"Taken for granted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... say whether the usual attitude of criticism to Captain Marryat (1792-1848) is more uncritical than ungrateful or more ungrateful than uncritical. Because he has amused the boy, it seems to be taken for granted that he ought not to amuse the man: because he does not write with the artificial and often extremely arbitrary graces of the composition books, that he is "not literature." If it be so, why in the first case so much the worse for "the man," ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... the Pope was the source of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the English Church before the Reformation is an assertion of the gravest import, which ought not to have been thus taken for granted.... The fact really is this:—A modern opinion, which, by force of modern circumstances, has of late gained great favour in the Church of Rome, is here dated back and fastened upon ages to whose fixed principles it was unknown ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... tale, for there, they had taken for granted, lay the treasure. Pym was most considerate at this time, and mentioned ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... very hard, seeing that they came at the tail of the procession, and those just ahead would hardly notice the fact if at some time or other they should lag, and vanish from sight. It might be taken for granted that they had simply fallen a little behind, and by putting on a spurt of speed could at any time easily ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... Of course it is taken for granted in this paper that the young American wife is this kind of a woman—wise and gentle and good-natured—above all things good-natured. For says the Bible, "It is better to dwell in the wilderness than with a contentious and an angry woman." But read what is written in the Book of the right kind ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... dried peas-sticks? Flung on the fire, happen they'd crackle and blaze: But I'm hot enough, to-day, without you frizzling. Still, "thieves" sticks in my gullet, old heel-of-the-loaf. Yet I'm not particular, myself, at times: And I've always gathered from your dutiful son Manners were taken for granted at Krindlesyke, And never missed: so I'll overlook the word. You've not been used to talking with a lady, Old scrag-end: still, I'm truly honoured, sir, In making your acquaintance: for I've heard Some pretty things ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... been covered before we remarked the absence of the dogs which had been left to follow. We had taken for granted that they would follow us, and were so fully occupied after starting that their absence had passed unnoticed. It would be difficult to locate them if we returned; the weather would improve in a few days; if they felt hungry they would come down of their own accord. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... a great effort to learn who the mysterious interloper was, but he wholly failed to obtain any clew to his identity. He had jumped to the conclusion that Dorothy's mysterious lover was a man of low degree. He had taken for granted that he was an adventurer whose station and person precluded him from openly wooing his daughter. He did not know that the heir to Rutland was in the Derbyshire country; for John, after his first meeting with Dorothy, had carefully ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... attributes of Kenneby and Bridget Bolster were discussed between them, and it was manifest that Aram knew with great accuracy the characters of the persons with whom he had to deal. That Kenneby might be made to say almost anything was taken for granted. With him there would be very great scope for that peculiar skill with which Mr. Chaffanbrass was so wonderfully gifted. In the hands of Mr. Chaffanbrass it was not improbable that Kenneby might be made ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... 'Tatinek! Tatinek!' she shouted, and we ran to meet the old man who was coming toward us. Antonia reached him first, took his hand and kissed it. When I came up, he touched my shoulder and looked searchingly down into my face for several seconds. I became somewhat embarrassed, for I was used to being taken for granted by ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... one popular error with regard to the Norman Conquest which it may not be amiss to correct. It is taken for granted by most persons who have written on it, that the triumph of William was the triumph of an aristocracy over a people, and we often hear the Saxons spoken of as democrats who were subdued by aristocrats. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... Fleet. The individual element of gallantry merges into gallantry of the whole. You have the very communism of courage. The thought is to keep a cool head and do your part as a cog in the vast machine. Courage is as much taken for granted as the breath of life. Thus, Cradock's men fought till they went down. It was according to the programme laid out for each turret and ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... best arrow or spear was that tipped with the best piece of flint. In brief, to do good work, you must have good tools. Translated into the terms of today, this means that the expert or specialist must be preferred to the untrained. In nearly all walks of life this truth was taken for granted, except in affairs connected with government and administration. A President might be elected, not because he was experienced in these matters, but because he had won a battle, or was the compromise candidate between two other aspirants. As it was with Presidents, so with ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... of palm-tops, the sameness and smallness of the land, the hugely superior size and interest of sea and sky. Life on such islands is in many points like life on shipboard. The atoll, like the ship, is soon taken for granted; and the islanders, like the ship's crew, become soon the centre of attention. The isles are populous, independent, seats of kinglets, recently civilised, little visited. In the last decade many changes have crept in: women no longer go unclothed till marriage; the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the famous Hundred Days it seemed to occur to no one that Bonaparte would make any attempt upon Paris. It was calmly taken for granted he would ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... study of general method, as well as in that of the foregoing mental processes, it has been taken for granted that our minds are capable of identifying different objects on the basis of some common feature or features. This tendency of the mind to identify objects and group individual things into classes, depends upon its capacity to detect similarity and difference, or to make comparisons. When the ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... course of the discussion, observed the Rev. Samuel West of New Bedford, it seemed to be taken for granted that the federal government was going to be put into the hands of crafty knaves. "I wish," said he, "that the gentlemen who have started so many possible objections would try to show us that what they so much deprecate is probable.... Because power may be abused, shall ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... mentions the President's Cabinet. It was taken for granted, however, that departments similar to those found in the Cabinet would be formed. The Constitution declares that the President "may require the opinions in writing of the heads of the executive departments," and again, that "Congress may vest the appointment of certain inferior officers ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James
