"Truism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... character; good, indifferent, and bad. Need I say that, as a very safe rule, they must all be viewed as bad from the point of view of the young Clergyman's (or indeed of the Clergyman's) purse? It is a truism to remark that high interest means low security; but even a truism can bear occasional repetition when it has to do with a good man's whole life and work, and when the oblivion may mean acute or chronic misery. Such investments are for us a form of gambling, ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... hope that you and your participants will enjoy Singhalut. It is a truism that, in order to import, we must export; we wish to encourage a pleasurable response to the 'Made in Singhalut' tag ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... a quick, sparkling glance of affirmation, as if she had lately had some trouble to maintain that ancient truism. She was going to speak again, but the Doctor waved his hand downward soothingly toward the restless form and ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... It is a truism almost as old as Time itself, that true love is never fully known until after the lovers have once quarreled and made their peace. The kiss of reconciliation after a temporary estrangement is frequently more potent than the ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... often been stated that no two well-designed sewerage schemes are alike, and although this truism is usually applied to inland towns, it applies with far greater force to schemes for coastal towns and towns situated on the banks of our large rivers where the sewage is discharged into tidal waters. The essence ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... the truism—in question is an attempt to do neither the one nor the other; it simply asserts the patent fact that, if God is omnipotent, and so had an unlimited choice of means whereby to accomplish the ends of "animal perfection," ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... declared poetry the most philosophical of all writings—but it required a Wordsworth to pronounce it the most metaphysical. He seems to think that the end of poetry is, or should be, instruction; yet it is a truism that the end of our existence is happiness; if so, the end of every separate part of our existence, everything connected with our existence, should be still happiness. Therefore the end of instruction should be happiness; and happiness is another name for pleasure;—therefore ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... thought of death had come to her when she looked at the glory of the dawn. She had said to Maurice, "'The mountains will endure'—but we!" Of course it was a truism, such a thing as she might say at any time when she was confronted by the profound stability of nature. Thousands of people had said much the same thing on thousands of occasions. Yet now the demon at her elbow whispered to her that the remark had had a peculiar significance. She had ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the historical novel, which has advanced on the general lines marked out by him. Carlyle tersely says: "These historical novels have taught all men this truth, which looks like a truism, and yet was as good as unknown to writers of history and others till so taught: that the by-gone ages of the world were actually filled by living men, not by protocols, state papers, controversies, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... life, of course) that the church, the school, and the farmers' organization are the great rural social institutions. They are the forces now most efficient, and the ones that promise to abide. This classification may appear to be a mere truism, when we suggest that under the church should be placed all those movements that have a distinctively religious motive, under the school all those agencies that are primarily educational in design, and under farmers' organizations those ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... though it were a self-evident truism, that we cannot know that anything exists which we do not know. It is inferred that whatever can in any way be relevant to our experience must be at least capable of being known by us; whence it follows that if matter were essentially something with which we could not become ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... wandering from the path of rectitude. The story is not an illustration of the "pleasures of hope;" but an attempt to show the young reader that what we most desire, in moral and spiritual, as well as worldly things, we labor the hardest to obtain—a truism adopted by the heroine in the form of the principal title of the volume, Hope ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... could report a dinner-table conversation, I might be tempted to say something of my talk with Mr. Oliphant. I like well enough conversation which floats safely over the shallows, touching bottom at intervals with a commonplace incident or truism to push it along; I like better to find a few fathoms of depth under the surface; there is a still higher pleasure in the philosophical discourse which calls for the deep sea line to reach bottom; but best of all, when one is in the right mood, is the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... truism that interesting occupation prevents dissension, and that idle fingers are ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... who thought twice about Mrs. Van Dam escaped the reflection that she was a descendant, and Cora with her mind running continually on this shoot of a peculiarly sightly family tree, was as fired by this truism of natural law as if it had lain all the centuries awaiting her discovery. Those delightful magicians of figures, who as easy as asking prove William the Conqueror the mathematical begetter of us all, had hitherto contented her; but such sweets cloyed before ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... everything there is a time and a season, and then how does the glory of a thing pass from it, even like the flower of the grass! This is a truism, but it is one of those which are continually forcing themselves upon the mind. Many years have not passed over my head, yet during those which I can call to remembrance, how many things have I seen flourish, pass away, and become forgotten, except by myself, who, in spite ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... own." Alas! next day, in the press, I was reported as simply uttering the truism that such gatherings increase the peaceful feeling of nations; and so the main point of my little speech was lost. But it was a slight matter, and of all my visits to Oxford, this will remain in my memory as ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... since one of the first of American statesmen told the national Senate that "Julius Caesar struck down Roman liberty at Pharsalia," and probably there was not one man in his audience who supposed that he was uttering anything beyond a truism, though they must have been puzzled to discover any resemblance between "the mighty Julius" and Mr. Martin Van Buren, the gentleman whom the orator was cutting up, and who was actually in the chair while Mr. Calhoun was seeking to kill him, in a political ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... principles of association are excellent in themselves, and indeed absolutely essential to the working of the human mind. Legitimately applied they yield science; illegitimately applied they yield magic, the bastard sister of science. It is therefore a truism, almost a tautology, to say that all magic is necessarily false and barren; for were it ever to become true and fruitful, it would no longer be magic but science. From the earliest times man has been engaged in a search for general ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... this passage is an absurd truism; but the proposition in question can be resolved into—An animal is rational or it is irrational. Again, "the former does not belong to pure categoricals," it is simply disjunctive. MR. INGLEBY falls into the same error, and moreover seems not to be aware that a disjunctive ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... which seems to me worth notice. Varieties generally have much restricted ranges: this statement is indeed scarcely more than a truism, for if a variety were found to have a wider range than that of its supposed parent-species, their denominations ought to be reversed. But there is also reason to believe, that those species which are very closely allied to other species, and in so far resemble varieties, often have much restricted ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... that this great moral question is no question confined to the narrow limits of the home, but a question of the rise and fall of nations. This is a truism of history. All history teaches us that the welfare and very life of a nation is determined by moral causes; and that it is the pure races that respect their women and guard them jealously from defilement ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... (he says), "and for the last time, we were forcibly reminded of the old truism that a 'fleet' is created by long practice at sea in time of peace (cruising, not remaining in port), and that a collection of ships of various types hastily collected, which have only learned to sail together on the way to the theatre of operations, ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... blood; it is the business of lesser men to apply the discovery to practical ends. It takes a Whitney to invent the cotton gin, but the dullest negro roustabout can operate it. Why multiply illustrations of a truism? Theory, you perceive, calls for other and higher gifts than application. The man who can formulate the eternal laws of social evolution can safely leave it to others to ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... call Happiness the Chief Good is a mere truism, and what is wanted is some clearer account of its real nature. Now this object may be easily attained, when we have discovered what is the work of man; for as in the case of flute-player, statuary, or artisan of any kind, or, more generally, all ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... headstone in a corner of the ground, inscribed with the name of Susan Meynell, who died July 14th, 1835, much lamented; and then the text about 'the one sinner that repenteth,' and so on," said Mr. Sheldon, as if he did not care to dwell on so hackneyed a truism. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... be a truism to declare that human nature is about as complicated a piece of machinery as could be found in the human world. And yet I do not know why it should be considered so. All things and all men do not run in grooves. A man to be a criminal need not be hopelessly bad in every other sense. ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... than he, that, so far as we know how, we must avoid substituting the goal for the starting point, must avoid reading back into the present what courage, effort and skill might create in the future. Yet this truism is inordinately difficult to live by, because every one of us is so little trained in the selection ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... This truism, which is in the mouths of thousands while it is in the hearts of scarcely any, was well meant by Sir Wycherly, however plainly expressed. It merely drew from the youth the simple answer that—"he was born in the ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... It is a truism and a counsel of perfection to say so, but, to be effective, wild-life protection laws, like other laws, must be scientific, comprehensive, accepted by the public, understood by all ...
— Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... between one man and another; and it is by the aggregation of such men that a nation becomes prosperous. It must never therefore be forgotten, that it is not the possession of knowledge, but the use which we make of it, that confers distinction. For no truism is more incontrovertible than this, that knowledge which we cannot or do not use, is ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... understand the rationale of the unfoldment of his own possibilities must make no mistake here. He must realize that the whole process is that of bringing the universal within the grasp of the individual by raising the individual to the level of the universal and not vice-versa. It is a mathematical truism that you cannot contract the infinite, and that you can expand the individual; and it is precisely on these lines that evolution works. The laws of nature cannot be altered in the least degree; but we can come into such a realization of our own ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... system to be touched, as with a rod, when necessary—a rod that is held over them always in terrorem! We all talk about morality; but try some measure of reform, and you will find that every man sees the necessity of it for his neighbour only. Goodness is happiness, and sin is disease. The truism is as old as the hills, and as evident; but if men were in earnest, do you suppose they would go on for ever choosing sin and its ghastly companion as they do? Do you know, there are moments when I think that even their reverence for the purity of women is a sham. For why do they ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... a controversy which has conclusively settled the question, establishing to the satisfaction of all parties a clear preponderance of argument or fact in favor of one opinion, and making that opinion a truism which is accepted by all enlightened men, even though they have not themselves examined the evidence on which it rests. Thus, if any one in a company of ordinarily educated persons were to deny the ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... have given the world romance and interest. Every story, whether we find it in the myths of the East, the folklore of Europe, the poems of the Troubadours, or in our newspaper of this morning, is based on one or the other of these factors, or on both combined. Now it is a truism that love never played so important a part as now in shaping the destinies of men and women, for this is the only century in which it has obtained even a partial divorce from worldly and parental influences. Moreover the great battle of society, to crush wrong and elevate ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... that God cannot reverse morality, may mean either that it would be inconsistent with his immutability to reverse the laws he had himself established, or that he is compelled by his nature to impose certain rules, and no others. The first supposition is a truism; the second is not proved. For, since Mr. Mansel has discarded as a fiction any 'absolute law of duty,' it is hard to conjecture whence he could derive any compulsory choice of rules. Why God commands some things in preference to others—whether from a regard to the happiness of all his creatures, ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... truism, that the higher position now taken by English studies, is intimately interwoven with the advances which have been made during the last quarter of a century in the higher education of women, and that but for the movement to let women share ...
— The evolution of English lexicography • James Augustus Henry Murray
... children certainly have no instinctive feeling against their black playfellows; they have to be taught to look down upon and keep away from the companions of their childhood, a fact which no candid observer will deny. It is also a truism of history that the fair-skinned women of a conquered country, as a rule, will yield themselves easily to the swarthy barbarians who have killed or overcome their husbands and brothers. The many women who in British seaports, and in the German towns that were ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... like truism, at least I hope it does, for then you will surely not refuse to act upon it; and to consider farther, how, as architects, you are to keep yourselves in contemplation of living ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... Asia, but would have been equally ridiculed by Greece and Rome. The result of this would be that the condition of our social, civil, and political affairs would be incalculably improved. The Salic law would be unnecessary; it would be a superfluous truism. The European lady, strictly speaking, is a creature who should not exist at all; but there ought to be housekeepers, and young girls who hope to become such; and they should be brought up not to be arrogant, but to be domesticated ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... too much jam and feels that too much of a good thing is a truism is rather like the philosopher who, having studied everything, comes to the sad conviction that there is something wrong with the world. The child finds that large quantities of jam are a delusion; the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... been a woman at least," said Miss Amory. "I have been a sort of feminine automaton. I have been respectable and she has not. All good women are not respectable and all respectable women are not good. That's a truism so absolute that it is a platitude, and yet there still exist people to whom it would appear a novel statement. That poor creature has loved and had her heart broken. She has suffered the whole gamut of things. She has been a wife ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... is a platitude—a flat statement which reduces the facts of the case to an average, and calls that truth. It is absurd to imply, as does this old truism, that we may never judge a man by his words. Words are often the most convenient indices of education, of cultivation, and of intellectual power. And what is more, a man's speech, a man's writing, when ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... a profound hush in the Executive Chamber. The feet of those who entered made no sound on the thick carpet. Those who were in the chamber offered evidence of the truism that there are situations where words fail to do justice to ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... their rulers. The means employed have been cited as evidence in support of the economic interpretation of history now in fashion. Government, it is true, like every other form of life, must meet the fundamental needs of subsistence and defense, but this truism supplies no explanation of the particular mode of doing so that may be adopted. Those needs account for motion but not for direction. Human will, discernment, and purpose enter and complicate the situation in a way that makes theories of determinism appear absurd. No one has ever ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... be a truism wellnigh as musty as Hamlet's half cited proverb, to enlarge upon the evidence given in King Lear of a sympathy with the mass of social misery more wide and deep and direct and bitter and tender than Shakespeare ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... produced. And why may not "a substance" be produced? Because, by the definition, "a substance" is that which is "self-existent." In other words, a self-existent substance cannot be created,—a truism which scarcely required the apparatus of a geometrical proof by means of propositions, scholia, and corollaries, or, as Professor Saisset says, with laconic naivete, "ce qui a a peine besoin d'etre ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... when you took to working for the infant school. Yes, I think the way to be happy and useful is to get up many interests, so as to be fresh and vigorous, and think not at all of personalities. There's a truism!" ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... great beings in thy day," said the leaden king, who loved the philosophy of a truism (and the history of whose inspirations I ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... truism," cried Beatrice. "Ah, sister, I am tired of all this; for eleven years the sea has been singing the same songs; those waves rise and fall as they did a hundred years since; the birds sing the same story; the sun shines the same; even the shadow of the great elms fall over the meadow ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... intention of the United States in annexing the Hawaiian Islands is to give them the benefits of the most advanced civilization, and it is a truism that the progress of civilization in every country is measured by the approach of women toward the ideal of equal ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... it is the case among intelligent thinkers," explained the Philosopher, "but in popular literature the convention still lingers. To woman's face no man cares to protest against it; and woman, to her harm, has come to accept it as a truism. 'What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and all that's nice.' In more or less varied form the idea has entered into her blood, shutting out from her hope of improvement. The girl is discouraged from asking herself the occasionally needful question: Am I on the way to becoming ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... surprise, audacity, and irreverence. But all these qualities have characterized other schools of humor. There is the same element of surprise in De Quincey's anti-climax, "Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other which, perhaps, at the time he thought little of," as in Artemus's truism that "a comic paper ought to publish a joke now and then." The violation of logic which makes us laugh at an Irish bull is likewise the source of the humor in Artemus's saying of Jeff Davis, that ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... critical point in political economy. Malthus's opponents, as Mr. Bonar remarks,[217] attacked him alternately for propounding a truism and for maintaining a paradox. A 'truism' is not useless so long as its truth is not admitted. It would be the greatest of achievements to enunciate a law self-evident as soon as formulated, and yet ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... fear of my thinking you the owner of a cold heart. I am more than three parts disposed, however, to be ferocious with you for ever writing down such a preposterous truism. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... owner will be when it is returned to her. I turn back and search eagerly. Perception is necessary, but it is only the first step. The perception must excite some feeling, if choice or exertion of the will is to follow. This is a truism. ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... then only if it became evident that their inability or unwillingness to do justice at home and abroad had violated the rights of the United States or had invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations. It is a mere truism to say that every nation, whether in America or anywhere else, which desires to maintain its freedom, its independence, must ultimately realize that the right of such independence can not be separated from the responsibility of making good ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Rome, the vandalisms of the ignorant, or the kilns and melting-pots of the Middle Ages. The quality is still more a source of delight than the quantity. This last sentence, of course, contains a truism, since art is no delight without high quality. If we had only preserved to us such masterpieces as the Capitoline Venus, the Dying Gaul, the Laocoon, the Dancing Faun, the so-called Narcissus, and the Resting Mercury, we ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... see, Leonard, that though knowledge be power, it is only one of the powers of the world; that there are others as strong, and often much stronger; and the assertion either means but a barren truism, not worth so frequent a repetition, or it means something that you would find it very difficult ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not reply, but Mark understood that she assented to his truism, and they walked on as silent as the long shadows that followed them. A quarter of a mile from the high road the path reached the edge of the wold and dipped over into a wood which was sparse just below the brow, but which grew denser ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... general principles which should control human society, and as such should prevail over majorities. Constitutions were expressly intended to defend the rights of minorities; since without them, each question, or interest, might be settled by the majority, as it arose. It was but a truism to say that the oppression of the majority was the worst sort of oppression; since the parties injured not only endured the burthen imposed by many, but were cut off from the sympathy of their kind, which can alleviate much suffering, by the ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... Mantegna seems to be graving steel or cutting into marble. It is easy to apply this analysis in succession to any draughtsman who has style. To do so would, however, be superfluous: we should only be enforcing what is a truism to all intelligent students of art—namely, that each individual stamps his own specific quality upon his handiwork; reveals even in the neutral region of design his innate preference for colour or pure form ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... said Soames. Why he said that, what he meant by it, he knew neither when he spoke nor after. It was a truism almost preposterous, but its effect was startling. She rose from the window-seat, and stood for a moment perfectly still, looking at him. He could see her bosom heaving. Then she turned to the window and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... competition of American wheat. When we discussed the subject and foretold the straits to which the country would be reduced in the event of war with a great European Power, he concluded these forebodings with the habitual remark, "Well, what I says is, them as lives longest will see the most." A truism, no doubt, but, as time has proved, by ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... or political courage has made up his mind to a prospect of immutable mutability; but even in a "transformation" there is something catastrophic in the removal of the back scene. It is a truism to say of the wise and noble lady who is gone from us that we shall always remember her; but there is a subtler and higher compliment still in confessing that we often forgot her. We forgot her as we forget the sunshine, ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... arrogance of Realism." Each person is, for himself, the keystone and the occasion of this universal edifice. "Nothing, not God," he says, "is greater to one than oneself is"; a statement with an irreligious smack at the first sight; but like most startling sayings, a manifest truism on a second. He will give effect to his own character without apology; he sees "that the elementary laws never apologise." "I reckon," he adds, with quaint colloquial arrogance, "I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... emblem of frail humanity striving towards the ideal. It is a long leap from that childlike faith to the present day of skyscrapers. For so is the world constituted. A great truth too often becomes gradually a truism, then a merely tolerated and uninteresting theory; gradually it becomes obsolete and sometimes even degenerates into a symbol of sarcasm or a servant of utilitarianism. This we are illustrating every day of our lives. We speak of a person's being "silly," and yet the word comes ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... forming proverbs could not have been entirely insensible to it. We may define a proverb to be a moral statement, instructive in object, and epigrammatically expressed. It is always somewhat controversial, and when it approaches a truism scarcely deserves the name. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... more from various texts in the Jewish and Christian sacred books, substituting for Jupiter flinging his thunderbolts the Almighty wrapped in thunder and sending forth his lightnings. Through the Middle Ages this was fostered until it came to be accepted as a mere truism, entering into all medieval thinking, and was still further developed by an attempt to specify the particular sins which were thus punished. Thus even the rational Florentine historian Villani ascribed floods and fires to the "too great pride of the city of Florence and the ingratitude of the citizens ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... not to be much wondered at when it is considered that these men were his rivals, either as poets or prose-writers, and it is well known that such are generally as jealous of each other as are the ladies who are handsome of those who desire to be considered so. It is an old truism, and as true as it is old, that in the multitude of counsellors there is safety. I therefore will show you my opinion of this gifted but unfortunate genius: it may be estimated as worth little, but it has this merit: it comes from an eye-and ear-witness, and this, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... a truism. "It is usually better not to," said she, with the air of an authority. And latterly, addressing the facade of Notre Dame, "You see, Mr. Barry-Smith being so ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... truism to suggest that dramatic instinct and dramatic power of expression are naturally the first essentials for success in the art of story-telling, and that, without these, no story-teller would go very far; but I maintain that, even with these gifts, no high standard ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... seem a truism to say that the whole is made up of its parts, but all the same we often lose sight of this in our ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... an unlikelihood," said Phillip adroitly. And much as we speak of the uncertainties of this world, the latter remark might be accepted as a truism in regard to the pecuniary affairs ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... wonderful successes, that looked like conjuring, had been gained by plodding logic, by clear and commonplace French thought. The French electrify the world not by starting any paradox, they electrify it by carrying out a truism. They carry a truism so far—as in the French Revolution. But exactly because Valentin understood reason, he understood the limits of reason. Only a man who knows nothing of motors talks of motoring without petrol; only a man ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... of new-fangled systems of philosophy, or gravely descanting on the immense importance of instilling sound principles of morality into the mind. It would not be a bold conjecture, but an obvious truism to say, that all the great changes which have been brought about in the moral world, either for the better or worse, have been introduced not by the bare statement of facts, which are things already known, and which must always operate nearly ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... special moral or doctrinal significance in the making of such conversation with one's self at all. The Logos, the reasonable spark, in man, is common to him with the gods—koinos auto pros tous theous—cum diis communis. That might seem but the truism of a certain school of philosophy; but in Aurelius was clearly an original and lively apprehension. There could be no inward conversation with one's self such as this, unless there were indeed some one else, aware of our ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... paradox; but it always finds enthusiastic believers who have plausible arguments in its support. It appears, indeed, to have a singular fascination for some persons in all times and communities. It might seem an obvious truism that under no possible conditions can people in general be got to give as much for a promise to pay as for a certain and instant payment; and yet this truism would have to be proved a falsehood in order to establish ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... of the young lady's speech, though she protested against the former part. For my part, I suppose Miss Laura was right in both statements, and with regard to the latter assertion especially, that it is an old and received truism—love is an hour with us: it is all night and all day with a woman. Damon has taxes, sermon, parade, tailors' bills, parliamentary duties, and the deuce knows what to think of; Delia has to think about Damon—Damon is the oak (or the post), and stands up, and ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... light destroy the materiality of bodies (a truism in art well known to Watteau, Rembrandt, Turner, and latterly, to Claude Monet and the earlier group of Impressionists). And now for ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... that is desire is intercessory; but kindling desire loses a part of its purest spirituality if the lips try to express it. It is a truism that we can think more lucidly and profoundly than we can write or speak. The silent intercession and unvoiced imploring is an honest and potent prayer to heal and save. The audible prayer may be offered to be heard of men, though ostensibly to catch ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... come and must come wherever man can set his wishes and his hopes. The only way not to be disappointed when a thing turns out against you, is not to have really cared how the thing went. It is not a truism to remark that this is impossible if you did care. Of course you are not disappointed at failing of attaining an end which you did not care whether you attained or not; but men seek very few such ends. If a man has worked day and night for six weeks in canvassing his ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... come with a better civilization; but before society can be civilized it has to be debarbarized,' Emma remarked, and Diana sighed over the task and the truism. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... but his own belief in the sanctity of the verbal arrangement was sound to the core, and he hazarded the opprobrium of our stern conventional system. To him, Lady Hamilton had an enduring charm which influenced his wild, weak, generous soul, and was in fact an inspiration to him. It is a truism that the life-story of all men has its tragedy and romance, and in this, Nelson's was only similar to others; and who can help ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... me a truism to say that we ought to look at life in the light of eternity. Only then does the true significance of the meanest action in life appear. Life is redeemed from triviality and vulgarity. So far from worldly possessions losing their value, and ordinary occupations appearing insignificant, ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... compound interest,' but there are reasons for suspecting that Mr. Carlyle's definition of the just and the unjust are such as to reduce this and all his other sentences of like purport to the level of mere truism and repetition. If you secretly or openly hold that to be just and veracious which is successful, then it needs no further demonstration that penalties of ultimate failure are exacted for injustice, because it is precisely the failure that constitutes ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... these properly to a landsman, I would say, for the sake of easier comprehension, that the theory of a 'bend' is based on the good- natured truism contained in the old adage, 'One good turn deserves another'; while a second proverb, 'Safe bind, safe find,' will equally justify the existence of the 'hitch'; but if the inquirer be not satisfied with either of these definitions or explanations, whichever term he may choose ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... struggle for existence. If the first of these can be explained in such a manner as to be accepted as true, or highly probable, we have a substantial gain to our knowledge. The second is little—if at all—better than a truism. Granted, if it were not generally the case that those forms are most likely to survive which are best fitted for the conditions of their existence, no adaptation of form to conditions of existence could ever have come about. "The survival of the fittest" therefore, ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... under-feeding are both bad, is a truism. Of the two, however, the last is the worst. As writes a high authority, "the effects of casual repletion are less prejudicial, and more easily corrected, than those of inanition."[1] Besides, where there has ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... must naturalize that portentous phrase, a truism, it were well that we limited the use of it. Every commonplace or trite observation is not a truism. For example: A good name helps a man on in the world. This is nothing but a simple truth, however hackneyed. It has a distinct subject and predicate. But when the thing predicated is involved in the term of the subject, and so necessarily ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... was nothing to suspect in the young gentleman, he saw no earthly reason why so agreeable a companion should not be an agreeable son-in-law. "If he be poor," thought the squire, "though he does not seem so, Lucy is rich!" And this truism appeared to him to answer every objection. Nevertheless, William Brandon possessed a remarkable influence over the weaker mind of his brother; and the squire, though with great reluctance, resolved to adopt his advice. He shut his doors against Clifford, and when he met him ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... suppose this theorem to be a truism; but I venture to state it, because it is surely desirable that it should be recognized as an axiom by metaphysicians, and practically does not seem to me yet to have been so. I say "animated life" because the word "life" by itself ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... words in the place of things. It seems to be true, that whether applied to language or to other branches of knowledge, the Darwinian theory, unless very precisely defined, hardly escapes from being a truism. If by 'the natural selection' of words or meanings of words or by the 'persistence and survival of the fittest' the maintainer of the theory intends to affirm nothing more than this—that the word 'fittest to survive' survives, he adds not much to the knowledge ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... and Mahomedan, Catholic and Protestant; the persecutions, the torturings, the domestic hatreds, the petty spites, with ALL creeds equally blood-guilty, one cannot but be amazed that the concurrent voice of mankind has not placed bigotry at the very head of the deadly sins. It is surely a truism to say that neither smallpox nor the plague have brought the same misery ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... a mere truism to say that the intellect with which woman as well as man is endowed, has been given for use and exercise, and not "to fust in her unused." Such endowments are never conferred without a purpose. The Creator may be lavish in His gifts, but ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... is there respecting human nature which is absolutely and universally true? We know of only one: and that is not only true, but identical; that men always act from self-interest. This truism the Utilitarians proclaim with as much pride as if it were new, and as much zeal as if it were important. But in fact, when explained, it means only that men, if they can, will do as they choose. When we see the actions of a man we know with certainty what ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... midst of a vehement plea for an enlargement of female education, in the course of which he uttered several things rather disturbing to the nerves of Mrs. Mumbray, and other ladies present.—Woman, it was true, lived an imperfect life if she did not become wife and mother; but this truism had been insisted on to the exclusion of another verity quite as important: that wifehood and motherhood, among civilized people, implied qualifications beyond the physical. The ordinary girl was sent forth into life with a mind scarcely ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... get His whole glory while man gets any. That seems a truism, but do we realise the fact? "Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit." If that is our one aim, as it was in the soul of Jesus, it is bound to be realised. Let Him work this in us too—this simple, absolute, absorbing passion of ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter
... is an idea which has at present all the unpopularity of a truism; so that we tend to forget that it was not so very long ago that it had the more practical unpopularity which attaches to a new truth. Ingratitude is surely the chief of the intellectual sins of man. He takes his political benefits for granted, just as he takes ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... cases from the illogical structure of his understanding; his success was in a path which required no logic. What is the brief abstract of his success? It is this: he took an obvious and familiar truth, which until his time had been a barren truism, and showed that it teemed with consequences. Out of this position—That in the ground which limited human food lay the ground which limited human increase—united with this other position—That there is a perpetual ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... farsighted, sounds simple; but two generations have disagreed on the question whether Webster was a great statesman; and both great statesman and farsighted are such vague and inclusive terms that one would either accept a general principle of which they are terms as a harmless truism, or else balk at being asked to grant a proposition which might have unexpected meanings thrust into it. This double difficulty pursues the syllogism as a device for forwarding knowledge: either it sets forth a truth so large and vague that you cannot say whether you accept it for all cases or ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... a truism, although I know perfectly well that it will meet with a vehement denial from many who are in sympathy with thoughts which spring from the inner life. To see with the astral sense of sight is a form of activity ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... served as an adequate excuse and she had started at comparatively short notice, accompanied by the faithful Mary, after a stormy interview with her doctor, whose gloomy warnings she refuted with the undeniable truism that one land was as good as another to die in. Within a few hours of the American coast the tragedy, short and overwhelming, had occurred. From the parent ice a thousand miles away in the north the stupendous white destruction had moved majestically down its appointed ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... it up. It was a mere truism. Nothing under canvas could be expected to make a port on such an idle night of dreamy splendour and spiritual stillness. We would have to glide idly to and fro, keeping our station within the appointed bearings, and, unless a fresh breeze sprang up with the dawn, we ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... Protestant. Swift and Addison, the most native and natural of our writers, Hooker and Milton, the most elaborate, never can become our co-religionists; and, though this is but the enunciation of a truism, it is not on that account an ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... come about so subtilely and gradually that she was almost unaware of it herself, this inward change in herself. Nora had by nature a quick and active mind, but she had also many inherited prejudices. It is a truism that it is much harder to unlearn than to learn, and for her it was harder, in the circumstances, than for the average person. Not that she was more set in her ways than other people, but that she had accepted from her childhood a definite set of ideas as to the proper conduct of life; a code, ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... to the success of an absolute ruler. We may therefore accept this essay as the most profound and lucid exposition of the principles by which Italian statesmen were guided in the sixteenth century. That Machiavellism existed before Machiavelli has now become a truism. Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Louis XI. of France, Ferdinand the Catholic, the Papal Curia, and the Venetian Council had systematically pursued the policy laid down in the chapters of the Prince. But it is no less true that Machiavelli was the first in modern times to formulate ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... dwelling in a serener ether than ours, which, though we may never attain, it is yet a refreshment to look up to; and Hawthorne, not perhaps the greatest romancer in the English tongue, but certainly the purest artist in that sphere of fiction. Now, it is a mere truism to say that each of these men was, in his way, a typical product of New England, inconceivable as the offspring of any other soil in the world. Emerson, it has been said, not without truth, was the first of the American humourists, carrying into metaphysics that gift ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... think, have not been sufficiently taken into account. In most countries political life depends largely for its steadiness and sanity upon a strong infusion of rural opinion into the counsels of the nation. It is a truism that democracy requires for success a higher level of intelligence and character in the mass of the people than other forms of government. But intelligence alone is not enough for the citizen of a ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett
... this truism is, it is constantly violated in teaching reading in the rural school. For the course in reading usually consists of a series of five readers, expected to cover seven or eight years of study. These readers contain less than one ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... and life of Gothic art is its realism and truism, and until we carry out its principles in our hearts and lives, it will be little more to us than ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... I fear, be taken as a truism that "the man in the street" (collectively, the "general public") knows little and cares less for what is called physical science. Now and again when something remarkable happens, such as a great thunderstorm, or an earthquake, or a volcanic eruption, or a brilliant comet, ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... simply printed books. The vaster proportion of what is printed is not literature. It may be statements of fact and items of information; it may be sound science and unimpeachable record; it may be truism; it may be platitude; it is often sheer bathos or doggerel. We do not count these things as literature. A good deal of singing, piano-beating and tin-whistling is not music. It is only in virtue of a certain fine quality that books are literature. According to Emerson, literature is ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... soon as possible from the crowd, at the moment when Pippin—who never lost a good opportunity—had mounted upon a stump in order to address them. Breaking away just as the lawyer was swelling with some old truism, and perhaps no truth, about the rights of man and so forth, he mounted his horse, which he had concealed in the neighborhood, and rode off to the solitude and the shelter ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... Campaign. It is rather a long tale to tell, for it takes 432 pages in the unravelling. It ends with a beautiful avowal that "the heart is no more unchanging than the mind, and that love's not immortal, but an illusion." As the utterer of this truism is a young married woman, it would seem that the foundation is laid for a sequel to Disenchantment that might ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... was found' so-and-so 'brought it'; 'And all the women did spin with their hands, and brought that which they had spun'; 'And the rulers brought' so-and- so. Such statements embody the very plain truism that what we have settles what we are bound to give. Or, to put it into grander words, capacity is the measure of duty. Our work is cut out for us by the faculties and opportunities that God has ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... Truism as it is, my dear Rouge Pot, I am bound to beg you never to forget that everybody can't have everything in this world, and that everybody can't be everything on the stage. What you (and I, and every other actor!) would really like, would be to choose the play, to act the best part, ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... a kind of language is nowadays admitted to be a truism, but this is more evident among mammals and birds, and, reviewing the classes of the former, we find a more or less defined ascending complexity and increased number of varying sounds as we pass from the lower forms—kangaroos and moles—to the higher herb-and-flesh-eaters, ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... interest which we call its spirit; and therefore the more fully we enter into the spirit of all with which we are concerned, the more thoroughly do we become alive. The more completely we do this the more we shall find that we are penetrating into the great secret of Life. It may seem a truism, but the great secret of Life is its Livingness, and it is just more of this quality of Livingness that we want to get hold of; it is that good thing of which we can never ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... practice of therapeutics. My quarrel, however, is with these same medical magazines, which delight in discovering mares' nests for no other apparent purpose than to make mankind uncomfortable. They will persist in disregarding the time-honored axiom that "everybody knows more than anybody," a truism which Dr. Spahr elaborated in his declaration that "the common observation of common people is more trustworthy than the statistical investigations of the most unprejudiced expert"— even though he be a distinguished ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... all the obstinacy of lifelong habits, hung back from the new things which Miss Rodney was forcing upon her acceptance, but she was no longer moved by active resentment. To be told that she cooked badly had long ceased to be an insult, and was becoming merely a worrying truism. That she lived in dirt there seemed no way of denying, and though every muscle groaned, she began to look upon the physical exertion of dusting and scrubbing as part of her lot in life. Why she submitted, Mrs. Turpin could not have told ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... critic, with a philosophic bias, is inclined to quarrel with the obvious human congruity of Shakespeare's utterances. What is the use of this constant repetition of the obvious truism: "When we are born we cry that we are come to this ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... the arts:' so said the old maxim, but it has rarely been found a truism. They who feel it, feel also the virtue which dictated the aphorism. Men whose object is to enlighten the nations or exalt the judgment or (the least ambition) to refine the tastes of others—men who feel that this object is dearer ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... herself to an ardent lover and been afterwards deserted by him must necessarily have gone through such intense suffering that her character is probably deepened thereby and her capacity for love and faithfulness increased. It is another truism that suffering is necessary to bring out ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... it more profitable to declare that the only sound way to protect your commerce is to destroy the enemy's fleet. As an enunciation of a principle it is a truism—no one would dispute it. As a canon of practical strategy, it is untrue; for here our first deflection again asserts itself. What are you to do if the enemy refuses to permit you to destroy his fleets? You cannot leave ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... idlers are steadily introducing habits and customs which no wise observer can regard without solemn apprehensions. The simple Southampton poet has told us what "idle hands" are apt to do under certain guidance, and his saying—truism as it appears—should be studied with more regard to its vital meaning. The idlers crave for novelties; they seek for new forms of distraction; they seem really to live only when they are in the midst ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... sharp criticism passed in the House of Commons on the smallness of the recognition, the Prime Minister replied that Nelson's glory did not depend upon the rank to which he might be raised in the peerage; a truism too palpable and inapplicable for serious utterance, the question before the House being, not the measure of Nelson's glory, but that of the national acknowledgment. As Hood justly said, "All remunerations should be ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... preparations for the improvements of the sight, the hearing, the appetite, false teeth, false hair, respiration, massage, and so on, there can be no salvation. That people who do not make use of these perfected preparations are stronger and healthier, has become such a truism, that advertisements are printed in the newspapers of stomach-powders for the wealthy, under the heading, "Blessings for the poor," {252} in which it is stated that only the poor are possessed of proper digestive powers, and that ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... could understand his actions in the sequel without knowing the details of those situations through which he had passed before. We are largely influenced by little things and little events. The statement is a truism in the eyes of the moralist, but the truth is, unfortunately, too often forgotten in real life. The man who falls down-stairs and breaks his leg has not noticed the tiny spot of candle grease which made the polished step so slippery just where ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford |
