Literary notes about certainty (AI summary)
The word certainty in literature emerges as a versatile device to capture both the assurance of conviction and the uneasy tension between what is known and what remains elusive. Authors employ it to underscore a firm resolve or a sense of inevitable truth: some portray a palpable, almost empirical certainty—as when mathematical or logical precision is asserted to be nearly unchallengeable ([1], [2])—while others use it to evoke the inner emotional state or fate of individuals, lending their characters a momentary relief or, at times, a disquieting finality ([3], [4]). It can signify the steadfastness of personal belief or the soundness of critical observation, yet also serve to highlight the paradoxical nature of human understanding, where absolute assurance is often as disputable as it is desired ([5], [6], [7]).
- Greater mathematical certainty is almost unthinkable.
— from Criminal Psychology: A Manual for Judges, Practitioners, and Students by Hans Gross - In the algebraical question, as it proceeds towards solution, the certainty of its operations remains altogether unimpaired.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe - In the common light of common day her radiant certainty of that rapt morning had faded.
— from Anne of the Island by L. M. Montgomery - Sometimes, on the very brink of certainty, I failed; yet still I clung to the hope which the next day or the next hour might realise.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - They were strengthened into certainty when I beheld the Aged enter at a side door, escorting a lady.
— from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens - We may, therefore, conclude with certainty, that the opinion of a continued and of a distinct existence never arises from the senses.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume - The certainty that you now may step out of life whenever you please, and that to do so is not blasphemous or monstrous, is itself an immense relief.
— from The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy by William James