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Take for granted   /teɪk fɔr grˈæntəd/   Listen
Take for granted

verb
1.
Take to be the case or to be true; accept without verification or proof.  Synonyms: assume, presume.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Take for granted" Quotes from Famous Books



... Reader,—I take for granted that you are tolerably well acquainted with the different modes of life and travelling peculiar to European nations. I also presume that you know something of the inhabitants of the East; and, it may ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne

... Milly, popping up in his absence, occupied—he couldn't have said quite why he felt it—more of the foreground than one would have expected her in advance to find clear. She took up room, and it was almost as if room had been made for her. Kate had appeared to take for granted he would know why it had been made; but that was just the point. It was a foreground in which he himself, in which his connexion with Kate, scarce enjoyed a space to turn round. But Miss Theale was perhaps at the present ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... dutiful determination of my will, although no act should flow from it, must operate in another, to me incomprehensible, world; and, except this dutiful determination of the will, nothing can take effect in that world. What do I suppose when I suppose this? What do I take for granted? ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... holye scripture which doeth no where make mention of such inchaunting creatures; and therefore if any such be, we will holde them the workes of the Devill and not of God." But, then, there are true Lamiae, and "we shall take for granted by the testimony of holy scripture that there is such a beast as this." The particulars Topsell was able to gather about them are to the following effect: "The hinde parts of this beast are like unto a goate, his fore legs like a beares, his upper parts to a woman, the body scaled ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... farming. The Irish estate, which he had inherited from his brother, brought in five hundred a year (Arthur Young's Ireland, ii. 193). For a short time he received a salary of seven hundred pounds a year as agent for New York. We may perhaps take for granted that he made as much more out of his acres. He received something from Dodsley for his work on the Annual Register down to 1788. But when all these resources have been counted up, we cannot but see the gulf of a great yearly deficit. The unhappy truth is that from the middle of 1769, when ...
— Burke • John Morley

... with you yet, though. There are just one or two more points I am going to put before you—and this gentleman who is not Mr. Douglas Romilly," he added, with a little bow to Philip. "The first is this. There is one fact which we can all three take for granted, because I know it—I can prove it a hundred times over—and you both know it; and that is that the Mr. Merton Ware of to-day travelled from Liverpool on the Elletania as Mr. Douglas Romilly, occupied a room at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel as Mr. Douglas Romilly, and absconded from ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... down before the work of our own hands. We are awe-struck at their power, and magnify the mystery of their existence. We only pray that they may not turn us out of house and home, because of some blunder in our ritual observance. That they will make it very uncomfortable for us, we take for granted. We have resigned ourselves to that long ago. They are so very complicated that they will make no allowance for us, and will not permit us to live simply as we would like. We are really very plain people, and easily flurried and worried ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers

... 'twere worthy thine To do, it is my part to hear of thee, And not to take for granted. But, O Sultan, To lay loud protestations at thy feet Of gratitude for a life spared, agrees Not with my station or my character. At all times, 'tis once ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

... bibliolater, you have not yet finished your Hebrew or Samaritan translation of coquette. Well, you shall be excused from that, if you will only translate it into English. You cannot: you are obliged to keep the French word; and yet you take for granted, without inquiry, that in the word 'witchcraft,' and in the word 'witch,' applied to the sorceress of Endor, our authorized English Bible of King James's day must be correct. And your wicked bibliolatrous ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... history need here a word of caution. They follow De Tocqueville, and De Tocqueville follows Biot in speaking of the serf-system as abolished in most of France hundreds of years before this. But Biot and De Tocqueville take for granted a knowledge in their readers that the essential vileness of the system, and even many of its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... individual and for state? From these early years onwards, Mr. Gladstone's whole language and the moods that it reproduces,—his vivid denunciations, his sanguine expectations, his rolling epithets, his aspects and appeals and points of view,—all take for granted that right and wrong depend on the same set of maxims in public life and private. The puzzle will often greet us, and here it is enough to glance at it. In every statesman's case it arises; in Mr. Gladstone's it is cardinal ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... always ready for improvements, which indeed we take for granted, so regularly do they make their appearance. No alert American can visit any foreign country without noting innumerable examples of stupid adherence to outworn and cumbrous methods in ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... never understand you. You're angelically good. But it's horrible, the things you take for granted. 'She keeps ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair

... of Mr. Thorn without trembling. His manner meant so much more than it had any right, or than she had counted upon. He seemed she pressed her hands upon her face to get rid of the impression he seemed to take for granted precisely that which she had refused to admit; he seemed to reckon as paid for that which she had declined to set a price upon. Her uncle's words and manner came up in her memory. She could see nothing best to do but to get home as fast as possible. She had no one ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... poet in association for a libel, like the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in a fiery sign. What the one wants in wit, the other must supply in law. As for malice, their quotas are indifferently well adjusted; the rough draught, I take for granted, is the poet's, the finishings the lawyer's. They begin,—that in order to one Mr Friend's commands, one of them went to see the play. This was not the poet, I am certain; for nobody saw him there, and he is not of a size to be ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... it; and if these do not prosper in a State, it may extend its empire to right and to left, and it will only carry poverty and desolation along with it, without being itself permanently enriched. You seem to take for granted, that because the French revenue amounts to so much at present it must continue to keep up to that height. This, I conceive impossible, unless the spirit of the government alters, which is not likely for many years. How comes it ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... might have been a daring and useful friend to his brother, had he been forced to take for granted from birth that he was nobody, and his brother everybody,—as do all younger sons of English noblemen, to their infinite benefit,—held himself to be an injured man for life, because his father called his first-born Baldwin, and promised him the succession,—which ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... but you must allow me to speak plainly, and I shall have to take for granted that you are acquainted with the physical ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... there is no doubt that this akropolis had its own circuit of wall, distinct from that of the lower town. This last took in a large space, and was of a strangely complicated shape, running out hither and thither in various directions. According to all our experience of other places, we would take for granted that the inner circuit was the older. Here, we should say, was the original settlement; the town, after the usual manner of towns, outstripped its boundaries; it spread itself in whatever directions suited its inhabitants; lastly, the suburbs which ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman

... positions are not easily found. Application may be made at newspaper offices for a regular position when one becomes vacant. While she is waiting to obtain regular work, the girl may write special articles and submit them for publication. We may take for granted that she enjoys writing, but she should be able to choose subjects on which to write. One of the first questions that an applicant for newspaper work is likely to ask is: "What shall I write about?" This question ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy

... a marvel about our coming to know the external world which we shall never be able fully to understand. We have come by this knowledge so gradually and unconsciously that it now appears to us as commonplace, and we take for granted many things that it would puzzle ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts

... false, (a thing that hereafter I shall have much pleasure in making out to the angry reader's satisfaction,) but to a dead certainty those anecdotes, in particular, which bear marks in their construction that a rhetorical effect of art had been contemplated by the narrator, —we may take for granted, that the current stories ascribing modern wars (French and English) to accidents the most inconsiderable, are false even in a literal sense; but at all events they are so when valued philosophically, and brought out into their circumstantial ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... river to cover the country from depredation, to retire upwards, lest he should be placed between their two bodies. One of these entered Williamsburg on the 20th, and the other proceeded to a ship-yard we had on Chickahominy. What injury they did there, I am not yet informed. I take for granted, they have burned an unfinished twenty-gun ship we had there. Such of the stores belonging to the yard as were moveable, had been carried some miles higher up the river. Two small galleys also retired up the river. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... was so tense, his voice so eager, that it was as much as she could do to remain vexed. Still, she resented the fact that he had spoken to her aunt without authority. It was a presumption that seemed to take for granted her answer. It was as though he ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... is the ideal one, it is the natural violin tone. Too many violin students have the technical bee in their bonnet and neglect it. And too many believe that speed is brilliancy. When they see the black notes they take for granted that they must 'run to beat the band.' Yet often it is the teacher's fault if a good singing tone is not developed. Where the teacher's playing is cold, that of the pupil is apt to be the same. Warmth, rounded fullness, the truly beautiful violin tone is more difficult to call forth ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens

... either on the land or in the river, left to kite or crocodile. The evidence of satirists is generally to be discounted, because they tend to emphasize the exceptional; and it is not the exceptional thing that gives the character of an age, or of a man. It is the kind of thing that we take for granted and assume to be normal that shows our character or gives the note of the day; and what we omit to notice may ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... of conversation depends on how much you can take for granted. Vulgar chess-players have to play their game out; nothing short of the brutality of an actual checkmate satisfies their dull apprehensions. But look at two masters of that noble game! White stands ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... medium, and to take things on trust. But, dismissing these fanciful theories, and considering woman as a whole, let it be what it will, instead of a part of man, the inquiry is, whether she has reason or not. If she has, which, for a moment, I will take for granted, she was not created merely to be the solace of man, and the sexual should not destroy the ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... picked these clauses as containing its essence, you will find that the Apostle speaks of the things which the prophets foretold as being the same as 'those which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the Gospel unto you, with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.' I must not take for granted that you are all referring to your Bibles, but I should like to point out, as the basis of one or two things that I wish to say, the remarkable variety of phrase employed in the text to describe the one thing. First, Peter speaks of it as 'salvation,' then ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... are, and ever have been, occasional and rare instances of acts of inhumanity and cruelty among Southern slaveholders; too shocking for recital! But if any one will be at the trouble to spend a few months in the Yankee States, and take for granted all that is related to him by busy-bodies, idlers and others that have nothing else to do but to talk about their neighbors; they will find no difficulty in gathering up material, out of which, they could manufacture ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward

... wash out the guilt of them—who am I to set myself up? I cannot be faithful in a little—why should I try to be ruler over much? I cannot use properly the blessings and the power which God does give me—must I not take for granted that, if I had more riches, more power, I should use them still worse? I know well enough of a thousand sins, and weaknesses and ignorances in myself which my neighbours never see. I believe, therefore, my neighbours have much too good an opinion of me, and not too bad a one; and therefore ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley

... the bay and coming up—as it seemed to me against the wind. They spelt thunder. In spite of my early forebodings I had brought no mackintosh; my duties as a Committee-man were over: and I have reached an age when fireworks give me no more pleasure than I can cheerfully forgo or take for granted. I had, having coming thus far on my homeward way, already more than half a mind to pursue it, when the band started to render the 'Merry Duchess' waltz, with reed instruments a semitone below the brass. This decided me, and I reached my door ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... was held there.** The names of Levi and Celia Thaxter of Boston had long, I believe, been conspicuous in the higher ranks of his disciples, though they first occur in his correspondence at about this date. I trust I may take for granted Mrs. Thaxter's permission to publish a letter ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... sentiments and ideas will, in effect, never be formed,—the mind will be in perpetual slumber. Thus, in point of fact, this controversy is connected ultimately with that ancient dispute as to the origin, sources, and genesis of human knowledge and sentiments. I shall simply take for granted that you are (as most philosophers are) an advocate of innate capacities, but not of "innate ideas"; of "innate susceptibilities," but not of "innate sentiments"; that is, I presume you do not contend that the mind possesses ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... than England, or Llywelyn less civilised than Edward I. Giraldus Cambrensis saw a prince going barefoot, and the fussy little Archbishop Peckham saw that Welsh marriage customs were not what he liked; and many historians, who have never read a line of Welsh poetry, take for granted that the conquest of Wales was ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards

... extent that I don't take for granted vulgar ones. You're perfectly capable of seeing that what you came out for wasn't really at all to do what you'd now ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... such matters, are not very enterprising. Also, he has the air of wondering what he is doing dans cette galere. He has come with his beau-frere, who is an engineer, and is looking after some mines, and he talks with scarcely any one else, as he speaks no English, and appears to take for granted that no one speaks French. Mamma would be delighted to assure him of the contrary; she has never conversed with an Academician. She always makes a little vague inclination, with a smile, when he passes her, and he answers with a most respectful bow; but it goes no farther, to mamma's disappointment. ...
— The Point of View • Henry James

... of friends, in bankruptcy disclosures, in lawsuits, in police reports, we have constantly thrust before us the pervading selfishness, dishonesty, brutality. Yet when we criticise nursery-management and canvass the misbehaviour of juveniles, we habitually take for granted that these culpable persons are free from moral delinquency in the treatment of their boys and girls! So far is this from the truth, that we do not hesitate to blame parental misconduct for a great part of the domestic disorder commonly ascribed ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... lanterns. A brilliant description of it had interested the civilised world immensely for about forty-eight hours; the appalling retrogression was still used occasionally as the text for violent denunciations by the poorly educated; the well-educated had ceased to do anything but take for granted that superstition and ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... that we would (on the whole) rather spend the evening with two or three stable boys in a pot-house than take part in that pallid and Arctic joke? Why does the modern millionaire's jest—bore a man to death with the mere thought of it? That it does bore a man to death I take for granted, and shall do so until somebody writes to me in cold ink and tells me that he really thinks ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... as here. No doubt the migratory habit is stronger in America than in England, and family life is not apt to flourish in hotels or boarding-houses. The Saratoga trunk is not the best cornerstone for the home: so much we may take for granted. But the American families who are content to go through life without a threshold and hearthstone of their own must, after all, be in a vanishing minority. They very naturally cut a larger figure in fiction than ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... king should be set up in Rome by Marc Antony?" With abuse of a similar kind he goes on to the end of his declamation, when he again professes himself ready to die at his post in defence of the Republic. That he now made up his mind so to die, should it become necessary, we may take for granted, but we cannot bring ourselves to approve of the storm of abuse under which he attempted to drown the memory and name of his antagonist. So virulent a torrent of words, all seeming, as we read them, to have been poured out in rapid utterances by the ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... to take for granted that third horse which pulled the car uphill, so Peter was taken for granted. He might have been on the highroad to a renown like that of Chief Justice Marshall, and Honora ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... the masculine type. It is therefore quite possible that Sappho may have been personally a pure woman, her mental masculinity ("mascula Sappho" Horace calls her) being her misfortune, not her fault. But even if we give her the benefit of the doubt and take for granted that she had enough character to resist the abnormal impulses and passions which she describes in her poems, and which the Greeks easily pardoned and even praised, we cannot and must not overlook the fact that these poems are the result of a diseased brain-centre, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... that Letter, there was another publication in the papers here, informing the World, that when he set off for the Northern Department he was accompanied by ——- and several other Members of C——-, which I take for granted is true. These are trifling political Manuevres similar to those which we have seen practicd in the Mass Bay when a prop was wanted for a sinking Character. You may think them not worth your Notice. Excuse my troubling you with them. Cunning Politicians often make use of the Names ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams

... does not. If he is consistent in seeing water as trees and trees as water, his mind must be constituted differently from mine and yet I may never know it. So, by an almost unperceived act of faith, we have to take for granted that our separate individualities meet and become one to some extent in our common experience of this great universe, which is at that same time the expression of God. The real universe must be infinitely greater and more complex than the one which ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell

... haven't been about with Kit and Ted Harewood for nothing! Jolly good larks it is to see how all of you take for granted that a fellow never knew the taste of anything ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... silent for a moment, and the old tormenting doubt began to rise within her. Would he think she desired to make an overture? Would he take for granted that because his magnetism had drawn her he could do ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... she writes: "I suppose I may take for granted that mine was the poetic temperament, and since there are no thrilling incidents to relate, you may think you should like to have my views as to what that means. I cannot tell you in an hour, or even in a day, for it means so much. I suppose it, of its absence or presence, to make far more ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... Godmother was tucking Mary Alice in, they had a long, long talk about the caller of the afternoon and about some other people Godmother knew, and about how sad a thing it is to take for granted about any person certain qualities we think ...
— Everybody's Lonesome - A True Fairy Story • Clara E. Laughlin

