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Certainty   Listen
noun
Certainty  n.  (pl. certainties)  
1.
The quality, state, or condition, of being certain. "The certainty of punishment is the truest security against crimes."
2.
A fact or truth unquestionable established. "Certainties are uninteresting and sating."
3.
(Law) Clearness; freedom from ambiguity; lucidity.
Of a certainty, certainly.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Certainty" Quotes from Famous Books



... his mallet aloft, and cut the line, on which the serpent sunk again under the water. Thor, however, launched his mallet at him, and there are some who say that it struck off the monster's head at the bottom of the sea, but one may assert with more certainty that he still lives and lies in the ocean. Thor then struck Hymir such a blow with his fist, nigh the ear, that the giant fell headlong into the water, and Thor, wading with rapid strides, soon came to the ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... have got to land by jumping from one piece to another. Such things have happened before frequently. To say truth, at every point of land we turn, I feel a sort of expectation amounting almost to certainty that we shall find your father and his party travelling southward on their ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... the dwarf began forthwith to exhibit provoked in me but a polite counterfeit of enthusiasm. Lola Brandt had discounted my interest. Even his performance with the ferocious Persian lacked the diabolical certainty of Lola's handling. He locked all the other cats up and enticed it out of the cage with a piece of fish. He guided it with a small whip, as it jumped over gates and through blazing hoops, and he stood tense and concentrated, ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... already reached a figure which only a short while ago would have been considered utterly unthinkable. (Cheers.) But there is a tendency, perhaps, to overlook the fact that these larger armies require still larger reserves, to make good the wastage at the front. And one cannot ignore the certainty that our requirements in this respect will be large, continuous, and persistent; for one feels that our gallant soldiers in the fighting line are beckoning, with an urgency at once imperious and pathetic, to those who remain at home to come out and play their part too. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... task before them the magnitude of which they have little idea of. First they have the river itself to navigate; then they have the guns of Quebec to settle with. Let them take their choice between Scylla and Charybdis; for of a certainty they lie ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... death, both as to the certainty of thy dying, and uncertainty of the time when. We must die, we must needs die; our days are determined—the number of our months are with God, though not with us; nor can we pass them, would we, had we them, give a thousand worlds to do it (2 ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... artificial causes of difference to be withdrawn, what natural character would be revealed. I am not about to attempt what I have pronounced impossible: but doubt does not forbid conjecture, and where certainty is unattainable, there may yet be the means of arriving at some degree of probability. The first point, the origin of the differences actually observed, is the one most accessible to speculation; and I shall attempt to approach it, by ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill

... with a tone of certainty, and knowing that only those who live by them can predict the eccentric rise and fall of these torrents I was glad to defer to his judgment. It was only for Ormond's sake that we desired to press on at all, and Harry observed truthfully, ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... great men even of our own English history before the Reformation seem to us almost like the fossil skeletons of another order of beings. Some broad conclusions as to what they were are at least possible to us, however; and we are able to determine, with tolerable certainty, the social condition of the people of this country, such as it was before the movements of the sixteenth century, and during the process ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... hundred head. our guide could not speake the language of these people but soon engaged them in conversation by signs or jesticulation, the common language of all the Aborigines of North America, it is one understood by all of them and appears to be sufficiently copious to convey with a degree of certainty the outlines of what they wish to communicate. in this manner we learnt from these people that two men which they supposed to be of the Snake nation had stolen 23 horses from them and that they were in pursuit of the theaves. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... qualities and characteristic conditions of certain figures and devices: but, nothing is ever left to be inferred when an uncertain inference might possibly be adopted, or that can be understood clearly and with certainty only by means of an explicit statement. Superfluous words and particles of all kinds are altogether omitted. Descriptive epithets follow the nouns to which they refer: as, ared cross is styled a cross gules. ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell

... the continued activity of the sun through countless centuries, we may assume, with mathematical certainty, the existence of some compensating influence to make good its enormous ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers

... be on my guard. I have in the last few hours lived through so much that makes life worth living, that I would not wantonly expose myself to any danger. Still, I cannot go without certainty—cannot, if there is some truth in our fears, leave the best ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck

... "It is a certainty that she is here to butt into our game!" Jimmie said, as the white planes disappeared. "She'll start when we start, an' stop when we stop, an' there won't be any getting away from her. How does she get into the air so quick ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson

... willingly abandoned all his own ambitions. There is something very fine in the complete surrender of your Church. In ours there is so much room for difference of opinion, so much toleration of various doctrines. There seems so little certainty. In Rome there ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... sun should never rise: He may not rise, for heaven may play a trick; But he has risen from Adam's time to ours. Is nothing to be left to noble hazard? No venture made, but all dull certainty? By heaven I'll tug with Henry for a crown, Rather than have it on tame terms of yielding: I scorn to poach ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... has been my faithful companion in the Alps. . .I have the pleasure to tell you that the King of Prussia has made me a handsome gift of nearly 200 pounds for the continuance of my glacial work. I feel, therefore, the greater certainty of completing what remains for ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... with the end of the little curtain in his hand and the rest before his face; evidently not at all satisfied but that the man he dreaded had tracked him through all his doublings and turnings, with the certainty of ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... stout and hardy men; many of them exceeding six feet in height. They are dressed in white frocks, or rifle shirts, and round hats. These men are remarkable for the accuracy of their aim; striking a mark with great certainty at two hundred yards distance. At a review, a company of them, while on a quick advance, fired their balls into objects of seven inches diameter at the distance of two hundred and fifty yards. They are now stationed ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head

... interesting possibility of a change in the score. In like manner, the student in geometry fixes his attention upon the line joining the points of bisection of the sides, because he desires to change his present mental state of uncertainty as to its parallelism with the base into one of certainty. He further fixes his attention upon the qualities of certain bases and triangles, because through attending to these, he hopes to gain the desired experience concerning the ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education

... of the mind, are dearly bought indeed; but they will neither keep long, nor serve well in time of need: and men do less regard to offend one that is supported by love, than by fear. For love is held by a certainty of obligation, which because men are mischievous, is broken upon any occasion of their own profit. But fear restrains with a dread of punishment which never forsakes a man. Yet ought a Prince cause himself to be belov'd in such a manner, that if he gains not love, he may avoid hatred: for it may ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... claim for the Salisbury. What's in a name and a family, if one can't get some good out of 'em? Intend to start the "Uncle Mine." Fine chance. Any place where there's a large and fluctuating Pop-ulation (with emphasis on the "Pop"), the Uncle Mine is a certainty." But Oh, for the "pop,"—I mean the dear old fizz,—and the older it is, the ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various

... find we both were consecrated by a common grief! Ever since that evening when we confided our childhoods to each other, I have known that to lose you would be death,—yes, I have kept you by me selfishly. The certainty felt by Monsieur de la Berge that I should die if I lost you touched him deeply, for he read my soul. He knew how necessary I was to my children and the count; he did not command me to forbid you my house, for I promised to continue ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac

... him! Now you have him at the pinch! Well pulled, Brock! 'Tis a certainty for Brock—good Brock! Well done—well done! Ah, would you? Hands off that dagger! Let fisticuffs settle it! ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... work has had must be attributed, as far as the contents go, to the prominence given to two great truths. The one was, the certainty that prayer will be answered. There is with some an idea that to ask and expect an answer is not the highest form of prayer. Fellowship with God, apart from any request, is more than supplication. About the petition there is something of selfishness and ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray

... Le Gardeur was plain enough to De Pean, who knew her ambitious views regarding the Intendant; and that the Intendant would not marry her was equally a certainty to him, although it did not prevent De Pean's entertaining an intense jealousy ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... chemical body, and can never be a mechanical mixture. This fact has been of great value to the science of chemistry in developing the atomic theory, which has demonstrated that a body can only exist chemically combined when a definite number of atoms of each element is present, and that there is no certainty of such proportions existing except in the crystal. I hold before you a crystal of common alum. Its chemical symbol would be Al{2}O{3},3SO{3}KO,SO{3}24H{2}O. If we knew its weight and wished to know its ultimate component parts, we could calculate them more ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various

... ran one of the oldest roads in England, the "Pilgrim's Way." Many parts of it still exist, and it is believed by many to be the oldest monument of human work in these islands. About two-thirds of the length of the road is known with certainty, and to some extent the old itinerary forms the modern highway. Its earliest route seems to have been from Stonehenge to Canterbury, but later the part from Stonehenge to Alton was abandoned in favour of that from Winchester to Alton. Guildford and Dorking ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... one thing he was sure to certainty: that if he had been able to introduce any such element of interest into his wife's residence as he had, through merely saying the word, in his own, it surely would have made some of the big difference then it was making now. He found himself brooding, yearning over ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... Krool's face had a leer. He looked impudently at Stafford, and Stafford read the meaning behind the unveiled insolence: Krool knew what no one else but Jasmine and himself knew with absolute certainty. Krool was in his own country, more than half a savage, with the lust of war in his blood, with memories of a day in Park Lane when the sjambok had done its ugly work, and Ian Stafford had, as Krool believed, placed it in the hands of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... gigantic stature of the chorus is in itself no indubitable proof of the supernatural origin of this chorus. Thus the spectators are unable to decide, whether they actually see the Eumenides or only a chorus impersonating them. This is the meaning of 145 and 146. This doubt yields to certainty as the action ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various

... for the Report of the Committee of Synod. The decision of Synod has been given, as stated above. The important question now is, what will be the result of this decision on the Church at Amoy? This question, however, cannot yet be answered with certainty, for we cannot yet even guess what course the Missionaries there, when they learn the decision of Synod, will feel it their duty to pursue. There may be more, but I can now only think of three ways open before them. (1.) To ask the Board to recall them. ...
— History and Ecclesiastical Relations of the Churches of the Presbyterial Order at Amoy, China • J. V. N. Talmage

... willing to swear to it. Such is your conviction, at least; for, unless you saw the blow given by another hand, or could prove Mr. Colleton to have been elsewhere at the time of the murder, of course you could not, of a certainty, swear to any such fact. You are not now to say whether you believe him capable of such an act or not. You are to say whether you know of any circumstances which shall acquit him of the charge, or furnish ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... speaking aloud, giving expression to a thought, seeming common to all. It is the sailor who twice uttered the prediction, which, for the third time, he repeats, now as the assertion of a certainty. To the group ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid

... earth—agrees to offer prayers daily to St. Leopold, and every week to contribute as much as a crucifix. The valley of the Mississippi has been surveyed and mapped by the Jesuits, under the directions of the Vatican, and Popish Cardinals in Europe are boasting of the certainty of their subjecting this land of freedom at no distant day to papal supremacy! Rev. Dr. JAMES, an eminent ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... coins which can be identified with certainty are some silver pieces which bear in Runic letters the name of the Mercian king AEthelred (675-704). There are others, however, of the same type and standard (about 21 grains) which may be attributed with probability to his father Penda (d. 655). But it is clear ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... silence was all sorrow. 'I shall not live to see you married,' he went on, 'but since the foundation is laid, that little signifies; it would be a selfish pleasure, and I have never thought of myself but in you. To foresee your future, in its main outline, to know to a certainty that you will be safely domiciled here, with a wife approved by my judgment, cultivating the moral fruit of which I have sown the seed—this will content me. But, my son, I wish to clear this bright ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James

... loss of external aid,' he said; 'nay, of much more. There is no certainty of receiving the benefits linked by Divine Power to her ordinances. Faith, in fact, while acknowledging the great Object of Faith, refuses or neglects to exercise herself upon the very subjects which He has set before her; and, in effect, would accept ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Porson, obviously representing Landor in this case, 'whom I have found it so delightful to read in, and so hard to read through.' What Landor here says of Spenser, I should venture to say of Landor. There are few books of the kind into which one may dip with so great a certainty of finding much to admire as the 'Imaginary Conversations,' and few of any high reputation which are so certain to become wearisome after a time. And yet, upon thinking of the whole five volumes so emphatically extolled ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... without the concurrence of the Parliament; and it is in the highest degree improbable that either he or the Parliament would ever have consented to make the settlement of the English crown a matter of stipulation with France. What he would or would not have done, however, we cannot with certainty pronounce. For James proved impracticable. Lewis consequently gave up all thoughts of effecting a compromise and promised, as we have seen, to recognise William as King of England "without any difficulty, restriction, condition, or reserve." It seems certain ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the post-mark on the letter would tell me from whence it came, so I forthwith looked at the back of the letter, and in the post-mark read the name of a well-known and not very distant sea-port. I then knew with tolerable certainty the port where she had embarked, and I almost determined to follow her, but I almost instantly determined to do no such thing. Isopel Berners had abandoned me, and I would not follow her; 'perhaps,' whispered pride, 'if I overtook her, she would only despise me for running ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... upon land in the cities were indued with a mathematical certainty and a perpetuity. City real estate was not subject to the extreme fluctuating processes which so disordered the value of rural land. All of the tendencies and currents of the times favored the building up of an aristocracy ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... English, and the prostration of the Continent, which had enabled him absolutely to seal every port of Europe against an Englishman, who could now no longer venture to stray a mile beyond the range of the ship's guns, which had brought him to the shore, without the certainty of being arrested as a spy,—this unheard-of condition of things had at length compelled all English gentlemen to reconcile themselves for the present to the bounds of their own island; and, accordingly, in the spring of 1809, we three unhanged friends ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... They shifted too much. His thick, brown hair was thrown off his forehead in a most exuberantly artistic fashion. His nose jutted well into the outer world, and I had to confess that his profile was of a certainty striking. But his full face was disappointing. It was too narrow; its expression was that of a meagre soul, and his eyes were very close together. Yet I liked Piloti; he played the piano well, sang with no little ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... Lysistrata (ll. 1242 and 1245), which was probably a kind of bag-pipe, is also derived from [Greek: phusa], i.e. physallis, the "concrete,"[28] and physateria[29] the "collective"[28] form of the instrument. We leave the realm of inference for that of certainty when we reach the reign of Nero, who had a passion for the Hydraulus (see ORGAN: History) and the tibia utricularis.[30] That the bag-pipe was introduced by the Romans into the British Isles is a conclusion supported by the discovery in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... many ladies by the pillar that I cannot tell to a certainty which one you mean,' whispered my would-be informant. Stooping and glancing along my arm with the precision of a Kentucky rifleman, I brought my finger to bear directly upon the head of the unknown, who, as the devil ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... offered wager of a pound of tobacco or a month's wages to that effect—I was to be pent on the same ship with her. As sure as cosmic sap was cosmic sap, just that sure was I that ere the voyage was over I should be pestered by her making love to me. Please do not mistake me. My certainty in this matter was due, not to any exalted sense of my own desirableness to women, but to my anything but exalted concept of women as instinctive huntresses of men. In my experience women hunted men with quite the same blind tropism that marks the pursuit of the sun by the sunflower, ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... effect a lodgement. Mrs. Hopkins's parrot had been observing Kitty, first with one eye and then with the other, evidently preparing to make a remark, but awkward with a stranger. "That 's a beautiful part y 've got there," Kitty said, buoyant with the certainty that she was on safe ground this time; "and tahks like a book, I 'll be bound. Poll! ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... no one who is acquainted with the praise of the Eastern Church will fail to detect here and there certain marks which inevitably announce their origin. In most cases initial Greek headlines have been dispensed with, for the reason that they can serve no useful purpose, nor indicate with any certainty the source of ...
— Hymns from the Morningland - Being Translations, Centos and Suggestions from the Service - Books of the Holy Eastern Church • Various

... it is, of course nobody knows anything with certainty. But in my judgment there is only one tenable theory of Will Whittaker's disappearance, and that is, that he was murdered and his body hidden. Mead is the only enemy he was known to have, and Mead had threatened ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly

... not all, sir," continued Noel Prodgers. "It is impossible that we can share such certainty as you claim. Probability lies entirely against it. This has happened twice, remember, and each time a valuable and precious life disappears, for causes beyond our knowledge. That, however, is no reason for ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... is true even now, it was far truer before the days of Columbus, when men were constantly looking westward across the Atlantic, and wondering what was beyond. In those days, when no one knew with certainty whether the ocean they observed was a sea or a vast lake, it was often called "The Sea of Darkness." A friend of the Latin poet, Ovid, describing the first approach to this sea, says that as you sail out upon it the day itself vanishes, and ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... Mrs. Church," said Miss O'Flynn. "I wrote to my brother-in-law this very day, and I expect an answer soon. Of course, we can't tell you to a certainty whether the house is still to be had, but I didn't hear that it was let. We must hope ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... the "Private Views" at the Royal Academy and Grosvenor Gallery, that these never seemed complete without them. A Private View, a first appearance of Joachim or Sarasate, a first concert of Richter or Henschel or Halle, at each of these, almost to a certainty, the poet was sure to appear. The chief personal happiness of his later life was in his son. Mr. R. Barrett Browning is so well known as a painter and sculptor that it would be superfluous for me to add anything ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... and it gave Philip a chance to see the country, and to judge for himself what prospect of a fortune it offered. Both he and Harry got the "refusal" of more than one plantation as they went along, and wrote urgent letters to their eastern correspondents, upon the beauty of the land and the certainty that it would quadruple in value as soon as the road was finally located. It seemed strange to them that capitalists did not flock out there ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... for all parties, indeed, in Ireland, political differences have so completely stamped the externals of each party that he must be a man of small penetration who cannot, in the first five minutes he is thrown among strangers, calculate with considerable certainty whether it will be more conducive to his happiness to sing, "Croppies Lie Down," or "The Battle of Ross." As for Billy Crow, long life to him! you might as well attempt to pass a turkey upon M. Audubon for a giraffe, as endeavor to impose a Papist upon him ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... in the rural life about him, the life in which he actively shared, that he found the world wherein he could pour all his thoughts, feelings, and experiences with the certainty of seeing them emerge in forms answering to his conception. It was not until he came to Barbizon that he began truly to live the artist-life as he understood it, where the work is a faithful reflection of the only things a man really cares for—the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... most of the tallookdars of the country over which I have passed. Not one in five, or I may say one in ten, attends the viceroys, because it would not be safe to do so; or pays the demands of Government punctually, because there is no certainty in them. ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... manifestly clear, I fled away as guiltily as a thief might have done and never halted till I was far beyond sight and call. Then I began my search with a feverish excitement that was brimful of expectation—almost of certainty. I crawled about the ground, seizing and examining bits of stone, blowing the dust from them or rubbing them on my clothes, and then peering at them with anxious hope. Presently I found a bright fragment and my heart bounded! I hid behind a boulder ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... professional to throw a regiment of cavalry on a battery of machine guns, with the dead certainty that if the guns go off not a horse or man will ever get within fifty yards of the fire? I couldn't believe my eyes when ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw

... careful man is sometimes thrown off his guard, and drinks more than his usual allowance. It is, Mr. Watts believes, an admitted fact that even people who are considered strictly temperate habitually take more than is good for them. What quantity is good for every man, no one can say with certainty. So far as wine is taken to aid digestion, Blackie, who considers that wine "may even be necessary to stimulate digestion," holds that "healthy young men can ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade

... that as all religions have general and eternal truths for their object, they cannot thus shape themselves to the shifting spirit of every age without forfeiting their claim to certainty in the eyes of mankind. To this I reply again, that the principal opinions which constitute belief, and which theologians call articles of faith, must be very carefully distinguished from the accessories connected with them. Religions are obliged to hold ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... Professor said, "your news gratifies me, of course. Your rehabilitation, however, was a matter of certainty. With me life has become a chaos. You can have no idea, with your independent nature, what it means to entirely rely upon the ministrations of one person and to be suddenly ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... saying more than she meant, though, strangely, as if it had been an effect of her type and of her voice, there was neither pertness nor passion in the profession she had just made. Curiously wanting as she seemed both in timidity and in levity, she was to a certainty not self-conscious—she was extraordinarily simple. Mr. Longdon looked at her now with an evident surrender to his extreme interest, and it might well have perplexed him to see her at once so downright as from experience and ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James

... accomplish great things through your instrumentality, and in order to secure your services with greater certainty he has placed around you barriers which you cannot pass without an effort that does violence to nature, still necessity makes it a duty to break them down, and necessity has no law. When the first step is taken nothing can ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi

... without caseation, is usually sufficient evidence of the tuberculous nature of any portion of tissue examined for diagnostic purposes. The recognition of the bacillus itself by appropriate methods of staining makes the diagnosis a certainty; but as it is by no means easy to identify the organism in many forms of surgical tuberculosis, it may be necessary to have recourse to experimental inoculation of susceptible ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... celibacy is to be preferred to wedlock as a more worthy mode of life. In 1 Cor. vii. 32-34 he argues that the unmarried, being free from domestic cares, can care for the things of God. He speaks often of the degree of certainty he feels that he has with him the Spirit of God. This shows that he often lacked self-confidence in regard to his teachings. He does not seem to hold the ascetic view. In Ephes. v. 22 the marriage institution is accepted and regulated, with some mystical notions, which ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... which he feared had been broken. I accordingly, to pacify him, went down and got it, and managed to produce some few notes, which had the desired effect. The major after some time came in to relieve me, for we could not trust any of the people at the inn, who would to a certainty have been dosing our patient with whisky, under the belief that they were doing him a kindness, but at the risk of producing ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston

... all life looked gray and hopeless to Mercy. She had had an over-mastering presentiment from the moment when she read the telegram that she should reach Penfield too late to see Parson Dorrance alive. A strange certainty that he had died in the night settled upon her mind as soon as she waked from her troubled sleep; and when she reached Lizzy's door, and saw standing before it the undertaker's wagon, which she so well remembered, there was no shock of surprise to her in the ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... was bent on this, and unable to dissuade him from his certainty that the fugitive was inside the hut, for the moment scarcely ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough

... a vegetable system of an artificial and arbitrary character. It cannot be replaced by a natural one, no matter how reasonable the change might be, or how often it has been attempted to make it, because no other system could ever yield the same certainty and stability of definition. Just in the same way the artificial and arbitrary basis on which, as has been shown, the constitution of a State rests, can never be replaced by a purely natural basis. A natural basis would aim at doing away with ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... consider that you have taken an unjustifiable liberty. Have you anything to say for yourself before I proceed to shoot you? I might mention that I once had a third cousin whose aunt by marriage was slightly insane, so you see that I can kill you with a calm certainty that the jury will acquit me, on the ground of my ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various

... maddening to think how one not very violent blow with a club or a knife would put an end to her wilfulness forever, and yet that the risk to himself in that case would be almost as deadly as the certainty for her. But accidents might happen. In a land of elephants, tigers, snakes, wild boars and desperate men there is a wide range for circumstance, and the sooner the accident the less the risk of interference ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... nothing in the bare notion that ideas have been its agents that would seem to guarantee that my present purposes in lecturing will be prolonged. I may have ulterior developments in view; but there is no certainty that my ideas as such will wish to, or be ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... malignity at length provoked Addison to retaliate for the first and last time cannot now be known with certainty. We have only Pope's story, which runs thus. A pamphlet appeared containing some reflections which stung Pope to the quick. What those reflections were, and whether they were reflections of which he had a right to complain, we have now ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... be a mistake to assume that the middle class counts for nothing, even at an election. As to ideas, have we got any new ones since 1871? 'To be consequent and powerful,' says Arminius, 'men must be bottomed on some vital idea or sentiment which lends strength and certainty to their action.' There are those who tell us that we have at last found this vital idea in those conceptions of the British Empire which Mr. Chamberlain so vigorously trumpets. To trumpet a conception is hardly a happy phrase, but, as Mr. Chamberlain plays no other instrument, it is forced upon ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... bottom of his grief Pascal had the dominating feeling that for him life was ended. Regret for Clotilde, sorrow at having her no longer beside him, the certainty that he would never see her again, filled him with overwhelming grief. Work had lost its power, and he would sometimes let his head drop on the page he was writing, and weep for hours together, unable to summon courage to take up the pen again. His passion ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... acquaintances you soon learn to recognise by some peculiarity of shape or covering; and their faces, considered as means of personal identification, assume a secondary importance. If you see Ivan's legs coming down the chimney, you feel a moral certainty that Ivan's head is somewhere above in the smoke; and Nicolai's boots, appearing in bold relief against the sky through the entrance hole, afford as satisfactory proof of Nicolai's identity as his head would, provided that part of his body came in first. Legs, therefore, are ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... into a woman's; she was looking on the ground, and walking slowly as if searching for something that had been lost, her course being precisely that of Mr. Melbury's gig. Fitzpiers by a sort of divination jumped to the idea that the figure was Grace's; her nearer approach made the guess a certainty. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... skill was viewed by his kaisarly kingship as beneath his dignity; but still he feared Friedel's being seized upon to be as prime illustrator to the royal autobiography—a lot to which, with all his devotion to Maximilian, he could hardly have consigned his brother, in the certainty that the jeers of the ruder nobles would ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... suggestion of some that we were playing with fire; or even with hell-fire. In the words that were written for us there was nothing ostensibly degrading, but any amount that was deceiving. I saw quite enough of the thing to be able to testify with complete certainty, that something happens which is not in the ordinary sense natural, or produced by the normal and conscious human will. Whether it is produced by some subconscious but still human force, or by some powers, good, bad, or indifferent, which are external to humanity, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... monsoon-like character, while the wind, constantly blowing very fresh, kept veering from North-West to South-West. Every now and then, by way of agreeable variety, a heavy squall would take us from South-South-West, though more commonly from West-South-West. The only certainty that we could calculate upon, was, that at North-North-West the wind would remain when it got there, stationary for a few hours. The thunder and lightning, the former loud and with a long reverberating ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... Alexander Joseph Chemmle,' he began. 'During the night I have reviewed my life, and now more than ever I am conscious of the limiting influence exerted upon a philosopher by the loss of boyhood. The suspicion has been with me for years: it is now a certainty. You are not likely, my young friend, to be with me long, for The Tattooed Quaker will, of course, carry you back to England next week. But in the intervening time I want you, so far as is within your power, to make a boy of me. I put myself unreservedly ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas

... after that evening, by a sense of guilt. I was quite certain, with unjustifiable certainty born of instinct, that the man had wanted to speak to me, and that the smallest response on my part would have encouraged him to do so. Why hadn't I given the response? A smile would have sufficed; a smile wasn't much to demand by one human being of another. I thought it very pitiable ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West

... She desired Vignon to suggest to Madame de Fleury that one of the assistants in her favorite couturiere's establishment,—the one with whose designs Madame de Fleury was already acquainted,—might be tempted, by the certainty of the marchioness's patronage, to visit America. Madame de Fleury was contented, and immediately proposed that Mademoiselle Melanie should sail in the same steamer. Vignon allowed two of her work-women ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... constable went to saddle the horse, and Alice sat on the bench waiting till it was ready, she fought with a very strong temptation. Her husband would not receive her, so much she knew for a certainty; but there were others who would. How welcome Roger would have made her! and what a perfect haven of rest it would be, to live even for a few days with him and Christabel! Her old father, too, at Frittenden, ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt

... peculiarly to belong to the Lord. Now, on the other hand, the danger of religion is certain and inevitable, though not simply in itself and absolutely, (because the Lord doth in heaven and earth what he pleases,) yet with a moral certainty and infallibility, which is often as great as physical certainty. Suppose these men having the power of the sword, prevail, will they not employ it according to their principles, and for attaining their own ends, which both are destructive to religion? What is more certain ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... to be expected, has reappeared in England again; and England, as was to be expected, has taken no sufficient steps towards meeting it; so that if, as seems but too probable, the plague should spread next summer, we may count with tolerable certainty upon a loss of some ten ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... name. Well, and what does the poor man ask, who regards himself as your debtor when you do him the honor of accepting anything he can give you? He asks only for a hope—and what a hope, good God! Is it not rather the certainty of never having anything from you but what my passion may seize? The fire in my heart will abet your cruel deceptions. You find me ready to submit to every condition you can impose on my happiness, on my few pleasures; but promise me at least that on the day ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... this fact would, sooner or later, have been brought to the knowledge of those from whom we most desired to keep it concealed; but that now we had time to rest, and a shelter to rest in, during the first hot pursuit, which we knew to a fatal certainty was being carried on. The remnants of our food, and the stored-up fruit, would supply us with provision; the only thing to be feared was, that something might be required from the loft, and the miller or some one ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell

... hardly disposed of themselves in this manner and were beginning, in the gray dusk, to distinguish objects with some certainty, when the door of the distant cabin opened and a mongrel collie bounded out followed by a man who left the door ajar. The man, carrying a water pail, set it down, yawned, stretched himself and tucked ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... was soon ascertained that antipyrin, antifebrin, phenacetin and other analogous products, if given in sufficient doses, would reduce the heat, and allay the pains with great certainty and promptness, not only in continued fevers, but also in rheumatism, influenza, or la grippe, etc.; and thus their use soon became popular with both the profession and the public. No one, however, undertook to first ascertain by strictly scientific appliances ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... defective foundations have to be encountered. The metal can be moulded in such precise forms and so accurately fitted together as to give to the arching the greatest possible rigidity; while it defies the destructive influences of time and atmospheric corrosion with nearly as much certainty ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... detail," he remarked one evening in the dug-out after dinner, "are very easy to see if you have eyes to see them with. One is nothing; two are a coincidence; three are a moral certainty. A really trained man can see a molehill; I can see a mountain; most of you fellows couldn't see the Himalayas." With which sage remark he thoughtfully lit his pipe and relapsed into silence. And silence being his usual characteristic he came into the ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... fist which is trying to strangle you, your voice, and your ardent protest, preventing you from being heard—I rejoice, praying that your teeth may be sharpened. And when you are marching against Sodom and Gomorrah, to tear down the old, my soul is with you, and the certainty that you must triumph fills and warms my heart and intoxicates me ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... the Emden was possible, also a landing by the enemy on the Keeling Island, at least for the purpose of landing the wounded and taking on provisions. As there were other ships in the neighborhood, according to the statements of the Englishmen, I saw myself faced with the certainty of having soon to surrender because of a lack of ammunition. But for no price did I and my men want to get into English imprisonment. As I was thinking about all this, the masts again appeared on the horizon, the Emden steaming ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... believe I can affirm with certainty that the several sums mentioned in the account transmitted with my letter above mentioned were received at or within a very few days of the dates which are affixed to them in the account. But as this contains only the gross ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... "It's a certainty that the Soviets have been tricked, too, the same as us. But we have found out. That gives ...
— The Defenders • Philip K. Dick

... structure, the result of so much patient and intelligent energy, was fearfully shattered; the bridge, the river, and the shore, strewed with the mangled bodies of his soldiers. He expected, as a matter of certainty, that the fleet from below would instantly force its passage, destroy, the remainder of his troops-stunned as they were with the sudden catastrophe complete the demolition of the bridge, and then make its way to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... true, that the essential characteristics of naval discipline are, and ought to be, promptitude of action, and that vigorous kind of decision which leads to certainty of purpose at all times, and under all circumstances. But these very qualities are valueless, unless they are regulated by justice. Without this, a man-of-war would very soon become worse than useless to the country, besides ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... towards proving the truth of the theological notions entertained by its adherents. I can assure you that such ideas of religion are quite as far removed from mine as yours can be." His final letter announces the certainty of his being about to start on the enterprise so long projected. He had hitherto withheld the fact, from a wish not to distress his mother unnecessarily while there was a chance that any unforeseen obstacle might create ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... Upper German territories reveal a greater toughness of fibre and more power of resistance. They are blunt individualists, whose love of country utters itself with less enthusiasm and attains to perfect certainty perhaps only after a longing for adventures abroad ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... where their real strength lies, and have put it forth to the utmost. But we never feel satisfied that Coleridge has discovered where his real strength lies, and he strikes us as feeling no more certainty on the point himself. Strong as is his pinion, his flight seems to resemble rather that of the eaglet than of the full-grown eagle even to the last. He continues "mewing his mighty youth" a little too long. There is a tentativeness of manner which seems to come from a conscious ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... it, I did get up once. I heard the cat growling, or thought I did, but after I had looked out and seen nothing, nor heard anything, I went back to bed again and didn't know anything more till sun-up. I guess I'm pretty slow. I'm getting old for a certainty." ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin

... sedimentary deposits, the bed which lies lowest is the oldest. In many other vertical linear sections of the same series, of course, corresponding beds will occur in a similar order; but, however great may be the probability, no man can say with absolute certainty that the beds in the two sections were synchronously deposited. For areas of moderate extent, it is doubtless true that no practical evil is likely to result from assuming the corresponding beds to be synchronous or strictly contemporaneous; ...
— Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life • Thomas H. Huxley

... them to-night, I shall stay in and nurse my cold, and read." This was mere futile bravado, for the impartial spectator in him, though far less clear-sighted and judicial now than formerly, foresaw with certainty that if Hilda did not come he would call at the Orgreaves'. At five minutes to seven he was miserable: he had decided to hope until five minutes to seven. He made it seven in despair. Then there ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... been stimulated to sowing by the certainty of reaping. Tomorrow's sheaves and shoutings support to-day's tearful sowing. Certainty of victory wins battles before they are fought. Armed with confidence patriots have beaten down stone castles with naked fists. Uncertainty makes the heart sick, takes nerve out of arm ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... the rapt fancy in the beam of day: The gifts of fortune, too, he flung aside, By wisdom's wealth, a nobler store, supplied. There Hippias, too, I saw, who dared to claim For general science an unequall'd name. And him, whose doubtful mind and roving eye No certainty in truth itself could spy; With him who in a deep mysterious guise Her heavenly charms conceal'd from vulgar eyes. The frontless cynic next in rank I saw, Sworn foe to decency and nature's modest law. With him ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... some considerations on the scale of being, of which, yet, I am obliged to renew the mention, whenever a new argument is made to rest upon it; and I must, therefore, again remark, that consequences cannot have greater certainty than the postulate from which they are drawn, and that no system can be more hypothetical than this, and, perhaps, no hypothesis ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... day, four the next, seven the next, but after a time he voted it slow, and went after gill birds, with more enjoyment but less certainty of a bag. ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner

... offset the glory of our manly years? Because their narrowness cannot take in the contingencies that threaten peace, are they blessed above all others? Does not the same narrowness cut them off from the bright certainty that underlies all doubts and fears? If ignorance is bliss, man stands at the summit of mortal misery, and the scale of happiness is a descending one. We must go down into the ocean-depths, where, for the scintillant soul, a dim, twilight instinct lights up gelatinous lives. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... the peculiar position so often assumed (that of sitting upon the haunches), are somewhat characteristic of this trouble, though these symptoms, as we have already seen, may be present during diseases of the stomach or anterior portion of the bowels. Even could we diagnose with certainty this form of hernia, there is little or nothing that can be done. Leading the horse up a very steep gangway or causing him to rear up may possibly cause the hernial portion to return to its natural position. This is not enough, however; it must ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... bent over her, listened, but no word came. She was, indeed, too bewildered and overwhelmed to speak. The old bitter fear and certainty began to assert itself against the overmastering impulse which ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... General, take up the slate and read. General reads: DAGOBERT, VICTORIA. The first in his friend's writing; the second in a new hand. I never saw anything in the least like this; or at all approaching to the absolute certainty, the familiarity, quickness, absence of all machinery, and actual face-to-face, hand-to-hand fairness between the conjuror and the audience, with which it was done. I have not the slightest idea of ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... proportion of the Free Soilers and Democrats, were enlisted in the service of this remarkable movement. Pretending to herald a new era in our politics in which the people were to take the helm and expel demagogues and traders from the ship, it reduced political swindling to the certainty and system of a science. It drew to itself, as the great festering centre of corruption, all the known rascalities of the previous generation, and assigned them to active duty in its service. It was an embodied lie of the first magnitude, a horrid conspiracy against decency, the rights of man, ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... public testimony. Those, whose livelihood, or promotion, or expectations, were dependent upon the government of the country, were generally backward on these occasions. Though they thought they discovered in the parliamentary conduct of Mr. Pitt, a bias in favour of the cause, they knew to a certainty that the Lord Chancellor Thurlow was against it. They conceived, therefore, that the administration was at least divided upon the question, and they were fearful of being called upon lest they should give offence, and ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... the terrors of my ticklish situation respecting provision for a family of children, I am decidedly of opinion that the step I have taken is vastly for my happiness. As it is I look to the Excise scheme as a certainty of maintenance!—luxury to what either Mrs. Burns ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... occur I do not know. No one knows for a certainty, but a man who has lived in Panama almost since the French started the big ditch, claims to know a great deal about the slides and the causes of them. He tells me that certain small slides, such as have been experienced, are followed—almost always after ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton

... better for anybody than a marriage like hers, and if she chose this time for letting him know that she was thinking of it, it was because in those terms she could bring closest to him his new-found possibilities. If she could have reached Peter with the personal certainty of riches by explaining to him how far his dollars would stretch end to end, or how many acres of postage stamps he could buy with them, she might have thought less of him on that account, but she would have helped him ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin

... toot-tooing of clarionets, and bumming of bass-fiddles, ye may be as sure as you are born, that ye run a chance of being deluded out of your right senses—that the sounds are by way of lulling the soul asleep—and that, to the certainty of a without-a-doubt, you are in the heat and heart of ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... the words of different languages; and possibly even some picturesque fragment of early history may have now and then been carried about the world in this manner. But as the philologist can with almost unerring certainty distinguish between the native and the imported words in any Aryan language, by examining their phonetic peculiarities, so the student of popular traditions, though working with far less perfect instruments, can safely assert, with reference to a vast number of legends, that ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... critical scrutiny of a short, stout woman with crinkly, gray hair. This was Mrs. R. B. M. Smith, who, when the opening exercises were finished, signified her willingness to relate to the children a model story, calling the teacher's attention in advance to the almost incredible certainty that would characterize the children's anticipation of the events judiciously and ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various

... hear over yonder the voice of the man we are in search of. Listen! that's the Colonel's voice to a certainty. Quick, by all the devils! Let us run at full speed, or we shall ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... and destroy it in order to prevent the enemy from crossing the Eisach. Forward, my friends! Forward to the gap of Brixen! We must roll down trees, detach large fragments from the rocks, and hurl them down on the enemy; we must fire at them from the heights with deadly certainty, and every bullet must hit its man. Forward! forward! To the ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... back from her shoulders. And, most wonderful and striking of all, a circlet of pure gold rests upon the shapely head, and a second circlet is clasped round the waist. Then she is a queen? No doubt of it. And then comes, to the joy of admiration of all she has seen, the added joy of certainty that all is her own. This is a queen's garden, and she is the ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various

... Every dollar issued by the Government, or by national banks under government authority, passes current like gold. Indeed the ease with which it can be transported and the certainty of its redemption makes the paper money of the United States ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... creek, and through a tangle of vines, brought the party to the leaning pine tree. From that point the old sycamore tree looked not at all as it did from the point of starting. The boys had taken pains to watch its changes of appearance, however, and were able to point it out with certainty to Sam. ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston

... All the world said the trouble would come afterwards; but if it did come, it was not to Johnny. Never was chanticleer so crouse on his own dung-hill, as Johnny Darbyshire was in his own house. He was lord and master there to a certainty. In doors and out, he shouted, hurried, ran to and fro, and made men, maids, and Lizzy herself, fly at his approach, as if he had got a whole cargo of Mercury's wings, and put them on their feet. It was the same in parish affairs; and the fame ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various

... Will-be-will, to know the certainty of this matter. So he asked him, and he told him; then did the giant send for the prisoners, who, when they were come, demanded of them who they were, whence they came, and what they did in the camp of Shaddai; and they told him. Then he sent them to ward again. Not many days after, he sent for ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... compromise goes to pieces at the first cannon-shot of the advance, and while she's fighting on it's her poor business to be putting herself together again: So she makes a mess of the beginning, to a certainty. If it weren't that she had the army of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... moment at which the fracture had occurred cannot be stated with any certainty. A sentence of three months' imprisonment in the second division was not responsible. The smash was before that. Probably it came with the realization that he stood beneath the shadow of the Criminal Law. Be that as it may, the ex-financier emerged from prison a broken man. But for the interest ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... have no certain knowledge upon the important question whether the ideal of beauty, if possessed by the lower animals at all, is in all, or even in many cases, in accordance with our own. We, for instance, admire a male humming-bird; what certainty have we that he is equally beautiful in the eyes of his mate? In cases where we have reason to believe that deliberate selection has taken place, we do not know that that selection was influenced by only one condition—that of beauty. There may have been a thousand causes at work of which we ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland

... Chouan, Honore de Balzac plunged boldly, under his own name, into the turmoil of literature. He pushed ahead audaciously, elbowing his way, and he made himself enemies. He went his own road, indifferent to sarcasms, mockeries, and spiteful comments called forth by his tranquil assurance and certainty of his own strength, which he did not try to hide. At a period when it was the fashion to sigh and be pale and melancholy, in a stage-setting of lakes, clouds and cathedrals, and when one was expected to be abnormal and mediaeval, Balzac displayed a robust joviality, ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet

... travellers of distinction. I found that they were in the habit of selling their booty in the frontier towns. As these in general were thinly and poorly peopled, and little frequented by travellers, they could offer no market for such valuable articles of taste and luxury. I suggested to them the certainty of their readily obtaining great pieces for these gems among the rich strangers with ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... the safe ground of certainty. Whatever is doubtful is dangerous, and had best be left alone. If we go skating, and have a suspicion that the ice in a certain spot is weak, that is sufficient to make us avoid it. Possibly we might pass over it without ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees

... took her seat again, while Enoch's footsteps went briskly out through the shed. With the clanging of the door, she felt secure. If she had to deal with Josiah Pease, she could do it better alone, clutching at the certainty that was with her from of old, that, if you could only keep your temper with cousin Josiah, you had one chance of victory. Flame out at him, and you were lost. "Some more potatoes?" asked she, ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... explanation we cannot know what they are. We quite easily and naturally and confidently guess that they are in all cases objects which will return five hundred per cent. on the Trust's investment in them, but guessing is not knowledge; it is merely, in this case, a sort of nine-tenths certainty deducible from what we think we know of the Trust's trade principles and its sly ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Of thy mere will. To darken a good name Without clear cause is heinous wickedness; And to cast off a worthy friend I call No less a folly than to fling away What most we love, the life within our breast. The certainty of this will come with time; For time alone can clear the righteous man. An hour suffices to make ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... tell them no more, nor ever did; but in imperturbable serenity and certainty of purpose builded a tight little house in a nook of Old Wives' Cove, within the harbor, where the Shining Light might lie snug; and there he dwelt with the child he had, placidly fishing the grounds with hook and line, save at such times as he set out upon some ill-seeming ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan

... state of affairs Bulgaria was always the uncertain factor. Her attitude could not be gauged with certainty, but it was extremely suspicious throughout. A pro-Bulgar element had for some months been listened to by our Foreign Office with greater respect than it deserved, although nobody, pro-Bulgar or anti-Bulgar, entertained any trust in Tsar Ferdinand's integrity. ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... mourn for him long: but why should your fear of wronging an innocent man, hinder your putting this physician to death? Is it not sufficient justification that he is accused of a design against your life? When the business in question is to secure the life of a king, bare suspicion ought to pass for certainty; and it is better to sacrifice the innocent than to spare the guilty. But, Sir, this is not a doubtful case; the physician Douban has certainly a mind to assassinate you. It is not envy which makes ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.

... there was only the ghost of that finer, gentler man she had helped to bring into being. The piercing dark eyes he bent upon her burned her, went through her as if he were looking into her soul. Then Madeline's quick sight caught a fleeting doubt, a wistfulness, a surprised and saddened certainty in his eyes, saw it shade and pass away. Her woman's intuition, as keen as her sight, told her Stewart in that moment had sustained a ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... Southwest. The pernicious system of acquiring title to public lands in vogue among the Virginians and North Carolinians was abandoned. Instead of making each man survey his own land, and allowing him to survey it when, how, and where he pleased, with the certainty of producing endless litigation and trouble, Congress provided for a corps of government surveyors, who were to go about this work systematically. It provided further for a known base line, and then for division of ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... not only harsh but unjust. The variation of the closing exclamation of each verse is as skilful as anything Field ever did. Different, indeed, from the refrain in "Wynken, Blynken and Nod," but touching the chords of mirth with certainty and irresistible effect. Field might have added, that none of the comedians he has named ever gave to the experience of "Johnny Jones and His Sister Sue" in public recitation the same melancholy humor and pathetic conclusion as did the author of their misfortunes and untimely end himself. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... we incorrectly ascribe to the mental brutality of the judges of those times, were but a logical consequence of the contemporaneous theories. It was felt that in order to condemn a man, one must have the certainty of his guilty, and it was said that the best means of obtaining tins certainty, the queen of proofs, was the confession of the criminal. And if the criminal denied his guilt, it was necessary to have recourse to torture, ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri

... Haslingfield to Madingley? And after, ere the night is born, Do hares come out about the corn? Oh, is the water sweet and cool Gentle and brown, above the pool? And laughs the immortal river still Under the mill, under the mill? Say, is there Beauty yet to find? And Certainty? and Quiet kind? Deep meadows yet, for to forget The lies, and truths, and pain? ... oh! yet Stands the Church clock at ten to three? And is there honey ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... a shot, either the horse was in the way or both animals were wholly concealed by the bushes. Moreover, the boys had to run fast through the brush to keep them in sight. Nat could not shoot with certainty, and Jonathan ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... their ranks at every fire. But, as the savages gathered closer and closer around them, they were obliged to fall back towards the pine grove, and as time after time they retreated into the darkness, they could distinguish their foes with less certainty, and finally they were obliged to make a scattered flight to save themselves from being surrounded. Strange to tell not one of them had been wounded, which could be only accounted for by the gloom, in which they were enveloped, ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle

... be obtained, then every Cavalry Commander requires to have a complete grasp of the nature of the Infantry combat. He must be able to estimate with as equal certainty as an Infantry General the general course of an engagement, the consumption of reserves, and the gradual moral degradation of the ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi

... to Prof. Darmstetter. That was how it came about. He had looked disconcerted at my appearance in the laboratory, and my suspicions had suddenly grown to certainty. I ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark

... with certainty, my dear. A northerner evidently— but whether Swedish or Danish it would be difficult ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn

... years, One of my comrades called me, in his wrath Son of the Czar. I took it as a jest, And with a blow avenged it at the time. All this now flashed like lightning on my soul, And told with dazzling certainty that I Was the Czar's son, so long reputed dead. With this one word the clouds that had perplexed My strange and troubled life were cleared away. Nor merely by these signs, for such deceive; But in my soul, in my proud, throbbing heart I felt within me coursed the blood of ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller

... its reward in the feeling that we had relieved more than one anxious host, and given certainty of a brilliant success to parties that must necessarily have been in doubt until certain of our coming. With my usual modesty, I say "our," wishing to give E. E. her little chance, ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens



Words linked to "Certainty" :   self-assurance, inevitableness, overconfidence, certitude, slam dunk, self-confidence, inevitability, authority, foregone conclusion, surety, predictability, incertain, reliance, assurance, indubitability, state of mind, confidence, unavoidability, uncertain, quality, cocksureness, indisputability, ineluctability, uncertainty



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