"Self-evident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... geological period no comparison could be made with the beginning of the next preceding one, in that same proportion and measure the plants and animals had also changed, so that scarcely any more resemblance existed between these and those from which they originated. It is self-evident that amid such changes only those specimens continued to exist, which had adapted themselves in their progressive development in their organs and capacities in the best way to the new conditions of their existence. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... distrust their senses, and doubt of the existence of heaven and earth, of everything they see or feel, even of their own bodies. And, after all their labour and struggle of thought, they are forced to own we cannot attain to any self-evident or demonstrative knowledge of the existence of sensible things. But, all this doubtfulness, which so bewilders and confounds the mind and makes philosophy ridiculous in the eyes of the world, vanishes if we annex a meaning to our words, ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... more self-evident than that one should choose a region, especially as regards soil and climate, which is adapted to the crop or crops to be raised, yet there are probably more failures due to a lack of crop adaptation than to any other ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... perseverance is one thing and genius quite another—nor can all the Quarterlies in Christendom confound them. By and by, this proposition, with many which I have been just urging, will be received as self-evident. In the meantime, by being generally condemned as falsities, they will not ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... (Vol. ii., p. 405. and vol. iii., p. 52.) approve of, and confirm Mr. Knight's suggestion of a ring dial, as though it were so self-evident as to admit of no denial. Nevertheless, neither he nor they have shown any good reason for its adoption: even its superior antiquity over the portable time-piece is mere surmise on their parts, unaccompanied ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... self-evident: The success of an enterprise furnishes no proof that it is in accordance with justice, or that it meets the approbation of God, or that it ought to be prosecuted to its consummation, or that it is the fruit ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... course, Hervey became exceedingly matter of fact. He spoke as though the explanation were self-evident. ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... and intelligent effort to understand and improve one's own voice. I hope I shall not seem to assume the dignity of an authority which no personal taste can claim, if I beg a hearing for the following elements of manner and voice, which appeal to me as essential. They will, probably, appear self-evident to my readers, yet they are often found wanting in the public school teacher; it is so much easier to say "what were good to do" than to ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... sense of duty and self-sacrificing patriotism. Probably the flocking of several million men to arms in defence of the Empire, and in defence of British conceptions of right and wrong has done something to convince Germans that the premises of the syllogism, were not so self-evident ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... and much-needed warning against the confusion between consciousness as an infallible authority, and belief upon experience, of which we are conscious as a belief—Mr Mill proceeds to sift the alleged self-evident connection between Free-will and Accountability. He shows, not merely that there is no connection, but that there is a positive repugnance, between the two. By Free-will is meant that a volition is not determined by motives, but is a spontaneous ...
— Review of the Work of Mr John Stuart Mill Entitled, 'Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy.' • George Grote
... to the floor and began to go over the film pages again, comparing her portraits with the portraits of those higher-paid creatures. She hated vanity and could not endure it in other women; it was a mere observation of a self-evident fact that she was prettier than all the other film queens put together. She sat there sneering at the presumptuousness of screen idols whom she had almost literally worshiped ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... when you publish the old family notes on the matter, if, for reasons you state, you do not wish to publish Jefferson's letters to your father which concern the subject, it will be sufficient just to say he acted by and under his advice and aid, and people will accept it, as it is self-evident, because it is preposterous to hold that Mr. Lemen could have accomplished such results without some great power behind him. In conclusion, it is my judgment that your father's anti-slavery labors were the chief factor leading up to the free state ...
— The Jefferson-Lemen Compact • Willard C. MacNaul
... himself that holiness consists in the beauty of his composition, and in the ornament of eloquence, so also a simple and unpolished man must not imagine that his ignorance constitutes him a saint. This is even still clearer, when this man may not be ignorant. Now, it is self-evident that a Friar Minor, cleric, or priest, is obliged, in conscience, according to the talent he has received from Heaven, to study carefully, in order to be competent to fulfil properly the ministries of preaching and of the confessional; since the spirit of his vocation, and ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... reasoning some propositions are necessarily taken for granted. These are called axioms, and are commonly regarded as self-evident. Yet their vital principle is not so much that of being self-evident as being, from the nature of the case, incapable of demonstration. Our edifice must have some support to rest upon, and we take these axioms as its foundation. One example of such a geometric ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... relation between Hahnemann's three cardinal doctrines appears to be self-evident upon inspection. But if, as is often true with his disciples, they prefer the authority of one of their own number, I will refer them to Dr. Trinks's paper on the present state of Homoeopathy in Europe, with which, of course, they are familiar, as his name is mentioned as one of the most prominent ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the young orator, the better the Eleusinian liked him. True, not every story ran to Democrates's credit, but Hermippus knew the world, and could forgive a young man if he had occasionally spent a jolly night. Democrates seemed to have forsworn Ionian harp-girls now. His patriotism was self-evident. The Eleusinian saw in him a most desirable protector in the perils of war for Hermione and her child. Hermione's dislike for her husband's destroyer was natural,—nay, in bounds, laudable,—but ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... of diverse and opposing religions which afflict mankind, it is self-evident that but one religion may justly claim the inspiration of truth, and it is equally evident to all reasoning minds that that religion is the religion of kindness and humanity,—the religion of noble thoughts ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... I had the pleasure of informing the reader before, has built up for me a considerable circle of men and women admirers. With self-evident emotion I shall tell of the pleasant hours of our hearty conversations, which I modestly call ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... Which self-evident fact brought him back again to 'Yes; and I only wish he had seen more of him! These are his plantations, I declare, that he used to make ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him the golden key wherewith to unlock the world of the universe, of the soul, of all nature. He is as convinced of the two absolute facts of God and Soul as Cardinal Newman in writing of "Two and two only, supreme and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator." Most fervently ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... education, all the associations of his life, and the fixed principles of his moral and political character, was an opposer of slavery in every form. No man felt more keenly the wretched absurdity of professing to base our Government on the "self-evident truth, that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with an unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"—of proclaiming our Union the abode of liberty, the "home of the free," the asylum of the oppressed—while holding in our midst millions of fellow-beings ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... for such public duties as other nations habitually assume, may perhaps be dismissed with a single citation from the Supreme Court. Said Mr. Justice Bradley, in the Legal Tender Cases: "As a government it [the United States] was invested with all the attributes of sovereignty.... It seems to be a self-evident proposition that it is invested with all those inherent and implied powers which, at the time of adopting the Constitution, were generally considered to belong to every government as such, and as being essential to the exercise of its ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... deliberately induced to it as a matter of choice. You will remember, perhaps, how desperately the Prefect laughed when I suggested, upon our first interview, that it was just possible this mystery troubled him so much on account of its being so very self-evident." ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... if this were self-evident; while the Count read himself a thousand lessons upon the errors vanity is apt to lead one into. Yet ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... encourages the hope that the incident of color, race or previous condition can not always be a bar to preferment. An equal chance and fair play to all the citizens are absolute essentials to the continued life of a republic such as ours is to be. It is in this self-evident truth that is found a sure ground of confidence. Upon this bed-rock of America's boasted pride for interest in her humblest citizen may be built the superstructure of the future ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... Lords, the Peers in their robes, the beautifully-dressed ladies with very many beautiful faces; lastly, the procession of the Queen's entry and herself, looking worthy and fit to be the converging-point of so many rays of grandeur. It is self-evident that she is not tall, but were she ever so tall, she could not have more grace and dignity, a head better set, a throat better arching; and one advantage there is in her looks when she casts a glance, being of necessity cast up and ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... and steps taken to have their statements given in such a way that they are audible and intelligible. A few lessons in elementary elocution are generally vitally necessary. The man with the bassoon voice must be tamed, and the birdlike old lady made to chirp more loudly. But all this is the self-evident preparation which must take place in every case, and while highly important is of far less interest than the development of the circumstantial evidence which is the next ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... story, and it also carries with it an excellent moral, self-evident to almost any reader. It is beautifully printed and graphically illustrated. The scene of the story is laid in Boston; and the author's experience with his mother-in-law is very readable, as is also his reckless expenditures for his wife's sake, he harboring ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... sterility to the unfit themselves will, on the whole, be incalculable. They are self-evident, and need ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... regulations. Our political philosophy centers around that concept, and all our social discussions fall into the form of propositions and disputes about rights. The history of the dogma of rights has been such that rights have been believed to be self-evident and self-existent, and as having prevailed especially in primitive society. Rights are also regarded as the opposite of force. These notions only prove the antagonism between our mores and those of earlier generations. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... persons in recompense for voicelessness. The Count spoke like one who could sing, but his throat was delicate, and so the world lost a great singer. Of most instruments he spoke with a half-concealed contempt. But of the violin he said nothing. He was not a man to turn the conversational overflow upon self-evident facts. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." John 17:5. That the appearance on earth of One who dwelt with the Father in glory before the world was, and after the fulfilment of his mission returned to the Father again, was supernatural, is self-evident. His person was, as has been shown, divine. He was God manifest in the flesh; and wherever he went, his supernatural power displayed itself. The miraculous element is so interwoven into the very substance of the gospel history, that ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... gaps of the mountain in the direction of Chattanooga, leaving nothing in front of the left wing but the reserves of Granger and those of Crittenden. These held their ground gallantly around Snodgrass Hill, but it was a self-evident fact to all the officers, as well as the troops, that the battle was irretrievably lost, and they were only fighting for time, the time that retreat could be safely made under cover of darkness. But before the sun was fairly set, that great army was in full retreat. But long before this it was ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... them which is as impenetrable to conviction in certain matters as a brick wall is to a parched pea. They will fall back on any loophole of a theory, however imbecile and far-fetched, rather than accept some simple and self-evident solution that they start out by regarding as impossible. And Aunt Charlotte was a very ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... an avowed and definite declaration against some of the leading ideas on which the mechanical philosophy depends; and yet the caution, and almost timidity, with which a man so eminent approaches the announcement of conclusions of the most self-evident truth is a most curious proof of the reign of terror which has come to ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... which the Elegy was composed were well adapted to soothe and cherish that contemplative sadness which, when the wounds of grief are healing, it is a luxury to indulge, and that the poet did indulge them is self-evident in many ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... it would indeed be a fair and full reply, that these lines are not bad, because they are unpoetic; but because they are empty of all sense and feeling; and that it were an idle attempt to prove that "an ape is not a Newton, when it is self-evident that he is not a man." But the sense shall be good and weighty, the language correct and dignified, the subject interesting and treated with feeling; and yet the style shall, notwithstanding all these ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the mystic himself is characterized by a personal experience through which the ordinary limitations of life and the passionate pursuits of the soul are transcended, and a self-evident conviction is attained that he is in communion, or even in union, with some self-transcending Reality that absolutely satisfies and is what he has always sought. "This is He, this is He," the mystic exclaims: "There is no other: This is He whom ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... helped each other, not only in politics but in business. "We want the whole business [city business] if we can get it." If "we win, we expect everyone to stand by us." Then he uttered what must have been to every citizen of understanding a self-evident truth, "I am working for ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... much—coming in. But there seems to be no limit to the joy we feel when Power goes out through us. It seems so self-evident, so needless, to say "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Why of course it is: ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... to glance at certain considerations which point to the by no means self-evident proposition, that this factor of irresponsible property is certain to be present in the social body a hundred years ahead. It has, no doubt, occurred to the reader that all the conditions of the shareholder's ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... Falconer. The rest of his features had now grown into complete harmony of relation with his whilom premature and therefore portentous nose; his eyes glowed and gleamed with humanity, and his whole countenance bore self-evident witness of being a true face and no mask, a revelation of his individual being, and not a mere inheritance from a fine breed of fathers and mothers. As it was, she could admire and love him without danger of falling in ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... case insurmountable hindrances should arise to prevent the carrying out of this same, I have no inclination to substitute for the Orclaestral-concert one for Chamber-music. But the word "Evening entertainment" must, as is self-evident, be entirely dispensed with. Our business is to raise, to educate the audience, not to amuse them; and if indeed, as Goethe very pertinently says, "deep and earnest thinkers are in a bad position as regards the public," we will therefore not so much the less, but so much the more earnestly maintain ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... existence, and that he must be intimately acquainted with the operations and progress of the internal machinery, and consequent outward deportment of this creature which he has made; these are, I think, self-evident propositions. That there is a real and eternal distinction between virtue and vice, and consequently, that I am an accountable creature; that from the seeming nature of the human mind, as well as from the evident imperfection, nay, positive ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... front of Will and me, his strong yellow teeth gleaming between a black beard and mustache. The Turk got up clumsily, and went out, muttering to himself. I glanced toward the corner where the self-evident gipsies sat, and observed that with perfect unanimity they ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... in the character of the early state constitutions. These were shaped by the same revolutionary movement which produced the Declaration of Independence, and were largely influenced in their practical working by the "self-evident" truths proclaimed in the latter. One of the axioms of political science embodied in the Declaration of Independence was the right of the people to alter or abolish the existing form of government. This principle, however, was expressly recognized in but few of the earlier state constitutions, ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... blandest of smiles. "Yes, thanks—I see I was right. It was unnecessary to name names.—Oh! undoubtedly, innumerable excuses, and of the most valid description, were they needed—were they not swallowed up in the single, self-evident excuse that the lady you mention is a supremely clever ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... impossible that she should have disappeared into any one of the houses which had their entrances within the dark tunnel he had just traversed. Apart from the presumptive impossibility of her being lodged in such a quarter, there was the self-evident fact that he must have heard the door opened and closed. Secondly, she could not have turned to the right, for in that direction the street was straight and without any lateral exit, so that he must have seen her. ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... published in England, were little read, and universally decried. The critics were always hard at work, proving that he was no poet, and demonstrating in the most logical manner that he was quite incapable of reasoning on the commonest topic. In addition to all this, his ignorance was self-evident; and though he was very fond of quoting Greek, they doubted whether he was capable of reading the original authors. The general impression of the English public, after the lapse of some years, was, that ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... and account him the prince of philosophers, but I do not always share his opinion. Aristotle and the other philosophers have planted the tree of science, but the latter has not by any means put forth all its branches or matured all its fruit." This thought, though it seems to us self-evident, was of great moment in the age of scholasticism. Bacon spent ten years in prison; but in spite of everything, he was so much under the influence of scholasticism that he considered it the task of philosophy to adduce evidence for the ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... conform to it. The non-resident owners would then express themselves in the terms of Sir Philip Gibbs, "that he should consider it as the fault of his manager, if he were not to keep up the number of his slaves." This reasoning concerning the different tendencies of the two systems was self-evident. But facts were not wanting to confirm it. Mr. Long had remarked, that all the insurrections and suicides in Jamaica had been found among the imported slaves, who, not having lost the consciousness of civil rights, which they had enjoyed in their own country, could ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... long as you have no Light. What then is the Light?—Why, simply something you cannot confine in a church or bottle in a creed: and this is a proposition that needs no proving at all, because it is self-evident. There was a fellow in English Wiltshire once, they say, who planted a hedge about his field to keep in the cuckoo from her annual migration. The spirit of Cuckoo-hedging came in, in the first ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... fundamental contradiction in one chief department of our thought, it remains to ask how far this necessity constitutes a sufficient reason for accepting this hypothesis.... Those who hold that the edifice of physical science is really constructed of conclusions logically inferred from self-evident premises, may reasonably demand that any practical judgments claiming philosophic certainty should be based on an equally firm foundation. If, on the other hand, we find that in our supposed knowledge of the world of nature propositions are ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... conclusion before the public four years ago, I assumed, as something self-evident, that I was announcing a doctrine which was not by any means an isolated novelty; and I distinctly said so in the preface to the 'Laws of Social Evolution.' I fully understood that there must be some connecting bridge between the so-called classical economics ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... speaker as if wroth with him for proposing so simple and self-evident a means of getting at the water at a time when they had only succeeded at the risk of losing ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... words of the Jesuit, might be taken as a motto by the great in all countries. These social differences are patent in all ages; the fact is always accepted by the people; its "reasons of state" are self-evident; it is at once cause and effect, a principle and a law. The common sense of the masses never deserts them until demagogues stir them up to gain ends of their own; that common sense is based on the verities ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... no wish to see far beyond the obvious; he missed good things sometimes, but he gained more than he lost; he knew that it is always on the margin, as it were, of the self-evident that the greatest purchase against the nearest difficulty is obtainable. His life was not one of Herculean effort, but, like the lives of all those organisms that are most likely to develop and transmit a useful modification, it was one of well-sustained ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... breast—to say nothing of a thousand ingenious forms of torture inflicted just because "He sees that it is best for you," after having led you to see otherwise—that you cannot trust a God like that must be more or less self-evident. If you are part of His Self-Expression He cannot practise futilities through your experience and personality. He must be kind with a common-sense kindness, loving with a common-sense love. Whatever ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... of diet that meant, probably. Googoo—if that was the dog's name—was passionately fond of poets, that was self-evident, and intended to make a meal of this one, forthwith. He flew at the Speranza ankles. Albert performed a most undignified war dance, and dashed his handful of sand into Googoo's open countenance. For a minute ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... should relish an egalitarian state like an equilateral triangle; or should defend the Pons Asinorum as Codes defended the Tiber bridge. But anyone who does not understand that does not understand the French Revolution—nor, for that matter, the American Revolution. "We hold these truths to be self-evident": it was the fanaticism of truism. But though Carlyle had no real respect for liberty, he had a real reverence for anarchy. He admired elemental energy. The violence which repelled most men from the Revolution was the one thing ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... since his college days, was felt in good earnest by not a few of Delafield's friends. For he was a person rich in friends, reserved as he generally was, and crotchety as most of them thought him. The mixture of self-evident strength and manliness in his physiognomy with something delicate and evasive, some hindering element of reflection or doubt, was repeated in his character. On the one side he was a robust, healthy Etonian, who could ride, shoot, ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... all the burdens that go with such citizenship, and to partake of the joys and sorrows that are its inevitable accompaniment—in a word, to take the advice of the Rabbis of old and "seek the welfare" of the country in which we live. But this obligation is so self-evident, and the problems raised by it solve themselves so naturally, that they need no further thought. In point of fact, the patriotism of the Jews for the lands in which they live has been demonstrated on so many occasions ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... clear as day; beyond all question, beyond all dispute; undoubted, uncontested, unquestioned, undisputed; questionless[obs3], doubtless. authoritative, authentic, official. sure as fate, sure as death and taxes, sure as a gun. evident, self-evident, axiomatic; clear, clear as day, clear as the sun at noonday. Adv. certainly &c. adj.; for certain, certes[Lat], sure, no doubt, doubtless, and no mistake, flagrante delicto[Lat], sure enough, to be sure, of course, as a matter of course, a coup sur, to a certainty; in truth ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... its supreme importance, it is scarcely necessary to dwell upon the self-evident fact that this foundation—Emission, or Placing of the voice—should be well laid under the guidance of a skilled and experienced singing-teacher. Nothing but disappointment can ensue if a task of such consequence be confided, as is too ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... been surprised that you, who ought to see these things, have believed that I have taken any step which is out of harmony with our friendly relations, for beside these facts which I have mentioned, which are undisputed and self-evident facts, there are many more intimate ties of friendship which I can scarcely put in words. Everything about you charms me, but most of all, on the one hand, your perfect loyalty in matters of friendship, ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... Remaining enjoyment is the indulgence of frank speech Sell your manuscripts, but don't sell your soul Success is often a misfortune Summer days that come but to go There isn't much to feel here except what you see Things that are self-evident nobody seems to see Vanity at the bottom of even a reasonable ambition We confound events with causes What ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger
... absolute. This theory is most admirably expressed in the opening of the Declaration of Independence, of which he was the sole author, and which was adopted almost literally as he wrote it: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... only a few minutes for Kennedy, in his most engaging and plausible manner, to state the hypothetical reason of our call. Though it was perfectly self-evident from the start that Mrs. Martin would throw cold water on anything requiring an outlay of money Craig accomplished his full purpose of securing an interview with Mr. Haswell. The invalid lay propped up in bed, and as we entered he heard us and turned ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with, is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... dramas, in which of course it is impossible that he should ever speak in his own person? No doubt he may speak his own sentiments through the mouths of many of his persons; but how are we to know in what cases he does so?—At least we may assert, as a self-evident negative, that a passage treating of a wide question put into the mouth of a person despised and rebuked by the best characters in the play, is not likely to contain any cautiously formed and cherished opinion of the dramatist. At first sight this may seem ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... natural laws and principles to their logical effects. The "Regular" school of medicine, so far, has endeavored to build a medical science on the observation of "effects" and "experiences," but since one fundamental law of nature may produce a million seemingly differing effects it becomes self-evident that it is utterly impossible to found an exact science on such ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... sufficient prominence to make a record of their lives valuable are too busy to prepare an autobiography, but there is only one other way to go down to posterity correctly represented, and that is to have some one else write the history while the hero still lives. If we admit this self-evident proposition, then the question is presented, should it be published during his lifetime? A reason analogous to that which justifies the writing, demands also the publication, in order that denials or attacks may be met by the person who, above all others, is best qualified to defend the original ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... of truths, or those received by intuition, we have examples in what are called 'self-evident axioms,' and 'fundamental laws' or 'conditions of thought,' which no wise man has ever attempted to prove. Of the second, we have examples in the whole fabric of mathematical science, reared from its basis of axioms and definitions, ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... impervious to moisture. Brown and even black silk, laid out in abroad ribbons, in spindle-shaped patterns, in fanciful meridian waves, adorns the upper portion of the exterior. The part played by this fabric is self-evident: it is a waterproof cover which neither dew ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... striking pictures of the inconsistency of human nature. The author of the Declaration of Independence lays down at the very first this axiom: "We hold this truth to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." And yet this man, with members of others who signed the famous document, was a slave-holder, and contributed to the maintenance of a system ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... this with so evident a sense of its obviousness as a self-evident truth that none of us had the courage to brave her surprise by asking an explanation. My mother's air of surprise when any of us went wrong in any way was very terrible to us. One day, when in a fit of peevish temper, I had taken the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... in such well-known works as Cesar Franck's Symphony in D minor and Wagner's Prelude to the Mastersingers! As we face these questions squarely the need for the listener of special training in alertness and concentration is self-evident. A very small proportion of those who attend a symphony concert begin to get their money's worth—to put the matter on a perfectly practical plane—for at least 50% of the musical structure is presented to ears without capacity for receiving it. In ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... inside where there was no wall but one. Simson placed himself on the side next the ruins, so as to intercept any communication with the old house, which was what his mind was fixed upon. I was posted on the other side. To say that nothing could come near without being seen was self-evident. It had been so also on the previous night. Now, with our three lights in the midst of the darkness, the whole place seemed illuminated. Dr. Moncrieff's lantern, which was a large one, without any ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... into ordinary education do not discipline the mind in this way. Mathematical training is almost purely deductive. The mathematician starts with a few simple propositions, the proof of which is so obvious that they are called self-evident, and the rest of his work consists of subtle deductions from them. The teaching of languages, at any rate as ordinarily practised, is of the same general nature,—authority and tradition furnish the data, and the mental operations ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... the form of its eternity. He was in a position to judge. He had lived face to face and hand to hand with all forms of corporeal horror, and there was no mass of disease or of corruption that he did not see in its resplendent and divine transparency. It was simple and self-evident to him that the world of bodies was made so and not otherwise. It was also clear as daylight that the entire scheme of things existed solely to unfold and multiply and vary the everlasting-to-everlasting-world-without-end ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... the history of another. Religions are not necessary to human progress. They are really clogs. My ancestors had more trouble to extirpate these superstitious ideas from the mind than they had in getting rid of disease and crime. There were several reasons for this difficulty. Disease and crime were self-evident evils, that the narrowest intelligence could perceive; but beliefs in creeds and superstitions were perversions of judgment, resulting from a lack of thorough mental training. As soon, however, as education of a high order became universal, it began to disappear. No mind of ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... better suit the object that I have in view. The editors whose notes I have examined probably thought the connexion so self-evident or insignificant as not to require either notice or explanation. If so, I differ from them, and I therefore offer the following remarks for the amusement rather than for the instruction of those who, like myself, are not at all ashamed ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 48, Saturday, September 28, 1850 • Various
... of Prague the idea called America is alive. A worker, dressed in grimy overalls, rises to speak at the factory gates. And he begins his speech to his fellow citizens with these words, words of a distant revolution: "We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." It's no secret here at home freedom's door opened long ago. The cornerstones of this free society have already been ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George H.W. Bush • George H.W. Bush
... these truths to be self-evident—that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... enlightenment, however, thousands, convinced of the value and benefit of the bathing, periodically attend these miserable substitutes for properly-planned, hygienically-heated, and effectively-ventilated Turkish baths. Viewing any self-evident shortcomings as irremediable evils, ignorant of the true principles of bath construction, and knowing little or nothing of the physiological action of the bath, they have neither the means of ascertaining, nor the power to detect, the genuine article from the harmful substitute. ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... self-evident prey, Mr. Kelley was a shade the quicker. His elbow fended accurately the ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... could have been descried on no other than the above line must be self-evident, but to say that it has followed it in the manner that a contagious disease ought to have done, in our own country for instance, is at variance with the fact. From Sunderland and Newcastle to the south, the ways were open, the stream ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... greatest of all rights, bestowed by a beneficent God upon his rational creatures, namely, the government of themselves by themselves. Acting upon this opinion, an opinion as false as it is foul—acting upon this opinion, as upon a self-evident proposition, those who held it proceeded with a fiendish consistency to deny the rights of citizens to those whom they had declared incapable of performing the duties of citizens. It is not necessary, and therefore I will not disgust you with the hideous picture of that ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... have any doubt on the matter. Alas, that I should have to say so, it is too self-evident. You persuade this poor creature to go out alone with you into the Pineta at an extraordinary hour of the morning, knowing then,—or according to your own showing, becoming aware soon after you started—that it was your uncle's intention by ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... generally are," he replied. "Some of the young chaps thought it first-rate, even though they were a little startled for the moment. Though why people should feel startled by anything so self-evident as my remarks beats me. Be hanged to them for ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... lost, and I am left in the lurch without a portrait, I must have recourse to my own tongue, which, for all its stammering, may do well enough to state some truths that are tolerably self-evident. I assure you then, dear reader, that you can by no means make a fricassee of these tales which I here present to you, for they have neither legs, head, bowels, nor anything of the sort; I mean that the amorous intrigues you will find in some of them, are ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... is to the effect that there is no city or country in the world in which it is possible to obey the law thoroughly, is also self-evident. A certain class of common crimes, such as robbery, cheating and swindling, murder and the like, are followed by a species of automatic punishment in all quarters of the civilized world, in spite of exceptions in specific cases, which result from the intervention of political bosses and ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... Spain, England, and France, was this, that he could discover a new route to the East Indies; that is to say, without going round the Cape of Good Hope. He grounded this proposition on the spherical figure of the earth, from whence he thought it self-evident that any given point might be sailed to through the great ocean, either by steering east or west. In his attempt to go to the East Indies by a west course, he met with the islands and continent of ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... excess of a virtue, and to pass from conscientiousness to bigotry is not a long nor difficult journey. All views are not equally true. This every sane mind holds as self-evident. There is a liberalism at this point which would run, if let go its logical course, to the sophist fallacy that truth did not exist, and therefore one view was as just as another—an attitude repugnant to all fine ethical natures. Now, conceiving we have ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... situation, wherein the Government and the States as individuals could not act, that the simple, self-evident plan of the House of Governors was proposed. It required no Constitutional amendment or a single new law passed in any State to create it or to continue it. It can not make laws; it would be unwise for it to make them even were it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... from ideas clearly conceived the consequences which were formally involved in them. What, then, were these ideas—these verae ideae, as he calls them—and how were they to be obtained? If they were to serve as the axioms of his system, they must be self-evident truths, of which no proof was required; and the illustration which he gives of the character of such ideas is ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... It is self-evident that the farther back we go for intelligence the deeper we plunge in the darkness of ignorance; and even though intuitional and moral truths may be found in the old writings, they belong to a literature imbedded in an ignorance ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... If called upon, as he sometimes is, to explain to others how and why one of these slight and almost imperceptible signs fit in with his theory, he fails. Therefore the cautious expert, like a good judge, is careful in giving reasons for his judgment only to cite those which are self-evident. ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... intimating that, in the opinion of the law officers, persons charged on oath with seditious libel might be apprehended and held to bail. No act of Sidmouth called forth such an outburst of reprobation as this; yet it is not self-evident that instigations to outrage, being criminal offences, should be treated by magistrates differently from other offences for which bail may be required, with the alternative of imprisonment. On the other hand, it is ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... religions, the development of the individual in that which is most peculiar and individual in him. Its claim is in its grace, its freedom and happiness, its lively interest, the variety of its gifts to civilisation; its weakness is self-evident, and was what made the unity of Greece impossible. [253] It is this centrifugal tendency which Plato is desirous to cure, by maintaining, over against it, the Dorian influence of a severe simplification everywhere, in society, in culture, in ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... reflection, nor did he attempt by anxious psychological analysis to initiate the reader into their processes of thought and emotion. He simply depicted them as he saw and knew them. Their feelings and actions have their immediate, self-evident motives in the characters themselves, and the absence of analysis on the author's part gives an increased energy and movement ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... constable's uniform, employed at twenty shillings a week. He has his orders, and would be marked for discouragement if he overstepped them. That the system is bad, there needs no lengthened argument to prove, because the fact is self-evident. If it were anything else, the results that have attended it could not possibly have come to pass. Who will say that under a good system, our streets could have got into ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... of critically estimating the value of things by comparison with a theoretic standard. Perfect culture should supply a complete theory of life, based upon a clear knowledge alike of its possibilities and its limitations." Against the second proposition he urged in the first place that it was self-evident that after having learned all that Greek, Roman, and Eastern antiquity have thought and said, and all that modern literature has to tell us, it was still necessary to have a deeper foundation for criticism of life. An acquaintance with what physical science had done, particularly ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... already experienced, and likely still to flow from this large and growing accession to our marine strength, need scarcely be commented on. They are self-evident, and recommend themselves alike to the merchant, the trader, and the mere man of pastime, all of whom are in some degree participators. Besides the regularity and security attendant on the transmission of all sorts of merchandise, there is an immense saving of time and cost. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... ashamed, had found a home in Angela's grey eyes. There was a strange nobility about her. Whether it dwelt in the stately form, or on the broad brow, or in the large glance of the deep eyes, it is not possible to say; but it was certainly a part of herself as self-evident as her face or features. She might well have been the inspiration of ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... She attended the 1892 convention as a fully accredited delegate. Naturally she could produce no very marked results in that brief period, and the remark is made that her work was of necessity of a pioneer and missionary character rather than one of immediate results—a self-evident commentary. Later women were organizers for brief periods, one being Miss Anna Fitzgerald, of the National ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... I said, as Hammond and myself held the creature suspended over the bed, "I can give you self-evident proof that here is a solid, ponderable body, which, nevertheless, you cannot see. Be good enough to watch the surface of ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... as he seemed to be struck with this statement of a self-evident fact, he would, in the next few minutes, bring the numeral "nineteen"—tant bien que ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... untarnished and spotless; it would be like a mirror of gold without alloy, bright and lustrous for ever. For Lucian, it was no defect in the woman that she was desirous and faithless; he had not conceived an affection for certain moral or intellectual accidents, but for the very woman. Guided by the self-evident axiom that humanity is to be judged by literature, and not literature by humanity, he detected the analogy between Lycidas and Annie. Only the dullard would object to the nauseous cant of the one, or to the indiscretions of the other. A sober critic might say that the man who could ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... it's self-evident. She's exactly as much in love with Trent as she was a year ago, and she's fighting against it every hour of her life. And the ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... "Of course—that is self-evident. But it shows how the righteous seed is being over-flooded with iniquity, even in its last chosen house; how our Canaan is being given up to the Philistines. And therefore it is, doubtless, that Satan, in the pride of his success, is introducing his emissaries into the very house of the Lord ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... from the highest crag of Helseggen. Looking down from this pinnacle upon the howling Phlegethon below, I could not help smiling at the simplicity with which the honest Jonas Ramus records, as a matter difficult of belief, the anecdotes of the whales and the bears; for it appeared to me, in fact, a self-evident thing that the largest ships of the line in existence, coming within the influence of that deadly attraction, could resist it as little as a feather the hurricane, and must disappear bodily and ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... upon their methods; I can state that now. The mental state which they reach systematically I reached accidentally. The solitude, the absorbedness, the lying in a bed month by month, the gazing upon a fixed point hour by hour—these are all self-evident facts with ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... 3. It is self-evident, since property is always accompanied (either actually or potentially) by the fact which this axiom expresses; and through this fact, mainly, property ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... way. You menace our security. You must die, as countless thousands have already died, to secure the results of our seizure of Belgium"; but can we understand or in any way palliate the attempt to hide the stains of blood on that prison floor of Brussels with a cobweb of self-evident falsehoods? ...
— The Case of Edith Cavell - A Study of the Rights of Non-Combatants • James M. Beck
... Ritter, James Ritter," supplied the outlaw promptly. "I am not ashamed of my real name but my relatives had cause to be ashamed of its owner in his present condition. Their plans are almost self-evident, my lad. They will wait until dark and then slip over the wall, some will stop in that big building while the balance will make their way around to a building on the other side of you. They will then have you surrounded and have only to watch and ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... natural course of reasoning, that there has never been an effected without a cause, and we infer from this, that there can be no action, either in animate or inanimate matter, without there first being some cause to produce it. And from this self-evident fact we know that there is some cause for every impulse or movement of either mind or matter, and that this law governs every action or movement of the animal kingdom. Then, according to this theory, there must be some cause before fear can exist; and, if fear ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid
... with it the power of seeing." We can only reassert that we see design everywhere; and that the vast majority of the human race in every age and clime has seen it. Analogy from experience, sound induction—as we hold—from the works not only of men but of animals, has made it an all but self-evident truth to us, that wherever there is arrangement, there must be an arranger; wherever there is adaptation of means to an end, there must be an adapter; wherever an organization, there must be an organizer. The existence of a designing God is ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... could be no demand for railroad iron after our magnificent system of railroads, extending its benefits to every portion of the Union, had been brought to a dead pause. The same consequences have resulted from similar causes to many other branches of useful manufactures. It is self-evident that where there is no ability to purchase manufactured articles these can not be sold, and consequently ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... requires no seed-time, and asks for no peasant's toil. At the same time, the economic value of mushroom diet ranks second to meat alone. With bread, and mushrooms properly gathered and prepared, a person may neglect the butcher during the summer months. This is self-evident to the unscientific mind by the simple facts that mushrooms make the same use of the air we breathe as is made by animals, that cooked they resemble no form of vegetable food, and that in decay their odor in some cases cannot be distinguished from that of ...
— Mushrooms of America, Edible and Poisonous • Anonymous
... all comers—for the passer-by, for the indifferent, and even for my country's foes. My wish is that the veriest looker-on, idly turning these pages, may be confronted only with documents whose authenticity will be self-evident, if he is willing to see, and whose ignominious tale will reach his heart, if ye have ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... If these self-evident truths are kept before us, and only if they are so kept before us, we shall have a clear idea of what our foreign policy in its larger aspects should be. It is our duty to remember that a nation has no more right to do injustice to another nation, strong or weak, than an individual has to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... it not almost a self-evident axiom, that the State should require and compel the education, up to a certain standard, of every human being who is born its citizen? Yet who is there that is not afraid to recognize and assert this truth?" On ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... from experience, from some collaboration of the two or from some other source, is not for the mathematician to decide. He leaves the question to the philosopher. Being based upon this knowledge, which precedes all mathematics, the axiom stated above is, like all other axioms, self-evident, that is, it is the expression of a part of this ...
— Sidelights on Relativity • Albert Einstein
... like some unrecognized virtue, may have kept alive and nourished the pity and tenderness which were originally sown within him. We must leave the difficulty, as we must leave the great problems of Nature, unexplained, and be content with what is self-evident before us. We know, at all events, that he had an open heart, and that the heart is a fountain which ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... entitled to his seat," persisted Thatcher. "Mebbe he is—in the office of the Kempeny," growled Yuba Bill; "but it's time some folks knowed that out in the plains I run this yer team myself."—A fact which was self-evident to most of the passengers. "I suppose his authority is as absolute on this dreary waste as a ship captain's in mid ocean," exclaimed Thatcher to the baleful-eyed stranger. Mr. Wiles—whom the reader has recognized—assented with the public side of his face, but looked ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... Limited.—Is the right which is reserved by a State to "amend" or "alter" a charter without restriction? When it is accompanied, as it generally is, by the right to "repeal," one would suppose that the answer to this question was self-evident. None the less, there are a number of judicial dicta to the effect that this power is not without limit, that it must be exercised reasonably and in good faith, and that the alterations made must be consistent with the scope and object of the grant, etc.[1651] Such utterances ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... is a new displacement of a second portion of the liquid, and a consequent rise of level. Again, this second rise of level causes a yet further immersion, and by consequence another displacement of liquid and another rise. It is self-evident that this process must continue till the entire solid is immersed, and that the liquid will then begin to immerse whatever holds the solid, which, being connected with it, must for the time be considered ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... about for a way to explain what seemed to her a self-evident truth. "I mean—privacy," she said. "For instance, if you were in love, you'd not want everybody to ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... you on a more serious subject. Pardon me if I tell you that I think you are a happy man, and excuse me if I add, that if you do not keep yourself so I shall not think you a wise one. A good wife is better than a good-for-nothing mistress.—A self-evident proposition!—A stupid truism! Yes; but if every man who knows a self-evident proposition when he sees it on paper, always acted as if he knew it, this would be a very wise and a very happy world; and I should not have ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... moment. Another is that any of the rules, or so-called 'laws of nature,' by which the relation of phenomena is truly defined, is true for all time. The validity of these postulates is a problem of metaphysics; they are neither self-evident nor are they, strictly speaking, demonstrable. The justification of their employment, as axioms of physical philosophy, lies in the circumstance that expectations logically based upon them are verified, or, at any rate, not contradicted, whenever ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... having in the first place concealed the birth of a child, and further of having killed the child so born. I have no doubt in my own mind that she is not guilty of either—the court will itself arrive at this self-evident conclusion. Concealment of birth—the child was born in the middle of the day. True, the mother is alone at the time—but who could have been with her in any case? The place is far away in the wilds, the only living soul ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... do. You admit you never heard or thought of that before—the bladder, I mean. Yet it's as obvious as tintacks that a medium who's hampered at his hands will do all he can with his teeth, and what could be so self-evident as a bladder under one's lappel? What could be? Yet I know psychic literature pretty well, and it's never been suggested even! Never. It's a perpetual surprise to me how many things are not thought of by investigators. For one thing, they never count the odds against them, and that puts them wrong ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... Confederacy was established; every step he had taken proved his persistence in the same idea; he never would consent to put obstacles in the way of recognition; and he was waiting only for the proper moment to interpose. All these points seemed so fixed — so self-evident — that no one in the Legation would have doubted or even discussed them except that Lord Russell obstinately denied the whole charge, and ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... the business man as the means, and the work of the artist and scientist as the end. We might refine upon these definitions and make them closer, but they will serve for illustration as they are. I don't think there can be any question as to which is the highest kind of work; some truths are self-evident. He is a fortunate man whose work is an end, and every business man sees this, and owns it to himself, at least when he meets some man of an aesthetic or scientific occupation. He knows that this luckier fellow has a joy in his work which he can never feel in business; that ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... but two courses seem possible: either to proclaim the Princes dead by natural causes and give them public burial; or to conceal the death, and by letting the world fancy them life prisoners so forget them. Each has its advantage; but on the whole, the latter may be better. Nathless, this much is self-evident—the true tale dare not be told. Daggers, blood, and death are inexplicable when Kings' sons are the victims, save on ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... to men of all sorts in all ages, and even to philosophers, in the whole phenomenon of the saint, it is undoubtedly the appearance of the miraculous therein—namely, the immediate SUCCESSION OF OPPOSITES, of states of the soul regarded as morally antithetical: it was believed here to be self-evident that a "bad man" was all at once turned into a "saint," a good man. The hitherto existing psychology was wrecked at this point, is it not possible it may have happened principally because psychology had placed itself under ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... portions left without explanation in parables partially explained, that must in the nature of the case be to us most uncertain. It may be assumed regarding them that their spiritual meaning is either self-evident, and therefore required not a comment, or of subordinate importance, and therefore did not obtain one. In this case it is certain, from the diversity of opinion that prevails regarding them, that these portions are not easily understood: there remains only the other ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... to the men who had begun to despair of Cooper's ever accomplishing again anything worthy of his early renown. They were pure works of art. No moral was everlastingly perking itself in the reader's face, no labored lecture to prove what was self-evident interrupted the progress of the story. There is scarcely an allusion to any of the events which had checkered the novelist's career. References to contemporary occurrences are so slight that they would pass unheeded by any one ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... had been "takin' notes" was a debatable point, but that somebody was taking everything takable on the premises soon became a self-evident proposition; and this was uncomfortable for more reasons than one. Mr. Smith and I almost quarrelled about it. He would not believe it to be Chang-how, and I was determined it should not be Anarky. Said he, "Anarky is taking advantage of the popular idea ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various |
