"Self-evident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... residents of Williamstown there is scarcely a tradition or trace of his presence. He did not fit into the treadmill of daily lessons and lectures. He was impatient of routine and discipline. There is a story extant, which is a self-evident fabrication, that President Mark Hopkins, meeting him on the street one day, asked him how he was getting along with his studies. Field replied that he was doing very well. Thereupon President Hopkins, in kindly humor, remarked: "I am glad to hear it, for, remember, you have ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... the first kind of truths, or those received by intuition, we have examples in what are called 'self-evident axioms,' and 'fundamental laws' or 'conditions of thought,' which no wise man has ever attempted to prove. Of the second, we have examples in the whole fabric of mathematical science, reared from its basis of axioms and definitions, as well ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... question depends the value of tile-draining as a practical improvement, for if there is a self-evident proposition in agriculture, it is that what is not profitable, one year with ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... these advantages," continued Barbican, "is that it is from the visible side alone that eclipses of the Sun can be seen. This is self-evident, the interposition of the Earth being possible only between this visible face and the Sun. Furthermore, such eclipses of the Sun would be of a far more imposing character than anything of the kind to be witnessed from our Earth. This is chiefly for two reasons: first, when we, terrestrians, see the ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... fruitful and intelligent surmise upon the part of the professor bred a whole series of further theories upon Melek, each of which contradicted the last but one, and the latest of which was always of so limpid and so self-evident a truth as to be accepted by whatever was intelligent and energetic in the population, and especially by the young unmarried women of the wealthier classes. In this manner the epoch of Melek was reduced ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... be pointed out that in order to be selected, a change must first have been produced. This proposition, which now seems self-evident, has, however, been a source of much difference of opinion among Darwin's followers. The opinion that natural selection produces changes in useful directions has prevailed for a long time. In other words, it was assumed that natural selection, by ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... enjoyment is the indulgence of frank speech Sell your manuscripts, but don't sell your soul Success is often a misfortune Summer days that come but to go There isn't much to feel here except what you see Things that are self-evident nobody seems to see Vanity at the bottom of even a reasonable ambition We confound events with ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger
... (and lungs) fulfill through evaporation. It is a condition of nourishment, and the influence of a moist or dry air upon the health of the body, or of mechanical agitation by walking or running, which increases the perspiration, is self-evident." It will be readily seen that this discovery has an important bearing upon the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... perfectly self-evident, yet I believe that but for the warning word of Lord Kelvin, I should have been rash enough to step out into empty space with sufficient force to have separated myself hopelessly from the ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... point of fact, it's quite a self-evident sort of thing. I am extremely anxious, Major, that my friend Dombey should hear me express my very great astonishment and regret, that my lovely and accomplished relative, who was possessed of every qualification to make a man happy, should have so far forgotten ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... any doubt on the matter. Alas, that I should have to say so, it is too self-evident. You persuade this poor creature to go out alone with you into the Pineta at an extraordinary hour of the morning, knowing then,—or according to your own showing, becoming aware soon after you started—that ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... with him the golden key wherewith to unlock the world of the universe, of the soul, of all nature. He is as convinced of the two absolute facts of God and Soul as Cardinal Newman in writing of "Two and two only, supreme and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator." Most fervently ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... only feel so much—coming in. But there seems to be no limit to the joy we feel when Power goes out through us. It seems so self-evident, so needless, to say "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Why of course it is: any child ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... certainties at the moment when he espoused the sister of Maximilian of Bavaria and of the Elector of Cologne. That this close connection with the very heads of the Catholic League could bode no good to the cause of which the States-General were the great promoters was self-evident. Very soon afterwards the Palatine, a man of mature age and of considerable talents, openly announced his conversion to the ancient church. Obviously the sympathies of the States could not thenceforth fail to be on the side ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... school tacked instead towards the sheltered bank of the stream, and with one accord broke into Scotch songs. Geraldine, in a full contralto, was singing "Green grow the rashes, O". Betty Blane's chirpy voice proclaimed "I'm ower young to marry yet",—a self-evident proposition, as she was only thirteen. Stuart and Loveday were crooning "Flowers of the Forest" as a kind of soprano dirge, which was drowned by a chorus of juniors roaring "Auld ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... measure of praise for work well done. In one factory alone in Massachusetts, where more than 3,000 persons are employed, hundreds of them are women and girls, employed not only in assembling the parts, but attending various machines. Under the group "Toys," also "Dolls, playthings," it is self-evident women must have much to do with their manufacture and preparation for the market, and their inventions of toys and playthings for children would seem to preeminently entitle them to the place in this group which ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... a truth in the physical, and therefore in the spiritual, world of so great importance that we shall not mis-spend time if we follow it, for further confirmation, into another department of nature. Its significance in Biology is self-evident; let ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... battle of the 18th. The seven German Corps facing them were exactly 178,818 strong. Thus the French had been driven out of a position of almost unrivalled natural advantages by a numerically inferior force. It is self-evident that the loss of the aggressors must have been much greater than that of the defence; it amounted to 20,584 men, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... abuse, our author stood immutable. But once did he ever condescend to notice his maligners, and then only to expose their ignorance, at the same time pledging himself never again to refer to their attacks. A thinking man, he could not but be fully aware that their style, and self-evident malice, could only add to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... shall be twenty-four! At such age a man does not think of any ladies for he has something else to do; that is self-evident." ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... humanity of the Child Jesus which we have been dwelling upon; there was also the preparation for the proper guardianship of both Mother and Child during the years of Jesus' immaturity. There are certain things which are self-evident when once we turn our minds to them; and it is thus self-evident that the care of our Lord and of His Blessed Mother would require the preparation of the man to whom they should be committed. In the state of society into ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... Paris journal of eminence says, that we are not to exult as if much progress were made towards the crushing of Repeal, simply by the act of crushing a single meeting; and, strange to say, the chief morning paper of London echoes this erroneous judgment as if self-evident, saying, that "it needs no ghost to tell us that." We, however, utterly deny this comment, and protest against it as an absurdity. Were that true, were it possible that the Clontarf meeting had been suppressed on its own separate merits, as presumed from secret information, and without ulterior ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... should waste no time, and it was equally important that we should select the most vulnerable point for attack. It was self-evident, therefore, that our first duty would be to reconnoitre the surface of the planet and determine its ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... is required to find the fourth number, for they have not yet forgotten the rule which was given to them arbitrarily without proof by their masters; others construct a universal axiom from their experience with simple numbers, where the fourth number is self-evident, as in the case of 2, 4, 3, 6; here it is evident that if the second number be multiplied by the third, and the product divided by the first, the quotient is 6; when they see that by this process the number is produced which they knew beforehand to be the ...
— On the Improvement of the Understanding • Baruch Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza]
... admits, money accumulated itself represents violence; when money, as a representative of direct labor, forms but a very small portion of the money which is derived from every sort of violence,—to say nowadays that money represents the labor of the person who possesses it, is a self-evident ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... narrow half-whiskers'—and so on. Emily at a loss to understand how the fugitive could disguise himself. Reminded her that he could effectually disguise his head and face (with time to help him) by letting his hair grow long, and cultivating his beard. Emily not convinced, even by this self-evident view of the ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... figures amused Keith for a while. But it took no serious hold on his mind. The whole field of mathematics left him strangely uninterested although he was good at arithmetic. He thought the problems of Euclid stupid. Once he had learned how to prove a theorem, it seemed so ridiculously self-evident that he wondered why anybody should bother his brain about it. There were other boys who could figure out the demonstrations in advance without looking at the book. Keith tried it once or twice, but failed miserably and gave it up as a worthless and thankless job. ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... sample, the methods of obtaining which have been described. In considering the methods of calorimeter determination, the remarks applied to coal are equally applicable to any solid fuel, and such changes in methods as are necessary for liquid fuels will be self-evident from ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... quickly scraped the gray seal from the dial's knob; then he drew the packages of money from his shirt and pockets and tossed them on the floor among the litter of papers already there—she would get it back again when it had served its purpose, it would be self-evident that it was the proceeds of that day's sale of the estate's securities over which ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... which the earlier Greeks called Chaos. A little thought will make it evident that we are not arbitrary in finding fault with the translation of the gospel, for it is self-evident that a word cannot be the beginning, a thought must precede the word, and a thinker must originate thought before it can ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... blood-supply—has long been seen to be inadequate, since the restorative effect succeeds a short period of rest even in excised bloodless muscle. But that the phenomena of fatigue and recovery were not primarily dependent on dissimilation or assimilation becomes self-evident when we find exactly similar effects produced not only in plants, but also in metals (fig. 113). It has been shown, on the other hand, that these effects are primarily due to cumulative residual strains, and that a brief period of rest, ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... What is action? Most critics pass over this point, as if it were self-evident In the higher, proper signification, action is an activity dependent on the will of man. Its unity will consist in the direction towards a single end; and to its completeness belongs all that lies between the first determination and the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... Majesty when I informed you of his coming and of the departure of Don Luis de Bracamonte, asking you to be pleased to send a governor for those places, for Don Luis said that he would remain there only until the arrival of your Majesty's appointee—a thing that was self-evident, even had he not said it. Had it not been for placing a captain before one whom your Majesty had honored with the title of master-of-camp, I would have given those forts in charge to Captain Don Andres Perez Franco, to whom your Majesty, while he was alferez, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... about to assume, had delivered to him a suit of celestial armor—a helmet, consisting of the principles of piety, of justice, of honor, of benevolence, with which from his earliest infancy he had hitherto walked through life, in the presence of all his brethren; a spear, studded with the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence; a sword, the same with which he had led the armies of his country through the war of freedom to the summit of the triumphal arch of independence; a corslet and cuishes of long experience and habitual intercourse in peace and war with ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... give an excellent turn to your letter. In refusing such an offer you could not have better reasons than those you give, and it would be absurd to try and persuade him that we are not lovers, as the thing is self-evident. Nevertheless, my darling, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... a man like him, who lives at court, does not like to have a mad niece in his house. The thing is self-evident; if I'd continued to play my part of the man of the robe, I should have done the same in a similar case. But here, as you perceive, we don't care much for appearances; and I've taken her for a servant. She has shown more ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... is precisely the portions left without explanation in parables partially explained, that must in the nature of the case be to us most uncertain. It may be assumed regarding them that their spiritual meaning is either self-evident, and therefore required not a comment, or of subordinate importance, and therefore did not obtain one. In this case it is certain, from the diversity of opinion that prevails regarding them, that these portions are not easily ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... front of Will and me, his strong yellow teeth gleaming between a black beard and mustache. The Turk got up clumsily, and went out, muttering to himself. I glanced toward the corner where the self-evident gipsies sat, and observed that with perfect unanimity ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing
... Asinorum as Codes defended the Tiber bridge. But anyone who does not understand that does not understand the French Revolution—nor, for that matter, the American Revolution. "We hold these truths to be self-evident": it was the fanaticism of truism. But though Carlyle had no real respect for liberty, he had a real reverence for anarchy. He admired elemental energy. The violence which repelled most men from the Revolution was the one thing that attracted him to it. While a ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... the nature of man, and as numerous as the wants of society. Man is the only government-making animal in the world. His right to a participation in the production and operation of government is an inference from his nature, as direct and self-evident as is his right to acquire property or education. It is no less a crime against the manhood of a man, to declare that he shall not share in the making and directing of the government under which he lives, than to say that he shall not acquire property and education. The fundamental and ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... wiser Sprichwort than those of France and America. It compares advantageously with the second par. of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) by the Representatives of the U.S., which declares, "these truths to be self-evident:—that all men are created equal," etc. It is regretable that so trenchant a state-paper should begin with so gross and palpable a fallacy. Men are not born equal, nor do they become equal before their death-days even in condition, except by artificial levelling; and in republics and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... crises, men always revert to first principles, as in sailing out of sight of land the mariner consults celestial laws. So the Fathers began at the beginning, with God and human nature, and derived their government from truths which they disdained to prove, asserting them to be self-evident. Thus the Revolution was not the struggle of a class only, but of a people. It was not merely the rebellion of subjects whose pockets were threatened, it was the protest of men whose instincts had been outraged. As Mr. Webster was fond of saying, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... first, that the immigrants brought their peculiarities with them, which were fixed already when they came, we must also accept as self-evident that the Negritos of the Philippines do not belong to the same stock as the more powerful, bright-colored Indios. As long as these islands have been known, more than three centuries, the skin of the Negritos has been ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... that held the Bar's attention. Chick's straight, well-knit form, his quick-trained actions, overbalanced the question of the prophet in the mind of the man on the throne. His delight was self-evident. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... self-evident that "c" cannot be used as often as "b," so the Declarer who likes always to say something will prefer "b," but the bidder who wishes, when he calls, to have distinct value attached to his announcement, will elect in favor of "c" rather than "b," and for the same reason ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... industrial question, we may assume that the entrance of the swarms of immigrants into our country represents the introduction of just so much laboring power into the country, and we may also assume as a self-evident proposition that the introduction of laboring power into an undeveloped or partially developed country is advantageous until the point is reached at which all the laborers whom the country can ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... given moment, is the consequence of its state at any preceding moment. Another is that any of the rules, or so-called 'laws of nature,' by which the relation of phenomena is truly defined, is true for all time. The validity of these postulates is a problem of metaphysics; they are neither self-evident nor are they, strictly speaking, demonstrable. The justification of their employment, as axioms of physical philosophy, lies in the circumstance that expectations logically based upon them are verified, or, ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... always represented the round world upon which we dwell although it is at the same time believed that the world was not then considered to be round, frequently occurs in the hand of a female figure representing Eternity. It is self-evident that a representation of the world we live on is less likely to have been so placed ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... intuition. It was physically impossible that she should have disappeared into any one of the houses which had their entrances within the dark tunnel he had just traversed. Apart from the presumptive impossibility of her being lodged in such a quarter, there was the self-evident fact that he must have heard the door opened and closed. Secondly, she could not have turned to the right, for in that direction the street was straight and without any lateral exit, so that he must have ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... well-regulated distribution of his time and work, to be economical without parsimony and liberal without prodigality, and generally to follow such rules of wisdom as tend to render life prosperous, and human conduct acceptable to society. All such rules are self-evident, and grow necessarily out of the general principle which demands of the functions of the body to subserve the attainment of self-sanctification. But we must now speak precisely of this sanctification, to point out briefly in what it consists. ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... believed in exist or have ever existed; we hold them to be productions of the human imagination to which nothing real corresponds. This view has nowadays become so ingrained in us and appears so self-evident, that we find it difficult to imagine that it has not been prevalent through long ages; nay, it is perhaps a widely diffused assumption that even in antiquity educated and unbiased persons held the same view ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... explain some things in language, since you are not familiar with the mechanism of thought transference. The Five, a self-perpetuating body, do what governing is necessary for the entire planet. Their decrees are founded upon self-evident truth, and are therefore the law. Population is regulated according to the needs of the planet, and since much work is now in progress, an increase in population was recommended by the Five. My companion and I therefore had three children, instead of the customary two. By lot it fell to us to have ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... circle of Gilbert's arms that morning and answered his arguments about his mother. Now she was realizing that for weeks before that her allegiance had been wavering. She had no wish to go back to him. She could not understand herself, but the fact was self-evident, even though the scent of heliotrope haunted her days and crept into the land of her dreams. Her letter, when it was finished, struck her as cold and stupid, yet she let it go; she could not somehow make ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... bloodshed was practical, as such a testimony can still be, when men will; their principle of equality, as well as their practise of it was their legacy to our people, and it remains now all that differences us from other nations. It was not Thomas Jefferson who first imagined the first of the self-evident truths of the Declaration, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... sold as antifermentive is simply the well-known antiseptic, salicylate of soda. It should be self-evident to one at all acquainted with the philosophy of animal existence, that an agent which will prevent fermentation and decay must be sufficiently powerful in its influence to ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... What had happened was self-evident. From her place beside the huge stump she'd seen a military car approaching. And she and Lockley had been trying to reach the cordon of troops around Boulder Lake. There was no reason to distrust men in uniform or in a military ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... flocking of several million men to arms in defence of the Empire, and in defence of British conceptions of right and wrong has done something to convince Germans that the premises of the syllogism, were not so self-evident ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... mediaeval mysticism, and the faith of the early Christian Church. Buddhism and Christianity are both pessimist in their origin. It is not an "opinion," i.e. a creed or formula which may be weighed and either accepted or rejected, but is an insight which, when once understood and felt, is as self-evident as the air we breathe. But it is an insight which can only be attained through moral discipline, never through the rationalism of vulgar and self-seeking minds. Nor is it for those who are enlightened at all moments of their lives, but only in times of poetic exaltation, when the faculties ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... principles to all existing evil, political, legal, and ecclesiastical institutions, and to hasten the time when the kingdoms of this world will have become the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. It appears to us a self-evident truth that whatever the Gospel is designed to destroy at any period of the world, being contrary to it, ought now to be abandoned. If, then, the time is predicted when swords shall be beaten into plowshares ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... common gas, the gas itself, owing to defectiveness of the burner, is projected into the air. Now, considering the deleterious nature of all illuminating gases, the reasons for perfect ventilation of rooms in which natural gas is used for heating and culinary purposes are self-evident, not alone as a protection against explosions, but for the health of the occupants of the house, remembering that a larger supply of oxygen is said to be necessary for the perfect combustion of natural ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... would annihilate itself, because the result would be that there would be no deposits. A practical law which I recognise as such must be qualified for universal legislation; this is an identical proposition and, therefore, self-evident. Now, if I say that my will is subject to a practical law, I cannot adduce my inclination (e.g., in the present case my avarice) as a principle of determination fitted to be a universal practical law; for this is so far from being fitted for a universal legislation ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... with a sound of vexation in his voice, leaning back in his chair and looking balefully at Lady Tippins, who nods to him as her dear Bear, and playfully insinuates that she (a self-evident proposition) is ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... all self-evident propositions, they produced a pause in the discourse; for men do not deal with new ideas as freely as they deal with ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... the wages of sin, and extol, just a little, the wages of virture. For too constant insistence upon an evil thing is sure to breed doubt in the mind of one who is in the habit of thinking at all. It did in Cecille's. If it be so true, so inevitable, so frightful, surely it should be self-evident now and then, instead of a mere matter of report. And beautiful generalization, never anything but vague, becomes noticeable after a time, questionable. The things of glory in this world are not so tediously many that they will not bear once ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... guilty men to the scaffold, and——But that rascal is out of your reach.—Without trying to influence the conscience of such a magistrate as you are, I may point out to you that if you could be perfectly sure that Lucien was ignorant of the contents of that woman's will, it would be self-evident that he had no interest in her death, for she gave him ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... height of efficiency is attained by Mervin L. Lane, Insurance Service, New York, who prints on his letterhead, "Unnecessary terms of politeness as well as assurances of self-evident esteem are omitted from ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... organized and drilled together and worked out a class cheer for the Putnam Division Country Club—three deep long pants, say, followed by nine sharp short pants or pantlets. But I would have been elected pants leader without a struggle. My merits were too self-evident for a contest. ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... poses as being concerned with man's welfare on earth can ever make headway unless it recognises this. Physical well-being is a moral consideration that should and must have our attention before aught else, and that this is so needs no demonstrating; it is self-evident. ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... grand words of the Jesuit, might be taken as a motto by the great in all countries. These social differences are patent in all ages; the fact is always accepted by the people; its "reasons of state" are self-evident; it is at once cause and effect, a principle and a law. The common sense of the masses never deserts them until demagogues stir them up to gain ends of their own; that common sense is based on the verities of social order; and the social order is the same everywhere, in Moscow as in London, in Geneva ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... of seeing." We can only reassert that we see design everywhere; and that the vast majority of the human race in every age and clime has seen it. Analogy from experience, sound induction—as we hold—from the works not only of men but of animals, has made it an all but self-evident truth to us, that wherever there is arrangement, there must be an arranger; wherever there is adaptation of means to an end, there must be an adapter; wherever an organization, there must be an organizer. The existence of a designing God ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... supreme importance, it is scarcely necessary to dwell upon the self-evident fact that this foundation—Emission, or Placing of the voice—should be well laid under the guidance of a skilled and experienced singing-teacher. Nothing but disappointment can ensue if a task of such consequence be confided, as is too ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... not be improper also to remark, though the position be so obvious as almost to render the statement of it needless, that there is the same close connection and perfect harmony in the leading doctrines of Christianity among each other. It is self-evident, that the corruption of human nature, that our reconciliation to God by the atonement of Christ, and that the restoration of our primitive dignity by the sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit, are all parts of one whole, united in close ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... proof of this proposition, or rather the proposition itself, is self-evident, and is also plain from the definition of desire. For the desire of living, acting, &C., blessedly or rightly, is (Def. of the Emotions, i.) the essence of man - that is (III:vii.), the endeavour made by everyone to preserve ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... purity and to realise all the grandeur that can be crowded into it, it is necessary to study it in the religious edifices of the country. Plainness is the characteristic of the Shinto temple; built as a rule of pine, it has a thatched roof. The fact of its being an edifice of the Shinto religion is self-evident from the torii which stand before every Shinto temple. There are no idols or exterior ornamentation of any kind. The walls are left untouched by either the painter or the lacquerer. In the Buddhist temples, on the contrary, ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... of this last remark was so self-evident and incontrovertible that it elicited no reply, and the three friends rode on for a considerable time ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... little tool (fig. 69), the invention of one of my youngest "hands" (and heads), and really a praiseworthy invention, though indeed a simple and self-evident matter enough. The usual tool for waxing-up is (1) a strip of glass, (2) a penknife, (3) a stick of wood. The thing most to be wished for in whatever is used being, of course, that it should retain the heat. This youth argued: "If they ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... of history is the Philosophical. No explanation was needed of the two previous classes; their nature was self-evident. It is otherwise with the last, which certainly seems to require an exposition or justification. The most general definition that can be given is, that the philosophy of history means nothing but the thoughtful consideration of it. Thought is, indeed, essential to humanity. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... demonstrated by the grand natural order of the universe. In the light of modern science the principle of evolution is familiar to us all, and the accurate adjustment existing between all parts of the cosmic scheme is too self-evident to need insisting upon. Every advance in science consists in discovering new subtleties of connection in this magnificent universal order, which already exists and only needs our recognition to bring it into practical use. If, then, the highest work of the greatest minds ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... their logical effects. The "Regular" school of medicine, so far, has endeavored to build a medical science on the observation of "effects" and "experiences," but since one fundamental law of nature may produce a million seemingly differing effects it becomes self-evident that it is utterly impossible to found an exact science on such uncertain ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... of sterility to the unfit themselves will, on the whole, be incalculable. They are self-evident, and need not ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... exceedingly skinny personages: very upright, and very yellow. Miss Amelia Crumpton owned to thirty-eight, and Miss Maria Crumpton admitted she was forty; an admission which was rendered perfectly unnecessary by the self-evident fact of her being at least fifty. They dressed in the most interesting manner—like twins! and looked as happy and comfortable as a couple of marigolds run to seed. They were very precise, had the strictest ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... divine truth. To the modern dogmatist, these positions seem sceptical and pernicious. But to the philosopher, who knows the laws of human nature, to every scholar who knows the actual history of the Bible, these positions seem only self-evident. That in the Scriptures there are innumerable errors in science, mistakes in history, prophecies that were never fulfilled, contradictions and inconsistencies between different books and chapters,—these are facts of observation which every Biblical student knows full well. Granting, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... their present owners. Society itself would be thrown into the utmost confusion, and all the resources of both parties would be temporarily much diminished, if not nearly destroyed. But, whether suddenly or gradually, this fundamental change must take place; for it is self-evident that slavery cannot survive the present struggle. The proclamation of the President, which is to take effect on the 1st of January next, will make emancipation more complete and speedy; but the same result ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... investigation of the science of number, or any other abstract science. Mathematical and numerical investigations advance from principles which are clearly defined, and almost universally acknowledged to be self-evident; the reasoning also is of such a kind as to preclude the admission of error. In theology the case is different. There, it is difficult to define with accuracy the points from which the reasoning commences, and also to exclude, with certainty, the possibility of error in the reasoning itself. There ...
— Thoughts on a Revelation • Samuel John Jerram
... was concerned, feudalism and all things pertaining to caste, including what was then known in England, and is still known in Germany, as Divine Right. When he at last enunciated his political faith he put in the forefront of his declaration as "self-evident truths," the principles "that all men are created equal;" that they are endowed with "certain inalienable rights," among them "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;" and that governments derived "their just powers from the consent ...
— "Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" • Charles Francis Adams
... attribute of will. That we possess a definite and distinct energy whose activity may be contrasted with the rest and may be legitimately named "the will" is certainly less self-evident than either of the two preceding propositions but is none the less implied in both of them. For in the act of articulating to ourself the definite thought "I am I" we are using our will. The motive-force may ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... it enjoined the utmost possible cleanliness, and formulated a principle so self-evident that it seems astounding people should not have recognized it for themselves: that the smallest infant, like ourselves, should have regular meals, and should only take fresh nourishment when it has digested what has been given before; and hence that it should be suckled only at intervals ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... confusing the poet with the literary man, who writes from calculation rather than from inspiration. The dictum of Aristotle, "Those who feel emotion are most convincing through a natural sympathy with the characters they represent," [Footnote: Poetics XVII, Butcher's translation.] has appeared self-evident to most critics ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... must, if it do actually belong to society, have been come by naturally; and this accordingly is what Utilitarians really, though perhaps unconsciously, assume, treating moreover this gratuitous assumption of theirs as a self-evident truth. ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... grievances of 1765 and the declaration of 1774, this great state paper, drawn by the nervous pen of Thomas Jefferson, set forth the causes of ill-feeling toward Great Britain. First comes a statement of certain self-evident truths, a reiteration of those rights of man upon which Otis had dwelt in his speech of 1761. Then follows an enumeration of grievances put forward in this crisis as their justification in the face of the world; yet of the twenty-nine specifications of oppressive ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... it either wise or humane to prolong the war and crush the Boer resistance at the cost of much slaughter, merely in order to avenge defeats and vindicate a military superiority which the immensely greater forces of Britain made self-evident? A great country is strong enough to be magnanimous, and shows her greatness better by justice and lenity than by a sanguinary revenge. These moral arguments, which affect different minds differently, were reinforced by a strong ground of policy. The Boers of the Orange Free State had sympathised ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... fiction which gives a vivid impression of reality does truly represent the conditions studied in it, is one of those inquiries to which there is no very final answer. The most baffling fact of such fiction is that its truths are self-evident; and if you go about to prove them you are in some danger of shaking the convictions of those whom they have persuaded. It will not do to affirm anything wholesale concerning them; a hundred examples to the contrary present themselves if you know ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was "a reasonable man," Irene had always held a self-evident proposition. She had never, until a few days ago, conceived the possibility of a conflict between his ideas of right and her own. Domestic discord was to her mind a vulgar, no less than an unhappy, ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... to glance at certain considerations which point to the by no means self-evident proposition, that this factor of irresponsible property is certain to be present in the social body a hundred years ahead. It has, no doubt, occurred to the reader that all the conditions of the shareholder's being unfit him for co-operative action in defence ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... giving him to understand that they were doing something for him. That had the end and object that the auditors know; and it is not unknown that the archbishop wrote in their favor to the royal Council. That was almost self-evident, for the explicit manner in which Licentiate Don Francisco de Rojas y Onate, visitor of these islands, enlightened him was not sufficient, when the visitor said that he had no right, and that neither the cabildo nor the bishop could do anything ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... possess, but in the main the question of methods predominates. Most beginners do not trouble very much about any particular plan in their study of chess, but as soon as they have learnt the moves, rush into the turmoil of practical play. It is self-evident that their prospects under such conditions cannot be very bright. The play of a beginner is planless, because he has too many plans, and the capacity for subordinating all his combinations to one leading idea is non- existent. Yet it cannot be denied upon ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker
... is the simplest. The preamble is philosophical, dealing with "self-evident" truths. Today the men who dislike or doubt these truths dismiss the preamble as "theoretical," or, to use another term of derogation favored by reactionaries, "French." But if the preamble be French and philosophical, the specific charges against ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... their wrangling cliques; no doubt he occasionally faced the possibility of a redeemed Poland, but in general the suggestion of such a consummation served his purpose and he went no further. That he had no sentiment about Polish nationality is self-evident. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... statement that the laryngeal muscles are too weak to withstand the pressure of a powerful expiratory blast, the theory of the vocal action therein embodied met with immediate acceptance. This idea is so plausible that it appeals to the thoughtful investigator as self-evident, and seems to call for no proof. The doctrine of breath-control was at once adopted, by the most influential vocal scientists, as the ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... importunities of others. For Marie Antoinette had of late often broken through the rule which, in compliance with her mother's advice, she had at first laid down for herself, to abstain from recommending persons for preferment; and had pressed many a petition on the minister's notice as to which it was self-evident that she could know nothing of their merits, nor feel any personal ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... systematized, their value conceded, their acceptance a matter of course. All problems would be regulated; all difficulties smoothed away; all opposition overcome. Then the officers and rangers of that peaceful and organized service, then the public—accepting such things as they accept all self-evident truths—would look back on these beginnings as men look back on romance. They would recall the time when, like knights errant, armed men rode abroad on horses through a wilderness, lying down under the stars, living hard, dwelling lowly in poverty, ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... struggling individuals, with all the frailties of human nature and all the possibilities of mankind, either for good or evil; incidentally he throws into marked contrast the despicable depreciation used by the Spanish writers in referring to the Filipinos, making clear the application of the self-evident proposition that no ordinary human being in the presence of superior force can very well conduct himself as a man unless he be treated ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... but I did not mention it, for I know how closely measured out are the moments of a king; and besides, it seems to me as self-evident that we think of our personal advantage as that when we buy a horse we ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "It is so self-evident that it is the way all governments are carried on. Wherefore, my good Paul, we only do what all other legislators do. We are never rogues so long as we call ourselves honest fellows, and we never commit ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for a way to explain what seemed to her a self-evident truth. "I mean—privacy," she said. "For instance, if you were in love, you'd not want everybody to ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... call me Ritter, James Ritter," supplied the outlaw promptly. "I am not ashamed of my real name but my relatives had cause to be ashamed of its owner in his present condition. Their plans are almost self-evident, my lad. They will wait until dark and then slip over the wall, some will stop in that big building while the balance will make their way around to a building on the other side of you. They will then have you surrounded and have only to watch and wait to starve you out. They have plenty ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... situation, wherein the Government and the States as individuals could not act, that the simple, self-evident plan of the House of Governors was proposed. It required no Constitutional amendment or a single new law passed in any State to create it or to continue it. It can not make laws; it would be unwise ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... "that's a self-evident fact. I know that, and she is your ladylove. But I want to know all about her, and, first of ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... must so familiarize himself with all the details, as in a manner to become a child of that epoch; for he can present a really living image of only that which is living in himself. That this requires a deep and earnest study of history is self-evident. Historical Romance demands the study of the historian, together with the creative imagination of the poet. For the free embodiment of the poet can blossom only from out the studio of the historian, as ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... is evidently also necessary not to personify "nature" too much, though I am very apt to do it myself, since people will not understand that all such phrases are metaphors. Natural Selection is, when understood, so necessary and self-evident a principle that it is a pity it should be in any way obscured; and it therefore occurs to me that the free use of "survival of the fittest", which is a compact and accurate definition of it, would tend much to its ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... article of diet that meant, probably. Googoo—if that was the dog's name—was passionately fond of poets, that was self-evident, and intended to make a meal of this one, forthwith. He flew at the Speranza ankles. Albert performed a most undignified war dance, and dashed his handful of sand into Googoo's open countenance. For a minute or so there was a lively shindy on top of that knoll. At the end ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... consequences which were formally involved in them. What, then, were these ideas—these verae ideae, as he calls them—and how were they to be obtained? If they were to serve as the axioms of his system, they must be self-evident truths, of which no proof was required; and the illustration which he gives of the character of such ideas ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... principles are self-evident. Everyone will admit it to be expedient that all goods wanting to be sold should be sold as soon as they are ready; that every man who wants to work should find employment as soon as he is ready for it. Obviously also, as soon ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... few minutes for Kennedy, in his most engaging and plausible manner, to state the hypothetical reason of our call. Though it was perfectly self-evident from the start that Mrs. Martin would throw cold water on anything requiring an outlay of money Craig accomplished his full purpose of securing an interview with Mr. Haswell. The invalid lay propped up in bed, and as we entered he heard ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... jolted. It was suddenly self-evident. Logan had said he'd figured a table of overdrive fields for the Isis which would work for anything between one point five light-speeds to maximum. One point ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... as he seemed to be struck with this statement of a self-evident fact, he would, in the next few minutes, bring the numeral "nineteen"—tant bien que ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... the American Declaration of Independence—"We hold these truths to be self-evident—that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by the Creator with inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"—was not the sort of language that appealed to English Whigs (America itself cheerfully admitted the falseness of the statement by keeping ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton |
