"Truism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... love as we do, I think,"—and Helen, sighing, agreed to this portion of the young lady's speech, though she protested against the former part. For my part, I suppose Miss Laura was right in both statements, and with regard to the latter assertion especially, that it is an old and received truism—love is an hour with us: it is all night and all day with a woman. Damon has taxes, sermon, parade, tailors' bills, parliamentary duties, and the deuce knows what to think of; Delia has to think about Damon—Damon is the oak (or the post), and stands ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... face as he uttered this profound truism, and the face being as open and genuine as was Snooks' character, it said plainly enough "Yes, I have a ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... another', is universal, and a plain contradiction of Christ speaking of Himself as the co-eternal Son; 'My Father is greater than I'. Speaking of himself as the co-eternal Son, I say;—for how superfluous would it have been, a truism how unworthy of our Lord, to have said in effect, that "a creature is less than God!" And after all, Creeds assuredly are not to be imposed 'ad libitum'—a new Creed, or at least a new form and choice ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... VII. "That this hypothesis of an independent power in any set of clergymen, makes all reformation unlawful, except where those who have this power, do consent." The title of this chapter, A Truism. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... truism, although it is often misunderstood, we ought to end by remarking that chance is an occasion for, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... we measure and classify a number of persons by any physical characteristic (stature, weight) we find that the results always fall under a curve of probable error. That they should do so is, in fact, a truism. If a number of persons with different degrees of power and resistance are acted on by the same influences, it is most probable that the greatest number of them will reach the same and a mean degree of self-realization, and others in proportion to their power and resistance. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... call its spirit; and therefore the more fully we enter into the spirit of all with which we are concerned, the more thoroughly do we become alive. The more completely we do this the more we shall find that we are penetrating into the great secret of Life. It may seem a truism, but the great secret of Life is its Livingness, and it is just more of this quality of Livingness that we want to get hold of; it is that good thing of which we ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... hydrostatics and pneumatics are difficult to the multitude, or that mental efforts in regions of political economy or ethical philosophy are beyond ordinary reach, one would only pronounce an evident truism, an absurd platitude. But let any man take any subject fully within his own mind's scope, and strive to think about it steadily, with some attempt at calculation as to results. The chances are his mind will fly ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... labourer had approached to starvation and beggary, the higher were the profits and the more efficient the means of the landholder. This was no theoretical proposition, hastily introduced, it was a practical truism, the result of careful and recent inquiry. He would read to the meeting an account of the population of the parish of Enford, a large parish in the centre of the county of Wilts, with the comparative ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... everywhere certain possibilities. But one class of men have dissented from this view—the slave-holders of all ages. A justification of slavery has been sought in the alleged belief of the inferiority of the persons enslaved; while the broad truism of the possibilities of the human mind was confessed in all legislation that sought to prevent slaves from acquiring knowledge. So the slave-holder asserted his belief in the mental inferiority of the Negro, and then advertised his lack of faith in his assertion by making laws ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... all taken in fresh waters in the thirty-two remaining States of the Union. This may at first blush seem like a broad assertion, but it is no doubt strictly within bounds. If the claim be not too much of the nature of a truism, we may add that so far as quality is concerned the superiority of our finny tribes is even more strongly marked than in regard to quantity. In the sluggish streams that abound in "ten degrees of more effulgent ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... is intercessory; but kindling desire loses a part of its purest spirituality if the lips try to express it. It is a truism that we can think more lucidly and profoundly than we can write or speak. The silent intercession and unvoiced imploring is an honest and potent prayer to heal and save. The audible prayer may be offered to be heard of men, though ostensibly to catch God's ear,—after the fashion ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... example, I, being many, that is to say, having many parts or members, am yet also one, and partake of the one, being one of seven who are here present (compare Philebus). This is not an absurdity, but a truism. But I should be amazed if there were a similar entanglement in the nature of the ideas themselves, nor can I believe that one and many, like and unlike, rest and motion, in the abstract, are capable either ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... the future, there was not the shadow of a doubt that he would carry out his purpose. He had come downstairs smarting under the impression of Sir William's last words when they were discussing the new Governor. Then he recovered, and reminded himself of the obvious truism that the man occupied with politics must school himself to have his opinions contradicted by his opponents, and must make up his mind that there are as many people opposed to his way of thinking in the world as agreeing with it. But it is one thing to engage in a free fight in the ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... have a kind of language is nowadays admitted to be a truism, but this is more evident among mammals and birds, and, reviewing the classes of the former, we find a more or less defined ascending complexity and increased number of varying sounds as we pass from the lower forms—kangaroos and moles—to the higher herb-and-flesh-eaters, ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... an absolute truism to state that at the present moment the American is a material factor in influencing the book-market. He is less so, perhaps, in the sort of way in which he assisted the booksellers of a bygone generation in reducing or realising their stocks; but he has ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... which the panorama of the Maladetta chain can be best seen is the Pic d'Entecade, a noted point for an object-lesson of the mountains' relief. Some of us accordingly resolve to ascend it. We have at last begun to recognize the truth of a truism,—that of early rising among the mountains. Always given in all "Advice to Pedestrians," in all "Physicians' Holidays," in all hand-books and guides, it had worn off into a commonplace, founded chiefly, ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... as this is the case they must remain useless. It is clear that in order to deal with Greek history it is necessary to consult documents in the Greek language, and therefore necessary to know Greek. Rank truism, the reader will say. Yes, but many proceed as if it had never occurred to them. Young students attack ancient history with only a superficial tincture of Greek and Latin. Many who have never studied mediaeval French and Latin think ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... him, but in vain. He told his story in a straightforward manner, and it showed how easy it is even in our present civilized and advanced age to get rid of or punish people without running personal risk of bodily injury if you go the right way about it. The case is also a forcible reminder of the truism that the laborer is worthy of his hire, and that things done on the cheap are apt ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... is the generalization, indeed the truism or dictum here laid down, that, in only the psychoanalyst knows how many instances, by the analysis of a single, even the very first dream, one can arrive at the rock-bottom depth of the trouble at hand—yes, at ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... eagerly, perhaps noisily and indignantly, to so obvious a truism; but our own efforts in the same direction will not bear us out. Able men in England employ themselves in matters of a more practical character; and while we refuse to avail ourselves of what has been done elsewhere, no book, or books, which we produce on ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... greatest wandering from the path of rectitude. The story is not an illustration of the "pleasures of hope;" but an attempt to show the young reader that what we most desire, in moral and spiritual, as well as worldly things, we labor the hardest to obtain—a truism adopted by the heroine in the form of the principal title of ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... engravings, as well as by their paintings. If I could report a dinner-table conversation, I might be tempted to say something of my talk with Mr. Oliphant. I like well enough conversation which floats safely over the shallows, touching bottom at intervals with a commonplace incident or truism to push it along; I like better to find a few fathoms of depth under the surface; there is a still higher pleasure in the philosophical discourse which calls for the deep sea line to reach bottom; ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... moral or doctrinal significance in the making of such conversation with one's self at all. The Logos, the reasonable spark, in man, is common to him with the gods—koinos auto pros tous theous—cum diis communis. That might seem but the truism of a certain school of philosophy; but in Aurelius was clearly an original and lively apprehension. There could be no inward conversation with one's self such as this, unless there were indeed some one else, aware of our ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... Christian sacred books, substituting for Jupiter flinging his thunderbolts the Almighty wrapped in thunder and sending forth his lightnings. Through the Middle Ages this was fostered until it came to be accepted as a mere truism, entering into all medieval thinking, and was still further developed by an attempt to specify the particular sins which were thus punished. Thus even the rational Florentine historian Villani ascribed floods and fires to the "too great pride ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... modern scientific work, but it is there. The inference is an illogical one, but under the conditions inevitable. And being an inference religion is not primarily an emotion but a conviction, and it must stand or fall by its intellectual trustworthiness. It seems, indeed, little less than a truism to say that unless men first of all believed something about religion they could never have emotions concerning it. Hope and fear may colour our convictions, they may prevent the formation of correct opinions, but they originate in connection with ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... said, as though it were a self-evident truism, that we cannot know that anything exists which we do not know. It is inferred that whatever can in any way be relevant to our experience must be at least capable of being known by us; whence it follows that if matter were essentially something with which we could not become ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... becoming much lighter; it was like the vulture preying upon its own vitals; but that season of silence was past. When once a deep grief can be spoken of, its great agony is gone. I think there is an old saying, or a proverb—"Griefs lose themselves in telling," and a greater truism was never uttered. The ice once broken, touching his feelings with regard to Sibylla, Lionel found comfort in making it his theme of conversation, of complaint, although his hearer and confidant was only Lucy Tempest. A strange ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Truism as it is, my dear Rouge Pot, I am bound to beg you never to forget that everybody can't have everything in this world, and that everybody can't be everything on the stage. What you (and I, and every other actor!) would really like, would be to choose the play, to ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... been famous for teaching those things which make for intellectual enlightenment and social improvement. The difference between the Protestant north and the rest of Roman Catholic Ireland, as between the Protestant and Romish cantons in Switzerland; is a truism almost proverbial. And without the little leaven of such influence as the better educated and more enlightened gentry may possess, the Irish peasant will be even more superstitious, more blinded by prejudice ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... other point which seems to me worth notice. Varieties generally have much restricted ranges: this statement is indeed scarcely more than a truism, for if a variety were found to have a wider range than that of its supposed parent-species, their denominations ought to be reversed. But there is also reason to believe, that those species which are very closely allied to other species, and in so far ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... as true to-day as when the above truism emanated from that most wonderful of all human intellects. Every age and generation, as well as every changing religious or political condition, has brought with it its own peculiar and essentially differing current literature, which, as a rule, ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... GENTLEMEN: It would be a truism to say that I have always been interested in transportation. It has always been a subject of keen interest to me, I presume, because I was born with it. By the fortune of birth I came to live in a region where transportation has been through every one of its stages in this country. If you go back ...
— Address by Honorable William C. Redfield, Secretary of Commerce at Conference of Regional Chairmen of the Highway Transport Committee Council of National Defence • US Government
... It is a mere truism to state that many a chain of grave and far-reaching events is set in motion by some insignificant trifle. The touching of a trigger by a child explodes a gun which extinguishes a valuable life, and perhaps throws a whole neighbourhood ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... Women are always governed by their hearts. So much so that my last sentence is a truism, scarcely worthy the saying. Besides, my dear Julian, what would it matter if she were not? What could the attitude of such a woman on any subject under the sun ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... a landsman, I would say, for the sake of easier comprehension, that the theory of a 'bend' is based on the good- natured truism contained in the old adage, 'One good turn deserves another'; while a second proverb, 'Safe bind, safe find,' will equally justify the existence of the 'hitch'; but if the inquirer be not satisfied with either of these definitions or ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... the sciences, and impossible, except under certain conditions of moral culture." Which is only to say, that industry, frugality, and discretion, the three foundations of economy, are moral qualities, and cannot be attained without moral discipline: a flat truism, the reader may think, thus stated, yet a truism which is denied both vociferously, and in all endeavour, by the entire populace of Europe; who are at present hopeful of obtaining wealth by tricks of trade, without industry; who, possessing wealth, have lost in the use of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... a truism to say that the whole is made up of its parts, but all the same we often lose sight of this in our ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... the agent smiled sadly, but scornfully, and said another truism. "What good would that do? From Sheridan down, what army officer's statement has any weight whatever with the Indian Bureau,—when ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... imparting the love and knowledge of literature. But the value of literary studies in education depends so much upon the spirit in which they are pursued that I may perhaps be permitted a few more words on the practical side of the subject. I have already repeated the truism that no one can impart enthusiasm who is not himself possessed of it: but even the lover of literature sometimes lacks that clear consciousness of aim, and that sympathetic understanding of the personality of his pupil; which are both essential to successful ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... suppose this theorem to be a truism; but I venture to state it, because it is surely desirable that it should be recognized as an axiom by metaphysicians, and practically does not seem to me yet to have been so. I say "animated life" because the word "life" by itself might have been taken ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... are warned against those who come to regard it "as a sacred duty to vindicate the claims of abstract benevolence at all hazards, even though it lead through seas of blood and fire," our adviser is either basing his counsel upon the very flattest truism, or else intends to indorse a popular cry against men who claim to have founded their convictions on investigation the most thorough and conscientious. Take the vote of the wealth and education of Europe to-day, and Abraham Lincoln will be pronounced a fanatic vindicating the claims of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... Judaism, until the period of modern reform, this fact of human life was not merely an unconscious truism, it was consciously admitted. And it ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... blood; it is the business of lesser men to apply the discovery to practical ends. It takes a Whitney to invent the cotton gin, but the dullest negro roustabout can operate it. Why multiply illustrations of a truism? Theory, you perceive, calls for other and higher gifts than application. The man who can formulate the eternal laws of social evolution can safely leave it to others to put his laws ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... IT is a mere truism to say that the sea outflanks all land operations in warfare. Yet how many people fully realise that the left wing of the Allied armies in Belgium and France depended for its safety on the naval command ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... often been stated that no two well-designed sewerage schemes are alike, and although this truism is usually applied to inland towns, it applies with far greater force to schemes for coastal towns and towns situated on the banks of our large rivers where the sewage is discharged into tidal waters. The essence of good designing is that every detail shall be carefully thought out ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... occurs, I think, in Arthur Young's travels; I am not sure I quote the words correctly, but the sense will come home to every cultivated mind with the force of a proverbial truism. ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... "But I never heard any preacher, in any country, tell his congregation anything else. And people always listen with attention. In countries where rain is entirely unknown, it is not a truism to say that 'when it rains it is damp.' On the contrary, in such countries that statement would be regarded as requiring demonstration, and once demonstrated, it would be treasured and taught as an interesting ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... both. They have made objection to your proposed generosity, and put forward the argument that you are but temporary trustee of the Cologne Archbishopric; that you must guard the rights of your successor; and this truism could not help but appeal to that quality of equity which distinguishes you, so a conference of the prelates has been called, and a majority of that Court will decide whether or not the town of Linz shall be tendered to me. Perhaps a suggestion ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... be, to call Happiness the Chief Good is a mere truism, and what is wanted is some clearer account of its real nature. Now this object may be easily attained, when we have discovered what is the work of man; for as in the case of flute-player, statuary, or artisan ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... the utterance of this truism, amid which arose from the other end of the table the piping tones of Mlle Remanjon's ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... holocaust. In self-protection we have found it necessary to unite, we Genoese and Texcocans. We bear you no ill will, far to the contrary. However, it is necessary that you all return to Earth. You have impressed upon us the aforementioned truism that man adapts but in the Pedagogue's library I have found another that also applies. Power corrupts, and absolute power ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... existence of only a few species in such genera. Whenever we meet (which will be on the 23rd [at the] Club) I shall much like to hear whether this strikes you as sound. I feel all the time on the borders of a circle of truism. Of course I could not think of such a request, but you might possibly:—if Bentham does not think the whole subject rubbish, ask him some time to pick out the dozen most anomalous genera in the Leguminosae, or any great order of which there is a monograph by which I could calculate ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... withdrew himself as soon as possible from the crowd, at the moment when Pippin—who never lost a good opportunity—had mounted upon a stump in order to address them. Breaking away just as the lawyer was swelling with some old truism, and perhaps no truth, about the rights of man and so forth, he mounted his horse, which he had concealed in the neighborhood, and rode off to the solitude and the shelter of ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... am I very ambitious of starting the most specious novelty, unless I imagine I have reason on my side. Originality implies independence of opinion; but differs as widely from mere singularity as from the tritest truism. It consists in seeing and thinking for one's-self: whereas singularity is only the affectation of saying something to contradict other people, without having any real opinion of one's own upon the matter. Mr. Burke was an original, though an extravagant writer: ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... roared with laughter at this truism, but were quieted by the shout of a boy that the preacher was a-coming; whereupon the reverend gentleman elbowed his way through the guests to the quiet couple, and requested them to stand up. A few hurried words by the clergyman, a few bashful replies from the young people, ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... shifting of quantities is a correlate of the progress achieved in technical science and in means of communication, and also of the vastness of armies and navies and of the aims of the world's foremost peoples, is since then become a truism, realized not only by the Germans but by all ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Leonard, that though knowledge be power, it is only one of the powers of the world; that there are others as strong, and often much stronger; and the assertion either means but a barren truism, not worth so frequent a repetition, or it means something that you would find ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to compel men to compete in the use of their savings no matter how wasteful the competition, and to forbid men competing in the use of their labor, no matter what the idleness thereby caused. I think it a truism that whoever seeks to be exempted from the restrictions or liabilities he would impose on others, seeks not ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... fought for it, have made sacrifices for it, and vowed to have it at any cost; but we have not found for it a definite place in a philosophy of life. Superficial though he be, our friend has indicated a need: we must take the question philosophically—but in the great and true sense. It is a truism of philosophy and science that the world is a harmonious whole, and that with the increase of knowledge, laws can be discovered to explain the order and the unity of the universe. Accordingly, if we are to justify our own position as separatists, we must show ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... is a similar contradiction and anomaly in the mind and heart of man. Again, what would become of the Posthaec meminisse juvabit of the poet, if a principle of fluctuation and reaction is not inherent in the very constitution of our nature, or if all moral truth is a mere literal truism? We are not, then, so much to inquire what certain things are abstractedly or in themselves, as how they affect the mind, and to approve or condemn them accordingly. The same object seen near strikes us more powerfully than at a distance: ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... you're right," Stephen laughed. "But love of country and love of one's neighbor should be synonymous. This I have found by actual experience to be almost a truism." ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... 1280, the trouveur Sarrazin also cites "The Graal" ("li Graaus") in the same manner, in superfluous verification of the then-accepted truism that King Arthur was at one time Lord of Great Britain. This appeal to "The Graal" as the authority for a general belief shows that it was at that time recognised as a well-spring of authentic knowledge; while the fact that the trouveur was not confounding "The Graal" with the ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... sunbeam answered this question with a truism, not always as applicable as in this case,—"A brave, able, self-respecting manhood is fair profit for any man's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... began for SONOGUN a time of moral stress and torture such as he had never anticipated. It is an old saying, and perhaps (who knows?) a truism, that virtue is its own reward, not, perhaps, the reward that ambitious people look for, but the easy consciousness of superiority which comes to those who feel themselves to be on a higher level than the rest of the world, which struggles on a lower level. Another ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... truism," cried Beatrice. "Ah, sister, I am tired of all this; for eleven years the sea has been singing the same songs; those waves rise and fall as they did a hundred years since; the birds sing the same story; the sun shines the same; even the shadow of the great elms ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... had ridden up the well-remembered slope, all in the dark, and had seen the lighted windows at the top; that these were but the old loves in the disguise of piety. But to those who understand what priesthood is, for him that receives it, and for the soul that reverences it, the thing is a truism. For the priest was one who loved Christ more than all the world; and the woman one who ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... them. Mathematics have produced no quarrels among mankind—it is by the mysterious and the vague, that temper as well as imagination is most roused. In proof of this while the acknowledged clearness almost to truism, which the leading principles of Political Science have attained, has tended to simplify and tame down the activities of eloquence on that subject. There is still another arena left, in the science of the Law, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... surface of the continents must be worn away. Should it be continued LONG ENOUGH! And with that thought there flashes on his mind an inspiring conception—the idea that solar time is long, indefinitely long. That seems a simple enough thought—almost a truism—to the twentieth-century mind; but it required genius to conceive it in the eighteenth. Hutton pondered it, grasped its full import, and made it the basis of his hypothesis, his ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... considered necessary to the success of an absolute ruler. We may therefore accept this essay as the most profound and lucid exposition of the principles by which Italian statesmen were guided in the sixteenth century. That Machiavellism existed before Machiavelli has now become a truism. Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Louis XI. of France, Ferdinand the Catholic, the Papal Curia, and the Venetian Council had systematically pursued the policy laid down in the chapters of the Prince. But it is no less true that Machiavelli was the first in modern times to formulate a theory of government ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... his competitor, but tries also to surpass him. Indeed it is a truism that competition is the life of trade. In the shop and in the office, on the road and behind the counter, in all buying and selling, competition is essential to the greatest success. Competition, the desire to excel, is universal and instinctive. It gives a zest ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... took it up. It was a mere truism. Nothing under canvas could be expected to make a port on such an idle night of dreamy splendour and spiritual stillness. We would have to glide idly to and fro, keeping our station within the appointed bearings, and, unless a fresh breeze ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... periods with references to the Rubicon. It is not thirty years since one of the first of American statesmen told the national Senate that "Julius Caesar struck down Roman liberty at Pharsalia," and probably there was not one man in his audience who supposed that he was uttering anything beyond a truism, though they must have been puzzled to discover any resemblance between "the mighty Julius" and Mr. Martin Van Buren, the gentleman whom the orator was cutting up, and who was actually in the chair while Mr. Calhoun ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... great. Shall I write the commonplace that rings in sequence in my ear, and draws on my hand—"are not Great, for they are not (in the broad human and ethical sense) Good"? I write it, and ask forgiveness for the truism, with its implied uncharitableness of blame; for this trite thing is ill understood and little thought upon by any of us, and the implied blame is divided among us all; only let me at once partly modify it, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... critic, with a philosophic bias, is inclined to quarrel with the obvious human congruity of Shakespeare's utterances. What is the use of this constant repetition of the obvious truism: "When we are born we cry that we are come to ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... hope that you and your participants will enjoy Singhalut. It is a truism that, in order to import, we must export; we wish to encourage a pleasurable response to the 'Made in Singhalut' tag on our ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... said that Education will set this tangle straight, what have we uttered but a truism? Training for life teaches living; but what training for the profitable living together of black men and white? A hundred and fifty years ago our task would have seemed easier. Then Dr. Johnson blandly assured us that education was needful solely for the embellishments of ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... case, what can be more exasperating than having to grapple with a sort of dioramic dinner, where the dishes represent a series of dissolving views—mutton and beef of mature age, leaping about with a playfulness only becoming living lambs and calves—while the proverb of "cup and lip" becomes a truism from perpetual illustration? Neither is it agreeable, after falling into an uncertain doze, to feel dampness mingling strangely with your dreams, and to awake to find yourself, as it were, an island in a little salt lake formed ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... you took to working for the infant school. Yes, I think the way to be happy and useful is to get up many interests, so as to be fresh and vigorous, and think not at all of personalities. There's a truism!" ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... been so often said, that from a proverb it has become a truism; but it must continue to be the refrain of those who write upon art. The subject is so long, and its ramifications are so intricate, that it is difficult to include ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... that it is through this kind of intuitive investigation that the 'spirit of scepticism' primarily arises, is equally true; though not, perhaps, at the first blush, so apparent. In this sense, the statement of Mr. Buckle is simply one half of a truism, the other half of which, not enunciated by him, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... subsequently. An earnest and commendable desire to win leads the counsel to search not only libraries but his own brain for the strongest reasons that he can summon upon which to base a judgment in behalf of his client. Why is it that a great Bar makes a great court? Though it may seem a truism, I repeat, it is because the great Bar furnishes to the court all the reasons that can possibly be urged in each case and enables it to select from among all the reasons developed by the ingenuity and intense interest of men ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... mere saying or existing. It would be possible, no doubt, to place Don Quixote, or Falstaff, or Peer Gynt, on the stage, and let him develop his character in mere conversation, or even monologue, without ever moving from his chair. But it is a truism that deeds, not words, are the demonstration and test of character; wherefore, from time immemorial, it has been the recognized business of the theatre to exhibit character in action. Historically, too, we find that drama has everywhere originated in the portrayal of an action—some ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... feeling of dissatisfaction with the world within which the practical man has always lived and acted; to suggest something of its fragmentary and subjective character. We turn back therefore to a further examination of the truism—so obvious to those who are philosophers, so exasperating to those who are not—that man dwells, under normal conditions, in a world of imagination rather than a world of facts; that the universe in which he lives and at which ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... Priestley fancies himself to have proved the Deity cannot want the two former, he concludes the Deity cannot want the latter, as the less probable for him to be deficient in, his argument is no more a truism. As a wish, that the Deity may not want benevolence, in that sense let him take it as agreed upon. He allows that misery in the human species proves malevolence in the Deity, and happiness the contrary. All the proof adduced in favour of benevolence ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner
... matter in what abundant measure such a performer may possess the good qualities of earnestness, conviction and sincerity, he is not an artist. "Poeta nascitur, non fit," has long been accepted as a truism; and similarly, it is supposed that the artist also is born, not made. But seeing that the mechanical side of any art is learned by experience, study, or observation—still to quote the definition—without which an adequate manifestation of that art is ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... probability that The Prince has had a more direct action upon real life than any other book in the world, and a larger share in breaking the chains and lighting the dark places of the Middle Ages. It is a truism to say that Machiavellism existed before Machiavelli. The politics of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, of Louis XI. of France, of Ferdinand of Spain, of the Papacy, of Venice, might have been dictated by the author of The Prince. But Machiavelli was the first to ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... minded it no more than the fact that he had not the muscles of a tiger or a horn on his nose like a rhinoceros. All was swallowed up in an ultimate certainty that the President was wrong and that the barrel-organ was right. There clanged in his mind that unanswerable and terrible truism in ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... position. But how? By proving that a "substance" cannot be produced. And why may not "a substance" be produced? Because, by the definition, "a substance" is that which is "self-existent." In other words, a self-existent substance cannot be created,—a truism which scarcely required the apparatus of a geometrical proof by means of propositions, scholia, and corollaries, or, as Professor Saisset says, with laconic naivete, "ce qui a a peine besoin d'etre demontre." But, while the only proof that is offered extends no further than ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... end." Yet no one would have insisted more than he, that, so far as we know how, we must avoid substituting the goal for the starting point, must avoid reading back into the present what courage, effort and skill might create in the future. Yet this truism is inordinately difficult to live by, because every one of us is so little trained in the selection of ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... my Essay on Justification in 1837; it was aimed at the Lutheran dictum that justification by faith only was the cardinal doctrine of Christianity. I considered that this doctrine was either a paradox or a truism,—a paradox in Luther's mouth, a truism in Melanchthon's. I thought that the Anglican Church followed Melanchthon, and that in consequence between Rome and Anglicanism, between high Church and low Church, there ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... It is a truism almost as old as Time itself, that true love is never fully known until after the lovers have once quarreled and made their peace. The kiss of reconciliation after a temporary estrangement is frequently more potent than the first declaration ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... conditions for the existence of thought or knowledge." If this implies that sensations supply the conditions for the existence of our memory of sensations or of our thoughts about sensations, it is a truism which it is hardly worth while to state so solemnly. If it implies that sensations supply anything else, it is obviously erroneous. And if it means, as the context would seem to show it does, that sensations are the subject-matter of all thought or knowledge, then ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... faced squarely and unflinchingly. The influence of the Church on Society depends on the manner Catholics understand their social responsibilities and translate into action her doctrine. We may well apply to the life of the Church in a country this biological truism: "life consists in adaptation to environment." From a Catholic viewpoint Our West will be vitalized only in as much as the Catholics in Western Canada, thoroughly patriotic in their aspirations and thoroughly Catholic in their ideas and feelings, will bring their influence to bear on our national ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... and must come wherever man can set his wishes and his hopes. The only way not to be disappointed when a thing turns out against you, is not to have really cared how the thing went. It is not a truism to remark that this is impossible if you did care. Of course you are not disappointed at failing of attaining an end which you did not care whether you attained or not; but men seek very few such ends. If a man has worked day and night for six weeks in canvassing his county, and then, having been ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... in his work were made to ascertain the size of the surface necessary for the support of any given weight. He accepted a truism of to-day in pointing out that in any matters connected with aerial investigation, theory and practice are as widely apart as the poles. Inclined at first to favour the helicopter principle, he finally rejected this in favour of the plane, with which he made numerous ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... critical point in political economy. Malthus's opponents, as Mr. Bonar remarks,[217] attacked him alternately for propounding a truism and for maintaining a paradox. A 'truism' is not useless so long as its truth is not admitted. It would be the greatest of achievements to enunciate a law self-evident as soon as formulated, and yet previously ignored or denied. Was this the case of Malthus? Or did he ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... evident that their inability or unwillingness to do justice at home and abroad had violated the rights of the United States or had invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations. It is a mere truism to say that every nation, whether in America or anywhere else, which desires to maintain its freedom, its independence, must ultimately realize that the right of such independence can not be separated from the responsibility of making good ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... commonly survive longer in the struggle for existence. If the first of these can be explained in such a manner as to be accepted as true, or highly probable, we have a substantial gain to our knowledge. The second is little—if at all—better than a truism. Granted, if it were not generally the case that those forms are most likely to survive which are best fitted for the conditions of their existence, no adaptation of form to conditions of existence could ever have come about. "The survival of the fittest" therefore, or, perhaps better, ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... of nature's tints she had ever before seen. She was conscious, too, of an awful aloofness. Her spirit was entrenched in its own citadel. She seemed to be brooding, solitary and remote, yet shrinking ever within herself; quite unknowing, she offered a piteous example of the old Hebrew's dire truism that man came naked into the world and naked shall ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... least a serviceable weapon when it takes the form of self-reliance. It is always at hand in an emergency—a guard of honour to the soul. The loneliness of individual life must learn self-respect from within, not without; and were all creeds to be mixed, that truism ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... artificial preparations for the improvements of the sight, the hearing, the appetite, false teeth, false hair, respiration, massage, and so on, there can be no salvation. That people who do not make use of these perfected preparations are stronger and healthier, has become such a truism, that advertisements are printed in the newspapers of stomach-powders for the wealthy, under the heading, "Blessings for the poor," {252} in which it is stated that only the poor are possessed of proper digestive ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... is sad reason to believe, was born of politics. The victim of that outrage, and the hero of that terrible night, is happily with us to-day.... I will not offend him with any words of praise. But may I not say in the market-place what is the truism of the committee-room ... that when this gentleman did what he did, he brought to Reform the sympathy which ... has made me ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... passed for regarding cooking as a menial and vulgar labor; and those who give some thought to their daily food usually gain in vigor and cheerfulness. It is a truism that food is concentrated force. The manipulation of a motive power capable of invigorating both body and mind, is an occupation worthy to employ intelligence and skill. In countries where the people depend upon ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson
... the like is true in literature. But writing cannot be luminous and great save in the hands of those whose words are their own by the indefeasible title of conquest. Life is spent in learning the meaning of great words, so that some idle proverb, known for years and accepted perhaps as a truism, comes home, on a day, like a blow. "If there were not a God," said Voltaire, "it would be necessary to invent him." Voltaire had therefore a right to use the word, but some of those who use it most, if they would be perfectly sincere, should enclose it in quotation marks. ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... do not know how passions originate in the mind. But, if people would consider the nature of substance, they would have no doubt about the truth of Prop. vii. In fact, this proposition would be a universal axiom, and accounted a truism. For, by substance, would be understood that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself—that is, something of which the conception requires not the conception of anything else; whereas modifications exist in something external to themselves, and a conception of ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... a truism, but it is worth attention. Unlike the rest of us, labouring people are unable to shirk any of life's discomforts by "getting a man" or "a woman," as we say, to do the disagreeable or risky jobs which continually need to be done. ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... greatest borrower, plagiarist, and imitator that all time has brought forth. This, however, did not shake his faith in the poet's greatness; and to reconcile what to some would appear contradictory positions, he proposes the fact, I might say the truism, that the greatest man is not the most original, but the "most indebted" man. This, in the sense in which it is true, is saying no more than that the educated man is better than the savage; but, in the apologetic sense intended, it is equivalent to affirming ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... Barry-Smith descended to a truism. "It is usually better not to," said she, with the air of an authority. And latterly, addressing the facade of Notre Dame, "You see, Mr. Barry-Smith being so ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... brought a blush to his face every time he thought of it, but he kept his own counsel. Once or twice he had been on the point of telling Frank the whole story, but had refrained, feeling it would do no good, and might cause trouble. He was a thorough believer in the truism that if you give a calf rope enough, he will hang himself, and a rascal time, he will ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... elsewhere is right, one of the greatest works of the Hellenic spirit, and especially of fifth-century Athens, was to insist on what seems to us such a commonplace truism, the difference between Man and God. Sophrosyne in religion was the message of the classical age. But the ages before and after had no belief in such a lesson. The old Medicine-Man was perhaps himself the first Theos. At any rate ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... bit of doing, boss, retaliated that rough diamond palpably a bit peeved in response to the foregoing truism. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Euripides (in my way) but, as heretofore do not take greatly to him. He is always prosy, whereas (except in the matter of funeral Lamentations, Condolence, etc., which I suppose the Greek Audience expected—as I suppose they also expected the little sententious truism at the end of every Speech), except in these respects, Sophocles always goes ahead, and makes his Dialogue act in driving on the Play. He always makes the most of his Story too: Euripides not often. A remarkable instance of this is in his Heraclidae (one ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... non pas jusgu'a l'ennui"—and the author of Pamela has plainly disregarded this useful law. On the other hand, the tedium and elaboration of his style have tended, in these less leisurely days, to condemn his work to a neglect which it does not deserve. Few writers—it is a truism to say so—have excelled him in minute analysis of motive, and knowledge of the human heart. About the final morality of his heroine's long-drawn defence of her chastity it may, however, be permitted to doubt; and, in contrasting the book with Fielding's work, ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... truism that man epitomizes the universe. Therefore, the law of growth, which science names evolution, may be studied and applied with equal precision and accuracy to the individual; to a body of individuals called a nation; and to ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... many bachelors about, and no wonder there is an outcry to "tax them." Even then many men will pay the tax gladly, plus an entertainment tax if necessary—who knows? For elder people are so fond of drilling into the ears of youth the truism that passion dies and that marriage, to be successful, must be founded upon something more enduring than a feeling of delirium under the stars. That is why a School for Wives would be so useful. After ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... It is a truism to say that the "social question," the question how best to organize society, is as old as society itself. Great thinkers all down the ages, from Plato to Sir Thomas More, from More to Jean Jacques Rousseau, from Rousseau to Saint Simon, Fourier, Louis Blanc, Lassalle, and Karl Marx, have ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... foretold the straits to which the country would be reduced in the event of war with a great European Power, he concluded these forebodings with the habitual remark, "Well, what I says is, them as lives longest will see the most." A truism, no doubt, but, as time has proved, by no ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... corner of the ground, inscribed with the name of Susan Meynell, who died July 14th, 1835, much lamented; and then the text about 'the one sinner that repenteth,' and so on," said Mr. Sheldon, as if he did not care to dwell on so hackneyed a truism. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... reverse morality, may mean either that it would be inconsistent with his immutability to reverse the laws he had himself established, or that he is compelled by his nature to impose certain rules, and no others. The first supposition is a truism; the second is not proved. For, since Mr. Mansel has discarded as a fiction any 'absolute law of duty,' it is hard to conjecture whence he could derive any compulsory choice of rules. Why God commands some things in preference to others—whether from a regard to the happiness ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... glance of affirmation, as if she had lately had some trouble to maintain that ancient truism. She was going to speak again, but the Doctor waved his hand downward soothingly toward the restless ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... everybody's pocket, is the one simple and primal truth for the public to know, and for economists to teach. How many of them have taught it? Some have; but only incidentally; and others will say it is a truism. If it be, do the public know it? Does your ordinary English householder know that every costly dinner he gives has destroyed forever as much money as it is worth? Does every well-educated girl—do even the women in high political position—know that every fine dress ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... 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 almost a truism; but we have only to remind our readers that one of the passages oftenest quoted with admiration, and indeed separately printed and illuminated, is "The Seven Ages of Man," a passage full of inhuman contempt for humanity and ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... perpetual new light upon the life of the observer himself and of his fellow human beings. This is true of any two human beings, but if the two happen to be people of commanding character and genius it becomes a truism which it would be almost ludicrous to question. Let us apply this to the study not of one individual but of one society by another, and let us take the case in point, in which the two societies happen to be great civilizations. The ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... the old lady, in a withering tone. There is not much real prophetic wisdom in this truism, but it sounds very awful, and the Tailor went to ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... care and instruction and guidance of its distinguished Founder and Principal, Dr. Booker T. Washington, and that I have striven, from the first day until now, to put into practise the lessons taught me by him and his excellent body of teachers. At Tuskegee we were taught the truism, "If you can not find a way, make one." I hope I am not immodest in saying that I think I have, in ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... tale to tell, for it takes 432 pages in the unravelling. It ends with a beautiful avowal that "the heart is no more unchanging than the mind, and that love's not immortal, but an illusion." As the utterer of this truism is a young married woman, it would seem that the foundation is laid for a sequel to Disenchantment that might be appropriately ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... forced to notice the truism thrusting itself forward so often and conspicuously; that law was essentially made by the great criminals of society, and that, thus far it has been a frightful instrument, based upon force, for legalizing theft on a large scale. By law the great criminals absolve ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... moon, Where all sighs are deposited; and now It happened luckily, the chaste orb shone As clear as such a climate will allow; And Juan's mind was in the proper tone To hail her with the apostrophe—"O thou!" Of amatory egotism the Tuism,[777] Which further to explain would be a truism. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... it must be admitted, harmonises well with our modern tolerance, our modern zeal for reform; and yet it rests upon a fundamental fallacy. No one, of course, denies the {149} moulding power of heredity and environment; no one denies such an obvious truism as that we cannot expect to grow fine specimens of humanity in the reeking slum or the sweater's workshop. But as environment is a greater power than heredity, so there is only one power greater than environment—and that is our power to alter environment. "But that," protests the ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... bring him back," he said gently, feeling ready to take her in his arms and press her to his breast, where impatience and compassion dwelt side by side. But except for a short shudder Mrs Verloc remained apparently unaffected by the force of that terrible truism. It was Mr Verloc himself who was moved. He was moved in his simplicity to urge moderation by asserting the ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... fibres in novel and bewitching patterns. To this end he must have two things: a fine sense, in the first place, of the sound, value, meaning, and associations of individual words, and next, a sense of harmony, proportion, and effect in their combination. It is amazing what nobility a mere truism is often found to possess when it is clad with a ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... the teapot, with a curled-up nose indicating some uneasiness of mind. "They never get out, of course," she remarked as a mere truism. ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens |
