Probabilities

Examples

• It is not prose but poetry, at least a great part of it, and ought not to be judged by the rules of logic or the probabilities of history. Plato. The Republic.
• Who can measure probabilities against certainties? Plato. The Republic.
• Their minds construct a utopia--one in which all judgments are based on logical inference from syllogisms built on the law of mathematical probabilities. Walter Lippmann. A Preface to Politics.
• Are no probabilities to be accepted, merely because they are not certainties? Jane Austen. Sense and Sensibility.
• She has so rarely seen the thing done that the probabilities are strong the other way. Charles Dickens. Bleak House.
• Judged by mere worldly considerations and probabilities, his story is a very doubtful one. Charles Dickens. Oliver Twist.
• And what are the probabilities as to the result of the contest? Charles Dickens. The Pickwick Papers.
• Lydgate could now construct all the probabilities of the case. George Eliot. Middlemarch.
• He recapitulated the statements which Becky had made, pointed out the probabilities of their truth, and asserted his own firm belief in her innocence. William Makepeace Thackeray. Vanity Fair.
• My second reflection is founded on those large probabilities, which the mind can judge of, and the minute differences it can observe betwixt them. David Hume. A Treatise of Human Nature.
• The probabilities are that our loss in killed was the heavier, as we were the attacking party. Ulysses S. Grant. Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant.
• I was in no position to try the probabilities on one side or on the other in this instance by any better test than the test of personal resemblance. Wilkie Collins. The Woman in White.
• All three are in the region of dramatic system-making and myth, to which probabilities are irrelevant. Walter Lippmann. A Preface to Politics.
• Margaret was surprised to find an acceptance contemplated, after all she had learnt of sad probabilities during the day. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell. North and South.
• From the stone age onward the probabilities are that man has always had some kind of bowling game. Various. The Wonder Book of Knowledge.
• The probabilities of causes are of several kinds; but are all derived from the same origin, viz. David Hume. A Treatise of Human Nature.
• That's a question I have carefully put to myself; and upon the whole the probabilities are in favour of her accepting him in time. Thomas Hardy. The Return of the Native.

Checked by Jocelyn