... put it there on purpose?" he thought. "Did she take for granted that I would pause to admire the scenery, and that I would recognize the perfume of her violets? Gad! she's deeper than I thought if that be true. The ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... of the Babylonians, to the images of their gods, to their forms of incantations, and other things besides; but these notices are rendered obscure by their indirect character, and require a commentary that can only be furnished by that knowledge of the times which they take for granted. To this difficulty, there must be added the comparatively late date of the notices, which demands an exercise of care before applying them to the very early period to which the religion of the Babylonians may ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... not be supposed, for one moment, that I consider young women as more generally in the habit of detraction than other people; for I venture on no comparisons of the kind. All I presume to take for granted is, that they are often exceedingly faulty in this respect, and need counsel and caution. Were there any doubts on the latter point, one would think they might very readily be removed by reading the excellent work of Amelia Opie, ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott

... presuppositions on our hands and, being ignorant of the natural causes which have imposed them on the animal mind, we may be offended at them. Their arbitrary and dogmatic character will tempt us to condemn them, and to take for granted that the analysis which undermines them is justified, and will prove fruitful. But this critical assurance in its turn seems to rely on a dubious presupposition, namely, that human opinion must always evolve in a single line, dialectically, providentially, and irresistibly. It is at least ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana

... I gave you too much assurance of your inevitable safety, and you must remember that I did that through faith in your springs of effort; not in the silly conviction that you will arrive without struggle. Some nuances of character you will have to take for granted in yourself, though you must be careful in confessing them to others. You are unsentimental, almost incapable of affection, astute without being cunning ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... Gallowgate to wait the issue. But it would be no more fair to take this report for truth than it would be to assume that Claverhouse really forbad burial to the dead Whigs, that the dogs might eat them where they lay in the streets. There was too much quarrelling in the Covenanting camp to allow us to take for granted all their judgments on each other when unfavourable; and at Drumclog Hamilton seems by all accounts to have borne himself bravely enough, whatever he ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris

... any encouragement or sympathy from the humane nations of Europe; in fact, his entire characterization was wholly damning to the South. Yet it is to be noted that he never for a moment questioned that the South had already actually established its independence. This he seems to take for granted. Thus again, and from another quarter, there was presented the double difficulty of England in regard to the Civil War—the difficulty of reconciling sentiments of humanity long preached by Great Britain, with her commercial interests ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... arrival, had relieved me of all grossness of admonition. Whatever he had been driven from school for, it was not for ugly feeding. He was irreproachable, as always, today; but he was unmistakably more conscious. He was discernibly trying to take for granted more things than he found, without assistance, quite easy; and he dropped into peaceful silence while he felt his situation. Our meal was of the briefest—mine a vain pretense, and I had the things immediately removed. While this was done Miles stood again with ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James

... thoroughfares; it buys clothes, jewels, miscellaneous attractive things, making its purchases of articles useful or decorative with a freedom from anxiety in its enjoyment which does not mark the mood of the ordinary shopper. In the everyday purchaser one is accustomed to take for granted, as a factor in his expenditure, a certain deliberation and uncertainty; to the travelling American in Europe, shopping appears to be part of the holiday which is being made the most of. Surely, all the neat, ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... in Eskimo, for the Indians and Eskimos carry on no social intercourse and the Indians rather despise the Eskimos. The Indian referred to, however, has learned something of the Eskimo language, and also a little English—English that you cannot always understand, but must take for granted. He informed me, "Me three man—Indian, husky (Eskimo), white man." He was very proud ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace

... title tempts one to think that this may be the case, and as I am in search of such jewels as certainly constitute 'the world's best wealth,' I hope to find a few in this old-fashioned casket, especially after the specimen you have sent, and which I take for granted to be a genuine specimen of the quality (whatever be its antiquity) of the hidden treasures. If you will oblige me by sending the volume itself by coach I will take great care of it, and thankfully return it in due time free of expense. ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry

... what the precepts of the religion are; how pure, how benevolent, how disinterested a conduct they enjoin; and that this purity and benevolence are extended to the very thoughts and affections. We are not, perhaps, at liberty to take for granted that the lives of the preachers of Christianity were as perfect as their lessons; but we are entitled to contend, that the observable part of their behaviour must have agreed in a great measure with the duties which they taught. There was, ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... habit of giving unsolicited advice is likely to take for granted that his advice has been acted upon, even though experience should teach him that this is seldom the case. I had sagely counseled Bagster to go to the New Hampshire woods, in order to recuperate after his multifarious labors. I was therefore surprised ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... not but be interested in the valiant adventurer. He seemed a man such as Red Republics and Revolutions breed, and need; very capable of doing rough work, and not likely to be hampered by scruples as to the manner of doing it. If he is, as I take for granted, busy in France just now, he ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... simply that he still goes on to 'wonder' and ask Why when other persons are ready to leave off. He is less contented than other men to take things for granted. Of course, he knows that, in the end, you cannot get away from the necessity of taking something for granted, but he is anxious to take for granted as few things as possible, and when he has to take something for granted, he is exceptionally anxious to know exactly what that something is. De Morgan tells a story of a very pertinacious controversialist who, being asked whether he would not at least admit that 'the ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... I shall take for granted that you have a fairly plain idea of the stomach and its dependences. Physiologies can always be had, and for minute details they must be referred to. Bear in mind one or two main points: that all food passes from the mouth to the stomach, an irregularly-shaped pouch or bag with ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell

... with us, and, unless we perceive some other peer differ from you, we will take it in the course we have constantly done. We never have sent your Lordships out of the hall to consent [consult?] upon a matter upon which that noble lord appeared to have formed a decision in his own mind; we take for granted that what is delivered from the woolsack, to which no peer expresses a dissent, is the sense of the House; as such we take it, and as such we submit to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke

... doubt very much in love with Dorothy Stanbury. So much, we may take for granted. He, at least, believed that he was in love with her. He would have thought it wicked to propose to her had he not been in love with her. But with his love was mingled a certain amount of contempt which had induced him to ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... CAUTION.—Always realize the possibility of error both in another and in yourself. Be on your guard against intentional or unintentional deception. As Bacon said, "Read not to contradict and to confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider."[3] The author you are reading may have made a mistake, or may be trying to mislead you. "When we think of the difficulty of finding the way, when we are most desirous to go right, how easy to mislead those whom ...
— How to Study • George Fillmore Swain

... believed it. In further sign of the same, he made no inquiry into the matter—did not once even question his father about it. If it was true, he did not want to know it: he would treat his lack of proof as ignorance, and act as with the innocence of ignorance! A fellow must take for granted what was commonly believed! At last, and the last was not long in arriving, he almost ceased to ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... were to take for granted one of a pair of necessary consequences, as that the side is incommensurable with the diagonal, when it is required to prove that the diagonal ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock

... persuasion; avoiding, as far as can properly be done, every occasion of conflict, every need of a violent issue. The child, on the other hand, ought to remember the rightful authority of his parents, consider their greater experience, take for granted their benignant intention, cultivate a grateful sense of dependence and duty towards them, and foster the habit of prompt and hearty submission to their wishes. It is a safe rule, in general, for a boy or girl to respect and obey the father and mother, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... that there are believers, like Heman or Asaph, who do not enjoy full assurance of the love of God, yet certainly no true believer should remain satisfied in the absence of this blessed peace. Not a few had hitherto been accustomed to take for granted that they might be Christians, though they knew of no change, and had never thought of enjoying the knowledge of the love of God as their present portion. They heard that others, who were reckoned ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar

... deep breath. "I presume," she began sententiously, "I presume we may take for granted that an intelligent young woman of twenty-three who has lived in civilised society in the twentieth ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... romances to marriage resumes itself into a declared hostility to the conventional French system of match-making. Much that she was condemned for venturing to put forward we should simply take for granted in England, where—whichever system work the best in practice—to the strictest Philistine's ideas of propriety there is nothing unbecoming in a love-match. The aim and end of true love in her stories is always marriage, whether it be the simple attachment of Germain, the field-laborer, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas

... "moneyedness" that we so often find in our new west when people have made their success; but the solid, friendly, everyday liberality that for generations has not had to pinch itself and therefore has mellowed down to taking the necessities and a certain amount of give and take for granted. I was glad when on closer approach I noticed a school embedded in the shady green of the corner. I thought with pleasure of children being so close to people with whom I should freely have exchanged a friendly ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove

... much obliged to you for the naval letter, which the post of to-day brings me from Stowe; I will make the use of it which you allow me to do, and will then return it to you. I hope Dr. Pegge will find Lady B. better. I take for granted ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... triangle is to the other two sides as eight units to twelve thousand, it is impossible not to perceive that it behoves us to be singularly diffident as to the conclusion at which we have arrived, or rather it behoves us to take for granted that we are not unlikely to fall into the most important error. We have satisfied ourselves that the sides of the triangle including the apex, do not form an angle, till they have arrived at the extent of ninety-five millions of miles. How are we sure that they do then? May not ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... appears to take for granted that the conception of primal ancestral spirits, perpetually reincarnated, is primitive. But, in fact, we seem to know it, among Australian tribes, only in these which have advanced to the possession of eight classes, and have made 'the great step ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker

... place there in the coaches. The honest clown looked earnestly at me, and said nothing for above half a minute, when, scratching his poll, 'A horse, say you and to Colchester, to carry double? why yes, mistress, alack-a-day, you may have horses enough for money.' 'Well, friend,' says I, 'that I take for granted; I don't expect it without money.' 'Why, but, mistress,' says he, 'how much are you willing to give?' 'Nay,' says I again, 'friend, I don't know what your rates are in the country here, for I am a stranger; but if you can get one for me, get it as cheap ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe

... who do not enable him to communicate with them except in print. They will see, on a very little reflection, that it is plainly his interest to take all he can get, and make the most, and the best of everything; and therefore he begs them to take for granted that their communications are received, and appreciated, even if two or three succeeding Numbers bear no proof of it. He is convinced that the want of specific acknowledgment will only be felt by those who have no idea of the labour and difficulty attendant on the hurried management of such a work, ...
— Notes & Queries,No. 31., Saturday, June 1, 1850 • Various

... were a few people like that in the world, people whose sympathy and understanding you could take for granted. There was a fearlessness in such people which made them stand out from the crowd, stone-markers in a desert waste to lend assurance to a tired wayfarer by its sturdy permanence, its ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long

... read a book that treated of its own familiar interests was distrusted." In this respect the difficulty of his position was made more prominent by its contrast with that of the great novelist who was then occupying the attention of the English-speaking world. Scott, in writing "Waverley," could take for granted that there lay behind him an intense feeling of nationality, which would show itself not in noisy boastfulness, but in genuine appreciation; that with the matter of his work his countrymen would sympathize, ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... that if you lived five hundred years on earth, you would but have a heavier load on you as time went on. But you will not live, you will die. Perhaps you will tell me that you will then cease to be. I don't believe you think so. I may take for granted that you think with me, and with the multitude of men, that you will still live, that you will still be you. You will still be the same being, but deprived of those outward stays and reliefs and solaces, which, such as they are, you now enjoy. You will be yourself, ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman



Words linked to "Take for granted" :   expect, presume, suppose, assume, presuppose, anticipate



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