... as Seneca states (De Benef. iv), for a man to be bound to keep a promise, it is necessary for everything to remain unchanged: otherwise neither did he lie in promising—since he promised what he had in his mind, due circumstances being taken for granted—nor was he faithless in not keeping his promise, because circumstances are no longer the same. Hence the Apostle, though he did not go to Corinth, whither he had promised to go (2 Cor. 1), did not lie, because obstacles had arisen ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... cease its pounding, felt an immense sense of relief. It was a wonderful thing, this message. It cleared up one point on which he had been anxious and unsettled. It was taken for granted at the Works, then, that he had come straight to Liverpool. He walked up and down the deck on the side remote from the dock, ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... explanation of many of our fancies for flowers and for animals, our preference for gardens laid out in the natural style, our love of walks, of the country and those who live there, of a great number of objects proceeding from a remote antiquity, etc. It is taken for granted that no affectation exists in the matter, and moreover that no accidental interest comes into play. But this sort of interest which we take in nature is only possible under two conditions. First the object that inspires us with this feeling must be really ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... she had watched his evolution from the clay sketch, and in Pleydon's mind, to the final heroic proportions; and she had taken for granted that a grateful world would see him in her light. A woman, she decided, had made the trouble; and she hated her with a personal vigor. ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... mail-time, and with the simple thought, "So,—Laura has written it, after all," she enclosed it in her own, and sent it off, post-haste; not even looking at the unsealed envelope, as Mrs. Surrey had taken for granted she would, and thus failing to ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... homewards again, having great need to do my business, and so pretending to meet Mr. Shott the wood monger of Whitehall I went and eased myself at the Harp and Ball, and thence home where I sat writing till bed-time and so to bed. There seems now to be a general cease of talk, it being taken for granted that Monk do resolve to stand to the Parliament, and nothing else. Spent a little time this night in knocking up nails for my hat and cloaks ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... be taken for granted that in addition to the Government and the Opposition there is at least one party of Rebels. Generally there are more, since each section has its own rebels, down to the tiniest. In the eighties the rebels were Communist Anarchists, and to us at any ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... majesty to augment his forces by land and sea. Thirty-two thousand pounds were allotted as a subsidy to the king of Poland, and twenty thousand to the elector of Bavaria. These gratifications met with little or no opposition in the committee of supply; because it was taken for granted, that, in case of a rupture, France would endeavour to avail herself of her superiority by land, by invading his Britannic majesty's German dominions; and therefore it might be necessary to secure the assistance of such allies on the continent. That they prognosticated aright, with respect to the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... attended, and every discussion to which I listened, this point, which might seem of minor importance, completely overshadowed the question of industrial conscription which, at least inside the Communist Party, seemed generally taken for granted. It may be taken now as certain that the majority of the Communists are in favor of individual control. They say that the object of "workers' control" before the revolution was to ensure that factories should be run in the interests of workers as well of employers. In Russia ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... how hard it was not to be thanked for one's services. Did Peter mind? He must be pretty well used to it, for certainly no one ever thanked him for anything, and as for praise that was out of the question. If, as Uncle Joshua had said, he was the prop of the house, it was taken for granted, and no one thought ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... it may be taken for granted, did not intend to characterise as "a flood of twaddle" the whole of Lord Lytton's verse. Poetry which, as far as published up to 1855, called forth from Leigh Hunt warm praise for its beauties and mercy for its defects, in these words embodied in a letter to Mr. John Forster, the friend and biographer ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... Mick, sighting his rifle and pretending to take aim at the swab as he went off after imposing this extra task on us, though he waited until the officious gentleman's back was turned, as may be taken for granted, "Oi wud loike to spot thet chap roight in the bull's-eye, bad cess to him! Och, but wait till we're aboord the Active, Tom, an', sure, we'll hev no more of straight-backed jokers loike him to ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... over the neighboring hills and valleys, but a beautiful home nevertheless. Vines climbed the brick chimneys, and budding hydrangeas, in pots, topped the white balustrades of the porch. A hundred little details of perfect furnishing would have been taken for granted by the casual onlooker, yet without its lawns, its awnings, its window boxes and snowy curtaining, its glimpse of screened veranda and wicker chairs, its trim assembly of garage, stable, and servants' ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... dogmatic design on the opinions of his listeners; and it is only after a most vigilant process of moral logic that we can ever be justified in attributing to him this or that thesis of any one of his personages, apart from the general ethical sympathies which must be taken for granted. Much facile propaganda has been made by the device of crediting him in person with every religious utterance found in his plays—even in the portions which analytical criticism proves to have come ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... very small—one of proportions more than anything else. Mr. Stephenson says of his model: "I can say that it is a very fair representation of what the engine was before she was altered." Hitherto it has always been taken for granted that the alteration consisted mainly in reducing the angle at which the cylinders were set. The Nasmyth drawing alters the whole aspect of the question, and we are now left to speculate as to what ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... side of Hindoo character, and the drama and historical plays came in, generalities gave way to definite localizing, and in the Epics ornate descriptions of actual landscape took independent place. Nature's sympathy with human joys and griefs was taken for granted, and she played a part of ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... be taken for granted that the omission which, years after, I found in the Chapter House at Westminster Abbey was fully supplied in our list of monarchs. A slab in a small chapel at Westminster says that the body of Oliver Cromwell ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... they come to speak of Christianity, is that these things are not the matters in debate. They are the facts to be explained, to be accounted for. In all argument they themselves must first be taken for granted. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... meaning, and which could be used accordingly in one sense or another. This instances a second class. Again, we can bring forward yet another class of Scripture revelations, namely, passages which are necessarily understood with reference to certain other matters which are unexpressed but are taken for granted, or in which the words used may bear more than one meaning, or a meaning which is uncertain or obscure. If the unexpressed matter can be supplied without doubt, then all ages will agree in the interpretation; and if the terms ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... sentences about herself, quoted above, there is no biography of the writer. That she was good is taken for granted. ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... mind, or private views. A man who has been concerned in a transaction will not write it fairly; and a man who has not, cannot. But notwithstanding all this uncertainty, history is not the less necessary to be known, as the best histories are taken for granted, and are the frequent subjects both of conversation and writing. Though I am convinced that Caesar's ghost never appeared to Brutus, yet I should be much ashamed to be ignorant of that fact, as related by the historians ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... (eoliths), are very far from representing the earliest achievements of man in the accumulation of culture. Those dim, remote cycles must have been full of great, but inconspicuous, originators who laid the foundations of civilization in discoveries and achievements so long taken for granted that we do not realize that they ever had to be ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... principle and on that of its term. For a twofold principle is available in the inquiry of counsel. One is proper to it, and belongs to the very genus of things pertaining to operation: this is the end which is not the matter of counsel, but is taken for granted as its principle, as stated above (A. 2). The other principle is taken from another genus, so to speak; thus in demonstrative sciences one science postulates certain things from another, without ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... everyday life of the family is interesting and instructive, on account of Sir John Gladstone, as well as on that of his more distinguished son, and is from the pen of an eye-witness: "Nothing was ever taken for granted between him and his sons. A succession of arguments on great topics and small topics alike—arguments conducted with perfect good humor, but also with the most implicable logic—formed the staple of the family conversation. The children ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... parents and older relatives religious observances are taken for granted and there is an obvious sincerity in the many allusions to God's will and God's guidance of human life. No one reading them could doubt that the description of a dying relative as "ready for the summons" and to "going home" is a sincere one. Other ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... taken for granted that men inherited some guiding instincts from their beast ancestry, and it may be true, although it has never been proved. If there were such inheritances, they controlled and aided the first efforts to satisfy needs. Analogy makes it easy to assume that the ways ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... is always right, is an assertion, artistically, as untrue, as it is one whose truth is universally taken for granted. Nature is very rarely right, to such an extent even, that it might almost be said that Nature is usually wrong: that is to say, the condition of things that shall bring about the perfection of harmony worthy a picture is rare, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... inflicted all manner of hurts on the human body, and the malignity of disease has spared no part. It was supposed that the cranial cavity could not be entered or repaired without producing fatal results. It was taken for granted that certain organs could not be touched, much less treated capitally, without destroying the subject's life. But one exploration has followed another and one successful adventure has been succeeded by another still more successful until the surgeon's work is at the present ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... elapsed before the director and other officials came to us. Then I learned what the difficulty was. The two American ladies, in perfectly good faith, had visited the library a few hours before; and, on their saying that the American minister had recommended them to come, it had been taken for granted at once that THEY were the princess and the duchess, and they had been shown everything with almost regal honors, the officials never discovering the mistake ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... however, that it is a fair assumption that a sounder, more thorough, and more systematic system is about to be put into operation. We feel, too, that with the increased emphasis about to be laid upon training, it can safely be taken for granted that every effort has been, and will continue to be, made to give effect to the ...
— Report of the Juvenile Delinquency Committee • Ronald Macmillan Algie
... had occasion more than once to express, and deem it proper now to repeat, that it is, in my judgment, to be taken for granted, as a fundamental proposition not requiring elucidation, that the Federal Government is the creature of the individual States and of the people of the States severally; that the sovereign power was in them alone; ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... could desire, and therefore in our national hymn have we gone on imploring the Lord to arise and scatter our enemies; to confound their politics, whether they be good or ill; and to expose their knavish tricks—such knavish tricks being taken for granted. And then, with a steady confidence, we used to declare how certain we were that we should achieve all that was desirable, not exactly by trusting to our prayer to heaven, but by relying almost exclusively on George ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... on which Swinburne takes for granted what is perhaps his highest endowment as a poet, while dwelling with fine enthusiasm on the 'entire and absolute sincerity' of a whole section of poems in which the sincerity itself might well have been taken for granted, is that marvellous metrical inventiveness which is without parallel in English or perhaps in any other literature. 'A writer conscious of any natural command over the musical resources of his language,' says Swinburne, 'can ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... good buffalo; and perhaps he is the hero required by a people which is itself called John Bull.' In all which there is an undoubted vein of truth. Fielding's want of refinement, for example, is one of those undeniable facts which must be taken for granted. But, without seeking to set right some other statements implied in M. Taine's judgment, it is worth while to consider a little more fully the moral aspect of Fielding's work. Much has been said upon this point by some who, with ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... were selling automobiles or shoes or hardware, our honesty would be taken for granted. But there has been so much trickery in the sale of trusses and other things for rupture that it is only in justice to ourselves that ...
— Cluthe's Advice to the Ruptured • Chas. Cluthe & Sons
... them their place in the human comedy. And is not Christianity itself one of these facts? How amazing that such a thing should have appeared at all upon the earth! When one reads Meredith, with his brilliant intellectual cleverness, one finds Christianity "taken for granted," and dismissed as hardly relevant to ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... It may be taken for granted, I presume, that all dogs have this time-sense in a greater or lesser degree, and not only all dogs, but other animals also, for there are sufficient proofs to justify this assertion. Sportsmen, in particular, will be able to furnish examples in support ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... then, as Shalem practically owns and controls that paper, its favourable opinion might be taken for granted." ...
— When William Came • Saki
... wrote that the sonnets were the key to Shakespeare's heart, it has been taken for granted (save by those who regard even the sonnets as mere poetical exercises) that Shakespeare's real nature is discovered in the sonnets more easily and more surely than in the plays. Those readers who have followed ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... of Ahab(748) and the cave of Panias(749) are allowed. Water which changed, but changed of itself, is allowed. A well of water which came from a distance is allowed, only it must be watched, that no man check it." R. Judah said, "it is taken for granted and allowed." "A well into which earth or clay fell?" "One must wait till it clear," the words of R. Ishmael. R. Akiba said, "there is no need ...
— Hebrew Literature
... Rey was the storm centre. He had been mentioned in the same vision with the number 15 and it was taken for granted that he would play the chief role in the Treurfontein meeting. De la Rey was the unquestioned ruler of the Western Transvaal. The ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... which is taken for granted by modern man, and is therefore assumed to have been always obvious, was in fact established quite deliberately at a definite historical moment. We have seen how this applies to our knowledge of the gaseous state of matter; it applies also to the idea of the uniqueness of gravity. About ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... (it is taken for granted that she is a good little girl) will not make the plaything the business of her whole day, the object of all her thoughts; she will not forget everything for it, she will leave it unhesitatingly when her mamma calls her. Neither will she wish to be alone in her enjoyments, ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... is to meet the needs of students who are either unable or unwilling to attend classes in subjects which they wish to study. No effort has been spared to make the books self-contained. It is taken for granted that no help is available other than that to be found in the pages of the various volumes, and it is hoped that this help will be sufficient to enable the most isolated student to give himself a thorough ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... is with his art in its fullest and finest expression, in its essence; and therefore it is unnecessary for me to dwell upon any other of his impersonations than that of Hamlet. When a man can play Hamlet so supremely, it may be taken for granted, I presume, that he can play Mice and Men, or even that masterpiece of all masterpieces, Caesar and Cleopatra. I trust that it is no disrespect to the distinguished authors of these two plays to say that such plays in a great actor's repertoire represent less his versatility ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... remembered how Maurice and Lucia had been perpetually associated together at all Cacouna parties; every one, therefore, naturally thought of Lucia, and she was more frequently spoken of than she had been at all since she left. It seemed also to be taken for granted that Maurice would see her somewhere before long, and he was entrusted with innumerable messages both ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... married; well-built and dark; looking younger than his years, genial, quiet and domestic to a degree; he lives what would seem to be an ideal life in a charming home, across the threshold of which the curiosity of the public need not try to pass. As might be taken for granted, Mr. Major has been all his life a loving ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... now seen how the two great conceptions of Matter and Form were reached; the next problem Greek philosophy had to face was that of Motion. At first the fact of movement had simply been taken for granted. The Ionian tendency was to see motion everywhere; it was rest that had to be explained, or rather the appearance of it. However, when the new conception of an eternal matter began to be taken seriously, difficulties made themselves ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... constituted beauty resides in the fact that it is all general beauty, that you are appealed to by no specific details, or that these at least, practically never importunate, are as taken for granted as the lieutenants and captains are taken for granted in a great standing army—among whom indeed individual aspects may figure here the rather shifting range of decorative dignity in which details, when observed, often prove poor (though never not massive and ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... the last notice was eclipsed by the seriousness of the other two. It had always been taken for granted that the captain of Willoughby was also the Speaker of the House, and a contested election for that office was without precedent. Now, however, the old rule was to be challenged; and as the members waited for the clock to strike six they discussed the coming contest among themselves ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... movements, but with a more expressive face, with less colour, and much more positive assurance of high breeding. Lady Penwether was said to be haughty, but it was admitted by all people that when Lady Penwether had said a thing or had done a thing, it might be taken for granted that the way in which she had done or said that thing was the right way. The only other gentleman there was Major Caneback, who had just come in from hunting with some distant pack and who had been brought into the room by Lord Rufford that he might ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... all of granitic formation: and if one might judge from the specimens of iron pyrites and copper ore found here and there, the existence of minerals in large quantities, as is the case about Uppernavik, may be taken for granted. ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... father and mother for the first time under those conditions. There can be no harm in quoting her remark. Only—I have to say it—experience causes apprehension, that we are again to be delayed by descriptions, and an exposition of feelings; taken for granted,—of course, in a serious narrative; which it really seems these moderns think designed for a frequent arrest of the actors in the story and a searching of the internal state of this one or that one of them: who is laid out stark naked and probed and expounded, like as in the celebrated ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... my rescue one evening, when, returning from school, I was beset by three other boys, who had resolved on drubbing me. My haughty deportment had vexed their self-esteem, and, as the same cause had left me with few sympathies, it was taken for granted that the unfairness of their assault would provoke no censure. They were mistaken. In the moment of my greatest difficulty, William Edgerton dashed in among them. My exigency rendered his assistance a very singular benefit. My nose was already broken—one of my eyes sealed ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... certainly did not hide her mouth with her hands or her handkerchief, as women often do in bursts of hilarity; she laughed freely, and as much as she wanted to, and it was as clear as possible that tights presented themselves quite preposterously to any discussion of her profession. They were things to be taken for granted, like the curtain and the wings; they had no relation to ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... favourite theme of Deutero-Isaiah (cf. Is. xl.), and it is elaborated in the spirit of Is. xliv. 9-20. The warning not to fear the idols is much more natural if addressed to an exilic audience than to Jeremiah's contemporaries. It may be taken for granted that the passage is ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... treaty concessions, Western nations boldly discussed the dismemberment of China as certain to come, and authors and journalists disputed as to which country should possess the richest parts of the Empire whose impotence to defend itself was taken for granted. Chinese ministers in Europe and America reported these discussions to their superiors in Peking. The English papers in China republished some of the articles and added many effective ones of their own, so that speedily all the ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... found that I should have to prepare it by another drama, and therefore took up the long-cherished idea of making the young Siegfried the subject of a poem. In it everything that in "Siegfried's Death" was either narrated or more or less taken for granted was to be shown in bold and vivid outline by means of actual representation. This poem was soon sketched and completed. When I was going to send it to you, I for the first time felt a peculiar anxiety. It seemed as if I could not possibly ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... moved in all its deeps by Darwin's Origin of Species. Thus the geological record is inconsistent, we learned, with the record of the first chapters of Genesis. If man is a differentiated monkey, and if a monkey has no soul, or future life (which is taken for granted), where are man's title-deeds to these possessions? With other difficulties of an obvious kind, these presented themselves to the poet with renewed force when his only chance of happiness depended on being able to believe in a future life, and reunion with the beloved dead. Unbelief ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... heavens my opinion of the arrangement of the stars and their magnitudes, and of some other particulars, has undergone a gradual change; and indeed, when the novelty of the subject is considered, we cannot be surprised that many things formerly taken for granted should on examination prove to be different from what they were generally but incautiously supposed to be. For instance, an equal scattering of the stars may be admitted in certain calculations; but when we examine the Milky Way, or the closely compressed clusters of stars of which my catalogues ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... held before there was any definition of the place of an ecumenical council. Many councils were held during the Arian controversy that were quite as representative. It was taken for granted that the councils were arranged in a scale of authority corresponding to the extent of the Church represented. The first clear statement of this principle is at the Council of Constantinople ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... e. the possessor) is freed from the necessity of proving title against one who is in an unlawful position. But to this it was well answered by Bruns, in his later work, that it assumes the title of disseisors to be generally worse than that of disseisees, which cannot be taken for granted, and which probably is ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... clean, even when most sceptical and discursive, young intercourse; a carnival of half anxious and half elated criticism, all framed and backgrounded in still richer accumulations, both moral and material, or, as who should say, pictorial, of the matter of course and the taken for granted. Nothing could have been in greater contrast, one cannot too much insist, to the situation of the traditional lonely lyrist who yearns for connections and relations yet to be made and whose difficulty, lyrical, emotional, personal, social or intellectual, ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... above them. They needed no protection then, and none foresaw that within a decade, by the operations of a few small steam-cruisers, they would be swept from the seas, never to return. Everything was taken for granted, and not least that war was a barbarism of the past. From 1815 to 1850, the lifetime of a generation, international peace had prevailed substantially unbroken, despite numerous revolutionary movements internal to the ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... abuses, and that there was reposed in him a special trust for that purpose. And now I shall show, by the twenty-fifth paragraph of the same letter, that they intrusted Mr. Hastings with this very great power from some particular hope they had, not only of his abstaining himself, which is a thing taken for granted, but of his restraining abuses through every part of the service; and therefore they say, "that, in order to effectuate this great end, the first step must be to restore perfect obedience and due subordination to your administration. Our Governor and Council ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... work in order of date is the treatise De Monarchia. It has been generally taken for granted that Dante was a Guelph in politics up to the time of his banishment, and that out of resentment he then became a violent Ghibelline. Not to speak of the consideration that there is no author whose life and works present so remarkable a unity and logical sequence as those of Dante, Professor ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... this searching new proposal. The Unionists had a fatal weakness in their position. This was the feature of the situation that had not hitherto been put into words. Lincoln had not been accurate when he said that the slavery question was "the only substantial dispute." He had taken for granted that the Southern opposition to nationalism was not a real thing,—a mere device of the politicians to work up excitement. All the compromises he was ready to offer were addressed to that part of the South which was seeking to make an issue on slavery. They had little meaning for that other ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... from true premisses. It is thus a very important part of the true 'story of everything' to state the principles upon which valid reasoning depends, and to enunciate the ultimate postulates which have to be taken for granted whenever we try to reason validly about anything. This is the inquiry known by the name of logic. We cannot expect men whose time is fully taken up with the task of reaching true conclusions about some special class of facts, those which concern the history of living organisms, or the production ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... spiritual world. Let us not, then, utterly scorn the strange rabble who have rushed headlong after this curiousest curiosity of modern times—except the rebellion—even though they may remind us of 'the Queen's ragged regiment of literature.' It should be taken for granted that so startling a novelty would attract the floating scum of society, whether the solid folk heeded or ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Bavarian, while he praises and defends the Austrians indiscriminately. Both parties have their adherents, who publish everything from their own point of view. As this one-sided material is all that is laid before Ours, the danger is that the advice given is not in favour of investigation. It is taken for granted that all that comes before their eyes is true, and the other side is condemned unheard. But as it is clear that the Christian cause in Germany would be greatly benefited by a union of the two parties, it would be well worth the trouble, ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... a little unwholesome, not quite manly, and often even grotesque. It is easy to say: "Dic mihi si fueris tu leo, qualis eris?" and if one is a person of no great importance, it is an embarrassing question to answer. In this connection I can only say that I should assume that my lionhood was taken for granted without so much roaring, bristling of the mane, and switching of the tail. It irritates those who are discontented, it positively infuriates the redder democrats, and it bores the children, and, worst of all, proclaims to everybody that the lion is not quite comfortable ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... of lads were all dressed in the khaki suits known all over the world nowadays as typifying Boy Scouts, it could be readily taken for granted that they belonged to the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... be the ideal. Here it must suffice, to select the most essential or interesting matters, and to present them with such vividness as the necessary brevity will permit. Very little preliminary knowledge will be taken for granted; the use of Latin or technical terms will be shunned, and every topic will be dealt with, as far as possible, in ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... The bridge taken for granted, Grez is a less inspiring place than Barbizon. I give it the palm over Cernay. There is something ghastly in the great empty village square of Cernay, with the inn tables standing in one corner, as though the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... far-away land to be treated like a son or a brother, to be taken for granted, to be embraced by strange men and blessed by strange women. Sweet also is it for the far-away man to recognise a new son or a new brother in the wanderer whom he has received. I remember one night at the remote village ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... mastered by his imagination, he painted the prospects of the trip and the joys of the open life and the roadside in such glowing colours that the Mole could hardly sit in his chair for excitement. Somehow, it soon seemed taken for granted by all three of them that the trip was a settled thing; and the Rat, though still unconvinced in his mind, allowed his good-nature to over-ride his personal objections. He could not bear to disappoint his two friends, who were already deep in schemes and anticipations, ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... "wails" and wails feebly, with the invariability of a thing unproved and taken for granted. Nothing, nevertheless, could be more unlike a wail than the most distinctive cry whereon the child of man catches his first breath. It is a hasty, huddled outcry, sharp and brief, rather deep than shrill in tone. With all deference to old moralities, man does ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... after her. The bewildered, wet and shivering New Yorker stared about the room, which, to his surprise, was warm and cozy. The warmth was furnished, so he presently discovered, by a steam radiator in the corner. Radiators and a bathroom! These were modern luxuries he would have taken for granted, had Elisha Warren been the sort of man he expected to find, the country magnate, the leading citizen, fitting brother to the late A. Rodgers Warren, of Fifth Avenue and ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... not necessary to say, were rife among us. It was known we were set for Buenos Ayres, and it was taken for granted that there the Prince was to effect his morganatic marriage. But what was to happen afterwards? We were chartered for twelve months. That bespoke a cruise, and guesses flew about the ship. Lane, the purser, was the most in evidence in these discussions. He was an excitable man with a ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... forget what it is to you that she lives. Do not let your eyes fill; do not let your brain swim. It would be madness to believe it if it is not true. Listen, then:— You know that men speak of human beings, taken singly, as individuals. It is taken for granted in the common speech that the individual is the unit of humanity, not to be subdivided. That is, indeed, what the etymology of the word means. Nevertheless, the slightest reflection will cause any one to see that this assumption ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... long since she had felt shame. She felt it now, when it struck her that during all her long reveries about her escape and her restoration to the world, not one thought of her children had entered into the imagery of her dream. Like all people of strong passions, she had taken for granted that there was something grand and fine in the intensity of her feelings. Now, for a moment, the clear mirror of Annie's mind was held up before her own, and she saw herself as she was. For one instant ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... which seems to have frightened everybody?" Letters, 1901, v. 469; vi. 30) that it is Lucifer and not Byron who puts such awkward questions with regard to the "politics of paradise" and the origin of evil. Nobody seems to have believed him. It was taken for granted that Lucifer was the mouthpiece of Byron, that the author of Don Juan was not "on the side ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... of serums, bacterins, vaccines and other products of the biologic laboratory is almost an obsession today. Their curative and preventive values are taken for granted. Most of the time the children are strong enough to throw off the poisons without showing prolonged or pronounced effects, but every once in a while a child is so poisoned that it takes months for it to regain health ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... must be taken for granted. When you board a train, you cannot make sure that the trainmen are all qualified for their positions and that all parts of the train and of the track are in proper condition. If, however, you choose a poorly managed road, in place of a well-managed one, you are more likely to be killed ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... would, he assumed, be followed by the Eastern, and the monarch approved by Mesopotamia, Babylonia, and the capital would carry, as a matter of course, the rest of the nation. Policy required that the general acquiescence should not have been taken for granted. Tiridates should have made a military progress through the East, no less than the West, and have sought out his rival in the distant Hyrcania, and slain him, or driven him beyond the borders. Instead of thus occupying himself, he was content ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... did she say?" asked Marian very anxiously, almost hoping it might prove that Caroline's acceptance might have been taken for granted without ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of the social system which he had inhabited, his absence on account of his mother's death being taken for granted, people laid him away in their minds almost as ceremoniously as they had laid away the memory of his mother. Nothing halted because he was not present; nothing was delayed, rearranged, or abandoned because his familiar presence chanced to be missing. There remained only one ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... taken for granted that the husband will perform the major duties of his relation, such as being a good citizen, a good business man, and hence a good provider for his family, and that he will in all things seek the mutual happiness ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... Morgan's postulate, the relation of a mother to her son is not that of a wife to the children of other wives of a polygynous husband. Poverty of language is therefore established in this case, and may be taken for granted where ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... sin here. It is generally taken for granted that it was a breach of the second, not of the first, commandment, and Aaron's proclamation of 'a feast to the Lord' is taken as proving this. Aaron was probably trying to make an impossible compromise, and to find some salve ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... by other kinds, for the simple reason that the soil has been impoverished of the constituents required for the growth of that particular tree or trees. This I believe to be one of the fallacies handed down from past ages, taken for granted, and never questioned. Nowhere does the English oak grow better than where it grew when William the Conqueror found it at the time he invaded Britain. Where do you find white pines growing better than in parts of New England where this ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... these studies it will be well to be on our guard. Thus many of us have been tempted to put 'domus' and 'dominus' into a connexion which really does not exist. There has been a stage in most boys' geographical knowledge, when they have taken for granted that 'Jutland' was so called, not because it was the land of the Jutes, but on account of its jutting out into the sea in so remarkable a manner. At a much later period of their education, 'Aborigines,' ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... those theories which prevent men from judging of the evidence as they would on any other topic of Inductive Inquiry. In adopting this course, we are only following the footsteps of the profound author of the "Analogy," who finding it, he knew not how, "to be taken for granted, by many persons, that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry," set himself, in the first instance, to prove "that it is not, however, so clear a case that there is nothing in it;"—this preliminary proof being designed ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... for sacrifice of the totem, and communion in eating him, is very scanty. The fact is rather inferred from rites among peoples just emerging from totemism (see the case of the Californian buzzard, in Bancroft) than derived from actual observation. On this head too much has been taken for granted by anthropologists. But I learn that direct evidence has been obtained, and is on the point of publication. The facts I may not anticipate here, but the evidence will be properly sifted, and bias of ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... of a famous journal once received for his week's task, General Hamley on the Art of War, a three-volume novel, a work on dainty dishes, and a translation of Pindar. This was perhaps taxing versatility and omniscience over-much, and it may be taken for granted that the writer made no serious contribution to tactics, cookery, or scholarship. But being a man of a certain intelligence, passably honest, and reasonably painstaking, probably he produced reviews sufficiently useful and just to answer their purpose. On the new system ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... "Nothing is to be taken for granted. Nothing," he raged. Peter was silent for a moment, watching McGuire who had paced the length ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... ruins of the burnt wing of the hotel should have sufficiently cooled to render a search practicable. Even then, if no other measures were taken, the fact might never be absolutely substantiated. If nothing more was ever heard of Harvey Farnham, it would probably be taken for granted that he had met his death in the fire at the Santa Anna Hotel, even though no actual traces of his body were forthcoming. His heirs, whoever they might be, would doubtless claim their inheritance, and even assurance money, if such there were to be had, ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... of the school sentiment that obtains in the community the eighth grade is practically as populous as the first grade. Attendance upon school work is a habit of thinking both with the children and with their parents, and school is taken for granted the same as eating and sleeping. If a boy should, for any cause, fail to graduate from the high school, every patron of the school would regard it as a personal calamity. They would feel that he had, somehow, been dropped off the train before he reached ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... religious men do not in their books ascribe the production of natural phenomena to the Divine Power. But if they were so to do they would be transcending their business as scientists. In every science certain simple facts of experience are taken for granted: it is the business of the scientist to reduce other and more complex facts of experience to terms of these data, not to explain these data themselves. Thus the physicist attempts to reduce other related phenomena of greater complexity to terms of simple force and motion; but, What are force and ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... motion," said Mr. Dinsmore. "Are all the grown people agreed? The consent of the younger ones may safely be taken for granted," he added, with a smiling ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... creation of a superficial, ill-considered optimism which has largely lost sight of the terrific obstacles in human nature against which any real moral advance on earth must win its way. Too often we have taken for granted what a recent book calls "a goal of racial perfection and nobility the splendour of which it is beyond our powers to conceive," and we have dreamed about this earthly paradise like a saint having visions of heaven and counting it as won already because he is predestined ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... I showed them the safe-pass Grim had scribbled. They accepted that as dubious preliminary evidence of my right to be alive, but no more. I was searched painstakingly and ignominiously for weapons. No questions asked. Nothing taken for granted. Even my small change was examined in the moonlight, coin by coin, to make sure, I suppose, that it wouldn't explode if struck on stone. They gave everything back to me, ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... and implements, without forethought and without self-control, singularly susceptible to evil influences, with strong animal appetites, and no intellectual tastes or aspirations to hold those appetites in check, it would be to assume more than would be taken for granted of any white race under the same conditions, to expect that the wild Indians will become industrious and frugal except through a severe course of industrial instruction and exercise under restraint."—Report on Indian Affairs, ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... all his life talking prose. If, however, there be no real difference between the methods of science and those of common life, it would seem, on the face of the matter, highly improbable that there should be any difference between the methods of the different sciences; nevertheless, it is constantly taken for granted that there is a very wide difference between the Physiological and other sciences in point ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley |
