"Incontrovertible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but he was charged with having escaped, the year before, from the custody of a man whose prisoner he was not and had never been—with having broken from a durance that ought to have existed! From incontrovertible testimony, we know that Captain Semmes only raised the white flag, after his vessel began to sink; that he stayed on her deck until she went down beneath him; that no boat came to him from the "Kearsage," and that he was in the water full an hour, before the boat of ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... distance in the rear, and when his orders were not ill-timed or inapplicable to the case in hand, they were not infrequently deemed impracticable, or at cross purposes with the convictions of the generals whose duty it was to carry them into effect. The simple and incontrovertible fact is that General Butler's presence with that army was from the start embarrassing if not absolutely unnecessary. It interposed an intermediate commander between the generalissimo and two entire army corps, and however good ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... Hinduism. Much of it is avowedly based on the principle that in this degenerate age the Veda is difficult to understand,[440] and that therefore God in His mercy has revealed other texts containing a clear compendium of doctrine. Thus the great Vishnuite doctor Ramanuja states authoritatively "The incontrovertible fact then is as follows: The Lord who is known from the Vedanta texts ... recognising that the Vedas are difficult to fathom by all beings other than himself ... with a view to enable his devotees to grasp the true meaning of the Vedas, ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... nature of the man that many worthy persons unfamiliar with the true facts of history have believed that Joseph was a purely apocryphal infant, or, as some have suggested, merely an adopted child; but that Napoleon did upon this occasion content himself with second place is an incontrovertible fact. Nor is it entirely unaccountable. It is hardly to be supposed that a true military genius, such as Napoleon is universally conceded to have been, would plunge into the midst of a great battle without first having acquainted ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... we do not often stop to analyse the reasons of prolonged popular favour; yet nothing is more certain than that there is reason, and good reason, for fidelity in public taste. Popular liking, if continued, is always founded upon certain incontrovertible virtues. If a manufacture cannot hold its own for ever in public favour, it is because it fails in some important particular to be what it should be. Products of the loom must have lasting virtues if they would secure lasting esteem. Blue denim had ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... strict adherence to the laws and traditions of the Provinces, no disrespect had been intended to him, no invasion of his constitutional rights, and that on his part his lifelong devotion to the House of Nassau had suffered no change. He repeated his usual incontrovertible arguments against the Synod, as illegal and directly tending to subject the magistracy to the priesthood, a course of things which eight-and-twenty years before had nearly brought destruction on the country and led both ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Wendell? Yes, he knew with incontrovertible certainty that he was Paul Wendell. But he also knew, with almost equal certainty, that he was Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton. He was living—had lived—in the latter half of the nineteenth century. But he knew nothing of the Captain other than the certainty of identity; ...
— Suite Mentale • Gordon Randall Garrett
... was not discussing the value of shorter working hours, she was pointing out that "equal pay" cannot rule for an entire group of workers when restrictions apply to part of the group and not to the whole body. We meet here, not a theory, but an incontrovertible fact. Pay is not equal, and cannot be, where conditions are wholly unequal. Protection for the woman worker means exactly what it would mean for the alien man if by law he were forbidden to work Saturday afternoon, overtime or at night, ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... justice, and a complaisant judiciary has ratified the Puritan position. In England and on the Continent that principle is safeguarded by the fundamental laws, and during the early days of the anti-slavery agitation in this country it was accepted as incontrovertible, but if any American statesman were to propose today that it be applied to the license-holder whose lawful franchise has been taken away from him arbitrarily, or to the brewer or distiller whose costly plant has been rendered useless and valueless, ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... in all the formalities attendant upon the case, Mr. Forrest proved of infinitely more value than the accomplished tutor. The former, an officer reared with deep regard for established law and order, accepted the situation as a fact, the laws as incontrovertible, and considered himself and friends, although involuntarily, as the offenders. The German-American scholar, on the contrary, spent fruitless hours in striving to argue the officials out of their stand and in preaching a crusade against the laws they were sworn to obey. Forrest ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... he had not been surprised by the incompetence and failure of science and of fire; but the flexibility of the skin as he handled it, taken with its stubbornness when all means of destruction that man possesses had been brought to bear upon it in vain—these things terrified him. The incontrovertible fact ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... Roscius, if the Name can sooth him; a Critic; nay, an Orator; but I shall be bold to assert, that we have many, very many, in this Kingdom, of far greater Powers than that Gentleman, whereof some of his Orations, so called, are incontrovertible Testimonies. ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... that he bases his conduct—his inward or his outward conduct, his feeling or his action—upon a dogma or theoretical principle which he deems incontrovertible, runs the risk of becoming a fanatic, and moreover, the moment that this dogma is weakened or shattered, the morality based upon it gives way. If, the earth that he thought firm begins to rock, he himself trembles at the earthquake, for we do not all come up to the ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... announcement from Col. Bledsoe that he would resign soon, and that it was his purpose to ask the President to appoint me chief of the bureau in his place. I said I preferred a less conspicuous position—and less labor—but thanked him. He said he had no influence with the Secretary—an incontrovertible fact; and that he thought he should return to the University. While we were speaking, the President's messenger came in with a note to the colonel; I did not learn the purport of it, but it put the colonel in a good humor. He showed me the two first words: "Dear Bledsoe." He said ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... this vitally important question, we shall most of us, I take it, agree upon certain points. In the light of recent knowledge upon, and extended experience of the subject, one such point which now appears incontrovertible is that there are thousands die annually—directly or indirectly—through overfeeding where one dies through insufficient nourishment. And it may at once be said that, as regards these thousands, the death certificates are practically valueless as data in relation to erroneous dieting, so that ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... true that are not expedient to say. Sink everything into Dewey-Aguinaldo cooeperation, that was on both sides honest even if it did not imply any actual arrangement, which, of course, Dewey himself could not make. That here you have the facts,—undenied—incontrovertible." [38] ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... believe are the established phrases—but will he be the happier? Let the once smiling and populous Hawaiian islands, with their now diseased, starving, and dying natives, answer the question. The missionaries may seek to disguise the matter as they will, but the facts are incontrovertible; and the devoutest Christian who visits that group with an unbiased mind, must go away mournfully asking—'Are these, alas! the fruits of twenty-five ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... taste, but he ought still to respect the judgment of mankind, which has consigned to oblivion the works which he admires. While he pores unmolested on Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, and Occleve, let him not censure our obstinacy in adhering to Homer, Virgil, Milton, and Pope. . . Notwithstanding the incontrovertible merit of many of our ancient relics of poetry, I believe it may be doubted whether any one of them would be tolerated as the production of a modern poet. As a good imitation of the ancient manner, it would find its ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... had shown a lack of respect for the Supreme Court, which had already decided the question at issue by a vote of eight to one. Mr. Justice White, then on the Court and now Chief Justice, set forth the position that the two cases were in principle identical with incontrovertible logic. In giving the views of the dissenting minority on the action ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the United States will never seek war except for the defence of her rights, her obligations, or her necessary interests. In that sense our policy may always be defensive only, although it may compel us at times to steps justified rather by 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 ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... foregoing low wages, the discouraging result of excessive fines, long hours, and unwholesome sanitary conditions, not only the physical system is injured, but—the result we most deplore, and of which we have incontrovertible proof—the tendency is to injure ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... the eighth and sixteenth centuries. They contain theogonies, accounts of the creation, philosophical speculations, fragmentary history, and may be brought to support any sectarian view, having never been intended as one general body, but they are received as incontrovertible authority. In former times great efficacy was attached to sacrifice and religious austerities, but the objects once accomplished in that way are now compassed by mere faith. In the Baghavat Gita, the text-book of the modern ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... wished to find in the prophet some plain and incontrovertible proofs of the Messiahship of Christ, to use against Moslems and Jews. While thus searching, I found various passages that would bear an explanation according to my views, and read on till I came to the fifty-second chapter, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... inconsistency wherever it existed. He won many of his lawsuits by the straightforward method of showing that the one or two vital statements on which the whole case of the opposition rested were false, inasmuch as they were inconsistent with well-established and incontrovertible facts. An instance of ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... be in accordance with his political bias; or should there be nothing uttered by any speaker that may suit his purpose, these ear-trumpets will change the sounds of words and the construction of sentences in such a way as to be incontrovertible, although every syllable should be diverted from its original meaning and intention. They have also the power of larding a speech with "loud cheers," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... of fatalism. Here he has not only the wisdom of the East but the logic of the West on his side. Necessity is as incontrovertible to thought as it is incredible to feeling. But in the potent illusion of free-will (if illusion it be) rests all morality and all the admiration that we feel for good and evil deeds. Not even at Alan Seeger's bidding can ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... vulgar elements of the Belgian population did transgress, there still remains incontrovertible evidence that almost unheard-of kindness was shown to the invading army, and that Germans had displayed brutal insolence to Belgians before a state of war had been declared. Nearly every single letter ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... that the only rational procedure is to begin by determining in what relation the copies stand to each other. For this purpose we adopt as our starting-point the incontrovertible axiom that all the copies which contain the same mistakes in the same passages must have been either copied from each other or all derived from a copy containing those mistakes. It is inconceivable that several copyists, independently reproducing an ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... enough, and on the plane of purely physical science, and we may therefore be assured that it is not the way in which the memory of the Logos acts; yet it is neatly worked out and absolutely incontrovertible, and as I have said before, it is not without its use, since it gives us a glimpse of some possibilities which otherwise might not occur ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... that the full exercise of this noble function of the associative faculty is inconsistent with absolute and incontrovertible conclusions on subjects of theoretic preference. For it is quite impossible for any individual to distinguish in himself the unconscious underworking of indefinite association, peculiar to him individually, from those great laws of choice ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... upon his panel at any moment, have been a matter of much credit to his young pupil. The first point of any real interest is Lord Lindsay's confirmation of Foerster's attribution of the Campo Santo Life of Job, till lately esteemed Giotto's, to Francesco da Volterra. Foerster's evidence appears incontrovertible; yet there is curious internal evidence, we think, in favor of the designs being Giotto's, if not the execution. The landscape is especially Giottesque, the trees being all boldly massed first with dark brown, within which the leaves are painted separately ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the negro's the guilty man. The facts speak for themselves, and facts are incontrovertible. As surely as the sun shines, Carpenter killed your daughter. Why, then, continue this gossip, slander which besmirches Withers and is bound to attack your ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... conclusion of a life spent rather diligently in study, and in association especially with astronomical practice and physical experiments, I have, in view of certain hitherto unpublished facts, decided to make public almost incontrovertible evidence that in the planet Mars the continuation of our present life, in some instances, has been discovered by myself. I will not dwell on the astonishment I have felt over these discoveries, nor attempt to describe that felicity ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... The incontrovertible part was that things came to a decisive pass on a July day in the late '80's when the two Tatums sent word to the two Stackpoles that at or about six o'clock of that evening they would come down the side road from ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... up this statement, for its truth was incontrovertible, and showed that the father's ill-will was too tangible a thing to be concealed; ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... to his summers, Mr. Port—after a month spent for the good of his liver in taking the waters at the White Sulphur—of course went to Narragan-sett Pier. It may be accepted as an incontrovertible truth that a Philadelphian of a certain class who missed coming to the Pier for August would refuse to believe, for that year at least, in the alternation of the four seasons; while an enforced absence from that damply delightful watering-place for two successive ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... The Prince paid us two visits, but our chief company were Hare, Grey, and Sheridan, the latter persecuting me in every pause of the music and telling me he knew such things of you, could give me such incontrovertible proofs of your falsehood, and not only falsehood but treachery to me, that if I had one grain of pride or spirit left I should fly you. And guess what I answered, you who call me jealous. I told him I had such entire reliance ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... deal, without doing too much; and thirdly, that there really had occurred no circumstances in the Cabinet, or with the King, sufficient to account for their summary dismissal. There is no denying that his first position is incontrovertible, that he makes out a very fair case for his second, and his argument on the third throws great doubt upon the matter in my mind, having previously had no doubt that the King had a good case to show to the world. It is not so much the Duke's opposition to this or that particular ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... increased humanity; and in part it may be so, for the nature of a people can never undergo a sudden and entire change. But I can myself vouch for the lenity which they displayed when they have had the power, and to wit great provocation, to have acted otherwise. The incontrovertible facts, too, remain that Mussulman Turkey has been the first to relinquish the unchristian custom of decapitating prisoners, and other inhuman practices, which the so-called Christians appear little inclined to renounce. This will, of course, meet with an indignant denial ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... sense; that power of execution which creates, forms, and constitutes: not the profoundness of single thoughts, not the richness of imagery, not the abundance of illustration." Assuredly, no "new definition" can be an effective one which conflicts with Goethe's incontrovertible dictum. ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... with too much respectful anxiety as if it were as real as ourselves. He who can give so perfectly the texture of common life, the solidities of common sense, likes to wave his wand over the domain of sturdy prose and incontrovertible custom, and to show how plastic it is, and how easily pierced, and how readily transformed. He has a malicious pleasure in confusing the boundaries of nature and fancy, and mocking the purblind understanding. In the "Midsummer Night's Dream" we have ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... There never was the least symptom of mental disturbance in him after the time (1795-6) when he was placed for a few weeks in Hoxton Asylum, to allay a little nervous irritation. If it were necessary to confirm this assertion, which is known to me from personal observation and other incontrovertible evidence, I would adduce ten of his published letters (in 1833) and several in 1834; one of them bearing date only four days before his death. All these documents afford ample testimony of his clear good sense and kind heart, some ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... All these spectators in the background had watched for a long time past; and a simultaneous thrill had run through the household, which no one was conscious of being the cause of, which was instinctive and incontrovertible. If not yesterday, then to-day; or to-morrow, if anything should come in the way to-day. Things had come to such a pitch that they could go no farther. Of this every one in Markland was sure. There is something that gets into the air when excitement and self-repression run high, and ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... not arraying evidence for a trial, but leaning over the brink of introspection in the attitude of Narcissus. One need seek no farther than self-love, it may be suggested, to find the motive for the poet's absorption in his reflection. Yet it is incontrovertible that the self-infatuation of our Narcissus has its origin in the conviction that no one else understands him, and that this conviction is founded upon a very real attitude of hostility on the part of his companions. The lack of sympathy between the English poet ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... to the White Bear," said Hans, in the tone of one who states an incontrovertible fact, ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... whose name is somewhat familiar to the champions of Homoeopathy, has said that "the new healing art is not to be judged by its success in isolated cases only, but according to its success in general, its innate truth, and the incontrovertible nature ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... as an incontrovertible truth impossible to dispute; but then he had never until lately felt the smallest desire to travel through life accompanied by any one person. He had fallen in and out of love as often as was wholesome or possible for so hard-working a young man, and always looked upon the experience as ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... violating the law. The number of men and women consecrated to God by vows of chastity forms but an imperceptible fraction of the human family, their proportion in the United States, for instance, being only one individual to about every four thousand. Moreover, it is an incontrovertible fact that the population increases most in those countries in which the Catholic clergy exercise the strongest influence; for there married people are impressed with the idea that marriage was instituted not for the gratification of the flesh, but for the procreation ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... secured a copy. And the letter to Charles Jenkinson of 20 June 1777 and to Dr. Dodd of 26 June were of the sort that an enterprising lady might well have wheedled copies from the Doctor. The important point is that the inclusion of the letters in the 1789 printing of the Enquiry provides incontrovertible proof of Miss Reynolds' ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds
... friends and the enemies of Christianity admit that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is vital to the religion that bears His name. The Christian confidently appeals to it as an incontrovertible fact; the sceptic denies it altogether as a historical reality. "If the resurrection really took place," says an assailant of it, "then Christianity must be admitted to be what it claims to be—a direct revelation from God." "If Christ be not risen," says the Apostle Paul, ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... of revelation and his reduction of Christianity to what he called its "natural" and hence incontrovertible basis carried with it a corollary, that of man's absolute right to religious enquiry and profession. Here he became specific, borrowing from Lockean empiricism his conditions of intellectual assent. "Evidence," he said, "ought to be the sole ground of Assent, and Examination is the ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... interpreted in the light of the "incontrovertible maxim" that "the courts of no country execute the penal laws of another."[91] In the leading case of Huntington v. Attrill,[92] however, the Court so narrowly defined "penal" in this connection as to make ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... better days, seemed seconded by a phalanx of ghostly beings, who had untimely passed away by means of fearful treatment, and by the living miseries of multitudes of shapeless deformed ones, who ever stood unpleasant and incontrovertible witnesses of the cruelties and ...
— Allopathy and Homoeopathy Before the Judgement of Common Sense! • Frederick Hiller
... their crudity alone. His first impulse had been to surprise the two, hold them up at the revolver point, but the result of such an act would have been abortive, for the disfigured safe would stand a mute, incontrovertible witness to the fact that an attempt to force it had been made—and, whether it was actual robbery or attempted robbery that was proved against the son, it in no way deflected the blow aimed at David Archman. And, besides, there was the letter! If he, Jimmie Dale, had been in time even ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... means represents the actual state of affairs in a generator, because, as was explained in the previous chapter, a carbide vessel cannot be filled completely with solid; and, indeed, were it so "filled," in ordinary language, much of its space would be still occupied with air. Nevertheless it is incontrovertible that an acetylene plant calculated to supply so many burners for so long a period of time must be very much larger if it is constructed on the non-automatic principle, when the carbide is decomposed all at once, than if the automatic system is adopted, when the solid remains ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... He had long been the butt of all their witticisms, but now Anton was very sorry to see that he was universally disliked. Even the quartette had given him up—at least there was decided enmity between him and both basses. Whenever Specht ventured upon an assertion that was not quite incontrovertible, Pix would shrug his shoulders and ejaculate "Pumpkins." Indeed, almost all that Specht said was met by a whisper of "pumpkins" from one or other; and whenever he caught the word, he fell into a towering passion, broke off ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... Alexander; no one, in find, came from the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pres. Compared with the MS. described by Mr. Thompson, they are only as straw to gold. I have seen with my eyes, I have touched with my fingers, an incontrovertible testimony to the existence of this document. But the document itself—what has become of it? Sir Thomas Raleigh went to end his days by the shores of the Lake of Como, whither he carried with him a part of his literary wealth. Where did ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... all the vicissitudes of life; an intellect developed along the lines of its greatest possibilities; and an occupation chosen in accordance with the tastes and talents of the individual; it becomes an incontrovertible fact that the education is the controlling factor in the physical life ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... the incontrovertible proof of his loss, a catastrophe all the more agonizing since the logic of the situation obliged him to eliminate ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... inspiration, down to the time when the West forced open the doors of Japan to the world. From that moment, under the new influences, it has sickened and declined. But what a record! And a record that is also an incontrovertible proof that the Japanese belong to the civilised nations—the nations that can live ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... treason," repeated Commines, finding some comfort and strength in the bald platitude: it was incontrovertible and at least gave him firm ground under his feet. "Nor can treason go unpunished, or how would the throne be safe for a day? But what the father cannot do, though a king, another can and must; and must," he reiterated, steeling himself with a rising emphasis for what was to follow. ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... and a certificate are different things. The latter is, at the very best, only evidence of the former. The fact to be determined is the appointment; the certificate is produced as evidence; it may be controvertible or incontrovertible, as the law may have provided, but there is nothing in the nature of a certificate which forbids inquiry into its verity; it is not a revelation from above; it is a paper made by men, fallible always, and sometimes dishonest ...
— The Electoral Votes of 1876 - Who Should Count Them, What Should Be Counted, and the Remedy for a Wrong Count • David Dudley Field
... did not resent this imputation of ignorance. He merely said, with the air of one who gives an incontrovertible answer: ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... a hotch-potch of new ideas and opinions; you have made a certain acquaintance with researches that are going on in various directions—researches that seem to you to upset a good many ideas that people have hitherto considered incontrovertible and unassailable. But all this has never gone any further than knowledge in your case, Miss West—a mere matter of the intellect. It has not got ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen
... think, miss, but that the rain was altogether too mastherful for ye? Ye know, me dear, we can't (even the best of us) conthrol the illimints!" This incontrovertible fact Mrs. Connolly gives forth with a truly noble air of resignation. "Come down now, and let me get ye that palthry cup ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... Blake would leave that gentleman unharmed and would come whirling back upon Katherine as a boomerang of popular indignation. She dared not breathe a word against the city's favourite until she had incontrovertible proof. Under the circumstances, the best course seemed for her to ask for a postponement on the morrow to enable her ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... dead but of the living was an unanswerable denunciation of the Sadducean perversion of scripture; and with solemn finality the Lord added: "Ye therefore do greatly err." Certain of the scribes present were impressed by the incontrovertible demonstration of the truth, and exclaimed with approbation: "Master, thou hast well said." The proud Sadducees were confuted and silenced; "and after that they durst not ask him ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... atmospheric air, that explosion takes place inside and outside of the lamp; whereas, when the lamp has burnt sufficiently long to heat the wire gauze, no explosion takes place on the outside of the lamp. These experiments appear incontrovertible in support of his theory, which is, "that the wire gauze is merely the rapid receiver and the retainer of heat, and that it is the caloric in its meshes which prevents the flame of the lamp from being fed by the oxygen of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... the while it is to be admitted that all this axiomatic exhortation has no visible effect on the course of events or on the popular temper touching warlike enterprise. Indeed, no equal volume of speech can be more incontrovertible or less convincing than the utterances of the peace advocates, whether subsidised or not. "War is Bloodier than Peace." This would doubtless be conceded without argument, but also without prejudice. Hitherto ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... historians record faithfully all that has been said and written from the commencement of time to the period in which they flourish, they will embalm the fact that at least one prose writer of the present day has enunciated that incontrovertible proposition. ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... find words which would fully express his feeling. He had come a long way these last hours in his ideas of life; he saw things naked and clear cut, without dubious shades. But he had to realize now that what his soul accepted as incontrovertible logic ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... Brazil and Cuba, composed variously of Americans, French, English, Cuban, Brazilian and German investigators. Nothing has been added to our original findings; nothing has been contradicted of what we have reported, and to-day, after nearly thirteen years, the truths that we uncovered stand incontrovertible; besides, they have been the means of driving out yellow fever from Cuba, the United States (Laredo, Texas, 1903 and New Orleans, La., 1905), British Honduras and ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... will-o'-the-wisp of the mind. It took months and years to bring it into any accustomed relation to every-day matters of thought and act; and it is this habitual adjustment of our inward belief to our outward environment that makes any creed appear to be incontrovertible. ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... we saw from time to time. Once I tramped up within thirty feet of a big fellow who was pursuing some studies behind a log. But again the incontrovertible-postmortem-evidence of their food habits was a surprise—the bulk of their sustenance now was berries, in one case this was mixed with the tail hairs—but no body hairs—of a Chipmunk. I suppose that Chipmunk escaped minus his tail. There was ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... which has lit up the flame; but more and more do the incidental evils seem curable and the difficulties removable.' As the Crimean war went on, the usual cry for administrative reform was raised, and Mr. Gladstone never made a more terse, pithy, and incontrovertible speech than his defence for an open civil service in the summer ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... motion with her hands, as if sweeping something away from before her. He had become pale and there was a light in his eyes. He felt angry at this girl who had shown herself ready to argue with him,—in her girlish fashion, of course,—and who, after listening to his incontrovertible arguments, fell back resolutely upon a platitude, and considered that she had got ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... drawing his gaze out into the blackness of the night. He struggled against the temptation to look towards the window. He whirled the Dax woman till her twinkling feet cleared the floor. He sang to the accompaniment of Miguel's fiddle. He was outwitting the thing that dangled before his eyes, having the incontrovertible last word with a vengeance. And as he danced and swayed, all unwittingly his glance fell on the window opposite, and Jim Rodney's face looked in at him, beautiful in its ecstasy of hate—Rodney's face, refined, sharpened, tried in some bitter crucible, but Rodney's ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... fact of inner experience, which the poet thinks incontrovertible—the fact that man, every man, necessarily regards evil, whether natural or moral, as something to be annulled, were it only possible—is an immediate proof of the indwelling of that which is highest in man. On this basis, Browning is able to re-establish the optimism which, from ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... great truth in the Science of being, that the real man was, is, and ever shall be perfect, is incontrovertible; 200:18 for if man is the image, reflection, of God, he is neither inverted nor subverted, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... for these cardinal points—I myself am unmarried; Miss Primleigh is herself unmarried; the young lady students contemplating embarkation on this expedition are each and every one of them unmarried also. In view of these facts—which are incontrovertible and not to be gainsaid—do you deem it entirely proper that I, a member of the opposite sex, should be suffered to accompany them throughout the course of their sojourn on alien shores, far, far from home and the restraining influences ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... facts furnish incontrovertible proof of the patience and skill with which astronomy had been cultivated in Mesopotamia, and that, with very inadequate instrumental means, it had reached no inconsiderable perfection. These old ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... question of her portrait has its own vexed (and until now unrecognized) dilemmas. In fine there seems no point connected with our first professional authoress which did not call for the nicest investigation and the most incontrovertible proof before it could be accepted without suspicion or reserve. The various collections of her plays and novels which appeared in the first half of the eighteenth century give us nothing; nay, they rather cumber our path with the trash of discredited Memoirs. Pearson's reprint (1871) is entirely ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... futile because it concerns that practically mythical being, the aboriginal man, about whose social and psychic life no one knows anything, and any theorizer can say what he chooses without fear of shipwreck on incontrovertible facts. Whether the lowest races known to-day are differentiated from the highest only by acquired social and psychic characteristics, or also by differences of psychic nature, may perhaps be an open question. ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... views in regard to the country. The matter is hardly worth referring to were it not that these opinions, hastily arrived at and apparently as hurriedly rushed into print, have been accepted by some people as incontrovertible facts. Another class of work that I think a reader should be warned against is the book of the man who has lived in Japan for a time and seen life only from a certain standpoint. The book of a bishop or a missionary may ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... the county of Wilts, he discovered that a farmer near Calne had been infected with the smallpox after having had the cow-pox, and that the disease in each instance was so strongly characterized as to render the facts incontrovertible. The cow-pox, it seems, from the doctor's information, was communicated to the farmer from his cows at the time that they gave out an ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... treat seriously a movement founded upon such arguments as these. They are in the main incontrovertible. We seem to be breathing the very atmosphere of Wagner, and it would be scarcely too much to say that the humanist movement of the Bardi salon was in its intention the forerunner of the German movement dreamed ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... discussion when we were called upon to extend relief? He begged to state this was not the true question: it was whether they would found all the future proceedings upon error and misstatement, or upon incontrovertible facts. Another question was, would they be satisfied to patch up the wounds of the country for a short period or seek to remedy the disease in its spring and in its sources before it became still more alarming and incurable? The Duke ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... incontrovertible. They are not sought to be controverted, except, indeed, by the invention and circulation of such wanton falsehoods as that France was contemplating, and even commencing, the violation of Belgian territory as a first step ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... tempted from the comparatively secure ground of observations and the arrangement of observations into the perilous regions of metaphysics. Most scientific men return quickly, repelled and perhaps a little scared by the baffling confusion of that windy region of thought where no rules of logic seem incontrovertible, no conclusions tenable, and no discussions profitable. Huxley, however, not only entered into metaphysical questions with enthusiasm, but gave a great deal of time to the study of some of the great metaphysical writers. His views are to be found scattered through very ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... this rent in a manner contrary to, and utterly inconsistent with, all law and order and the constitution of the country." No member of either House denied the accuracy of this description of the Association's proceedings. And if it were correct, it was incontrovertible that the denunciation of it as an utterly unconstitutional body was not too strong. Indeed, the fact of its "levying a tax" upon a portion of the King's subjects (to say nothing of the intimidation, amounting to compulsion, by which, as was notorious, it was in many ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... Galilee, who, with his naked hands, convinced in thirty-five minutes nine larger men than himself of the incontrovertible fact that you cannot keep ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... so remarkable that, if narrated in a history, they would put a severe strain on belief. But the evidence for them is incontrovertible; for no man, writing to people about their own condition, invents a mythical description of their circumstances; and besides, Paul was writing to restrain rather than encourage these manifestations. They show with what mighty force, at its first entrance ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... to year, but from century to century; and for ten, twenty, and thirty years together;(1*) and that neither labour nor any other commodity can be an accurate measure of real value in exchange, is now considered as one of the most incontrovertible doctrines of political economy, and indeed follows, as a necessary consequence, from the very definition of value in exchange. But to allow that corn regulates the prices of all commodities, is at once to erect ...
— Observations on the Effects of the Corn Laws, and of a Rise or Fall in the Price of Corn on the Agriculture and General Wealth of the Country • Thomas Malthus
... as you have said, but the case appears to me one of the simplest. If my uncle wished the bitterest revenge on you, what could be more terrible than cause you to be the executioner of your own son? The vengeance, however, to be complete, depends on his being able to place before you incontrovertible proof that you were the father of the victim. Send, therefore, a messenger to him, one from Gudenfels, who knows nothing of what has happened in this castle of Schonburg, and who is therefore unable to disclose, even if forced to confess, that Wilhelm is alive. Let the ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... fickle, nor deem it unnatural for love so to perish. After learning what she had learned from absolute incontrovertible evidence (it is useless to enter into the circumstances, for no one is benefited by wallowing in unnecessary mire), that she, or any virtuous maiden, should continue to love this man, would have been a ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... say Admiral, he reasons, why may you not say Hatter? One man is as good as another, and it is the business of the "great poet" to show poetry in the life of the one as well as the other. A most incontrovertible sentiment, surely, and one which nobody would think of controverting, where—and here is the point—where any beauty has been shown. But how, where that is not the case? where the hatter is simply introduced, as God made him and as his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... States. Here again we are met with the theory that the Government of the United States does not rest upon the soil and territory of the country. We think that this theory is founded on an entire misconception of the nature and powers of that Government. We hold it to be an incontrovertible principle that the Government of the United States may, by means of physical force, exercised through its official agents, execute on every foot of American soil the powers and functions that belong to it. This necessarily involves the power to command ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... concerning their moral obligations in the work of education. It must also be admitted that the changes in school government have been favorable to learning and virtue. For, while it is not assumed that all schools are, or can be, controlled by moral means only, it is incontrovertible that a government of mild measures is superior to one of force. This superiority is as apparent in morals as in scholarly acquisitions. It is rare that a teacher now boasts of his success over his pupils in physical contests; but such claims were common a quarter of a century ago. The change ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... amused them all very much, and David expressed his entire concurrence with it, declaring it to be incontrovertible. Margaret ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... thought!—it must be that he loved her. As she so concluded, a delicate, throbbing fire fluttered in her side, and stole up to burn unreproved and undetected in her cheeks. Her reasoning was no reasoning, of course; but she knew nothing of knightly honour or the dramatic sense, so it seemed incontrovertible. At this discovery she was as full of shame as if she had done a sin. A sin indeed it seemed almost to be in her, that one so high should stoop to one so low, and she not die at once. Sacrilege—should not one die rather than suffer a sacrilege to ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... excellent company. The major was fond of argument, but extremely tenacious of his own opinions. Ellis handled the foils of discussion with just the requisite skill to draw out the major, permitting himself to be vanquished, not too easily, but, as it were, inevitably, by the major's incontrovertible arguments. ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... clearer? It will not do to treat it lightly. It is a statement of what international law is on this point from an authority; and the reasons for the doctrine are clear and incontrovertible. Neutrality depends on the fact of war; when, for any cause, that fact no longer exists, neutrality ceases likewise, of course. It is only the application of a well-known maxim of law, that when the reason of a rule fails, the rule itself fails. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... uneasily; "it was fine, surely; but have no fear, Fra Teodoro is not incontrovertible, and the Servi have ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Machiavelli always refused to write either of men or of governments otherwise than as he found them, and he writes with such skill and insight that his work is of abiding value. But what invests "The Prince" with more than a merely artistic or historical interest is the incontrovertible truth that it deals with the great principles which still guide nations and rulers in their relationship with each other ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... great men, lofty as were their inquiries and blameless their lives, had not established any system, nor any theories which were incontrovertible. They had simply speculated, and the world ridiculed their speculations. Their ideas were one-sided, and when pushed out to their extreme logical sequence were antagonistic to one another; which had a tendency to produce doubt and scepticism. Men denied the existence ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... instance, and in the beginning of the reign of his successor, Foscari; that is to say, circa 1424. This is not disputed; it is only disputed that the sea faade is earlier; of which, however, the proofs are as simple as they are incontrovertible: for not only the masonry, but the sculpture, changes at the ninth lower shaft, and that in the capitals of the shafts both of the upper and lower arcade: the costumes of the figures introduced in the sea faade being ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... us is whether Aristophanes really liked AEschylus or only pretended to do so. It must be remembered that the claims of AEschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, to the foremost place amongst tragedians were held to be as incontrovertible as those of Dante, Petrarch, Tasso and Ariosto to be the greatest of Italian poets, are held among the Italians of to-day. If we can fancy some witty, genial writer, we will say in Florence, finding himself bored by all the poets I have named, we can yet believe ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... opinion that consumption is incurable, there exists ample, incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. Its curability is established beyond the shadow of a doubt. Individuals have recovered in whom there was extensive destruction of pulmonary tissue, and, indeed, entire destruction of one lung. Numerous instances are on record in which persons ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... but discussed and thought over, and every slight allusion to the times was instantly applied. In the prevailing listlessness, the mere fact of increased mental activity was of importance. A spark of genius does much to raise a nation. It is in itself the incontrovertible proof that the race lives: a dead people does not produce men of genius. Whatever awakes one part of the intelligence reacts on all its parts. You cannot lift, any more than you can degrade, the heart of man ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... the man who possesses his eyesight must behold a thousand evidences of a Creator denied to a blind man; and in the same way the man who knows most of the material world should see the most conclusive evidences of design and a Designer. The humblest blade of grass preaches an incontrovertible sermon. What force is it that brings it up, green and beautiful, out of the black, dead earth? Who made it succulent and filled it full of the substances that will make flesh and blood and bone for millions of gentle, grazing animals? What a gap would it have ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... still alive, and his neighbors; he reflected their views, and the passions of the day. That it was, in view of the events then transpiring, the best policy to turn back the southern army, after the great battle, and not insist too closely on following up the advantage gained, seems now incontrovertible.—R. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... confident. I detailed the circumstances of the marriage of Violet Dalston, then only eighteen years of age, with a Mr. Grainger; the birth of a son; and subsequent disappearance of the husband; concluding by an assurance to the jury that I should prove, by incontrovertible evidence, that Grainger was no other person than the late Sir Harry Compton, baronet. This address by no means lessened the vague apprehensions of the other side. A counsel that, with such materials for ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... Government in any act of double dealing. But they had the Emperor Alexander of Russia to deal with. He offered to act as intermediary between Great Britain and France in order to bring about an honourable peace. The British Government refused, and it is stated on incontrovertible authority that Alexander was furious, and upbraided the British with having used troops, which should have been sent to Russia's aid, to crush Denmark. The outrage of attacking a small State which was at peace and with which she had no quarrel was powerfully denounced by Alexander. ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... arguments that are incontrovertible, but totally irrelevant; it busies itself with destroying claims which the Zionists have never made. A trio may be taken as representative. It is pointed out with cogency that Palestine is not capable of supporting the twelve million of Jews who ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... logical or argumentative as nature; they can offer no reason or "guess," but they exhibit the solemn and incontrovertible fact. If a historical question arises, they cause the tombs to be opened. Their silent and practical logic convinces the reason and the understanding at the same time. Of such sort is always the only pertinent question ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... their increase as property to their children forever.—Levit. xxv: 44, 45, 46. All these nations were made of one blood. Yet God ordained that some should be "chattel" slaves to others, and gave his special aid to effect it. In view of this incontrovertible fact, how can I believe this passage disproves the lawfulness of slavery in the sight of God? How can any sane man believe it, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... thought on the subject, I am obliged to repeat my assertion. Your own convictions in the matter, and your story of the shadow and the peaked cap may appeal to the public and assure you some sympathy, but for an entire reversal of its opinion you will need substantial and incontrovertible evidence. You must remember—you will pardon my frankness—that your husband's character failed to stand the test of inquiry. His principles were slack, his temper violent. You have suffered from both and must know. ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... middle of last summer, sir. Maria, the squaw, came to me with certain proof that made the evidence incontrovertible." ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... commercially, well and good. If not, it starves in a garret along with the artist. If the demand for modern tapestries was large enough, the art would flourish—perhaps. But it is not a large demand, for many reasons, chief among which is the incontrovertible one that the modern work is seldom pleasing. The whole world is occupied with science and commerce, and art does not create under their influence as in more ideal times. What can the trained eye and the cultivated taste do other than turn back to ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... discerning public! In fact, Sir, I am reduced to this occasional humiliating employment, derogatory certainly to the dignity of literature, as averting the approach of famine. I write, for various adventurers, poetical panegyric, and illustrate each subject by incontrovertible facts, with appropriate incident and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... South are of two kinds, viz., male and female. Much as has been said of the jackass pro and con, I do not remember ever to have seen the above statement in print before, and yet it is as trite as it is incontrovertible. In the Rocky mountains we call this animal the burro. There he packs bacon, flour and salt to the miners. The miners eat the bacon and flour, and with the salt they are enabled successfully to ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... an incontrovertible fact that to hasten sanitary reform it is only necessary to hold out the helping hand; to encourage the ignorant citizen to ask for instruction and direction, instead of placing upon him the task of making bricks without either clay or straw. There ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... found it necessary to take notice in some manner of the cruel and incessant attacks made upon her as the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and to fortify herself against them by a published statement of incontrovertible facts. It was claimed on all sides that she had in her famous book made such ignorant or malicious misrepresentations that it was nothing short of a tissue of falsehoods, and to refute this she was compelled to write a "Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin," in which should appear the sources from which ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... have the top crust. There will be four hundred and seventy-five men and women present who can draw upon their training and deliver incontrovertible judgments concerning cheese, and leather, and cattle, and hardware, and soap, and tar, and candles, and patent medicines, and dreams, and apparitions, and garden trucks, and cats, and baby food, and warts, and hymns, and time-tables, and freight-rates, and summer resorts, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... delineation of the theological opinions of the earlier periods of Grecian civilization. That the ancient Greeks believed in one Supreme God has been conclusively proved by Cudworth. The argument of his fourth chapter is incontrovertible.[391] However great the number of "generated gods" who crowded the Olympus, and composed the ghostly array of Greek mythology, they were all subordinate agents, "demiurges," employed in the framing ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... one day," he said, mournfully, as if quietly accepting the incontrovertible fact. "I told you once, and I yet trust, that the day may dawn wherein my Lady's heart shall come home to ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... them in the face! Whether they look amongst the most highly civilized peoples or amongst the lowest savages; whether they look into the past history of mankind or into its present condition, there is the stupendous fact of sin, and there is the incontrovertible fact that everywhere men ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... whilst the author avoids every thing that is ridiculous or contemptible, he, at the same time, never rises to any thing that we can commend or admire. He says what is incontrovertible, and what has already been said over and over, with much gravity, but says nothing new, sprightly, or entertaining; travelling on in a plain, level, flat road, with great composure, almost through the whole long, and rather tedious volume, which is little ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... infant—which the infant in after-life exercises and perhaps strengthens or further complicates—and which, with minute additions, it bequeaths to future generations(1)." Thus we have solid physiological ground for the idea of pre-existence and the idea of a multiple Ego. It is incontrovertible that in every individual brain is looked up the inherited memory of the absolutely inconceivable multitude of experiences received by all the brains of which it is the descendant. But this scientific assurance ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... their temperance,—their "total abstinence" from all the intoxicating moral and mental "drinks" which confuse the understanding and mislead the conscience. He could not borrow money on his note of hand, like any other citizen, without the circumstance being trumpeted abroad as incontrovertible evidence that Nick Biddle had paid him that sum to defend his diabolical Bank in the Senate of the United States. The plain fact that his speeches were confined strictly to the exposition and defence of sound opinions on trade and finance, and that it was difficult to answer them, only confirmed ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... (and that meant practically everybody) were freed of paying rent by a moratorium. Residents of Moscow and Petrograd are still obliged to pay rent and at a higher figure than in pre-war days. These two incontrovertible facts are evidence that an all-powerful Bolshevik in the Communist Government has in two years installed a lesser measure of Communism in actual practice than existed in the belligerent European countries during the war years. ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... it will demolish an infamous privilege. She affirms that an institution which might have been excusable under a landgrave, with a few thousand acres of territory, is inconsistent with the dignity and, to quote continental phraseology, the mission of a first-class state. Here again the reasoning is incontrovertible. Of one other thing, moreover, we may feel perfectly sure, that Prussia having determined to suppress these centres and sources of corruption, they will gradually disappear from Europe. Concede to them ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... front, meet his accusers; while I was to proceed to Transit and Lionise, and having instructed them in the story we had planned, meet him at the place of skulls, fully prepared to establish, by the most incontrovertible and consistent evidence, that we were not the aggressors in the row. A little persuasion was necessary to convince both our friends that their presence would be essential to Echo's acquittal; they had too many just ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Nineteenth Century England became once more a 'nest of singing birds,' as was apparent from the stream of fresh and melodious strains issuing from, among other sources, 'The Bodley Head,'" was greeted with a ripple of girlish laughter from her hearers. It seemed that this incontrovertible statement of fact had somehow aroused reminiscences of another head which, if fresh, had not been precisely melodious on the ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... of the stars, not those produced by the parallaxes at which they are seen from the changing position of the spectator, but the true changes constantly going on in the regions of space, afford us incontrovertible evidence of the 'dominion of the laws of attraction' in the remotest regions of space, beyond the limits of our solar system. The existence of these laws is revealed to us by many phenomena, as, for instance, by the motion of double stars, ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... having his revenge on Aunt Charlotte for the torrent of abuse she had poured upon him a few minutes previously. For a short time she sat quite still, the picture of perplexity and irritation. The facts as Austin stated them were incontrovertible, and yet—probably because she lacked the instinct of causality—she could not accept his explanation of them. There are some people in the world who are constituted like this. They create a mental atmosphere around ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... species—act powerfully to prevent this last fatal result, and instead the harassed individual seeks from others the aid which is lacking within himself. He may turn to the priest who seeks and often secures the final common path for faith in an over-ruling Providence, a faith which in many incontrovertible instances has proved sufficient in very truth to move mountains of lesser stimuli; or he turns to a physician, who too often treats the final outcome of the hyperactivity only. The physician who accepts the theory of the kinetic diseases, however, will not only ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... There has probably never existed, in any age or at any spot on the earth's surface, a group of people that did not take for granted its own preeminent excellence. Upon some such assumption, as upon an incontrovertible axiom, all historical narratives, from the chronicles of a parish to the annals of an empire, alike proceed. But in New England it assumed a form especially apt to provoke challenge. One of its unintentional effects was the ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... hundred yards from the shore, which were headlands of points running out into the sea within the remembrance of the inhabitants. The tops continue covered with trees or shrubs; but the sides are bare, abrupt, and perpendicular. The progress of insulation here is obvious and incontrovertible, and why may not larger islands, at a greater distance, have been formed in the revolution of ages by the same accidents? The probability is heightened by the direction of the islands Nias, Batu, Mantawei, Pagi, Mego, etc., the similarity of the rock, soil, and productions, and ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... "What is the weight of smoke?" He answered: "Subtract from the weight of the burnt wood the weight of the remaining ashes, and you will have the weight of the smoke." Thus he presumed it to be incontrovertible that even in fire the matter (substance) does not perish, but that only the form of it undergoes a change. In like manner was the saying: "From nothing comes nothing," only another inference from the principle or permanence, or ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... here introduce a vast amount of incontrovertible evidence to show that, if the attendance of all the children in any commonwealth could be secured at such improved common schools as we have been contemplating for ten months during the year, from the age of four to that of sixteen years, they would prove competent ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... Guy Seton gave themselves up to the pleasures of the hunt, blissfully forgetful of the young brothers and sisters who were following on wheels; and, indeed, of everything and everyone but just their own two selves. There seemed always to be some incontrovertible reason why they should keep by themselves, a little apart from the rest of the field. Rowena's hunting experiences had been few, and her escort was too anxious about her safety to allow her to try any but the very simplest and smallest of jumps. This excess of precaution necessitated many ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... usual appeal for an additional sum of money—he gave her, formally, six thousand dollars a year; and the manner of the demand, for the necessities of their daughter, showed his sharpened perceptions that she had never really experienced the blindness of a generous emotion. Eunice, the child, was incontrovertible proof of that—no more than an additional lever for ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... taxed without his own consent." Even when its most zealous professed advocates had abandoned the intention of maintaining this proposition, even at the risk of loosing the friendship of his dearest political connections, he stood firm upon the solid basis of that incontrovertible principle, "equal justice and freedom to all." No pretended expediency, no crafty policy, although urged with the greatest force and zeal, by the most experienced and acute reasoners, neither flattery, bribes, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... practitioners should have fallen under the spell of this consummation of formalism and should have regarded the 'Canon' as an infallible oracle, the more so in that the logical construction was impeccable and the premises, in the light of contemporary conceptions, passed for incontrovertible axioms?"(13) ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... with a rueful face,—"questions my word, which is incontrovertible?" Here he clapped his hand upon a couteau-de-chasse lying near, but, appearing to think better of it, drew himself up, and, with a shower of nods flung at me, added, "I deny your accusation!" I ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... to deny it. He knew that words would weigh as nothing against this material, tangible, incontrovertible proof. Forty-seven cards had been fraudulently inserted among the others. Certainly not by him! But by whom? Still he, alone, had been the gainer ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau |
