reach bottom; but best of all, when ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... SONOGUN a time of moral stress and torture such as he had never anticipated. It is an old saying, and perhaps (who knows?) a truism, that virtue is its own reward, not, perhaps, the reward that ambitious people look for, but the easy consciousness of superiority which comes to those who feel themselves to be on a higher level ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... school of philologists has sprung up, who are sometimes accused of putting words in the place of things. It seems to be true, that whether applied to language or to other branches of knowledge, the Darwinian theory, unless very precisely defined, hardly escapes from being a truism. If by 'the natural selection' of words or meanings of words or by the 'persistence and survival of the fittest' the maintainer of the theory intends to affirm nothing more than this—that the word 'fittest to survive' survives, he adds not much to the knowledge of language. ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... pause. He changed his tone. "Come. This won't bring him back," he said gently, feeling ready to take her in his arms and press her to his breast, where impatience and compassion dwelt side by side. But except for a short shudder Mrs Verloc remained apparently unaffected by the force of that terrible truism. It was Mr Verloc himself who was moved. He was moved in his simplicity to urge moderation by asserting the claims ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... as I, and as well able to think, and as much entitled to their conclusions. Thirdly, even if I did regret, I should be ashamed to put my name to bad chemistry made to do duty for good reasoning. The declaration is an awkward attempt to saturate sophism with truism; but the sophism is ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... as though it were a self-evident truism, that we cannot know that anything exists which we do not know. It is inferred that whatever can in any way be relevant to our experience must be at least capable of being known by us; whence it follows that if matter were essentially something ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... consulted with one or other of your colleagues, Mayence or Treves, or perhaps with both. They have made objection to your proposed generosity, and put forward the argument that you are but temporary trustee of the Cologne Archbishopric; that you must guard the rights of your successor; and this truism could not help but appeal to that quality of equity which distinguishes you, so a conference of the prelates has been called, and a majority of that Court will decide whether or not the town of Linz shall be tendered ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... still my wife," said Soames. Why he said that, what he meant by it, he knew neither when he spoke nor after. It was a truism almost preposterous, but its effect was startling. She rose from the window-seat, and stood for a moment perfectly still, looking at him. He could see her bosom heaving. Then she turned to the window and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... said my companion, "exhibiting the various powers of the different musical instruments, and observed how some of limited scope cross only a few of the divisions, and how others stretch nearly from side to side. 'Tis but a poor truism, perhaps, to say that similar differences in scope and power obtain among men—that there are minds who could not join in the concert of to-night—who could see neither beauty nor grandeur amid these wild cliffs and caverns, or in that ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... moralist, is bound to do, "according to what they had, not according to what they had not," they are men who, with average advantages, might have been famous in their day. God thought it better for them to "hide them in his tabernacle from the strife of tongues;" and—seldom believed truism—He knows best. Alexander shall not, according to his early dreams, "earn nine hundred pounds by writing a book, like Burns," even though his ideal method of spending be to buy all the boys in the parish "new shoes with iron tackets and heels," and send them home with shillings for their mothers, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... the permanent, abiding difference of Race. It is a truism of history that the Englishman who settles in Ireland becomes more Irish than the Irish. The records of the past are filled with great examples. The Norman adventurers who spread into Ireland after the Conquest have become in modern times the chiefs of great Irish communities, until ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... Barry-Smith descended to a truism. "It is usually better not to," said she, with the air of an authority. And latterly, addressing the facade of Notre Dame, "You see, Mr. Barry-Smith being so ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... of secrecy is absolutely essential to a successful surprise. This is a military truism all the world over, but applies with special force amongst the Pathan tribes on the North-West Frontier of India, as indeed it did amongst the Boers, and for probably a very similar reason. They were not always professional ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... the arts:' so said the old maxim, but it has rarely been found a truism. They who feel it, feel also the virtue which dictated the aphorism. Men whose object is to enlighten the nations or exalt the judgment or (the least ambition) to refine the tastes of others—men who feel that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... productions have disappeared in the conflagrations of Rome, the vandalisms of the ignorant, or the kilns and melting-pots of the Middle Ages. The quality is still more a source of delight than the quantity. This last sentence, of course, contains a truism, since art is no delight without high quality. If we had only preserved to us such masterpieces as the Capitoline Venus, the Dying Gaul, the Laocoon, the Dancing Faun, the so-called Narcissus, and the Resting ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... defining or denying a simple central power, but of balancing the brain in a bewilderment of new powers which seem to overlap and might even conflict. Nature herself has become unnatural. The wind is blowing from the other side of the desert, not now with noble truism "There is no God but God," but rather with that other motto out of the deeper anarchy of Asia, drawn out by Mr. Kipling, in the shape of a native proverb, in the very story already mentioned; "Your gods and my gods, do you or I know ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... unfoldment of his own possibilities must make no mistake here. He must realize that the whole process is that of bringing the universal within the grasp of the individual by raising the individual to the level of the universal and not vice-versa. It is a mathematical truism that you cannot contract the infinite, and that you can expand the individual; and it is precisely on these lines that evolution works. The laws of nature cannot be altered in the least degree; but we can come ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... satisfactorily the author's concept? No matter in what abundant measure such a performer may possess the good qualities of earnestness, conviction and sincerity, he is not an artist. "Poeta nascitur, non fit," has long been accepted as a truism; and similarly, it is supposed that the artist also is born, not made. But seeing that the mechanical side of any art is learned by experience, study, or observation—still to quote the definition—without which an adequate manifestation ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... often been stated that no two well-designed sewerage schemes are alike, and although this truism is usually applied to inland towns, it applies with far greater force to schemes for coastal towns and towns situated on the banks of our large rivers where the sewage is discharged into tidal waters. The essence of good designing is that every detail shall be carefully thought ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... the best nurse of talent has long been a most humiliating truism; and the fountain of the Muses, bursting from a barren rock, is but too apt an emblem of the hard source from which much of the genius of this world has issued. How strongly the young translators of Aristaenetus were under the influence ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... in fresh waters in the thirty-two remaining States of the Union. This may at first blush seem like a broad assertion, but it is no doubt strictly within bounds. If the claim be not too much of the nature of a truism, we may add that so far as quality is concerned the superiority of our finny tribes is even more strongly marked than in regard to quantity. In the sluggish streams that abound in "ten degrees of more effulgent clime," the fish partake of the slimy properties of their native element; ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... subject of strings, we find Doni says in his musical treatise, published in 1647: "There are many particulars relating to the construction of instruments which are unknown to modern artificers, as, namely, that the best strings are made when the north and the worst when the south wind blows," a truism well understood by experienced string manufacturers. Thomas Mace, in his curious book on the Lute, enters at some length into the question of strings, and speaks in glowing terms of his Venetian Catlins. The above references to strings, met with in the writers of the sixteenth and ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... use, or indeed possibility, so long as the men of science themselves are disputing about the facts of experiment? It will be time enough to try to understand them, when they are agreed and we know what the facts really are. Whatever they may turn out to be, it is but a truism to say they must be consistent with all other truth, although they may entirely upset some of our ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... can't; we should come to grief.' This was no barren truism, for I was ready with a plan of my own, though reluctant ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... it is through this kind of intuitive investigation that the 'spirit of scepticism' primarily arises, is equally true; though not, perhaps, at the first blush, so apparent. In this sense, the statement of Mr. Buckle is simply one half of a truism, the other half of which, not enunciated by ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... truism to say that fish should be absolutely fresh, yet only too many cooks think, during the week-end, that fish is like the manna of the Hebrews, which was imbued with Sabbatarian principles that kept it fresh from Saturday to Monday. I implore of you to think differently about fish. It is ...
— The Belgian Cookbook • various various
... to recall the truism that first-class art never reproduces its surroundings; but such banality is often justified by our human proneness to shuffle over the fact that many truisms are true. And this one is pre-eminently indisputable: that what ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... a truism that man epitomizes the universe. Therefore, the law of growth, which science names evolution, may be studied and applied with equal precision and accuracy to the individual; to a body of individuals called a nation; and to worlds, ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... 'I never make paradoxes; I wish I could. I merely said that a man may have an exquisite taste in Romanee Conti, and yet never have even smelt four ale. That's all, and it's more like a truism than a paradox, isn't it? Your surprise at my remark is due to the fact that you haven't realized what sin is. Oh, yes, there is a sort of connexion between Sin with the capital letter, and actions which are commonly called sinful: ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... hearing, the appetite, false teeth, false hair, respiration, massage, and so on, there can be no salvation. That people who do not make use of these perfected preparations are stronger and healthier, has become such a truism, that advertisements are printed in the newspapers of stomach-powders for the wealthy, under the heading, "Blessings for the poor," {252} in which it is stated that only the poor are possessed of proper digestive powers, and that the rich require assistance, and, among other various ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... assurance, has declared poetry the most philosophical of all writings—but it required a Wordsworth to pronounce it the most metaphysical. He seems to think that the end of poetry is, or should be, instruction; yet it is a truism that the end of our existence is happiness; if so, the end of every separate part of our existence, everything connected with our existence, should be still happiness. Therefore the end of instruction should be happiness; and happiness is another ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... the ground, inscribed with the name of Susan Meynell, who died July 14th, 1835, much lamented; and then the text about 'the one sinner that repenteth,' and so on," said Mr. Sheldon, as if he did not care to dwell on so hackneyed a truism. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... generalization, indeed the truism or dictum here laid down, that, in only the psychoanalyst knows how many instances, by the analysis of a single, even the very first dream, one can arrive at the rock-bottom depth of the trouble at hand—yes, at ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10 |
