"Axiom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appearance or creation of only a few forms of life, or of some one form alone. It has been maintained by several authors that it is as easy to believe in the creation of a million beings as of one; but Maupertuis's philosophical axiom "of least action" leads the mind more willingly to admit the smaller number; and certainly we ought not to believe that innumerable beings within each great class have been created with plain, but deceptive, marks of descent from a ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... practice of all the actions useful to it; and because all the other virtues, under the denominations of charity, humanity, probity, love of one's country, sincerity, generosity, simplicity of manners, and modesty, are only varied forms and diversified applications of the axiom, "Do not to another what you do not wish to be done to yourself," which is ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... theory, which was nearly unknown to the republics of antiquity—which was introduced into the world almost by accident, like so many other great truths—and misunderstood by several modern nations, is at length become an axiom in the political science of the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... be ranked as the seat of the Unitarians, as Baltimore is that of the Roman Catholics, and Philadelphia that of the Quakers.... No axiom is more applicable to the pensive, serious, scrutinizing inhabitant of the New England States than this: 'What I do not understand, I reject as worthless and false;' so said one of the most learned men of Boston to me. 'Why occupy the mind with that which is incomprehensible? Have we not ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... something which according to our past experience we ought to find no difficulty in doing, then we may guess what a bee must feel as it goes flying up and down a window-pane. Then we have doubts thrown upon the fundamental axiom of life, i.e. that like antecedents will be followed by like consequents. On this we go mad and die in a ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... the axiom before mentioned, that architectural design should express and emphasize the practical requirements and physical conditions of the building, let us look a little more in detail into the manner in which this ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... be too hard on her. We never know what we may be brought to ourselves." For it was Aunt Tipping's unformulated axiom that, whatever cock-and-bull stories misfortune may tell, there is always some truth in ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... sketch was symptomatic. Mrs. Maiden's house had been considered perfect, up to the time of her death. Rachel had at first been even intimidated by it; Louis had sincerely praised it. And indeed its perfection was an axiom of drawing-room conversation. But as soon as Louis and Rachel began to look on the house with the eye of inhabitants, the axiom fell to a dogma, and the dogma was exploded. The dreadful truth came out that Mrs. Maldon had shown a strange indifference to certain aspects ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... the only indisputable axiom in philosophy; there are no grotesques in nature; not anything framed to fill up empty cantons and unnecessary spaces: in the most imperfect creatures, and such as were not preserved in the ark, but, having their seeds and principles in the womb of nature, are everywhere where ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... hast misrepresented thy teacher, and as thou seemest to set an equal value on eloquence and on reasoning, I shall attend to thee awhile on each of these matters, first inquiring of thee whether the axiom is Socratic, that it is never becoming to get drunk, unless in ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... of his favourite axiom, drove off at such a furious rate over great stones left in the middle of the road by carmen, who had been driving in the gudgeons of their axle-trees to hinder them from lacing, [Opening; perhaps from LACHER, to loosen.] that Lord Colambre thought ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... for the crops," said Pearl, thinking of the twenty acres of wheat in front of the house and of the oat-field behind the bluff; "and, besides," quoting a favourite axiom of her mother's, "he ain't sugar or salt, and ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... place here. It is an old story, and, like other old stories accepted by the multitude, has become almost of no effect; passive acceptance mentally, absolute rejection physically, seeming to be the portion of much of the gospel of health. "Cleanliness is next to godliness," is almost an axiom. I am disposed to amend it, and assert that cleanliness is godliness, or a form of godliness. At any rate, the man or woman who demands cleanliness without and within, this cleanliness meaning pure air, ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... any kind, and pointed out that in any case his acquaintance with Cuba was altogether too recent to have enabled him to form even the most elementary opinion on the question, at the same time mentioning as a general axiom that Englishmen were usually regarded as cherishing a weakness in favour of good government and the maintenance ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... with the gesture of a great man, "what is the use of all these discussions? What do they prove?—the eternal verity of one axiom: All things are true, all things are false. Moral truths as well as human beings change their aspect according to their surroundings, to the point ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... was such pretty serving," said Mrs. Van Alstyne, afterward. "Where did they get such people?—And beautiful serving," she went on, reverting to her favorite axiom, "is, after all, the ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... intending hostess is a new-comer in London, and has not yet picked up a sufficiency of town-acquaintances, or if those whom she has are not altogether the style of folk she wishes to invite, a different course of procedure has to be adopted. It may be taken as an axiom that there are always plenty of people in society who are ready to go anywhere (within recognized limits) to a ball, provided that some lady of acknowledged experience in such matters will stand sponsor for its probable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... occasionally held discourse, philosophic and profound, when he and I chanced to be alone together in the office, say that all first-rate thieves were sober, and of well-regulated morals, their bodily passions being kept in abeyance by their love of gain; but this axiom could scarcely hold good with respect to these women—however thievish they might be, they did care for something besides gain: they cared for their husbands. If they did thieve, they merely thieved for their husbands; ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... axiom of the breeder is—est in equis patrum virtus—"Like produces like." But the second axiom is, "The goodness of the horse goes in at his mouth." The moral is, that like produces like only under like natural conditions. Turn out all the winners of the last ten years to breed on ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... to the feet of learned Jesuit teachers long before Yale was founded, has recently been paved with concrete, transformed into a tennis court, and now echoes to the shouts of students to whom Dr. Giesecke, the successful president, is teaching the truth of the ancient axiom, "Mens ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... e'er a sup at all in the house?" said Mat; "if there is, let me get it; for there's an ould proverb, though it's a most unmathematical axiom as ever was invinted—'try a hair of the same dog that bit you;' give me a glass, Nancy, an' you can go for Father Connell after. Oh, by the sowl of Isaac, that invented fluxions, ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... civilization are always the result of the application of primitive ideas. Thought is invariably the point of departure and the goal of all social existence. The history of Montegnac is a proof of that axiom of social science. When at last the administration was able to concern itself with the needs and the material prosperity of this region of country, it cut down this strip of forest, and stationed a detachment of gendarmerie near ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... as a new axiom—the more exercise the less fool. Strong, able muscles, steady nerves (and let us remember that nerves depend for their tone on the muscular condition), a clean skin open at all its pores and doing its eliminative work thoroughly, and clean strong vitals make up the kind of beauty within ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... he was talking about. But this is only Phase One of the plan. A corollary is based upon the axiom that one disabled automobile is equal to ...
— "To Invade New York...." • Irwin Lewis
... efforts to circumstances. Sooner or later they need new great principles. Then they obliterate the old ones. The old jingle of words no longer wins a response. The doctrine is dead. In 1776 it seemed to every Whig in America that it was a pure axiom to say that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. They clung to this as a sacred dogma for over a hundred years, because it did not affect unfavorably any interest. It is untrue. Governments get their powers from the historical fact ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... presented with a copy of Lindley Murray's Grammar, by the aid of which he gained some knowledge of the structural rules of English. He had already become acquainted with Paradise Lost, and was another proof of Matthew Prior's axiom, 'Who often reads will sometimes want to write,' for he had begun to write verse when only 'a bonnie pit lad.' For more than forty years of his life he laboured in 'the coal-dark underground,' and is now the caretaker ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... with the hobby,[1] lest you fall with the lark, nor attempt not with Phaeton, lest you drown with Icarus. Fortune, when she wills you to fly, tempers your plumes with wax; and therefore either sit still and make no wing, or else beware the sun, and hold Daedalus' axiom authentical, medium tenere tutissimum. Low shrubs have deep roots, and poor cottages great patience. Fortune looks ever upward, and envy aspireth to nestle with dignity. Take heed, my sons, the mean is sweetest melody; where ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... The famous axiom, laissez faire, and laissez passer, the subversive tendencies of which people affect to condemn, was not invented by Quesnay. He only gave a scientific bearing to what was the inspiration of a merchant called Legendre. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... ourselves to having books by our bedside? Ought not 'early to bed and early to rise' to be the motto of every well-conducted person, and is not reading in bed calculated to render the carrying out of that axiom virtually impossible? This is the problem we have first to solve, and it may be said at once that this discourse does not apply virginibus puerisque. Girls and boys, young men and young women, are hereby solemnly exhorted to abjure all nocturnal or matutinal ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... shall be met by many with the squeamish proverb, De mortuis nil nisi bonum; though I am not disposed at this moment to enter on a discussion of the merits of this received axiom. Shakspeare tells us "The evil that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... holiness but what is holy; this is a sort of axiom," said Charles; "if the fruits are holy, faith, which is ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... relation—of form and quantity—is often grossly false in regard to morals, for example. In this latter science it is very usually untrue that the aggregated parts are equal to the whole. In chemistry also the axiom fails. In the consideration of motive it fails; for two motives, each of a given value, have not, necessarily, a value when united, equal to the sum of their values apart. There are numerous other mathematical truths ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... a civilian, the whole front of the bar was full of soldiers, all apparently drinking, and drinking again, and drinking yet again, nibbling cheese, crackers and smoked-beef meanwhile, apparently to keep up the necessary thirst. "Fire and fall back!" seemed to be a military axiom not always observed by the rank and file of the Two Hundredth, as many of them kept their places and went on with their guzzling, with a determination worthy of a much better cause. But it was occasionally observed, after all, for there were a few who had been overcome ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... their style of weapon. Our army sword is the short, stiff, pointed gladius of the Romans; and the American bowie-knife is the same tool, modified to meet the daily wants of civil society. I announce at this table an axiom not to be found in Montesquieu ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... nation of fifty millions thinks of one of them, at any rate; for if the mutual verdict of the top of an empire and the bottom of it does not establish for good and all the judgment of the entire nation concerning that book, then the axiom that we can get a sure estimate of a thing by arriving at a general average of all the opinions ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... we shall see, the avowed axiom of Strauss; he even acknowledges, that if it be not true, he would not think it worth while to discredit the history of the Evangelists; that is, the history must be discredited, because he has resolved that a miracle is an ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... maid over to them. Thus, if the two old bachelors had not been kept asunder by the two political systems of which they each offered a living expression, their private rivalry would still have made them enemies. Epochs put their mark on men. These two individuals proved the truth of that axiom by the opposing historic tints that were visible in their faces, in their conversation, in their ideas, and in their clothes. One, abrupt, energetic, with loud, brusque manners, curt, rude speech, dark in tone, in hair, in ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... is lost in space, So nothing spiritual can man efface; Exemplifying thus the axiom sure, That conquering love, truth, justice ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... morning I slept late, until past seven in fact. It had ever been an axiom with us that the indolence attributed to the "artistic temperament" was a foolish tradition. Creative power undoubtedly comes late in the day and in the still night-watches; often I had planned a whole book while in bed; but there are many things to do in ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... Doctor, testily. "The origin of the muscle, or place where it arises, is the first thing to be described. The use comes afterwards. It is an axiom of ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... sweeping exemplification of the axiom last alluded to, as to parallel changes, is Comte's so-called law of the three states of civilisation. Under this law, he asserts, the whole historical evolution can be summed up. It is as certain as the law of gravitation. Everything in human society ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... have had a divine book-revelation to tell him that a divine book-revelation was impossible. Great as is my admiration of Mr. Newman, I should, myself, have preferred having God's word for it. However, let us lay it down as an axiom that a human book-revelation, showing you that 'a divine book-revelation is impossible,' is not impossible; and really, considering the almost universal error of man on this subject,—now happily exploded,—the book-revelation which convinces man of ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... had caught pilfering, and it was said that she had starved him to death amid the plunder he had gathered, and had afterwards had his body flung without burial into the river. Whether there was more than rumour in such a gruesome tale none could now say, but it had long become an acknowledged axiom that Lady Scrope's goods had ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... '"It was an axiom with Menabrea, with Nigra, with Corti, that Italy and England herself could do nothing in the Mediterranean without France, still less do anything against France. The last conversation of Corti with Crispi shows ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... nothing away. The newspaper placards announced what seemed to be equivalent to the end of the existing social order; but Frinton apparently did not blench nor tremble; it went calmly and powerfully forward into the day (which was Saturday), relying upon the great British axiom: "To ignore is to destroy." It ignored the end of the existing social order, and lo! there was no end. Up and down various long and infinitely correct avenues of sheltered homes drove Mr. Prohack, and was everywhere baffled in his human desire to meet Frinton half-way. He stopped the car at ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... friends, and with nearly all the newspapers that I see; but the Morning Chronicle and the Daily News, of which I have only seen one article for a long time back, appeared to be maintaining what I hold. That we ought to be strictly neutral (not armed and threatening neutrals) seems to be an axiom; but at the same time I look at the crisis with much hope and little or no fear. To declaim against L. N.'s treachery is only a way of playing into the wrong hands, i.e. supporting Austria. He has pledged himself ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... listened to the trite axiom with the respect due one who has met and grappled successfully with his one great chance. His well-fed appearance, his genial, contented smile, gave an impression of prosperity even when his linen was frayed and his elbows glossy; now in the latest achievement ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... (1596-1650) elaborated his system of philosophy, in creating a new method of philosophizing. The leading peculiarity of his system was the attempt to deduce all moral and religious truth from self- consciousness. I think, therefore I am, was the famous axiom on which the whole was built. From this he inferred the existence of two distinct natures in man, the mental and the physical, and the existence of certain ideas which he called innate in the mind, and serving to ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... been only the product of the evil days when "judgment had fled to brutish beasts, and men had lost their reason." Possibly at no time or place in our history has there been more emphatic verification of the axiom, "In the midst of ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... philosophy, and after it begins to dawn on the thinking mind how utterly irreconcilable they are, the absolute impossibility of a consistent evolutionist believing in an inspired, inerrant, and infallible Bible becomes well nigh an axiom. It is no wonder that Dr. W. B. ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant
... axiom" of philosophy. That we may distinctly comprehend its meaning, and understand its bearing on the subject under discussion, we must ascertain the sense in which he uses the words "phenomenal" and "relative." The importance of an exact ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... application of this principle, and tries to prove geometrically the dogmas defined in the Creed. This bold attempt is entirely factitious and verbal, and it is only his employment of various terms not generally used in such a connexion (axiom, theorem, corollary, etc.) that gives his treatise its apparent originality. Alain de Lille has often been confounded with other persons named Alain, in particular with Alain, archbishop of Auxerre, Alan, abbot of Tewkesbury, Alain de Podio, etc. Certain ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... should be. The first principle, on which the theory of a science of history can be plausibly argued, is that all actions whatsoever arise from self-interest. It may be enlightened self-interest, it may be unenlightened; but it is assumed as an axiom that every man, in whatever he does, is aiming at something which he considers will promote his happiness. His conduct is not determined by his will; it is determined by the object of his desire. Adam Smith, in laying the foundations of political economy, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... into possession of her own soul. She claims the toga virilis, and all the strengthening burdens of freedom. Now it is difficult to represent such a demand in terms of argument. Liberty is no mere conclusion of linked logic long-drawn out: it is an axiom, a flaming avatar. The arguments by which it is defended are important, but they bear to it much the same relation that a table of the wave-lengths of various rays of light bears to the immediate glory of a sunrise. There is another obstacle. Self-government, like other spiritual realities, say ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... "An axiom," said I, "not to be disputed; but now that we are safe, and have time to think about it, are you not slightly of opinion that we behaved somewhat scurvily to our better half, in leaving it so quietly in ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which he claims that the Jugo-Slavs of the Balkans, his countrymen, are about half Celtic; the product of the fusion of Slavic in-comers, perhaps conquerors, with an original Celtic population. Bohemia was once the land of the Celtic Boii; and we may take it as an axiom, that no conquest, no racial incursion, ever succeeds in wiping out the conquered people; unless there is such wide disparity, racial and cultural, as existed, for example, between the white settlers ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... "confessedly the ablest man of business in the House of Commons." The Governors of the Bank of England, very efficient men certainly, held it a great point in the minister's favor that they "could never do business with any man with the same ease they had done it with him." Undoubtedly the first axiom of business is that one's accounts should be kept straight, one's books nicely balanced; the second, that one's assets should exceed one's liabilities. Mr. Grenville, accordingly, "had studied the revenues with professional assiduity, and something of professional ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... this view, the natural classification would eventually be found to stand upon a basis of physiology. Therefore all the systems of classification up to the earlier part of the present century went upon the apparent axiom, that characters which are of most importance to the organisms presenting them must be characters most indicative of natural affinities. But the truth of the matter was eventually found to be otherwise. ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... his demonstration, he winds round it and round it, adding proof to proof, but never escaping the same vicious circle: substance exists because it exists, and the ultimate experience of existence, so far from being of that clear kind which can be accepted as an axiom, is the most confused of all our sensations. What is existence? and what is that something which we say exists? Things—essences— existences; these are but the vague names with which faculties, constructed only to deal with conditional phenomena, disguise their incapacity. The world ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... soul because he began with the belief that he could reach it. English jurists had said that the deaf-blind were idiots in the eyes of the law. Behold what the optimist does. He controverts a hard legal axiom; he looks behind the dull impassive clay and sees a human soul in bondage, and quietly, resolutely sets about its deliverance. His efforts are victorious. He creates intelligence out of idiocy and proves to the law that the deaf-blind man ...
— Optimism - An Essay • Helen Keller
... is the result of the consultations of the most eminent Russian generals. They also have studied Macchiavelli, and found that significant axiom, 'He who knows how to resist will conquer in the end.' The Russians, therefore, will resist, ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... passion, forms the groundwork of the drama. Now, admitting the axiom of Rochefoucauld, that there is but one love, though a thousand different copies, yet the true sentiment itself has as many different aspects as the human soul of which it forms a part. It is not only modified by the individual ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... to this new life-phenomenon, to keep it happy and prosperous and she cared not how plain this might become to them —she feared not to taunt and humiliate them. And they accepted her sentence meekly, they no longer tried to oppose her. Her will was become an axiom which they never disputed, which they never even discussed. No matter what might happen to them in future, the ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... supremacy to the English Legislature were unnecessary, as it is an axiom of constitutional law that a sovereign Legislature, such as the Queen and two Houses of Parliament in England, cannot bind their successors, and consequently can repeal or alter any law, however fundamental, and annul any restrictions ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... wine in old bottles, daughter," he said sadly, as he glanced down into the valley. The car was running smoothly, slowly and noiselessly around a sharp curve, and the Reverend Mr. Goodloe both heard and answered the sad axiom. ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... each judge for himself. A tolerably long digression of this kind will seem all too short; and ninety out of every hundred readers shall seize with avidity upon details that possess all the piquancy of novelty, thus establishing yet once again the trust of the well-known axiom, that there is nothing so little known as that which everybody is supposed to know—the Law of the ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... did not, it is true, aim at any fanciful ideal, or adopt any fantastic shibboleths. He was only a utilitarian. He believed in no inspiration but that of experience. He had no other creed or dogma or gospel than Bentham's axiom,—"The greatest happiness of the greatest number." But many will think that herein was the chief of all his claims to the honor of all men, and the best evidence of his worth. At any rate, he set a notable example of the way in which a man, making the best use in his power of merely ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... old man's faggot, in the bond. For the harmony of a science, supporting each part the other, is and ought to be the true and brief confutation and suppression of all the smaller sort of objections. But, on the other side, if you take out every axiom, as the sticks of the faggot, one by one, you may quarrel with them and bend them and break them at your pleasure: so that, as was said of Seneca, Verborum minutiis rerum frangit pondera, so a man may truly say of the schoolmen, Quaestionum minutiis scientiarum frangunt soliditatem. ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... gather in cities demands the upbuilding influences of trips into the open in order to equip the child mentally and physically to face the world and its work with the strength and tenacity characteristic of the country-bred. Moreover, the study of objects rather than books is an axiom in modern education and here, too, we can readily see that the best way to study trees is to take the pupil to the trees. Such studies are more lasting than book study because they emphasize the spirit and the goal rather ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... discharged. By securing this judgment Granville Sharp effectually abolished the Slave Trade until then carried on openly in the streets of Liverpool and London. But he also firmly established the glorious axiom, that as soon as any slave sets his foot on English ground, that moment he becomes free; and there can be no doubt that this great decision of Lord Mansfield was mainly owing to Mr. Sharp's firm, resolute, and ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... this head by mentioning two examples among others which he brings to explain the better what he means by his first philosophy. The first is this axiom, "If to unequals you add equals, all will be unequal." This, he says, is an axiom of justice as well as of mathematics; and he asks whether there is not a true coincidence between commutative and distributive justice, and arithmetical and geometrical proportion. But I ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... instincts of the poor. But among the fragments of advice also occurs the following suggestive and even alluring remark: "Every man over forty is a scoundrel." On the first personal opportunity I asked the author of this remarkable axiom what it meant. I gathered that what it really meant was something like this: that every man over forty had been all the essential use that he was likely to be, and was therefore in a manner a parasite. It is gratifying to reflect that Bernard Shaw has sufficiently ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... their commercial intercourse. They trade with the Indians, with the fur companies, the whalers and among themselves across Bering straits. Many of them are veritable Shylocks, having a through comprehension of the axiom in political economy regarding the regulation of the price of ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... examining glance. They were not Shawnees or Miamis, but certain features of paint and dress showed him that they were Wyandots, a small tribe, but the bravest that white men ever faced on the North American Continent. It became an axiom in the Ohio Valley that a Wyandot might be killed in battle, but he could not be taken prisoner. Thirteen Wyandot chiefs were in the allied Indian army that was beaten by Wayne at the Fallen Timbers; the bodies of twelve ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... axiom of human nature that the greatest men do not find it necessary or possible to talk about their own greatness. They are so busy that they have never had much time to think about it. And so it is with the best magazines, and with the best short stories. The man ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... point, he first frames these examples: "The men who are here, the man who is here; the cocks that crow, the cock that crows;" and then asks, "Now, if the relative be the nominative, why do the verbs change, seeing that here is no change in the relative?" He seems ignorant of the axiom, that two things severally equal to a third, are also equal to each other: and accordingly, to answer his own question, resorts to a new principle: "The verb is continually varying. Why does it vary? Because it disregards the relative and goes and finds the antecedent, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... his body, freed from external pressure, would burst him like a shell, or like a balloon that suddenly rises to too great a height in the air! A scaphander would have been a fatal gift. Don't regret its absence, friend Michael; never forget this axiom: As long as we are floating in empty space, the only spot where safety is possible is inside ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... consumption of the whole. At first, indeed, he ferreted for the parliament, but since he hath got off his cope he set up for himself. He lives upon the sins of the people, and that is a good standing dish too. He verifies the axiom, lisdem nutritur ex quibus componitur; his diet is suitable to his constitution. I have wondered often why the plundered countrymen should repair to him for succour, certainly it is under the same notion, as one whose pockets are picked goes to Moll Cutpurse, ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... to attack the rooms of one with whom he is not in the habit of intimacy. From ignorance of this axiom I had near got a horse-whipping, and was kicked down stairs for going to a wrong oak, whose tenant was not in the habit of taking jokes of this kind.—The ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... we rightly assert that a form of imaginative life is clearly pathologic? In my opinion, the answer must be sought in the nature and degree of belief accompanying the labor of creating. It is an axiom unchallenged by anyone—whether idealist or realist of any shade of belief—that nothing has existence for us save through the consciousness we have of it; but for realism—and experimental psychology ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... scale is set for the most distant of land views, beach scenes and boats in the middle distance off-shore. You will learn by costly overexposures that water views require much less light than landscapes. Photographers have an axiom that "water is as bright as the sky itself." So at "64," which is proper exposure for the most distant of land panoramas, you begin ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... one to leave Cortina, there are several ways of departure. We selected the main highway for our trunks, but for ourselves the Pass of the Three Crosses; the Deacon and the Deaconess in a mountain waggon, and I on foot. It should be written as an axiom in the philosophy of travel that the easiest way is best for your luggage, and the hardest ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... ah, yes!" the Cardinal resumed with increasing passion. "He told you, no doubt, as he tells others, that whilst in substance he will make no surrender, he will readily yield in matters of form! It's a deplorable axiom, an equivocal form of diplomacy even when it isn't so much low hypocrisy! My soul revolts at the thought of that Opportunism, that Jesuitism which makes artifice its weapon, and only serves to cast doubt among true believers, the confusion of a ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... theories of the universe are also divergent. According to the Bible the outer world is the creation, by God, out of nothing. To the Brahman of all times the idea of pure creation has seemed absurd. Ex nihilo nihil fit is an axiom of all their philosophies. Whether it be the Vedantin who tells us that the material universe is the result of Brahm invested with illusion, or the Sankya philosopher who attributes it to prakriti—the power of nature; or the Veisashika sage who traces it to eternal atoms; ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... a horse might beget a calf or a sow have a litter of puppies, which is never the case,—for in all time we find repeated in the offspring the structure, the instincts and all the general characteristics of the parents, and never those of another species. Such is the law of nature and hence the axiom that "like produces like." But while experience teaches the constancy of hereditary transmission, it teaches just as plainly that the constancy is not absolute and perfect, and this introduces us to another ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... matter she did not understand. "Madam," said the moralist, "before expressing your opinion, you should consider what your opinion is worth." But this shaft would have glanced harmlessly from off the panoply of the stupid and self-complacent old lady of whom I am thinking. It was a fundamental axiom with her that her opinion was entirely infallible. Some people would feel as though the very world were crumbling away under their feet, if they realized the fact ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... other races; indeed, for centuries they were distinct rather for their weakness in multiplying power and number. Many other races have exceeded them in this particular. But no sooner do we come abreast of the latter day time than we find the laws of centuries changed. In thermal science it is an axiom that heat expands all bodies, and of course that cold contracts them. But to this general rule there is one beautiful and benevolent exception: it is in water; for if we start with water at thirty-two degrees, we find the remarkable phenomenon of ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... in some way, and gave ourselves up. For the nonce, however, three weeks would pass, and with them all our woes. The idea of eighteen weeks occurred to nobody; it would have been too farcical, too puerile. That starvation must have killed us long ere the period had fled, would have been our axiom, if it were pertinent to the issue, when the 'pros' and 'cons' of the situation were being eagerly discussed on the opening days of a Siege that was to send the fame of the Diamond City farther than ever did its diamonds. A few weeks would terminate the trouble; and if, in the interim, ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... now; but the enormous development of various sciences and the wide spread of popular 'knowledge' had, in the first flush, distracted attention from that which is now, in all civilized countries, simply an axiom of thought, viz., that a Revelation of God must be embodied in a living authority safeguarded by God. Further, at that time science and exact knowledge generally had not reached the point which they reached a little later—of corroborating in particular ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... spiritual people that the world has ever known. Both Socrates and Jesus believed in God, and both have taught the world, with no uncertain sound, of their faith in immortal life. The latter was clearly an axiom with Jesus, for He said to His disciples in effect, "If there had been any question about it I would have told you;" and almost with his last breath Socrates compelled his disciples to think of him as immortal, for he told them that, though his body might be buried anywhere, he defied both ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... ground is not to fly, my little chevalier," replied the captain; "it is an axiom of the art which I advise you to consider; besides, I am not sorry to study your play. Ah! you are a pupil of Berthelot, apparently; he is a good master, but he has one great fault: it is not teaching to parry. ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... axiom that there is but one great principle of love; but then it assumes various phases, according to the thousands of circumstances under which it is exhibited, and which, to speak in the language of philosophy, it would be impossible to synthetise. Time, place, age, the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... the crown by right of birth, assumed the insignia of royalty on the death of his father, and claimed to be acknowledged as monarch. But Mebodes, the Grand Vizier, interposed with the assertion of a constitutional axiom, that no one had the right of taking the Persian crown until it was assigned to him by the assembly of the nobles. Kaoses, who thought he might count on the goodwill of the nobles, acquiesced; and the assembly being convened, his claims were submitted to it. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... MEMBER FOR SARK, in pursuance of his favourite axiom that there is nothing new under the sun, calls attention to two conversations in which he discovers singularly close parallel in tone and temper. The first will be found in official report of Parliamentary debate. It took ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... Christianity, slavery was an established institution in all countries.[478] Some pagan philosophers, like Seneca, maintained that all men are by nature free and equal, still by the law of nations slavery was upheld in all lands; and it was an axiom among the ruling classes, that "the human race exists for the sake of the few." Aristotle held that no perfect household could exist without slaves and freemen and that the natural law, as well as the law of nations, makes a distinction between bond and free.[479] Plato ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... with this little axiom and passed a whole week in delight, grouping around this harmless epigram the crowd of ideas which came to him unconsciously and which he was astonished to find that he possessed. His humorous mood yielded ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... to one's temper never helps in a contest of strength or skill. Agnes herself was trying to prove that axiom; but Trix had never tried ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... standpoint of military law should be referred to in Herr Zimmermann's defense. In the official textbook of the General Staff of the German Army the definite policy of terrorizing a conquered country is proclaimed as a military theory. Its leading axiom is that ...
— The Case of Edith Cavell - A Study of the Rights of Non-Combatants • James M. Beck
... have heard. He is starting on a pilgrimage of manhood toward God. He saw the bishop; now he sees God, and here is hope; for so is God the secret of all good and worth, a thing to be set down as the axiom of religion and life. A conscience long dormant is now become regnant. Jean Valjean is ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... come at the vacancy of the Imperial throne. Ferdinand of Aragon was dead, and Naples passed to the King of undivided Spain. It was the unswerving policy of Rome that it should not be united with the Empire, and against that fixed axiom the strongest dynasty of emperors went to pieces. The Reformation had just begun in Germany, and Leo wished one of the Northern Electors to be chosen as Maximilian's successor. In conformity with the political situation, he would have preferred Frederic of Saxony, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... his mind a legitimate wish to be there, and so might do him a very special and peculiar injury. In fact, gentlemen, it has been doubted whether this grave offence of obstruction is not always being committed by everybody, as a corollary to the well- known axiom in physics that two bodies cannot occupy the same space at one and the same time. So much, gentlemen, for the lesser accusation. As to the far more serious one, I scarcely know in what words to impress upon you the gravity of the accusation. ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... the shadow of my finger. I concede that talent is not necessary to usefulness, and a woman may fulfill every duty of her station without it. But our question is of comparative usefulness; and there I have something to say. It is an axiom that knowledge is power; and, if it is, the greater the knowledge, the greater should be the power of doing good. To men, superior intelligence gives power to dispose, control, and govern the fortunes of others. To women, it gives influence over their minds. The greater knowledge ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... appeared in your paper some days ago, {164} in which it is stated that, in the course of some remarks addressed to the Playgoers' Club on the occasion of my taking the chair at their last meeting, I laid it down as an axiom that the stage is only 'a frame furnished with a set ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... comprehend, aware that he had no wound of the trunk. His useless arms made all effort vain, and the left foot under the weight of the horse began to feel numb. The position struck him as past help until our people charged. He thought of Francis's axiom that there was nothing so entirely tragic as to be without some marginalia of humour. The lad smiled at his use of the word. His own situation appealed to him as ridiculous—a man with a horse on him waiting for an ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... should be allowed to stand in the way of it! The senior partner of Hatch & Buckley had been quick to note this condition of mind and to reap the profits that came therefrom. Monomania means money, was a business axiom in that gentleman's office, but he had pumped the stream dry and Von Barwig was now at the end of his resources. By some strange process of thought, Von Barwig recognised this fact, but it seemed to him to mean that because his money had come to an end his search had ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... ourselves holding an intermediate position between true First Cause, on the one hand, and the world of secondary causes on the other, and in order to understand the nature of this position, we must fall back on the axiom that the Universal can only work on the plane of the Particular through the individual. Then we see that the function of the individual is to DIFFERENTIATE the undistributed flow of the Universal into suitable directions for starting ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... more important than the individual. But there is nothing gained by thinking in this way, except a very illusory kind of pleasure; since it is impossible that the folk should ever be a poet. This indisputable axiom has been ignored more in theories about ballads—about epic material—than in theories about the epics themselves. But the belief in a real folk-origin for ballads, untenable though it be in a little ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... Geoffrey would gladly have laid his honours down in payment for one year of her dear and unforgotten presence. She was too unselfish; she did not think that a man could thus prize a woman's love, and took it for an axiom that to succeed in life was his one real object—a thing to which so divine a gift as she had given Geoffrey is as nothing. It was therefore this Juggernaut of her lover's career that Beatrice would cast down her life, little knowing that thereby she must turn the worldly and temporal success, ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... old axiom in war, that when the personnel of armies is equal, victory is apt to rest with numbers. In the West, the United States not only had the numbers in their favor, but they were better equipped in every way; and the only ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... in us. "Conduct," he said once, "is the outcome of selfishness limited by self-conceit." It was his way so to put things as to strip them of friendly, decent covering; had he said self-interest limited by self-respect, the axiom would have been more accepted and less quoted. A superficial person used to exclaim to me, "And yet he is so kind!" A man without ideals finds kindness the easiest thing in the world. In truth he was kind, and ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... such dynamical elements of Christianity. The doctrine of the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection was put before the world by Darwin in 1859, and within the half century has been accepted almost as an axiom by the whole civilised world. Undoubtedly that doctrine has proved itself dynamical. On the other hand, a few years earlier than the publication of The Origin of Species, another body of new doctrine was propounded to Britain and the world, and strongly urged by its upholders, namely, the doctrine ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... The fundamental problem is whether a thing which is by hypothesis infinite can in any sense be defined, and if it is not defined, whether it can be said to be cognized or thought. It would appear to be almost an axiom that anything which by hypothesis transcends the intellect (i.e. by including subject and object, knowing and known) is ipso facto beyond the limits of the knower. Only an Absolute can cognize ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... was this morality and proverbial wisdom, and although this last axiom was very characteristic of my friend Hop Sing, who was that most sombre of all humorists, a Chinese philosopher, I must confess, that, even after a very free translation, I was at a loss to make any ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... the whole matter to a conclusion. It may be taken as a safe axiom that to make gold mining in the mine as distinct from mining on the Stock Exchange really profitable the same system of economy, of practical supervision, and scientific knowledge which is now adopted in all other businesses must be applied ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... we may assume it as an axiom with regard to actions acquired after birth, that we never do them automatically save as the result of long practice, and after having thus acquired perfect mastery over ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... sure,' interposed the horse-dealer, with whose notions of bargain and sale the axiom perfectly coincided, 'so should I.' The young gentleman, who had given rise to these observations, was on the point of offering a rather angry reply to these sneers, but the rising of the young man before noticed, and of the female who ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... 1770 he published a political pamphlet, entitled The False Alarm[325], intended to justify the conduct of ministry and their majority in the House of Commons, for having virtually assumed it as an axiom, that the expulsion of a Member of Parliament was equivalent to exclusion, and thus having declared Colonel Lutterel to be duly elected for the county of Middlesex, notwithstanding Mr. Wilkes had a great majority of votes[326]. This being justly considered ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... strange, that intelligent and learned men, should be compelled to rely on such puerilities, as arguments and truly supporting such tremendous conclusions? But they say it was his name in conjunction with the curse, that made him and his descendants the negro we now find on earth. It is an axiom in logic, that, that which is not in the constituent, can not be in the constituted. We have seen, that the making of Ham a negro, is not in the name, which is one of the constituents, now let us see, if it is in the other constituent, the curse. ...
— The Negro: what is His Ethnological Status? 2nd Ed. • Buckner H. 'Ariel' Payne
... knew The sunny street that holds the sifted few. It can't be helped, though, if we're taken young, We gain some freedom of the lips and tongue; But school and college often try in vain To break the padlock of our boyhood's chain One stubborn word will prove this axiom true,— No quondam rustic ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of all the problems that were connected with such pseudo-propositions. All the problems that Russell's 'axiom of infinity' brings with it can be solved at this point. What the axiom of infinity is intended to say would express itself in language through the existence of infinitely many ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein |
