"Incontestable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for a first chapter, even though the copy in which we have read it be so torn and defaced as to suggest the idea that some portion of it may have been lost. The unity of the work, as a whole, is an incontestable proof that we possess it in its original integrity. The validity of this argument will be recognized, perhaps, only by those naturalists to whom the Animal Kingdom has begun to appear as a connected whole. For those who do not see order in Nature it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... for their appearance; an infinite diversity of species without any common material bond, so grouping themselves as to present the most admirable progressive development to which our own species is linked,—are these not incontestable proofs of the existence of a superior intelligence whose power alone could have established such an ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... any error at the start," was the confident reply; "not even so much as a line! We took too many tests proving the absolute perpendicularity of the Columbiad, to entertain the slightest doubt on that subject. Its direction towards the zenith being incontestable, I don't see why we should not reach the Moon when she comes to ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... would in a doubtful case think it necessary to demonstrate to his public in a special discourse that he had not been guilty of any breach of the law in this respect! The authority of the supreme law-giver was incontestable; the only question was how to interpret his enactments. Does, for example, "one revolution of the sun" mean twelve hours or twenty-four? This and other such weighty matters were subjects of warm controversy. Lessing's mind was critical rather than creative; he, too, was an enthusiastic student of ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... folly as inseparably as M. de La Fayette signifies America; M. de Talleyrand, diplomacy; Desaugiers, song; M. de Segur, romance. If they once forsake their own line people no longer attach any value to what they do. So, foppery, my friend Paul, is the sign of an incontestable power over the female folk. A man who is loved by many women passes for having superior qualities, and then, poor fellow, it is a question who shall have him! But do you think it is nothing to have the right of going into a drawing-room, of looking down at people from over your ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... only means, he added, by which the French could be prevented from receiving plenty of provisions from Genoa. "Unless the Austrians get possession of a point of land, we cannot stop the coasting-trade." The latter argument, at any rate, was incontestable; and it was also true that only by an advance to Vado could communication between the army and the British fleet be restored and maintained. Beaulieu, who had lately acquired a high reputation on the battle-fields ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... was so strongly disinclined to die that I refused to let Warden Atherton and Captain Jamie kill me. I was always so innately urged to live that sometimes I think that is why I am still here, eating and sleeping, thinking and dreaming, writing this narrative of my various me's, and awaiting the incontestable rope that will put an ephemeral period in ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... the groundwork of whose reputation had been formerly laid by a singular wound. He had since skilfully profited by circumstances. The very defeat of Austerlitz, which he had foreseen, added to his renown, which was further increased by his late campaigns against the Turks. His valour was incontestable, but he was charged with regulating its vehemence according to his private interest; for he calculated every thing. His genius was slow, vindictive, and, above all, crafty—the true Tartar character!—knowing the art of preparing an ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... the second victim, and this time not a Chinaman, had been found under almost identical conditions. The link with the establishment of Huang Chow was incomplete, and Durham fully recognized that it was up to him to make it sound and incontestable. ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... ladies," remarked dowager lady Chia, "it isn't that I have any wish to flatter your aunt Hsueeh in her presence, but it is a positive and incontestable fact that there isn't, beginning from the four girls in our household, a single one able to hold a candle ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... woman who was conscious of owning a redly-glowing hearth with a big black pot, fairly well filled, clucking and bobbing upon it? To possess such wealth as this, and think seriously of withholding a share from anybody who urges the incontestable claim of wanting it, is a mood altogether foreign to Lisconnel, where the responsibilities of property are, no doubt, very imperfectly understood. Accordingly Mrs. Kilfoyle said to the tattered tramp: "Ah, thin, step inside and have a couple of hot pitaties." And when he ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... these things as I sat spinning theories about her in my arbor and the bees droned in the flowers. It was incontestable that, whether for right or for wrong, most readers of certain of Aspern's poems (poems not as ambiguous as the sonnets—scarcely more divine, I think—of Shakespeare) had taken for granted that Juliana ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... of that character, this, in its way, unique letter would then acquire an intolerable unity and monotony, and would no longer produce the desired effect, namely, to fashion and complete a most lovely chaos of sublime harmonies and interesting pleasures. So I use my incontestable right to a confused style by inserting here, in the wrong place, one of the many incoherent sheets which I once filled with rubbish, and which you, good creature, carefully preserved without my knowing it. It was written in a mood of impatient longing, due to my not finding you where I most ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of rubbish of any kind as a well-kept kitchen floor. The cleanliness is so noticeable that one looks searchingly for even a scrap of paper, for some trace of negligence, to modify this superiority over the streets of our American cities. But there is no consolation; the superiority is so incontestable that no comparison is possible. For the whole twelve or fifteen miles the streets are lined with trees, or shrubs, or flowers, with well-kept grass, and with separate roads on each side for horsemen ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... Pan-Germans and who does not regard the position occupied by the empire in the world as commensurate with its power. Perhaps the reply of France to the last increase of the Germany army, the object of which was to establish the incontestable supremacy of Germany is, to a certain extent, responsible for his bitterness, for, whatever may be said, it is realized that Germany cannot go ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... It is incontestable that in times of danger a free people displays far more energy than one which is not so. But I incline to believe that this is more especially the case in those free nations in which the democratic element preponderates. Democracy appears ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... conversation by pointing out the incontestable advantages of the Transasiatic with regard to the trade between Grand Asia and Europe in the security and rapidity of its communications. The old hatreds will gradually disappear under European influence, and in that respect alone Russia ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... injurious effects resulting from this state of things upon the interests and character of both nations, I regarded it as among my first duties to cause one more effort to be made to satisfy France that a just and liberal settlement of our claims was as well due to her own honor as to their incontestable validity. The negotiation for this purpose was commenced with the late Government of France, and was prosecuted with such success as to leave no reasonable ground to doubt that a settlement of a character quite as liberal as that which ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... A coloured American lithograph, representing the kiss of reconciliation between two offended lovers, hung against the wall on one side, and was evidently regarded with a good deal of pride by the proprietor, as affording incontestable evidence of culture and refined taste, and proving his familiar acquaintance with American art, and the manners and customs ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... advance were to be made in associating the people of the conquered Colonies with the government of those Colonies, the right hon. gentleman thought that it had better be in the Orange River Colony first. But at any rate now it is incontestable that there is no Party in this country or in the Transvaal that opposes the grant of responsible government to the Transvaal. That is a great advance, and shows that we have been able to take our first step with the ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... "It's incontestable. Look at the figures for yourself: missionary's salary so much, clothes and books to converts so much, voluntary and other offerings of converts so much why, you're losing on it, Edward!" exclaimed Mr. Furlong, and he shook his head dubiously at the ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... that it is the duty of educated men actively to lead the progress of their time, is incontestable. The orator, indeed, virtually arraigned his alma mater for moral hesitation and timidity. But a university lives in its children, and is judged by them; and surely the history of civil and religious liberty in this country from Samuel Adams, James Otis, and Joseph Warren down ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... prosper the hope. Besides this diplomatical dignitary and his wife, we had two American gentlemen of more than average intelligence, who related wonderful things of the 'spiritual manifestations' (so called), incontestable things, inexplicable things. You will have seen Faraday's letter.[24] I wish to reverence men of science, but they often will not let me. If I know certain facts on this subject, Faraday ought to have known them before he expressed an opinion on it. His ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... I have collected from the actual originals written by the great Affonso de Albuquerque in the midst of his adventures to the King, Dom Manoel, your great-grandfather.' The Commentaries have been for three centuries the one incontestable printed authority for Albuquerque's career. But in 1884 was published the first volume of the Cartas de Affonso de Albuquerque, seguidas de Documentos que as elucidam, under the direction of the Academia Real das Sciencias de Lisboa, and edited by Raymundo Antonio ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... retrograded in economical science during this period, while making great strides in moral and political advancement by the abolition of slavery and the enfranchisement of the freedmen, seems to me incontestable. Professor Perry has described very concisely the steps taken by the manufacturers in 1861, after the Southern members had left their seats in Congress, to reverse the policy of the government in reference to foreign trade.[1] He has noticed but has not laid so ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... pitched the claims of the sacred theory on a much lower key. He says: "Mankind was of one language, in all likelihood the Hebrew.... The proper names and other significations given in the Scripture seem incontestable evidence that the Hebrew language was the original language of the earth,—the language in which God spoke to man, and in which he gave the revelation of his will to Moses and the prophets." Here are signs that this great champion is growing weaker in the faith: in the citations made it will ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... stipulates for a loss to me, and a gain to you. You are requiring of me a new service; I have a right to refuse, or to require of you, as a compensation, an equivalent service." If the parties are agreed upon this compensation, the principle of which is incontestable, we can easily distinguish two transactions in one, two exchanges of service in one. First, there is the exchange of the house for the vessel; after this, there is the delay granted by one of the parties, and the compensation correspondent to this delay yielded by the other. These ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... happiness I renew that of my own youth," she said gently, "as it is granted to few women, I imagine, to renew it. But I renew it with a reverence for them; since my own happiness was plain sailing enough, obvious, incontestable, whilst theirs is nobler, and rises to a higher plane. For its roots, after all, are planted in very mournful fact, to which it has risen superior, and over which ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... advantages, lightness, solidity, and economy. It is astonishing that the system of actual war had not led to the employment of the kind of saddle in use among the Tartars, the Cossacks, the Hungarians, and, indeed, among all horsemen and nomads. This saddle has the incontestable advantage of permitting the horse to lie down and rest himself without inconvenience. If, notwithstanding the folded blanket which they place under the Hungarian saddle, this saddle will still wound the animal's back sometimes, this only proceeds from the friction occasioned ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... whom they happen to take particular interest, friendly or otherwise. Moreover, it is to be noted that the public has come to doubt the value of the first-night receptions which we record, the fact being incontestable that a good deal of ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... the Israelites, in spite of their incontestable wit and intelligence, seem to have only had regard for the present. Like all other Oriental peoples, they only in their misfortunes remembered the faults of their past, which they each time had to expiate by ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... psychical aether!—I lay nothing upon testimony for my purpose now, knowing the things that can be said, and also not valuing the bare assent of the intellect. The sole assurance worth a man's having, even if the most incontestable evidence were open to him from a thousand other quarters, is that to be gained only from personal experience—that assurance in himself which he can least readily receive from another, and which is least capable of being transmuted into evidence ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... the one that does not refer to teeth. To remember, to forget, to silence all the mistakes, to cause perfection and indignation and to be sweet smelling, to fasten a splendid ulster and to reduce expenses, all this makes no charge, it does not even make wine, it makes the whole thing incontestable. The doctrine which changed language was this, this is the dentition, the doctrine which changed that language was this, it was the language segregating. This which is an indication of more than anything else does not prove it. There is no passion. A little tiny piece of stamp, ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... Not the incontestable facts of His resurrection and ascension; but that He has borne my nature to the midst of the throne, and has achieved a victory which helps me ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... example to the world, and interest the heart of sensibility. I would also show how my fatal destiny has deprived my children of an immense fortune; and, though I want a hundred thousand men to enforce and ensure my rights, I will leave demonstration to my heirs that they are incontestable. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... believe myself," was Crispin's answer, and his voice was not free from bitterness. "But I have a proof here that seems incontestable, even had I not the proof of your face to which I have been blind these months. Blind with the eyes of my body, at least. The eyes of my soul saw and recognized you when first they fell on you in Perth. The voice of the blood ordered me then to your side, and though I heard its call, ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... the book's interpretation by mental indolence. The fact is incontestable; and this fact in itself may be taken as sufficient to establish the inexpediency of publishing The Certain Hour. For that "people will not buy a volume of short stories" is notorious to all publishers. To offset the axiom there ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... rather than really progressive course of human ideas, at least in metaphysics. The fact, remarked by Macaulay, that the two principal sections of Christendom in Europe remain very nearly in the limits in which they were in the sixteenth, or in the middle of the seventeenth century, is incontestable. Nor, indeed, are present facts and symptoms so adverse, as is generally supposed, to the probability of an ultimate reaction in favour of Catholic doctrine and rule, even among the Teutonic peoples, in the revolutions to which human ideas ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... It is incontestable that spirits are produced by the saccharine substance. Grains, however, supply it, although they are not sensibly sweet. This has made me suspect that the fermentation is at first saccharine, which produces the sweet ...
— The Art of Making Whiskey • Anthony Boucherie
... which we might have named, and which would have manifested the same incontestable supremacy: there is the energy of meekness, that spirit of docility which communes with the Almighty in hallowed and receptive awe: there is the boundless vitality of love which lives on through midnight after midnight, unfainting and unspent: there is the inexhaustible energy of faith which hold ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... of all sizes, "behold him! here are seventeen works from his pen, of which one, his 'Philosophical and Mineralogical Works,' published in 1734, is in three folio volumes. These productions, which prove the incontestable knowledge of Swedenborg, were given to me by Monsieur Seraphitus, his cousin and the ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... seraglio how to brave the storms of Versailles. Versailles was like Stamboul or Teheran, oriental in etiquette, oriental in destruction of wealth and capital, oriental in antipathy to a reforming grand vizier. It was the Queen, as we now know by incontestable evidence, who persuaded the King to dismiss Turgot, merely to satisfy some contemptible personal resentments of herself and her creatures.[3] And it was not in Turgot's case only that this ineptitude wrought mischief. In June 1789 Necker was overruled in the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 8: France in the Eighteenth Century • John Morley
... It is claimed, indeed, to be sustained by divine authority, but this is a claim that has no warrant in the words of the statement itself, and one to which no form of words could give warrant. To establish it, direct and incontestable evidence from the creative power itself would be necessary, and it need scarcely be said that no such evidence exists. It is not easy, indeed, to conceive what form such evidence could take. It would certainly need to be something ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... Historia de Yucatan, the similarity of ruins throughout this territory is thus alluded to: "The incontestable analogy which exists between the edifices of Palenque and the ruins of Yucatan places the latter under the same origin, although the visible progress of art which is apparent assigns different epochs for their construction."[10-*] ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... astonishment, not so much from the consciousness of guilt, as from the suddenness of such an unexpected charge. As soon, therefore, as he recovered from his surprise, with indignant pride he exclaimed: "What! Gomez Arias charged with treason, when he comes to afford the most incontestable proofs of his love and devotion to his country? Where—where is the villain who dares affix so foul a stigma to the name of Gomez Arias? Where is he?—let him appear, that I may confound and chastise the miscreant;" then looking round ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... compass of history to find another instance in which such various and such powerful agencies concurred to degrade the character and to blast the prosperity of a nation. That the greater part of them sprang directly from the corrupt and selfish Government of England is incontestable. No country ever exercised a more complete control over the destinies of another than did England over those of Ireland for three-quarters of a century after the Revolution. No serious resistance of any kind ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... himself in adscititious qualities rather purposes to command applause than impart pleasure: and he is therefore treated as a man who, by an unreasonable ambition, usurps the place in society to which he has no right. Praise is seldom paid with willingness even to incontestable merit, and it can be no wonder that he who calls for it without desert is ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... of Eastern historians and geographers, as well as of the records of his own country. They are distinguished by clearness of exposition and orderly arrangement. His style has all the simplicity and grandeur of the masters of historical writing, and the purity of his diction is incontestable. Though, on the whole, impartial, Barros is the narrator and apologist of the great deeds of his countrymen, and lacks the critical spirit and intellectual acumen of Damiao de Goes. Diogo do Couto continued the Decades, adding nine more, and a modern edition of the whole appeared in Lisbon ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... lady was impelled by a variety of considerations, the chief of which was the incontestable proof it would afford of her devotion to Mr. Peter Magnus, and her anxiety for his safety. She was too well acquainted with his jealous temperament to venture the slightest allusion to the real cause of her agitation on beholding Mr. Pickwick; and she trusted to her own influence ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... these three conditions; if they only mean that no government can permanently exist which does not fulfill the first and second conditions, and, in some considerable measure, the third; their doctrine, thus limited, is incontestable. Whatever they mean more than this appears to me untenable. All that we are told about the necessity of an historical basis for institutions, of their being in harmony with the national usages and character, and the like, means either this, or nothing ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... sort of superstitious consternation that a somnambulist might feel in contemplating in broad daylight the deeds he had wrought in sleep-walking. As to the rest of the nation, it was in vain that Tsiskwa denied; for there were many confirmatory details in support of the incontestable fact of the official belt openly shown in the possession of the Lenni Lenape. The gossips recapitulated the long and solitary audience with Tsiskwa to which Tscholens had been admitted—that strange wild cry with which it had terminated ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... doing his duty by his clients with a determination that seemed incontestable, suffered in the end because of his very zealousness. He took no time to analyse the personal side of his work; he dealt with the situation from the aspect of a man who serves but one interest, forgetting that it involved the weal ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... this girl at times exerted over me. When under its spell I seemed to be a creature of her will, and my power to act voluntarily was paralyzed by a strange force emanating from her marvellous vitality. I cannot describe it. I tell you only the incontestable fact, and you may make out of it whatever you can. I shall again in the course of this history have occasion to speak of Dorothy's strange power, and how it was exerted over no less ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... from, their own. As Emerson truly says, "Let the world beware when a Thinker comes into it!".. and here WAS this Thinker,—this type of the Godlike in Man,—this uncomfortably sincere personage, whose eyes were clear of falsehood, whose genius was incontestable, whose fame had taken society by assault, and who, therefore, was entitled to receive every attention ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... have tolerably short abstract words to express grandeur, envy, and lightness, cheictivate, uoite, and uonde; but in Coptic, the word malice,* metrepherpetou, is composed of five elements, easy to be distinguished. (* See, on the incontestable identity of the ancient Egyptian and Coptic, and on the particular system of synthesis of the latter language, the ingenious reflexions of M. Silvestre de Sacy, in the Notice des Recherches de M. Etienne Quatremere ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... be no control and no interference in the administration of the affairs of this kingdom of me. Hence the growth of the doctrine and of the party of Free Trade, and the willingness to try that experiment, in the face of what appear incontestable facts. I confess, the motto of the Globe newspaper is so attractive to me that I can seldom find much appetite to read what is below it in its columns: "The world is governed too much." So the country is frequently affording solitary examples of resistance to the government, solitary ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... first view that particular cases like these ought not to operate against a general privilege granted by a solemn treaty, and it is an incontestable principle that the happiness of nations consists in a great measure in maintaining a good harmony and correspondence with their neighbors by respecting their rights, by supporting their own, without being deficient in what is required by humanity and civil intercourse; ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... strength for the liberties, the position, and the honor of the United States. But why need I indulge in these reflections in proof of my proposition? Gentlemen, we have here this evening the living proof, the visible, tangible, audible, incontestable, immortal proof, that the position of the Democratic party, in the existing organization of parties, is the national, constitutional party of the United States. Gentlemen, I ask you to challenge your memories, and look upon the history ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... daughter Miette, with that unreasoning spite which is felt for social outcasts. The girl, in particular, they treated in a foul manner; and the insulting gibe of "daughter of a galley-slave" constantly rose to their lips like an incontestable reason for condemning the poor, dear ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... recognition of Carleton Roberts as the author of this tragedy,—Carleton Roberts whom she not only knew well but had loved in days gone by, as sincerely as he had loved her. This I now propose to prove to you by what I cannot but regard as incontestable evidence." ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... this side altogether, as I did the first, so that the lost planet is irrecoverable, as the inscription is now defaced. Note the o for e in adolescentia; so also we constantly find u for o; showing, together with much other incontestable evidence of the same kind, how full and deep the old pronunciation of Latin always remained, and how ridiculous our English mincing of the vowels would have sounded to a ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... nature to become equal each to the other'—'wheat cannot rise unless silver rises.' " If W. J. Bryan said that, even in his salad days, he's a hopeless damphool, unfit to be pound-master, much less president; but I'll pay two-bits for incontestable evidence that he ever made such an idiotic remark. My private opinion is that the malice of Puck's mendacity is equalled only by its awkwardness. It is possible that its editor mistakes falsehood for fun. Or he may have heard ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... greatly exalted by this triumph, and incontestable proof of his popularity with the fair sex, quickly grew convivial, not to say uproarious; volunteering more than one song of no inconsiderable length, and regaling the social circle between-whiles with ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... Alpine mass. The superiority of the Monte Generoso to any of the similar eminences on the northern outskirts of Switzerland is great. In richness of colour, in picturesqueness of suggestion, in sublimity and breadth of prospect, its advantages are incontestable. The reasons for this superiority are obvious. On the Italian side the transition from mountain to plain is far more abrupt; the atmosphere being clearer, a larger sweep of distance is within our vision; again, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... Hamlet's superiority, This is true even of Horatio. We have already remarked that in their scenes with the ghost the manhood of Hamlet is of a higher strain and dignity. And not only in resolution, but in that other manly virtue of self-reliance, his superiority is incontestable. Horatio follows Hamlet at a distance as Lucilius follows Brutus, content if from time to time he may stand at his side. Whatever is Hamlet's mood he reflects it, for to him Hamlet is always great. Horatio never questions, presumes not to give advice, echoes the scorn or laughter ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... those which we have noticed as worn by a number of the statues from Cyprus; but the cap of the right-hand personage terminates in a button, whereto is attached a long appendage, which looks like the tail of an ox." The Egyptian character of much of this design is incontestable. The ankh, the lotus blossom in the hand, the winged disk, are purely Egyptian forms; the Isis Athor with Horus in her lap speaks for itself; and the worshipper in front of Isis has an unmistakably Egyptian head dress. But the contest with ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... Of the merits incontestable, first and foremost may be mentioned the color and motion of Life which spread like an atmosphere over this fiction. By his inimitable idiom, his knowledge of the polite world, and his equal knowledge of the average human being irrespective of class or condition, Thackeray was able ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... thought his palace would look fresher if the walls were covered with French paper, and so packed all the pictures off to the empty building on the Prado, which his grandfather had built for a museum. As soon as the glorious collection was exposed to the gaze of the world, its incontestable merit was at once recognized. Especially were the works of Velazquez, hitherto almost an unknown name in Europe, admired and appreciated. Ferdinand, finding he had done a clever thing unawares, began to put on airs and poser for a patron of art. The gallery was still further immensely ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... indefatigable messenger Allah was able to remain at ease in heaven, thus keeping up the appearance of intangible, majestic remoteness so necessary for dignified gods. And thus Mohammed came into his own. From that moment Mohammed looked upon himself as Allah's vice regent, through whom Allah's incontestable decrees were to be given to man." (Mohammed—R. F. Dibble.) Mohammed's every doubt had now vanished, his soul was completely at ease, and from his lips there burst the wildly exultant chant, "There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... powers of Government, being capable of being every moment compared with the end of political institutions, may be more respected; and also, that the future claims of the citizens, being directed by simple and incontestable principles, may always tend to the maintenance of the Constitution, and the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... our ladies of the Palace Royal. This Palace Royal is a sort of Babylon, with this difference; that the former prostitute themselves all the year round, and that they are not quite so attractive as the Chaldean beauties. For the rest, one of the incontestable facts of ancient history is this prostitution of the women of Babylon in honor of Venus, and I cannot understand why Voltaire refused to believe it, since religions have always been responsible for the most abominable actions, and because religious wars, the horrors of intolerance, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... theater where they made themselves conspicuous. From there they proceeded to the lower section of the city and were purposely arrested for disturbing the peace about the time of Donnelly's murder, in order to establish incontestable alibis. Nevertheless, it was they who laid the trap, and they are equally guilty with the wretches who obeyed their orders. It was they who paid over the blood money, and with their arrest you will have all the accessories to the crime, save one. Of him I can tell you nothing. I fear I can never ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... been suffering from an hallucination, that was an incontestable fact. My mind had been perfectly lucid and had acted regularly and logically, so there was nothing the matter with the brain. It was only my eyes that had been deceived; they had had a vision, one of those visions which lead simple folk to ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... come? Keep-sakes? Haggerty dearly wanted to believe that the intruder was the one man he desired in his net; but he refused to listen to the insidious whisperings; he must have proof, positive, absolute, incontestable. If it was Crawford's man Mason, it was almost too good to be true; and he did not care ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... else offered sure disaster. He rose, and walked slowly toward his home, revolving, testing, the various aspects of the trip to Sprucesap; at once deciding upon that venture, and repeating to himself the incontestable fact of its ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of a man to his language is an incontestable right; the free use of it is a primary human liberty. The Church has always respected this right as one of the most elementary laws of nature. In the evangelization of nations She has always accommodated ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... protected by a just, humane and enlightened Government. The benefits likely to flow from the accomplishment of this object, in the opening up of new fields of tropical agriculture, new channels of enterprise, and new markets for the world's manufactures, are great and incontestable." I quite agree with the framer of the prospectus that these benefits are great and incontestable, but then they would be benefits conferred on the world at large at the expense of the shareholders of the Company, and I presume ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... however, is a subject of vast importance, I shall endeavor to show, from incontestable historical evidence, that the Popes have always, from the days of the Apostles, continued to exercise supreme jurisdiction not only in the Western Church till the Reformation, but also throughout the Eastern Church till the great schism ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... little of these marvels, was in a hurry to hasten onwards; this country, so fertile, displeased him by its very fertility; without being otherwise hydropical, he felt water under his feet, and sought in vain the signs of incontestable aridity. ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... this was the feeling it aroused in her that he was defying authority. Even if her innate respect for the printed word had not made her accept as final the judgment of the newspapers, there was still the incontestable fact that so many people had paid to see "Pretty Fanny" that both Oliver and Miss Oldcastle had reaped a small fortune. She glanced in a helpless way at ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... Husband, near the Brook that runs on one side of her Meadow. She made the most solemn Vow, in the Height of her Affliction, never to stir from that Tomb, as long as ever that Rivulet took its usual Course.—Well! and wherein, pray, said Zadig, is the good Woman so much to blame? Is it not an incontestable Mark of her superior Merit and Conjugal-Affection? But, Zadig, said Azora, was you to know how her Thoughts were employ'd when I made my Visit, you'd never forget or forgive her. Pray, my dearest Azora, what then was she about? Why, the ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... Marmontel, and Laharpe, were the original habitues of Mme. Lebrun's drawing-room. At the same time used to visit her the bitter, bilious, discontented David, the painter, who, though very young, was annoyed at a woman having such incontestable proficiency in his own art, and whose democratic ideas were hurt at her receiving such a number of what he styled "great people." Madame Lebrun, one day,—little dreaming that she was addressing a future coupe-tete of the most violent species, (perhaps the only genuine admirer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... at times no income at his disposal except the alma he could solicit from his poorest subjects to maintain his warfare against foreign miscreants, the levy on the Church for war-galleys; and the proceeds of his permission to eat meat on Fridays. This sounds like an epigram, but it is a plain, incontestable fact. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... him accept hardship and suffering unresistingly, but it can make him accept as truth the explanation that his perfectly preventable afflictions are sublimely just and gentle. It is this acme of the power of herd suggestion that is perhaps the most absolutely incontestable proof of the profoundly ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... and provide for everything, who had to be everywhere the moving and the regulating spirit. This universal and untiring energy is the grand characteristic of Charlemagne's government, and was, perhaps, what made his superiority most incontestable and his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... friend of all rheumatic invalids—the Morning Nap—came swooping down upon him like a sponge and wiped out of his face every single bit of the sharp, precious evidence of pain which he had been accumulating so laboriously all night long to present to the Doctor as an incontestable argument in favor of ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the religion, which overlooks or condemns any of these elements, is never satisfactory, and fails to win sincere belief, because of its felt incompleteness. All men have an instinctive faith that in God's plan no incontestable facts are exceptional or needless facts. Science assumes this in regard to the phenomena of the natural world; and, in its progressive searches, expects to discover continual proof that all manifestations, however opposite and contradictory, are parts of one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... namely, to lay stress upon all the considerations against any doctrine or proposal, without any attempt to weigh them against the considerations in its favour; amongst which should be reckoned all the considerations that tell against the alternative doctrines or proposals. Incontestable demonstration can rarely be expected even in science, outside of the Mathematics; and in practical affairs, as Butler says, 'probability is the very guide of life'; so that every conclusion depends upon the balance of evidence, and to allow weight to ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... acting is not of the high class which conceals the art, this man's look beside him and behind him at vacant seats had incontestable evidence in support of his declaration, that the lady and gentleman had gone on by themselves: the phaeton was a box of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... dispraise. Most Englishmen know negroes of pure blood as well as 'coloured persons' who, at Oxford and elsewhere, have shown themselves fully equal in intellect and capacity to the white races of Europe and America. These men afford incontestable proofs that the negro can be civilised, and a high responsibility rests upon them as the representatives of possible progress. But hitherto the African, as will presently appear, has not had fair play. ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... beliefs, principles (as e.g., the idea of space, duration, cause, substance, unity, infinity), which are not derived from sensation and experience, and which can not be drawn out of sensation and experience by any process of generalization. These ideas have this incontestable peculiarity, as distinguished from all the phenomena of sensation, that, whilst the latter are particular, contingent, and relative, the former are universal, necessary, and absolute. As an example, and a proof of the reality and validity of this distinction, take the ideas of body ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... not yet reached such a point as in France and elsewhere, it is I think incontestable that the English race, like many another, is physically deteriorating. Athletics tend to improve the standard, but there must be proper material to work upon, and M. Zola, I found, held the view that for a race to ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... comprehensible. The atmosphere of operose indolence, prolonged through centuries and centuries, stifles; nor can antiquity and influence impose upon a mind which resents monkery itself as an essential evil. That Monte Cassino supplied the Church with several potentates is incontestable. That mediaeval learning and morality would have suffered more without this brotherhood cannot be doubted. Yet it is difficult to name men of very eminent genius whom the Cassinesi claim as their alumni; nor, with Boccaccio's testimony to their carelessness, and with ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... Universal Union of the Human Race there must be one Pilot, as it were, who, considering the different conditions of the World, and ordaining the different and needful offices, may hold or possess over the whole the universal and incontestable office of Command. And this office is well designated Empire, without any addition, because it is of all other governments the government; and so he who is appointed to this office is designated Emperor, because of all Governors he is the Governor, ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... else that Hugh Welwyn-Baker held that important telegram from his father; that was all. Mr. Mumbray's hopes rose high. On the morrow, at another meeting rather differently constituted (miserable lack of organization still evident among the Tories), it was made known on incontestable authority that the sitting Member would offer himself for re-election. Mr. Mumbray and his supporters held high language. "It would be party suicide," they went about repeating. With such a man as Denzil ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... "It is incontestable that beings of gigantic size do appear from time to time.... Giants are men whose development, instead of pursuing a normal course, has undergone a morbid deviation, and whose nutrition has become perverted. They are dystrophic. Their great stature shows that one part has gained at the loss of another. ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... arrabales and of the city of the Havannah, but also for furnishing water to the fountains which require to be supplied during three months of the year. I visited several times, with MM. Lemaur, the plains through which this line of navigation is intended to pass. The utility of the project is incontestable if in times of great drought a sufficient quantity of water can be brought to ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... them. But the analogy breaks down at every point, because the essence of it is that every one who reached the hill-top would inevitably see the same scene. Yet in the case of religion, the hill-top is crowded by people, whose good faith is equally incontestable, but whose descriptions of what lies beyond are at hopeless variance. Moreover all alike confess that the impressions they derive are outside the possibility of scientific or intellectual tests, and ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... places, by Lermontoff. Quite peculiar to himself, at that day—and even much later—are his vivid delineations of character, and his simple but startlingly lifelike and truthful pictures of every-day life. If his claim to immortality rested on no other foundation than these, it would still be incontestable, for all previous Russian ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... the gold-making "Canon's Yeoman." Hence, again, the vitality of such quasi-scientific fancies as the magic mirror, of which miraculous instrument the "Squire's" "half-told story" describes a specimen, referring to the incontestable authority of Aristotle and others, who write "in their lives" concerning quaint mirrors and perspective glasses, as is well known to those who have "heard the books" of these sages. Hence, finally, the corresponding tendency to eschew the consideration of serious religious questions, and ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... swallowing Salvator's bitter pill, feigned to be highly delighted that Antonio had in this way given such incontestable proofs of his talent, and with all due ceremony nominated him a member ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... from this experimental knowledge of the course of that river, I can affirm, with confidence, that it is not inaccurately laid down in my map of West Barbary[241], and that it is not three hundred English miles from 439 Fas, but only six English miles from that city. I can also assert, from incontestable testimony, that Tombut, or Timbuctoo, is[242] not three hundred miles from the Nile El Abeed, but only about twelve English miles from that stream, the latter ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... vehement suspicions, and, perhaps, hunted to my obscurest retreat by the ministers of justice? I am innocent; but my tale, however circumstantial or true, will scarcely suffice for my vindication. My flight will be construed into a proof of incontestable guilt. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... observed discussing at interminable length idle questions, such as: whether history is a science or an art; what are the duties of history; what is the use of history; and so on. On the other hand, there is incontestable truth in the remark that nearly all the specialists and historians of to-day are, as far as method goes, self-taught, with no training except what they have gained by practice, or by imitating and associating with the older masters of ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... different places about the court, the last of which was sold at a price sufficient to entitle him to claim gentility; so that, in one of his subsequent railings against the nobles, he declared that his nobility was more incontestable than that of most of the body, since he could produce the stamped receipt for it. Following the example of Moliere and Voltaire, he changed his name, and called himself Beaumarchais. He married two rich widows. He formed a connection with the celebrated financier, Paris Duverney, ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... Absolute, in the matters of the Intelligence and of Faith. The Supreme Reason has not left the gleams of the human understanding to vacillate at hazard. There is an incontestable verity, there is an infallible method of knowing this verity, and by the knowledge of it, those who accept it as a rule may give their will a sovereign power that will make them the masters of all inferior things and of all errant ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... a law prohibiting the system, must be purchased at the Monopoly's stores. At the end of the month, many of these miners have not only consumed every dollar of their wages but are actually in debt. It is stated, further, as an incontestable fact that, "a miner who objects to the amount of work or wages given to him gets no more of either, for he is at once dropped from the rolls, and his name is sent to the neighboring mines as that of a man unlit for employment." These people subsist—miraculously—on ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... comical contest enough between a literary lady once, and Doctor Johnson, to which I was myself a witness;—when she, maintaining the happiness and purity of a country life and rural manners, with her best eloquence, and she had a great deal; added as corroborative and almost incontestable authority, that the Poets said so: "and didst thou not know then," replied he, my darling dear, that the ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... injured. A great number of neuralgias appear to us to have no other cause. Many women that we have interrogated on this matter have fortified this opinion. But that which to us has passed to the condition of incontestable proof, is the prevalence of uterine troubles, of enervation among the married, hysterical symptoms which are met with in the conjugal relation as often as among young virgins, arising from the vicious habits of the husbands in their ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... accomplishing caused the vague flash of the social sword to be visible in his clenched fist; happy and indignant, he held his heel upon crime, vice, rebellion, perdition, hell; he was radiant, he exterminated, he smiled, and there was an incontestable grandeur in this ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... But the evidence in the case pointed toward the conclusion that Browne himself was Hubert. If this was so, how could Browne be said to have forged the name of Hubert, when he had a perfect legal right to take the property under any name he chose to assume? This was incontestable. If your name be Richard Roe you may purchase land and receive title thereto under the name of John Doe, and convey it under that name without violating the law. This as a general proposition is true so long as the taking of a fictitious name is for an honest purpose and not ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... made as to a certain interested or ambitious side of his character, Pierre d'Ailly, whose devotion to the cause of union and reform is incontestable, remains one of the leading spirits of the end of the 14th and beginning ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of giants were got together, very likely one or two of the mere six-feet-six people might be angry at the incontestable superiority of the very tallest of the party; and so I have heard some London wits, rather peevish at Macaulay's superiority, complain that he occupied too much of the talk, and so forth. Now that wonderful tongue is to speak no more, will not many a man grieve that he no longer has the ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... same; and all his Posterity standing in the same Relation to him, as their Federal Head; 'tis evident, in this View of the Matter, that this Bias to Evil, must in all be uniform and alike: but the contrary seems demonstrable, from undoubted and incontestable Experience; some Children having much stronger Propensities to Evil, than others: And if Part of this can be resolved into something besides the Influence of Adam's first Transgression, and subsequent to the Fall; it ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch
... the impartial Pictet, who freely admits, that, "in the absence of sufficient direct proofs to justify the possibility of his hypothesis, Mr. Darwin relies upon indirect proofs, the bearing of which is real and incontestable"; who concedes that "his theory accords very well with the great facts of comparative anatomy and zooelogy,—comes in admirably to explain unity of composition of organisms, also to explain rudimentary and representative organs, and the natural series of genera and species,—equally ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... heathen religions, historically considered, are a degeneracy from a higher knowledge of God. In other words, the application of the doctrine of evolution to the field of comparative religion is a mistake. "Any form of Animism known to me has no lines leading to perfection, but only incontestable marks of degeneration," says the author. "In heathenism the gold of the ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner |
