"Certitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... contradict, yet neither could it adequately prove the mysteries of faith, except on premisses visible only to him who receives Revelation as a fact; that it is the moral state, rather than the intellectual, to which the Spirit of God speaks with the greater certitude. That which he had both learned and taught he now knew, that Faith, having, like man himself, a body and a spirit—an historical expression and an inner verity—speaks now by one, now by another. This man believes because ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... righteous justified without love; all Christians without the grace of Jesus Christ; God without power over the will of men; a predestination without mystery; a redemption without certitude! ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... much influenced by Butler. Both of them, after a fashion, accept Butler's famous saying that 'probability is the guide of life.' Newman, believing in the necessity of dogma, holds that we are justified in transmuting the belief corresponding to probability into such 'certitude' as corresponds to demonstration. He does so by the help of appeals to our conscience, which, for the reasons just given, fail to have any force for his opponent. Fitzjames adhered steadily to Butler's doctrine. There is, he says, a probability ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... dynamics of society, is more the prophet than you. The carpenter at his bench, the blacksmith by his forge, the boiler-maker clanging and clattering, are all warbling more sweetly than you. The sledge-wielder pours out more strength and certitude and joy in every blow than do you in your whole sheaf of songs. Why, the very socialist agitator, hustled by the police on a street corner amid the jeers of the mob, has caught the romance of to-day as you have not caught it and where you have missed it. He knows ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... unscientific view. For religious liberty is composed of the properties both of religion and of liberty, and one of its factors never became an object of disinterested observation among actual leaders of opinion. They preferred the argument of doubt to the argument of certitude, and sought to defeat intolerance by casting out revelation as they had defeated the persecution of witches by casting out the devil. There remained a flaw in their liberalism, for liberty apart from belief is liberty with a good deal of the substance ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... certainty; necessity &c. 601; certitude, surety, assurance; dead certainty, moral certainty; infallibleness &c. adj.; infallibility, reliability; indubitableness, inevitableness, unquestionableness[obs3]. gospel, scripture, church, pope, court of final appeal; res judicata[Lat], ultimatum ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... examine this matter, just to see what certitude there can be on this point; and I shall divide this Dissertation into four parts. In the first, I shall speak of good angels; in the second, of the appearance of bad angels; in the third, of the apparitions of souls of the dead; and in the fourth, of the appearance ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... spot of blood on his neckerchief, questioned him closely. The coward fumbling at an answer, she was presently convinced of his guilt, and forthwith denounced him for a member of the gang to M. Pacome, an officer of the Guard. Straightly did M. Pacome summon Du Chtelet, and, assuming his guilt for certitude, bade him surrender his captain. 'My friend,' said he, 'I know you for an associate of Cartouche. Your hands are soiled with murder and rapine. Confess the hiding-place of Cartouche, or in twenty-four hours you are broken on the wheel.' Vainly did Du Chatelet protest ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... "some have felt are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme power has fashioned the natures of women." But as there is not "one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of woman cannot be treated with scientific certitude." It is treated with a dissective delineation in the women of George Eliot unequalled in ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... faltered, spoke to me. Was I, it asked, true son of Mother Church? Coldly I answer'd 'Ay;' then blessed words That danced into mine ears more excellent Music than wedding bells had been were said, With certitude that I might see my maid, My dear one. He would give a paper, he The man beside me. 'Do thy best endeavour, Dear youth. Thy maiden being a right sweet child Surely will hearken to thee; an she do, And will recant, fair faultless heretic, Whose knowledge ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... it shall not die for lack of material aid, estimating beyond all money and all price the lives and health of the brave men now in the field for the defence of the country, and grateful that they may repose in the certitude that every cent contributed will be used in the surest manner to effect the results required. To aid in sustaining this beneficent institution, New York is about to inaugurate a great Metropolitan Fair. She asks in the sacred name ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... time his family thought it likely that David would never reappear; and the eldest son, who had the charge of Jacob on his hands, often thought it a little hard that David might perhaps be dead, and yet, for want of certitude on that point, his legacy could not fall to his legal heir. But in this state of things the opposite certitude—namely, that David was still alive and in England—seemed to be brought by the testimony of a neighbour, who, having been on a journey to Cattelton, was pretty sure he had seen ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... them without my knowledge? These are questions which I cannot answer." He cannot answer a question on which the value of his whole system of physical philosophy depends; uncertain about his own identity, about the evidence of his senses, he would make the latter the sole rule and measure of certitude, and deny to man any higher faculty by which alone he can justify his trust in his cognitive faculties. Another instance of his absolute ignorance of common philosophic terminology is when he asserts ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... roots. Moral law dominates man, whether he respects or defies it. See how it is in every-day life: each one is ready to cast his stone at him who neglects a plain duty, even if he allege that he has not yet arrived at philosophic certitude. Everybody will say to him, and with excellent reason: "Sir, we are men before everything. First play your part, do your duty as citizen, father, son; after that you shall return to ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... for the placing of heavy guns in concealed positions. In addition they perfected the mobility of even the heaviest of pieces, so that it became impossible for observation from the Franco-British ships or from aeroplanes to locate them with any certitude. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... options, 1. Pascal's wager, 5. Clifford's veto, 8. Psychological causes of belief, 9. Thesis of the Essay, 11. Empiricism and absolutism, 12. Objective certitude and its unattainability, 13. Two different sorts of risks in believing, 17. Some risk unavoidable, 19. Faith may bring forth its own verification, 22. Logical conditions of religious ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... of, and it particularly struck him that they were to be marked altogether in Waymarsh's quarter. This added to his own sense of having gone far with her-gave him an early illustration of a much shorter course. There was a certitude he immediately grasped—a conviction that Waymarsh would quite fail, as it were, and on whatever degree of acquaintances to profit ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... and more a matter of fine-spun gallantry. As I have already had occasion to relate, he was angry at finding himself reduced to chopping logic about this young lady; he was vexed at his want of instinctive certitude as to how far her eccentricities were generic, national, and how far they were personal. From either view of them he had somehow missed her, and now it was too late. She was ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... Bulgaria alone, owing to her commanding geographical position, might have achieved the feat more than once during the campaign. With the death of King Carol of Roumania[85] the probability of this consummation seemed to verge on certitude. It aroused high hopes ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... wealth, never giveth away nor enjoyeth himself from avarice, saying, he hath none.' The Yaksha asked,—'By what, O king, birth, behaviour, study, or learning doth a person become a Brahmana? Tell us with certitude!' Yudhishthira answered,—'Listen, O Yaksha! It is neither birth, nor study, nor learning, that is the cause of Brahmanahood, without doubt, it is behaviour that constitutes it. One's behaviour should always be well-guarded, especially by a Brahmana. He who maintaineth his conduct unimpaired, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... summed up in a few lines, demanded long years for their accomplishment. Despairing of completing them, I abandoned them more than once to return to those labours of the laboratory in which one is always sure of skirting the truth and of acquiring fragments at least of certitude. ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... A cold angry certitude formed in his being. What a criminal fool he had been! What a blind booby! His only remark, however, brought a puzzled expression to Ettie's troubled countenance. Calvin Stammark exclaimed, "Phebe Braley." He was silent for a little, his frowning gaze fixed ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... her babe, whom now Her father, seeking to depress her will, Withheld and would not send it; but at length Word being brought her that the child indeed No longer suffered, nor desired the breast, Her peace returned, and, giving thanks to God, All were united in new bonds of hope. Now being fixed in certitude of death, We stripped our souls of all their earthly gear, The useless raiment of this world; and thus, Striving together with a single will, In daily increment of faith and power, We were much comforted by heavenly dreams, And waking visitations of ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... her excursion into the country to see the old butler. Well—her letter is still lying there. It has not been called for. Ergo, this town is not his usual abode. Personally, I never thought it was. But he cannot fail to turn up some time or other. Our main hope lies just in the certitude that he must come to town sooner or later. Remember he doesn't know that the butler is dead, and he will want to inquire for a letter. Well, he'll find a note ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... scientific ideal. Man, Spinoza held, is a part of Nature, and Nature is governed by eternal and immutable laws. It must be just as possible, therefore, to apply the mathematical method to man, as it is to apply it to matter. It must be possible to determine, with the certitude obtainable in the exact sciences, what things are good for man and what means he has for ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... that parallel, startling as it may seem, is not a mere futile imagining. It is sustained and rendered plausible by a sound substratum of knowledge of the anatomical conditions under which the central nervous mechanism exists, and in default of which, as pathology demonstrates with no less certitude, its functionings are futile to produce the normal manifestations ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... brings night upon us may leave the stars with us. Cimourdain was full of virtues, full of truths, but they shone in the midst of darkness" (i. 123). If the aristocrat had rigidity, so had the Jacobin. "Cimourdain had the blind certitude of the arrow, which only sees the mark and makes for it. In revolution, nothing so formidable as the straight line. Cimourdain strode forward with fatality in his step. He believed that in social genesis the very extreme point must ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... discount. What, therefore, was the ancient philosopher to do? His reflections concerning the past must of necessity be partial; how much more would his anticipations of the future fail of anything like demonstrative certitude! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... do not ridicule two children who love each other with a passion which is true and pure, because it is founded upon a knowledge of each other's character; on the certitude of their mutual ardor in conquering the difficulties of life; in a word, of two children who will also cherish sincere affection ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... "I in the hope, belief, and certitude My wife to me was faithful evermore, Should with contempt the beauty have eschewed Of that famed daughter which fair Leda bore; And all the wit and wealth wherewith was wooed The illustrious shepherd upon Ida hoar. But no repulse ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... and turn about. Then, rested, refreshed and strong, he turned his face toward camp and John Thornton. He broke into the long easy lope, and went on, hour after hour, never at loss for the tangled way, heading straight home through strange country with a certitude of direction that put man and ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... thing before in peace ironworks, but I saw it again with the same astonishment, the absolute precision of movement on the part of the half-naked sweating men, the calculated efficiency of each worker, the apparent heedlessness, the real certitude, with which the blazing hot cylinder is put here, dropped there, rolls to its next appointed spot, is chopped up and handed on, the swift passage to the cooling crude, pinkish-purple shell shape. Down a long line one sees in perspective a practical symmetry, of furnace and machine group and ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... became aware, scarcely the word escaped my lips, that swift ensued in silence and by stealth, and yet with certitude, a formidable change of the amphitheatre which held the Carnival; although the human stir continued just the same amid that shift of ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... an indulgent fashion to add) the "subtlety" of Browning's mind too often led him into like excesses: I deny the subtlety here, for these clauses are so wholly uninteresting in thought that even as examples I shall not cite them. But their crowning distastefulness is in the certitude we feel that, whatever they had been, they never would have occurred to this lyrical child. The stanza without them is the stanza as Pippa felt it. . . . In the same way, the opening rhapsody on dawn which precedes her invocation ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... life sympathetically is of practical importance; for otherwise we shall not know how to change it or indeed that it ought to be changed at all. Only by knowing other ways of life can we be certain of the relative worth of our own way; knowledge alone gives certitude. Without knowledge we run the risk of becoming ruthless destroyers of things which an intelligent sympathy might well preserve and find a ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... conscious of those bleibende Verhaeltnisse, more and more capable of living in the whole; also that, in proportion as we gain a firmer hold upon our own place in the world, we shall come to comprehend with more instinctive certitude what is simple, natural, and honest, welcoming with gladness all artistic products that exhibit these qualities. The perception of the enlightened man will then be the taste of a healthy person who has made himself acquainted with the laws ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... humiliation, of exasperation, 'Oh, it's you! Why are you here? If I am so odious to you that you must write to my sister to say so, I give you back your word.' But then, don't you see, it could not have been that. I have the practical certitude that soon afterwards they went together in a hansom to see the ship—as agreed. That was my reason for saying that Flora de Barral ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... brief minute we saw the depth, the earnestness, the affection that in her seek so often the mask of frivolity, and I wouldn't be surprised if more than one tempest-tossed soul envied her peace, her love, her certitude. ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... free than live a slave. You can conceive my astonishment when I saw that toryism was as openly professed as whiggism itself: however, at that time I believed that all good Americans were united together; that the confidence of congress in you was unbounded. Then I entertained the certitude that America would be independent in case she should not lose you. Take away, for an instant, that modest diffidence of yourself, (which, pardon my freedom, my dear General, is sometimes too great, and I wish you could know, as well as myself, what difference there is between you and any other ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... by some magical metamorphosis turn these probabilities into a certainty? No; he simply claimed that they were sufficient to produce certitude, which is a different matter. Certitude, he held, was a quality or habit of mind; certainty, a quality of propositions; and probabilities that did not reach to logical certainty might suffice for a mental certitude. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... De Ente Supernaturali, disp. 30. Under these circumstances Suarez was justified in saying, in regard to the degree of certitude to be attributed to this teaching: "Si quis negaret gratiam sanctificantem esse habitum, licet esse temere dictum, non ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... deepest need of your heart. Nothing but the King's own sign-manual on the pardon makes it valid; and unless you and I can, somehow or other, come to close grips with God, and get into actual contact with Him, and hear, somehow, with infallible certitude, as from His own lips, the assurance of forgiveness, there is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... day wore along he came into valleys or swales where game was more plentiful. A band of caribou passed by, twenty and odd animals, tantalizingly within rifle range. He felt a wild desire to run after them, a certitude that he could run them down. A black fox came toward him, carrying a ptarmigan in his mouth. The man shouted. It was a fearful cry, but the fox, leaping away in fright, did not ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... very feeble control over the unruly affections of sinful men. Newman himself resorted to scientific methods in his theory of Development, that is, of the growth and evolution of doctrine. We may agree that these destructive arguments have much logical force, yet on the other hand such certitude as empiricism can provide brings little consolation to the multitude, who require some imperative command; they look for a pillar of cloud or fire to go before them day and night, and a land of promise in the distance. Scientific ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... hour, but the hour, and yet, though every room and corridor, the cellar and the garret, were searched, no token was found of the young wife's presence. Meanwhile the husband stood like a statue on the threshold, waiting with what seemed to me a strange certitude for the return of the ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... It seems that sacred doctrine is not nobler than other sciences; for the nobility of a science depends on the certitude it establishes. But other sciences, the principles of which cannot be doubted, seem to be more certain than sacred doctrine; for its principles—namely, articles of faith—can be doubted. Therefore other sciences seem ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... began to think. It was twenty-four hours since that man left his room. Razumov had a distinct feeling that Haldin in the fortress was sleeping that night. It was a certitude which made him angry because he did not want to think of Haldin, but he justified it to himself by physiological and psychological reasons. The fellow had hardly slept for weeks on his own confession, and now every incertitude was at an end for him. No doubt ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... confess, but because He has promised pardon to those who do confess; that is, not because of the worthiness or sufficiency of our confession (for there is no such worthiness or sufficiency), but because of the truth and certitude of His promise, as says the xxiv. Psalm: "For Thy Name's sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity." [Ps. 25:35] It does not say, "for my sake," or "for my worthiness' sake," or "for my name's sake," but ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... formal proof and without discussion. To act, we must believe; to believe, we must make up our minds, affirm, decide, and in reality prejudge the question. He who will only act upon a full scientific certitude is unfit for practical life. But we are made for action, and we cannot escape from duty. Let us not, then, condemn prejudice so long as we have nothing but doubt to put in its place, or laugh at those whom ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... little dramas, which in no way affected the tenderness of their hearts, these two beings adored each other with the presentiment and, gradually, the cruel certitude of an approaching separation, when suddenly there occurred in Felicia's life a horrible event. One day, Jenkins had taken her to dine at his house, as often happened. Mme. Jenkins was away on a couple of days' visit, as also her son; but the doctor's age, his semi-paternal intimacy, allowed ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... la sainte Eglise se croit investie du droit absolu d'enseigner les hommes; elle se croit depositaire de la verite, non pas de la verite fragmentaire, incomplete, melee de certitude et d'hesitation, mais de la verite totale, complete, au point de vue religieux. Bien plus, elle est si sure de l'infaillibilite que son Fondateur divin lui a communiquee, comme la dot magnifique de leur ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... meddle with it because it had come from abroad; the French passion for opposing, for struggling;—and beneath it all the large French indifference to the problem of evil (or whatever you like to call it), the changeless French content in certitude, upon which ease, indeed, as upon a rock, the Church of Gaul has permanently stood and ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... le Gouvernement de Sir R. Peel va s'affermir de plus en plus, ce que je ne puis que desirer pour le bien-etre du pays. Je dois cependant dire a votre Majeste que si le Ministere eut change, j'ai la certitude que le nouveau se serait empresse de maintenir, comme nous le desirons si vivement, cette entente cordiale si heureusement etablie entre ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... 'Tis to me A thunder storm in stone, with Sinai flare Across the Ages. 'Tis the Fiend's despair And the Arch-angel's Triumph. It sets free The mind and soul with certitude, Christ's key Which, like the Sun, opes Heaven—the Good and Fair. Still, oft, what darkness drowns the sun's noon glare Within the ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... of trial draws near I send you all my love. I can do no more. We are probably called upon to make such a sacrifice as forbids us to dwell upon our ties. Let us pray that the certitude of Goodness and Beauty may not fail ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... those who recognised the impossibility of accepting the varying voices of Intuition as a moral guide; to all those the theory that Morality was based on Utility, came as a welcome and rational relief. It promised a scientific certitude to moral precepts; it left the intellect free to inquire and to challenge; it threw man back on grounds which were found in this world alone, and could be tested by reason and experience; it derived no authority from antiquity, no sanction ...
— The Basis of Morality • Annie Besant
... delineate and enforce the practical duties of life. His great object was the elucidation of morals; and he was the first to teach ethics systematically from the immutable principles of moral obligation. Moral certitude was the lofty platform from which he surveyed the world, and upon which, as a rock, he rested in the storms of life. Thus he was a reformer and a moralist. It was his ethical doctrines which were most antagonistic to the age and the least appreciated. He was a profoundly religious ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... in man, in goodness, as against the pessimist outlook of the day, Gilbert, as we have seen, felt profound certitude. That his outlook was one that held him back from many fields of opportunity he was already partly conscious. A fragment of a letter ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... whose silence on this point cannot be pressed as conclusive. It is, indeed, unlikely that Jesus knew all that medical men now know. But awareness of any fact may be in varying degrees from serious suspicion up to positive certitude. While far from positiveness, awareness may exist in a degree that gives courage for resolute effort resulting in clear and full verification. Jesus may have been ignorant of the objective reality of Lazarus's condition, ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... new attitudes, new excursions and discoveries. They would part with a certain understanding, but they never knew with what view they would meet in the morning. They were swung from one extreme to the other, from certitude to doubt, from joy to dismay and despair. And so, day after day they would sit and talk, for uncounted hours. Corydon would come to the little cabin, or Thyrsis would come to the village, and they would wander about the roads or the woods, forgetting their meals, ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... perceptible movement that I was aware of, Mrs. Jones advertised her certitude of knowledge of what ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... are other texts I could put my finger on. No, there is no use in talking, the partisans of the glorious kingdom are supported with certitude by inspired passages, and can, under certain conditions and without fear of heresy, uphold this doctrine, which, Saint Jerome attests, was in the fourth century a dogma of faith recognized by ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... a hasty toilet with a handful of snow, the party set off shortly before sunrise. Ralph by general consent assumed the leadership. Taking careful soundings with his ice-axe and using his crampons with almost uncanny certitude, he guided his companions through a moraine and debouched on to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... they drove the dogs from the shelter of the rock into the teeth of the storm. Then, turning, they fled south before the gale with what certitude they might. They had nothing to guide them, neither stars nor brilliant aurora, and they struggled along the heavy trail only by their memories of it, and the exercise of every particle of ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... however, are multiplying that this condition of things in the coffee industry has passed, and that the practise of telling the coffee story with certitude will soon become general. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... you are a Christian you ought not only thus to be realising daily, with increasing certitude and power, the fact of His love, but you ought to be drinking in and deriving more and more every day of the consequences of that love, of the spiritual gifts of which His hands are full. There is open for each of us in Him an inexhaustible ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... faith, and science. For it is essential to opinion that we assent to one of two opposite assertions with fear of the other, so that our adhesion is not firm: to science it is essential to have firm adhesion with intellectual vision, for science possesses certitude which results from the understanding of principles: while faith holds a middle place, for it surpasses opinion in so far as its adhesion is firm, but falls short of science in so ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... of the last Balkan War in 1912. Is it possible today, from a six years' perspective, to establish with any degree of certitude the reasons for its outbreak and determine without hesitation the responsibility for it? Can you affirm with any degree of certainty that a court composed of American, European and Asiatic jurists would be unanimous in condemning ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... his primitive and confiding belief in the testimony of the senses, is beginning to be left out in the cold, when men like Sir W. R. Grove turn round on him and tell him that "the principle of all certitude" is not and cannot be the testimony of his own senses; that these senses, indeed, are no absolute tests of phenomena at all; that probably man is surrounded by beings he can neither see, feel, hear, nor smell; and ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... wholesome respect for them. Not so the rest of the crew of the Snark. In their case, seeing was not believing. One and all, they had seen my dreadful predicament; and all of them, I am convinced, had a subconscious certitude that their own superb constitutions and glorious personalities would never allow lodgment of so vile a poison in their carcasses as my anaemic constitution and mediocre personality had allowed to lodge in mine. At Port Resolution, in the ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... puisque des opinions formees d'apres l'experience ... sont la seule regle de la conduite des hommes les plus sages, pourquoi interdirait-on au philosophe d'appuyer ses conjectures sur cette meme base, pourvu qu'il ne leur attribue pas une certitude superieure a celle qui peut naitre du nombre, de la constance, de l'exactitude des observations?"—CONDORCET, Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique des Progres de ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... be said to yield to the white in this respect, he lacks obviously that mental quick-sightedness which, with the latter, defines, as it were, intuitively, the exact location on the field, of a friend, and, with unerring certitude, calculates the degree of force that shall be needed to propel the ball, and the precise direction its flight shall take, in order to insure its reposing on the net of that friend. In the frequently recurring mlees, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... he delayed everything until the doubtful part could be replaced. Wilkinson, his senior assistant, fumed at some of these delays, which, he insisted, were for the most part unnecessary. Banghurst magnified the patient certitude of Filmer in the New Paper, and reviled it bitterly to his wife, and MacAndrew, the second assistant, approved Filmer's wisdom. "We're not wanting a fiasco, man," said MacAndrew. ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... but not for the man of business, if you mean me! But my countess shall not be disappointed; I answer for her happiness!" And as if he felt the impulse to celebrate his happy certitude by a bonfire, he got up to throw a couple of logs upon the already blazing hearth. Valentin watched for a few moments the quickened flame, and then, with his head leaning on his hand, gave a melancholy sigh. "Got a ...
— The American • Henry James
... let us return to the stand-point taken up by the North-Netherlanders who first set sail for the Indies in 1595. They "knew in part" only: they were aware that they knew nothing with certitude. But their mercantile interests very soon induced them to try to increase and strengthen their information concerning the regions of the East. What sort of country after all was this much-discussed New-Guinea, they began to ask. As early as 1602 information was sought from the ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... first everything springs into life."[20] But "experience" with him does not mean enthusiastic visions and raptures. He puts as little value on ecstasies and emotional vapourings as he does on dialectic. Ecstasies lead men as often on false trails as on right tracks. They supply no criterion of certitude; they furnish no concrete ideas or ideals to live by; but still further, they do not bring all the deep-lying powers of the soul into play as any true source of religion must do. He is striving to find a foundation-principle for the spiritual life which shall not be capricious or sporadic, ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... a siccity of devotion as we see in these days, we have a thousand and a thousand colleges that pass it over commodiously enough, expecting every day their dinner from the liberality of Heaven. Secondly, they do not take notice that this certitude upon which they so much rely is not much less uncertain and hazardous than hazard itself. I see misery as near beyond two thousand crowns a year as if it stood close by me; for besides that it is in the power of chance to make a hundred breaches to poverty through the greatest strength ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... slightest control, seemed to breathe throughout her entire being an affirmation of her celestial dependency. She could catch no words, merely a vague, immaterial destiny like distant music; and her ears filled with a wailing certitude of an inseverable affinity with the stars, and she longed to put off this shameful garb of flesh and rise to her spiritual destiny of which the stars are our watchful guardians. It was like deep music; words could not contain it, it was a deep and indistinct ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... misfortune or danger that she could point to or forecast with certitude. Nevertheless, struggle against it as she might, knowing it for pure psychological phenomena arising out of her harsh environment. Hazel suffered continual vague forebodings. The bald, white peaks seemed ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... man's in a temper with the weather, but it's no good bein' angry with the winds of heaven." Jimmy had shut his door, of course. We knew he was dry and comfortable within his little cabin, and in our absurd way were pleased one moment, exasperated the next, by that certitude. Donkin skulked shamelessly, uneasy and miserable. He grumbled:—"I'm perishin' with cold outside in bloomin' wet rags, an' that 'ere black sojer sits dry on a blamed chest full of bloomin' clothes; blank his black soul!" We took no ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... events that man should emerge one day from the savagedom and animalism of the past to enter upon the path of a progress which we believe to be endless. I say the reason which demonstrates this to us with a certitude which not the most intolerant bigotry dares to question to-day, tells us also that it is wholly preposterous that all that is left to man wherein to work out his own individual moral progress is the brief span ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... the ingenious minds are busy inventing the forms of the new beacons which, it is consoling to think, will be set up presently in the old places. But what is interesting to a writer is the possession of an inward certitude that literary criticism will never die, for man (so variously defined) is, before everything else, a critical animal. And as long as distinguished minds are ready to treat it in the spirit of high adventure literary criticism shall appeal to us with all the charm and ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... life in heaven again respire Where men saw nought that was or was to be, Save only death imperial. Thou and he Who has the heart of all men's hearts for lyre, Ye twain, being great of spirit as time is great, And sure of sight as truth's own heavenward eye, Beheld the forms of forces passing by And certitude of equal-balanced fate, Whose breath forefelt makes darkness palpitate, And knew that light should live ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... character may be given to some of those unusuall Chances that sometimes produce the most surprizing effects. Besides altho the vivacity and force of imagination be easily admitted into the relations of the Languages, and leaves there forcible impressions, yet it neither warrants certitude, nor dislodgeth confusion; 'tis reason alone that establisheth the mind in its cognizances, and credits all its conceptions with order, tis that alone which perfects the combination of all their relations and agreements according to the naturall ...
— A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages - Or, The Art of Knowing All by the Mastery of One • Pierre Besnier
... James dwells upon the unsatisfactoriness and uncertainty of philosophical and scientific knowledge: "Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... truths the times are ripe; the world is filled with the saddest of memories, with gloom, forebodings and fear. Without the truth in this matter, there can be no rational hope—history must go on in its dismal course; but with the truth, there is not only hope but certitude that the old order has passed and that humanity's manhood dates from the present day. That I have here presented the truth in this matter—the true conception of the human class of life—I have personally no doubt; and I have no doubt that that conception is to be the base, the guide, the source ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... followers of Luther and Zwingli to meet death, and bear the harshest tortures for their faith. For they run to suffer punishments, no matter how horrible, as if to a banquet; so that if you take that as a test either of the truth of doctrine or of their certitude of grace, you would easily conclude that in no other sect is to be found a faith so true or grace so certain. But as Paul wrote: "Even if I give my body to to be burned and have not charity, it avails me naught. But he has not charity who divides the unity. . . . He cannot ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and we finish by believing it. To this circumstance is due the astonishing power of advertisements. When we have read a hundred, a thousand, times that X's chocolate is the best, we imagine we have heard it said in many quarters, and we end by acquiring the certitude that such is the fact. When we have read a thousand times that Y's flour has cured the most illustrious persons of the most obstinate maladies, we are tempted at last to try it when suffering from an illness of a similar kind. If we always read in the same papers that A is an ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... loyalty and honour, from the highest, which are almost godlike, to the simplest, the most elementary, which still belong to the lower worlds. There is no longer any doubt on this point: it has been proved over and over again until we have attained a final certitude. ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the orthodox is likely, however, to be early outgrown. As the difficulties in the way of his finding a God worthy of his adoration become manifest to him, it may be, indeed, with a sigh that he turns from the conventional religion in which so many men find certitude and place. This is the mood, frequently, of Browning, [Footnote: See Christmas Eve and Easter Day.] of Tennyson, [Footnote: See In Memoriam.] of Arnold, [Footnote: See Dover Beach.] of Clough. [Footnote: See The New Sinai, Qui Laborat ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... single current, likens itself to a life, whether of an individual or of a community. A man's life is of many flashing moments, and yet one stream; a nation's flows through all its citizens, and yet is more than they. In such places, one is aware, with an almost insupportable and yet comforting certitude, that both men and nations are hurried onwards to their ruin or ending as inevitably as this dark flood. Some go down to it unreluctant, and meet it, like the river, not without nobility. And as incessant, as inevitable, and as unavailing as the spray that hangs over the Falls, is the white ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... special physique. Sometimes I think there are no other dancers but Americans. It used to be so delightful a diversion watching our acrobat and his group with their strong and graceful bodies writhing with rhythmical certitude over a bar or upon a trapeze against a happily colored space. Now we get little more in the field of acrobatics beyond a varied buck and wing; everything seems tuxedoed for drawing room purposes. We get no more than a ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... partie des forces de l'ennemi afin de reunir toutes les siennes contre celles qui l'on attaque, ou qui attaquent; et de vaincre ensuite le reste avec plus de facilite et de certitude. ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... to happy accidents what encouragement he might. All day he roamed the park, and, as the day dragged on, became a deeply dejected man. Even the certitude of seeing her to-morrow ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... with the now perfected compound has been put off one more day. F is completely calm and confident of the outcome. She is below now, making lastminute preparations. For the first time she has infected me with her certitude—although I never doubted ultimate success—and I feel tomorrow will actually see the beginning of the end for the Grass which started so long ago on Mrs Dinkman's lawn. How far I and the world ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... work, ignoring all affectation or attitudinizing, never politic, and naturally unconscious of his own simplicity. Yet he loved and adored what we call glory, and would tell anybody of his successes, even of his decorations, with a childlike certitude that these things must delight others as much as himself. His French honors were of course his great pride, but he highly appreciated those which he had received from allied governments, too: the Distinguished Service ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... Theuriet, which had the most brilliant success. Porel played the part of Jean-Marie. He was at that time slender, and full of hope. Since then his slenderness has developed into plumpness and his hope into certitude. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... well-served baths, and, otherwise, reading every bit of my daylight. I kept well and I remained safe, ignored and unnoticed. The procurator kept his word as to shielding me from visitors, and he said he had much ado to succeed, for the ease and certitude with which, in the open arena, before all Rome, I approached a lion or tiger which had just slaughtered a criminal and lapped his blood, seized the beast by the mane or scruff of the neck, as if he had been a tame dog, and led him to a ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... unprejudiced witness to the Divine origin of Scripture, we must prove solely on its own authority that it teaches true moral doctrines, for by such means alone can its Divine origin be demonstrated: we have shown that the certitude of the prophets depended chiefly on their having minds turned towards what is just and good, therefore we ought to have proof of their possessing this quality before we repose faith in them. (16) From miracles God's divinity cannot ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... be true To one another! for the world which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... glimmer of artificial light flickering in the depths of its silent heart. So faint was it, at the distance, that, for a while, doubt prevailed. Then conviction supervened as each of the watchers recorded his observation and a sigh of certitude made itself heard. The point of light was held by all. It was dwelt upon. It was the verification needed to convey absolute faith ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... own instruction. I ventured upon several themes with a greater frankness than I had used in Anticipations, and came out of that second effort guilty of much rash writing, but with a considerable development of formed opinion. In many matters I had shaped out at last a certain personal certitude, upon which I feel I shall go for the rest of my days. In this present book I have tried to settle accounts with a number of issues left over or opened up by its two predecessors, to correct them in some particulars, and to give the general picture of a Utopia that has ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... a treachery if not confessed, I was obliged to confess, horribly frightened as I was. He might have stopped me; he did not. ... And now, what is there on earth to halt me? Love cannot. Common decency and courage cannot. Fear of your unhappiness and mine cannot. No, even the certitude of your contempt, some day, is powerless to halt me now. I could not love; I am utterly incapable of loving you enough to balance the sacrifice. And ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... grace through the ungraceful man-garments of civilization. Every movement was supple, slow, and apparently considered. This she did not see nor analyze. She saw only a clothed man with grace of carriage and movement. She felt, rather than perceived, the calm and certitude of all the muscular play of him, and she felt, too, the promise of easement and rest that was especially grateful and craved-for by one who had incessantly, for six days and at top-speed, ironed fancy starch. As the touch of his hand had been good, so, ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... tell him that the Church and the Order are there to define the true signification of the Rule, he appeals to common sense, and to that interior certitude which is given by a clear ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... the mathematics, on account of the certitude and evidence of their reasonings; but I had not as yet a precise knowledge of their true use; and thinking that they but contributed to the advancement of the mechanical arts, I was astonished that foundations, so strong and solid, ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... and in its real part, the doctrine of nature and of morals, while metaphysics treats of the highest presuppositions and the ultimate grounds,—the "pro-principles," Campanella starts, as Augustine before him and Descartes in later times, from the indisputable certitude of the spirit's own existence, from which he rises to the certitude of God's existence. On this first certain truth of my own existence there follow three others: my nature consists in the three functions of power, knowledge, and volition; I am finite ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... thrilled with her as she thrilled, loved her more and more as she loved. Moore must have written words of enchantment. Wade's hungry heart suffered a pang of jealousy, but would not harbor it. He read in her perusal of that letter what no other dreamed of, not even the girl herself; and it was certitude of tragic and brief life for her if she could not live for Wilson Moore. Those moments of watching her were unutterably precious to Wade. He saw how some divine guidance had directed his footsteps to this home. How many years ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... leads to naturalism, for, indeed, no natural science could arise if reality exhausted itself in the measurements of naturalism; but it is rather the weakness of the conviction of the spiritual life; it is the failure of certitude in regard to the presence of a spiritual existence; it is the unclearness concerning the inner conditions of all mental and spiritual activity which a shallow and popular philosophy [p.215] presents—it is all this which turns natural science into a materialistic ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... Immortality. The natural sciences that he had so deeply studied had accustomed his mind to trust exclusively to the evidence of his senses. Nothing existed for him that was not palpable; what could not be calculated contained no element of certitude in his eyes; matter and figures composed his universe; numbers were his god; the phenomena of Nature were his revelations, Nature herself his Bible and his gospel; his virtue was instinct, not seeing that numbers, phenomena, Nature, and virtue ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... numbness. He moved fiercely to intervene. But Janice settled herself in the saddle and Dillon confidently led the way. Coburn grimly walked beside her as she rode. He was convinced that he wouldn't leave her side while Dillon was around. But even as he knew that desperate certitude, he was filled with confusion and a ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the ultimate arrest of Althorp and Sheil by the Serjeant-at-arms, a very foolish affair, which must end as it began, in much declaiming and swearing, and no positive conviction, though complete moral certitude. It afforded much amusement, as everything personal does. The present expectation is that the session will go ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... exposition, contained principles which seemed predestined to form the basis of such a doctrine. His aim was that of Cabanis and the ideologists, to set the study of society on the same basis of certitude which had been secured for the study of nature through the work of Descartes and Newton. [Footnote: Vico has sometimes been claimed as a theorist of Progress, but incorrectly. See B. Croce, The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico (Eng. tr., ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... it was stated with every accent of certitude that Madame Markievicz had been captured in George's Street, and taken to the Castle. It was also current that Sir Roger Casement had been captured at sea and had already been shot in the Tower of London. The names of several Volunteer ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... LETTER BETA}) the various metaphysical tests of truth or grounds of certitude employed. ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... troops—proudly glancing along the lines before he removed the screen and called another eye to behold. He had drawn them up, with their banners, to fill Geoffrey, at once, with his own confidence and knowledge—for it was knowledge and certitude, not opinion or fantasy, ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... almost convincing tranquillity of assertion. "Why, I'll be sprung inside an hour." There came a ripple of laughter that reminded the Inspector of the fashion in which he had been overcome by this woman's wiles. And she spoke with a certitude of conviction that was rather terrifying to one who had just fallen under the ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... in Jesus, conspicuous was the prophetic feeling and tone. He was possessed with an absolute fullness of conviction, and spoke in a tone of blended ardor and certitude. "He taught as one having authority." He rarely gave reasons. If in his words we find appeal to precedent or argument, it is really as little more than illustration or picture to clothe his own intuition. ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... reproach disguises the certitude that Caroline wishes to enjoy respecting the serious matters which Adolphe wishes to conceal. Adolphe then undertakes to narrate how he has spent the day. Caroline affects a sort of distraction sufficiently well ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... God of Isaac, God of Jacob, Not of philosophers and of savants. Certitude. Certitude. Sentiment. Joy. Peace. God of Jesus Christ My God and your God. Thy God will be my God— Oblivion of the world and of all save God. He is found only by the ways taught ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... alcentrokura. Century centjaro. Ceremonious ceremonia. Ceremony ceremonio. Certain (some) kelkaj. Certain (sure) certa. Certainly certe, nepre. Certainty certeco. Certify certigi. Certify atesti. Certitude certeco. Cessation (of hostilities) interpaco. Cessation cxesado. Cession cedo. Cetaceous balena. Chaff (ridicule) moki. Chaff pajlrestajxo. Chaffinch fringo. Chagrin cxagreno. Chain cxeno. Chain ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... by considerations of my own, which are implied in my University sermons, Essay on Ecclesiastical Miracles, and Essay on Development of Doctrine. My argument is in outline as follows: that that absolute certitude which we were able to possess, whether as to the truths of natural theology, or as to the fact of a revelation, was the result of an assemblage of concurring and converging probabilities, and that, both according to the constitution of the human ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... consisting of a number of expansions of definitions, analysed as words, not compared with the facts of which the words are representatives. This way of treating political theory enabled the writer to assume an air of certitude and precision, which led narrow deductive minds completely captive. Burke poured merited scorn on the application of geometry to politics and algebraic formulas to government, but then it was just this ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... undoubted find, and did immediately in those rushed days take the Annas off his mind. He could leave them with her in the comfortable certitude that whatever else they did to Mrs. Bilton they couldn't talk to her. Never would she know the peculiar ease of the Twinkler attitude toward subjects Americans approach with care. Never would they be able to tell her things ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... slight sprinkling of Americans and English. It was noted that there was nothing mercurial and flyaway about them. They seemed weighty men, oppressed by a sad and stolid bovine-sort of integrity. A sober seriousness and enormous certitude characterized all of them. They appeared men without nerves and without fear, as though upheld by some overwhelming power or carried in the hollow of some superhuman hand. The captain, a sad-eyed, strong-featured American, was cartooned in the papers as "Gloomy Gus" ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... entirely suitable to me, and to marry her was to be faithless to that vision of the highest, that wonderful unknown woman of the apocalyptic moorland, whose face Sylvia had not even momentarily banished from my dreams, and whom, with an unaccountable certitude, I still believed to be the woman God had destined for me; but, all things considered, Sylvia was surely as pretty an answer to prayer as a man could reasonably hope for. Many historic vows had met with sadly less ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... j'ai a lui exposer centre la conduite de M. le President Bruce envers un Agent de Sa Majeste le Roi de France, et venir a ce titre reclamer un appui que je ne puis plus dorenavant attendre de sa part. La confiance que m'inspire le caractere dont votre Excellence est revetue, et la certitude qu'elle n'ignore pas les intimes relations qui lient la France a l'Empire du Bresil, me font qu'elle saura apprecier les consequences graves que doivent entrainer l'avance faite ici aux sujets de mon Souverain, et le silence meprisant que garde a cet egard le ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... will obtain it. Vous tenez le corps de la France, mais vous ne tenez pas son ame. Cette ame, aujourd'hui effrayee, engourdie, endormie, cette ame c'est la liberte. Elle se reveillera un jour et vous echappera. La certitude de ce reveil suffit pour consoler et fortifier ses vieux et fideles soldats a traverser la nuit de l'epreuve. Cette liberte honnete et moderee, sage et sainte, j'y ai toujours cru, et j'y crois encore. Je l'ai toujours servie, toujours aimee, toujours invoquee, ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... mind conceives under the guidance of reason, it conceives under the form of eternity or necessity (II:xliv.Coroll.ii.), and is therefore affected with the same certitude (II:xliii.&Note). Wherefore, whether the thing be present, past, or future, the mind conceives it under the same necessity and is affected with the same certitude; and whether the idea be of something present, past, or ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... study of all manner of occult subjects, although his sane mental health safeguarded him against fantastic and perilous faiths. He made daring incursions into the realm of the unreal without renouncing his residence in the partly surveyed and charted region of what we are pleased to call certitude. ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... end in view he went down to Little Deeping. His conviction that the Twins were responsible for the disappearance of the princess became certitude when he learned from Mrs. Dangerfield that they were encamped on Deeping Knoll, and had been there since the day before that disappearance. But he kept that certitude to himself, since it was his habit to do things in the ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science. The modern Theosophist holds, with the Buddhists, that we live an incalculable number of times on this earth, in as many several bodies, because one life is not long enough for our complete spiritual development; that is, a single lifetime ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... not the worst. Had he met Father Beron in the street after all these years Dr. Monygham was sure he would have quailed before him. This contingency was not to be feared now. Father Beron was dead; but the sickening certitude prevented Dr. Monygham from looking anybody in ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... independence that shocks me so much, and makes any place in the neighbourhood of present-day students so disagreeable to me. Yes, my good friends, you are perfect, you are mature; nature has cast you and broken up the moulds, and your teachers must surely gloat over you. What liberty, certitude, and independence of judgment; what novelty and freshness of insight! You sit in judgment—and the cultures of all ages run away. The scientific sense is kindled, and rises out of you like a flame—let people ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... thought themselves heroes when playing a game of corks. The official placards, the trash in the journals, inspired him with immense disgust, for they had never lied so boldly or flattered the people with so much low meanness. It was with a despairing heart and the certitude of final disaster that Amedee, needing a little sleep after the fatigue, wandered through Paris's obscure streets, barely lighted here and there by petroleum lamps, under the dark, opaque winter sky, where the echoes of the distant cannonading unceasingly growled like ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... which nothing can daunt. He is convinced, especially if he has never travelled beyond his own borders, that he engrosses the virtue and intelligence of the world The driver of a motor-car assured me, with a quiet certitude which brooked no contradiction, that England was cut up into sporting estates for the "lords," and that there the working man was doomed to an idle servility. "But," said he, "there is no room for bums here." This absolute disbelief in other countries, combined with a perfect confidence ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... denials of the chief of the Fronde, the very clever but very little truthful Cardinal de Retz, the most ardent and most obstinate of Mazarin's enemies? It would seem, indeed, either that there is no certitude whatever in history, or that it must be considered henceforth as a point absolutely demonstrated that there was a project determined upon to kill Mazarin; that that project had been conceived by Madame de Chevreuse, and in some sort imposed by her upon Beaufort with the ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... this reason Moses bids the Jews (Deut. xviii.) ask of the prophets a sign, namely, the prediction of some coming event. (16) In this respect, prophetic knowledge is inferior to natural knowledge, which needs no sign, and in itself implies certitude. (17) Moreover, Scripture warrants the statement that the certitude of the prophets was not mathematical, but moral. (18) Moses lays down the punishment of death for the prophet who preaches new gods, even though he confirm his doctrine by ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... his ignorance explained everything. Our knowledge has only deepened the mystery, and all that we shall learn will but deepen it further. We can explain the solstice. We are aware with absolute certitude that the solstice and the equinox and the varying phenomena of the seasons are due to the fact that the plane of the equator is tilted at a slight angle to the plane of the ecliptic. When we put on the first overcoat in autumn, and when we give orders to let the furnace out in spring, ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... je le croie! Desespere une passion dangereuse, sauve-moi des effets que j'en crains; tu ne me hais, ni ne m'aimes, ni ne m'aimeras! Accable mon coeur de cette certitude-la! J'agis de bonne foi, donne-moi du secours contre moi-meme: il m'est necessaire, je te le ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... upon her very soul. This seemed so different to any other parting, that had perforce been during the past year. The presence of Chauvelin in her house, the obvious planning of this departure for France, had filled her with a foreboding, nay, almost a certitude of a gigantic and ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... are established. Yes, but is this non-ego really what it seems? It is; granted; but what is it and can we know what it is? Not without doubt, and here scepticism is unshakable; but in that there is certitude of the existence of the non-ego, the presumption is that we can know it, partially, relatively, very relatively, while we remain infinitely distant from an absolute knowledge, which would be divine. Therefore let us observe and experiment; let us make the "history" of nature as historians ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... began their missionary labors? A hundred years of teachin' an' preachin'. The sum of it a' is next to nothin'—an' naebody knows that better than the same fathers. They're wise, keen-sighted men, too. What good they do they do in a material way. If men like ye came here wi' any certitude of lightenin' the struggle for existence—but ye canna do that; or at least ye dinna do that. Ye'll find that neither red men nor white ha' time or inclination to praise the Lord an' his grace an' bounty when their ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... close of an outdoor public meeting the chairman, with fatuous ineptitude, shouts that everybody will sing three verses of "America." Granting that the tune is pitched comfortably, the first verse marches with vigor and certitude, but not for long; dismay soon smites the crowd in sections as the individual consciousness backs and fills ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... without the walls, and could not be included by him: nor probably the clergy, deaconesses, or others particularly consecrated to a devout life; as appears from his invective. Nor does he speak this with any certitude, but from his private apprehension by comparing the lives of the generality of the people with the severe maxims of the gospel. This is manifest from the proof he draws from the manners of the people, and from a like invective ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... shone clear. He was born to great things. In those early years that followed it was not a matter of an imaginative child's vanity, but the unalterable, serene conviction of a child's soul. The prince and princess were realities, his future greatness a magnificent certitude. You must remember this, if you would understand Paul's after-life. It was built on this radiant knowledge. In the afternoon he met Billy Goodge and the gang. They were playing at soldiers, Billy distinguished by a cocked hat made out of newspaper ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... the world, and we depart Even as lonely, having lived alone, The breast that feeds us, the beloved one's heart, The lips we kiss,—or curse—alike unknown. Ay, even these lips of thine, so often kissed, What certitude have I that they exist? Alas, it is the truth, though harsh it seems, I have been loved as sweetly in ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... does not involve its own abdication—for universal suffrage may do everything except abdicate; submit these things to it and it will solve them, not without error, perhaps, but with the grand total of certitude that appertains to human sovereignty; it will solve them masterfully. Now, put to it the question whether John or Peter did well or ill in stealing an apple from an orchard. At that, it halts; it is at fault. ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... enormously strengthened by pressure. But whatever the metaphor chosen, the truth indicated will be this: that the Catholic Faith became between the years 600 and 1000 utterly one with Europe. The last vestiges of the antique and Pagan civilization of the Mediterranean were absorbed. A habit of certitude and of fixity even in the details of thought was ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... many turnings and new inquiries, they reached Prison Street; and the grim walls of the jail, the first object that answered to any image in Silas's memory, cheered him with the certitude, which no assurance of the town's name had hitherto given him, that he was in ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... indisposition he usually manifested to leave the vicinity of his hoard, the miser closed the various compartments with more than his accustomed certitude and began to prepare to respond to the lassitude of sleep which, for some ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... to hear it," said Snarley, whose suspicions were now raised to certitude, "and, what's more, I won't hear it. What's the good? If anybody's been talkin' about nightingales, it's sure to be rubbish. Nightingales is things you can't talk about, but only listen to. No, thank ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... soldier's lips. The patroon!—his ill-disguised admiration for the actress!—his abrupt reappearance the night of the temperance drama! Any uncertainty Saint-Prosper might have felt regarding the identity of him he sought, or the reason for that day's work, now became compelling certitude. But for the tenants, he might have ridden by the old patroon house. As it was, congratulating himself upon this accidental meeting rather than his own shrewdness, he quickly dismounted. A moment's thought, and he followed ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... her pretty well now. And she was undeniably good to look at in the white of her tennis costume; the hair, like Nap's spots in its golden brown, was filleted with a scarlet ribbon, and her eyes shone from her freshened face with an unwonted sparkle—decision, certitude—what was it? ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... 'reason' himself, but not in the manner of an earnest seeker after truth. Reason, for him, is a serviceable weapon of attack or defence, but he is like a man fighting with magic impenetrable armour. He enjoys a bout of logical fence; but it will decide nothing for him: his 'certitude' is independent of it. It is easy to see that such an attitude must appear profoundly dishonest to any man who accepts Locke's maxim about truth-seeking. It is equally easy to see that Newman would spurn the charge of dishonesty as hotly as the charge of scepticism. His ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... impression of reality. If I evoke a reminiscence and dwell attentively on the details, I have the impression that I am in face of the reality itself. "I feel as if I were there still," is a common saying; and, among the recollections I evoke, there are some which give me the same certitude as the perception of the moment. Certain witnesses would write their depositions with their blood. One does not see this every day; but ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... the gods of science that his leader's aberrations were of so harmless a character, went home strong in the certitude of his knowledge of externals, proud that he was able to refer his visions to self-suggestion, and wondering complaisantly whether in his old age he might not after all suffer himself from visitations of the very kind that afflicted ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood |
