"Unquestionable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... representative of liberty has done much to mould the political life, if not also to write many pages of the history of the people, and that in spite of the questionable morality of the received narrative of his career, and its unquestionable untruth. The emergence of the Swiss from slavery to freedom, as in the case of all other nations, was undoubtedly a gradual process, and there is now every reason for believing that the narrative relating ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... manifestations and the invariable inconsequence and silliness of the intellectual results, I withdrew entirely from circles in which mediums took part or in which physical phenomena were sought for, and limited my investigations to the cases in which the good faith of all the company was unquestionable, and the investigation conducted in privacy and sincerity. Here, of course, there was still great uncertainty, and often the most curious triviality and low intelligence, but we were able to check the possible tendency to the simulation of the supra-normal ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... careful to mark his acts as exceptional measures, justifiable only by the imperative necessities of the civil war, so that they might not pass into history as precedents for similar acts in time of peace. It is an unquestionable fact that during the reconstruction period which followed the war, more things were done capable of serving as dangerous precedents than during the war itself. Thus it may truly be said of him not only that under ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... recent times, been prohibited(565) in nearly all countries as arbitrary, and as a species of cabinet-justice. Nor should the granting of them be compared with the pardoning power. In the case of a pardon, the offended State forgives. In this case it sacrifices the unquestionable right of one party to the very doubtful advantage of another. Where such letters are granted in great numbers, credit cannot fail to suffer. "Quinquinnellen gehoeren in ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... I wrote my last, Clinker was set at liberty. As Martin had foretold, the accuser was himself committed for a robbery, upon unquestionable evidence. He had been for some time in the snares of the thief-taking society; who, resenting his presumption in attempting to incroach upon their monopoly of impeachment, had him taken up and committed to Newgate, on the deposition of an accomplice, who has been admitted as evidence for ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... and written in contention upon this latter assertion, and books may be quoted upon either side of the question, but we make the statement without qualification and upon unquestionable authority. ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... most ingenious hypothesis enables us to give a reason for many apparent anomalies in the distribution of living beings in time and space, and that it is not contradicted by the main phenomena of life and organization appear to us to be unquestionable; and so far it must be admitted to have an immense advantage over any of its predecessors. But it is quite another matter to affirm absolutely either the truth or falsehood of Mr. Darwin's views at the present stage of the inquiry. Goethe has an excellent aphorism ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... in my own bed. If it be that I had not dreamt, the Count must have carried me here. I tried to satisfy myself on the subject, but could not arrive at any unquestionable result. To be sure, there were certain small evidences, such as that my clothes were folded and laid by in a manner which was not my habit. My watch was still unwound, and I am rigorously accustomed to wind it the last thing before going to bed, and many such details. But these ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... calmer afterthought led him to desire peace, and when he found that the tempest he had helped to stir up would not subside at his bidding, he began casting about for a way of escape. He was a man of unquestionable genius; a soldier of rare strategic ability; an orator of the truest sort, and his courage in danger was simply sublime. Such a man was likely to be of great value to the Indians in their approaching war, and ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... is that! I've noticed, and I've noticed it many times, that a woman takes her color from the man she's walking with. The woman who looks an unquestionable lady when she's with a polished-up fellow, looks a mere tawdry imitation article when she's hobbing and nobbing with a homely blade. You sha'n't be treated like that for long, or at least your children sha'n't. You shall have somebody to walk with you who looks ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Ibsen wrote to Schandorph, the Danish novelist: "I was quite prepared for the hubbub. If certain of our Scandinavian reviewers have no talent for anything else, they have an unquestionable talent for thoroughly misunderstanding and misinterpreting those authors whose books they undertake to judge.... They endeavour to make me responsible for the opinions which certain of the personages of my drama ...
— Ghosts • Henrik Ibsen
... she was invited everywhere, and the accumulation of "R.S.V.P." cards on her table and desk made such a formidable heap that it was quite a business to clear them, as she did once a week, with the assistance of the useful waste-paper basket. As a writer her popularity was unquestionable, and so great and insistent was the public demand for anything from her pen that she could command her own terms from any publishing quarter. Her good fortune made very little effect upon her,—sometimes ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... reason for admitting them in evidence. This, in my view, amounts to nothing more than that he appropriated to himself and adopted the thoughts of others. What proof could this appropriation or adoption afford of a malicious intent in their publication? Every man has an unquestionable right to his own moral or religious sentiments: there is no crime in this: it would be criminal to restrain any man in this country in his own, or in adopting the moral or religious opinions of others, if he please; it is criminal only when he attempts to propagate ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown
... the two sisters was unquestionable. In the morning, it was their grace, their elegance, their distinction that attracted universal admiration; in the afternoon, it was declared that their walk had the freedom and ease of two young goddesses; in the evening, there was but one cry of rapture at the ...
— L'Abbe Constantin, Complete • Ludovic Halevy
... in deference to his dismounted commander or associates, his conduct was the same. He would stand like a rock in the open when officers and men alike had taken to cover; while men older in service and years, higher in rank and of unquestionable intrepidity, were loyally preserving behind the crest of a hill lives infinitely precious to their country, this fellow would stand, equally idle, on the ridge, facing in the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... which neither knew the way. She saw that he had begun, by ever so little, to understand; and she feared to say more lest a wrong word should overtake a right one. As for Haig, his incredulity persisted notwithstanding the unquestionable sincerity of her speech. He did not doubt that she contemplated, in this moment of emotion, the complete and final sacrifice. But he was quite convinced that she would take a different view of the situation when the test should come. She did not yet appreciate, he argued, the peril of ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... was a young man who might not improbably make a figure in the world, should circumstances be kind to him, but as to whom it might be doubted whether circumstances would be sufficiently kind to enable him to use serviceably his unquestionable talents and great personal gifts. He had taught himself to regard himself as a young English gentleman of the first water, qualified by his birth and position to live with all that was most noble and most elegant; and he could have lived in that sphere naturally and gracefully were it not that ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... Pericles exercised for so long a period over an ingenious but fickle people like the Athenians, is an unquestionable proof of his intellectual superiority. This hold on the public affection is to be attributed to a great extent to his extraordinary eloquence. Cicero regards him as the first example of an almost perfect orator, at once delighting the ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... crop free from disease. Such is the positive assertion of Mr. Bollman, one of the professors in the Russian Agricultural Institution, at Gorigoretsky. In a very interesting pamphlet[47] by this gentleman, it is asserted, as an unquestionable fact, that mere drying, if conducted at a sufficiently high temperature, and continued long enough, is a complete antidote ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... But it is unquestionable that she keeps a severe eye on him all through dinner, and so forbids any trifling with the sacred topic. "It would have put the poor things out so!" She had said to herself; and, indeed, it must be confessed that the lovers are very shy and uncomfortable, ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... uninterrupted succession, and never did a line give more unquestionable proofs of legitimacy. The eldest son succeeded to the looks as well as the territory of his sire, and had the portraits of this line of tranquil potentates been taken, they would have presented a row of heads marvelously resembling, in shape and magnitude, the vegetables ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... dead and wounded. It consisted largely in hand-to-hand fighting, which now gave an advantage to the Austrians, now to the Italians; many of the positions were lost and re-taken more than half-a-dozen times; the issue seemed long doubtful, and when Benedek, who commanded his side with unquestionable ability, received orders from the field of Solferino to begin a retreat, each combatant was firmly convinced that he was getting the best of it. Austrian writers allege that this order saved the Sardinians from defeat, while in both Italian and French narratives, the Piedmontese are ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... hands of the Taeping rebels, whose movement presented a strange medley of perverted Christianity, communism, and freebooting. There it was that his magnetic influence over men first had free play. Though he was only thirty years of age, his fine physique, dauntless daring, and the spirit of unquestionable authority that looked out from his kindly eyes, gained speedy control over the motley set of officers and the Chinese rank and file—half of them ex-rebels—that formed the nucleus of the "ever victorious army." What wonder that he was thenceforth ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... unquestionable power, and will be read with unwonted interest by many readers who are weary of the ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... in the Commissary's office. For if the Cigarette was surprised to be arrested, the Commissary was no less taken aback by the appearance and appointments of his captive. Here was a man about whom there could be no mistake: a man of an unquestionable and unassailable manner, in apple-pie order, dressed not with neatness merely but elegance, ready with his passport at a word, and well supplied with money: a man the Commissary would have doffed his hat to on chance upon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... me very gravely, if we had left home in order to get rid of the vermin with which the English of all ranks were afflicted? "I have heard from unquestionable authority," she added, "that it is quite impossible to walk through the streets of London without having ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... before Coleridge's lines on Switzerland—Campbell's Hohenlinden—and the finest of Moore's Irish melodies, which were instanced by Shelley and others. Yet, unknown as the Rev. Charles Wolfe is, it is unquestionable that he was a man possessing the highest powers of imagination, and a powerful intellect, cultivated to a very high point of perfection, and fitting him to become one of the brightest stars of the world ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... State officers had been before, and that a public trust might be turned into an additional corporation agency for evil. The selection of the commissioners, and especially that of Judge T. M. Cooley, of Michigan, was greatly to the credit of President Cleveland. A man of unquestionable integrity, an eminent jurist and close student of railroad affairs, Judge Cooley was particularly well qualified for the office of chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission, which he occupied for ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... precipitately doomed him to ignominy. She had heard that his father commanded him to live and redeem his lost fame; and she often fancied he was busily employed in obeying that command. Indulging this idea, she hoped that his glory would burst upon them with such unquestionable splendour, that every tongue would applaud, while she took her hero by the hand, and asked her father to rescind the injunction which forbade her to avow ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... —begin to be pampered upon facts. The introduction of these details developed a particular ability of hand; and that ability, childishly indulged, has led to the works that now amaze us on a railway journey. A man of the unquestionable force of M. Zola spends himself on technical successes. To afford a popular flavour and attract the mob, he adds a steady current of what I may be allowed to call the rancid. That is exciting to the moralist; but what more particularly interests the artist is this tendency of the ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Leicester, had entered the field of Zutphen without greaves, threw off his own, and thus exposed himself to the cannon-shot which slew him. (2) Being mortally wounded, and receiving a cup of water, he handed it (according to a tradition which is not unquestionable) to a dying soldier. (3) His series of sonnets record his love for Penelope Devereux, sister to the Earl of Essex, who married Lord Rich. She had at one time been promised to Sidney. He wrote the sonnets towards 1581: in 1583 he married ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... believe, to the Jessamy Bride herself. After admitting, apparently with some reluctance, that "he was a very plain man," she goes on to say, "but had he been much more so, it was impossible not to love and respect his goodness of heart, which broke out on every occasion. His benevolence was unquestionable, and his countenance bore every trace of it: no one that knew him intimately could avoid admiring and loving his good qualities." When to all this we add the idea of intellectual delicacy and refinement associated with him by his poetry and the ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... over me, but I did my best against it. It was not to be denied, I rejoined, that this was a remarkable coincidence, calculated deeply to impress his mind. But, it was unquestionable that remarkable coincidences did continually occur, and they must be taken into account in dealing with such a subject. Though to be sure I must admit, I added (for I thought I saw that he was going to bring the objection to bear upon me), men of common sense did not allow much for coincidences ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... Revenue cutter! In fact during the year 1777 one of the Customs officials wrote sadly to the Board that there was a large lugger off the coast, and so well armed that she was "greatly an overmatch" for even two of the Revenue cruisers. It seems almost ludicrous to notice a genuine and unquestionable report of a smuggling vessel coming into a bay, finding a Revenue cruiser lying quietly at anchor, and ordering the cruiser, with a fine flow of oaths, immediately to cut his cable and clear out; otherwise the smugglers promised to sink her. The ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... might have been stimulated to this proceeding by a lofty sense of duty, and impulses of unquestionable excellence. She might, by this time, have become impressed with the sinfulness of long indulgence in unavailing woe, or the necessity of setting a proper example of neatness and decorum to her blooming daughter. ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... St. Michael's Mount, the most beautiful and prominent object in Mounts Bay, has been described as 'a hoare rock in a wood,' about six miles from the sea, although it now stands in the bay; and this idea of a sunken land is borne out by the unquestionable fact that if we dig down a few feet into the sand of the shore near Penzance, we shall come on a black vegetable mould, full of woodland detritus, such as branches, leaves of coppice wood, and nuts, together with carbonised roots and trunks ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... let His authority slumber; it is only His laws that are strong enough to protect and avenge themselves. Every human government is bound to make its laws so far resemble His that they shall be uniform, certain, and unquestionable in their operation; and this it can do only by a timely show of power, and by an appeal to that authority which is of divine right, inasmuch as its office is to maintain that order which is the single attribute ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... annoyance pursued towards me by a clique of whom Zenteno was the agent. Like many other good commanders, O'Higgins did not display that tact in the cabinet which had so signally served his country in the field, in which,—though General San Martin, by his unquestionable powers of turning the achievements of others to his own account, contrived to gain the credit—the praise was really due to General O'Higgins. The same easy disposition, after the elevation of the latter to the Supreme Directorate, induced him to consent to the establishment ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... requests, that I would overlook what had passed, and reinstate you in all your former charges, I think myself obliged, without the least hesitation, to comply with it. So, if you please, you may enter again upon an office which you have always executed with unquestionable integrity, and to the ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... in the course of this argument may not appear of the same questionable character as those advanced by our author, we will fortify them with a few brief citations from a work of such unquestionable authority as the ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... it is unquestionable that such a dilatation of the pupil might, under certain circumstances, be occasioned by mental excitement. I am sorry to find that our patient's attacks ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... George Mason had gone abroad, Emily Earl went to the city to complete her education. She was in due time initiated into the mysteries of fashionable life. Introduced to society by a relative of unquestionable rank, her face and form presented attractions sufficient to make her the object of attention and flattery. Four successive winters were passed in the city. She was the foremost object of all "who flattered, sought, and sued." Is it strange that her judgment ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... it. This work, which was published about 1774, though bearing a different author's name on the title, was probably the work of D'Holbach,(556) aided by Diderot and Helvetius, and other members of the society which met at D'Holbach's house. It is a work of unquestionable talent and eloquence, in which materialism, fatalism, and atheism, combine to form a view of human nature which even Voltaire is said ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... come to call in question such Doctrines as (tho' but upon slender Grounds for it) they had received for unquestionable Truths of Religion, they are ordinarily more likely to continue Scepticks, or to proceed to an intire disbelief of this Religion, than to take occasion from hence to make a just search after its Verity: The ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... day there are differences of opinion as to the extent of his guilt, but none as to the treachery with which he was murdered by his most trusted officers. That Wallenstein owed much gratitude to the emperor is unquestionable, but upon the other hand he had even a greater title to the gratitude of Ferdinand, whose crown and empire he had repeatedly saved. Wallenstein was no bigot, his views were broad and enlightened, and he was therefore viewed with the greatest ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... indignity, and every inch of condescension they stagger under. But their children don't deserve these things. And just mark the slimy little word-shuffle which, in order to keep the "deserving poor" up to their work, pronounces upon them the blessings obviously adherent only to that unquestionable guarantee of unselfish purpose, namely, voluntary poverty. A subtle confusion of issues; but the person who homilises on the blessings of compulsory poverty should be left ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... their opinions may not for one moment be suffered to outweigh, on an occasion of vital importance, the great mass of evidence now on record quite in accordance with that just stated. One gentleman of unquestionable respectability gives as a reason (seemingly his very strongest) for a change of opinion, that he has been credibly informed that when the cholera broke out on one side of the street in a certain village in Russia, a medical man had a barrier put up by which the ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... affords him much subject-matter for questionable writing. It might be well to recollect, however, that there really exists no necessity for crossing the Atlantic and travelling as far west as Utah in order to compose questionable books upon unquestionable subjects; similar materials in vast quantities exist much nearer home, and Pimlico and St. John's Wood will be found quite as prolific in "Spiritual Wives" and "Gothic" affinities as any creek or lake in the Western wilderness. Neither is it to be wondered at that so ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... authority "the good Turpin," though his history contains no trace of them; and the more outrageous the improbability, or rather the impossibility, of their narrations, the more attentive are they to cite "the Archbishop," generally adding their testimonial to his unquestionable veracity. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... seductions of the wily monarch, whose severe yet flattering letters half frightened and half soothed him into a relapse of royalism. But with the Prince of Orange Philip had no chance of success. It is unquestionable that, be his means of acquiring information what they might, he did succeed in procuring minute intelligence of all that was going on in the king's most secret council. He had from time to time procured copies of the stadtholderess's despatches; but ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... look over the face of human society, you get proof positive, scientific demonstration unquestionable, that good is in the majority, love is the majority power of the world. How do I know? You draw up a list of all those things that you call evil, and you will note, as you analyze them, that they are the things that tend to disintegrate, to separate, to tear down; ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... the wealthy, population is concerned, the Church triumphs in her hostility to the Government schools; and to the same extent she holds an educational monopoly. No white creole would dream of sending his children to a lay school or a lyce—notwithstanding the unquestionable superiority of the educational system in the latter institutions;—and, although obliged, as the chief tax- paying class, to bear the burden of maintaining these establishments, the whites hold them in such horror that the Government ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... covertly loosing the bolas from his waist, meaning to whirl it round his head and so strike his pursuer. "I however struck him with my sabre to the ground, and then got off my horse, and cut his throat with my knife." This is a dark picture; but how much more shocking is the unquestionable fact, that all the women who appear above twenty years old are massacred in cold blood! When I exclaimed that this appeared rather inhuman, he answered, "Why, what can be done? ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... went so far as to say, that they "did but dissemble." Immediately, they cried out upon her, charged her with witchcraft, and had her apprehended. After being carried to prison, she spoke in strong language against the proceedings. Four persons of unquestionable truthfulness, in prison with her, on the same charge, prepared a deposition to this effect: "We heard Mary Warren several times say that the magistrates might as well examine Keysar's daughter that had been distracted many years, and take notice of what she said, as well as any of ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... upon this, shut the door and departed. His was a stern figure, but the hurt within was very sore. This, then, he reflected bitterly, was the kind of boy he had. He suffered deeply at the discovery, which for him was unquestionable. ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... great Power was, step by step, creeping closer to our possessions. It was a fortunate circumstance, too, that, for the first five years I was at the head of the Army in India, I had as my military colleague in Council the late General Sir George Chesney, a man of unquestionable talent and sound judgment, to whose cordial support, not only in frontier affairs, but in all my efforts to promote the efficiency and welfare of the soldier, ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... this on me," replied Hollingsworth, looking her sternly in the face. "Did I call you hither from among the masqueraders yonder? Do I assume to be your judge? No; except so far as I have an unquestionable right of judgment, in order to settle my own line of behavior towards those with whom the events of life bring me in contact. True, I have already judged you, but not on the world's part,—neither do I ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that; but it must be of unspeakable comfort in times of mental doubt to repose on unquestioned and unquestionable authority." ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... could instantly decide on its containing little writing, and was persuaded of its having the air of a letter of haste and business. Its object was unquestionable; and two moments were enough to start the probability of its being merely to give her notice that they should be in Portsmouth that very day, and to throw her into all the agitation of doubting what she ought to do in such a case. If two moments, however, can surround with difficulties, a third ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... theologians prior to the days of Darwin were content to assume that mind is the only possible cause of mechanism, I think we have a ready answer in the universal prevalence of their belief in special creation. For I think it is unquestionable that, upon the basis of this belief, the assumption is legitimate. That is to say, if we start with the belief that all species of plants and animals were originally introduced to the complex conditions of their several environments suddenly and ready made (in ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... Printed by Ulric Han. Without Date. Folio. This is a volume of the most unquestionable rarity; and such a copy of it as that now before me, is of most uncommon occurrence.[103] Can this be surprising, when I tell you that it once belonged to Henri II. and Diane de Poictiers! The leaves absolutely talk to you, as ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... do think it an unquestionable evil, unless we think marriage is so." Everybody sat up, as the stop-gap had intended, no doubt, and he "held them with his glittering eye," or as many as he could sweep with his glance. "I suppose that the greatest hypocrite at this table, where we are all so frankly hypocrites together, ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... certainly possesses talents which might figure in any line. If he is ambitious, it is rather of the praise which virtue dedicates to merit than of the homage which fear renders to power. His disposition is naturally warm and affectionate, and his attachment to the United States unquestionable. Unless I am grossly deceived, you will find his zeal sincere and useful, whenever it can be employed on behalf of the United States without opposition to the essential ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... the best and most efficient protectors of our cornfields and granaries from the devastating pillage of the swarms of mice and other small rodents." Nay, by their constant destruction of these petty but dangerous enemies, the owls, he says, "earn an unquestionable title to be regarded as among the most active of the friends of man; a title which only one or two among them occasionally forfeit by their aggressions on the defenceless poultry." Roger or Dolly beholds ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... triumphant language with which a critick exults over the misery of an irregular poet, and exults commonly without resistance or reply. It is time therefore to tell him by the authority of Shakespeare, that he assumes, as an unquestionable principle, a position, which, while his breath is forming it into words, his understanding pronounces to be false. It is false, that any representation is mistake for reality; that any dramatick fable ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... his interests suddenly tottered to the ground? Surely it was because he had not learned to put the things of the spirit above things material? If he resigned his will to Islam, would he in return be granted the calm philosophy of a Moslem, who accepts his condition and his disappointments as the unquestionable and far-seeing decree of the Cause ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... liked by all who knew him for his good humor, but for his bright disposition, and his unquestionable honesty. In him, in his handsome, radiant figure, his sparkling eyes, black hair and eyebrows, and the white and red of his face, there was something which produced a physical effect of kindliness and good humor on the people who met him. ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... no one kind of memory developed to a preponderating degree. Bastian doubts the second class, but does not deny that the visual type may exist; for Galton has undoubtedly shown that visual memory and power of recall of visual word images varies immensely in different individuals, and it is unquestionable that certain individuals possess the visualising faculty to an extraordinary degree; some few, moreover, can see mentally every word that is uttered; they give their attention to the visual symbolic equivalent and not to the auditory. Such persons ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... did for the Crimean War, Garshin did for the war with Turkey in the seventies. I have not seen it mentioned, but I suspect that Andreev owes much to the reading of this brilliant author. Garshin was an unquestionable genius; if he had lived, I think he might have become the real successor to Tolstoi, a title that has been bestowed upon Chekhov, Gorki, and Andreev, and has not yet been earned by any man. But like nearly all Russian authors, he suffered from intense ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... "gangrenee d'aristocratie." ["Eat up with aristocracy."] "Je vous en defie," ["I defy you."] retorted the pumpkin-merchant; but turning pale as she spoke, "Mon civisme est a toute epreuve, mais prenez donc ta citrouille," ["My civism is unquestionable; but here take your pumpkin."] take it then." "Ah, te voila bonne republicaine, ["Ah! Now I see you are a good republican."] says the beggar, carrying off her bargain; while the old woman muttered, "Oui, oui, l'on a beau etre republicaine tandis qu'on n'a pas de pain a manger." ["Yes, in ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... that the majority of them share the Cardinal's view, which is also that of a large portion both of the rest of the clergy and also of the laity; and, whatever may be the precise action which has been taken in the matter, it is unquestionable that a very formidable mass of ecclesiastical authority and popular feeling is united against certain principles or opinions which, whether rightly or wrongly, are attributed to us. No one will suppose that an impression so general ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... American Bank Lock Company, has had a recent trial of the Chubb Lock, so long deemed invincible here, and consumed twenty-four minutes and a half in picking it, under the supervision of judges of unquestionable ability and impartiality. He then re-locked it without disturbing the "Detector," and left it as when it was set before him. He has now to try his skill on the "Bramah" lock under the challenge for L200; and, should he be able to open it, he says he shall there rest the case.[D] He has been ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... herds which hunted such and such a latitude or longitude this year, say, will turn out to be identically the same with those that were found there the preceding season; though there are peculiar and unquestionable instances where the contrary of this has proved true. In general, the same remark, only within a less wide limit, applies to the solitaries and hermits among the matured, aged sperm whales. So that though Moby Dick had ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... the Alencon farce, if it were not unquestionable fact, would be almost incredible. Monsieur was some twenty years younger than the amorous Queen; in person he was offensive and contemptible; his character corresponded to his person, and his intelligence to his character. Elizabeth ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... well and indeed loved him said to me a little bitterly that he had become a Roman Catholic not because his faith was strong, but because it was weak. There was a touch of truth in this. Hugh did with all his heart desire to base his life upon some impersonal unquestionable certainty; and where a more submissive mind might have reposed, as a disciple, upon the strength of a master, Hugh required to repose upon something august, age-long, overpowering, a great moving force which could not be too closely or precisely interrogated, but which ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... cunning. He had no intention to deceive, or even to abstain from promoting a revelation of the truth, which he did not fear. Simply he and it were radically at cross purposes. They were mutually unintelligible. The sincerity of his ardour for the attainment of a footing in Guiana is unquestionable. He was honestly eager for it in the Tower, in Trinidad after the return from San Thome, at Plymouth, when he was grovelling in counterfeit madness at Salisbury, and when he was a fugitive on the Thames. But Guiana was not his real end. Guiana was ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... indifference to him when he had any work to do. One reads the account of the toil he could cheerfully bear, the privations he could recklessly undergo, the physical obstacles he could surmount, with what would be a feeling of incredulity were it possible to doubt the unquestionable evidence of a whole cloud of {138} heterogeneous witnesses. Not Mark Antony, not Charles the Twelfth, not Napoleon, ever went through such physical suffering for the love of war, or for the conqueror's ambition, as Wesley was accustomed to undergo for the sake ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Two facts were, however, unquestionable. First, the Stretts were building a fleet that in their minds would be invincible. Second, they would attack Ardane as soon as that fleet could be made ready. The unanswerable question was: how long ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... certain and unquestionable, it further follows that everything existing in the world, so far as it affects us, everything that falls to our lot, all that we encounter, all that we suffer, all that we do, aside from sin, has been purposely arranged by Almighty God for our greater spiritual good and eternal salvation. ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... received the name of George; his second name Brydges coming from the family through which Chandos and the Rodneys were brought into relationship. The social position and surroundings resulting from such antecedents contributed of course to hasten the young officer's advancement, irrespective of the unquestionable professional merit shown by him, even in early years; but to them also, combined with narrow personal fortune, inadequate to the tastes thus engendered, was probably due the pecuniary embarrassment ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... philosophy, "Soul," in the English sense of the word, does not exist for the Buddhist. "Self" is an illusion, or rather a plexus of illusions. "Transmigration," as the passing of soul from one body to another, is expressly denied in Buddhist texts of unquestionable authority. It will therefore be evident that the real analogy which does exist between the doctrine of karma and the scientific facts of heredity is far from complete. Karma signifies the survival, not of the same composite individuality, but of its ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... the Government can discharge the clear and unquestionable duty of establishing foreign mail facilities, only by paying liberal prices for the transport of the mails for a long term of years, by creating and sustaining an ocean postal system, by legislating upon it systematically, and by abandoning our ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... work would fall of course, as of no authenticity. I submit this simple question to the reader. When a writer, in attempting to silence a publication, attacks the character of its author, rather than the principles of the work itself, is it not a proof that the work itself is unquestionable, and that this writer is at a loss to ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... since their relations have been studied, that the harmony has been created to which we owe the works of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Rossini, grand geniuses, whose music is undoubtedly nearer to perfection than that of their precursors, though their genius, too, is unquestionable. The old masters could sing, but they had not art and science at their command,—a noble alliance which enables us to merge into one the finest melody and ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... connected with the sea-faring life. His father, John Ellerthorpe, owned a 'Keel' which sailed between Rawcliffe and the large towns in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and John often accompanied him during his voyages. His mother was a woman of great practical sagacity and unquestionable honesty and piety, and from her young John extended many of the high and noble qualities which distinguished his career. Much of his childhood, however, was passed at the 'Anchor' public house, Rawcliffe, kept by his paternal grandmother, where he early became an adept swearer and a lover of ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... the first section that Bernard Shaw draws from his own nation two unquestionable qualities, a kind of intellectual chastity, and the fighting spirit. He is so much of an idealist about his ideals that he can be a ruthless realist in his methods. His soul has (in short) the virginity and the violence of Ireland. But Bernard Shaw ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... upon a subject that is not, perhaps, undeserving of one moment of your attention. There is a work entitled the Edinburgh Review, written with such unquestionable talent that it has already attained an extent of circulation not equalled by any similar publication. The principles of this work are, however, so radically bad that I have been led to consider the effect that such sentiments, so generally diffused, ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... twenty-four cows had been killed, when but a few years previously ninety-four had been slaughtered on a similar occasion. Perhaps you will permit me to state in your columns that this year the festival, in this particular, has afforded as melancholy and unquestionable proof of distress as the last, while it bore other evidence, which though trivial in itself, is not unworthy of notice. Last year two theatrical shows visited us, displaying their "Red Barn" tragedies, and illuminated ghosts, at threepence per head, at which they did well; ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... daily paper is persecuted by poetasters is an unquestionable fact; and it is probable that some of the worst of the sufferers would be justified in taking extreme measures to protect themselves from such outrages. But that Major Slott of The Patriot ever proposed to murder a poet in self-defence ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... near, the face is comely and youthful, and expresses only surprise, instead of the pain and fear of which it bears the aspect in the distance. I could not get near enough to see whether it had been retouched. It looks like Tintoret's work, though rather hard; but, as there are unquestionable marks in the retouching of this picture, it is possible that some slight restoration of lines supposed to be faded, entirely alter the distant expression of the face. One of the evident pieces of repainting is ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... that the cabinet with the loss of it great leader had lost all its preservative qualities. Lord Goderich was a man of unquestionable integrity; but he exhibited a lamentable deficiency in that energy, judgment, and firm resolution, which were absolutely necessary for the keeping together of the discordant materials of which his administration ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... unquestionable that at the time when Maudslay began the improvement of machine-tools, the methods of working in wood and metals were exceedingly imperfect. Mr. William Fairbairn has stated that when he first became acquainted with mechanical ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... he had been more in society and less in his study. The indulgence with which he treated his nephew was, no doubt, imprudent. A man more in the habit of dealing with men would have been more guarded with a person with Dick's questionable story and unquestionable physiognomy. But he was singularly unsuspicious, and his natural kindness was an additional motive to the wish for introducing some variety into the routine of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... an invalid: I could indeed have wished for a milder; but in this world we must be content with the least of two evils. I wish to have some ostensible reason for going abroad, and this embassy is the only one that presents itself in an unquestionable shape. Any thing is better than staying where I am, and as I am. My motives are not so entirely personal and selfish as I have stated them. A man who has a grain of feeling cannot endure to see the woman whom he loves, whose only failing is her love, living in a state of ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... precepts of religion alike demand that opposition shall be conducted according to the methods, and within the limits, which the law of the land itself prescribes. But it may be—it has been, and yet again may be—that the law, however regular in its enactment, and therefore unquestionable on the score of formal authority, either outrages fundamental political right, or violates the moral dictates of the individual conscience. Of the former may be cited as an instance the Stamp Act, perfectly regular as regarded statutory ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... cried Evatt, with unquestionable earnestness, and possessing himself of Janice's hand, he stooped and ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... in camp and answered to the bugle—it seemed to be a fashion which they had suddenly adopted. This practice is one of the few, for which officers, inclined to be lenient in most particulars, may well be willing to have their men shot. Except that I have seen it prevail, at times, among troops of unquestionable bravery and fidelity, I would say that the most cowardly and treacherous spirit induces it. The Second Kentucky was a regiment which never had its superior—it possessed, not only courage and steadiness, but the highest "dash" and inflexible constancy, and yet, at one period, the practice which ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... little, if at all, known among them. If A gives B a part of his seal to-day, the latter soon returns an equal quantity when he is the successful fisherman. Uncertain as their mode of living is, and dependent as they are upon each other’s exertions, this custom is the evident and unquestionable interest of all. The regulation does credit to their wisdom, but has nothing to do with their generosity. This being the case, it might be supposed that our numerous presents, for which no return was asked, would have excited in them something like thankfulness, combined ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... have asked you to hear that, children, because, from all that we have seen in the work and play of these past days, I would have you gain at least one grave and enduring thought. The seeming trouble,—the unquestionable degradation,—of the elements of the physical earth, must passively wait the appointed time of their repose, or their restoration. It can only be brought about for them by the agency of external law. But if, indeed, there be a nobler life in us than in these ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... of the middle size, and are active and athletic. They are in general of fair complexions and handsome features, and in appearance bear no slight resemblance to certain Tartar tribes of the Caucasus. Their bravery is unquestionable, and they are considered as the best soldiery belonging to the Spanish crown: a fact highly corroborative of the supposition that they are of Tartar origin, the Tartars being of all races the most warlike, and amongst whom the most remarkable conquerors have been produced. They ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow |
