"Axiom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the universe are also divergent. According to the Bible the outer world is the creation, by God, out of nothing. To the Brahman of all times the idea of pure creation has seemed absurd. Ex nihilo nihil fit is an axiom of all their philosophies. Whether it be the Vedantin who tells us that the material universe is the result of Brahm invested with illusion, or the Sankya philosopher who attributes it to prakriti—the power of nature; or the Veisashika sage who traces it ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... Mathematical axioms are not axioms of general truth. What is true of relation—of form and quantity—is often grossly false in regard to morals, for example. In this latter science it is very usually untrue that the aggregated parts are equal to the whole. In chemistry also the axiom fails. In the consideration of motive it fails; for two motives, each of a given value, have not, necessarily, a value when united, equal to the sum of their values apart. There are numerous other mathematical truths which are only truths within the limits of relation. But the mathematician argues, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... smartness. From the bridge Captain Parkinson himself directed his ship. His face was placid: his bearing steady and confident. This in itself was sufficient earnest that the cruiser was in ticklish case. For it was an axiom of the men who sailed under Parkinson that the calmer that nervous man grew, the more cause was there for nervousness on ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... out his cigarette. "Professor, I cannot wait while scientists wrangle. There is an axiom of mine which I am going to tell you." He paused impressively. "Nothing is impervious to force. Muster enough force and anything ...
— The Leech • Phillips Barbee
... was completed, he set about to prepare breakfast, deciding that he would let the sleepers get another hour's rest, as he could prepare the morning meal alone almost as quickly as with the aid of one or two others. He had already learned the truth of the housewife's axiom that "two are a crowd in a kitchen, and three are ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... nose. But how can we overlook his incapacity to express the subtle changes of HAMLET'S ever questioning mind? One of his admirers has recently quoted RUSKIN in his support. MR. FECHTER gives no heed to RUSKIN'S axiom, that all true art is delicate art. There is no delicacy in his conception of HAMLET. True, he is impulsive and sensitive; but this is due to his physical and not to his mental organization. A HAMLET without delicacy is ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... the time of Kepler, philosophers had assumed almost as an axiom that the heavenly bodies must revolve in circles and that the motion of the planet around the orbit which it described must be uniform. We have already seen how that great philosopher, after very persevering labour, succeeded in proving that the orbits of the planets were not circles, ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... essential in the Arab-Israeli dispute because it is an axiom that when the political process breaks down there will be ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace
... objects, That if one gets drunk sometimes, one shall do it often. I deny the consequence, and say in the words of the philosopher, an axiom held by ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... is based upon a denial of the axiom that the satisfaction of one want breeds another want. Experience does not teach the decay but the metamorphosis of individuality. Under socialised industry progress in the industrial arts would be slower and would absorb a smaller ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... went to bed, and slept the sleep of the dissipated, which for some queer reason—of which no rhymer has yet taken advantage—is as profound as that of innocence. Perhaps it is an instance of the proverbial axiom, extremes meet. ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... anyone else, how absurd the philosophical utilitarians are with their axiom that everyone pursueshis own happiness. He exposes over and over again, with nerve-rending subtlety, how intoxicating to the human spirit is the mad lust of self-immolation, of self-destruction. It is really from him that Nietzsche learnt that wanton Dionysic talisman which ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... minds to explain them, and perhaps to defend them. Latterly one hears constantly of the physical decay which threatens the American people, because of their unwise and disproportioned stimulation of the brain. It is assumed, almost as an axiom, that there is "a deficiency of physical health in America." Especially is it assumed that great mental progress, either of races or of individuals, has been generally purchased at the expense of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... the infirmity of his demonstration, he winds round it and round it, adding proof to proof, but never escaping the same vicious circle: substance exists because it exists, and the ultimate experience of existence, so far from being of that clear kind which can be accepted as an axiom, is the most confused of all our sensations. What is existence? and what is that something which we say exists? Things—essences— existences; these are but the vague names with which faculties, constructed only to deal with conditional ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... undercurrent, and of ten the little undercurrents pre-eminently shape the events themselves. The truth of this axiom is illustrated principally in the recall of the resolute, indefatigable, far and clear-sighted patriot and statesman, General Butler. To jump to a conclusion without much ado, the recall of Butler from New ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... The famous axiom, laissez faire, and laissez passer, the subversive tendencies of which people affect to condemn, was not invented by Quesnay. He only gave a scientific bearing to what was the inspiration of a merchant called Legendre. The latter, consulted by Colbert on the best means of protecting ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... with interest and intelligence, and had apparently accepted every article of faith in God and man which had been offered for her guidance through life with unquestioning confidence; at least she had never been heard to object to any time-honoured axiom. And she did, in fact, accept them all, but only provisionally. She wanted to know. Silent, sociable, sober, and sincere, she had walked over the course of her early education and gone on far beyond it with such ease that those in authority over her ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... our axiom? Build your church, and the rest will take care of itself. You remember our scraping and begging, and how that good Mr. Davison helped us out and brought the endowment up to the needful point for consecration, on condition ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that the missionaries, their successors, have been and are quite comfortable, and have no other occupation than to maintain what the first ones built. It is a fact that, according to the philosophic axiom that the conservation is equivalent to a second production, that would not be doing little even did they do no more. But as a matter of truth it must be said that if so holy a province rests in the conservation of the conquests ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... "supply and demand." And the organizations built up during the war, if they prove efficient, will not be abolished. Hours of labour and wages in the co-operative League of Nations will gradually be equalized, and tariffs will become things of the past. "The axiom will be established," says Mr. Webb, "that the resources of every country must, be held for the benefit not only of its own people but of the world . . . . The world shortage will, for years to come, make import duties ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 'Une Fille d'Eve,' he remarks that 'the mission of genius is to search, through the accidents of the true, for that which must appear probable to all the world.' The common saying, that truth is stranger than fiction, should properly be expressed as an axiom that fiction ought not to be so strange as truth. A marvellous event is interesting in real life, simply because we know that it happened. In a fiction we know that it did not happen; and therefore it is interesting only as far as it is explained. Anybody can invent a giant or a genius by the ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... up to; and since it is the builder of the body it will build up a body in correspondence with the personality thus impressed upon it. These two laws of the subjective mind form the foundation of the axiom that our body represents the aggregate of our beliefs. If our fixed belief is that the body is subject to all sorts of influences beyond our control, and that this, that, or the other symptom shows that such ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... so serviceable a pigment for so many purposes, especially in admixture, that its sin of fugacity is overlooked. Hence we find indigo constantly mentioned in works on painting, their authors forgetting or not caring to remember that wholesome axiom, a fugitive colour is not rendered durable by being compounded. Artistically, it is adapted for moonlights, and when mixed with a little lamp black, is well suited for night clouds, distant cliffs, &c. ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... and Professor Haeckel, maintain that our experience, as well as the range of our microscopes, is too limited to justify the current axiom. They believe that life may be evolving constantly from inorganic matter. Professor J. A. Thomson also warns us that our experience is very limited, and, for all we know, protoplasm may be forming naturally in our own time. Mr. Butler Burke has, under the ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... in their time, and are incompatible with true and permanent greatness. One is tempted to say, the more sudden and vehement the success, the less it will endure. But it would not be true. Such an axiom would condemn an opera like "Don Giovanni," an oratorio like the "Creation," a symphony like Beethoven's Seventh. There is a wonderful difference, an immeasurable gulf between the good and the bad in art; yet the apparent line is of ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... that it boots to dally longer in a dying chamber. It is an axiom of old that the stage curtain should be drawn before the inexorable one enters in upon his final work. Dr. Finucane did come, but his coming was all in vain. Sir Thomas had known that it was in vain, and so also had his patient wife. There ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... hard chin becomes rounded and not too prominent, the cheek-bones sink, the ears are smaller, a softness spreads itself over the whole face. That which was only honest now grows tender. Again another generation, and it is a settled axiom that the family are handsome. The country-side, as it gossips, agrees that the family are marked out as good-looking. Like seeks like, as we know; the handsome intermarry with the handsome. Still, the beauty has not arrived yet, nor is it possible to tell whether she will appear ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... law, whatever is received by the earth from the sun, an equivalent for the same must again be returned from the earth to the sun, to the uttermost fraction.[2] Such being the conditions, how may this retro-acting process that all analogy and the profoundest scientific axiom prove to be in constant operation—how, I ask, may this retro-acting process be explained? What equivalent may the earth give back as compensation for such enormous benefits, for such stupendous powers? The laws of ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... stones, diamonds, and carbuncles[129]—"maxime juxta academiam Glaguensis oppidi in Gludisdalia regione," and he casts about to explain how it is that England produces nothing of the kind, but only silver and lead. He solves the question by laying down an axiom that the harder the environment, the harder the stone produced. The mountains of Scotland are both higher and presumably harder than those of England, ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... is one of these operations in which nature is continually present, and going on before our eyes; this may be one reason that a very critical observance of it has escaped our attention. Fermentation brings us acquainted with this unerring axiom; that nothing in nature is lost; or that matter, of which all things are composed, is indestructible. For instance, the vinous process of fermentation, succeeded by distillation, produces ardent spirits, or alcohol, the elements of which are here ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... succession of species in time, and their actual geographical distribution over the earths surface, were leading up from all sides and in various ways to the question of their origin. Now and then we encountered a sentence, like Prof. Owens "axiom of the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of living things," which haunted us like an apparition. For, dim as our conception must needs be as to what such oracular and grandiloquent phrases might really mean, we felt confident that they presaged no good to ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... commercial intercourse. They trade with the Indians, with the fur companies, the whalers and among themselves across Bering straits. Many of them are veritable Shylocks, having a through comprehension of the axiom in political economy regarding the regulation of the price of a ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... shall be met by many with the squeamish proverb, De mortuis nil nisi bonum; though I am not disposed at this moment to enter on a discussion of the merits of this received axiom. Shakspeare tells us "The evil that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... "the great axiom" of philosophy. That we may distinctly comprehend its meaning, and understand its bearing on the subject under discussion, we must ascertain the sense in which he uses the words "phenomenal" and "relative." The importance of an exact terminology is fully appreciated ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... too," continued Madame, "in the name of that poor little Naiad, who is indeed the most charming creature I ever met. Moreover, she laughed so heartily while she was telling me her story, that, in pursuance of that medical axiom that laughter is the finest physic in the world, I ask permission to laugh a little myself when I ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... patience in working them out; what magnanimity in discarding those which were not true! What power of guessing, even to hit upon theories which could be established by elaborate calculations,—all from the primary thought, the grand axiom, which Kepler was the first to propose, that there must be some numerical or geometrical relations among the times, distances, and velocities of the revolving bodies of the solar system! It would seem that although his science was deductive, he invoked the aid of induction also: a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... system is intended to develope the better instincts of the animal, not to punish the vices which we have taught him, in vain efforts to subdue a strength incalculably greater than ours—which by resolute cruelty we have forced him to employ in resisting our unjust demands. Baucher lays it down as an axiom that no horse is naturally vicious, but that his vices are acquired through bad management. One may possess a higher temper than another, to be sure, but spirited horses are those which turn out best under his method of training. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... the universe which all others do of NOTHING, it seems plain that they make the universe and NOTHING to be the same. Time must then be said to be nothing; the same also must be said of predicate, axiom, junction, conjunction, which terms they use more than any of the other philosophers, yet they say that they have no existence. But farther, to say that what is true has no being or subsistence but ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... through this process. It must not be allowed to weigh against the validity of a word once fairly naturalized by use, that originally it crept in upon an abuse or a corruption. Prescription is as strong a ground of legitimation in a case of this nature as it is in law. And the old axiom is applicable—Fieri non debuit, factum valet. Were it otherwise, languages would be robbed of much of their wealth. And, universally, the class of purists, in matters of language, are liable to grievous suspicion, as almost constantly proceeding on half knowledge and on insufficient ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Miss Thorne went on sighing and regretting, looking back to the divine right of kings as the ruling axiom of a golden age, and cherishing, low down in the bottom of her heart of hearts, a dear unmentioned wish for the restoration of some exiled Stuart. Who would deny her the luxury of her sighs, or the ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the hopes and visions of the most spiritual people that the world has ever known. Both Socrates and Jesus believed in God, and both have taught the world, with no uncertain sound, of their faith in immortal life. The latter was clearly an axiom with Jesus, for He said to His disciples in effect, "If there had been any question about it I would have told you;" and almost with his last breath Socrates compelled his disciples to think of him as immortal, for ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... he went back over the ground to see whether he could detect error on either side. He found none. At every stage the steps were both probable and proved. All the more he was disconcerted that Russell should indignantly and with growing energy, to his dying day, deny and resent the axiom of Adams's whole contention, that from the first he meant to break up the Union. Russell affirmed that he meant nothing of the sort; that he had meant nothing at all; that he meant to do right; that he did not know what he meant. Driven from one defence after another, he pleaded ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... to the statement of some of the consequences which follow from Mr. Spencer's view—already explained—as to how the higher warrant, by which we know the Indestructibility of Matter to be an axiom, a self-evident truth, originated. In his chapter upon "Ultimate Scientific Ideas" he says that Space and Time are "wholly incomprehensible," and that "Matter ... in its ultimate nature, is as absolutely incomprehensible as Space and Time." He affirms, as pointed out, that no experimental verification ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... rhymed with unrhymed. Let the straitest doctrinaire criticism of men of talent like Boileau and simpletons like Rymer be compared with the fullest appreciations of Coleridge and Hazlitt, of Sainte-Beuve and Mr. Arnold. "Compare, always compare" is the first axiom of criticism.[1] ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... bloody suggestion with dogged inflexibility, maintaining only one axiom above all the rest—that whatever minor parts might be enacted—Casca, Cassius, or what not—he was to be the dramatic Brutus, excepting that assassin's negativeness. In other words, the idea was to be his own, as well ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... what he was talking about. But this is only Phase One of the plan. A corollary is based upon the axiom that one disabled automobile is equal ...
— "To Invade New York...." • Irwin Lewis
... were at Port Henry, repairing the boat, I went up to Burlington, where I ordered this to be done. It came down to-day, and I want it put up in the wheel-house, where it will be constantly before your eyes, as the best axiom in the world for a steamboat man. It will be the history of the Woodville to you, and I hope you will always act upon it, never running your boat above a safe speed, nor leave your wharf when it ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... axiom founded upon the evidence of past work, and a respect for the laws of construction in the carpenter's department, that when foliage appears in panels divided by plain spaces, it should never be made to look as if it grew from one panel into the ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... it was not desirable to rob Saint Peter's altar in order to build one to Saint Paul. It might have been simpler to suggest that the consumer would pay the tax, supposing it were ever paid at all, but the axiom was not so familiar ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the Viscount Turenne), in conjunction with the forces to be supplied by the republic. "Any treaty of peace on our part with the King of Spain," said the States-General, "is our certain ruin. This is an axiom. That monarch's object is to incorporate into his own realms not only all the states and possessions of neighbouring kings, principalities, and powers, but also all Christendom, aye, the whole world, were it possible. We joyfully ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... be free from his debts, and have undisturbed possession of Les Jardies, where they could live en pigeons heureux. Ever inclined to give advice, he suggested to her that she should have her interests entirely separate form Anna's, quoting the axiom, N'ayez aucune collision d'interet avec vos enfants, and that she was wrong in refusing a bequest from her deceased husband. She should give up all luxuries, dismiss all necessary employees and not spend so much of her income but invest it. He felt that she and her daughter were lacking ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... actual obsessions of the evil one, who contrived in this manner to give scandal to the faithful, and selected the most godly for his evil purpose. This ingenious defence of the field-chaplain was the saving of my back, for my father, who was a believer in Solomon's axiom, had a stout ash stick and a strong arm for whatever seemed to him to be a falling away from the ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... never stopped till they reached the town of Calatafimi, several miles from the battlefield. We ceased our pursuit a short distance from the entrance to the town, which is very strongly situated. If one gives battle, one ought to be sure of victory; this axiom is very true under all circumstances, but especially at the beginning of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... cannot be answered by those who believe in the appearance or creation of only a few forms of life, or of some one form alone. It has been maintained by several authors that it is as easy to believe in the creation of a million beings as of one; but Maupertuis's philosophical axiom "of least action" leads the mind more willingly to admit the smaller number; and certainly we ought not to believe that innumerable beings within each great class have been created with plain, but deceptive, marks of descent ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... Beg no questions. St. Paul to you may be infallible, But Science is so unaccommodating, If not irreverent, she'll not accept His ipse dixit as an axiom. Here, in our civilized society, Is an increasing host of single women Who do not find the means of livelihood In the employments you call feminine. What shall be done? And my reply is this: Let every honest calling be as proper For woman as ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... theorem to be a truism; but I venture to state it, because it is surely desirable that it should be recognized as an axiom by metaphysicians, and practically does not seem to me yet to have been so. I say "animated life" because the word "life" by itself might have been taken to include that of vegetables; and I say "animated" instead of "spiritual" life because the Latin "anima," and pretty Italian corruption ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... reason while these moods were on him, has been held up as an authority that may be relied upon as to the doings and sayings of Napoleon and his immediate followers at the "Abode of Darkness." It is a well-known axiom that persons who speak or write anything while jealousy or temper holds them in its grip may not be counted as reliable people to follow, and that is exactly what happened in Gourgaud's case. He was the Peter of the band of disciples at St. Helena, ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... it seems primarily unnecessary to suggest at all that they came from anywhere; for, if the position be once assumed as an axiom that all people must have immigrated from some place to the place in which we first find them, or hear of them, then the double question arises: "Why should the persons we find in A., and who, we think, may have come from B., not have migrated from A. to ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... "It is almost an axiom with the regular army of our own country and those of foreign nations, that soldier and discipline are synonymous. Meaning thereby the blind discipline of ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... think that other parties in Shetland may have acted upon the principle referred to in Mr. Walker's evidence, although you do not approve of it?-They may have done so, and I have no doubt they have, because it is a common axiom in Shetland that if once you get a man into debt you have a hold over him. No doubt you have a hold over him, but it is simply a hold over a very ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... demonstrate the truth of his favourite axiom, drove off at such a furious rate over great stones left in the middle of the road by carmen, who had been driving in the gudgeons of their axle-trees to hinder them from lacing, [Opening; perhaps from LACHER, to loosen.] that Lord ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... On the contrary, there is no other place besides this at which God dwells and suffers Himself to be seen; no place but this alone where man can draw near to Him and seek His face with offerings and gifts. This view is the axiom that underlies the whole ritual legislation of the middle part of the Pentateuch. It is indicated with special clearness by the LPNY (HL MW(D (before the tabernacle), introduced at every turn in ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... merciful to the earthly offender but the magistrate. The law is an eternal principle. The magistrate may forgive a man without exacting satisfaction. The law knows no forgiveness. It can be as little changed as an axiom of mathematics. Repentance cannot undo the past. Let a man leave his sins and live as purely as an angel all the rest of his life, his old faults remain in the account against him, and his state is as bad as ever it was. God's justice ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... time past I have had no other news of you than your excellent articles on "artistic individuality," etc., in which, among many other right and fine observations, I was specially pleased with the axiom: "The artistic temperament, when genuine, corrects itself in consequence of the change of contrasts." May it prove so in my case;—this much is certain,—that in the tiresome business of self-correction few have to ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... had received a divine order to that effect; and nothing, in her opinion, could displease our Lord, provided the motive were praiseworthy. The countess, putting to good use the consecrated authority of her unexpected ally, led her on to make a lengthy and edifying paraphrase of that axiom enunciated by a certain school of moralists: ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... inequality, both possible. Then we discover, singularly enough, that property may indeed manifest itself accidentally; but that, as an institution and principle, it is mathematically impossible. So that the axiom of the school—ab actu ad posse valet consecutio: from the actual to the possible the inference is good—is given the lie as far as ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... you cannot attain," said Mr. Axiom, my employer,—"think of the influence you exercise!—more than a clergyman; Horace Greeley was an editor; so was George D. Prentice; the first has just been defeated for Congress; the last lectured last night and got fifty ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... twenty-three volumes, I do at least know for a certainty what one nation of fifty millions thinks of one of them, at any rate; for if the mutual verdict of the top of an empire and the bottom of it does not establish for good and all the judgment of the entire nation concerning that book, then the axiom that we can get a sure estimate of a thing by arriving at a general average of all the opinions involved, ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... be. The first principle, on which the theory of a science of history can be plausibly argued, is that all actions whatsoever arise from self-interest. It may be enlightened self-interest, it may be unenlightened; but it is assumed as an axiom, that every man, in whatever he does, is aiming at something which he considers will promote his happiness. His conduct is not determined by his will; it is determined by the object of his desire. Adam Smith, in laying the foundations of political economy, expressly eliminates ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... what is meant by such dynamical elements of Christianity. The doctrine of the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection was put before the world by Darwin in 1859, and within the half century has been accepted almost as an axiom by the whole civilised world. Undoubtedly that doctrine has proved itself dynamical. On the other hand, a few years earlier than the publication of The Origin of Species, another body of new doctrine was propounded to Britain and the world, and strongly urged by its upholders, namely, the doctrine ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... masked the towers. But there was another use for these lofty towers. The fact is that the Nuremberg engineers, at the time that they were built, had not yet adopted a complete system of flank-works, and not having as yet applied with all its consequences the axiom that that which defends should itself be defended, they wanted to see and command their external defenses from within the body of the place, as, a century before, the baron could see from the top of his donjon whatever was going on round the walls of his castle, and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... becoming an axiom in anthropology that what is needed is not discursive treatment of large subjects but the minute discussion of special themes, not a ranging at large over the peoples of the earth past and present, but a detailed examination of limited areas. This work ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... anxiety about his "exam." He was in a fidget, in a fever, putting on a spurt to come in first; sceptical moreover about his success and cynical about everything else. He appeared to agree to the general axiom that they didn't want a strange woman thrust into their life, but he found Mrs. Churchley "very jolly as a person to know." He had been to see her by himself—he had been to see her three times. He in fact ...
— The Marriages • Henry James
... came forward and uttered the significant yet simple words: "To your own kindness and the ceaseless efforts of my associates, our artists, you owe this accomplishment. What I have yet to say to you can be put into a few words, into an axiom. You have seen now what we can do. It remains for you to will! And if you will, then we ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... Christianity, slavery was an established institution in all countries.[478] Some pagan philosophers, like Seneca, maintained that all men are by nature free and equal, still by the law of nations slavery was upheld in all lands; and it was an axiom among the ruling classes, that "the human race exists for the sake of the few." Aristotle held that no perfect household could exist without slaves and freemen and that the natural law, as well as the law of nations, makes a distinction between bond and free.[479] Plato avowed ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... instance, the hydrogen atom each unites with two atoms of oxygen, and so down the list of all known existences,—these laws are among the assured results of scientific study. Now, the entire science of chemistry in all its branches is built upon the axiom that molecules are absolutely unalterable and that molecules of the same kind are always absolutely identical. A molecule of water is always and invariably composed of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. A molecule of sulphuric acid invariably ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... the term cause the axiom that every change has an occasion, hence that every event is bound up with a number of conditions which when lacking in whole or in part would prevent the appearance of the event, while their presence would compel its appearance, then the whole business ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... Amaryllis, in sheer kindness of heart, shone with good humour, readiness of reply and flow of conversation. Randal, while he felt that she now and then forced the note, caught her motive, and responding, smoothed her way. But Dick, having from childhood accepted Randal's immunity from love as an axiom, took it all in good faith, and emerging by quick degrees from his taciturnity, soon had his share of ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... if Seneca had adopted a loftier tone with his pupil from the first, Rome might have been spared the disgraceful folly of Nero's subsequent buffooneries in the cities of Greece and the theatres of Rome. We may lay it down as an invariable axiom in all high education, that it is never sensible to permit what is bad for the supposed sake of preventing what is worse. Seneca very probably persuaded himself that with a mind like Nero's—the innate worthlessness of which he must early have recognised—success of ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... an intermediate position between true First Cause, on the one hand, and the world of secondary causes on the other, and in order to understand the nature of this position, we must fall back on the axiom that the Universal can only work on the plane of the Particular through the individual. Then we see that the function of the individual is to DIFFERENTIATE the undistributed flow of the Universal into suitable directions ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... the maximum in the series of conditions in the world of sense, considered as a thing in itself. The actual regress in the series is the only means of approaching this maximum. This principle of pure reason, therefore, may still be considered as valid—not as an axiom enabling us to cogitate totality in the object as actual, but as a problem for the understanding, which requires it to institute and to continue, in conformity with the idea of totality in the mind, the regress in the series of the conditions of a given conditioned. For in the world of sense, that ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... of jests, as you rise in the social scale from the street-boy to the peer of France, that the observer arrives at a true comprehension of M. de Talleyrand's maxim, "The manner is everything"; an elegant rendering of the legal axiom, "The form is of more consequence than the matter." In the eyes of the poet the advantage rests with the lower classes, for they seldom fail to give a certain character of rude poetry to their thoughts. Perhaps also this same observation may explain the sterility of the salons, their emptiness, ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... digression of this kind will seem all too short; and ninety out of every hundred readers shall seize with avidity upon details that possess all the piquancy of novelty, thus establishing yet once again the trust of the well-known axiom, that there is nothing so little known as that which everybody is supposed to know—the Law of ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... observe, there are two things which are to be learned from this passage. The first is this, that happiness is not our end and aim. It has been said, and has since been repeated as frequently as if it were an indisputable axiom, that "Happiness is our being's end and aim." Brethren, happiness is not our being's end and aim. The Christian's aim is perfection, not happiness, and every one of the sons of God must have something of that spirit which marked their Master; that holy sadness, that peculiar unrest, that ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... said the carriers of freight hold the keys of trade was stating what appears almost an axiom, and an illustration is afforded of the results of reduced rates in an analogous business in the way in which the establishment of penny postage sent up the receipts ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... syndicates handling revenues greater than those of states, and directing the labors of hundreds of thousands of men with an efficiency and economy unattainable in smaller operations. It had come to be recognized as an axiom that the larger the business the simpler the principles that can be applied to it; that, as the machine is truer than the hand, so the system, which in a great concern does the work of the master's eye in ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... class do not keep money long, and when the proceeds of the robbery had been wasted at cards and in drink they separated. As in fulfilment of the axiom that a murderer is sure to revisit the scene of his crime, one of the men found himself at the Ocmulgee, a long time afterward, in sight of the new town—Macon. In response to his halloo a skiff shot forth from the opposite shore, and as it approached the bank he felt a stir in his ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... to a man in this position. He learns wondrous economies, and will feel a sort of pride in his ultimate discovery of how little money is needed to support life. In his old days Mr. Tymperley would have laid it down as an axiom that 'one' cannot live on less than such-and-such an income; he found that 'a man' can live on a few coppers a day. He became aware of the prices of things to eat, and was taught the relative virtues of nutriment. Perforce a vegetarian, he found ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... harmony between the various individual applications is brought about by all the individuals bringing their own particular action into line with this independent creative action of the original power. It is in fact another application of Euclid's axiom that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another; so that though I may not know for what purpose some one may be using this creative power in Pekin, I do know that if he and I both realize its true nature, we cannot by any possibility be working ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... the new year is called "happy" doubtless on account of the good resolutions which inevitably spring from a contemplation of the past. It is the one day in the year when every right-minded person at least tries to do good, and it is an axiom that to be good ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... saying that my father was an enthusiastic Britisher. But he was a firm believer in the American axiom, though—"My country, may she ever be right; my country right or wrong," and I, his son, echo the same sentiments. It is this sentiment that makes me have no love for a pro-Boer. It was this pride of country that caused him to go to the expense of subscribing ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... which is one of the most important principles to be kept in view in imparting instruction to both young and old. Lead on FROM something known TO something unknown, is a golden rule,—a most valuable axiom that all teachers should ever bear constantly in mind. What important lessons may be given in a field, wood, or forest! How much better is the thing itself for a lesson, than the representation of it! ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... expediency—the choice of the lesser evil—than by incontrovertible right. But if we have interests beyond sea which a navy may have to protect, it plainly follows that the navy has more to do, even in war, than to defend the coast; and it must be added as a received military axiom that war, however defensive in moral character, must be waged aggressively if it ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... two striking pictures of the inconsistency of human nature. The author of the Declaration of Independence lays down at the very first this axiom: "We hold this truth to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." And yet this man, with members of others who signed the famous document, ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... mortal great bore, confined to the higher classes of society. A celebrated wit, who, from his long and extensive acquaintance with the fashionable and political world, has had every means of forming his opinion on this subject, lays it down as an axiom, that none but a rich man, or a great man, can be a great bore; others are not endured long enough in society, to come to ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... brown and happy. From the attitude of the group around Judith and Peter Mary divined what had happened, and came to add her congratulations. Even Mrs. Yellett forgot to choose an axiom as her medium of expression, and kissed Judith publicly, with affectionate unction. Henderson had effaced himself, and Leander, proud of his triumph and Judith's commendation, sat in a corner and smiled contentedly. Ignorant of the drama to ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... because he began with the belief that he could reach it. English jurists had said that the deaf-blind were idiots in the eyes of the law. Behold what the optimist does. He controverts a hard legal axiom; he looks behind the dull impassive clay and sees a human soul in bondage, and quietly, resolutely sets about its deliverance. His efforts are victorious. He creates intelligence out of idiocy and proves to the law that the deaf-blind man is ...
— Optimism - An Essay • Helen Keller
... provisions, and naval stores, were exchanged for what the province wanted from other countries. The attention of the mercantile part was chiefly employed about staple commodities; and as their great object was present profit it was natural for them to be governed by that great axiom in trade, whoever brings commodities cheapest and in the best order to market, must always meet with the greatest encouragement and success. The planters, on the other hand, attended to the balance of trade, ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... shocking transgression of human brotherhood presented by such a scene! A scene of every-day occurrence—a scene never seeming to excite even one reflection kindred to these natural, surely, and obvious feelings—yet one terribly recalling to the pensive observer that axiom, Homo ad hominem lupus est! Doubtless the fraudulent or utterly reckless debtor is, in the eye of reason, the first "wolfish" assailant of his brother. But how many of these familiar tragedies are as truly the result of unforeseen, unforeseeable contingencies, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... Font's acting is the complete truth in one short sentence: Nature's triumph over art; reversing the copy-book axiom! But the Lord deliver us from ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... Wentworth saw the handle of the door begin to turn; the door opened and remained slightly ajar, until Felix had delivered himself of the cheerful axiom just quoted. Then it opened altogether and Gertrude stood there. She looked excited; there was a spark in her sweet, dull eyes. She came in slowly, but with an air of resolution, and, closing the door softly, looked round at the three persons present. Felix went ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... of conscience. In the jungle might is right, nor does it take long to inculcate this axiom in the mind of a jungle dweller, regardless of what his past training may have been. That the black would have killed him had he had the chance the boy knew full well. Neither he nor the black were any more sacred than the lion, or the buffalo, the zebra ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a people far too much engaged in industry and trade to make war. I am already certain that the New Atlantans pursue a policy of peace. For it is an axiom admitted by all economists that peace without and peace within are necessary for the progress of ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... that very truthful axiom: "The employe who never does more than he is paid for is never paid for ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... physical circumstances, and partially by its own second suggestions, growing out of those primary impressions received from nature. The moral influence, the historian asserts, is the weakest of the three, which control the destiny of man. Not an axiom now current, but was known and taught in the days of Plato, of Zoroaster, and of Confucius; yet how wide the gap intervening between the civilization of the different eras! Moral without intellectual culture, is nothing; but with the latter, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... everyone knows what is meant, and this is why most of the peoples of the ancient world conveyed their ideas in picture language. FLETCHER, in his Cyclopedia of Education, says:— "It has long been accepted as an axiom that the best explanation of a thing is the sight and study of the thing itself, and the next best a true picture of the thing." DRYDEN, speaking ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... reception, the chief of whom, the vice-palatine, was seated on the middle bench, drawing through the stem of his huge carved meerschaum the smoke of the sweet Veker tobacco. His figure was the living illustration of the ever true axiom: "Extra Hungariam non est vita,"—an axiom which his fat red face by no means confuted,—while his heavy, stiffly waxed mustache seemed to add menacingly: "Leave ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... the bulletins, despatches, notes, and proclamations which have emanated from Bonaparte, or passed through his hands. For my part, I believe that the proverb, "As great a liar as a bulletin," has as much truth in it as the axiom, two and ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... too, which is unelected by and independent of the nation.... The Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please. It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also.... A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone is a good thing; but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... be counted as our richest gain, to have learned afresh one's utter impotency so completely that the past axiom of service, 'I can no more convert a soul than create a star,' comes to be an awful revelation, so that God alone may be exalted in that ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... duty of superior officers. Therefore, even had a grant been made of Warner's Ranch in which the grantor purposely left out the recognition of the rights of the Indians, the highest Spanish courts would not have tolerated any such abuse of power. This was an axiom of Spanish rule, shown by a hundred, a thousand precedents. Hence it should have been recognized by the United States Supreme Court. It is good law, but better, it is good sense and common justice, and this is especially good when it protects the helpless and weak ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... fundamental requirements of function. According to this view, the natural classification would eventually be found to stand upon a basis of physiology. Therefore all the systems of classification up to the earlier part of the present century went upon the apparent axiom, that characters which are of most importance to the organisms presenting them must be characters most indicative of natural affinities. But the truth of the matter was eventually found to be otherwise. For it was eventually found that there is absolutely no correlation ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... English maritime law it became the mother of wages, as the crew were obliged to moor the ship on her return in the docks or forfeit them. So severely was the axiom maintained, that if a ship was lost by misfortune, tempest, enemy, or fire, wages also were forfeited, because the freight out of which they were to arise had perished with it. This harsh measure was intended to augment the care of the seamen for the welfare ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... promptly formulated the one indispensable condition which alone met the problem, and which the successful steam-engine must possess. He abandoned all else for the time as superfluous, since this was the key of the position. This is the law he then laid down as an axiom—which is repeated in his specification for his first patent in 1769: "To make a perfect steam engine it was necessary that the cylinder should be always as hot as the steam which entered it, and that the steam should ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... 'Capital! An axiom worth putting into print, for the benefit of all and sundry. Now I must say goodbye; that fellow yonder will take me back to the domesticities.' He hailed an empty carriage. 'We shall meet again ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing |
