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More "Credible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at a time when he expected to be treated with coldness and reproof? Who has not felt how such a moment was to him the dawn of a better hope, and how the merciful judgment of some wise and good human being seemed to be the type and the assurance of God's pardon, making it credible? Unconsciously it may be, but still in substance really, I believe some such reasoning as this goes on in the whispers of the heart—"He loves me, and has compassion on me—will not God forgive? He, this man, made in God's image, does not think my case hopeless. Well, then, in the larger love ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... wise and good and powerful, absolutely impossible. If one said to him that he believed thousands of things he had never himself known, he answered he did so upon testimony. If one rejoined that here too we have testimony, he replied it was not credible testimony, but founded on such experiences as he was justified in considering imaginary, seeing they were like none he had ever had himself. When he was asked whether, while he yet believed there was such a being as his mother ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... school-girl. Both had heard reports that young women were sometimes thus deported to become wives to the planters in the southern colonies or the West Indies, but that such a destiny should be intended for their own Aurelia, and by Lady Belamour, was scarcely credible. Doubts rushed over Betty, but she remembered what the school-girl had said of the captive being sent beyond seas; and at any rate, she must risk the expedition being futile when such issues hung upon it. And if they failed to meet her father, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... expressed in the Book of Wisdom, is not in Ecclesiastes; neither is God once named in the Book of Esther as author of the marvelous deliverances which the chosen people are said to have experienced. The history narrated in 1st Maccabees is more credible than that in Esther. It is therefore misleading to mark off all the apocryphal works as human and all the canonical ones as divine. The divine and the human elements in man are too intimately blended to admit of such separation. The best which he produces partakes of both. ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... "this walking genius, this credible incredible, and visible invisible pedestrian dealer in portable eatables, has almost ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... even backed up before the world by one other voice, people might continue to listen, and in the end something might be done. But so long as I stand quite alone, telling the same story, which becomes, apparently, not only more tedious, but less credible by repetition, I feel that I am doing nothing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... country psalm-singers practice, which may be justly deemed the lowest class of counterpoint, or singing in several parts, can not be acquired in the coarse manner in which it is performed in the churches without considerable time and practice. It is, therefore, scarcely credible that a people, semibarbarous, should naturally arrive at any perfection in that art which it is much doubted whether the Greeks and Romans, with all their refinements in music, ever attained, and which the Chinese, who have been longer civilized ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... mainly for the sake of greater vividness. The appeal of setting being visual, the element was employed to illustrate the action and to make the characters clearly evident to the eye. By rendering a story more concrete, a definite setting rendered it more credible. This the eighteenth-century novelists discerned; but only with the rise of the romantic movement was the element ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... some grateful Italians, and by every Clerical writer who handles the subject. The British Government had early information of Italian revolutionary doings, just then, through Sir James Hudson, who was in communication with men of all shades of opinion, and it is credible that orders which must necessarily have been secret, were given to afford a refuge on board English ships to the flying patriots in the anticipated catastrophe. More than this is not credible, but the energy shown by Captain Marryat ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... statements made in the writings themselves concerning their origin. They prove, if they are credible, that portions of these books were written by Moses; they do not prove that the whole of them ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... governor "unless such person were of our privy council there,"[75] although no such limitation as to the governor's right was made in any of the commissions to Leonard Calvert so this clause in the lord proprietor's commission resolves itself into a Machiavellian statement. It is hardly credible that Lord Baltimore could have made such a statement from ignorance, for no one knew the commission better than the author of it. But notwithstanding the evidence against Lord Baltimore, the writer has too high an opinion ...
— Captain Richard Ingle - The Maryland • Edward Ingle
... he was ready to believe everything, even to that strangest, yet to me right credible miracle of the fish and the piece of money, and the next to doubt whether man had ever dared utter the words, "I and the Father are one." Tossed he was and tormented in spirit, calling even aloud sometimes to know if there was a God anywhere hearing his prayer, sure only of this, that ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... plunge into the Christian period without having first cleared the mind as to what is meant in history and literature by "the critical method," which in history may be defined as the "science of what is credible," and in literature as "the science of what is rational," is to invite fiasco. The theologian in such a state sees no obstacle to accepting an arbitrary list of documents with all the strange stuff they may contain, and declaring ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... offered. They are more or less conjectural. One is that the Yemishi of Mutsu were led by chieftains of Yamato origin, men who had migrated to the northeast in search of fortune or impelled by disaffection. It seems scarcely credible, however, that a fact so special would have eluded historical reference, whereas only one passing allusion is made to it and that, too, in a book not fully credible. The other explanation is that the Yemishi were in league with hordes of Tatars who had crossed ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Isn't it sad?" murmured Mrs. Markle, as she heard the street door close upon her visitor. "So much that is agreeable and excellent, all dimmed by the want of principle. It seems hardly credible that a woman, with every thing she needs, could act dishonestly for so small a matter. A few yards of lawn against integrity and character! What a price to ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... Mallard's severity lost its force now that it was only remembered. He accused himself of having been, as always, weakly sensitive to the moment's impression. The fact remained that Cecily had spent a long time alone with Mallard, had made him the confidant of her troubles; it credible in human nature—the past borne in mind—that Mallard had never exceeded a passionless sympathy? Did not Miriam say distinctly that suspicion had been excited in her by the behaviour of the two ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... who had become interested in her. Bessie was evidently quite normal mentally and apparently affectionately regarded her only near relatives—this father and brother. Her story appeared thus entirely credible. The judge stated that he had been approached outside of court by these women, who in their righteous indignation were insistent upon the need of dire punishment of the outrageous ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... reinforce the teeth of the Dons, and to sell them ploughs and sewing-machines. Its railroads have waked it up to a new life, and the Revolution has set free the thought of its people to an extent which would have been hardly credible a few years ago. Its streets swarm with newsboys and strangers,—the agencies that are to bring its people into the movement of ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... on upright and credible men of all ranks, who have performed anything noble or praiseworthy, to record, in their own writing, the events of their lives; yet they should not commence this honourable task before they have passed their fortieth year. Such, at least, is my opinion, now that ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... name and manner, and therefore would extirpate it, and use in place of it the titles used in England, namely, husbandmen, franklins or yeomen.' 'This was so plausible,' wrote Sir G. Fenton, 'that it was carried throughout the whole realm, in less time than might be thought credible, if expressed.' ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... followed by the banishment of the Norman favourites—by the utter downfall of the Norman party in England—by the decree of the Witan, that all the troubles in England had come from the Normans—by the triumphant ascendancy of Godwin's House. And is it credible for a moment, that the great English Earl could then have agreed to a pledge to transfer the kingdom to the very party he had expelled, and expose himself and his party to the vengeance of a foe he had thoroughly crushed for the time, and whom, without any motive ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it was possible that they might have made their way over land to this point, but it seemed scarcely credible—and then, how could they have come into possession of Virginia Maxon, whom every report except this last agreed was still in the hands of Ninaka and Barunda. There was always the possibility that the natives had lied to ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... those already recited, but so atrocious and devoid of motive, that it was a matter of grave doubt whether the facts should be given. It seemed too deplorable that such an occurrence could be recorded as the act of human beings; furthermore, would it be credible? It has been intimated that the present endeavor is to give a complete history of events as they occurred: no material item suppressed, nothing imaginary included; therefore the ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... yong man, & violente, and set against you ther, & y^e company hear; ploting with M^r. Weston their owne ends, which tend to your & our undooing in respecte of our estates ther, and prevention of our good ends. For by credible testimoney we are informed his purpose is to come to your colonie, pretending he comes for and from y^e adventurers, and will seeke to gett what you have in readynes [77] into his ships, as if they came from y^e company, & possessing all, will be so much profite to him selfe. And further ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... disciples; the same that the women might not touch: in a word, a body quite different from a human body, which we know cannot pass through walls, or appear or disappear at pleasure. What then could their hands or eyes inform them of in this case? Besides, is it credible that God should raise a body imperfectly, with the very wounds in it of which it died? Or, if the wounds were such as destroyed the body before, how could a natural body ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock
... but it had still been done, and in Cheltenham generally she was regarded as an engaged young lady. It had been in vain that she had denied that it was so. Her mother's word on such a subject was supposed to be more credible that her own; and now this man with whom she was believed to be so closely connected had disappeared from the world among the most disreputable circumstances. But when she explained the difficulty to her mother her mother bade her hold her tongue for ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... the belief, which has long been held by many skilful cultivators, that good follows from exchanging seed, tubers, &c., seems to be fairly well founded. Considering the small size of most seeds, it seems hardly credible that the advantage thus derived can be due to the seeds obtaining in one soil some chemical element deficient in the other soil. As plants after once germinating naturally become fixed to the same spot, it might have ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... point of Christian faith. But evill men under pretext that God can do any thing, are so bold as to say any thing when it serves their turn, though they think it untrue; It is the part of a wise man, to believe them no further, than right reason makes that which they say, appear credible. If this superstitious fear of Spirits were taken away, and with it, Prognostiques from Dreams, false Prophecies, and many other things depending thereon, by which, crafty ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... implied his sanction of it, from words which, to other men, bore no such meaning. But in saying that he has "expressly sanctioned it," they have, most unconsciously, I trust, ascribed their own words to our Lord; they make Mm to say what he has not said, unless they can produce[4] some other credible record of his words besides the books of the four evangelists and ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... eighteenth century, and are so strangely transposed that scarcely one tomb is correctly inscribed. A large blue stone called Long Meg was long believed to cover the remains of twenty-eight monks stricken by the plague, but like many another Abbey legend this is scarcely credible when we recall the busy monastic life which went on in these cloisters, and the fact that the cemetery was outside the Lady Chapel. Our goal at present is the famous Jerusalem Chamber, where the Abbots used to entertain their guests. To reach this we pass ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... detail, and view them in the light of the only purposes they suggest, we find them to be such that a God who could deliberately have been guilty of them would be a God too absurd, too monstrous, too mad to be credible. (Religion as a ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... proof, are apt to look on a man who vows that if a thing has been declared true by some authority whom he respects, then that constitutes proof to him, as either the victim of a preposterous and barely credible infatuation, or else as a flat impostor. Yet De Maistre was no ignorant monk. He had no selfish or official interest in taking away the keys of knowledge, entering not in himself, and them that would enter in hindering. The true reasons for his detestation of the eighteenth-century ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... authority of an ancient map, is put forward for the noted Portugese navigator Magalhaens, when in the service of the Emperor Charles V. of Spain; but there is little appertaining to the arguments advanced on behalf of this belief to render it credible. ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... Cleopatra and Antony is unconsciously reproduced without being bettered, or even equalled in point of majesty and musical expression. The loss of all simplicity and dignity, the impossibility of any credible scenic presentation of the incidents, and the extreme staginess of the conventions by which these impossibilities are got over, are no doubt covered from the popular eye by the overwhelming prestige of Die Gotterdammerung as part of so great ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... of a letter which the King is said to have written to the bishops—that is, to the Archbishop for the edification of the episcopal bench. It is hardly credible that he and Taylor should have been guilty of this folly, after the letter which they wrote to the Peers a year and a half ago and the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... victories in Saxony and Silesia, remained inactive. He at the same time assumed an air of extreme pride and self-sufficiency, which exasperated his enemies and gave occasion for their slanders. He was accused to Ferdinand of designing to seize the Empire,—a charge which seemed the more credible, on account of an offer having been made by France to assist him in obtaining the Bohemian crown. This proposition, however, he had firmly refused. The emperor's intention of removing him from the command of the army having reached his ears, he declared he would resign, but was persuaded to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... their number, the actions particularly ascribed to them, the conversation which they held respecting themselves, the Son of God, and their own destiny, the desires and passions they are represented as manifesting, and various other circumstances of their history. Is it credible, that a mere disease should be said to have addressed Christ in such language as the following: "What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?" Comp. Matt. viii. ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... Sing, driven out by intolerance from the continent, probably sought shelter on the islands that surround Bombay, would hardly sustain critical analysis. Elephanta and Salsetta are quite near to Bombay, two and five miles distant respectively, and they are full of ancient Hindu temples. Is it credible, then, that the Brahmans, at the culminating point of their power, just before the Mussulman invasions, fanatical as they were, and mortal enemies of the Buddhists, would allow these hated heretics to build temples within their possessions in general and on Gharipuri ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... teeth that he understood. But he did not seem interested. What he expected of me was to extricate him from a difficult situation. I don't know how far credible this may sound, to less solemn married couples, but to remain at variance with his wife seemed to him a considerable incident. Almost ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... long line of extraordinary fiction, with California for a background, which California has produced. California though is the despair of fiction writers. It offers so many epochs; such a mixture of nationalities; so many and such violently contrasted atmospheres, that it is difficult to make it credible. The gold rush... the pioneers... the Vigilantes ... the Sand Lot days... San Francisco before the fire... the period of reconstruction. As for the drama lying submerged everywhere in the labor movement... the novelists have not even ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... The earth must nourish the seed, the sun must warm it, the rain must moisten it, and man must have the strength to cultivate it, and the organs to eat it, and the stomach to digest it, and the blood-vessels to circulate it, and so on. Is it credible that all these things should ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... is like a piano" is a query that a person of sensibility would be slow to propose; but that in an educated community an individual could be found to answer it in these words,—"Because it smell odious," quasi, it's melodious,—is not credible, but too true. I can ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... I was "not going to be put upon." Very soon I found that he was not only a kind-hearted but a very able man. He had begun life, at the age of six, in a cotton factory. The statement to-day is hardly credible, but such is the fact. In those cruel times, when no Lord Ashley had as yet arisen to open the door of the workman's prison-house and set the children free, this poor child had been shut up from six in the morning till six ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... 1: Unbelievers are in ignorance of things that are of faith, for neither do they see or know them in themselves, nor do they know them to be credible. The faithful, on the other hand, know them, not as by demonstration, but by the light of faith which makes them see that they ought to believe them, as stated above (A. 4, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... in a mood of discovery. She sat in the room that was all furnished in pink (her favourite colour) and read a bitter, malicious, coarsely written and yet insidiously credible account of her husband's business methods. Something within herself seemed to answer, "But didn't you know this all along?" That large conviction that her wealth and position were but the culmination of a great and honourable social service, a conviction that had been her tacit ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... wounded him in the hand. Still the enemy fought on fiercely; surprising feats of personal prowess were displayed. Four or five of the foe fell beneath the iron hand of Fitzgerald, whose matchless strength renders credible the wildest tales of the days of chivalry. McMurdo was engaged in three successive hand-to-hand combats, his opponents having the advantage of shields to aid their swordsmanship. He killed two in succession, ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... credible to them, or even conceivable, that the whole forest region to which they belonged, containing many orders of trees differing altogether from their own tree system, besides plants and shrubs, and flowers and herbs (forms of vegetation of whose ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... could shake from them; that it has no solid foundation in the nature of things; and to a healthy human heart no credibility whatever. Permit me to say, only to hearts long drowned in dead Tradition, and for themselves neither believing nor disbelieving, could this seem credible. Think, and ask yourselves, in spite of all this preaching and perorating from the teeth outward! Hearts that are quite strangers to eternal Fact, and acquainted only at all hours with temporary Semblances parading about in a prosperous ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... Moluccas were well disciplined, and much better provided with artillery than we who attacked them. The heathen sovereigns were the kings of Bisnagar, Orixa, Bengal, Pegu, Siam, and China, all very powerful, but chiefly the last, so that it is difficult to express and scarcely credible the prodigious extent of his power. Siam extends above 500 leagues, and has seven subject kingdoms, which are Cambodia, Como, Lanchaam, Cheneray, Chencran, Chiamay, Canibarii, and Chaypumo. The king of Siam has 30,000 elephants, 3000 of which are armed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... her at work again early in the morning. Within a week or so he might be living in this house with this girl. He would be,—watching her life! Seducing prospect, scarcely credible! He remembered having heard when he first went to Lucas & Enwright's that ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... sides diminish somewhat the credit due to any particular imputation, they prove sufficiently the prevalence of that detestable practice in Scotland, and may in that view serve to render such rumors the more credible. This man had of late acquired the favor and entire confidence of Mary; and all her measures were directed by his advice and authority. Reports were spread of more particular intimacies between them; and these reports gained ground from the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... is to be Utopian, to make vivid and credible, if we can, first this facet and then that, of an imaginary whole and happy world. Our deliberate intention is to be not, indeed, impossible, but most distinctly impracticable, by every scale that reaches only between to-day and to-morrow. We are to turn our backs for a space upon the ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... powerful resolution to extricate myself from the bewitching influence which had surrounded me, I arose, and went straightway to the parlor. Could it be that a flash of pleasure beamed on Miss Tarlingford's face? or was I a deluded gosling? The latter suggestion seemed the more credible, so I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... course, some things that await a future time for their accomplishment, but what place would be really enjoyable if there were not certain corrections and additions over which the owners could daydream and plan. We admit the figures just quoted are so low as to seem hardly credible, but they demonstrate what could be accomplished within fifty miles of New York during the summer of 1935. The contributing causes for this happy result were that these people knew what they wanted, hunted ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... made a practice of indulging in an hour or two's fishing whenever the opportunity offered. It was this practice that led to an occurrence which was destined to culminate in an adventure so startling and extraordinary as to be scarcely credible in these prosaic twentieth- ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... satisfaction I feel in being useful to others, I have resolved to take up my pen, and inform those, who, for want of conversing with me, are strangers to what those know and see, with whom I have the pleasure of being acquainted. But, as certain things may appear, to some persons, scarce credible, nay impossible, though actually fact, I shall not fail to relate them for the benefit of the public. Wherefore, I say, being (God be praised) arrived at my ninety-fifth year, and still finding myself sound ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro
... what there is incredible about it. If the handwriting can be identified as that of the late Captain Rushton, and Robert says both his mother and himself recognized it, the story becomes credible and ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... age when a woman's beauty is at its prime, and she was also of the best judgment. So she furnished herself with a world of gifts, stores of gold and silver, and of riches and other sumptuous ornaments as is credible she might bring from so great a house and from so wealthy and rich a realm as Egypt. But yet she carried nothing with her wherein she trusted more than herself, and in the charms and enchantment of her ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... character, without honor and without any notion of duty. They are simply poor feeble creatures incapable of resisting masculine proposals. With good psychological training they would often become better women, active, devoted and full of life. It seems hardly credible, but it is true, that one sometimes finds in this category women who are highly gifted. It is then said that they are wanting in moral sense, but this is not always correct. In other respects they may be faithful to their duty, devoted, sometimes even ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... the best tea I have ever tasted! They are very cunning brewers and sagacious buyers too; their maxims show them to direct all their acuteness upon obtaining quality for their money. A compliment not backed by silver is hardly intelligible to the pretty ones: money is a really credible thing to them; and when they have it, they know how to use it. Apparently because they know so well, so perfectly appreciating it, they have only vague ideas of a corresponding sentiment on the opposite side to the bargain, and imagine that they fool people ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with the captain. The second day his knowledge of currents, coasts and the route of treasure-ships made him first mate; then he won the sailors over, put the captain in irons, and ruled the ship like a king; soon after, he sailed the ship as a prize into a Roman port. If this incident is credible, a youth who in four days can talk the chains off his wrists, talk himself into the captaincy, talk a pirate ship into his own hands as booty, is not to be accounted for by his eloquent words. His speech was but a tithe of his ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... book fills a gap about just how boy seamen were trained at the end of the nineteenth century. From first to last it is very credible, and also very readable. It was not very easy to transcribe, because the boys we meet come from a variety of country places, and hence have a variety of dialects. In particular one of the boys has a strong Irish brogue, and another has ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... Critias, that in several of the examples which have been recited the notion of a relation to self is altogether inadmissible, and in other cases hardly credible—inadmissible, for example, in the case of magnitudes, ...
— Charmides • Plato
... fired by an officer of the Federal guard from the foot of the Place Vendome, thus giving the signal to those under his orders to fire upon the citizens, improbable as appears such an excess of cold-blooded barbarity, is much the more credible. And now how many women mourn their husbands and son's wounded, and perhaps dead? How many victims have fallen? The number is not yet known. Monsieur Barle, a lieutenant of the National Guard, was shot in the stomach. Monsieur Gaston Jollivet, who some ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... cohort, to secure his conquest, and that he should sit down contented with an empty glory and the tribute of an indigent people, without any proper means of securing a continuance of that small acquisition? This is not credible. But his conduct here, as well as in Germany, discovers his purpose in both expeditions: for by them he confirmed the Roman dominion in Gaul, he gained time to mature his designs, and he afforded his party in Rome an opportunity ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... following up. It is scarcely credible, but that the species are really different; or if not, the variety in the length will considerably diminish the value of the length of canal as a principle of ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... I often think about you and Mr. Gilray and the rest and the Arcadia Mixture, and I beg to state that my mother will have informed you I am well and happy but a little overworked, as I am desirous of pleasing my preceptor by obtaining a credible position in the exams, and we breakfast at 7:30 sharp. I suppose you are to give me a six-shilling thing again as a Christmas present, so I drop you a line not to buy something I don't want, as it is only thirty-nine ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... countenance and genial smile, stepped forward to receive him. Mr. Jacks was member for the Penistone Division of the West Riding; new to Parliament, having entered with the triumphant Liberals in the January of this year 1886. His friends believed, and it seemed credible, that he had sought election to please the lady whom, as a widower of twenty years' endurance, he had wedded only a short time before; politics interested him but moderately, and the greater part of his life had been devoted ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... Jesuits, parting with them, it is said, on good terms, and with a reputation of excellent acquirements and unimpeachable morals. This last is very credible. The cravings of a deep ambition, the hunger of an insatiable intellect, the intense longing for action and achievement subdued in him all other passions; and in his faults, the love of pleasure had no part. He had an elder brother in Canada, the Abbe Jean Cavelier, a priest of ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... appealed to the effete Victorian composers, but in plums. And, mind you, not Carlsbad, but honest Worcestershire plums, without any Teutonic taint. Mr. JULIUS HARRISON'S patriotic example is not likely to be lost on his brother composers. Indeed it is asserted on credible authority that Mr. GRANVILLE BANTOCK, who has completely forsworn all Oriental and exotic subjects, is engaged on a gigantic symphony, with choral interludes, entitled "Yorkshire Pudding;" and that Mr. JOSEF HOLBROOKE is collaborating with Lord HOWARD DE WALDEN in a romantic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... spiritualism, the stigmata, etc. He was a devout Roman Catholic, and the so-called facts that he reasons on seem to me quite amazing; and yet the possibilities that lie between inert matter and man's living, all-powerful, immortal soul may make almost anything credible. The soul at times can do anything with matter. I have been busying myself with Sainte-Beuve's seven volumes on the Port Royal development. I like him (Sainte-Beuve). His capacity of seeing, doing justice to all kinds of natures and sentiments, is wonderful. I am sorry he is no longer ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... addressing their men in the manner of a lady with a pet canary. Had Bligh's language been the head and front of his offending, he would hardly have shocked an eighteenth century fo'c'sle. But his disposition does not seem to have bound men to him. He generated dislike. Nevertheless it is credible that the explanation which he gave goes far to explain the mutiny. He held that the real cause was a species of sensuous intoxication which had ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... Arabs, speak the Arab language, and have preserved up to the present day all the characteristics of their race. A roving Bedouin of the Yemen and a Beni Amer are so much alike that it seems hardly credible that the Beni Amers possess no record of their advent on the African coast, or of the causes that induced them to leave the land of their ancestors. Their long, black, silky hair has not acquired the woolly texture of that of the ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... very hard; the rains hindering me many days, nay, sometimes weeks together: but I thought I should never be perfectly secure till this wall was finished; and it is scarce credible what inexpressible labour every thing was done with, especially the bringing piles out of the woods, and driving them into the ground; for I made them much bigger than ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... produced by this display of eclectic affinities so pronounced that even the world's most ruthless war could not impair them was considerable. And it would have been heightened if the alleged and credible fact had also been divulged that the diplomatic instrument was ratified when Italy had already decided upon war with Austria-Hungary. Between Italy and Germany stands a bridge which both peoples are ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... picture arose of a secret temple in the shadow of the distant Himalayas. Was it credible that this quiet country house, so typical of rural England, harboured that same dread secret which he had believed to be locked away in those Indian hills? Could he believe that the dark and death-dealing power which he ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... itself, he is at a loss to know what would. Certainly, he would not attempt the task himself. In addition to the well-known biographies, traditions and memoranda attest the fact beyond the possibility of enlightened doubt. Other credible and corroborative records are not wanting. "Had the question," he concludes, "been asked of Dr. Livingstone by some savage in the depths of the African jungles, it would not have been surprising; but to come from a writer ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... The young and adventurous supplied better and more willing material than those already habituated to the careless life of the streets, or already engaged in some settled occupation: and, although it is scarcely credible that boys under the age of eighteen were forced to enlist, they were certainly permitted and perhaps encouraged to join the ranks. The law of Gracchus forbade the enlistment of a recruit at an age earlier than the completion of the seventeenth year.[613] These military measures, ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... Nineteenth Century, wherein I discover many things which are decidedly not to my advantage. It would appear that "evasion" is my chief resource, "incapacity for strict argument" and "rottenness of ratiocination" my main mental characteristics, and that it is "barely credible" that a statement which I profess to make of my own knowledge is true. All which things I notice, merely to illustrate the great truth, forced on me by long experience, that it is only from those who enjoy the blessing ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... swears to anything, of course this certificate is valueless, and the presumption of law prevails, viz., "that all property found under the enemy's flag is enemy's property," until the contrary be shown by competent and credible testimony under oath, duly certified to by a Consul or another officer. Ship ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... standing with my eyes upon the little group of fanciful fanes and spires of ice on the edge of the abrupt hollow. I had been too preoccupied to take close notice; on a sudden I started, amazed by an appearance too exquisitely perfect to be credible. The sun shone with a fine white frosty brilliance in the north-east; some of these spikes and figures of ice reflected the radiance in several colours. In places where they were wind-swept of their snow and showed the naked ice, the hues were wondrously splendid, ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... Commissioners' Report, says: "Even this vast sum does not represent more than the one half of the total sent home. Much was brought over by captains of ships, by relatives, friends, or by returning emigrants." No doubt, a great deal of money came through private channels, but it is hardly credible, that another sixteen or seventeen millions reached Ireland in that way. It is only guess-work, to be sure, but if we add one-fourth to the sum named in the Report, as the amount transmitted by private hand, it will probably bring us much nearer the truth. This addition ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... that the day and the mountains were parts of one complete whole. The morning itself was a new birth of nature, full of promise and prophecy; one of those hours in which only the greatest and noblest things are credible, in which one rejects unfaith and doubt and all lesser and meaner things as dreams of a night from which there has come an eternal awakening; a day such as Emerson had in thought when he wrote: "The scholar must look long for ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... farming, fur-trading, and many other sources of livelihood, but, up to the last news of them, without success. There was hope of them yet, however, so thought Baldwin Burr, because of the latest remarks made by them in the hearing of credible witnesses. Bob Corkey, having attained to the lowest depths of destitution and despair, had, it was said, made to his comrades the following observation: "Mates, it strikes me that we are three great fools;" whereupon Bounce had replied, "We're more than that ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... round it, should be at bottom and in all cardinal respects so faithful a transcript of "the truth as it is in Nature" came as a surprise and to me at least as a rebuke. How, under the rigid necessity of incorporating in its system much that seemed nearly unintelligible, and much that was barely credible, Theology has succeeded so perfectly in adhering through good report and ill to what in the main are truly the lines of Nature, awakens a new admiration for those who constructed and kept this faith. But however nobly it has held its ground, Theology must feel to-day that the modern world calls ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... of my walks about the wharves, I found a pile of dry hides lying by the side of a vessel. Here was something to feelingly persuade me what I had been, to recall a past scarce credible to myself. I stood lost in reflection. What were these hides—what were they not?—to us, to me, a boy, twenty-four years ago? These were our constant labor, our chief object, our almost habitual thought. They brought ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... been seized by force should be restored to their rightful owners, and that all castles which had been erected since the death of Henry I should be destroyed, and the number of these was noted at the time as 1115, though a more credible statement gives the number as 375. The treaty between the two which had no doubt preceded these ceremonies in the council contained other provisions. Stephen promised to regard Henry as a son—possibly he formally adopted him—and to rule England by his ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... generally was when it developed that sad theme; and mindful of Helen's warnings against the indulgence of resentment, I infused into the narrative far less of gall and wormwood than ordinary. Thus restrained and simplified, it sounded more credible: I felt as I went on that Miss Temple ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... in the inner doorway of the lodges of the old Egyptian Brotherhood, "the laborer is worthy of his hire." "Ask and ye shall have," sounds like something too easy and simple to be credible. But the disciple cannot "ask" in the mystic sense in which the word is used in this scripture until he has attained ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... it was listened to with interest, Harry perceived that it was not really believed. That they had been hunting, had been attacked by Indians, had made canoes and passed through some of the canons was credible enough, but that they should have traversed the whole of the lower course of the Colorado, seemed to the traders, who were all men experienced in the country, simply incredible. The party stopped at Santa Fe a few days, and then started north, travelling through the Mexican villages, and ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... all he had said, she scarcely dared to utter the words lest, after all, she might be taking for granted more than it was credible could be true. "Can you mean that if I stayed here with you it would make Temple Barholm seem more like HOME? Is it possible you—you ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... for the sake of the beauty of the vines that have overrun them. Many people imagine that falsehoods may become respectable on account of age, that a certain reverence goes with antiquity, and that if a mistake is covered with the moss of sentiment it is altogether more credible than a parvenu fact. They endeavor to introduce the idea of aristocracy into the world of thought, believing, and honestly believing, that a falsehood long believed is far superior to a truth that ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... for possibilities which renders it of far less account. Thus Diodorus of Sicily relates that one Abaris travelled round the world on an arrow of gold, and Cassiodorus and Glycas and their like told of mechanical birds that flew and sang and even laid eggs. More credible is the story of Aulus Gellius, who in his Attic Nights tells how Archytas, four centuries prior to the opening of the Christian era, made a wooden pigeon that actually flew by means of a mechanism of balancing weights and the breath of a mysterious spirit hidden within it. There may yet arise one ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... given at the present trial, beginning with the malice and interested motives of Dockwrath. Against three of them only was it needful that he should allege anything, seeing that the statements made by the others were in no way injurious to Lady Mason,—if the statements made by those three were not credible. Torrington, for instance, had proved that other deed; but what of that, if on the fatal 14th of July Sir Joseph Mason had executed two deeds? As to Dockwrath,—that his conduct had been interested and malicious there could ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... and what would be scarcely credible upon any single evidence, is, that the scars of wounds which had been for many years healed were forced open again by this virulent distemper. Of this there was a remarkable instance in one of the invalids on board the Centurion, who ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... Then, pretending to be a deaf-mute, he would go among them to learn something of their customs and pick up the language. When he had done that, he would move on to another tribe or village, able to tell a credible story for himself. For a while, it would be necessary for him to do menial work, but in the end, he would establish himself among these people. Then he could gather around him a faction of those who were dissatisfied with whatever conditions ...
— Flight From Tomorrow • Henry Beam Piper
... poetic symbol, a beautiful artifice employed by the poets to perpetuate a legend by associating it with the imperishable hieroglyphs of the galaxy. It is not credible that men imagined that group of stars only outlined in such shape by the help of arbitrary fancy to be literally the translated hunter himself. The meaning simply was that he was immortalized through the eternal linking of his name and form with a stellar cluster which would always ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the balloon, that I was an English Milord, and Arowhena a Russian Countess; that all the others had been drowned, and that the despatches which we had carried were lost. I came afterwards to learn that this story would not have been credible, had not the captain been for some weeks at sea, for I found that when we were picked up, the Germans had already long been masters of Paris. As it was, the captain settled the whole story for me, ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... five or six score people, if each person in it could speak for his own generation, would carry us away to the black unknown of the human species, {54} to days without a document or monument to tell their tale. Is it credible that such a mushroom knowledge, such a growth overnight as this, can represent more than the minutest glimpse of what the universe will really prove to be when adequately understood? No! our science is a drop, our ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... name is an English one, and 'tis scarce credible that in America, where our tongue is unknown, any region can be named ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... there it is. And, as if to make the thing less credible, you talk of his 'Bill for the Better Recovery of Small Debts.' I'm sure, O'Malley, your last moments were not employed ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... and physical properties of the elements were known to be periodic functions of their atomic weights, the idea of a common origin and common substance became much more credible. Differences in atomic weight and differences in properties alike might reasonably be explained by the differences in the amount of the primordial substance present in the various atoms; an atom of oxygen being supposed to be composed ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... the adjacent charnel-house.[20] His name, often written with a hyphen, indicates that he came of English fighting stock. When the Sonnets were written he was in the full tide of success. It is not credible that such a man at thirty or thirty-five, of buoyant and abounding life, could have so bewailed the ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... the words portend that he uttereth at dawn. Some say that he greets the sun as one god greets another in the language thereof, and others say that he proclaims the day, and others that he uttereth warning. And at every gate is a marvel not credible until beholden.' ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... leaden vessel filled with water; take the ashes of that wood, and boyle it with the patient's urine; then lay nine long heaps of the boyled ashes upon a board in a ranke, and upon every heap lay nine spears of crocus: it hath greater effects than is credible to any one that shall barely read ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... charm, confessing his willingness for evil courses as readily as his later repentance, is no less striking a personality. By sheer imagination the genius of Defoe makes Singleton's adventures, including the impossible journey across Central Africa, real and credible. The book is a model ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... in this desultory warfare, notably by the wind-mill at the Saint-Denys Gate and in the village of La Chapelle. "Every day there was booty taken," says Messire Jean de Bueil.[1724] It seems hardly credible that in a country which had been plundered and ravaged over and over again, there should have been anything left to be taken; and yet the statement is made and attested by one of the ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... aboundance of perles, which as they declared unto us they tooke oute of oysters, whereof there is taken ever alonge the rivers side and amongest the reedes and in the marishes, in so marvelous aboundance as it is scante credible. And wee have perceaved that there be as many and as greate perles found there as in any contrie in the worlde. (M223) In the seaventh leafe it followeth thus: The scituation is under 30. degrees, a good clymate, healthfull, and of goodd temperature, marvelous pleasaunte, the people goodd ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... adventure of arms, to the tragedy that blotted him out of a scheme that had misused and ruined him, the record moves with a dreadful singleness of intent. Sometimes, one at least hopes, the shadows may have been artificially darkened. It seems even to-day hardly credible that events should conspire to such futility of error. But as a story with a purpose, not, in spite of the publisher's description, a novel, The Secret Battle certainly deserves the epithet "striking." It is a blow ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... are similarly borne with. The young Ruffians of London—not Thieves yet, but training for scholarships and fellowships in the Criminal Court Universities— molest quiet people and their property, to an extent that is hardly credible. The throwing of stones in the streets has become a dangerous and destructive offence, which surely could have got to no greater height though we had had no Police but our own riding- whips and walking-sticks—the ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... influences and ways of acting, and to work as near as 'tis possible incognito; upon which supposal it is easy to conceive a reason why they most commonly work by and upon the weak and the ignorant, who can make no cunning observations or tell credible tales to detect their artifice.'[46] The act of bewitching is defined to be 'a supernatural work contrived between a corporal old woman and a spiritual devil' ('Discoverie,' vi. 2). The method of initiation is, according to ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... this high and mighty talk, which would have been indecent in one of Mr. Darwin's equals, proceeds from a writer whose want of intelligence, or of conscience, or of both, is so great, that, by way of an objection to Mr. Darwin's views, he can ask, "Is it credible that all favourable varieties of turnips are tending to become men;" who is so ignorant of paleontology, that he can talk of the "flowers and fruits" of the plants of the carboniferous epoch; of comparative ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... with a rare and vivid feeling of exhilaration. For the time he told himself that he wanted her more than he remembered ever to have wanted anything in his whole life; and his sated emotion of a man of pleasure, responded with all the lost intensity of youth. Was it credible that he was already middle-aged—was already growing a little bald? he demanded, with a genuine delight in the discovery that his ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... forces. We may suppose that the "Fishing Admirals," authorized by the Star Chamber and confirmed in their authority by 10 and 11 William III., c. 25, had already asserted a de facto jurisdiction on the spot, for it is hardly credible that the mere wantonness of legislative invention can have produced such a tribunal. To anticipate for a moment: the Act provided that the master of the first ship arriving from England with the season should be admiral of the harbour; to the masters of the second ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... chamber, because Mr. Gough's account seems to date the style of the painting earlier than -will serve my hypothesis. I had no data to go upon but the site having belonged to the family of Tufton (for I do not think the description at all answers to the taking of Francis I., nor is it at all credible that there should be arms in the painting, and yet neither those of France or Austria). I turned immediately to Lord Thanet's pedigree, in Collins's Peerage, and found at once an heroic adventure performed by one of the family, that ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... assertion," said he, "before God and before this jury. To make it seem a credible one I shall have to tell my own story from the beginning. Am I allowed to do ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... Bresl. Edit. "the place is full of Jinns and Marids." I have said that this supernatural agency, ever at hand and ever credible to Easterns, makes this the most satisfactory version of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... grades of incarnation: the most thorough kind is that illustrated by our bodies; in them we are incarnate, but probably not even in that case is the incarnation complete. It is quite credible that our whole and entire ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... except their genius; but they fulfilled their purpose. The wrecks and fragments of their subtle and profound minds obscurely suggest to us the grandeur and perfection of the whole. Their language excels every other tongue of the Western world; their sculptures baffle all subsequent artists; credible witnesses assure us that their paintings were not inferior; and we are only accustomed to consider the painters of Italy as those who have brought the art to its highest perfection, because none of the ancient pictures have been preserved. ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... raw. On board the ship no flour, oatmeal, and things of like nature, suited to the condition of infirm people, were allowed to the many sick, nothing but ship-bread, beef, and pork. This is the account given by a number of prisoners, who are credible persons, and this is but a part of their sufferings; so that the excuse made by the enemy that the prisoners were emaciated and died by contagious sickness, which no one could prevent, is futile. It requires no great sagacity to know that crowding people together without fresh air, ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... monkish manuscript goes on to relate cures of various diseases performed on man and beast, personal apparitions, "judgements" falling on scoffers, accounts of the dead restored to life and many other marvels credible or incredible according to the inclination of the reader. One of the "judgements" may be given as an example, showing, by the way, the manners of some of the clergy of ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... changed to satisfaction. Evidently her straightforward mind accepted the story as perfectly credible. Marcella, with bitterness, knew herself far from comely enough to suggest perils. She looked old enough for the part she was playing, and the glove upon her hand might ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... portending a storm. These brief, stammering illuminations brought out with ghastly distinctness the monuments and headstones of the cemetery and seemed to set them dancing. It was not a night in which any credible witness was likely to be straying about a cemetery, so the three men who were there, digging into the grave of Henry ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... as he was exchanged, Mosby made all haste for Lee's headquarters to report what he had discovered. Lee, remembering Mosby as the man who had scouted ahead of Stuart's Ride Around MacClellan, knew that he had a hot bit of information from a credible source. A dispatch rider was started off at once for Jackson, and Jackson struck Pope at Cedar Mountain before he could be re-enforced. Mosby returned to Stuart's headquarters, losing no time in promoting a pair of .44's to replace the ones ...
— Rebel Raider • H. Beam Piper
... whom I hear denying that the blood, aye, the whole mass of the blood, may pass through the substance of the lungs, even as the nutritive juices percolate the liver, asserting such a proposition to be impossible, and by no means to be entertained as credible, I reply, with the poet, that they are of that race of men who, when they will, assent full readily, and when they will not, by no manner of means; who, when their assent is wanted, fear, and when it is not, fear ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... his beautiful profession of faith in the Prayer to the Divinity, and in the touching "Adieu," which he wrote when he thought he would soon die. At nineteen, giving the list in his memoranda of books already read (a list hardly credible), he says: "With regard to books on religion, I have read Blair, Porteous, Tillotson, Hooker,—all very tiresome. I detest books about religion, but I adore and love my God, apart from the blasphemous notions of sectarians, and without believing in their absurd and damnable heresies, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... down the deserted street. No policeman was in sight. She grudgingly allowed herself to be drawn up the walk, and the music began. The children applauded loudly; and the two were just congratulating themselves on a very credible performance, when the door opened and a woman appeared—a first cousin ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... went to sea in a Hollander, was taken by the Dunkirke; at seaven yeares end stole away in an English botome; after that saw both the Indies; for all this was taken by a Turks man of warre, put into the Gallies, and for ought I heare by credible report ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... extremities of the toes have dilated discs for adhesion, showing the creature to be a true tree frog, it is difficult to imagine that this immense membrane of the toes can be for the purpose of swimming only, and the account of the Chinaman, that it flew down from the tree, becomes more credible. This is, I believe, the first instance known of a "flying frog," and it is very interesting to Darwinians as showing that the variability of the toes which have been already modified for purposes of swimming and adhesive climbing, have been taken advantage of to enable ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... called rooms; yet one of these is believed to have been his study; and in his study, and at his literary enjoyments, he died. Every thing is preserved with a reverential care that does honour to the people; and his chair, like less holy and less credible relics, is inclosed in a wire-frame, to prevent the dilapidations of the curious. I believe these things to be genuine. I believe in the local traditions that point out his study, and his kitchen, and his dying chamber.—Petrarch was all but idolized in his own time, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 469. Saturday January 1, 1831 • Various
... Genius—Genius, the Divine and Beautiful," said a gentleman leaning against the same fireplace with the deformed cavalier in iron-gray, and addressing that individual, who was in fact Mr. Alexander Pope. "What a marvellous gift is this, and royal privilege of Art! To make the Ideal more credible than the Actual: to enchain our hearts, to command our hopes, our regrets, our tears, for a mere brain-born Emanation: to invest with life the Incorporeal, and to glamour the cloudy into substance,—these are the lofty privileges of the Poet, if I have ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... they entered the surf, came out much the worse for wear, and the boat in which Dr. Hastings landed was stove in. Once on shore, life became a succession of wonders, rivaling the tales of Gulliver, and needing the conscientious descriptions of exact scientists to make them credible. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... do was to keep one or two natives, with barrows, removing the sand and gravel as soon as these had been sifted and sorted. But for those such as ourselves, whose claims lay more or less in the centre of the mine, the problem was a very different one. It sounds hardly credible, but after consultation we came to the conclusion that it would never pay to clear the ground by removing the rubbish, so we solved the problem by filling in the "paddock" we had sunk with the ground excavated therefrom, and opening another alongside. We unanimously decided that the portion ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... Heroes. This is all the rustication I have had, or am like to have. I am now over head and ears in Cromwellian Books; studying, for perhaps the fourth time in my life, to see if it be possible to get any credible face-to-face acquaintance with our English Puritan period; or whether it must be left forever a mere hearsay and echo to one. Books equal in dulness were at no epoch of the world penned by unassisted man. Nevertheless, courage! I have ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... feathers continuing to run in that manner, we did not percieve from whence they came, at length we were surprised by the appearance of a flock of Pillican at rest on a large sand bar attatched to a small Island the number of which would if estimated appear almost in credible; they apeared to cover several acres of ground, and were no doubt engaged in procuring their ordinary food; which is fish, on our approach they flew and left behind them several small fish of about eight inches in length, none of which I had seen before- the Pellican ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... would have left Britain without an army, without a legion, without a single cohort, to secure his conquest, and that he should sit down contented with an empty glory and the tribute of an indigent people, without any proper means of securing a continuance of that small acquisition? This is not credible. But his conduct here, as well as in Germany, discovers his purpose in both expeditions: for by them he confirmed the Roman dominion in Gaul, he gained time to mature his designs, and he afforded his party in Rome an opportunity of promoting his interest and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... correspondence between perceptions and the objects perceived. He saved himself, however, from absolute scepticism by the doctrine of probability or verisimilitude, which may serve as a practical guide in life. Thus his criterion of imagination (fantasia) is that it must be credible, irrefutable and attested by comparison with other impressions; it may be wrong, but for the person concerned it is valid. In ethics he was an avowed sceptic. During his official visit to Rome, he gave public lectures, in which he successively ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... all that Miss Travers had said hung together and seemed eminently credible; but when she was questioned about the chloroform and the handkerchief she became confused. At the outset she admitted that the handkerchief might have been a rag. She was not certain it was a rag. It was something she saw the doctor throw ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Catanach—we must get her to give credible testimony. Whatever the fact may be, we must have strong evidence. And there comes the difficulty, that she has already made an altogether ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... reading the correspondence which is digested in these pages, as hardly credible that Doctor Sturk should have continued to live for so long a space in a state of coma. Upon this point, therefore, I took occasion to ask the most eminent surgeon of my acquaintance, who at once quieted my doubts by detailing a very remarkable case cited by Sir A. Cooper ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... that Christ's body had been reawakened and changed, "a double miracle, exceeding far what had occurred in the case of Enoch and Elijah, could only be credible to one who saw in him a prophet far superior to them"—i.e., to one who notwithstanding his death was persuaded that he was the Messiah: "this conviction" (that a double miracle had been performed) "was the first to which the Apostles had to attain in the days of their humiliation after ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... South. Imprisonment indefinitely and the probable confiscation of all property would no doubt be the sentence if, as in this suspected case, the traitoress were a Southern woman of means. But that seems scarcely credible. I have heard of the affair mentioned, but I refuse to believe any daughter of the South would so ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... whiche chiefly thei builded to that purpose. Whereby thei not onely made their Souldiours so experte, that thei obtained with a fewe, in faightyng againste a greate houge multitude of enemies, soche marveilous victories, as in many credible Histories are mencioned, but also by the same meanes, their unarmed and rascalle people that followed their Campes, gotte soche understandyng in the feates of warre, that thei in the daie of battaile, ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... Johnson should in after years complacently refer to this character of himself and 'traits in it which time has not yet altered, that egotism and self-applause which he is still displaying, yet it would seem with a conscious smile,' is scarcely credible were it ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... of the future Bishop STUBBS, scared away his host's rustic congregation by leaning upon the garden-gate one Sunday morning, looking, with his red-gold hair and scarlet dressing-gown, like some "flaming apparition." The other, less picturesque but more credible, has also a bishop in it, and concerns an untimely recitation of Les Noyades. I will leave you to find this for yourself in a book that forms at least an interesting, if not altogether final, study ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... a little sight, in a little sight, We learn from what in thee is credible The incredible, with bloody clutch and feet Clinging the painful juts of jagg-ed faith. Science, old noser in its prideful straw, That with anatomising scalpel tents Its three-inch of thy skin, and brags—'All's bare,' The eyeless worm, ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... modifications of expression. While between the old monotonous dance-chant and a grand opera of our own day, with its endless orchestral complexities and vocal combinations, the contrast in heterogeneity is so extreme that it seems scarcely credible that the one should have been the ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... obliged to eat it half raw. On board the ship no flour, oatmeal, and things of like nature, suited to the condition of infirm people, were allowed to the many sick, nothing but ship-bread, beef, and pork. This is the account given by a number of prisoners, who are credible persons, and this is but a part of their sufferings; so that the excuse made by the enemy that the prisoners were emaciated and died by contagious sickness, which no one could prevent, is futile. It requires no great sagacity ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... have no finger in national affairs, which should be settled by the home authorities without reference to him. No doubt, he told himself, a readjustment was needed—visions and fancies had encrusted themselves so quickly round the religion credible by a practical man that a scouring was called for. How if this should be the method by which not only such accretions should be done away, but yet more practical matters should be arranged, and steps taken to amend the unwarranted ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... yon, of what had bound it. It is a better; for its patrial sky Fitter than yon. I feel—I'm conscious of it, With this I now begin to think, as here My father must have thought; if tales of him Have not been told untruly. Tales—why tales? They're credible—more credible than ever - Now that I'm on the brink of stumbling, where He fell. He fell? I'd rather fall with men, Than stand with children. His example pledges His approbation, and whose approbation Have I else need of? Nathan's? Surely of his Encouragement, ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... to Thomas Cromwell, empowering him to hold a general visitation of all churches, monasteries, and collegiate bodies. The evidence gathered of the shocking disorders obtaining in the cloisters of both sexes is on the whole credible and well substantiated. Nevertheless these disorders furnished rather the pretext than the real reason for the dissolutions that followed. Cromwell boasted that he would make his king the richest in Christendom, and this ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... be "lived" rather than "known"—or, if any one prefers the term, "realized"—by an organism which is without any psychical accompaniment whatever of the human type, is a fact which I find credible. But when Rolf speaks to me of the origin of the soul, or makes up poetry; when Lola complains to me of honour lost, etc., the thing is not credible to me in any way except by paying attention to nothing except ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... their beliefs, but only argued Dull, cold self-absorption Gift of waiting for things to happen He's so resting Life alone is credible to the young Morbid egotism Motives lie nearer the surface than most people commonly pretend Real artistocracy is above social prejudice Singleness of a nature that was all pose Submitted, as people always do with the trials of others Sunny gayety of self-forgetfulness Understood when I've ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... Monks and minstrels vied with each other in the invention of lying legends to adorn the lives of heroes and saints. All classes of the community shared in the general delusion, and the supernatural seemed more credible than the natural. In tracing the progress of learning, in England, I propose, during the remainder of the present paper to discuss one inconsiderable yet important element of modern civilization, which is often entirely overlooked. I ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... progress? It is a state difficult to believe. Could I have listened with an ear of credulity to the tale of Thompson—could I have borne to listen to it with patience, had I not witnessed an act of turpitude that ocular demonstration could only render credible—had I not been prepared for that act by the tone, the manner, the expressions of the minister, when we passed an hour together, ignorant of each other's presence? It was a dreadful conviction that was forced upon me, and as wonderful as terrible. Self-delusion, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... with a besom at the munificent salary of 36s. 4d. a year! Over the seventy years that have intervened, this pioneer of our town improvements stands out clear and notable with his four-penny besom and basket. That he did good honest work with his birch there is credible testimony in the parochial balance sheets of the period, wherein appear frequent entries, at first of 4d. and then of 5d. each, for new besoms, as the value of that commodity advanced with the greater enlightenment and more sweeping ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... to blame, it is not my work to inquire. Some would grasp with gladness the hope that such chance might be proved a fact; others would not care to discern upon the palimpsest, covered but not obliterated, a credible tale of a perfect man revealing a perfect God: they are not true enough to desire that to be fact which would immediately demand the modelling of their lives upon a perfect idea, and the founding of their ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... Shumse ad Deen being recovered from his fit by the aid of his daughter, and the women she called to her assistance; "Daughter," said he, "do not alarm yourself at this accident, occasioned by what is scarcely credible. Your bridegroom is your cousin, the son of my beloved and deceased brother. The thousand sequins in the bag reminds me of a quarrel I had with him, and is without the dowry he gives you. God be praised for all things, and particularly for this miraculous ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... It appears quite credible, therefore, that a "fluid" of some sort does exist, and that its liberation, under certain peculiar conditions, should produce odd physical phenomena; and this conviction has been rendered almost a certainty by the unique ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... at one time, and of graciously returning it to the Franks before he sailed away to conquer Mordred and to meet his own death upon the Isle of Avalon. All of these tales we may believe or not as we please, for Touraine is full of ancient legends, more or less credible, and especially rich in those pertaining to Caesar and his conquests, and of the beloved St. Martin's miraculous success in destroying the conqueror's towns, landmarks, and ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... left a description of the scene that time he first beheld the Flor de Majo. The church was hung with garlands of it, he says, and such emotions seized him at the view that he choked. The statement is quite credible. Those who see that wonder now, prepared for its transcendent glory, find no words to express their feeling: imagine an enthusiast beholding it for the first time, unwarned, unsuspecting that earth can show such a sample of the flowers that bloomed in Eden! And not a single branch, but garlands ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... not understood as it is with us. A man here and there might attend to his money, as did Atticus. Cicero did not; and therefore, when in want of it, he had to apply to a friend for relief. But he always applies as one who knows well that the trouble is not enduring. Is it credible that a man so circumstanced should have remained with those various sources of extravagance which it would have been easy for him to have avoided or lessened? We are led to the conviction that at no time was it expedient to him to abandon ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... said the stranger; "and yet who knows? That inscription certainly is Hebrew. At least, it is neither English nor German. When one has studied psychic phenomena as long as I have, he comes to a point where he is very chary of saying what is not credible. Do I not, time and again, materialize the dead, calling from the winds, the waters, and the earth the dispersed particles of the corporeal frame to reclothe for a little time the spiritual essence? Could not the great Solomon do as ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... could not but wonder if Marsh were really the sort of man he had been painted; or if, as might appear sufficiently credible, he had been maligned through Cherry's prejudice and George Balt's hatred. To-night he seemed the most kindly and courteous ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... Sir M. de Bunsen's credible testimony is further confirmed by the fact that the British Ambassador at Berlin in his letter of July 22d, to Sir Edward Grey, states that on the preceding night (July 21st) he had met the German Secretary ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... determination to depart hence home immediately, lest, if present, I may be affected by the contagion of any word or deed." Having said this, he departed. When the consuls laid before the senate the matter, doubtful with respect to proof, though from credible authority, the authority more than the thing itself, as usually happens, urged them to adopt even needless precautions; and a decree of the senate being passed, that the Volscians should quit the city, criers are sent in different directions to order them all to depart before night. A great ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... that this calculation is founded on the numbers found in a garden, and Hensen believes that worms are here twice as numerous as in corn-fields. The above result, astonishing though it be, seems to me credible, judging from the number of worms which I have sometimes seen, and from the number daily destroyed by birds without the species being exterminated. Some barrels of bad ale were left on Mr. Miller's land, in the hope of making vinegar, but the vinegar proved bad, ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... believe this history, as very conformable to the Holy Scripture, and whereof I can have no doubt without wronging truth and wounding my own conscience, which ought readily to yield assent unto that which is attested by so many and so credible witnesses and confirmed by such ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... second time, lest one should thus incur an impediment to the episcopate or holy orders. But this would not be lawful in things necessary for salvation. Hence the Blessed Mark did not act against a precept by cutting off his finger, although it is credible that he did this by the instigation of the Holy Ghost, without which it would be unlawful for anyone to lay hands on himself. If a man take a vow not to accept the bishop's office, and by this intend to bind himself not even to accept it in obedience to his superior prelate, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... we to believe?" he said, turning to the jury. "The latter one, the prosecution says. But why, I ask? Because it tallies with the statement extorted from Hill by the police under the threat of charging him with the murder. Does that make it more credible? Is a man like Hill, who is placed in that position, likely to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? It is an insult to the jury as men of intelligence to ask you to believe Hill's evidence. I do not ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... irrevocability of certain ghastly sentences, came over me in a flash, together with the certainty that, however earnestly I might deny, swear, take solemn oaths on family Bibles, nothing, nothing, not even a voice from heaven, much less that of a rural dean still on earth, could make my innocence credible. ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... matter, determined that the poor man's money should be put between two empty dishes, and the cook should be recompensed with the jingling of the poor man's money, as he was satisfied with the smell of the cook's meat." This is affirmed by credible writers as no fable, but an undoubted truth.—FULLER'S Holy State, lib. ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... of these kind ladies, and of many that subsequently followed their example, were badly needed, for the typhoid fiend was rampant—carrying off the young, and apparently strong, men at a rate too tremendous to be credible. Funerals were too common to call for even passing notice. "Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung," they went to ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... difficult of explanation. It did not seem impossible that the various types of domesticated cattle should have descended from a common ancestor. It did not seem difficult of comprehension that the dog might once have been a wolf. Though not quite so credible, it did not seem absurd that the tigers, lions, and leopards should have once all been alike. The resemblance between these are strong enough to make the idea seem conceivable. Though men were willing to concede this much, they insisted that the great branches of the animal kingdom varied ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... good nature, satisfied, apparently, if he could only enjoy the pleasures of dissipation and vice, and continue, in his palaces, a perpetual round of reckless merriment and fun. Some of the stories which are gravely told by the historians of the day are scarcely credible. For instance, it is said that a thief one day found his way, in the guise of a gentleman, into one of the royal drawing rooms, and contrived to get a gold snuff box out of the pocket of one of the noblemen ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... live with him. There have been hints in abundance, and shrugs and shakings of the head, and "Well, well, we know," and "We could if we would," and "If we list to speak," and "There be that might an they list." But we are not aware that there is before the world, substantiated by credible, or even by tangible evidence, a single fact indicating that Lord Byron was more to blame than any other man who is on bad terms with his wife. The professional men whom Lady Byron consulted were undoubtedly of the opinion that she ought not to live with her husband. But it is to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... intervention of the super-physical order in the affairs of the physical order. They will be mistaken if they make this inference; they will be mistaken if they suppose that I think miracles in Judaea credible but miracles in France or Flanders incredible. I hold no such absurdities. But I confess, very frankly, that I credit none of the "Angels of Mons" legends, partly because I see, or think I see, their derivation ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen
... years of age, left without a guide, without means of support, without any one to advise me, and without money, more than a hundred leagues from my home, and already accustomed to the comforts of a luxurious life. It is hardly credible that in this state of affairs I was regarded almost as a suspect, and was required each day to present myself before the city authorities for the greater safety of the Republic. I remember well that whenever the Emperor was pleased to make me relate these tribulations of my childhood, he never ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the fourth charge, the natives were captured in the Cape Colony, where Kritzinger was Chief Commandant. The statement that his authority as such ceased the moment he crossed the Orange River is hardly credible. The natives were shot at Biscuitfontein, where Kritzinger was laagered at the time, and their dead bodies were seen by de Klerk there. Jan Louw is very clear as to who the commandant was. He recognized his ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... Dolly's simple view it verged on the supernatural—perhaps it was the very real star read about in the Gospel story. Why not? Dolly was at the happy age when anything bright and heavenly seemed credible, and had the child-faith to which all things ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... and machinators industriously to hide from us their influences and ways of acting, and to work as near as 'tis possible incognito; upon which supposal it is easy to conceive a reason why they most commonly work by and upon the weak and the ignorant, who can make no cunning observations or tell credible tales to detect their artifice.'[46] The act of bewitching is defined to be 'a supernatural work contrived between a corporal old woman and a spiritual devil' ('Discoverie,' vi. 2). The method of initiation is, according ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... hanging about him. He was being educated largely with Cubans and Mexicans, in those New York days more than half the little flock of the foreign Institutions in general; over whom his easy triumphs, while he wagged his little red head for them, were abundantly credible; reinforced as my special sense of them was moreover by the similar situation of his sister, older than he but also steeped in the exotic medium and also sometimes bringing us queer echoes of the tongues. I remember ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... the Reviewer happily calls "the Goodwin children," probably believed in the efficacy of prayer, and in that alone, to combat and beat down evil spirits and their infernal Prince; and John Goodwin's declaration, that it was not by his advice that he went to the law, is, therefore, entirely credible in itself. The protracted trial, however, patiently persevered in for several long months, when he had every advantage, in his own house, to pray the devil out of the eldest of the children, resulting in her becoming more and more "saucy," insolent, and outrageous, ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... royal Media; to you, noble Taji; to you, Babbalanja;" said the chronicler, with an impressive gesture, "whether this seems a credible history: Yoomy ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the strange state in which she found herself that day, the supernatural itself had seemed credible. And yet—she was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... were mad or no, for if I did drinke without feare as I accustomed to do, it was a signe that I was whole, and in mine Assie wits, where contrary if I did flie and abhorre the tast of the water, it was evident proofe of my madness, which thing he said that he had read in ancient and credible books, whereupon they tooke a bason of cleere water, and presented it before me: but I as soone as I perceived the wholesome water of my life, ran incontinently, thrusting my head into the bason, drank as though I had beene greatly athirst; then they stroked me with ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... Begin with "Great Swingeing Falsehoods". The Opposite Method to be used in telling Ghost Stones. Begin with the more Familiar and Credible. Sleep. Dreams. Ghosts are identical with Waking Dreams. Possibility of being Asleep when we think we are Awake. Dreams shared by several People. Story of the Dog Fanti. The Swithinbank Dream. Common Features of Ghosts and Dreams. Mark Twain's Story. Theory of Common-sense. ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... indecent in one of Mr. Darwin's equals, proceeds from a writer whose want of intelligence, or of conscience, or of both, is so great, that, by way of an objection to Mr. Darwin's views, he can ask, "Is it credible that all favourable varieties of turnips are tending to become men;" who is so ignorant of paleontology, that he can talk of the "flowers and fruits" of the plants of the carboniferous epoch; of comparative anatomy, that he can gravely affirm the poison apparatus of the ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the national school, and was a very dragon at his catechism, and who may therefore be regarded as a credible witness, reported next day, that happening to peep in at the parlour-door an hour after this, he was instantly descried by Miss Betsey, then walking to and fro in a state of agitation, and pounced upon before ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... unattainable, ought not to be fretfully desired. To every man comes, sooner or later, the great renunciation. For the young, there is nothing unattainable; a good thing desired with the whole force of a passionate will, and yet impossible, is to them not credible. Yet, by death, by illness, by poverty, or by the voice of duty, we must learn, each one of us, that the world was not made for us, and that, however beautiful may be the things we crave, Fate may nevertheless forbid them. It is the part of courage, when misfortune comes, to bear without repining ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... and sagacious buyers too; their maxims show them to direct all their acuteness upon obtaining quality for their money. A compliment not backed by silver is hardly intelligible to the pretty ones: money is a really credible thing to them; and when they have it, they know how to use it. Apparently because they know so well, so perfectly appreciating it, they have only vague ideas of a corresponding sentiment on the opposite side to the bargain, and imagine that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... her husband would have been a deliverance great enough for one day; but at the same happy moment to see a means of deliverance from the smaller as well as the greater cross of her existence seemed almost too good to be credible. She brightened up immediately when that thought occurred to her. "I think it is the very best thing you could do," she said. "We are both so fond of the country, and it is so much nicer to manage a country parish than a town ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... him. I afterwards met Delisle at the house of one of my friends. To please me, the family asked Delisle to operate before me, to which he immediately consented. I offered him some iron nails, which he changed into silver in the chimney-place before six or seven credible witnesses. I took the nails thus transmuted, and sent them by my almoner to Irabert, the jeweller of Aix, who, having subjected them to the necessary trial, returned them to me, saying they were very good silver. Still, however, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... is still burning. She has not done all that she ought to have done, but she has done a large part of all that has been done to enlighten, to comfort, and to uplift humanity. And the discipline through which she has passed gives some indication of the work she has yet to do. It is not credible that a wise Providence should have kept her alive so many centuries, and should have made so much use of her in the establishment upon the earth of the kingdom of heaven, and should have led her into a constantly increasing ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... use his wings in running on the ground, as an Estrich or tame geese will do, touching the earth with his toes; and so by degrees learn to rise higher till he shall attain unto skill and confidence. I have heard it from credible testimony that one of our nation hath proceeded so far in this experiment that he was able by the help of wings to skip constantly ten yards at a time." Youwarkee spread wide her graundee, and in an instant was lost ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in giving us both? Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing about a god, and have therefore rejected ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... law required States' attorneys to defend Fugitive Slaves; prescribed the privileges of habeas corpus and jury trial for all such arrested; prohibited the use of prisons of the State for their detention; required evidence of two credible witnesses as to identity; and provided heavy penalties of fine and imprisonment for the seizure of any Free Person, with intent to have such Person held in Slavery. A Bill to repeal the Michigan law was defeated in the House ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... gracious good-humour, so untameable her high spirits, that it was only by remembering the little spitfire of twelve or fourteen years ago that it was credible that she had a temper at all; the temper erst wont to exhale in chamois bounds and dervish pirouettes, had apparently left not a trace behind, and the sullen ungraciousness to those who offended her had become the sunniest sweetness, impossible ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the lighted window of the nice little book-shop. The numerous photographs of what they were entitled to behold from the windows of their hotel seemed more convincing than photographs usually were. As the young people inspected them, they became reassured. It was not credible that such a noble vista would forever deny itself to such earnest pilgrims. When their uncle introduced this time his ancient formula about the certainty of brilliant sunshine in the morning, they somehow felt ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... its unpromising appearance, possesses capabilities which intelligent and experienced persons foresaw, and that it only requires time and patience to develope its surprising qualities: at this moment there are vegetables growing to an enormous size, scarcely credible, and which for the sake of truth I actually measured. What say you to radishes twenty inches round, and grown in nothing but sand, without any manure or preparation of the ground? Turnips, cabbages, peas, lettuces, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... we have no other authentic history to compare with it. Again, we find portions which treat of events connected in a thousand places with the affairs of the Roman Empire, of which we have several credible histories. Now, there are two modes of investigation open to us, the dogmatic and the inductive. We may take either. We may construct for ourselves, from the most flimsy suppositions, a metaphysical balloon, inflated with ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... was exchanged, Mosby made all haste for Lee's headquarters to report what he had discovered. Lee, remembering Mosby as the man who had scouted ahead of Stuart's Ride Around MacClellan, knew that he had a hot bit of information from a credible source. A dispatch rider was started off at once for Jackson, and Jackson struck Pope at Cedar Mountain before he could be re-enforced. Mosby returned to Stuart's headquarters, losing no time in promoting ...
— Rebel Raider • H. Beam Piper
... devoured by the dragon. And yet I see Orberosia and hear her. Did you not, O my daughter, while within the dragon's bowels arm yourself with the sign of the cross and come uninjured out of his throat? That is what seems to me the most credible explanation." ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... bubble came up from its depths; what landsman would have thought, that beneath all that silence and placidity, the utmost monster of the seas was writhing and wrenching in agony! Not eight inches of perpendicular rope were visible at the bows. Seems it credible that by three such thin threads the great Leviathan was suspended like the big weight to an eight day clock. Suspended? and to what? To three bits of board. Is this the creature of whom it was once so triumphantly said — Canst thou fill ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... witness or credible report of what General Booth has done with the funds entrusted to him for the Social Scheme which he laid before the country eighteen months ago, we think it would be a serious evil if the great task ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... my arrival in China, it would have seemed hardly credible to me that I should ever succeed in taking my place among the small number of Europeans who are acquainted with that remarkable country, not from books alone, but from actual observation; I never believed that I should ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... cabman's eating-house on the outer boulevard I got credit for my midday meal. Supper I was supposed not to require, sitting down nightly to the delicate table of some rich acquaintances. This arrangement was extremely ill-considered. My fable, credible enough at first, and so long as my clothes were in good order, must have seemed worse than doubtful after my coat became frayed about the edges, and my boots began to squelch and pipe along the restaurant floors. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... question the discernment of some of the Federal administrations in their choice of engravers; unfortunately, I have also to draw attention to an unaccountable delay in the execution of one of the medals. It seems scarcely credible that the one voted in 1857 to Dr. Elisha Kent Kane for his discoveries in the Arctic Seas has not yet been struck. Elder, in his "Life of E. K. Kane" (page ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... record, like that of Miss Eleanor Sleath, who wrote the moving history of The Orphan of the Rhine (1798) in four volumes, may be found in Watts' Bibliotheca Britannica. Horrid Mysteries, perhaps the least credible of the titles, was a translation from the German of the Marquis von Grosse by R. Will. Jane Austen's attack has no tinge of bitterness or malice. John Thorpe, who declared all novels, except Tom Jones and The Monk, "the stupidest things in creation," ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... A whole length; supposed to be by Leonardo da Vinci. Not very credible. It is a fine, bold, horribly-looking portrait: not in the very ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the lecture we need not describe. Many accounts of the Mormons, more or less credible, and all authenticated, have been given by serious historians, and Mr. W.H. Dixon, who has just returned from Utah to London, is said to have brought with him new stores of solid information. But to most of us Mormonism is still a mystery, ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... height as the top of the ascent above the arches. We have then actual proofs for roads leading up from east and west toward the center of the wall on the south side of the city, and every reason that an entrance here was practicable, credible, and necessary. ...
— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin
... western edge retreating at the same rate. The displacements—towards the violet on the east, towards the red on the west—corresponding to this velocity are very small; so small that it seems hardly credible that they should have been laid bare to perception. They amount to but 1/150th part of the interval between the two constituents of the D-line of sodium; and the D-line of sodium itself can be separated into a pair only by a powerful spectroscope. ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... meeting there has sprung up a friendship that many changes cannot change, and a love that many waters cannot quench. Either would cross all the continents and oceans of the world to-day to find the other; but as they remember how they met for the first time it seems too queer to be credible. And they lie back in their easy ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... approach his task in the spirit of a psychical inquirer who seeks to trap a bogus medium. The great Robert Houdin, one of the master wizards of modern times, quitted Petrograd by two gates at the same hour according to credible witnesses; but his performance sinks into insignificance beside that of a Chinese predecessor who flourished under one of the Ming emperors. The palace of this potentate was approached by gates, each having twelve locks, and each being watched by twelve guards. ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... apprehensible audible cessible coercible compatible competible comprehensible compressible conceptible contemptible contractible controvertible convertible convincible corrigible corrosible corruptible credible decoctible deducible defeasible defensible descendible destructible digestible discernible distensible divisible docible edible effectible eligible eludible enforcible evincible expansible expressible extendible extensible fallible feasible fencible flexible forcible frangible ...
— Division of Words • Frederick W. Hamilton
... leaves for the misuse of the slanderer a considerable field of truth. For the truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy. The world, in your despite, may perhaps owe you something, if your letter be the means of substituting once for all a credible likeness for a wax abstraction. For, if that world at all remember you, on the day when Damien of Molokai shall be named Saint, it will be in virtue of one work: your letter to the Reverend ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... invade, and particularly to describe the extraordinary defences and interior conditions with which it is credited by the gossipy old Monk of St. Gall, the most entertaining, though hardly the most credible, writer of that period. All authors admit that the country of the Avars was defended by an ingenious and singular system of fortifications. The account we propose to give, the Monk of St. Gall declares that he wrote down from the words of an eye-witness, Adelbart by name, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... did distrust him utterly. He knew his wife was with child, but he had left her not long ago in perfect health; and Henchard's treachery was more credible than his story. He had in his time heard bitter ironies from Henchard's lips, and there might be ironies now. He quickened the horse's pace, and had soon risen into the high country lying between there and Mellstock, Henchard's spasmodic run after him ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... mind you, not Carlsbad, but honest Worcestershire plums, without any Teutonic taint. Mr. JULIUS HARRISON'S patriotic example is not likely to be lost on his brother composers. Indeed it is asserted on credible authority that Mr. GRANVILLE BANTOCK, who has completely forsworn all Oriental and exotic subjects, is engaged on a gigantic symphony, with choral interludes, entitled "Yorkshire Pudding;" and that Mr. JOSEF HOLBROOKE is collaborating with Lord HOWARD DE WALDEN in a romantic historical opera ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... restored to their former masters. This, in their opinion, would touch, a conciliatory chord in Southern breasts, and might lead to pacification. That even pro-slavery Northerners should urgently advocate a proposition at once so cruel and so disgraceful is hardly credible. Yet it was reiterated strenuously, and again and again Mr. Lincoln had to repeat his decisive and indignant repudiation of it. In the message to Congress, December, 1863, he said that to abandon the freedmen now would be "a cruel and astounding breach of faith.... I shall not attempt to ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... long-range missile capabilities. It has begun to place near Moscow a limited antimissile defense. My first responsibility to our people is to assure that no nation can ever find it rational to launch a nuclear attack or to use its nuclear power as a credible threat against us or ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Lyndon B. Johnson • Lyndon B. Johnson
... Garfield remained at Hiram, teaching and working very hard. His salary, though a good one for the time and place, was still humble according to our English notions; but it sufficed for his needs; and as yet it would have seemed hardly credible that in only twenty years the Ohio schoolmaster would rise to be President of the United States. Indeed, it is only in America, that country of peculiarly unencumbered political action, where every kind of talent is most rapidly recognized and utilized, that this particular form of swift promotion ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... misery was better than nothingness, and he who had loved had lived. To think that a quiet, middle-aged Englishwoman, a pattern of domestic duty, should think thus, and exult in her son's inconceivable and, as she believed, unhappy passion, is almost too much to be credible. Yet so ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... former conferring of the name. Unquestionably, the apostle is the rock on which the Church is built. The efforts to avoid that conclusion would never have been heard of, but for the Roman Catholic controversy; but they are as unnecessary as unsuccessful. Is it credible that in the course of an address which is wholly occupied with conferring prerogatives on the apostle, a clause should come in, which is concerned about an altogether different subject from the 'thou' of the preceding and the 'thee' of the following clauses, and which yet ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... society in which it grew has likewise disappeared—the land-sharks, the claim speculators, the town-proprietors, the trappers, and the stage-drivers have emigrated or have undergone metamorphosis. The wild excitement of '56 is a tradition hardly credible to those who did not feel its fever. But the most evanescent things may impress themselves on human beings, and in the results which they thus produce become immortal. There is a last page to all our works, but to the history ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... between his teeth that he understood. But he did not seem interested. What he expected of me was to extricate him from a difficult situation. I don't know how far credible this may sound, to less solemn married couples, but to remain at variance with his wife seemed to him a considerable ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... Leigh Hunt, "with an old folio (?) book of romantic yet credible voyages and travels to read, an old bearded traveller for its hero, a fireside in an old country house to read it by, curtains drawn, and just wind enough stirring out of doors to make an accompaniment to the billows or forests we are reading of—this surely is one ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... fear:" Lady Macbeth is susceptible of all three. You smile! but that remains to be proved. The reason that Shakspeare's wicked women have such a singular hold upon our fancy, is from the consistent preservation of the feminine character, which renders them more terrible, because more credible and intelligible—not like those monstrous caricatures we meet ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... of the world, at least of so much of the world as is known to the Spanish nation. It is founded upon a lake of salt water of 200 leagues long, like unto Mare Caspium. And if we compare it to that of Peru, and but read the report of Francisco Lopez and others, it will seem more than credible; and because we may judge of the one by the other, I thought good to insert part of the 120. chapter of Lopez in his General History of the Indies, wherein he describeth the court and magnificence of Guayna Capac, ancestor to the emperor ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... stamens equal the pistil in length, but their pollen has no more effect on it than so much inorganic dust; whilst this pollen fully fertilises the short pistil of the other form. Now, it is scarcely credible that a mere difference in the length of the pistil can make a wide difference in its capacity for being fertilised. We can believe this the less because with some plants, for instance, Amsinckia spectabilis, ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... that he would have done the thing well. He was not good at describing change in anybody, especially not good at describing a change for the worse. The tendency of all his characters is upwards, like bubbles, never downwards, like stones. But at least it would probably have been more credible than the story as it stands; for the story as it stands is actually less credible than any conceivable kind of moral ruin for Boffin. Such a character as his—rough, simple and lumberingly unconscious—might be more easily conceived ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... country. The British state their own loss at thirty-five killed, among whom was one field officer, and one hundred and forty-four wounded, including two majors, and five inferior officers. It is scarcely credible, notwithstanding the difference in arms, that in a well contested action, the disparity in the killed could have been so considerable. It is the less probable, as the pursuit was not of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... This is a very large number and hardly credible. It was not 6000. Can Eystein be the Island Stone, the Man of ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... been ruined by milliners' bills;—that your son has not gone northwards with a sham Scotch heiress, or your daughter been married at Charicombe, by private license, to a pinchbeck Irish peer. For all these things—however painful the admission—were, according to the most credible chroniclers, the by-no-means infrequent accompaniment or sequel of an unguarded sojourn at the old jigging, card-playing, scandal-loving, pleasure-seeking city in the loop of "the ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... confirms neither the rigid system of unchanging fact which realism postulates (seeing that the only facts that science speaks of are ever changing in its progress), nor finds its problems, conflicts, and errors credible as a reflexion of any Universal Mind, unless Idealism ultimately repudiates ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... fears were soon allayed; Colonel Tudesco was only a wind-bag, and could not really arrest people. Besides, was it credible that Bargemont, head of a Ministerial Department, was still in Paris? And after all, if he did come to harm, well, so much the ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... of serving the will; while that of the latter is free from it. Therefore the anecdote which Squarzafichi relates in his life of Petrarch, and has taken from Joseph Brivius, a contemporary, is quite credible—namely, that when Petrarch was at the court of Visconti, and among many men and titled people, Galeazzo Visconti asked his son, who was still a boy in years and was afterwards the first Duke of Milan, to pick ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the minister refuses, why then there is an attack upon him in the American prints, and his name and his supposed misdemeanors are bandied about from one end of the Union to the other. It is hardly credible to what a state of slavery they would reduce the American representative. One man says, "I understand I can have a Court dress at a Jew's." "Yes, you can, I believe." "Well, now, suppose we step down together; you may cheapen ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... that this was extraordinary and hardly credible, yet it happened exactly as I have set it down, and, furthermore, I enjoyed the experience. For three hours the thing and I conversed, and not once during that time did my hair stop pulling away at my scalp, ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... open in the muck of the roadway, wet and discoloured. Till that moment I had not come to the point of believing the place. The town was not humane. It was not credible. It might have been, for all I could tell, a simulacrum of the work of men. Perhaps it was the patient and particular mimicry of us by an unknown power, a power which was alarmingly interested in our doings; and in a frenzy over ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... "It would not be credible, would it? Believe me, nevertheless, and we have but to bid each other farewell. This is what comes of getting into ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... though the rest of this journey would be nearly intolerable, it must go on. He looked at the impassive cow-puncher getting ready to go and tying a rope on Pedro's neck to lead him, then he looked at the mountains where the runaways had vanished, and it did not seem credible to him that he had come into such straits. He was helped stiffly on the mare, and the three horses in single file took up their journey once more, and came slowly among the mountains The perpetual desert was ended, and they crossed a ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... "It's hardly credible," answered P——, stopping in his walk, "that these Norwegian fools can live in a country all their days, and have salmon under their noses, and not know how to catch them. Curse the fools! the sooner one ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... name, a shield and fence of thieves. The plaintiffs here can claim no assignment, because they themselves constitute the company. It has been decided that a man cannot steal his own money, neither can he assign from himself to himself. We shall prove by a credible witness that The Western Supply Company is but another name for John C. Fields, Oliver Radcliff, and the portly gentleman who was known a year ago as 'Honest' John Griscom, one of his many aliases. If to these ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... says that Spenser died here for "lack of bread," and that the Earl of Essex sent him "20 pieces" on hearing of his poverty, but the poet refused them, saying they came too late. Fletcher wrote of him: "Poorly, poor man, he lived; poorly, poor man, he died." But it seems hardly credible he was so badly off as to be destitute, for he was at the time a pensioner of the Crown. Thomas Carew the poet lived in King Street. Most of the taverns in Westminster seem to have clustered about this street; we have the names of the Bell, the Boar's Head, and the Rhenish Wine ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... make different statements equally credible, but without proof, and the case will go against me, because thou ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... meritorious, if they could increase either the vividness of conception or the sincerity of belief in their readers. A due consideration of that well-known weakness of the popular mind, which renders a statement credible in proportion to the multitude of local and circumstantial details which accompany it, may lead us to look with some indulgence on the errors, however fatal in their issue to the cause they were ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... Southern California there are reported instances of longevity ranging from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and forty. Lieutenant Gibbons found in a village in Peru one hundred inhabitants who were past the century mark, and another credible explorer in the same territory records a case of longevity of one hundred and forty. This man was very temperate and always ate his food cold, partaking of meat only in the middle of the day. In the year of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... reproof? Who has not felt how such a moment was to him the dawn of a better hope, and how the merciful judgment of some wise and good human being seemed to be the type and the assurance of God's pardon, making it credible? Unconsciously it may be, but still in substance really, I believe some such reasoning as this goes on in the whispers of the heart—"He loves me, and has compassion on me—will not God forgive? He, this man, made in God's image, does not think my case hopeless. ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... death, O king, having abandoned my arms and withdrawn (in Yoga meditation) from surrounding sights, none will be able to slay me. This that I tell thee is true. I also tell thee truly that I will cast off my arms in battle, having heard something very disagreeable from some one of credible speech.—'" ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... is found out, it would be madness to commence litigation. And the question, then, will be, how far that witness will suffice? It is true, that one witness of a marriage, if the others are dead, is held sufficient by law. But I need not add, that that witness must be thoroughly credible. In suits for real property, very little documentary or secondary evidence is admitted. I doubt even whether the certificate of the marriage on which—in the loss or destruction of the register—you lay so much stress, would be available in itself. But if an examined copy, it becomes ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... favorable railway connections. Two railways terminating at Ostrolenka permitted the rapid unloading of large masses of troops at this point, and the line Warsaw-Mlawa-Soldau led straight into the territory aimed at by such an invasion. It seemed easily credible that the Russian commander in chief did, as reported, give orders that Mlawa should be taken be the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... to prevent the marriage, and of the bridegroom's to undo it, would be natural incidents in such a story, and the magic powers employed by and against the bride would be the mythical representatives of the mutually unfamiliar customs of alien tribes. This theory at least offers a credible explanation of the hero's temporary oblivion of or unfaithfulness to his protectress, after ...
— The Edda, Vol. 2 - The Heroic Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 13 • Winifred Faraday
... the admiral, that he knew two sons of the pilot who discovered the island of Tercera, named Michael and Jasper Cortereal, who went several times in search of that land, and at last perished one after the other in the year 1502, without having ever been heard of since, as was well known to many credible persons. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... he was despised by those from whom first of all he looked for the appreciation after which his soul thirsted—his own family. He grew therefore yet more moody, and his moodiness and distrust developed suspicion. It is scarce credible what a crushing influence the judgment he pretended to scorn, thus exercised upon him. It was not that he acknowledged in it the smallest justice; neither was it that he cared altogether for what such a fanatical fool as the chief might think; but he reflected ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... now of everything I had suffered, every emotion repressed, every weakness vanquished. Strange, wonderful power that lies in that slight, grey tissue which we call brain! It seemed hardly credible that this buoyant sense of exultation, this overflowing, stupendous joy of gratified pride and ambition, this triumphant pleasure in my own powers and their recognition at last, these brilliant vistas that opened in my thoughts, could ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... September 1914. When war weariness is apt to sap resolution and the possibility of a patched up peace is furtively canvassed, the great world of the English-speaking race should call to remembrance the inhuman and barely credible acts of brutality and bestiality committed in cold blood by the ...
— Their Crimes • Various
... his bill there, ere he straggles weakly forth to repair his shattered health by frenzied flight, shall be given in change such hoary ten-cent shreds of former postal currency as he has not hitherto deemed credible, sticking together in inextricable conglomeration by such fragments of fish-scales as he never before believed could be gathered by handled small-money from palms not sufficiently ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... hasty temper he is represented to have shown, in embroiling himself with his men, for apparently trifling reasons, are not consistent with the moderation, good sense, and equanimity, with which his conduct had been marked in all his preceding voyages. It is moreover hardly credible, that, knowing as he did the mutinous spirit of some of the crew he should so rashly inflame this spirit, at a time when he was surrounded by imminent dangers, and when his safety depended on the united support of all the men under his command. Hence, whatever reliance may be placed ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... It doesn't sound exactly credible; and you won't understand it. I don't. But as I stood by the grave, I suddenly felt that there was something for me to do, something very important that had to be done. It was odd, very odd. I went back to my hotel quite harassed, puzzling and racking my brains. Then an idea struck me; ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... distinguished Senator has convicted Mrs. Clara Leonard of inconsistency or has added anything to the argument upon his side of the question. I have never said or intimated that there were women who were not credible witnesses. I have never thought or intimated that there were not women who were competent to administer the affairs of State or even to lead armies. There have been such women, and I believe there will be to the end of time, as there have been effeminate men who have been better ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... greater vividness. The appeal of setting being visual, the element was employed to illustrate the action and to make the characters clearly evident to the eye. By rendering a story more concrete, a definite setting rendered it more credible. This the eighteenth-century novelists discerned; but only with the rise of the romantic movement was the element applied ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... monstrous and unwarranted assumption. The supposition that all these types were rapidly differentiated out of Lacertilia, in the time represented by the passage from the Palaeozoic to the Mesozoic formation, appears to me to be hardly more credible, to say nothing of the indications of the existence of Dinosaurian forms in the Permian rocks which ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... is the legend as told to Herodotus in Asia Minor, probably by the members of the family of Harpagus, which the Greek historian tried to render credible by interpreting the miraculous incidents in a ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... pride, seems scarcely credible; but more than all this has been carefully recorded in the letters ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Sarah's having declined the hand of Eaverson became known. The selection of her by one like him seemed so high a preference, and such a marked tribute to her worth and virtue, that it was scarcely credible that she could have remained indifferent to his love. But she ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... Chaise. The confessor was then eighty years of age, and not unlike an ass; his ears were very long, his mouth very wide, his head very large, and his body very long. It was an ill-chosen joke. This libel was even less credible than what was stated ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... Accounts and Letters carried by Mr. Rob[in]son would have been attended with very unhappy if not fatal effects, had not this Town been so attentive as to have Contradicted those false accounts by the depositions of many credible persons under Oath. But it cannot be supposed that a Community will be so Attentive but upon the most Alarming Events: In general Individuals are following their private concerns, while it is to be feared the restless ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... Sweden is maintaining one 'live' ITS site at its computer museum (right next to the only TOPS-10 system still on the Internet), so ITS is still alleged to hold the record for OS in longest continuous use (however, {{WAITS}} is a credible rival for this palm). 2. A mythical image of operating-system perfection worshiped by a bizarre, fervent retro-cult of old-time hackers and ex-users (see {troglodyte}, sense 2). ITS worshipers manage somehow to continue believing that an OS maintained by assembly-language hand-hacking that supported ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... definite purpose, but because when we come to consider these processes in detail, and view them in the light of the only purposes they suggest, we find them to be such that a God who could deliberately have been guilty of them would be a God too absurd, too monstrous, too mad to be credible. (Religion as a Credible Doctrine; ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... which his father had bought up the mortgages on Ferndean, and finally the estate itself, was drained and scattered long ago, and that the miserable annuity upon which the Professor rested peacefully as a provision for his widow and child, died with the former. It was scarcely credible that a man should be so regardless of his own family, but the echo of the mystic, sublime discourses of the Greek porches, the faint but sacred trace of the march of vast armies, and the fall of nations, caused ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... carried to the White House Inn. There, under the candles, the dead man, as we said, was recognised for Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, a very well-known justice of the peace and wood and coal dealer. All this occurred on Thursday, October 17, and Sir Edmund had not been seen by honest men and thoroughly credible witnesses, at least, since one o'clock on Saturday, October 12. Then he was observed near his house in Green Lane, Strand, but into his ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... Intimation that the King would not die. But whoever knows them, will much rather conclude, that, like Physicians who are never better pleased than in Times of general Sickness, they only concealed a selfish Joy under the Mask of an affected Calmness; and it is really scarce credible what Advantage they drew from this public Calamity. The King, being given over by the Physicians, seemed to be lost without miraculous Relief from Heaven, and as the meanest of his Subjects was not wanting in his Endeavours to procure ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... words of the Virgin are rendered more credible by which she asserted her virginity. Thus Ambrose says: "Belief in Mary's words is strengthened, the motive for a lie is removed. If she had not been espoused when pregnant, she would seem to have wished to hide her sin by a lie: being espoused, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... Detective Downy. Shine had had the lad in his toils, otherwise why had he taken such precautions to shield the man, and why had he given him warning of the approach of the troopers? Rogers' story was entirely credible, he said. It was to the effect that Shine had confessed to him that he had robbed the mine of a quantity of gold and had been robbed in turn by the boy Haddon, who was his real accomplice. He solicited the aid of the unfortunate prisoner to recover the treasure, and offered ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... an onion is like a piano" is a query that a person of sensibility would be slow to propose; but that in an educated community an individual could be found to answer it in these words,—"Because it smell odious," quasi, it's melodious,—is not credible, but too true. I can show ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... revealed themselves to rude poets or dreamers in very simple times, that these rude people should regard the revelation as local, and connect it with the particular hill or river where it happened, seems to me exactly what any reasonable human being would expect. It has a far more credible look than if they had talked cosmic philosophy from the beginning. If they had, I should have suspected "priestcraft" and forgeries ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
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