Their coming could have been predicted with the same
certitude that astronomers to-day predict the outcome of the movements of stars.
After this I inquired in general into what is essential I to the truth and certainty of a proposition; for since I had discovered one which I knew to be true, I thought that I must likewise be able to discover the ground of this
certitude. And as I observed that in the words I think, therefore I am, there is nothing at all which gives me assurance of their truth beyond this, that I see very clearly that in order to think it is necessary to exist, I concluded that I might take, as a general rule, the principle, that all the things which we very clearly and distinctly conceive are true, only observing, however, that there is some difficulty in rightly determining the objects which we distinctly conceive.
Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific
certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favorite love-stories in prose and verse.
In addition to the stiffening afforded his backbone by the conscious ownership of eleven millions, he possessed an enormous
certitude.
From his calm-mad heights, with the
certitude of a god, he beholds all life as evil.
With some difficulty, after many turnings and new inquiries, they reached Prison Street; and the grim walls of the jail, the first object that answered to any image in Silas's memory, cheered him with the
certitude, which no assurance of the town's name had hitherto given him, that he was in his native place.
Doubtless Sylvia was not entirely suitable to me, and to marry her was to be faithless to that vision of the highest, that wonderful unknown woman of the apocalyptic moorland, whose face Sylvia had not even momentarily banished from my dreams, and whom, with an unaccountable
certitude, I still believed to be the woman God had destined for me; but, all things considered, Sylvia was surely as pretty an answer to prayer as a man could reasonably hope for.
Some of the masters whose influence left a trace upon my character to this very day, combined a fierceness of conception with a
certitude of execution upon the basis of just appreciation of means and ends which is the highest quality of the man of action.
But a voice behind me, the unmistakable voice of Wolf Larsen, strong with the invincible
certitude of the man and mellow with appreciation of the words he was quoting, aroused me.
Vronsky's life was particularly happy in that he had a code of principles, which defined with unfailing
certitude what he ought and what he ought not to do.
There were four of these steps, and she went up them, a step at a time, slowly, unwaveringly, and with so dogged
certitude that it never entered my mind that her strength could fail her and let that hundred-weight sack fall from the lean and withered frame that wellnigh doubled under it.
He knew his friend had always plenty of money, and he knew also, with profound
certitude, that his success would enable him to repay it.