Lest men suspect your tale untrue,
Keep probability in view. [ Gay ]

From principles is derived probability; but truth, or certainty, is obtained only from facts.

Wherever you see persecution, there is more than a probability that truth lies on the persecuted side. [ Latimer ]

There are errors which no wise man will treat with rudeness while there is a probability that they may be the refraction of some great truth still below the horizon. [ Coleridge ]

Dress has a moral effect upon the conduct of mankind. Let any gentleman find himself with dirty boots, old surtout, soiled neckcloth and a general negligence of dress, and he will in all probability find a corresponding disposition by negligence of address. [ Sir Jonah Barrington ]

The difference between a parable and an apologue is that the former, being drawn from human life, requires probability in the narration, whereas the apologue, being taken from inanimate things or the inferior animals, is not confined strictly to probability. The fables of Aesop are apologues. [ Fleming ]

If often happens too, both in courts and in cabinets, that there are two things going on together - a main plot and an underplot; and he that understands only one of them will, in all probability, be the dupe of both. A mistress may rule a monarch, but some obscure favorite may rule the mistress. [ Colton ]

Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property, of a man; like light, it can give little or nothing, but at most may show what is given; often it is but a false glare, dazzling the eyes of the vulgar, lending, by casual extrinsic splendour, the brightness and manifold glance of the diamond to pebbles of no value. [ Carlyle ]