"Irrefragable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... indulgences and otherwise, for the remission of that punishment, which the clergy could, if they would, inflict; and worst of all, that out of the whole theory sprang up that system of persecution, in which the worst cruelties of heathen Rome were imitated by Christian priests, on the seemingly irrefragable ground that it was merciful to offenders to save them, or, if not, at least to save others through them, by making them feel for a few hours in this world what they would feel for endless ages ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... reasons that we assert our opinion, that the distich of Pope, "Worth makes the man," or the title appended by Colley Cibber to one of his dramas, "Love makes the man," ought henceforth to yield, in point of truth, to the irrefragable principle which we here solemnly advance, "that it is the tailor makes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... upon Tomlinson the degree of Doctor of Letters in absentia. A university must keep its word, and Dean Elderberry Foible, who was honesty itself, had stubbornly maintained that a vote of the faculty of arts once taken and written in the minute book became as irrefragable as ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... of some of the grandest and most irrefragable truths of modern science, when newly discovered and dimly comprehended, has been to make it appear that Humanity must be rudely unseated from its throne in the world and made to occupy an utterly subordinate and trivial position; and it is because of this mistaken view of their ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... principle of things. Let us leave aside the fruitless discussions of false philosophy. The spiritualist generations made as many and as vain efforts to deny Matter as the materialist generations have made to deny Spirit. Why such discussions? Does not man himself offer irrefragable proof of both systems? Do we not find in him material things and spiritual things? None but a madman can refuse to see in the human body a fragment of Matter; your natural sciences, when they decompose it, find little difference between its elements and those of other ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... repress the ambition of nations, if fantastic and vain, but gentle to approve the efforts of children, made in accordance with the visible intention of the Maker of all flesh, and the Giver of all Intelligence. These laws, therefore, I now repeat, and beg of you to observe them as irrefragable. ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... boughs which seem wanted to connect all the living forms of leaves with the fossil leaves, and with countless forms of which all trace has disappeared, and also with a single root-have become invisible, yet that there is irrefragable evidence to show that they once actually existed, and indeed are existing at this moment, in a condition as real though as invisible to the eye as air or electricity. Should we, I ask, under these circumstances hesitate to call our imaginary plant or tree by a single name, ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... pitiable than that which leads it to turn a deaf ear and the lip of contempt towards those philosophers who carry the spirit of scientific inquiry into these higher regions, and endeavour to establish for mankind, by the irrefragable processes of reason, those principles on which rest all the great elements of man's destiny. We cannot act without a theory of life; and to whom shall we look for such a theory, except to those who, undaunted by the ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... frivolities of teleology such as are to be found in the notes of the learned commentators on Paley's 'Natural Theology,' has, I believe, had a temporary effect in turning attention from the solid and irrefragable argument so well put forward in that excellent old book. But overpoweringly strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie all around us,"[11] &c. Sir William Thomson goes on to infer that all living beings depend ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... to the United States, he had been providentially led to inquire into the circumstances of his birth on shipboard, and had discovered that not himself alone, but another baby, had come into the world during the same voyage of the prolific vessel, and that there were almost irrefragable reasons for believing that these two children had been assigned to the wrong mothers. Many reminiscences of his early days confirmed him in the idea that his nominal parents were aware of the exchange. The family ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Adaptations irresistibly suggesting purpose had their supreme application in natural theology. Being manifold, particular, and exquisite, and evidently inwrought into the whole system of the organic world, they were held to furnish irrefragable as well as independent proof of a personal designer, a divine originator of Nature. By a confusion of thought, now obvious, but at the time not unnatural, they were also regarded as proof of a direct execution of the contriver's ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... smaller document are written in different hands," he said, "the cryptograph is of much later date than the book; there is an undoubted proof of the correctness of my surmise. [An irrefragable proof I took it to be.] The first letter is a double M, which was only added to the Icelandic language in the twelfth century—this makes the parchment two hundred years ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... know all the hardship and all the enjoyment of a soldier's life, riding forth "in jack and knapskull"—the woman who long afterward was to hold her own for two days together, without help of counsel, against all the array of English law and English statesmanship, armed with irrefragable evidence and supported by the resentment of a nation—showed herself devoid of moral and physical resolution; too senseless to realize the significance and too heartless to face the danger of a situation from which the simplest exercise of reason, principle, or ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... fairy-tales. Nobody can say that the tale-writers who preceded and followed them were apostles of virtue or painters of Golden-Age scenes. But, with some exceptions (chiefly Italian) among the latter, they did not, unless their aim were definitely tragical—an epithet which one could show, on irrefragable Aristotelian principles, to be rarely if ever applicable to Beyle and his school—they did not, as the common phrase goes, "take a gloomy view" only. There were cakes and ale; and the cakes did not always give internal pains, nor the ale a bad headache. As even ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... destroy the purity of their penitents, have failed to touch the guilty parties, they are, in the good providence of God, infallible witnesses to tell to the world that auricular confession is nothing else than a snare to the confessor and his dupes. Yes, those Bulls of the popes are an irrefragable testimony that auricular confession is the most powerful invention of the devil to corrupt the heart, pollute the body, and damn the soul of the priest ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... formulate it, even in my own secret mind. But I was bound to see the thing through to the end. It occurred to me that I could prove the accuracy of my theory with the aid of a kite. You were kind enough to lend your assistance in that experiment, and it gave me irrefragable evidence of the existence of a shaft of flying atoms extending in a direct line between Dr. Syx's pretended mine and ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... tone; "for my part, I who have the honour of speaking to you, can boast, that never since I was of years of discretion (counting new style, beginning at thirteen, of course)—never have I lost a friend, a sincere friend—never, for this irrefragable reason—since that nonage, never was I such a neophyte as to fancy I had found that lusus natures, a ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... be unbecoming, as I acknowledge that for the most part it is, to speak disrespectfully of Works that have enjoyed for a length of time a widely-spread reputation, without at the same time producing irrefragable proofs of their unworthiness, let me be forgiven upon this occasion.—Having had the good fortune to be born and reared in a mountainous country, from my very childhood I have felt the falsehood that pervades ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... henceforth into its proper place, from the ascidians and polypes of the sea to the virtues and the vices—yea, to that Great Deity and Prime Cause (which indeed was all things), Noesis Noeseon, "the Thought of Thoughts," whom he discovered by irrefragable processes of logic, and in whom the philosophers believe privately, leaving Serapis to the women and the sailors? All they had to do was to follow in his steps; to take each of them a branch, of science or literature, or as ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... of its truth which is found in its perfect adaptation to the heart of man. It was reserved for him to develop its analogy to the Constitution and Course of Nature; and, laying his strong foundations in the depth of that great argument, there to construct another and irrefragable proof: thus rendering Philosophy subservient to Faith, and finding in outward and visible things the type and evidence of those within ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... From this increased prosperity we may confidently deduce the maxim that we should not kill and eat our fellow-creatures. I have consulted the higher power by whom you know that I am inspired, and he has assured me that this conclusion is irrefragable. ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... of the bounty is evident and irrefragable. Since the bounty was given, multitudes eat wheat who did not eat it before, and yet the price of wheat has abated. What more is to be hoped from any change of practice? An alteration cannot make our condition better, and is, therefore, very ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... witches were meant as those against whom modern legislation had, in most European nations, directed the punishment of death. These two circumstances furnished the numerous believers in witchcraft with arguments in divinity and law which they conceived irrefragable. They might say to the theologist, Will you not believe in witches? the Scriptures aver their existence;—to the jurisconsult, Will you dispute the existence of a crime against which our own statute-book, and the code of almost all civilized ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... philosophy was ever moulded in a nobler cast than his; it was founded in the school of Christianity, which was, that all men are by nature equal; that they are wisely and justly endowed by their Creator with certain rights which are irrefragable, and no matter how human pride and avarice may depress and debase, still God is the author of good to man; and of evil, man is the artificer to himself and to his species. Unlike Plato and Socrates, his ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... tragi-comic scenes, tragic enough in effect, between Father and Son; Son now about eighteen,—fit to be getting through Oxford, had he been an English gentleman of private station. It comes from the irrefragable Nicolai; who dates it about this time, uncertain as ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... shall be able to deduce from the arts of Venice will be both frequent and irrefragable, that the decline of political prosperity was exactly coincident with that of domestic and individual religion. I say domestic and individual; for—and this is the second point which I wish the reader to keep in mind—the most curious phenomenon in all Venetian history is the vitality of religion ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... belief in the Resurrection is not explained by a supposed hallucination; for their minds were not in that state in which alone such a delusion could establish itself firmly, and unless it were established firmly by the most apparently irrefragable evidence of many persons, it would have had no living energy. How an hallucination could occur in the requisite strength to the requisite number of people is neither explained nor explicable, except upon ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... to me irrefragable; and if logicians, though unable to dispute it, have usually exhibited a strong disposition to explain it away, this was not because they could discover any flaw in the argument itself, but because the contrary opinion seemed to rest on arguments equally indisputable. ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... good, hold water. convince, persuade (belief) 484. Adj. demonstrating &c. v., demonstrative, demonstrable; probative, unanswerable, conclusive; apodictic[obs3], apodeictic[obs3], apodeictical[obs3]; irresistible, irrefutable, irrefragable; necessary. categorical, decisive, crucial. demonstrated &c. v.; proven; unconfuted[obs3], unanswered, unrefuted[obs3]; evident &c. 474. deducible, consequential, consectary[obs3], inferential, following. [demonstrated ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... spiritual government of these provinces to the dexterous management of the former. Testimonies of such weight are more than sufficient at once to refute the calumnies and contrary opinions put forth on this subject, and at the same time serve as irrefragable proofs of the scrupulous impartiality with which I have endeavored to discuss ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... preach about the fire. I might have seen and healthily enjoyed a whole lot more of the Bonin Islands, if I had done what I ought to have done. But, as I see it, it is not a matter of what one ought to do, or ought not to do. It is what one DOES do. That is the everlasting, irrefragable fact. I did just what I did. I did what all those men did in the Bonin Islands. I did what millions of men over the world were doing at that particular point in time. I did it because the way led to it, because I was only a human boy, ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... take a joke this evening; for this morning I had irrefragable proofs of my wife's fidelity. I had risen very early to finish a piece of work for which I had been rushed, and in looking absently in my garden, I suddenly saw the valet de chambre of a general, whose house is ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... less fearful hell than that of thought; of deliberate, acute recollections, suspicions, trains of argument, which he tried to thrust from him, and yet could not. Who has not known in the still, sleepless hours of night, how dark thoughts will possess the mind with terrors, which seem logical, irrefragable, inevitable? ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... transmitted to us. By whom were these books written? Who are the men who have transmitted them? They are either the founders of religions themselves, or their adherents and assigns. Thus, in religion, the evidence of interested parties becomes irrefragable and incontestable. ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... miraculous power of relics, and refuse to honor the bones of martyrs, or should be so bold as to doubt the availing efficacy of the intercession of saints. The power of granting indulgences, the first source of the defection from the See of Rome, was now propounded in an irrefragable article of faith; and the principle of monasticism sanctioned by an express decree of the synod, which allowed males to take the vows at sixteen and females at twelve. And while all the opinions of the Protestants were, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... and said, that, though he differed from the honourable mover, he had much admired his speech of the last evening. Indeed the recollection of it made him only the more sensible of the weakness of his own powers; and yet, having what he supposed to be irrefragable arguments in his possession, he felt ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... the wild forgery of the second. Latin books, a library, gold, ships, and foreign trade, corn, beer, numerous towns and castles, all in the most northern parts of America in the fourteenth century, where only nomadic savages had ever existed, are all irrefragable evidence, that the whole, or at least that portion of the voyages of the Zenos, is an idle romance. To increase the absurdity, as if to try the gullability of the readers, Dedalus, a king of Scotland! is assumed to have been the first discoverer of the Western World; and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... heard his arguments would have gone away imbued with and persuaded of his doctrine, without hearing the answer that might be made." Letter of Cath. of Sept. 14th, ubi supra. Prof. Baum well remarks that "the last words furnish the most irrefragable proof of the great and convincing impression which the speech in general had made." ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... is planted in the schism of their ontology; the mighty structure heaves—reels—seems in suspense for one moment, and then, with one choral crash—to the frantic joy of the young Sagittary—lies subverted on the floor! Kant and Aristotle, Nominalists and Realists, Doctors Seraphic or Irrefragable, what cares he? All are at his feet—the Irrefragable has been confuted by his arrows, the Seraphic has been found mortal, and the greatest philosopher and the least differ but according to the brief noise ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... superhuman, divine power moulding his nature, guiding, quickening, ennobling, lifting, confirming, and hallowing and shaping him into conformity with Jesus Christ. I would that we all believed not as a dogma, but realised as a personal experience, that irrefragable truth, 'Know ye not that the Spirit of Christ dwelleth in you, except ye be reprobate?' The life of self is evil; the life of Christ in self is good, and only good. And if you are Christian men, and in the proportion, as I have said, in which you are living ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... rudimentary caudal column, the coccyx. This consists of a varying number (usually four, more rarely three, or five or six) of small degenerated vertebrae, and is a useless rudimentary organ with no actual physiological significance. Morphologically, however, it is of great interest as an irrefragable proof of the descent of man and the anthropoids from long-tailed apes. On no other theory can we explain the existence of this rudimentary tail. In the earlier stages of development the tail of the human embryo protrudes considerably. It afterwards atrophies; but the relic ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... press, and Censors for the public,-to which you are bound by the sacred ties of integrity to exert the most spirited impartiality, and to which your suffrages should carry the marks of pure, dauntless, irrefragable truth-to appeal to your MERCY, were to solicit your dishonour; and therefore,-though 'tis sweeter than frankincense,-more grateful to the senses than all the ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... the national character. And he therefore has little or no expectation that the falsehood of legends which have been circulated regarding the events of 1870 will be proved, to his countrymen, even by the most irrefragable demonstration. All political parties in France, he says, have combined to hold their own ministry responsible for that calamitous war; he despairs of obtaining from them a hearing. He awaits with resignation the time when some inquisitive student of history may light upon ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... his article, after triumphantly expressing his belief that his "main conclusions are irrefragable," he further says:— ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... this desire was so strong upon her that she felt a certainty she had wings, wings within her which she could not spread, but of the existence of which this insurgent desire was the irrefragable witness. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... uncompromising as the cold mathematics of the engineers who had mapped it. To the north spread unfathomably a forest of scrub pine and pinon, rising, here and there, into loftier growth. It was as if man, with his imperious interventions, had set those thin steel parallels as an irrefragable boundary to the mutual encroachments of forest and desert, tree and cactus. A single, straggling trail squirmed its way into the woodland. One might have surmised that it was winding hopefully if blindly toward the noble mountain peak shimmering in white splendor, mystic and wonderful, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Robinson,[11:1] who went up to Cambridge a little later than Marvell (June 1645), and was probably a harder reader, we are told that "the strength of his studies lay in the metaphysics and in those subtle authors for many years which rendered him an irrefragable disputant de quolibet ente, and whilst he was but senior freshman he was found in the bachelor schools, disputing ably with the best of the senior sophisters." Robinson despised the old-fashioned Ethics and Physics, but with the new Cartesian or Experimental Philosophy ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... "Here is my irrefragable opinion—I want your love, and I give you mine. In love I recognise solely the principle of reciprocation, as it obtains in Nature. The law that I acknowledge is to follow unfettered our strong impression, to exchange happiness for happiness. This answers your question of why I came here. ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... among his adversaries had established the soundness of his own political creed. The disputants who had long agreed in accusing him of an impious error had now effectually vindicated him, and refuted one another. The High Churchman who took the oaths had shown by irrefragable arguments from the Gospels and the Epistles, from the uniform practice of the primitive Church, and from the explicit declarations of the Anglican Church, that Christians were not in all cases bound to pay obedience to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... M. de Bouille, informing him that his brother-in-law the emperor Leopold was about to march a body of troops on Longwi, in order to afford a pretext for the concentration of the French troops on that frontier, and thus favour his flight from Paris, are irrefragable proofs of the counter-revolutionary understanding existing between the king and the foreign powers, no less than between the king and the leaders of the emigres. The memoirs of the emigres are full of proofs of this fact; and nature even attests them, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... better; and, while waiting, they will take it out of Old Jerry. He is the only one out of whom they can take it. They are to throw away their world and die, so they must take it out of somebody. Therefore Jerry "gets it in the neck." Men under the irrefragable compulsion of a common spell, who are selected for sacrifice in the fervour of a general obsession, but who are cooly awake to the unreason which locks the minds of their fellows, will burst into fury at the bond they feel. ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... elaborate dove-tailing. Nevertheless, if you cast your joke upon the waters, you shall find it no joke after many days. This is what I read in the Lyttelton Times, New Zealand: "The chain of circumstantial evidence seems fairly irrefragable. From all accounts, Mr. Zangwill himself was puzzled, after carefully forging every link, how to break it. The method ultimately adopted I consider more ingenious than convincing." After that I made up my mind never to ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... and no more," he replied, after thinking some minutes. "If, on producing your proof, I find it irrefragable, and can proceed in this matter without carrying it to court, or bringing in additional counsel—that is, if I can manage it all myself, which I doubt, I will be silent. Men—even lawyers, are not apt to die of ungratified ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... else than err ingeniously, this fact, that the Jewish Lawgiver, though touching science at a thousand points, has written nothing that has not been "demonstrated to be exactly and strictly true," is an irrefragable proof of his having derived his knowledge from a supernatural source. How does it happen, then, that Dr. Cumming forsakes this strong position? How is it that we find him, some pages further on, engaged in reconciling Genesis with the discoveries of science, by ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... distinguished all his schemes of reform. His first act was to obtain a royal decree, limiting the admission of professors to those who had submitted themselves to a rigorous examination in religious doctrine, and had given irrefragable proofs of orthodoxy. The same conditions were in future to be exacted of all who presented themselves for degrees. The university teemed with Lutheran literature; it was swept away by the same inexorable root-and-branch measures that had been so successfully ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... within ten days after she was of age: and having taken the money, she accompanied Mr and Mrs Harrel into another room. Presenting it then with an affecting solemnity to Mrs Harrel, "accept, Priscilla," she cried, "this irrefragable mark of the sincerity of my friendship: but suffer me at the same time to tell you, it is the last to so considerable an amount I ever mean to offer; receive it, therefore, with kindness, but use ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... there is no use in my telling you," says Soeur Lucie, who was not at all above using that imperfect, but irrefragable, logic familiar to us from our nurseries; "so you had better go to sleep again, for I cannot stop here any longer. Let ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... when the half-blown flower is heavy with the tears of the dawn, was infinitely more beautiful and elegant than the upright stub of a burdock; and that from something innate and independent of all association of ideas—these I had set down as irrefragable orthodox truths until perusing your book shook my faith." These words so pierce this soap-bubble of the metaphysicians, that we can hardly read them without fancying that the poet meant them to be ironical. Dugald Steward expressed surprise that ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... also be deemed an usurper of a title that does not belong to me, surprises me not. But grant me time to send home (as the English in the colonies affectionately call England to this day,) and I will prove my knighthood honorably won upon a stricken field, by irrefragable testimony. I will not deny that I have the honor of an acquaintance with Sir Ferdinando Gorges, but I am in no sense his agent, nor in any wise hold communication with him, save as a friend. For the note-book found at my lodgings, and deemed conclusive proof that I am a Catholic, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... Pink. There is a kind of pink called Fairchild's mule, which is here supposed to be produced between a Dianthus superbus, and the Garyophyllus, Clove. The Dianthus superbus emits a most fragrant odour, particularly at night. Vegetable mules supply an irrefragable argument in favour of the sexual system of botany. They are said to be numerous; and, like the mules of the animal kingdom, not always to continue their species by seed. There is an account of a curious mule ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... highly bred, purely English type of woman who, looking at facts squarely in the face, accepts them as facts and does not allow her imagination to dally in any atmosphere wherein they may be invested. To this type a vow is irrefragable. Loyalty is inherent in her like her blood. She never changes. What feminine inconsistencies she had at fifteen she retains at five-and-twenty, and preserves to add to the charms of her old age. She is the exemplary wife, the great-hearted mother of children. She has sent ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... true this was. When the mining first began, several rebels toward the East had tried profitlessly to buck this irrefragable game and had found they had battered their unyielding heads against an equally unyielding stone wall. These men had demanded more and Robinson's company, true to its threat, had urbanely gone around their farms, travelled on and left them behind, their coal untouched and certain to ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... on the very surface of the matter, the question presents itself to the biologist why it should not be so. The irrefragable philosophy of modern biology is that the most complex forms of living creatures have derived their splendid complexity and adaptations from the slow and majestically progressive variation and survival from the simpler and the simplest forms. If, then, the simplest forms ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... supported society. According to his views, the practical wisdom of men could not have a higher object than the introduction into society of the greatest spontaneity and freedom, but precisely because of this one should safeguard as sacred and irrefragable the natural laws of society—one should respect the existing order of things and, continually verifying it, inculcate its rational sides, not overlooking nature for the sake of culture, or vice versa" (p. 566). Property, the family, the state, are sacred; but aspiration toward ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... reflection, that this pursuit, if well attended to, must occupy some considerable share of a man's time and thoughts. He must be often about his bees, which will help to counteract the baneful effect of the village inn. "Whoever is fond of his bees is fond of his home," is an axiom of irrefragable truth, and one which ought to kindle in every one's breast, a favorable regard for a pursuit which has the power to produce so happy an influence. The love of home is the companion of many other virtues, which, if not yet developed into actual exercise, are still only dormant, and may be roused ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... found any errors they are in things which do not affect his main conclusions. The chain of causation by which he connects the spiritual and temporal life of each era with one another and with the entire series, will be found, we think, in all essentials, irrefragable. When local or temporary disturbing causes have to be taken into the account as modifying the general movement, criticism has more to say. But this will only become important when the attempt is made to write the history or delineate the character of some given ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... New Vessels, &c: But not now to enlarge upon the Uses, the Reader may securely take this Narrative, as the naked real Matter of Fact, whereby 'tis as clear, as Noon day (both from the Time, and irrefragable Testimony of very many considerable Persons in that University, who can jointly attest it; as well as from that particular unquestionable one of Mr. Boyle and his worthy Company, who were the ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... to disturb an elegant Historical Passage of this kind, circulating round the world, in some glory, for a century past: but there has a small irrefragable Document come to me, which modifies it a good deal, and reduces matters to the business form. Lord Charles Hay, "Lieutenant-Colonel," practical Head, "of the First Regiment of Foot-guards," wrote, about three weeks after (or ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... are overlooked by much of the reasoning of the abolitionist. In regard to the question of fact, whether a man is really a man and not a mere thing, he is profoundly versed. He can discourse most eloquently upon this subject: he can prove, by most irrefragable arguments, that a Hottentot is a man as well as a Newton. But as to the differences among men, such nice distinctions are beneath his philosophy! It is true that one may be sunk so low in the scale of being that civil freedom would be a curse ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... my lord, the most valid and irrefragable; proofs that cannot be questioned, even for a moment; and, least of all, by your lordship, who are best acquainted ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the castle and the lordship, with many a broad acre besides, passed from the Quins, and are now the property of the O'Briens to this day; and while the rest of the castle is little better than a heap of ruins, the fatal window still remains nearly as perfect as when the lady sprang through it, an irrefragable proof of the truth of the legend in the eyes of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... the blow Are hurried about with spaces small between. And all which, brought together with slight gaps, In more condensed union bound aback, Linked by their own all inter-tangled shapes,— These form the irrefragable roots of rocks And the brute bulks of iron, and what else Is of their kind... The rest leap far asunder, far recoil, Leaving huge gaps between: and these supply For us thin air and splendour-lights of the sun. And many besides ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... pleaded, is not therefore gained. You may remember, the neatly-wrought chain of circumstantial evidence, so artificially brought forward to prove Sir Philip Francis's title to the Letters of Junius, seemed at first irrefragable; yet the influence of the reasoning has passed away, and Junius, in the general opinion, is as much unknown as ever. But on this subject I will not be soothed or provoked into saying one word more. To say who I am not, would be one step towards saying who I am; and as I desire ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... Otaheite, whose manners are thus licentious, should be considered as a distinct confraternity, called by a particular name; and that this name should be the same in both places: this singular coincidence of custom, confirmed by that of language, seems to furnish an irrefragable proof of the inhabitants of both places being the same nation. We know, that it is the general property of the Otaheite dialect, to soften the pronunciation of its words. And, it is observable, that, by the omission of one single letter (the consonant t), our Arreoys ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... Not at all. In England, at the close of the Parliamentary war, it was generally argued—that Providence had decided the question against the Royalists by the mere fact of the issue. Milton himself, with all his high-toned morality, uses this argument as irrefragable: which is odd, were it only on this account—that the issue ought necessarily to have been held for a time as merely hypothetic, and liable to be set aside by possible counter-issues through one generation at the least. But the capital argument against ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... found out, in all human probability, in time to have prevented a collapse, or warded off recognition and intervention, but for Miss Carroll. The failure to reduce Vicksburg from the water, after a tremendous sacrifice of life and treasure, and the time it took to take Richmond, furnish irrefragable proof of the inability of the Union to subdue the rebellion on the plan of our ablest generals.... England and France had resolved that duty to their suffering operatives required the raising of the blockade ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... pelting of a merciless storm." Lowth told him—"You give yourself out as demonstrator of the divine legation of Moses; it has been often demonstrated before; a young student in theology might undertake to give a better—that is, a more satisfactory and irrefragable demonstration of it in five pages than you have done in five volumes."—Lowth's ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... production, the speech of Mr. Sherwood at Champlain was a renewed onslaught upon the anti-democratic coalition. In this speech the most irrefragable evidence, drawn from the recitals in the records of treason, is produced against the conspirators. The perusal of this speech leaves the mind in no doubt as to the purpose of the traitors to overthrow democratic government in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... grave, weighty, positive—involving a perilous responsibility, and requiring ample and irrefragable proof. They are expressed in vehement terms: but to measure the propriety of language, we must first examine the character of the system, or the nature of the object, against which it is directed. If we see a person wilfully abusing the goods of an individual, we may reprehend him, but with ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... those who like himself felt alarmed at its effect on the question of verbal inspiration. And it was the disproof of the genuineness of the Epistles of Phalaris by the learned Bentley,(410) which first threw solid doubts on the value attaching to traditional titles of books, and showed the irrefragable character belonging to an appeal to internal evidence; a department which has been called the higher criticism. This latter branch, so abundantly developed in German speculation, is only hinted at by the English ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... denouement of the scene he threw off all restraint, and laughed aloud. Everybody laughed as he did, and the two philosophers were saluted with unanimous felicitations. La Fontaine, however, was declared conqueror, on account of his profound erudition and his irrefragable logic. Conrart obtained the compensation due to an unsuccessful combatant; he was praised for the loyalty of his intentions, and the purity ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... assured his party that he had done so only out of deference to his predecessor in office. Those inherited policies having led to naught, he was now prepared to reassert our title to the whole of Oregon, which was sustained "by irrefragable facts and arguments." He would therefore recommend that provision be made for terminating the joint treaty of occupation, for extending the jurisdiction of the United States over American citizens in Oregon, and for protecting emigrants in transit through the Indian country. These were strong ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... and cruelty, in all their intercourse with the Spaniards the French behaved with moderation and even kindness. Paying for everything, obtaining their billets peaceably and quietly, marching with order and regularity, they advanced into the heart of the country, showing, by the most irrefragable proof, the astonishing evidences of a discipline which, by a word, could convert the lawless irregularities of a ruffian soldiery into the orderly habits and obedient conduct of ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the Nesnas (see vol. i. p. 206) or of the 'Angka, and other beings of that rare and wondrous order; for there is nothing in their existence incompatible with the Divine Power; but we decline to believe in them because their existence has not been manifested to us on any irrefragable authority." ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... was accustomed to hear arguments put forward with equal persuasiveness on both sides of a case. It seemed to him arrogant to make any proposition with a conviction of its absolute, indestructible and irrefragable truth. One requisite of a philosophy with him was that it should avoid this arrogance[73]. Philosophers of the highest respectability had held the most opposite opinions on the same subjects. To withhold absolute assent from all doctrines, while giving a qualified assent to those which seemed most ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... elapsed since that bright spring morning on which she had beheld the irrefragable proof of her lover's perfidy, when she received an offer of marriage from a gentleman, of good family and large property. He had been struck by her beauty at a party where he had seen her; and after a few meetings, made formal proposals to her father almost ere she was aware that he admired ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... are facts resting on irrefragable evidence; the apparent problem is, to {31} harmonise them with the affirmation of the divinity existing in man. If God be truly "in us all," then in what sense or to what purpose can we pray for a ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... insidious warfare, which is maintained, in various forms, against the essential doctrines of the Gospel. It is just an effusion of the malignity of the unsanctified heart. Its prevalence is an exact fulfilment of prophecy; and therefore an irrefragable proof of the truth and divine authority of that system which it is labouring to destroy. The emphatic declaration of the apostle, in the text, strikingly describes the state of feeling which now actually prevails, among many who enjoy ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2 No. 7 Dec. 1827 • Aaron W. Leland and Elihu W. Baldwin
... than before, and might be easily carried out. A complete photographic survey of a few selected regions, as a basis for an equally thorough and exhaustive scrutiny by direct observation, would, it is believed, lead to a much more satisfactory and hopeful method for ultimately furnishing irrefragable testimony as to permanency or change than any that has ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... name of St. Michael's Mount, Cara clowse in cowse, which in Cornish is said to mean "the hoar rock in the wood." In his paper read before the British Association at Manchester, Mr. Pengelly adduced that very name as irrefragable evidence that Cornish, i.e. a Celtic language, an Aryan language, was spoken in the extreme west of Europe about 20,000 years ago. In his more recent paper Mr. Pengelly has given up this position, and he considers it improbable that any philologer could now give a trustworthy translation of ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... principles from which it originated: IT IS ENDED." And in effect, books being opened throughout France, the names of the citizens who inscribed their acceptance of this new constitution amounted to four millions, while but a few votes to the contrary were registered—an irrefragable proof that the national mind was disposed to think no sacrifice too dear, so ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... fame of a poet, that we lose patience. The verses given in this pamphlet would invalidate Mr. Ball's claim to the authorship of Mrs. Akers's poem, even though the Seven Sleepers swore that he rocked them asleep with it in the time of the Decian persecution. But beside the irrefragable internal evidence afforded by the specimens given of Mr. Ball's poetry, and by his "first draft" of the disputed poem, and by his "completed copy" of the poem, there is the well-known fact that Mr. Ball is a self-confessed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... other Latin dialects can be shown to have all radiated from Rome as their centre, the old traditions of the eastern origin of all the chief nations of Europe have been proved to be fundamentally true; for by evidence so "irrefragable" (to use the expression of the Taylorian professor of modern languages at Oxford), that "not an English jury could now-a-days reject it," Philological Archaeology has shown that of the three great families of mankind—the Semitic, the Turanian, and the Aryan—this last, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... passengers was a magazine contributor, writing vagaries of Indian literature, also two physicians, a somber, irrevocable, irrefragable allopathist, and a genial homeopathist, who made a specialty of bronchitis. Two peremptory attorneys from the Legislature of Iowa were discussing the politics of the epoch and the details of national finance, while a wan, dolorous person, wearing concave glasses, alternately ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... imploring her to fly, if she felt the smallest doubt that her husband's pursuits were of the nature which the Roman Church had benevolently burned so many scholars for adopting. And even the little that Viola could communicate seemed, to the ignorant ascetic, irrefragable proof of sorcery and witchcraft; he had, indeed, previously heard some of the strange rumours which followed the path of Zanoni, and was therefore prepared to believe the worst; the worthy Bartolomeo would ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... together, inasmuch as the evidence for the later is just as good as the evidence for the earlier wonders. If the one set are certified by contemporaneous witnesses of high repute, so are the other; and, in point of probability, there is not a pin to choose between the two. That is the solid and irrefragable, result of Middleton's contribution to the subject. But the Free Inquirer's freedom had its limits; and he draws a sharp line of demarcation between the patristic and the New Testament miracles—on the professed ground that the accounts of the latter, being inspired, are out of the reach ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... the change from the old theological view based upon the letter of our sacred books to the modern scientific view based upon evidence absolutely irrefragable is complete. Here, too, we are at the beginning of a vast change in the basis and modes of thought upon man—a change even more striking than that accomplished by Copernicus and Galileo, when they substituted for a universe in which sun and planets revolved about ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... remuneration is not equivalent to the worth of the animal, the conscientious professor of knavery carries his goods to a more lucrative market. At the instance of Dashall, therefore, Sir Felix was determined to retain the animal until the claimant brought irrefragable proof of ownership. The fellow blustered,—the Baronet was immovable in his resolution;—when the other threw off all disguise, and exhibiting himself in pristine blackguardism, inundated Sir Felix with a torrent of abuse; who disdaining ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... then told me he had discovered a conspiracy to destroy me politically the particulars of which he felt it to be his duty to lay before [me]. I replied instantly, & somewhat sternly, Dr., I do not wish to hear them. I have irrefragable proof, he replied. I don't care, was the response. It is in writing, Sir, said he. I won't look at it, Sir. What, said he, don't you want to see it if it is in writing & genuine? An emphatic No, Sir, closed the conversation. ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... the Divine is one, because Reason is one. He taught that the Supreme Being is the immaterial, infinite Governor of all;[880] that the world bears the stamp of his intelligence, and attests it by irrefragable evidence;[881] and that he is the author and vindicator of all moral laws.[882] So that, in reality, he did more to overthrow polytheism than any of his predecessors, and on that account was doomed ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... how demonstrative of the very central truth of Christianity, is that plain fact, 'The Son of man came eating and drinking.' Then that pillar of all our hope, the Incarnation of the word of God, stands irrefragable. Sitting at tables, hungering in the wilderness, faint by the well, begging a draught of water from a woman, and saying on His Cross 'I thirst!'—He is the Incarnation of Deity, the manifestation of God in the flesh. Awe and mystery and reverence and hope ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... are on matters relating to their own exploits, and especially those relating to war, and in order that there shall be no humbug about such matters, he will give no credence to any statement that is not accompanied by the most irrefragable proof. When a warrior comes home and says, "I killed six enemies on my last raid," he is confronted with the demand to produce his evidence, and the only evidence admissible is the scalps of the dead enemies. Should he make such an assertion without ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... in the next chapter, as to point out here that since in countless places the text of our oldest Evangelia as well as the readings of the primitive Fathers exhibit unmistakable traces of the corrupting influence of the Lectionary practice, that very fact becomes irrefragable evidence of the antiquity of the Lectionary which is the occasion of it. Not only must it be more ancient than Cod. B or Cod. {HEBREW LETTER ALEF}, (which are referred to the beginning of the ivth century), but it must be older than Origen in the iiird century, or the Vetus ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... water) is a cure for warts; that a vessel of water put on the hearth of a smoky chimney is a remedy for the evil, and so on—not a single fact in all that he adduces. Yet these circumstances were regarded as real, and were spoken of at the times as irrefragable proofs of the truth ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... what they loved and felt; they sought what the heart naturally seeks, and gave what it most gratefully receives; and I look to them as in all points of principle (not, observe, of knowledge or empirical attainment) as the most irrefragable authorities, precisely on account of the child-like innocence, which never deemed itself authoritative, but acted upon desire, and not upon dicta, and sought for sympathy, not ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... aimed at the life of a minister or the king, any honest man must have immediately communicated the discovery to the Secretary of State: to conspire to introduce into America a military government, and abridge American liberty, was a more heinous crime, of which irrefragable evidence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... white to the lips. As much by her vehement pretence of sincerity as by the apparently irrefragable logic of her arguments, she forced conviction upon him. This brought a loathly fear in its train, and the gates of his heart stood ever wide to fear. He stepped aside to a chair, and sank into it, looking at her with dilating eyes—a fool confronted ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... benevolence, of Georgiana Carlton. With respect to her philosophy—it was of a noble cast. It was, that all men are by nature equal; that they are wisely and justly endowed by the Creator with certain rights, which are irrefragable; and that, however human pride and human avarice may depress and debase, still God is the author of good to man—and of evil, man is the artificer to himself and to his species. Unlike Plato and Socrates, her mind was free from the gloom ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... few moments there was quiet in the cabin, while those present digested Iff's conclusions and acknowledged their logic irrefragable. Staff caught Alison staring at the man as if fascinated, with a curious, intense look in her eyes the significance of which he ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... was in Virginia, so much vaster then than now, that Wesleyism spread widest and deepest. If any part of Wesley's mission tended to modify or abolish slavery, then a devotion to freedom so constant and generous as Conway's should link their names by an irrefragable, however subtle, filament of common piety. I wished to look into Finsbury Chapel for my old friend's sake, but it seemed to me that we had intruded on worshippers enough that morning, and I satisfied my longing by a glimpse of the interior through the pane of glass ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... marriage, and although he was aware that Tetrazzini was singing Mazzone's Sogni e Canti and Benedict's Carnevale di Venezia, the music was no more than a noise in the air to him. What should he do if Eleanor were married? Bad enough if she were engaged, but married!... An engagement was not an irrefragable affair, and he could woo her so ardently that his rival would swiftly vanish from her thoughts ... but a marriage!... He knew that marriages were not so irrefragable as they might be, and that a very desperate couple might go to the length of running away together ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... of the desolation of the Campagna stands revealed in the clearest light, and on the most irrefragable evidence. It is not cultivated for grain crops, because remunerating prices for that species of produce cannot be obtained. It is exclusively kept in pasturage, because it is in that way only that a profit can be obtained ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... but converses with Christ's human nature only. However, he was not believed this time on his bare word; the adventure of the crusade having a little sunk the credit of his oracles. Afterwards a thousand schoolmen arose, such as the Irrefragable Doctor, the Subtile Doctor, the Angelic Doctor, the Seraphic Doctor, and the Cherubic Doctor, who were all sure that they had a very clear and distinct idea of the soul, and yet wrote in such a manner, that one would conclude they were resolved no one should understand a word in their writings. ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... office before he came to London. Mr. Collier wrote to Lord Campbell to ask his opinion as to the probability of this being true. His answer was as follows: "You require us to believe implicitly a fact, of which, if true, positive and irrefragable evidence in his own handwriting might have been forthcoming to establish it. Not having been actually enrolled as an attorney, neither the records of the local court at Stratford nor of the superior Courts at Westminster would present his name ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... ceased—it was nine o'clock. She must rise, and appear below for the first time as mistress in her own house. Also, she remembered faintly something which Mrs. Dugdale had said about the custom at Kingcombe—an irrefragable law of country etiquette—-of a bride's going to church for the first time, ceremoniously, in bridal dress. And no sooner had she descended—wrapped in the first morning-frock she could lay her hands ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Me, and I in you,'—if a Christian man carries the consciousness of Christ's presence, and has Him as a Sun in his darkness, and as a Life-source feeding his deadness with life, then he knows with a consciousness which is irrefragable that Jesus Christ is in him, for he feels His touch; and he knows that he is in Christ, for he is aware of the power that girdles him, and in which he has peace and righteousness ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... acquired a considerable fortune. Notwithstanding all these advantages he passed his life miserably, and ended it on the scaffold. The following story afterwards got into circulation, and has been often triumphantly cited by succeeding astrologers as an irrefragable proof of the truth of their science. It was said, that long before he died he uttered three remarkable prophecies; one relating to himself, another to his friend, and the third to his patron, Pandolfo di Malatesta. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... like manner, their part to the mass of irrefragable evidence in support of the doctrine. As early as the second century, Eusebius says A. D. 171, the Montanists arose in Asia Minor. Among other things, Montanus, their founder, taught that were any to "commit grievous sin after baptism, to deny Christ, or have been stained with the guilt ...
— Confession and Absolution • Thomas John Capel
... Almost inconceivable is the power of a visible communion of numbers to give intensity to those feelings of the heart which usually retire into privacy, or only open themselves to the confidence of friendship. The faith in the validity of such emotions becomes irrefragable from its diffusion; we feel ourselves strong among so many associates, and all hearts and minds flow together in one great and irresistible stream. On this very account the privilege of influencing an assembled crowd is exposed to most dangerous abuses. As one may disinterestedly ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... has been said above of the growth of the Elements, we can appreciate the remark of Proclus about Euclid, 'who put together the Elements, collecting many of Eudoxus's theorems, perfecting many of Theaetetus's and also bringing to irrefragable demonstration the things which were only somewhat loosely proved by his predecessors'. Though a large portion of the subject-matter had been investigated by those predecessors, everything goes to show that ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... inspired Luther. In the scope and importance, however, of their great work of reformation the two cases were entirely parallel, and in both the success marks a new epoch in the development of the human mind. Consider, first, the irrefragable fact of the unexampled success which Darwin's reform of science has achieved in the short space of 23 years! for never before since the beginning of human science has any new theory penetrated so deeply to the foundation of the whole domain ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... rule and dominion, as all other beasts and animals. But did God call Adam man, after he had created him? Most certainly he did not. This fact relieves us of all doubt as to who was meant as the men of whose daughters the sons of God took their wives, independent of the preceding irrefragable proofs, that it was the negro; and the crime of amalgamation thus committed, brought the flood upon the earth. There is no possibility ...
— The Negro: what is His Ethnological Status? 2nd Ed. • Buckner H. 'Ariel' Payne
... exactly what we want," he exclaimed,—"an irrefragable proof of complicity. He would never have dared to abuse Miss Ville- Handry's confidence in so infamous a manner, if he had not been persuaded, in fact been quite sure, that Lieut. Champcey ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... period. The chief point which we have to notice is, that a considerable revolution of opinion has taken place on this point. It was originally believed that the presence of such animals as Elephants, Lions, the Rhinoceros, and the Hippopotamus afforded an irrefragable proof that the climate of Europe must have been a warm one, at any rate during Post-Glacial times. The existence, also, of numbers of Mammoths in Siberia, was further supposed to indicate that this high temperature ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... Belisarius seized him, and banished him to Greece."[25] But even if the fact that Pope Silverius had really held treasonable communication with the Goths, be admitted, still the manner in which he was condemned by Belisarius affords irrefragable evidence of the injustice of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... court of justice, whether a man be dead or alive. You aver he is alive, and you bring fifty witnesses to swear it: I answer, "Why do you not produce the man "' This is an argument founded on one of the first principles of the LAW OF EVIDENCE, which Gilbert would have held to be irrefragable. ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... by popular representation. It must be this or nothing. The French faction considers as an usurpation, as an atrocious violation of the indefensible rights of man, every other description of government. Take it, or leave it: there is no medium. Let the irrefragable doctors fight out their own controversy in their own way and with their own weapons; and when they are tired, let them commence a treaty of peace. Let the plenipotentiary sophisters of England settle with the diplomatic ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... temples and melting down the images;—in special connection with a visit paid by them that year to Britain[337] (our last Imperial visit), when they had actually been permitted to cross the Channel in winter-time; an irrefragable proof of Heaven's approval of their iconoclasm. It is highly probable that they pursued here also a course at once so pious and so profitable, and that the fanes of the ancient deities but lingered on in ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... to hinder us from believing in the Divine Personality as a fact, yet hinder us from conceiving the manner of its existence, and prevent us from exhibiting our belief as a philosophical conclusion, proved by irrefragable reasoning and secured against all objections. These difficulties are occasioned, on the one hand, by the so-called Philosophy of the Unconditioned, which in all ages has shown a tendency towards Pantheism, and which, in one of its latest and most finished ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... general uninstructed opinion; namely that, down to this date, the varieties of Northumbrian are much fewer and slighter than they afterwards became, and that the written documents are practically all in one and the same dialect, or very nearly so, from the Humber as far north as Aberdeen. The irrefragable results noted by Dr Murray will probably come as a surprise to many, though they have now been before the public for more than forty years. The Durham dialect of the Cursor Mundi and the Aberdeen Scotch of Barbour ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... raising or lowering the temperature during the time of development to breed butterflies, possessed of the characteristics of related varieties and species living in southern and northern regions respectively, characteristics not merely of color and design, but also of structure, is complete irrefragable proof ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... everything is so presented as to persuade the innocent student that all that is good or true anywhere is founded on the faith he is preparing to preach, that the historical evidences of its truth are irrefragable, that it is logically perfect and spiritually all-sufficing. These convictions, which no breath from the outside is allowed to ruffle, are deepened in the case of pensive and studious minds, like those of the leading modernists, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... the one stately mansion that I was familiar with appeared to me a desert, even with all its fairy-land splendors? Jack Holt's father was too rich a man not to allow his wife all the good things which she coveted, and her parlors, halls and bedrooms were irrefragable proof of the enormities which may be committed with an utter want of taste and tens of thousands of dollars. Both Harry and Jack hated the house, and spent every available moment out of school in our comfortable, well-worn nooks ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... is irrefragable," as the great Oxford Sanskritist says. To which he is answered—"provided it does not clash with historical facts and ethnology." It may be—no doubt it is, as far as his knowledge goes—"the only evidence worth listening ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... confute," Nature sets at naught the most ancient of axioms. How obvious is it that the lesser cannot contain the greater! Yet that Nature under certain circumstances blandly puts her thumb unto her nose and spreads her fingers out even at that irrefragable postulate, let this plain statement ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... unperformed or ill-performed!" Sad, indeed, that an introspection so profound and acute as this poor minister's should be so miserably deceived! We have had, and may still have, worse things to tell of him; but none, we apprehend, so pitiably weak; no evidence, at once so slight and irrefragable, of a subtle disease that had long since begun to eat into the real substance of his character. No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... (tyrannides) "oblique policies which drive the human race to slavery, as is patent in all of them to one who reasons."[221] He has nothing but pity for mankind when it has become a many-headed beast, "despising the higher intellect irrefragable in reason, the lower which hath the face of experience."[222] He had no faith in a turbulent equality asserting the divine right of I'm as good as you. He thought it fatal to all discipline: "The confounding of persons hath ever been the beginning of sickness in ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... grammar. I have, certainly, no intention to say more than is due to the uninformed and misguided. For some who are ungenerous and prejudiced themselves, will not be unwilling to think me so; and even this freedom, backed and guarded as it is by facts and proofs irrefragable, may still be ingeniously ascribed to an ill motive. To two thirds of the community, one grammar is just as good as an other; because they neither know, nor wish to know, more than may be learned from the very worst. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... ladyship, "to trifle; I am satisfied. My lord, I can give you the most irrefragable proof that whatever may have been the apparent levity of my conduct, you have had no serious cause for jealousy. But the proof will shock, disgust you. Have you courage to know more? ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Meldon, "to be as patient with you as I can. Many men would throw something heavy at your head for saying that. I don't. In spite of the fact that I spent hours proving to you by absolutely irrefragable evidence that Miss King is Mrs. Lorimer, I am still prepared to listen quietly to what you have to say. What convinces you that ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... the firm conviction of many, had all of them conversed with the Apostles, and heard the word of truth from their mouths. I do from my heart rejoice with you, that these holy men bear direct, clear, and irrefragable testimony to those fundamental truths which the Church of Rome and the Church of England both hold inviolate—the doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity, with its essential and inseparable concomitants, the atonement by the ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... chapter, it may be safely asserted that the veneration, attachment, and pride, which the English nation, for more than six centuries, have felt towards Magna Carta, are in their nature among the most irrefragable of all proofs that it was the fundamental law of the land, and constitutionally binding upon the government; for, otherwise, it would have been, in their eyes, an unimportant and worthless thing. What those sentiments were I will use the words of ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... unable to perceive the logical necessity of these simple arguments, which lie at the foundation of all Mr. Darwin's reasoning; that he should confound an irrefragable deduction from the observed relations of organisms to the conditions which lie around them, with a metaphysical "forme substantielle," or a chimerical personification of the powers of Nature, would be incredible, were it not that other passages of his work ...
— Criticisms on "The Origin of Species" - From 'The Natural History Review', 1864 • Thomas H. Huxley
... time, this reason of silence has entirely ceased, by the hostilities which the said kingdom has commenced against our Republic, under pretences, and in a manner the injustice of which has been demonstrated by the supreme government of the State, with an irrefragable evidence, in the eyes of impartial Europe; whilst the petitioners themselves, by the illegal capture of so large a number of Dutch ships, and afterwards by the absolute stagnation of navigation, and of ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... are any readers of The Journal of Negro History who can produce "irrefragable evidence" relative to this matter I would be glad if they would do so. Truth ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... illumination upon the question. If matter and material modes are real, then we must at once relegate the stories of the virgin birth, the miracles, the resurrection, and the ascension to the realm of myth. If the so-called laws of matter are real, irrefragable laws, then we indulgently, pass by these stories as figments of heated imaginations. But, regarding matter as a human, mortal concept, entirely mental, and wholly subject to the impress and influence of mind, and knowing, as we do now, that mental concepts change with ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... could only grasp what it is that transforms the molecule of dead matter into the living molecule! Pasteur called it "dissymmetric force," which is only a new name for the mystery. He believed there was an "irrefragable physical barrier between organic and inorganic nature"—that the molecules of an organism differed from those of a mineral, and for this difference ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... Generation de l'Homme, remarked that men who have much hair on the body are most amorous. At a more recent period Roubaud has said that pubic hair in its quantity, color and curliness is an index of genital energy. A poor pilous system, on the other hand, Roubaud regarded as a probable though not an irrefragable proof of sexual frigidity in women. "In the cold woman the pilous system is remarkable for the languor of its vitality; the hairs are fair, delicate, scarce and smooth, while in ardent natures there are little curly tufts about the temples." (Traite de l'Impuissance, pp. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... compositions are a real service rendered to historical literature; and the author has made this service greater by his prefaces, which will do more than the work of a hundred dissertations in rendering that true conception of early Roman history, the irrefragable establishment of which has made Niebuhr illustrious, familiar to the minds of general readers. This is no trifling matter, even in relation to present interests, for there is no estimating the injury which ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... way. Let them debate that will, for it leads nowhere unless indeed there be sharp revelation, positive declaration and very certain affirmation to go upon by way of Basis or First Principle whence to deduce some sure conclusion and irrefragable truth; for thus the intellect walks, as it were, along a high road, whereas by all other ways it is lurching and stumbling and boggling and tumbling in I know not what mists and brambles of the great bare, murky twilight and marshy hillside of philosophy, ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... confronted him with facts, and cross-examined him; thus we have elicited from him his principles and mode of action. I may perhaps have fallen into some errors of detail, though I have endeavoured to avoid them, but the main conclusions are, I believe, irrefragable. If they are not, I shall be obliged to any one who will point out the fallacy in my reasoning; and I pledge myself to make open retractation, when I resume these papers in a subsequent number. If they are, ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... far wider manner. Its present scope, which has grown and developed under Russian rule, embraces all sides, not only of the economic, but of the civil, life of the land. Russian autocracy has thus given irrefragable proof of its constructive powers in the sphere of civic development. The historian of the future will have to note its ethical importance in a far wider sphere as well: the greatest of social problems have found a peaceable ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... was sincere. This sincerity, visible, palpable, irrefragable, evident from the very grief that it caused him, rendered inquiries useless, and conferred authority on all that ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the United States ought to accept can be effected. With this conviction the proposition of compromise which had been made and rejected was by my direction subsequently withdrawn and our title to the whole Oregon Territory asserted, and, as is believed, maintained by irrefragable ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... all possible storms of comedy. The recent compiler of a most admirably skilful and most delicately invaluable compendium of Pantagruel or manual by way of guidebook to Rabelais has but too justly taken note of the irrefragable evidence there given that the one prose humourist who is to Aristophanes as the human twin-star Castor to Pollux the divine can never have practically weathered an actual gale; but if I may speak from a single experience of one which a witness long inured to Indian ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne |
