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Disprove   Listen
verb
Disprove  v. t.  (past disproved; past part. disproven; pres. part. disproving)  
1.
To prove to be false or erroneous; to confute; to refute. "That false supposition I advanced in order to disprove it."
2.
To disallow; to disapprove of. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Disprove" Quotes from Famous Books



... place, the believers are no wise dismayed by it. They freely admit that not only the media, but the spirits whom they summon, are sadly apt to lose sight of the elementary principles of right and wrong; and they triumphantly ask: How does the occurrence of occasional impostures disprove the genuine manifestations (that is to say, all those which have not yet been proved to be impostures or delusions)? And, in this, they unconsciously plagiarise from the churchman, who just as freely admits that many ecclesiastical miracles may have ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... Group, in 1910, said: "Fortunately, after the first two or three months, most children will thrive equally well when artificially fed, so long as the milk is good and reliable, and is properly prepared." All of our facts go to disprove ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes

... judges in the time of the trial of the rehabilitation, the fact of Joan of Arc being proved to have been incontestably a virgin was of the highest interest. It was reserved for a countryman of Joan of Arc's (Du Bellay) to invent a legend to disprove the fact; and to the everlasting shame of French literature, Voltaire adopted the lying calumny in his licentious ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower

... striving to prove themselves not idiots; in other words, in one breath they declare that his views were absolutely without point, and needed no explaining away; while in direct rebuttal of this declaration, they devoted time and labor in attempts to disprove the very ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... intuition to the facts he knew and came up with an answer. Then he phoned the New York Public Library, had his phone connected with the stacks, and spent an hour checking for data that would either prove or disprove his theory. He found plenty of the former and ...
— Dead Giveaway • Gordon Randall Garrett

... how you can disprove my argument on the immortality of the soul, which, being contained in the best of my dialogues, and being often asked for among my friends, I carry ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... at this. He was unable to disprove a fact of which the evidences were now so plain; but he struggled to maintain a little longer the respectability of ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille

... head and called on Billings as a man of honor to confute the charge. However Ledyard might lose his head, Billings was not willing to lose his. He advised Ledyard not to provoke conflict with the Russian authorities, but to go back to St. Petersburg and disprove the charge. Was it a case of one explorer being jealous of another, or had Billings played Ledyard into the fur traders' trap? That will never be known. Certain it is, Billings made mess enough of his own expedition to go down to posterity as a failure. ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... exercised with off-handed and masterly success—startling politicians and officials of the ancien regime by his bold and open tactics, and his contempt for tortuous bypaths in diplomacy. His wondrous exploits were performed with extreme poverty of means. He was the first to repudiate and disprove the supposed fundamental maxim in marine warfare, that no ship could attack a castle, or other strong fortification, with any hope of success. The early part of his naval career was occupied in opposing ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various

... been suggested that the warmth of the Tertiary climate was simply the effect of the residual heat of a globe cooling from incandescence, but many facts disprove this. For example, the fossil plants found in our Lower Cretaceous rocks in Central North America indicate a temperate climate in latitude 35 to 40 in the Cretaceous age. The coal-flora, too, and the ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... life.[136] He then passes by an insensible—because to him very natural—transition from the realities of feeling to those of thought, and to the underlying truth from which both series derive: and combats the idea that in thought, any more than in feeling, the present can disprove the past, the once true reveal itself as delusion. Time—otherwise growth—widens the range as it complicates the necessities of musical, i.e. emotional expression. It destroys the enfolding fictions which shield without concealing the earlier stages of intellectual ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... So also if any one has pointed out the extenuating circumstances in some particular case of offense, so as to show that it differs widely from the generality of the same class, the sophist, if he finds himself unable to disprove these circumstances, may do away the force of them, by simply referring the action to that very class, which no one can deny that it belongs to, and the very name of which will excite a feeling of disgust sufficient to counteract the extenuation; e.g., let it be a case of peculation, and ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... giving them opportunity of answering directly the complaints made against them, and of justifying their acts and laws. He therefore, in the Royal letter given above, dated April 6, 1666, required them within six months to send five of their number to England to answer and to disprove if they could complaints made against them, and to furnish proof of the professions and statements they had made in their address and petition. They could no longer evade or delay; they were brought face to face with the authority of King and Parliament; they ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... studied M. Tessier's careful and elaborate experiments,[328] made to disprove the common belief that good is derived from a change of seed; and he certainly shows that the same seed may with care be cultivated on the same farm (it is not stated whether on exactly the same soil) for ten consecutive years without loss. Another excellent observer, Colonel Le Couteur,[329] has ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... someone will hear you. Sit down." He nodded toward a seat on the other side of the little rustic table. "I will explain the matter as I see it, and if you can disprove any of my statements I shall be more than glad to ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster

... instead of employing this maxim in the sense in which it is used by Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and others, to prove there must be something self-existent and eternal, or in other words, "that nothing which once was not can ever of itself come into being," he uses it to disprove a divine creation, and even presents the maxim in an altered form—viz., "nothing is ever divinely generated from nothing;"[787] and he thence concludes that the world was by no means made for us by divine power.[788] Nature is eternal. "The universal ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... word!—I charge thee stay, and answer here To one, who, wert thou noble, were thy peer, 450 But as thou wast and art—nay, frown not, Lord, If false, 'tis easy to disprove the word— But as thou wast and art, on thee looks down, Distrusts thy smiles, but shakes not at thy frown. Art thou not he? whose deeds——"[jx] "Whate'er I be, Words wild as these, accusers like to thee, I list no ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... his rights, Baron de Saurac was arrested as a conspirator and imprisoned in the Temple. He had been denounced as having served in the army of Conde, and as being a secret agent of Louis XVIII. To disprove the first part of the charge, he produced certificates from America, where he had passed the time of his emigration, and even upon the rack he denied the latter. During his arrest, the eldest son discovered that Louis had become the owner of their ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... can prove or disprove that. He believes it, and you know that it is not to his interest to believe it. There is nothing very joyful about such a complication—a poor, little foundling thrusting himself upon one like a thunderbolt, without ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... and I, who are not so, engage ourselves in so stirring and violent an affair, that enslaves us to others, and renders us contemptible to ourselves." He said true that we are not to intrust a thing so precipitous in itself to a soul that has not wherewithal to withstand its assaults and disprove practically the saying of Agesilaus, that prudence and love cannot live together. 'Tis a vain employment, 'tis true, unbecoming, shameful, and illegitimate; but carried on after this manner, I look upon it as wholesome, and proper to enliven a drowsy ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... The argument is conclusive, and the defence complete, if the Union is only a firm or copartnership, and the sovereignty vests in the States severally. The refutation of the secessionists is in the facts adduced that disprove the theory of State sovereignty, and prove that the sovereignty vests not in the States severally, but in the States united, or that the Union is sovereign, and not the States individually. The Union is not a firm, a copartnership, ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... by the highest authority, puzzled Mr. Lincoln. They seemed very strange, yet he could not disprove them, and was therefore obliged to face the perplexing choice which was mercilessly set before him: "either to go into winter quarters, or to assume the offensive with forces greatly inferior in number" ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... artificial disabilities by which their freedom is limited and their development arrested? That only a few, under any circumstances, protest against the injustice of long-established laws and customs, does not disprove the fact of the oppressions, while the satisfaction of the many, if real, only proves their apathy and deeper degradation. That a majority of the women of the United States accept, without protest, the disabilities which grow out of their disfranchisement ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... night. They are recognizable, from Hawthorne's description, as the man of one idea, who has spent his whole life seeking the gem; a scientific experimenter who wishes to grind it up for the benefit of his crucible; a cynical sceptic who has come to disprove the existence of the great gem; a greedy speculator who seeks the carbuncle as he would prospect for a silver-mine; an English lord who wishes to add it to his hereditary possessions; and finally a young married couple who want ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... Petersburg, who had written a learned apologetic treatise "Concerning the Medieval Accusations against the Jews," published a refutation of the ritual myth under the title "Do the Jews use Christian Blood?," he was attacked in the Novoye Vremya by the liberal historian Kostomarov who attempted to disprove the conclusions of the defender of Judaism. The paper itself, hitherto liberal in its tendency, changed front about that time, and, steering its course by the prevailing moods in the leading Government circles, launched a systematic campaign against the ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... still occupies. By ingenious improvements in mounting and fitting, it was adapted to the finest micrometrical work, and thus offered unprecedented facilities both for the examination of double stars (in which Struve chiefly employed it), and for such subtle measurements as might serve to reveal or disprove the existence of a sensible stellar parallax. Fraunhofer, moreover, constructed for the observatory at Koenigsberg the first really available heliometer. The principle of this instrument (termed with more propriety ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... desert-plants disprove the Nagelian views in two important points. First, they show that extreme conditions do not necessarily change the organisms subjected to them, in a desirable direction. During the many centuries that these plants must have existed in the desert in annual generations, no single ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... enterprise that I have read of in history. Critics ambitious to say something new may rake out slanders from the archives of enemies, and discover faults which derogate from the character we have been taught to admire and venerate; they may even point out spots, which we cannot disprove, in that sun of glorious brightness, which shed its beneficent rays over a century of darkness,—but this we know, that, whatever may be the force of detraction, his fame has been steadily increasing, even on the admission of his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... sixteen per cent. at the time it was stated they were, or there has been great fraud committed since. As we are dealing with the greatest national bank in the country, it will be simple for the Government and banking officials at Washington instantly to disprove my statements if they are false; otherwise they must take action, civil and criminal, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... unnamed, may be conjectured to be Ceylon.[19] The absence of Mahinda's name in Asoka's inscriptions is certainly suspicious, but the Sinhalese chronicles give the names of other missionaries correctly and a mere argumentum ex silentio cannot disprove their ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... disprove your words, Sir Count," said the duke, removing his mail shirt and throwing it to the floor. Then he turned to Max and offered him the hilt of his dagger: "If you would purchase my death at the cost of your life, here is my dagger, and you may ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... Medical and Physical Journal for August 1827, and have not passed altogether unnoticed by my professional brethren[1], some of whom have done me the honour to speak of them in flattering terms, while no one, I believe, has attempted to disprove the existence of the important fact I was the ...
— Remarks on the Subject of Lactation • Edward Morton

... if false, they will not be able to persevere in one regular, consistent story "; whereas, if no advantage be taken of such particularity in the charge to detect the falsehood thereof, and if no attempt to disprove it, and no defence whatever be made, a presumption justly and reasonably arises in favor of the truth of such charge. That the said Warren Hastings, instead of offering anything in his defence, declared that he would not suffer Nundcomar to appear before the board at his accuser; that he ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... "I was under the impression that hermaphroditism was the usual character of these hybrids; and it has suggested itself to my mind as a possibility, which I have not, at present, sufficient data either to prove or to disprove, that the sterility of hybrids in general (still a somewhat obscure subject) may perhaps be partly due to hybridism having a tendency to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various

... When he arrived in Jerusalem at the close of his third missionary journey, the Apostle James and the elders informed him of the damage which this representation was doing to his good name and advised him publicly to disprove it. The words in which they made this appeal to him are very remarkable. "Thou seest, brother," they said, "how many thousands of Jews there are who believe; and they are all zealous of the law; and they are informed of thee that thou teachest all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker

... "To the Black-balled of the United Service Club," i.e. Lord Cardigan, was his), all contributed to the first number. It is an axiom of newspaper conductors that "the first number is always the worst number," and Punch did nothing to disprove the rule. Nevertheless, it was a great success. The tone and quality were far higher in dignity and excellence than was common to an avowedly smart and comic paper—far different from what is suggested by the word "Charivari;" and the public admitted that here was a novel school of comic writing, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... parts of a syllogism are correct it has absolute convincing power. Most attempts to disprove its statement attack the first two statements. Although it carries such an air of certainty it is likely to many errors in use. An error like this ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... any cure effected.]) The wound is rubbed with this salt, which is also taken internally. I had myself no direct and sufficiently convincing proof of the action of this specific; and the experiments of Delille and Majendie rather tend to disprove its efficacy. On the banks of the Amazon, the preference among the antidotes is given to sugar; and muriate of soda being a substance almost unknown to the Indians of the forests, it is probable that the honey of bees, and that farinaceous sugar which ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... Sydenham saw no reason for suspecting a communicable property. It might have been more to the point had Dr. Macmichael, instead of quoting old authorities on small-pox, measles, &c. quoted some authorities to disprove that Orton and others are wrong when they state it as their belief that some of those old epidemics in Europe, about which so much obscurity hangs, were nothing more or less than the cholera spasmodica. Mead's short sketch of the "sweating sickness" does not seem very ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest

... purse was open; but long before the quarrel over "Queen Mab" his generous spirit had begun to groan under her prim banality, and to express itself in ungenerous backbitings. His final estimate he imparted to Claire when he was seventy-eight years old, and it remains for those who dislike to disprove it: ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man. You all did see that on the Lupercal 95 I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And, sure, he is an honourable man. I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, 100 But here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not without cause: What cause withholds you then to mourn for him? O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare

... of storms. Here are appreciations of Shakespeare and of Milton, the like of which were not often proclaimed in his generation. Here is ecstatic admiration of ballads and of the Ossian imitations, all so unfashionable in the literary culture of the day. While dates disprove Lowell's statement in his essay on Gray that "those anti-classical yearnings of Gray began after he had ceased producing," it is certain that very little of his poetic work expressed these yearnings. "Elegance, sweetness, pathos, or even ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby

... and, as if to disprove his assertion, she seized his hand, and pressed it closely to her angrily, heaving bosom, as she tried to extract the thorn from it. But it had penetrated too far, and with a quick impatient ah! she ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... don't know what her conception of 'niceness' may be; it didn't fit mine. She had got it into her head that I 'pitied' her, which seemed to be a crime. I didn't see how to disprove it, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... that murdered man. It was highly characteristic of that camp—and, indeed, of others in California—that nobody, not even the ingenious theorists themselves, believed their story, and that no one took the slightest pains to verify or disprove it. Happily, Uncle Billy never knew it, and moved all unconsciously in this atmosphere of burlesque suspicion. And then a singular change took place in the attitude of the camp towards him and the disrupted partnership. Hitherto, for no reason whatever, all had agreed ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte

... large historic collection pertaining to the Davis family, much of the family furniture, the bed upon which Mr. Davis died, and the suit of clothes he wore when captured by General Wilson, in Georgia, at the close of hostilities between the North and the South; the object of the exhibit being to disprove the report that Mr. Davis wore a woman's dress when arrested. A statement of Capt. J.H. Parker, of General Wilson's staff was attached, contradicting the falsehood. The building cost $15,000 without furnishings or pictures. It was built entirely of Mississippi lumber, the contractor ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... the pure truth, we cannot deny it,' The Bishop of Mainz is being praised very much for his endeavors in the interest of peace. Likewise Duke Henry of Brunswick who extended a friendly invitation to Philip to dine with him, and admitted that he was not able to disprove the articles treating of both kinds, the marriage of priests, and the distinction of meats. Our men boast that, of the entire Diet, no one is milder than the Emperor himself. Such is the beginning. ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... testimony, and to the credibility of the witnesses; he may address himself to the reason, to the prejudices, to the sympathies, nay, even to the worst passions of the twelve men whose opinions he seeks to influence in favour of his client. He may proceed to call witnesses to disprove the facts adduced on the other side, or to show that the character of the accused stands too high for even a suspicion of the alleged clime; he has the utmost liberty of speech and action He may indefinitely protract the proceedings, and there seems to be scarcely any limit, in point of law, beyond ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... you these wits," said I, "to disprove to you the rumour of which you say that you have confirmation. Let us accept the statement that the body has been stolen. That much, no doubt, is true, for even rumours require some slight foundation. But who in all this world could say that when ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini

... Thornton was on his way to the houseboat Tom Curtis lay awake on his camp cot thinking of Madge and of what he could do to disprove the cruel story that Flora Harris had told. Of course, it must be false. Yet the girl would hardly have dared to tell such a tale unless a grain of truth had been hidden in it somewhere. Poor Madge! Tom wondered how her proud, passionate spirit would bear up under the shadow of ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers

... questions and comments are combined in such a way as to assist a boy or girl to verify or disprove the accuracy of Swift's work. A similar exercise, to illustrate the opposite extreme, may be based upon Adventures in Brobdingnag (page 54). It is hoped, too, that the questions may suggest a method ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... free from surfeit matter. A rested stomach will get more nutriment out of a small amount of food-stuff than an overworked stomach will get out of a much larger quantity. But experimentation which is sudden and covers a few weeks only, is worse than useless, as it tends to disprove the very principles that a saner method of experimentation would probably establish. And if I can impress this fact upon the reader I shall have performed a ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... any support to such an assumption. Another and stronger objection would be the uncertainty as to the correctness of the date of the letter. Seeing that so many of Chopin's letters have been published with wrong dates, why not also that of January 12? Unfortunately, we cannot in this case prove or disprove the point by internal evidence. There is, however, one factor we must be especially careful not to forget in our calculations—namely, George Sand's habitual unconscientious inaccuracy; but the nature of her narrative will indeed be a sufficient warning to the reader, for nobody can read it without ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... that as regards the foundations of his faith and morals, with Napoleon and Friedrich II. on his side, he had against him the advancing tide of modern Science. He did not attempt to disprove its facts, or, as Emerson, to sublimate them into a new idealism; he scoffed at and made light of ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... sufficient to produce any difference, one way or the other, in the fertility of the offspring of the two races, but proper statistics, continued over several generations, will, of course, be required to prove or disprove this conclusion. ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen

... biologist may continue, unquestioned, to work out more and more of the wondrous story of Life on the globe. They can never disprove, or on any of their own grounds deny, that God is the Author of all things—matter, force, and mind alike; that He designed the form and relations of the earth; that He organized its light, its seasons, and its changes; ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell

... form, the opposite characteristics of the individual soul are erroneously ascribed; just as ignorant men ascribe blue colour to the colourless ether. In order to remove this erroneous opinion by means of Vedic passages tending either to prove the unity of the Self or to disprove the doctrine of duality—which passages he strengthens by arguments—he insists on the difference of the highest Self from the individual soul, does however not mean to prove thereby that the soul is different from the highest Self, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... disproof, conviction, redargution^, invalidation; exposure, exposition; clincher; retort; reductio ad absurdum; knock down argument, tu quoque argument [Lat.]; sockdolager [U.S.], correction &c 572.1; dissuasion &c 616. V. confute, refute, disprove; parry, negative, controvert, rebut, confound, disconfirm, redargue^, expose, show the fallacy of, defeat; demolish, break &c (destroy) 162; overthrow, overturn scatter to the winds, explode, invalidate; silence; put to silence, reduce to ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... disprove Mr Sadler's principle; and the fact on which he lays so much stress—that the fecundity is less in the great towns than in the small towns—does not tend in any degree to prove his principle. There is not the least reason to believe ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... that Verrazzano had been three times on the coast of America, which, if true, would disprove the discovery set up in the letter. That document alleges that the coast explored by him was entirely unknown and HAD NEVER BEFORE BEEN SEEN BY ANY ONE before that voyage, and consequently not by him; and that, as regards ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy

... Were crimsoned. One his brother slew, nor dared To spoil the corse, till severed from the neck He flung the head afar. Another dashed Full in his father's teeth the fatal sword, By murderous frenzy striving to disprove His kinship with the slain. Yet for each death We find no separate dirge, nor weep for men When peoples fell. Thus, Rome, thy doom was wrought At dread Pharsalus. Not, as in other fields, By soldiers slain, or captains; here were ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... be hard to disprove this position, and they might have a good case if they would only leave it as it stands. But this they will not do; they must have assurance doubly sure; they must have the written word of the child itself as soon as it is born, giving the parents indemnity from all responsibility ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler

... even told what he has been charged with, has no power of facing his accuser, of bringing him to justice, of recovering damages from the State. While he himself is kept in close confinement, his enemy may manufacture evidence which he alone would be able to disprove; and the chance is never given him to ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen

... only recently of its authenticity, and it defies any sort of attempt to disprove it. It bears the signature of Bethmann Hollweg (German Imperial Chancellor at the outbreak of the war) and the date July 31, 1914. On that day Von Schoen (German Ambassador to France) was charged by a telegram from his Chancellor to notify ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne

... by giving woman the right of representation in the government which she helps to maintain; a voice in the laws by which she is governed, and all the rights and privileges society can bestow, the same as to man, or disprove its validity. We need no other declaration. All we ask is to have the laws based on the same foundation upon which that declaration rests, viz.: upon equal justice, and not upon sex. Whenever the rights of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... the Widmannstattian figures, from the name of their discoverer. When these figures are strongly developed the meteoric origin of the iron cannot be questioned, but their absence does not necessarily disprove such an origin. Native iron of ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson

... will you, Arthur?' said I, 'and listen to me—and don't think I'm in a jealous fury: I am perfectly calm. Feel my hand.' And I gravely extended it towards him—but closed it upon his with an energy that seemed to disprove the assertion, and made him smile. 'You needn't smile, sir,' said I, still tightening my grasp, and looking steadfastly on him till he almost quailed before me. 'You may think it all very fine, Mr. Huntingdon, to amuse yourself with rousing my jealousy; but take care you don't rouse ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... disprove that once and for all," he said. "The Rembrandt is at present in Lord Littimer's collection. There is an account of it in to-day's Telegraph. It is perfectly familiar to both of you. And, that being the case, what do ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... make my peace with my mother was not surprising, but my old professional mentor, Mr. Hanks, loved a paradox; if he wanted to call a man a fool, he praised him for his wisdom; if he wished to disprove a proposition, he argued for it, adroitly exposing its weakness, and yet he wrote ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... them. But the amazing thing in the world is the vast number of people who are content to believe important things on hearsay, because, on the whole, they love or trust the people who teach them. The word 'believing,' when I use it, doesn't mean that a good man says it, and that I can't disprove it, but a sort of vital assent, so that I can act upon the belief almost as if I knew it. It means for me some sort of personal experience, I could not love or hate a man on hearsay, just because people whom I loved or trusted said that they either loved or hated him. I might be so far biassed that ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... glass-roofed hot house, containing a very unique collection of potted plants, which, under the skillful hands of this young enthusiast, are undergoing the different stages of experimental treatment, such as he may deem necessary, to prove or disprove his many pet theories or fancies, in regard to care, growth, insect enemies, and to application of electric light, sun light, heat, moisture and fertilizers. Each plant bears a fruitful crop of cards, ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... archives of the Komorn Court, one of the most interesting trials is that of Athalie Brazovics. The woman's defense was masterly; she denied everything, knew how to disprove everything, and when they thought they had caught her, she managed to throw such mystery over it all, that her judges knew not where to have her. Why should she murder Timea? She was herself engaged, and had good prospects, while Timea was her benefactress, and ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... said that the anomalies above mentioned are so great as to disprove the existence of any scale which should indicate descent; but the nearer we approach species, the smaller we see differences become, till with species itself we find them at ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... "First we must disprove its impassability," I replied. "Nor shall I admit that it is impassable before I have followed its entire circle and stand again upon this spot, defeated. The sooner we start, the better, for I see no other way, and it will take us more than a month to travel the weary, frigid miles that ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the more purely a mechanist the speculator is, the more firmly does he assume a primordial molecular arrangement of which all the phenomena of the universe are the consequences, and the more completely is he thereby at the mercy of the teleologist, who can always defy him to disprove that this primordial molecular arrangement was not intended to evolve the phenomena of the universe." (The "Genealogy of Animals" ('The Academy,' 1869), reprinted ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley

... or touch it, would greatly enlighten us. It is, whether gravitation requires time. If it did, it would shew undeniably that a physical agency existed in the course of the line of force. It seems equally impossible to prove or disprove this point; since there is no capability of suspending, changing, or annihilating the power (gravity), or annihilating the matter in which the power resides.' The lines of magnetic force may have 'a separate existence,' but as yet we are unable ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various

... himself energetically to disprove this supposition. He succeeded. Belief is easy ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... again. "Does this do anything to your theory about duty?" asked Nolan. "Does it prove it, or disprove it, or what? I can not seem to get ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston

... and arbiters among the Indian nations. [Footnote: Heckewelder's History of the Indian Nations, p. 56.] That this preposterous story should have found credence is surprising enough. A single fact suffices to disprove it, and to show the terms on which the Delawares stood with the great northern confederacy. Golden has preserved for us the official record of the Council which was held in Philadelphia, in July, 1742, between the provincial authorities and the deputies of the Six Nations, headed by their noted ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale

... him to use stern measures and bombard us as he threatens," answered Cappoccio shrewdly but rather in the tone of a man who expects to have his argument disproved. And Francesco, if he could not disprove it, could at least ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... any man's word for such a statement," answered the Captain. "If it were known, I should have all the pressed men coming to me with long yarns, which it might be difficult to disprove." ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston

... anomaly by ignoring the fifth century B.C. in Athens, the fifteenth century in Italy, and the seventeenth in Holland, and humbly submitting that artists never appeared in numbers like swallows, but singly like aerolites. Now our task is not to disprove these statements, but to work out the relationship between the author of the "Butterfly Letters" and the painter of the portrait of "The Mother", "Lady Archibald Campbell", "Miss Alexander", and the other forty-one ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... interweave the seven locks of my head. Then she his locks did fasten with the pin, And said, The Philistines are coming in, Shift, Samson, for thyself; then he awoke, And pin and web, and all away he took. Then said she, How canst thou pretend to love me, When thus thy doing towards me disprove thee? For now, behold, thou hast deceived me thrice, And hast not told me where thy great strength lies. At length his soul being vex'd exceedingly, By reason of her importunity: He told the secrets of his heart, and said, Never yet razor on my head was laid; For I have been to God ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Platonism;—'He was Plato's nephew-had seen Plato—was his appointed successor, &c.' But in inspiration the early Christians, as far as I can judge, made no generic difference, let Lardner say what he will. Can he disprove that it was declared heretical by the Church in the second century to believe the written words of a dead Apostle in opposition to the words of a living Bishop, seeing that the same spirit which guided the Apostles dwells in and guides the Bishops of the ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... shoulders. "Ah, ha," cried Danglars, "this fellow is more like an ogre than anything else; however, I am rather too old and tough to be very good eating!" We see that Danglars was collected enough to jest; at the same time, as though to disprove the ogreish propensities, the man took some black bread, cheese, and onions from his wallet, which he began devouring voraciously. "May I be hanged," said Danglars, glancing at the bandit's dinner through the crevices of the door,—"may I be hanged if I can understand ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... absolute gentleman, who by his manner seems to challenge the universe to disprove his dignity! Can he unbend so far as to partake of food in public? My dear conte, you should ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... number of articles written by men well posted claiming that the pecan will not bear or thrive except on the cultivated bottom lands of our valleys and streams. The writer wishes to disprove this erroneous idea. It is not borne out by facts. On the farm of W. J. Coan of Bruceville, Knox County, Ind., there are a number of pecans planted from ten to fifteen years ago. Part of these trees ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... conqueror, Matthias Corvinus of Hungary—nay, in the cabinet of the Emperor himself—to reiterate assurances of that which I have advanced as true. If you will not believe me, I can but refer to the course of events. A day or two days' patience will prove or disprove what I have averred concerning the young Scot, and I will be contented to die on the wheel, and have my limbs broken joint by joint, if your Majesty have not advantage, and that in a most important degree, from ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... wisdom and learning. When Bekker was deposed from his office, his adversaries caused a medal to be struck representing the devil clad in a priestly robe, riding on an ass, and carrying a trophy in his right hand; which was intended to signify that Bekker had been overcome in his attempt to disprove demoniacal possession, and that the devil had conquered in the assembly of divines who pronounced sentence on Bekker's book. The author was supposed to resemble Satan in the ugliness of his appearance. Another coin was struck in ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... be silent. Wyclif was presiding as Doctor of Divinity over some disputations in the schools of the Augustinian Canons when his academical condemnation was publicly read, but though startled for the moment he at once challenged Chancellor or doctor to disprove the conclusions at which he had arrived. The prohibition of the Duke of Lancaster he met by an open avowal of his teaching, a confession which closes proudly with the quiet words, "I believe that in the end the ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... hand to go steadfastly forward, leaving it with the Lord to decide on which side the truth was. I therefore remained at home. The two elders who were won for the truth, went to the meeting in the afternoon, at which brother—sought to disprove what I had said, and after the meeting they stated that they were purposed to own me and all who believe in the Lord Jesus as brethren in the breaking of bread.—On the same evening seventeen of us met in my room for the breaking of bread, as we were in peace; of these seventeen twelve ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller

... was mortified to find me a coward upon the water. I assured him he should cure me if he could convince me there was no reason for fear. He would not allow of any, but could not disprove it. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... nearly every previous discussion of the intermarriage of kindred, has been either to prove or to disprove some alleged injurious effect upon the offspring. The writers who have treated the subject may be divided into three groups. First, those who have maintained in accordance with popular opinion that consanguinity ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner

... have reconciled him at once to the Athenians. The previous suspicions of his fidelity to Greece do not seem to have been kept alive even by the virulence of party; and it is natural to suppose that it must have been some act of his own, real or imagined, which tended to disprove the plausible accusations against him, and revive the general enthusiasm in his favour. What could that act have been but the last of his life, which, in the lines of Aristophanes referred to above, is cited as the ideal of a glorious death! ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... respect. It is said that he is of a noble and wealthy family but not that he is the son of a king or heir to the throne, though the statement, if true, would be so obvious and appropriate that its omission is sufficient to disprove it. The point is of psychological importance, for the later literature in its desire to emphasize the sacrifice made by the Buddha exaggerates the splendour and luxury by which he was surrounded ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... degrees I won my way, waiting patiently till the bosom, pleased with the relief, disgorged itself of all "its perilous stuff,"—not chiding, not even remonstrating, seeming almost to sympathize, till I got him, Socratically, to disprove himself. When I saw that he no longer feared me, that my company had become a relief to him, I proposed an excursion, and did not ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... fine chance to prove or disprove Tom's theory that a fellow ought to feel most at home in his old working clothes," ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock

... said Cortlandt, "one would suppose you attributed this to men. The Goliath we picture to ourselves would be a child compared to the man that could cut through these legs, though the necessity of believing him to have merely great size does not disprove his existence here. I think it probable we shall find this is the work of some animal with incisors of such power as it is difficult for us to ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... with doors, who laid The corner-stone of earth, who caused the grass Spring forth upon the wilderness, and made The darkness scatter and the night to pass— That He should clothe Himself with flesh, and move Midst worms a worm—this, sun, moon, stars disprove. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... These facts of observation support those who say that the odors, effluvia, and exhalations emitted from plants, earths, and ponds, are what give the initiative to such things. That when they have come forth, they are afterwards propagated either by eggs or offshoots, does not disprove their immediate generation; since every living creature, along with its minute viscera, receives organs of generation and means of propagation (see below, n. 347). In agreement with these phenomena ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg

... twenty thousand francs. The stranger proved to be Paganini, but that famous violinist was such a miser that the story has been doubted. It is said that he acted in behalf of an unknown benefactor, but his enthusiasm at the performance seems to disprove this, and the work possesses just the dark and sinister character that would ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson

... course of evolution, in the case of vegetable and animal life, that the first attempts to frame a theory of the evolution of religion proceeded, with the result that gods were assumed to have been evolved out of fetishes, religion out of magic, and prayer out of spell. To disprove this, it is not necessary to reject the theory of evolution, or to maintain that evolution in religion proceeds on lines wholly different from those it follows elsewhere. All that is necessary is to understand the theory ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons

... to make out its case against Mr. Motley. I will not parade the two old women, whose untimely and unseemly introduction into the dress-circle of diplomacy was hardly to have been expected of the high official whose name is at the bottom of this paper. They prove nothing, they disprove nothing, they illustrate nothing—except that a statesman may forget himself. Neither will I do more than barely allude to the unfortunate reference to the death of Lord Clarendon as connected with Mr. Motley's removal, so placidly disposed of by a sentence or two ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... she felt she must prove or disprove first of all. She sat beside Mr. Hammond quite speechless until they came to the camp on the harbor shore of Beach ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson

... Scouts who have reported seeing German infantry in rather considerable force south and west of our position here. He will show you on the map just where he says they are lying up. The general wants to verify this report or disprove it as quickly as possible. Your orders are simply to make a reconnaissance and to run no avoidable risks. If it is possible, ascertain the facts without betraying your own presence. I have detailed you because ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston

... the natives on this route are said to be cannibals, the Paamways not so voraciously as the others, because they cultivate a large breed of dogs for their eating." Mr. W. Winwood Reade suspects them to be an offshoot of the great Fulah race, and there is nothing in point of dialect to disprove what we must at present consider a pure conjecture. "The Fulah pronouns have striking analogies with those of the Yoruba, Accra, Ashantee, and Timmanee, and even of the great Kaffir class of dialects, which reaches from the equator to the Cape," wrote the late learned E. Norris, in ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... sensible and wise To let her husband reap the benefit, Instead of some old maid or senseless chit. Selfish? Of course! I hold all love is so: And I shall love my wife right well, I know. Now there's a point regarding selfish love, You thirst to argue with me, and disprove. But since these cosy hours will soon be gone, And all our meetings broken in upon, No more of these rare moments must be spent In vain discussions, or in argument. I wish Miss Trevor was in—Jericho! (You see the ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... business of governing the muscles or receiving the bodily sensations of its corresponding side. If brain matter really itself thought, we should have two thinking and speaking hemispheres—and this the first case of loss of speech by an apoplectic clot would disprove. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... came over Fleda that she was in imminent danger of losing Mrs. Thorn altogether. She managed however by some sort of instinct to disprove the assertion that the mind cannot attend to two things at once, and carried on a double conversation, with herself and with Mrs. Thorn, ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... time; had been making him capable of receiving the gift for which he prayed. He saw that intellectual difficulty encompassing the highest operations of harmonizing truth, can no more affect their reality than the dulness of chaos disprove the motions of the wind of God over the face of its waters. He saw that any true revelation must come out of the unknown in God through the unknown in man. He saw that its truths must rise in the man as powers of life, and that ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... works of Christ; miracles which they had investigated and could not disprove; a life which was its own witness; prophecies fulfilled; His own presence before their bar; the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... but your readers can't disprove it.—"'Coridon,' said he, surveying his attendant from head to foot, and ultimately assuming a severity of countenance, 'Coridon, you are becoming gross, if not positively what the people call fat.' ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... found by the editor of that paper lying-drunk in the channel of Castle Cumber Main-street, opposite his office—that he brought me in, recovered me, and then helped me home. Now, gentlemen, I'll just mention one circumstance that will disprove the whole base and calumnious charge—it is this—on rising next morning I found that I had eight and three halfpence safe in my pocket—and yet that reptile says that he carried me into his house!!! Having thus, gentlemen, triumphantly refuted that charge, I have the pleasure ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... with such a character to turn away from all evidence and to reject what she did not wish to believe. In the expressive language of the Bible, she "hardened her heart;" and doubtless, like skeptics of later days, she could ascribe what she could not disprove to the working of natural causes, or ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous

... pantheism under these circumstances makes them the more energetic and turns them into practical positivists, docile to their social medium and apologists for all its conventions. So that, while they write books to disprove naturalism in natural philosophy where it belongs, in morals where naturalism is treason they are themselves naturalists of the most uncritical description, forgetting that only the interests of the finite soul ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... easy to question and disprove the unqualified statement of the Appeal, that "the original settled policy of the United States was non-extension of slavery." Less convincing was Douglas's attempt to prove that the Missouri Compromise was expressly annulled in 1850, when portions of Texas and of the former ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... any one chooses to say that the creative work took place in the Cambrian or Laurentian epoch, in exactly that manner which Mr. Gladstone does, and natural science does not, affirm, natural science is not in a position to disprove the accuracy of the statement. Only one cannot have one's cake and eat it too, and such safety from the contradiction of science means the ...
— The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature - Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... talk," growled Mr. Baggs. "But talk don't take the place of facts. I say a blackguard's always a blackguard and defy any man to disprove it." ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... stretch of country, with its poor communications, we can only know in part. When one sets out to generalize he does so at his own peril. The only consolation is that it is almost impossible to disprove any statement; for, however fantastical, it is probably in accord with the facts in some ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger

... how little grounds there were for these fears, yet the neighbouring country was so overgrown with wood, and so traversed by mountains, that it appeared impracticable to penetrate to any distance, so that no account of the interior could be expected. They were, however, in a condition to disprove the relations given by Spanish writers, who have represented this coast as inhabited by a fierce and powerful people, as no such inhabitants were to be found, at least in the winter season; for, during the whole time of their continuance here, they never ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... thousand streams, And never cries "enough!"—the human mind Would drain all sources of intelligence, Yet ne'er is filled, and never satisfied. And theory succeeds to theory As regular as tides that ebb and flow. This treatise will disprove the last I read. Shade of Hippocrates! what creeds are formed, What antics practiced with your "Healing Art!" I will not sport with fate, nor tamper thus With man's credulity and nature's strength. No: I will gently ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various

... Glamorgan, Monmouth, Gloucester, Wells, and Hereford; and that the customary tenants of the manor of Woodstock, in Oxfordshire, had been reputed capable of voting, and even voted at elections for that county. In a word, they continued to examine evidences, argue and refute, prove and disprove, until the twenty-third day of April, when, after some warm debates and divisions in the house, lord Parker and sir Edward Turner were declared duly elected; and the clerk of the crown was ordered to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... Scotland,[59] supposes the Extracta to have been written posterior to the time of Fordun, and prior to the date of Bower's Continuation of the Scotichronicon,—a conjecture which one or more passages in the work entirely disprove.[60] If the opinion of Mr. Tytler had been correct, it would have been important as a proof that the story of the royal adventure of Alexander upon Inchcolm was written by Fordun, and not by Bower, inasmuch ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... distressed earl. Naturally, being a sentimental soul, she provided herself with a sufficiently romantic history up to the moment of the disappearance of her nondescript papa; and if she could not substantiate it, there was much satisfaction in knowing that no body could disprove it. That she had been christened with an aristocratic and poetical name like Marcia she held to be convincing testimony of her ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... observes, that "errors, however trivial, ought, in his opinion, never to be pointed out to the author without meeting with a candid and respectful acknowledgement." Following the example of so great a man, we can only say, that if any gentleman can prove or disprove the assertion of the Squireen O'Donahue, to wit, that the O'Donahues were kings of Ireland long before the O'Connors were heard of; we shall be most happy to acknowledge the favour, and insert his remarks in ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat

... how she was going to disprove for herself Louis's allegations, she wondered if he could have found anything to mock at, had he been present, in Kemp's ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf

... key of this room to any one; she will also keep an account of every thing she takes from it, and manage with as much consideration and frugality as if it was her own property she was using, endeavouring to disprove the adage, that "PLENTY makes waste," and remembering that "wilful waste ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... may, a post-mortem examination of the body would clear up all doubts, and should take place as speedily as possible. Captain Everett at once acceded to Dr. Archer's proposal, at the same time observing that he was quite sure the result would entirely disprove that gentleman's assumption. Mr. Hardyman also fully concurred in the necessity of a rigid investigation; and the post-mortem examination should, it was arranged, take place early on ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... appealing to God; which was the very thing which Antipater now did; for whereas he had done everything as if there were no God in the world, when he was on all sides distressed by justice, and when he had no other advantage to expect from any legal proofs, by which he might disprove the accusations laid against him, he impudently abused the majesty of God, and ascribed it to his power that he had been preserved hitherto; and produced before them all what difficulties he had ever undergone in his bold ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... been laid under contribution; and where this has been done, credit is given by footnote reference. In all cases where it has been possible to do so, however, statements of historical facts have been verified by independent research. Not a few items have required months of tracing to confirm or to disprove. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... a steady increase in saucer sightings. Most of them have been authentic reports, which Air Force denials cannot disprove. In January, mystery ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe

... divine who ventures this conjecture admits that it would be as hard to prove it as to disprove it. My own opinion is that it would be much harder. If there had been any such official receptacle of sacred writings, the prophets were not generally in a position to secure the admission of their documents into it. They were often in open controversy with ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden

... the charge, but, nevertheless, he was obliged to send her away. He had his own reputation in the country to think of, and the charge of witchcraft was no light one in those days, and not so easy to disprove. He gave her a handsome pension, and a comfortable house and troubled himself no ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt

... his hand, nor do I know the writing, now that you direct my attention to it. But what can that mean? You, surely, do not suppose that I have mistaken any one for him; for, independent of all else, his knowledge of my family, and my uncle's affairs, would quite disprove that." ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... our canals, nevertheless lends himself, through connivance at fraudulent contracts and the appointment of needless officials, to the squandering of the moneys set apart for their use. We invite you to disprove your complicity in the wasting of the state's millions, ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... of the lunar aspects has considerably abated, and we employ the term lunatic as a familiar expression, to denote a person of insane mind, without any reference to its derivation, or supposed ascendency of the moon, which my own observations have tended to disprove:—but as the phrase lucid interval is, in its legal sense, connected with lunatic, some investigation of its ...
— A Letter to the Right Honorable the Lord Chancellor, on the Nature and Interpretation of Unsoundness of Mind, and Imbecility of Intellect • John Haslam

... wonderful story, one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful I have ever read, "The Moon Maid," by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is built on a fallacy. You see, I am a believer in reincarnation and I would surely like to correspond with others who are also! Would not that also disprove the whole theory of reincarnation if it is true? I think it is not true, but I may be wrong. Is reincarnation a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... and chemistry, reading the Scientific American late into the night, until his broad shoulders were threatened with a permanent stoop, and his eager eyes blinked wearily at breakfast, anxious to disprove certain accepted theories, and as eager to introduce others, unaffected, irreverent, and irresistibly buoyant. William could not hear an opera praised without dragging Susan off to gallery seats, which the lady frankly characterized as "smelly," to see if his opinion agreed with that ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... asserted, that the profoundest learning and the politest manners were by no means incompatible, though so seldom found united in the same person; and I have engaged myself to exhibit you, as a proof of the truth of this assertion. Should you, instead of that, happen to disprove me, the concern indeed would be mine, but the loss will be yours. Lord Bolingbroke is a strong instance on my side of the question; he joins to the deepest erudition, the most elegant politeness and good-breeding that ever any courtier and man of the world was adorned with. And ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... a man's eyes for honesty; around his mouth for weakness; at his chin for strength; at his hands for temperament; at his nails for cleanliness. His tongue will tell you his experience, and under the questioning of a shrewd employer prove or disprove its statements as it runs along. Always remember, in the case of an applicant from another city, that when a man says he doesn't like the town in which he's been working it's usually because he didn't do very ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... another that he would meet with some misfortune, and so on; it will be enough to reply that sometimes a grammarian has spoken incorrectly, or a musician has sung out of tune, or a physician been ignorant of the proper remedy for a disease; but these facts do not disprove the existence of the sciences of grammar, music, ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... to be important. But why is it so! All truth is important. It is a question of little importance, merely whether a man had a maker or no, although it is of great importance to disprove the existence of such a Deity as theologians wish to establish, because appearances in the world go against it. Supposing however that it was granted, that the question, whether there is a Deity or not, was ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner

... have to find," wrote Trelawny, "is that the Shelleyan writers, being Christians themselves, seem to think that a man of genius cannot be an Atheist, and so they strain their own faculties to disprove what Shelley asserted from the earliest stage of his career to the last day of his life. He ignored all ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... or female controversialist draws upon his imagination, and not his learning; makes a story instead of an argument, and, in the course of 150 pages (where the preacher has it all his own way) will prove or disprove you anything. And, to our shame be it said, we Protestants have set the example of this kind of proselytism—those detestable mixtures of truth, lies, false sentiment, false reasoning, bad grammar, correct and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... bully, but we must face the fact that young Excell bears a bad name. He has been in trouble a great many times, and the prosecution will make much of that. Our business is to show the extent of the provocation, and secondly, to disprove, so far as we can, the popular conception of the youth. I can get nothing out of him which will aid in his defense. He refuses to talk. Unless we can wring the truth out of Slocum on the stand it will go hard with the boy. I wish you'd ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland

... and women who specialize in some vocation in such extreme degree that they cannot marry and have children are thereby, by reason of that celibate concentration, better able to function socially in their chosen work. It is the object of this book to disprove ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer

... know these parchments. They are those that my father took with him when he rode for London to disprove the Abbot's claim, and with them the evidence of the traitorous words he spoke last year at Shefton. Yes, this inner wrapping is my own; I took it from the store of worn linen in the passage-cupboard. But ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... Misogallo, "have always been puppets; formerly puppets in powder, now stinking and blood-stained puppets." "We indeed are slaves," says another epigram, "but at least indignant slaves" (a statement which the whole history of Italy in the nineties goes to disprove); "not, as you Gauls always have been and always will be, slaves applauding power whatever it be." The nasal and guttural pronunciation of the French language, the bare existence of such a word as quatrain, is enough to prove to Alfieri that the French ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... authorities felt satisfied the number of the Indians had been greatly underrated. Captain Buchan was of opinion they could not be less (in the whole) than three hundred persons. Now this is an important fact, as it goes far to disprove the generally received opinion that the tribe is extinct, inasmuch as that opinion was formed from the representations of the decreased numbers of her tribe, made by the Indian woman taken in 1823, but the accuracy of the whole ...
— Lecture On The Aborigines Of Newfoundland • Joseph Noad

... be, "Unravel the superstition, disprove the possibility of miracle, and let the deluge ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... which his intellectual vanity and self-consciousness sometimes carried him. From what is known of his disposition it seems probable that the sarcasms aimed by public writers at his infirmity inclined him to justify their attacks rather than to disprove them by his subsequent demeanor, and that some of his most extravagant outbursts of self-assertion were designed in a spirit of bravado and reckless good-nature to increase the laughter which satirists had raised against him. However this may be, his conduct ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... occupying one house. Most of these ideas have been ridiculed, because experience has proved that families seldom reside comfortably in crowded quarters. The tribes of which we are writing, while they destroy the originality of the communistic ideas of the Nineteenth Century, also disprove the arguments which are principally brought against them. In these singular houses or colonies, several families live together in perfect harmony. There are no instances on record of disputes such as are met with in boarding-houses patronized ...
— My Native Land • James Cox



Words linked to "Disprove" :   negate, disprover, explode, rebut, controvert, falsify



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