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More "Incredible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... endurance, we will not for a moment question. But the exploits of our cavalry, in the late expedition in the rear of Lee's army, surpasses any thing ever achieved on this continent. Especially are the adventures of the Second New York (Harris Light Cavalry) and the Twelfth Illinois almost incredible. But they bear with them trophies that fully confirm the record ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... was all but miraculous. It seemed as if she had not walked by natural feet, but some unseen influence had drawn and lifted her the whole way. When she stood in Kingcombe streets she hardly believed her senses—save that nothing was hard of belief just then, except the one horror—incredible, unutterable. ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... rocking-chairs! I remember now that you were expecting them when I was there. So they have arrived, safely, I hope; but I think you had ordered an incredible number, to be certain of having at least ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... simplicity of biblical interpretation; it went on, through the glories and adventures of a paladin in Darwin's train, to the darkness and dismay of a man who saw all his most cherished beliefs rendered, as he thought, incredible.[230] He lived to find the freer faith for which process and purpose are not irreconcilable, but necessary to one another. His development, scientific, intellectual and moral, was itself of high significance; and its record is of unique value to our own generation, so near ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... as a substitute for tea and coffee. The yaupon produces in great abundance a berry that is so highly esteemed by the Myrtle Warblers that they pass the winter in these regions in numbers almost incredible. ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... which happened to be wrecked on their coast was taken possession of by the Romans, used as a model, and one hundred and thirty ships constructed from it. These ships were all built, it is said, in six days; but this appears almost incredible. We must not, however, judge the power of the ancients by the standard of present times. It is well known that labour was cheap then, and we have recorded in history the completion of great works in marvellously short time, by the mere force ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... and open mouth; a burning flush suffused her cheeks, her breath came in gasps, and bending far forward, she clenched the railing convulsively with both hands. It seemed incredible that she could have heard correctly. What, is it possible to lie so in a court of justice, in the presence of the black crucifix, the judges, the listeners? And the prosecutor does not interrupt him in his infamous speech? The earth which holds the murdered man, now slandered in his ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... the separate treason of Anne Boleyn, mysterious to this hour in some of its features, rank with pollutions such as European prejudice would class with Italian enormities, and by these very pollutions—literally by and through the very excess of the guilt—claiming to be incredible. Neither less nor more than this which follows is the logic put into the mouth of the Lady Anne Boleyn:—From the mere enormity of the guilt imputed to me, from that very abysmal stye of incestuous adultery in which now I wallow, I challenge ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... a given habitual action Mr. Darwin writes:—"It does not seem to me at all incredible that this action [and why this more than any other habitual action?] should then become instinctive:" i.e., memory transmitted from one generation ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... at the pitch of desperation, really believed that what this meant was a breach which should last for years. Even they would not have believed it had it been put to them. That it should not all come right was incredible. But as a matter of fact it did not come right. Lady Markland was not by nature the yielding and anxious woman whom for this year of troubled wedlock she had appeared; and everybody knew that Theo was neither persuadable nor reasonable, ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... it is the ill-treatment or neglect of the skin which, probably, is the cause of disease and decay to an incredible extent. The various particulars in which this may be seen will now be pointed out. In the management and care of this wonderful and complex part of the body, ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... here to consult my son," she said quietly. "If you believe that we know who those strangers are, and that we have the means of inquiring into their private lives before they enter this room, you believe in something much more incredible than the magnetic sleep!" ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... observe of the conduct either of the magistrates or private citizens, and were soon considered as the eyes of the monarch and the scourge of the people. Under the warm influence of a feeble reign they multiplied to the incredible number of ten thousand, disdained the mild though frequent admonitions of the laws, and exercised in the profitable management of the posts a rapacious and insolent oppression. These official spies, who regularly corresponded with the palace, were encouraged ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... beings can be capable? It is reported of that prodigy of parts, Monsieur Pascal, that till the decay of his health had impaired his memory, he forgot nothing of what he had done, read, or thought, in any part of his rational age. This is a privilege so little known to most men, that it seems almost incredible to those who, after the ordinary way, measure all others by themselves; but yet, when considered, may help us to enlarge our thoughts towards greater perfections of it, in superior ranks of spirits. For this of Monsieur Pascal was still with the ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... high-bred knights. They exchanged the most superb defiances, the most audacious challenges, and proceeded from one country to another to run each other through the body proudly. The Beaumanoirs, who drank their blood, abounded. It was a question who would engage himself in the most incredible pranks; who would commit the most daring folly! They tell us afterward of the beautiful passages of arms, the grand feats performed, and the inimitable Froissart is the most charming of all these narrators, who make their readers as ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... him?' This psalm comes to answer that. 'The Lord of hosts is with us.' True, we are but of yesterday, and know nothing. True, earth is but a pin-point amidst the universe's glories. True, we are crushed down by sorrow and by care; and in some moods it seems supremely incredible that we should be of such worth in the scale of Creation as that the Lord of all things should, in a deeper sense than the Psalmist knew, have dwelt with us and be with us still. But bigness is not greatness, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Dell takes the hindmost. Personally, I found "If Winter Comes" a most sympathetic and interesting book. I think there are only two points on which I should be disposed to quarrel with it. Firstly, though Nona is a real creation, Effie is an incredible piece of novelist's machinery. Secondly, I detest the utilization of the Great War at the present day for the purposes of fiction. It is altogether too easy. It buys the emotional situation ready-made. ...
— If Winter Don't - A B C D E F Notsomuchinson • Barry Pain
... with trembling fingers and took out the six red-covered volumes and spread them on the table. He liked the bold black letters in which the title of the book and his name were printed on the covers: THE ENCHANTED LOVER by JOHN MACDERMOTT. It seemed incredible to him that a book should bear his name, but there, in big, black letters on a red ground, was his name. He turned the pages, reading a sentence here and a sentence there until Eleanor, who had been out when ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... separation of the sexes adds considerably to this freedom of expression. Their language is material in quality, every root is objective; as an instance, for the word soul they have no more spiritual equivalent than breath. Even the conversation between parents and children is of incredible frankness, and the Wazir of Egypt talks to his daughter "the Lady of Beauty," in a fashion astonishing to the West. But the Arabs are a great mixture. They are keenly alive to beauty, and every youth and every damsel is described in glowing, rapturous terms. We have heard ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... otherwise valid, of our general destiny. A transmutation of humanity, such as we can conceive to be brought about by the gradual prevalence of higher motives of action, and the gradual elimination thereby of what is base and brutish, is surely no more incredible than the actual development of humanity, as it is now, out of a lower animal form or ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... quarrel between Violet and her lover, and Phineas had felt that he could not ask the question. "Mr. Finn," said the Earl to him one morning, as soon as he entered the room, "I have just heard a story which has almost seemed to me to be incredible." The nobleman's manner was very stern, and the fact that he called his young friend "Mr. Finn", showed at once ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... England,—some three hundred in all. But of this number, in England, about a hundred habitually winter on the island, and half that number even in the Hebrides, some birds actually breeding in Scotland during January and February, incredible as it may seem. Their habits can, therefore, be observed through a long period of the year; while with us the bright army comes and encamps for a month or two and then vanishes. You must attend their dress-parades, while they last; for you will have but few opportunities, and their domestic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... courage, despondency, hope and fear, friendship and enmity, increase the activities. Consider man's ambitions—steeds of the sun with incredible swiftness dragging forward the soul's chariot. Consider the rivalries among men. What intensities of thought are induced thereby! Consider that toward one's friends the mind sends forth thoughts that are almoners of bounty and angels of mercy. But ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... a little circle for herself with incredible toils and labour, somebody came and swept it down rudely, and she had all her work to begin over again. It was very hard; very hard; ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... against the Socinians, it is full of valuable remarks on the anti-Trinitarians generally; and he brings out some points more clearly and forcibly than subsequent and more voluminous writers on the subject have done. For example, he meets the old objection that the doctrine of the Trinity is incredible as involving a contradiction, by pointing out that it rests upon the fallacy of arguing from a nature which we know to quite a different nature of which we know little or nothing.[435] The objection that the Christian Trinity was borrowed from the Platonists he ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... never on earth, realized. The animal arrives at animal perfection here,—becomes all [329] that it was made to be. The beetle, the dragon-fly, the eagle, is as perfect as it can be. But man comes far short of the ideal that presided over his formation. Any way it would be unaccountable, not to say incredible, that God's highest work on earth should fail of its end, fail of realizing its ideal, fail of being what it was made for. But when the process, unlike that in animals, which is all facility and pleasure, is full of difficulty and pain, then for the unfinished work to be dropped would be, not ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... was 53 degrees at 7 A.M. Streams of clear water gushed through the lanes in many places, which had created the flourishing aspect around. With such a picture of prosperity before us, due entirely to the presence of never-failing streams, it seemed incredible that the great central district of Messaria should be left to the chance of seasons when the means of artificial irrigation ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... forest, abandoned their flocks to run and see the cause of this unwonted uproar. By their evil star, or for their sins, they were led thither. When they saw the furious state the Count was in, and his incredible force, they would fain have fled out of his reach, but in their fears lost their presence of mind. The madman pursued them, seized one and rent him limb from limb, as easily as one would pull ripe apples from a tree. He took another by the feet, and used him as a ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... 10th of November, the eve of the fete. The pueblo of San Diego is stirred by an incredible activity; in the houses, the streets, the church, the gallera, all is unwonted movement. From windows flags and rugs are hanging; the air, resounding with bombs and music, seems saturated with gayety. Inside on little tables covered with bordered cloths the dalaga ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... abroad, and was greedily received by the multitude. As the horrors of Popery still pressed harder on them, they might be induced either to adopt that fiction, as they had already done many others more incredible, or to commit open violation on the right of succession. And it would not be difficult, it was hoped, to persuade the king, who was extremely fond of his son, to give him the preference above a brother, who, by his imprudent bigotry, had involved him in such inextricable ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... Domestic life in that hole was not conducted with regularity. Meals were at uncertain hours and uncertain also in their quantity and quality. The parents were hunters and were absent for long periods, and though there was incredible shouting and laughter when they returned, they came at such irregular times that we did not suspect that they were permanent residents and had a family. One night, however, Tommy, being precocious and, as we discovered afterwards, keen on seeing life, ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... for prudential reasons, that no more troops should be brought through that city." In answer to the remonstrances of Governor Hicks and a committee from Maryland, who presented their petition in person, Lincoln, intent on avoiding every cause of offense, and with a forbearance that now seems incredible, replied: "Troops must be brought here; but I make no point of bringing them through Baltimore. Without any military knowledge myself, of course I must leave details to General Scott. He hastily said this morning, in the presence of ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... down the deck behind the two veteran spacemen, a scowl on his face. "By the stars," he rumbled, "this is the most incredible thing I've run up against in all ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... he cried savagely. "It is incredible that I can never be left in peace. What the devil has the guard got to do with me? Will you understand that I have nothing to do with the guard! There is a sergeant somewhere ... curse him for a lazy scoundrel ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... Americans are wellnigh incredible. Take the matter of postage to France. The head of a great French concern made this statement to me in sober earnestness: "Won't you be good enough to beg American manufacturers to put their office boys through a course of instruction in postal ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... help this contemptuous Treatment, as she had nothing she wanted at Home, by reason of her Laziness, though all Materials in abundance were at hand. 'Tis incredible to relate, but, at the Time I am speaking of, certain Fact, on her whole Estate there was not one to be found could make a Buckle for her Shoe, or a Pin to her Sleeve; a Pot, a Spit, or any Utensil to cook her Victuals, might as well ...
— The True Life of Betty Ireland • Anonymous
... overpowered, both by the consciousness awakened within himself, by the doubt whether it were not a great sin, and by the strangeness that the King, hitherto his oracle, should infuse such a hope. What King James deemed possible could never be so incredible, or even sacrilegious, as he deemed it. Restless, ashamed, rent by a thousand conflicting feelings, Malcolm roamed up and down his chamber, writhed, tried to sit and think, then, finding his thoughts in a whirl, renewed his frantic pacings. And when dire necessity brought him ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the early 1960s, South Korea has achieved an incredible record of growth and integration into the high-tech modern world economy. Four decades ago GDP per capita was comparable with levels in the poorer countries of Africa and Asia. In 2004, it joined the trillion dollar club of world economies. Today its GDP per capita is 14 times North Korea's ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... shape he lurk, of whom Thou tellest, by morrow dawning I shall know. So promised he; and Uriel to his charge Returned on that bright beam, whose point now raised Bore him slope downward to the sun now fallen Beneath the Azores; whether the prime orb, Incredible how swift, had thither rolled Diurnal, or this less volubil earth, By shorter flight to the east, had left him there Arraying with reflected purple and gold The clouds that on his western throne attend. Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad; Silence ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... himself that the incredible was credible, the impossible possible—that it was done! done! done! and that he loved a woman in an hour because, in an hour, he had read her innocence as one reads through crystal, and his eyes were opened for the first time upon ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... have enveloped it in a host of mystical superstitions, most of which are as absurd as they are incredible, but all of them tending to show the great veneration that has always been paid to it.[127] Thus they say that it is possessed of unlimited powers, and that he who pronounces it shakes heaven and earth, and inspires the very angels with terror ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... frequent and lengthy interviews with the said SMARTLE, Esq., who is of incredible despatch and celerity—though I sometimes regret that I did not procure a solicitor of a more ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter of course—and in truth it was something very like it in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigor; Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple sauce; Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves, and, mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... unhappily become specialised. It stands for beliefs, doctrines, ceremonies, practices. But these may not, and indeed do not, suit many of us. The worst of definite religions is that they are too definite. They try to enforce upon us a belief in things which we find incredible, or perhaps think to be simply unknowable; or they make out certain practices to be important, which we do not think important. We must never do violence to our minds and souls by professing to believe ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of May, strive as we would, and never was a more gallant fight made, all our allies were crushed or had deserted us, and the siege of the city began. It began by land and by water, for with incredible resource Cortes caused thirteen brigantines of war to be constructed in Tlascala, and conveyed in pieces for twenty leagues across the mountains to his camp, whence they were floated into the lake through a canal, which was hollowed ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... with telling effect, as the Romans learned from Archimedes in the siege of Syracuse (214-212 B.C.). As Plutarch relates, "Archimedes soon began to play his engines upon the Romans and their ships, and shot stones of such an enormous size and with so incredible a noise and velocity that nothing could stand before them. At length the Romans were so terrified that, if they saw but a rope or a beam projecting over the walls of Syracuse, they cried out that Archimedes was ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... God had chosen to have the fish large enough so that it could swallow him. To be told again that a human body that could eat food and digest it, a body like ours, might rise into the air and pass out of sight into some invisible heaven, not very far away, there was nothing incredible about it. He knew nothing about the atmosphere, limited in its range so that it would be impossible to breathe beyond a certain distance from the planet. He knew nothing about the intense cold that would make life impossible just a ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... number 7 is thus deprived of its fair share in the structure. Here is a field of speculation in which two branches of inquirers might unite. There is but one number which is treated with an unfairness which is incredible as an accident; and that number is the mystic number seven! If the cyclometers and the apocalyptics would lay their heads together until they come to a unanimous verdict on this phenomenon, and would publish nothing until they are of one mind, they would earn the gratitude ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... But why should Thorne commit murder on this man who scarcely touched his life at any point... It's incredible! Muller! Muller! are you sure you are not letting your imagination run away with you again? It is a serious thing to make such an accusation against any man, much less against a man in Thorne's position. Are you sure of what you are saying?" The commissioner's excitement rendered him almost ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... of such English Saints as Edward the Confessor and Wilfrid of York; and yet they are not too favourably disposed towards our insular Saints, since they plainly express their opinion that our pious simplicity has filled their Acts with incredible legends and miracles, more suited to excite laughter than ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... excitement, rattling at the heels of an animal which, to me, had been a stranger even in its captive state, and which, thus to meet free on its native plains, has fallen to the lot of but few of the votaries of the chase; sailing before me with incredible velocity, his long swan-like neck, keeping time to the eccentric motion of his stilt-like legs—his ample black tail curled above his back, and whisking in ludicrous concert with the rocking of his disproportioned frame—he glided ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... of mountain sheep that got over the deep snow with incredible swiftness. It was my first view of these animals, but it aroused no enthusiasm in me, only a vague wonder that they seemed to be enjoying themselves. Finally Nimrod came and pulled me off, I was too stiff and numb to get down myself. Then ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... moment, Lisbeth Fischer had become the Mohican whose snares none can escape, whose dissimulation is inscrutable, whose swift decisiveness is the outcome of the incredible perfection of every organ of sense. She was Hatred and Revenge, as implacable as they are in Italy, Spain, and the East. These two feelings, the obverse of friendship and love carried to the utmost, are known only in lands scorched by the sun. But Lisbeth was also a ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... to be regretted that no system has been organised in Africa for capturing and training the wild elephants, instead of harrying them to destruction. In a country where beasts of burden are unknown, as in equatorial Africa, it appears incredible that the power and the intelligence of the elephant have been completely ignored. The ancient coins of Carthage exhibit the African elephant, which in those remote days was utilised by the Carthaginians; but a native ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... that young man. I like things put simply, in words of one syllable, within range of the understanding. Moreover, incredible as it seems, what he told us is true. Oh, of course, as I've found out since, there are treaties and things to be signed after China has been notified. She is then compelled to ratify these treaties or agreements; it looks better. Forced ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... the men about the barter, and eagerly take a hand in it. Unlike their sisters of civilisation, they are willing to part with articles of personal adornment, even that most prized by them, the shell necklace. [Note 2.] Ay, more, what may seem incredible, she with the child—her own baby—has taken a fancy to a red scarf of China crape worn by Leoline, and pointing first to it and then to the babe on her shoulder, she plucks the little one from its lashings and holds it up with a coaxing expression on her countenance, like ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... admirable teacher. A veritable galaxy of talent came from his class. He had little to say, but as his taste was refined and his judgment sure, nothing he said lacked weight or authority. He collaborated in several ballets for the Opera and that gave him a good deal of work to do. It sounds incredible, but he used to bring his "work" to class and scribble away on his orchestration while his pupils played the organ. This did not prevent his listening and looking after them. He would leave his work and make appropriate comments as though ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... points along the bank are moored a heterogeneous assortment of shanty boats of an incredible and comic slouchiness. Some are nothing but rafts made of water-soaked logs, bearing tiny shacks knocked together out of driftwood and old patches of tin and canvas, but the larger ones have barges, or the hulks of old launches, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... to be done, major, do you think?" But Major Warrener could think of nothing. The men at present knew nothing of the news, but the tidings would reach them in two or three days; for news in India spreads from village to village, and town to town, with almost incredible speed, and Meerut was but a hundred ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... Cummin was so powerful and numerous, that an incredible number of chieftains of that name attended the first parliament which Robert I. Held at Dunstaffnage Castle. The relationship between the heiress of Stratheaarn and that family was very near, her paternal grandmother having been the daughter of ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... some feeling. "We met in the Shadengo Valley; the company was in sore straits, and—and—to make a long story short!—he joined our band and traversed the continent with us. And so he was the marquis' ward! It seems almost incredible!" ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... allegiance to it. My feeling becomes a part of my actual life; it is a spiritual action: it hears and sees by spiritual senses. And then—Ah, there is something terrible in being alone—alone! She called this out loudly, wringing her hands. Kitty gave a queer smile. It was incredible to her that a woman could thus dissect herself for the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... stranger, assuming an air of incredible dignity. "Sir, my name is VALENTINE GREATRAKES, a person on whom God has bestowed powers which, apart from inspiration, have seldom for centuries ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... impudent display of colours; she was just then filling on the new tack; her ensign blew out quite plain to see; and even as we stared, there came a puff of smoke, and then a report, and a shot plunged in the waves a good way short of us. Some ran to the ropes, and got the Sarah round with an incredible swiftness. One fellow fell on the rum-barrel, which stood broached upon the deck, and rolled it promptly overboard. On my part, I made for the Jolly Roger, struck it, tossed it in the sea; and could have flung myself after, so vexed was I with our mismanagement. As for Teach, he grew ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... comparatively failed in life, and grown older than Samuel Pepys. For in the Diary we can find more than one such note of perfect childish egotism; as when he explains that his candle is going out, "which makes me write thus slobberingly;" or as in this incredible particularity, "To my study, where I only wrote thus much of this day's passages to this, and so out again;" or lastly, as here, with more of circumstance: "I staid up till the bellman came by with his bell under my window, as I was ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... foot against a venerable medicine man, Aggo Dah Gauda had one leg looped up to his thigh, so that he was obliged to get along by hopping. By dint of practice he had become very skillful in this exercise, and he could make leaps which seemed almost incredible. ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... rooms, either by force or with false keys. There are of this class thieves of incredible effrontery; that of one Beaumont almost surpasses belief. Escaped from the Bagne at Rochefort, where he was sentenced to pass twelve years of his life, he came to Paris, and scarcely had he arrived there, where he had already practised, when, by way of getting his hand in, he committed several ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... Muscovites,(941) as you would of a covey of partridges; he galloped thither, and shot them. But what news I am telling you! I forgot that all ours comes by water-carriage, and that you must know every thing a fortnight before us. It is incredible how popular he is here; except a few, who take him for the same person as Mr. Pitt, the lowest of the people are perfectly acquainted with him: as I was walking by the river the other night, a bargeman asked me for something to drink the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... They have now been carried further, and a lifetime is too short for one man to investigate thoroughly more than one or two; but in those days it was still possible for a man of keen intelligence, added to the almost incredible diligence, as it appears to us, of the Middle Ages, to make himself acquainted with all the best that had been done ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... metal, and takes the ink much better. It is remarkably durable too; for, if the cut be not exposed to alternate moisture or heat, so as to warp or crush it, the number of thousands that it will print is almost incredible. England is the country where this economical mode of illustration is performed in the greatest perfection; and just when a constant demand for box was thus created, the trees available for the purpose had ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 369, Saturday, May 9, 1829. • Various
... a bureau and writing aloud at incredible speed). "I, Jasper Beeste, of Beeste Hall, do hereby declare that I stole Lady Wilsdon's diamond necklace and hid it in the hatbox of Richard Trayle; and I further declare that the said Richard Trayle is innocent of any complicity ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... advanced ages permitted them to recollect their fathers and mothers, absolutely refused to follow them, and ran to their adopted parents for protection against the effusions of love their unhappy real parents lavished on them! Incredible as this may appear, I have heard it asserted in a thousand instances, among persons of credit. In the village of———, where I purpose to go, there lived, about fifteen years ago, an Englishman and a Swede, whose ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... River Embankment, with the arching spans of the Cambridge and Harvard bridges on one side, and the homes of wealth and mellow refinement on the other—a walk which for invigorating beauty compares with any in the cities of men—it seems incredible that when this promenade was laid out a few years ago, the householders along the water's edge absolutely refused to turn their front windows away from Beacon Street. Furthermore, they ignored the fact that their back yards and back windows presented an unbecoming face to such ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... at first sight it seems incredible that such an age of barbarism as that of the later Byzantine period should return, it is indeed quite possible that a relatively uncultured age should come upon us in the future; and there is every likelihood ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... Miss Lillycrop. "There's another thing I want to know," she added, looking with deep interest into the countenance of her host, while that stalwart man continued to stow incredible quantities of sausages and crumpets into his capacious mouth. "Is it really true that people post ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... is evident that these artificial hills could have been erected only at an incredible cost of labor. The careful measurements which have been taken of several of the principal mounds have enabled explorers to make an accurate calculation of the exact amount of labor employed on each. The result ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... twenty-nine or thereabouts should be unable to distinguish a red from a green, without knowing that he had any deficiency of colour sense, and without betraying his deficiency to his friends, seems perfectly incredible to the other twenty-eight; yet as a matter of fact he rarely does either the one or the other. It is hard to convince the colour-blind of their own infirmity. I have seen curious instances of this: one was that of a person by no means unpractised in physical research, who ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... might be, what kind of a plea is this? Why, if, as alleged by Mr. Davis, Mississippi had violated the Federal Constitution, by establishing a bank of circulation, that therefore the bonds of the State should be repudiated. Is it not incredible that a Senator should assume such a position on behalf of his State? But, if this be sound, it clearly follows, that, inasmuch as the Confederate bonds are issued in plain violation of the Constitution ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... it seems most probable, though at first sight incredible, that these utterances were thoroughly sincere for the moment. I fancy that under Pope's elaborate masks of hypocrisy and mystification there was a heart always abnormally sensitive. Unfortunately it ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... this man is robbed of ten thousand dollars; another man is murdered under your very nose—and then you waste thirty-six hours blundering around the country to satisfy your infernal curiosity. It's incredible, in a man of your frontier experience, under any hypothesis except that you stood in with the outlaws and held back to ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... are beings of mixed composition, and I doubt if mine was a single-minded pursuit. I knew that honour required me to pursue, and I had a vivid impression of having just been down in the dust with a very wiry and active and dirty little antagonist of disagreeable odour and incredible and incalculable unscrupulousness, kneeling on me and gripping my arm and neck. I wanted of course to be even with him, but also I doubted if catching him would necessarily involve that. They kicked my cap into the ditch at the end of the field, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... a terrible battle. It was short, but it is incredible with what fury the troops fought. We should do ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... as though to put away something incredible, approaching him, he went on more quietly, "But my experience is that it doesn't dare spring if you walk right up to it. Generally you find you're less afraid of everything in the world, ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... in favor of them, they were likely to be right this time, as so often heretofore. But for the most part the speeches were directly concerned with the problem under discussion, and showed a political consciousness which would have been almost incredible three years ago. The Red Army served as a text for many, who said that the methods which had produced that army and its victories over the Whites had been proved successful and should be used to produce a Red Army of Labor and similar victories on the bloodless front against economic ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... nor Bertram knew or cared what had become of Aunt Hannah and Pete. There were just two people in their world—two people, and unutterable, incredible, overwhelming rapture and peace. Then, very gradually it dawned over them that there was, after all, something strange and unexplained in ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... or swim as the fates might decide. One of the ships which effected her escape afterward sank, and with her went the entire proceeds of the voyage, while the other two, riddled and torn by Spanish shot, treacherously fired, only reached England after a voyage of incredible difficulty, toil, and suffering. Now, senors, the object of my visit to San Juan de Ulua is to avenge that treacherous attack upon my fellow-countrymen, to exact ample compensation therefor and for all the loss and suffering attendant upon it, and to demand ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... PREDICT inventions which have been realised in the locomotives, steam navigation, and aeroplanes of modern times. But Bacon predicts nothing. He is showing that science can invent curious and, to the vulgar, incredible things without the aid of magic. All the inventions which he enumerates have, he declares, been actually made in ancient times, with the exception of a flying-machine (instrumentum volandi quod non vidi nec hominem ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... was no festal-day, but a day of shame to her and her whole race, because of the horrible and incredible tidings brought to them by Matzke Bork, respecting their old kinswoman, Sidonia; therefore she had left bridegroom, bridal, and festival, and ridden away alone, to see if she could not turn away such a disgrace from her noble race, and such horrible torture from her poor ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... night, entered Shrewsbury in the morning. The acclamations of the people, the concourse of the nobility and gentry about his person, and the crowds which now came every day into the standard, were incredible. ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... fill many pages with the heroic deeds of these noble women. Through their assistance, scores of Union men were enabled to make their escape from the prisons, some of them under fire, in which they were confined, and often after almost incredible sufferings, to find their way to the Union lines. Others suffering from the frightful jail fever or wasted by privation and wearisome marches with little or no food, received from them food and ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... It seemed incredible that he should go like that. Surely he would come back at noon or at dinner time. She had always felt that under his gentleness there was iron. But deep in her heart she had never believed him so implacable of purpose where she ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... conclusion; but still too incredible for belief. I find it hard to trust to appearances in ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... of my hero, Master Richard Cheveley, son of the Reverend John Cheveley, vicar of the parish of S—, in the county of D—-, that it is possible some of my readers may be inclined to consider them incredible, but that they are thoroughly probable the following paragraph which appeared in the evening edition of the Standard early in the month of November, 1879, will, I think, amply prove. I have no fear that any sensible boys will be inclined to follow Dick's ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... canoe up a series of difficult cataracts, bitterly reproached his master next morning for his want of consideration in thus making a poor invalid go out and toil during the night. The Indians of the Gran Chaco are often heard to relate the most incredible stories as things which they have themselves seen and heard; hence strangers who do not know them intimately say in their haste that these Indians are liars. In point of fact the Indians are firmly convinced of the truth of what they relate; for these wonderful adventures ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... put my gang at work in the mornin'," he would answer. This performance was repeated again and again, but the "gang" we looked for did not come. I remonstrated against this seeming neglect, but Mr. Krome blandly assured me that when his men did once get to work they would push the job with incredible speed. I knew he was a liar, yet I always ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... towardes the tops of high Cedars, that I thinke in all the world the like abundance is not to be found: and my selfe hauing seene those parts of Europe that most abound, find such difference as were incredible to be written. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... wicked are always dark, and their motives often beyond fathoming; and strange, unaccountable, incredible as it may seem, I do believe, and that upon evidence so clear as to amount almost to demonstration, that Heathcote's visit to Dublin—his betrayal of the secret—and the final and terrible catastrophe which laid O'Mara ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... going to the town-hall to hear this wonderful new telephone, as they call it. They say that someone speaking from the post office at Glenelg will be perfectly audible in the town-hall here, a distance of six and a half miles. It sounds almost incredible. What will they discover next! Truly this is an amazing age, and you children may live to ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... adventures seemed to attest the possibility of divine intervention in earthly affairs. He witnessed the miracle of a peasant girl dominating a court of ruffians and bandits and arousing a cowardly king who was on the point of flight. He witnessed the incredible episode of a virgin bringing back to the fold such black rams as La Hire, Xaintrailles, Beaumanoir, Chabannes, Dunois, and Gaucourt, and washing their old fleeces whiter than snow. Undoubtedly Gilles also, under her shepherding, docilely cropped the white grass ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... perfectly at home in each one of them. There appeared to be no exhausting of their resources; and the ease, and copiousness, and fluency of their language, were remarked by all present, as extraordinary, and by some as almost incredible. Many who were present, could scarcely believe that the children spoke extemporaneously. All these phenomena were simply the effects of the principle of which we are here speaking, regularly brought into operation, in the weekly acts of drawing and applying their ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... manoeuvres of Miss Flaw especially attracted me that evening, but I leaned out across Miss Marks and I caught Miss Flaw's eye. She nodded, I nodded; and the amazing deed was done, I hardly know how. Miss Flaw, with incredible swiftness, flew along the line, plucked me by the coat-collar from between my paralysed protectresses, darted with me down the chapel and out into the dark, before anyone had time to say ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... "That which is incredible to thee thou shalt not, at thy soul's peril, attempt to believe. Go to Perdition if thou must, but not with a lie in thy mouth. ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... For it seemed incredible. Little more than an hour before they had left this man apparently a helpless imbecile, unable to concentrate his mental faculties save upon one point, and only at certain times upon that, at all others hopelessly blank. While now ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... adopted by Augustus. In the year 6 B.C., the eldest, Caius, reached the age of fourteen. He was therefore but a lad; notwithstanding his youth, there was suddenly brought forward the strange, almost incredible, proposal to make a law by which he might at once be elected consul for the year 754 A.U.C, when he ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... of a wise man content to bide his time Hate of hate, The scorn of scorn, The love of love Hollowness, the hopelessness, the unworthiness of life I did not know, and I hated to ask If he was half as bad, he would have been too bad to be In the South there was nothing but a mistaken social ideal Incredible in their insipidity Industrial slavery Love of freedom and the hope of justice Man who had so much of the boy in him Met with kindness, if not honor Napoleonic height which spiritually overtops the Alps Never paid ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... How incredible that it had taken centuries of patient technological research to master in a practical way the tremendous implications of Einstein's original postulate. Warp space with a rapidly moving object, move away from the observer with the ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long
... still quite struck with wonder at your "Predication aux oiseaux de St. Francois." ["St. Francis preaching to the birds." Composed by Liszt for pianoforte alone. (Roszavolgyi.)] You use your organ as an orchestra in an incredible way, as only a great composer and a great performer, like yourself, could do. The most proficient organists in all countries have only to take off their ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... assume it to be consolatory. The doctrine, in short, can hardly be made tangible without shocking men's consciences and understandings. It ought, it may be, to be attractive, but when firmly grasped, it becomes incredible and revolting. ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... grants that there may be something beyond the sphere of man's knowledge; I can make no such admission. For me, what is called the unknowable is simply the non-existent. We see what is, and we see all." Now this gave me a sort of shock; it seemed incredible to me that a man of so much intelligence could hold such a view. So far am I from feeling satisfied with any explanation, scientific or other, of myself and of the world about me, that not a day goes ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... and in so great need of laborers and workers. This increases our labor, so that our sufferings are very great—a prolonged martyrdom in which the sons of the Society pass their lives, exposed to innumerable fatigues, which are incredible even when seen. I believe, indeed, that you in Europe have no idea of this apostolic life; for of late years the missionary fathers have gone about through these mountains alone, poor and half-naked, having nothing to eat or drink, without shelter or entertainment, on account of the ferocity ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... seven warships were lying off the coast, every one of them smashing their broadsides into the Turkish positions. The noise was incredible, but every sound was dwarfed when the great super-Dreadnought fired her 15-inch guns. The shells, the length of a tall man and weighing very nearly a ton, were charged with shrapnel, carrying no fewer than twenty thousand ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... wonderful and most wonderful was to come. It was given me once and once again to look on a vision, an enchantment, a miracle of all but impossible beauty, incredible until seen, and even when seen scarcely to be credited, save by an act of faith. We had sailed up a deep bay, and cast anchor in a fine large harbor of the exactest horseshoe shape. It was bordered immediately by a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead? I verily thought with myself, that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. Which thing I also did in Jerusalem: and many of the saints did ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... believe that against the wishes of myself and my family you will persist in this. It is incredible! I can no longer be content only to ask you not to interfere—I ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... of human folly. It will astound the reader by reason of the wickedness of the waste of good capital involved, and at the same time it is a very pleasant proof of the progress that has been made in finance during the last half century. It is almost incredible that such things should have happened so lately. It is quite impossible ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... laws and inflexible despotism; that I, a stranger, naked, forlorn, cast upon a sandy beach frequented but at rare intervals and by savage fishermen, should find my way into the heart of this wonderful empire, and finally explore my way back to my native shore, are surely most strange and incredible achievements. Yet all this, my friend, has been endured and performed ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... Gordon stood under the mantelpiece behind the arm-chair where the captain of the House sat, and looked down at the row of new boys at the day-room table, it seemed incredible to him that he had ever been like that. And yet it was only three years ago since he had sat there, dazed ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... which thou tellest me, O Suta, about the battle, fierce and terrible, between the one and the many, and the victory of that illustrious one, that story of the prowess of Subhadra's son is highly wonderful and almost incredible. I do not, however, regard it as a marvel that is absolutely beyond belief in the case of those that have righteousness for their refuge. After Duryodhana was beaten back and a hundred princes slain, what course was pursued by the warriors of my army against the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Asian country of incredible natural beauty and proud nomadic traditions, most of Kyrgyzstan was formally annexed to Russia in 1876. The Kyrgyz staged a major revolt against the Tsarist Empire in 1916 in which almost one-sixth of the Kyrgyz population ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... first-rate, or even second-rate novelists, rather than to its own intrinsic merits. The public taste in fiction was not fastidious, and could swallow long-winded discussions and sentimental rhodomontade with an appetite that now seems almost incredible. The Novice is said to have been a favourite with Pitt in his last illness, but if this be true, the fact points rather to the decay of the statesman's intellect than to the literary value of the book. Still the ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... sea-coast of the channel on the French side had been the lines of a besieged city, no one point of which could with prudence be left undefended by cannon. Boulogne was pitched upon as the centre port, from which the expedition was to sail. By incredible exertions, Bonaparte had rendered its harbour and roads capable of containing two thousand vessels of various descriptions. The smaller sea-ports of Vimereux, Ambleteuse, and Etaples, Dieppe, Havre, St. Valeri, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... gasped in astonishment. It was too incredible to believe. It was actually ludicrous. She laughed heartily. ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... sweat—our garments were soaked through, and as we took off our wind clothes showers of ice fell on the floor. The accumulation was almost incredible and shows the whole trouble of sledging in cold weather. It would have been very uncomfortable to have camped in the open under such conditions, and assuredly a winter and spring party cannot afford to get so hot if they wish to ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... hesitation, in dilatoriness, in absolute lack of initiative and virility on the part of the two chief actors in the drama: that Doria should fly from the field of battle in an untouched ship is only one degree less incredible than that Barbarossa should have relinquished his attack on the Galleon of Venice. It would almost seem as if on this occasion each of the great rivals was hypnotised by the presence of the other; all their lives they had been seeking honour and riches ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... essentially are. Henry James refines but seldom repeats. Conrad, in such a story as "Gaspar Ruiz" for example, or in "Chance," gives the impression of not caring to understand if only he can fully picture the mind that his brooding imagination draws further and further from its sheath. It is incredible, to one who has not counted, how many times he raises the same situation to the light—the Garibaldean and Nostromo, Mrs. Travers marveling at her knowledge of Lingard's heart—turns it, opens it a little further, and puts it back while he broods on. Here is the explanation ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... free choices of allegiance would ever turn in malign reaction against the Government and people who had welcomed and nurtured them and seek to make this proud country once more a hotbed of European passion. A little while ago such a thing would have seemed incredible. Because it was incredible we made no preparation for it. We would have been almost ashamed to prepare for it, as if we were suspicious of ourselves, our own comrades and neighbors! But the ugly and incredible thing has actually come about and we are without adequate federal ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... earth, fifteen to twenty feet, immediately overlying the salt-rocks, and underneath what Dr. Foster believes to be the equivalent of the Drift in Europe, "associated with the bones of elephants and other huge extinct quadrupeds," "incredible quantities of pottery ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... census, that for 1790, showed that hardly four per cent of the people were in them. The tide set toward the factory towns as strongly as it now does toward the cities, though factory labor for the most part was of almost incredible severity. The length of a day's labor varied from twelve to fifteen hours, the mills of New England running generally thirteen hours a day the year round. Several mills are on record, the day in one of which was fourteen hours, and in the other fifteen hours and ten minutes, ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... Rosie-Crucian, Miraculous Sapphiric Medicines of the Sun and Moon, &c., all Harmoniously United, and Operated by Astromancy and Geomancy, in so Easie a Method that a Fine Lady may practise and compleat Incredible, Extraordinary Telesmes (and read her Gallant's devices without disturbing her fancy), and cure all Diseases in Yong and Old, whereunto is added ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... to be one of the most brilliant manoeuvres Napoleon had ever undertaken. The conscripts, the raw boys, the National Guards, many of whom had been in action for the first time that day, were filled with incredible enthusiasm. They were ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... incredible is about to be related; but a thing may be incredible and still be true; sometimes it is incredible because it is true. And many infidels but disbelieve the least incredible things; and many bigots reject the most obvious. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... "All the stories of Horace Walpole are to be received with great caution; but his Reminiscences, above all, written in his dotage, teem with the grossest inaccuracies and incredible assertions." LORD MAHON'S History of England. Lond. 1837. ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... evening service, when the Native nurse warned them of coming danger, beseeching her mistress to remain indoors, and, on being asked to explain, saying there would be a fight with the sepoys. The idea seemed incredible, and the Chaplain would have paid no attention to the warning had not his wife been greatly alarmed. At her earnest request he took his two children with them in the carriage, instead of leaving them in the house with the ayah, as had been intended. It was soon apparent that the ayah had ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... of love—of my love for you," he declares vehemently. "That you should suppose I ever felt anything for Mrs. Talbot but the most ordinary friendship seems incredible to me. To you, and you alone, my heart has been given for many a day. Not the vaguest tenderness for any other woman has come between my thoughts and your image since ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... afford so many opportunities of betting, just as the minor horse-races do in England; while the great quadrennial, the Presidential election, is the "Derby day" of America. The enormous sums that change hands upon such occasions, and the enormous number of them, would be incredible. A statistic of these bets, could such be given, and their amount, would surprise even the most "enlightened citizen" of the States themselves. Foreigners cannot understand the intense excitement which is felt during an election time throughout the United States. ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... the jacket, and found some moisture left. They sucked it, and it was a wonderful and incredible relief to their ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... his passion for physical perfection, the breeder of thoroughbred horses and cattle and dogs, the fact that a child of his should have been born without this precious heritage was a thing incredible, a humiliation beyond words. Whenever he looked at the tiny, whimpering creature, he asked pardon of her with his eyes for so monstrous an injustice. He never tired of carrying her about in his powerful arms, of rubbing the poor twisted limbs in an effort ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... morning the dog was gone. Yes, incredible as it seems, that graceless dog was gone—gone ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... box again, he looked more curiously at it. Surely the scrolls must be of some worth. He could not read, but perhaps something of value might be secretly hidden inside each of these scrolls. Who knew? It must be! It seemed incredible that even Christians would be foolish enough to fill a treasure-box with nothing but rolls of writing, and then conceal the box so carefully behind ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... hero-worshipping biographer is only too familiar to us. His book is usually a monotonous and insipid record of virtue or wisdom. The hero is always right, and always victorious, with the result that the book is at once tedious and incredible. But Boswell knew better than {64} that. He was too much of an artist not to know that he wanted shadows to give value to his lights, and too much a lover of the fullness and variety of life not to want ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... pleasures lead to eternal death, and our pains to perpetual happiness." Epipodius was severely beaten, and then put to the rack, upon which being stretched, his flesh was torn with iron hooks. Having borne his torments with incredible patience and unshaken fortitude, he was taken ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... a perfectly incredible increase in luxury and extravagance. "You are surprised at what you see here to-day," said she—"but take my word for it, if you were to come back five years later, you'd find all our present standards antiquated, and our ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... greatly distressed upon hearing that the Vrishnis had met with destruction through the Brahmanas rod of chastisement. The death of Vasudeva, like the drying up of the ocean, those heroes could not believe. In fact the destruction of the wielder of Saranga was incredible to them. Informed of the incident about the iron bolt, the Pandavas became filled with grief and sorrow. In fact, they sat down, utterly cheerless and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the blue cotton white-embroidered blouses and severely stiff snow-white shirt collars; and the women in round dark-brown cloaks reaching to their feet; the drum-beating, yelling tooth-drawers and patent medicine venders praising their remedies against tapeworm and ague with incredible volubility, and the couple of majestic gendarmes in their imposing uniforms, with yellow leather belts and cocked hats, who found no occasion to exhibit their stern official side to the noisy, laughing, but well-behaved crowd. After strolling for awhile ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... distress in which individuals of all descriptions are. The only remedy is the revival of Bonaparte's system of war and plunder; and it is evident that cannot be adopted during the reign of the Bourbons."[514] Neither he nor Castlereagh doubted the imminence of the danger. "It sounds incredible," wrote the latter, "that Talleyrand should treat the notion of any agitation at Paris as wholly unfounded."[515] A plot was believed to exist, which embraced as one of its features the seizing of the Duke, and holding him as a hostage. He himself thought it possible, and saw no means in the French ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... miraculous resuscitation of a roast fowl (generally a cock, as here), in confirmation of an incredible prophecy, is a tale found in nearly all European countries. Originally, we find, the miracle is connected with the Passion, not the Nativity. See the ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... the top of the tide, rounding promontories, and gliding among bosky bowers and wooded dells, till at last our panting conveyer panted no more, and we lay alongside the pier of Chepstow. The tide at this place rises to the incredible height of fifty, and sometimes, on great occasions, of seventy feet; so they have a floating sort of foot-bridge from the vessel to the shore, that sinks and rises with the flood, connected with the land by elongating iron chains, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... in a very few minutes. Indeed, his journey up and down may be very well compared with that of the well-known British sailor who took five hours to get up Majuba mountain, but, according to his own forcibly told story, came down again with an almost incredible rapidity. It may therefore be imagined that sledge- travelling in Madeira is not very ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... and determined man than William would have given up in despair, for it was seven years, it is said, before the affair was brought to a conclusion. One story is told of the impetuous energy which William manifested in this suit, which seems almost incredible. ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... on. At the banking ground he found empty skids. Evidently the drive was over. And yet even to Thorpe's ignorance, it seemed incredible that the remaining million and a half of logs had been hauled, banked and driven during the short time he had lain in the Bay City hospital. More to solve the problem than in any hope of work, he set out up ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... It was wonderful, incredible, the thing which had befallen Leesville. Full of hatred for the system as Jimmie Higgins was, he could not but be thrilled by what he saw. Thousands of men pouring into the once commonplace little city—men of a score of races and creeds, men old and young, white and black—even ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... to the mainmast, but another lurch of the vessel cast it loose again; a huge billow rolled under the stern; down went the bow, and the brute slid on its haunches, with its fore legs rigid in front, at an incredible pace towards the galley. Just as a smash became imminent, the bow rose, the stern dropt, and away he went back again with equal speed, but in a more ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... extended from Hamburgh to Rome, shrunk from the enormous charge of putting it in a habitable state. It is computed that the establishment at Versailles, first and last, in matters of construction merely, cost the French monarchy two hundred millions of dollars! This is almost an incredible sum, when we remember the low price of wages in France; but, on the other hand, when we consider the vastness of the place, how many natural difficulties were overcome, and the multitude of works from ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... swam and he sank weakly into his swivel chair. It was incredible that he, a veteran of the criminal bar, should have been so tricked. Instantly, as when a reagent is injected into a retort of chemicals and a precipitate is formed leaving the previously cloudy liquid like crystal, Tutt's addled brain cleared. He was caught! The victim ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... rice, as I had understood, but of the millet, which is used by the poor instead of rice. Some writers estimate that five millions of people must die from starvation before the next crop can be gathered; but this seems incredible. And now America comes to the rescue, so that at this moment, while from its Eastern shores it pours forth its inexhaustible stores to feed Europe, it sends from the West of its surplus to the older races of the far East. Thus from all sides, fabled Ceres ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... come again to carry my mother home with him for the winter; my wife and children three are combining for and against me; at all events, I am to have my visit. I pray you to cherish your good nature, your mercy. Let your wife cherish it,—that I may see, I indolent, this incredible worker, whose toil has been long since my pride and wonder,—that I may see him benign and unexacting,— he shall not be at the crisis of some over-labor. I shall not stay but an hour. What do I care for his fame? Ah! how gladly I hoped once to see Sterling as mediator and amalgam, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and began praying and crying, fearing they should be killed; he himself threw away his gun and knife, that they might not attract the flashes, for they were within two feet from the earth, flitting along with incredible swiftness, and moving parallel to its surface. They continued for upwards of five minutes, as near as he could judge, and made a loud rustling noise, like the waving of a flag in a strong breeze. After they had ceased, the sky became ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... the pursuit of Rokoff. Now that he was positive that the woman ahead of him was indeed Jane, and that she had again fallen into the hands of the Russian, it seemed that with all the incredible speed of his fleet and agile muscles he moved at ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... cavalry, in the late expedition in the rear of Lee's army, surpasses any thing ever achieved on this continent. Especially are the adventures of the Second New York (Harris Light Cavalry) and the Twelfth Illinois almost incredible. But they bear with them trophies that fully confirm the record of ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... in all but the payment of the bills. The common man is proud and glad to bear this burden for the benefit of his wealthier neighbors, and he does so with the singular conviction that in some occult manner he profits by it. All this is incredible, but ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... of famine even, not artificial, but real; in short, in the midst of an accumulation of horrors almost unexampled, the fiddle and tambourin never ceased. Galas, concerts, and balls were given daily in incredible numbers; and no less than from fifteen to twenty theatres, besides several, other places of public entertainment, were constantly open, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... Central Asian country of incredible natural beauty and proud nomadic traditions, Kyrgyzstan was annexed by Russia in 1864; it achieved independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Current concerns include: political freedoms, interethnic ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... perfectly motionless without a word. He was still striving to marshal this flood of mad ideas. It was incredible, amazing. ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... admission that natural science endorses the succession of animal life which Mr. Gladstone finds in Genesis. On the contrary, a good many representatives of natural science would be prepared to say, on theoretical grounds alone, that it is incredible that the "air-population" should have appeared before the "land-population"—and that, if this assertion is to be found in Genesis, it merely demonstrates the scientific worthlessness of the story of which ...
— The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature - Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... gentleman declared, laughingly, to Mr. Jefferson as they sat alone over their wine one evening after dinner at the Legation, Calvert having retired to finish the copying of some important letters to be despatched to Mr. Short, who was at Amsterdam. "Elles s'en raffolent, but Ned, incredible as it may seem, is far from being grateful for such a doubtful blessing! His stoical indifference and unvarying courtesy to the fair sex are genuine and sublime and pique the women incredibly. Indeed, ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... their people were but just emerged from actual famine, and were ready to be plunged into a gulf of penury and beggary, that your philosophic lords chose, with an ostentatious pomp and luxury, to feast an incredible number of idle and thoughtless people, collected with art and pains from all quarters of the world. They constructed a vast amphitheatre in which they raised a species of pillory.[3] On this pillory they set their lawful king and queen, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... The incredible thing is that the people here could stop Earth from firing another shot if they wished to, and at 24 hours' notice, but their philosophy is totally opposed to force, even when it means their own destruction. ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... gentry; and even their exertions to promote the growth of turnips, or to teach the people the proper mode of cultivation, were turned into ridicule and treated with contempt, in the public speeches of some of the Roman Catholic bishops. The floodgates of abuse were thrown open; the most incredible acts of violence and atrocity were imputed to them; generalities were dealt in—except in a few instances, in which it was fondly believed the facts would have borne out the assertions. But when investigation fully exonerated the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... and Lizabetha Prokofievna quarrelled seriously about the "woman question," in the course of a lively discussion on that burning subject. He told her that she was a tyrant, and that he would never set foot in her house again. It may seem incredible, but a day or two after, Madame Epanchin sent a servant with a note begging him to return, and Colia, without standing on his dignity, did ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... clergyman, not known as a hard rider across country and as a bruiser with his fists. There had been an article in the "Brotherton Church Gazette," in which an anxious hope was expressed that some explanation would be given of the very incredible tidings which had unfortunately reached Brotherton. Then Mr. Groschut had spoken a word in season to the Bishop. Of course he said it could not be true; but would it not be well that the Dean should be invited to make his own statement? ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... Korea has achieved an incredible record of growth and integration into the high-tech modern world economy. Four decades ago, GDP per capita was comparable with levels in the poorer countries of Africa and Asia. In 2004, South Korea joined the trillion dollar club of world economies. ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Antony was to pay Cicero for defending him. As to the former, Cicero himself alludes to such a report as being common in Macedonia, and as having been used by Antony himself as an excuse for increased rapine. But this has been felt to be incredible, and has been allowed to fall to the ground because of the second accusation. But in support of that there is no word of evidence,[219] whereas the tenor of the story as told by Cicero himself is against it. Is it likely, would ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... sojourn in London he had wondered just why Eugenia had settled there in preference to her own country. It was not her wont to do things without an object, yet until this moment he had been unable to fathom her motives. Even now it seemed almost incredible. And yet what meaning would her words have other than the monstrous one which had ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... romancing—but we know it is actually done; that a soul's earnest prayer may avail to enlist mighty energies in its help and so to bring about results which otherwise would not have come to pass, ought hardly to strike the present age as an inherently incredible proposition. ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... noble (gild it as they might) than to wring money out. He had some design of a fortune in the French Indies, as the Chevalier wrote me; and it was the sum required for this that he came seeking. For the rest of the family it spelled ruin; but my lord, in his incredible partiality, pushed ever for the granting. The family was now so narrowed down (indeed, there were no more of them than just the father and the two sons) that it was possible to break the entail and alienate a piece of land. And to this, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who must have been inspired, had already slammed the doors in the faces of those seeking wildly to escape. The clerk already had the little, short-legged desk before him and was calling the roll with incredible rapidity. Bewildered and excited as Wetherell was, and knowing as little of parliamentary law as the gentleman who had proposed the woodchuck session, he began to form some sort of a notion of Jethro's generalship, and he saw that the innocent rural members who belonged ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... other merit. Well yes. He had another name, but that's pure luck—his own name of de Barral which he did not invent. I don't think that a mere Jones or Brown could have fished out from the depths of the Incredible such a colossal manifestation of human folly as that man did. But it may be that I am under-estimating the alacrity of human folly in rising to the bait. No doubt I am. The greed of that absurd monster is incalculable, unfathomable, inconceivable. The career of de Barral demonstrates that it will ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... guide was right. After four hours we reached the main street, arriving slowly to the music of incredible clatter as our little carts leapt and jolted over hundreds of big pointed stones laid carefully side by side—Tutigne's ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... and so confuse their possessors, who should control them, that they are unable to distinguish between what is fact and what is fancy. You could carry the analogy further, to events of their lives—the runnings-away in boyhood; the devoted friendships to poets in youth; the incredible amount of hard work achieved in manhood despite ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... the walls of Sulgostow, I began to think upon how I could best acquaint my sister with these incredible events; but once in her presence, my confusion was such that I lost the power of measuring my words, and hence she fancied I had ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... accompanied only by his dog, who drew a small sled, upon which he carried some provisions for his sustenance, and a bag of snuff, which the Governor of the Province gave him as a present to the Governor of Canada. After encountering almost incredible hardships and dangers with a perseverance which shows how well he appreciated the good qualities of his stolen helpmate, he reached Montreal and betook himself to the Governor's residence. Travel-worn, ragged, and wasted with cold and hunger, he was ushered into the presence ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... to this destructive onslaught. The tone is not truly philosophic, because the writer habitually regards the notion of a God as an abnormal and morbid excrescence, and not as a natural growth in human development. He takes no trouble, and it would have been an incredible departure from the mental fashion of the time if he had taken any trouble, to explain theology, or to penetrate behind its forms to those needs, aspirations, and qualities of human constitution in which theology had its best justification, if not its earliest source. He regards it as an enemy ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... little girls are apt to be. She even wanted to enter a monastery in the disguise of a boy. Later her sister persuaded her to dye her hair and dress fashionably. Charity began to fear for her saint, but was reassured to find that already at sixteen she was a nun and had commenced that "life of almost incredible austerity," freeing herself from all dependence on food and sleep and resting on a ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... keeping a volume of the King's poetry, and forgot to return it. This was, we believe, merely one of the oversights which men setting out upon a journey often commit. That Voltaire could have meditated plagiarism is quite incredible. He would not, we are confident, for the half of Frederic's kingdom have consented to father Frederic's verses. The King, however, who rated his own writings much above their value, and who was inclined to see all Voltaire's actions in the worst light, was enraged to think that his ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... informed that a 2oz. glove is an evasion by which they dodge the law, and make it difficult for the police to interfere. They contend for a sum of money. It seems dreadful and almost incredible—does it not?—to think that such scenes can be enacted within a few miles of our peaceful home. But you will realise, Mr. Montgomery, that while there are such influences for us to counteract, it is very necessary that we should live up ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the street was even less bearable in the early morning. St. George wondered, as he hurried across from the Grand Street station, how the prince had understood that he must not only avoid the great hotels, but that he must actually seek out incredible surroundings like these to be certain of privacy. For only the very poor are sufficiently immersed in their own affairs to be guiltless of curiosity, save indeed a kind of surface morbid wonderment ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... hand, now feeling its way along the wall, would be free to strike a match. I climbed the three steps and was steadying myself against the door for a final plunge, when something happened—something so strange, so unexpected, and so incredible that I wonder I did not shriek aloud in my terror. The door was moving under my hand. It was slowly opening inward. I could feel the chill made by the widening crack. Moment by moment this chill increased; the gap was growing—a presence was there-a presence before which ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... conspicuous even in an age when giants were rife. He has been called the Christian Seneca, from the pith and clear sententiousness of his prose style. His 'Meditations,' ranging over almost the whole compass of Scripture, as well as an incredible variety of ordinary topics, are distinguished by their fertile fancy, their glowing language, and by thought which, if seldom profound, is never commonplace, and seems always the spontaneous and easy outcome ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... to garret, but there was no trace of him. It is as I have said a labyrinth of an old house, especially the original wing, which is now practically uninhabited, but we ransacked every room and cellar without discovering the least sign of the missing man. It was incredible to me that he could have gone away leaving all his property behind him, and yet where could he be? I called in the local police, but without success. Rain had fallen on the night before, and we examined the lawn and the paths all round the house, but in vain. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... after the dramatic representations were finished, they were turned round, with all the spectators in them, so as to make one circular theatre, in the centre of which gladiators fought; but the story is incredible, and must have arisen from the false translation of amfitheatron by "double theatre.'' It is uncertain whether Caesar, in 46 B.C., constructed a temporary amphitheatre of wood for his shows of wild beasts; at any rate, the first permanent ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... upon the details of an everyday story? You know, and have often told me, how other wealthy people spend their days. From an old, well-known drama, in which I, out of mere good-humour, was playing a hacknied part, arose a singular and incredible catastrophe, unexpected by me, or by ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... When Rosamund told her tale of which I could make little, for the girl was crazed with grief and cold and fear, save that you had been attacked upon the old quay, and she had escaped by swimming Death Creek—which seemed a thing incredible—I got together what men I could. Then bidding her stay behind, with some of them to guard her, and nurse herself, which she was loth to do, I set out to find you or your bodies. It was dark, but we rode hard, having lanterns ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... eight, nine, ten, and more, children at a birth. But these statements are so marvelous, so incredible, and unsupported by proper testimony, that they do not merit any degree of confidence. The climax of such extraordinary assertions is reached, and a good illustration of the credulity of the seventeenth century furnished, ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... an old velveteen shooting jacket with brass buttons, that he had found among his former wardrobe, and with the carelessness that is frequent with those who no longer seek to please, he had given up shaving, and his long beard, badly cut, made an incredible change for the worse in his appearance. His hands were never cared for, and after each meal he drank four or five glasses ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... suddenly overwhelmed the "Lavinia," and could form no idea of its nature. Had there been a collision? If so, it must have been with the iceberg, for nothing else had been in sight when he went below. Yet it was incredible that such a thing could have happened in broad daylight. The afternoon had been clear and bright; of that he was certain, though his surroundings were now shrouded by an impenetrable veil of fog. Through ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... distressed. With trembling hands she clutched at the sill of the window for support as she heard Frederic assent to old Otto's plans for him. Her estimate of his character made it seem incredible that he would willingly lend himself to this work of wholesale murder, yet she could no longer doubt the evidence of her own ears. With overwhelming force it came to her that this man who so readily agreed to such bloody, dastardly ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... With incredible slowness the laggard moments passed; the second dog-watch came to an end; and then, still more slowly, as it seemed to my impatience, first one, then two, three, four, and so on up to eight bells of the first watch were tolled out, and still there were no signs of the enemy. And ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... servitude for life, as it is now, gives the very faintest idea of what it used to be in old times. With a little trouble I could tell you the weight of iron carried by each man. I cannot exactly remember, but it would strike you as being incredible. They were chained two and two together (a horrible association), to lessen the chances of escape; there was no chance of mitigation for good conduct; there was hard mechanical, uninteresting work, out of doors in an inclement climate, in all weathers: what wonder if men died ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... lot and filled her days. Both she and Father were up at daylight in summer, and before daylight in winter. Sometimes she had help in the kitchen, but oftener she did not. The work that housewives did in those times seems incredible. They made their own soap, sugar, cheese, dipped or moulded their candles, spun the flax and wool and wove it into cloth, made carpets, knit the socks and mittens and "comforts" for the family, dried apples, pumpkins, and berries, and made the preserves ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... against truth with the utmost obstinacy. I sometimes suspected myself of madness, and should not have dared to impart this secret but to a man like you, capable of distinguishing the wonderful from the impossible, and the incredible from the false.' ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... despise history; and D'Alembert is said to have wished that all record of past events could be blotted out. Their theory, in its popular version at least, came to be that states and churches had been got up 'for the sole purpose of picking people's pockets.'[638] This had become incredible to any intelligent reasoner, and any Tory could prove that there was something good in the past. The peculiarity of the 'Germano-Coleridgian' school was that they saw beyond the immediate controversy. They were the first to inquire with any power ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... rocks asunder into forms such as at b, of which, when many of the edges have fallen, the lower ones are more or less supported by the very debris accumulated at their feet; and yet all the while the tops sustain themselves in the most fantastic and incredible fineness of peak against ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... they ever concur in that match? Did not they to the end endeavour to defeat and overturn it? I hope Mr. Hume will not call bishop Morton, the duke of Buckingham, and Margaret countess of Richmond, chiefs of the Yorkists. 2 The story told constantly by Perkin of his escape is utterly incredible, that those who were sent to murder his brother, took pity on him and granted him his liberty.—Answer. We do not know but from Henry's narrative and the Lancastrian historians that Perkin gave this account.(48) I am not authorized to believe he did, because ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... a good many Italian hostelries, and nourished no unreasonable expectations. The Lion at Paola would have seemed to any untravelled Englishman a squalid and comfortless hole, incredible as a place of public entertainment; the Two Little Lions of Cosenza made a decidedly worse impression. Over sloppy stones, in an atmosphere heavy with indescribable stenches, I felt rather than saw my way to the foot of a ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... unexpected comes to the help of the wicked. Incredible as it appeared, she received, on the eve of her departure, a telegram from Paris. At first she thought it a device of Viscount Gratian's to cover her elopement, but it was not possible for him to have imagined the appeal. It was from her uncle, who, traveling in France, and ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... sight of their faces something had melted within her; she had trusted to them at last all that was in her heart, so that father and mother, greatly moved, felt as if they had found their child again rather than lost her. At the almost incredible spectacle of tears in her father's eyes Brenda had crept into his arms, against his breast, and lain there so still, so silent, that it seemed unnatural. They perceived ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... extension of his empire toward the west by the acquisition of Finland from Sweden. Having failed to realize his purpose by a coalition of so-called legitimate sovereigns, and having heard the almost incredible suggestions which Napoleon had made to Prince Labanoff, his messenger, he was overpowered by the temptation thus held out, and, deserting Prussia, answered, "Yes." On the twenty-first an armistice without serious guarantees was concluded between France and ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... One who happens to have read the work of Villebois can easily comprehend the existence of a state of society, on the banks of the Volga, a hundred years ago, which is now impossible, and will soon become incredible. What is strangest in our narrative has been ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... having settled the operations of the ensuing campaign in Ireland, where general Ginckel exercised the supreme command, manned his fleet by dint of pressing sailors, to the incredible annoyance of commerce; then leaving the queen as before at the helm of government in England, he returned to Holland accompanied by lord Sidney, secretary of state, the earls of Marlborough and Portland, and began ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... openings for the adaptation of flexible tubes, made of very strong fabric of canvas, strengthened by cording, and terminating in nozzles of metal of 21/2 to 3 inches in diameter. From these nozzles the streams of water are directed against the face of the gravel to be washed, exercising incredible effectivity. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... and bar; so that a man, very little of an idealist, was able to sustain her in the pure imagination—where she did almost belong to him. She was his, in a sense, because she might have been his—but for an incredible extreme of folly. The dark ring of the eclipse cast by some amazing foolishness round the shining crescent perpetually in secret claimed the whole sphere of her, by what might have been, while admitting her lost to him in fact. To Thomas Redworth's mind the lack of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... supernaturally perceptive and positive woman, since she usually has superior opportunities to study man in all the stages from marriage to madness; but with her whole sex, particularly after certain sour turns in life, inheres an alertness of observation as to the incredible viciousness of masculine character, which nothing less than a bit of flattery or a happily equivocal reflection upon some rival sister can either divert or mislead ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... the powers of his vessel, Captain Ericsson did not succeed in exciting the interest of any of the persons who witnessed the performance; and it seems almost incredible that no one of them had the intelligence to perceive or the magnanimity to admit the importance of his invention. But, fortunately for Ericsson and the reputation of our country, he soon after met with Captain Stockton, of the United States navy, who at once took the deepest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Sally to have to be shut up in the house so long: but this was all; she was totally unprepared for any thought of danger, and the shock was terrible to her, when the thought came. It was on a sunny day in May, one of those incredible summer days which New England sometimes flashes out like frost-set jewels in her icy spring. Hetty had listened, as usual, to hear the Doctor leave Sally's room: she was more than usually impatient to have him go, for she was waiting to take in to Sally a big basket of arbutus blossoms ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... Incredible as it may sound to the twentieth century reader, the Commonwealth of Mississippi was for six years ably represented in the United States Senate by a distinguished Negro Senator, the Honorable B. K. Bruce. So inspiring is the story of Senator Bruce's efforts in the defense of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... will probably be much softened and will look at things differently; or he may be dead. Or you may be—and most likely will be—married. You need only concern yourself with the present. It is possible that you have discovered your only chance of happiness. Do not commit the incredible folly of strangling that chance before it is born. This is not my day for lecturing, but I am going to take your conscience in hand. It needs training. Before you know it, you will be morbid. That means brain rot, and no chance of the ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... defects of the heroical dramas of Dryden and his contemporaries are bombast in the ideas and bad taste in the expressions. In Crowne's heroical novel of "Pandion and Amphigenia"[346] both defects are pushed to an extreme which, incredible as it may seem to the readers of Dryden, was never at any time reached by ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... and despatch with which sailors can construct a raft, would be almost incredible to a landsman who had never seen the thing done. It is not from mere concert or organisation among themselves—though there is something in that. Not much, however, for well-drilled soldiers are as clumsy at such ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... life, that he would not believe the plays and tragedies he had written to be his own: indeed, he might have been taken for a grown-up child, if he had also forgotten his native tongue. If this instance seems incredible, what shall we say of infants? A man of ripe age deems their nature so unlike his own, that he can only be persuaded that he too has been an infant by the analogy of other men. However, I prefer to leave such questions ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... suddenly Jeanne began to recite the service for the dead in a monotonous voice, but with incredible rapidity, still seated on the bed, and turning the beads of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... content to serve my country; and I am perfectly well aware that I cannot serve two masters. In my sphere of action I have tried to understand the heavier social grievances, and to help to set them right. When the Times newspaper proved its then almost incredible case, in reference to the ghastly absurdity of that vast labyrinth of misplaced men and misdirected things, which had made England unable to find on the face of the earth, an enemy one- twentieth part so potent to effect the misery and ruin of her noble defenders as she has been ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... before Whitehall). You see the broken lance that lies there by his right foot; he shivered that lance of his adversary all to pieces; and bearing himself, look you, sir, in this manner, at the same time he came within the target of the gentleman who rode against him, and taking him with incredible force before him on the pommel of his saddle, he in that manner rid the tournament over, with an air that showed he did it rather to perform the rule of the lists, than expose his enemy; however, ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... broken ground apparently in disorder, and by the feel of his sword I made sure he had in mind to parry; but the man was as full of tricks as the French King Louis and with incredible swiftness he sent a straight thrust in high tierce—a thrust which sharply stung my ribs only, since I had flung myself aside in time ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... Burgoyne who knows everybody, at least by sight, laughs and points and chats with her neighbour, Mr. Neal; the constant welling up of processions from behind,—the Canons and Monsignori in their fur and lace tippets, the red Cardinals with their suites; the entry of the Guardia Nobile, splendid, incredible, in their winged Achillean helmets above their Empire uniforms—half Greek, half French, half gods, half dandies, the costliest foolishest plaything that any court can show; and finally as the time draws on, the sudden thrills and murmurs that run through the church, announcing ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... eight days I took a daily lesson an hour and a half. At the end of this twelve working-hours' appreticeship I was graduated—in the rough. I was pronounced competent to paddle my own bicycle without outside help. It seems incredible, this celerity of acquirement. It takes considerably longer than that to learn ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... audited report of the treasurer, Mrs. Henry Wade Rogers, showed almost incredible collections during a period when the war was making its endless calls for money. In part it was as follows: "The year 1918 has been a very remarkable one for the national suffrage treasury. The large demands of the war on every individual, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... limits some of the very most productive regions in the whole world. The Mesopotamian lowland, the Orontes valley, the tract between the Caspian and the mountains, the regions about Merv and Balkh, were among the richest in Asia, and produced grain and fruits in incredible abundance. The rich pastures of Media and Armenia furnished excellent horses. Bactria gave an inexhaustible supply of camels. Elephants in large numbers were readily procurable from India. Gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, tin, were furnished by several of the provinces, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... branches of the tree of life. Now this would be an objection fatal to the theory of natural selection, supposing these organs or structures in the cases compared are not merely analogous, but also homologous. For it would be incredible that in two totally different lines of descent one and the same structure should have been built up independently by two parallel series of variations, and that in these two lines of descent it should always and independently have ministered to the same function. On the other hand, ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... American army. That, indeed, was the great, the overpowering fact of these August days. Ellesborough responded eagerly, describing the huge convoy with which he himself had come over; and that amazing, that incredible march across three thousand miles of sea and land, which every day was pouring into the British Isles, and so into France, some 15,000 men—the flower of American manhood, come to the rescue of the world. He told the great story well, with ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... much as attempted to be proved; and why might not the protector's flatterers and partisans have made use sometimes of one false rumor, sometimes of another? Sir Thomas More mentions the one rumor as well as the other, and treats them both lightly, as they deserved. It is also thought incredible by Mr. Carte, that Dr. Shaw should have been encouraged by Richard to calumniate openly his mother the duchess of York, with whom that prince lived in good terms. But if there be any difficulty in this supposition, we need only suppose, that Dr. Shaw might have concerted ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... Romans maple wood, when knotted and veined, was highly prized for furniture. When boards large enough for constructing tables were found, the extravagance of purchasers was incredible: to such an extent was it carried, that when a Roman accused his wife of expending his money on pearls, jewels, or similar costly trifles, she used to retort, and turn the tables on her husband. Hence our ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... says the Wise Man, "under the sun." We have seen enough, of late years, of railway manias, and the almost incredible anxiety of all classes to realise something in the numerous El Dorados which infatuation or cupidity set afloat in periods of excitement. But, from the following account of De Tocqueville, it appears that a hundred and thirty years ago the same passions were developed on a still ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... immense armies were often employed by Indian kings, we have only to refer to a succession of writers. Barros notes the great power of the sovereign of Vijayanagar and his almost incredible richness, and is at pains to give an account of how these enormous forces were raised, "lest his tale should ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... Tiberius, Nero, and Caligula, of Heliogabalus and Caracalla, of Domitian and Commodus, to recognize that the difference between freedom and despotism is as wide as that between Heaven and Hell. The cruelty, baseness, and insanity of tyrants are incredible. Let him who complains of the fickle humors and inconstancy of a free people, read Pliny's character of Domitian. If the great man in a Republic cannot win office without descending to low arts and whining beggary and the judicious ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... others at right angles. This street is said to have been lighted at nights, while the Roman streets remained dark and dangerous. In the neighbourhood of the city was the celebrated park called Daphne, where the voluptuous and almost incredible dissipation of the ancient world perhaps reached its acme. Like Alexandria, Antioch ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... for entering upon the discussion of these questions, lies in the incredible thoughtlessness with which a great part of modern educated people, even of such men as do not at all wish to abandon faith in a living God, permit themselves to be governed by the leaders of religious infidelity, ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... peculiarly interesting and attractive. No man certainly ever performed more gallant exploits, and few have rendered more important service to the cause of freedom than he. Many of his actions for bravery, skill, and the performance of almost incredible deeds, by apparently the most inadequate means, are scarcely rivalled by any thing in the records of naval history. His life should be familiar to American readers; and in the elegant, forcible, and graphic style of Commander Mackenzie ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... and takes the ink much better. It is remarkably durable too; for, if the cut be not exposed to alternate moisture or heat, so as to warp or crush it, the number of thousands that it will print is almost incredible. England is the country where this economical mode of illustration is performed in the greatest perfection; and just when a constant demand for box was thus created, the trees available for the purpose had vanished from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 369, Saturday, May 9, 1829. • Various
... a conception carries us back into the dreamland of pious romance. It presupposes a world in which things did not happen as they happen now; in which the incredible is assumed to be real and the course of events is shaped by miracle. To be sure, miracle is but sparingly used in the dramatic action itself, and the totality of the play is only a little more wonderful than the Maid's actual history ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... at the same time all over India, but the amount of rainfall varies enormously in localities not far removed from each other. There are parts of India where rain hardly ever falls, and there are other parts where the total rainfall reaches an almost incredible figure. But it would be possible for a skilful wanderer so to travel about India that he would never come under the influence of ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... and all liars have their portion in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone. And that such men as the prophets of whom we read in the Old Testament did not know that, and therefore invented this history, or invented anything else, is a thing incredible and absurd. ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... as a serpent. He could scent the Prussians as a dog can scent a hare, could discover food where we should have died of hunger without him, and obtained information from everybody, and information which was always reliable, with incredible cleverness. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... with the bishop of Rochester without moneie; Dunstans parentage, his strange trance, and what a woonderfull thing he did during the time it lasted, his education and bringing vp, with what good qualities he was indued, an incredible tale of his harpe, how he was reuoked from louing and lusting after women whereto he was addicted, his terrible dreame of a rough beare, what preferments he obteined by his skill in ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (7 of 8) - The Seventh Boke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... his impression, carefully brought all the sense of the situation to converge upon a single point; everything was ready for the great scene of Becky's triumph in the face of the world, one memorable night of a party at Gaunt House. It is incredible that he should let the opportunity slip. There was a chance of a straight, unhampered view of the whole meaning of his matter; nothing was needed but to allow the scene to show itself, fairly and squarely. All its ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... tribe, piloted by the Pennacooks down the Merrimac, destroyed Haverhill, murdering and capturing most of its inhabitants. It would fill a volume to relate the bloody tragedies acted and instigated by this tribe; it seems almost incredible that any people could exist for a generation amidst such repeated incursions of ...
— The Abenaki Indians - Their Treaties of 1713 & 1717, and a Vocabulary • Frederic Kidder
... and be annoyed, and that his annoyance, his just and legitimate annoyance, would spoil the perfection of the afternoon. And as she played with the illusion it made more real her tranquillity, her incredible content. ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... this hall upon the pretence of sleep, give himself the mortal wound in his bedchamber, and then be brought back into that hall to expire, purely to show his good-breeding, and save his friends the trouble of coming up to his bedchamber; all this appears to me to be improbable, incredible, impossible." ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... these things, the Kid, by means of stolen horses, broke back once more to his old stamping grounds around Fort Sumner. Garrett again got on his trail, and as the Kid, with incredible fatuity, still hung around his old haunts, he was at length able to close with him once more. With his deputies, John Poe and Thomas P. McKinney, he located the Kid in Sumner, although no one seemed to be explicit as to his whereabouts. He went to ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... a surprisingly short time, he heard the hoofs returning. It seemed almost incredible that George could have driven to the Harbor, then to the Minot place, and started Judah on the return ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... spreading of tables in the streets with all manner of provisions, setting out whole hogsheads of wine and butts of sack, but specially such numbers of bonfires, both here and all along as he [the prince] went, the marks whereof we found by the way two days afterwards, is almost incredible." ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... suddenly stiffened. His one explanation of Langrishe's pride standing in the way was forgotten; it was not reason enough. Was it possible that Langrishe had been playing fast-and-loose with his girl? Was it possible—this was more incredible still—that he did not return her innocent passion? For a few seconds he did not speak. His indignation was ebbing into a dull acquiescence. If Langrishe did not care—why, no one on earth could make him care. No ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... the lieutenant bestrode. These fleet animals no sooner heard the enlivening sound, than, eager for the chase, they sprang away all of a sudden, and strained every nerve to partake of the sport, flew across the fields with incredible speed, overleaped hedges and ditches, and everything in their way, without the least regard to their unfortunate riders. The lieutenant, whose steed had got the heels of the other, finding it would be great folly ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... bread, which is fair on the outside, and somewhat brown within. Beyond this country, the Mare Mortuum, or Dead Sea[3], stretches with a continual current far to the south, and whatever falls into it is seen no more. In this country there grow canes of an incredible length, as large as trees, even sixty paces or more in height. There are other canes, called cassan, which spread over the earth like grass, even to the extent of a mile, sending up branches from every knot; and in these canes they find certain stones of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... me this," continued Miss Gladden, "you will see that I naturally concluded that the face was that of her mother; that her mother, her parents, and probably her early life were known to you; and I will frankly admit, that except that it seemed incredible that you would allow her to remain in these surroundings, if my hypothesis were correct, I would have believed that you were her father, and that grief from bereavement or separation, had caused you to choose this life ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... importance to warrant the intrusion of that table on the narrow sidewalk. I halted and asked the nun what day it was, and who was the saint depicted in the image. She said she did not know. This seemed incredible, and I persisted in my inquiry. She called a policeman from the middle of the street, where he was regulating traffic as usual, and asked him about the ikona and the day, with the air of a helpless child. Church and State set to work guessing with ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... supposed he, Tristram, would get it eventually; that Zara had had a very sad bereavement which he felt sure she would rather tell him about herself, and that he trusted, seeing how very sad and ill she had been, that Tristram would be particularly kind to her. So her uncle knew, then! This was incredible: but perhaps Zara had told him, in ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... you need only imitate real nature to claim the title of poet. Now nothing is more revolting than platitude when it tries to be simple and amiable, instead of hiding its repulsive nature under the veil of art. This occasions the incredible trivialities loved by the Germans under the name of simple and facetious songs, and which give them endless amusement round a well-garnished table. Under the pretext of good humor and of sentiment people tolerate these poverties: but this good ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the company's uses, but was entirely covered-in, and furnished suitably for the Winter. The Globe, made larger, and designed for Summer use, was a round wooden building, open to the sky, with the stage protected by an overhanging roof. All things considered, then, it is not incredible that the munificent Earl may have bestowed even as large a sum as a thousand pounds, to enable the Poet to do what he ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... circumstances, with an advancing tide under a heavy gale, where the breakers feel the shore underneath them a moment before they touch the rock, so as to nod over when they strike, the effect is nearly incredible except to an eyewitness. I have seen the whole body of the wave rise in one white, vertical, broad fountain, eighty feet above the sea, half of it beaten so fine as to be borne away by the wind, the rest turning in the air when exhausted, and falling ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... had wrought incredible mischief. Tom Drift was not the only soft-minded vain boy whom he had infected by his pernicious example. Like all reckless swaggerers, he had his band of admirers, who marked every action and drank in every word that ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... evidence pointing to you, but if they had the sense of a turnip they would know that you were incapable of squashing a flea, let alone destroying five eminent brothers in science! You, jealous, guilty of five crimes passionel! Pour le science! Credulous Earthlings! Incredible Earthlings! And here are you, a hunted man with ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... poverty. It was generally agreed that the man who would proceed further, in a cause of this sort, was fairly deserving of all the distress brought on himself, and justly debarred the sympathy of others. His suffering during the years that followed is simply incredible. The prejudice against him was intense. Everybody characterized him as a fool, and no one would help him. A witness afterwards testified in a trial: "They had sickness in the family; I was often in and ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... himself, by Jasmine; but he had loved Jasmine since she was a child, before Rudyard came—in truth, he all but possessed her when Rudyard came; and there was some explanation, if no excuse, for that betrayal; but this other, it was incredible, it was monstrous. It was incredible but yet it was true. Thoughts that overturned all his past, that made a melee of his life, rushed and whirled through his mind as he read the letter with assumed deliberation when he saw what it was. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... feeling towards Germany and the Germans had undergone a surprising change during the last few weeks. No, it was not the War—not even the fact that so many Englishmen had already been killed by German guns and shells. The change was owing—amazing and almost incredible fact—to the behaviour of ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... moment our twenty curs were let go, and the sow, although the bullet had smashed her shoulder, at once tore down the plateau, followed by her progeny, but catching sight of the cordon of boys below, at once turned, and, injured as she was, made up towards the summit of the mountain with incredible speed. Then began the fan, the dogs yelping and howling, and the boys and girls screaming with excitement, as they plunged through the undergrowth and vines in pursuit. Nearly on the summit was a huge tree, with foliage like an Australian white cedar, and here was the old pig's ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... and cold cruelty decked out with blasphemous phrase is viler, I think, than anything attributed by Shakespeare to the worst of his villains. But surely some hint of Richard's incredible vileness should have come earlier in the play, should have preceded at least his banishment of Bolingbroke, if Shakespeare had really meant to present him to ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... darling, I'd rather not say what I suspect, until I've a little more reason for my suspicion. It's too incredible! And yet,—it must ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... save the situation. They say that Lord Milner, on getting back, gave the War Cabinet to understand that all was going on fairly well in Russia, and that there was little or no fear of a bouleversement. This would have seemed to me incredible had I not met several of the members of the Mission when they turned up again, and had they not, one and all, appeared perfectly satisfied with the internal situation of the empire on which they had paid a call. Whom these good people saw out there, where they ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... that has killed a bird for instance; for cats are only soft-footed, purring bundles of deceit, with no standard of trail morals. But for a dog, a racing dog, and one belonging to the Allan and Darling Team, it was almost incredible. One would expect him at least to have the courage of his convictions, and be willing to take the consequences of what he regarded as a ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... traversed by the different parties. Mr Penny made every effort to ascend Wellington Channel; but his success was trifling compared to his unwearied endeavours. When his sledge was stopped by open water, and after incredible labours a boat was brought to the spot, thick-ribbed ice had collected to impede its progress. All the efforts of the heroic explorers were in vain. Lieutenant De Haven's ships returned to the United States, ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... prophesy rain in the season of rain, or the death of an old man, we believe them. But when the gods prophesy something incredible and ridiculous, such as happens not nowadays, and hath not been heard of since the fall of Bleth, then our credulity is overtaxed. It is possible that a man should lie; it is not possible that the gods should destroy ...
— Plays of Gods and Men • Lord Dunsany
... them and shouted, "Hands up!" While the soldiers were advancing toward them the three burghers succeeded in getting their rifles at their captors' heads, and turned the tables by making prisoners of them. There were many such instances of bravery, but one that is almost incredible occurred at the place called Railway Hill, near the Tugela, on February 24th. On that day the Boers did not appear to know anything concerning the position of the enemy, and James Marks, a Rustenburg farmer, determined to go out of the laager and reconnoitre ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... government and discipline of the colleges, and unsettled the minds of the students. Temple forgot at Emmanuel all the little Greek which he had brought from Bishop-Stortford, and never retrieved the loss; a circumstance which would hardly be worth noticing but for the almost incredible fact, that fifty years later he was so absurd as to set up his own authority against that of Bentley on questions of Greek history and philology. He made no proficiency, either in the old philosophy which still lingered in the schools of Cambridge, or in the new philosophy of which Lord ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... wait for him to continue on with the explanation Wilder has already surmised. Even the young prairie merchant—less experienced in Mexican ways and wickedness, in infamy so incredible—begins to have a glimmering ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... a waste, doesn't it?—but really you've no idea how mad girls are about flowers, or how much real joy they can bring into a sick-room. And, by changing the water often, and—so on, they last a long time, really an incredible time—" ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Sally, mia, life looks a bit more rosy! I've separated Dolores from her cigarette, from her furry coat of powder, from her athletic perfume, from her circus clothes, and to-day, in spite of her incredible size (the inches and pounds she has acquired in six months!) the years have fallen from her. In a slim, brown tricotine with a wide, untrimmed hat of silky brown straw her loveliness has come back, and ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... is no truth in this? Do you mean you think it all a fraud, a trick?" at last queried the major. "Why, it seems incredible!" ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... unless we play fast and loose either with words or with science, cannot be brought into harmony with what we have learnt from geology. Its ethnological statements are imperfect, if not sometimes inaccurate. The stories of the Fall, of the Flood, and of the Tower of Babel, are incredible in their present form. Some historical element may underlie many of the traditions in the first eleven chapters in that book, but this we cannot hope to recover." Canon Bonney proceeded to say of ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Aladdin's mother prostrated herself a second time; and when she arose, said: "Monarch of monarchs, before I tell your majesty the extraordinary and incredible business which brings me before your high throne, I beg of you to pardon the boldness of the demand I am going to make, which is so uncommon, that I tremble, and am ashamed to propose it to my sovereign." In order to give ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... far as one may judge of that kind of perfection—a perfect mistress of her voice; she can do what she likes with it, she can sustain a note in any part of the soprano compass—swell, diminish, and keep it exactly to the same pitch for an incredible space of time. She can burst forth a torrent of sound expressive of our strongest passions, without losing an atom of tone, and she can diminish it to a whisper, in sotto voce, as distinct as it is thrilling ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... prominent as to imply a good deal of common sense among the medical practitioners, as compared with the superstitions prevailing around them. I have said that I have caught the good Governor, now and then, prescribing the electuary of millipedes; but he is entirely excused by the almost incredible fact that they were retained in the materia medica so late as when Rees's Cyclopaedia was published, and we there find the directions formerly given by the College of Edinburgh for their preparation. Once or twice we have found him admitting ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the same as that in use now. We have heard so much of the rapid progress of agriculture, of the important changes introduced, and of the complete revolution which has taken place, that this statement may appear incredible. It is nevertheless the fact that that book might be put with advantage into the hands of any young man about to enter upon a farm. With the exception of those operations which are now performed by steam, and making an allowance ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... Juan, which is astonishingly fine. It sets him not only above, but far above all the poets of the day. Every word has the stamp of immortality. This canto is in a style (but totally free from indelicacy, and sustained with incredible ease and power) like the end of the second canto: there is not a word which the most rigid assertor of the dignity of human nature could desire to be cancelled: it fulfils, in a certain degree, what I have long preached,—of producing something wholly new, and relative to the age, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... the room at that moment, and the statement seemed so incredible, that the traveller eyed her with scrutinizing glance, striving in vain to find some trace of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... my child!" said he. It was the only time I ever heard him address my mother so parentally. But then I never heard him before so grave and solemn,—not a quotation, too; it was incredible: it was not my father speaking, it was another man. "Yes, I went there often. Lord Rainsforth was a remarkable person. Shyness that was wholly without pride (which is rare), and a love for quiet literary pursuits, had prevented his taking that personal part in public life for which ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... be a fearless fighter, not afraid to attack man even, and to be able to "charm" its prey within its reach. These attributes are popular beliefs without any basis of fact. It is fond of small birds and field mice and is what may be called a meadow snake. When frightened it speeds away at an incredible rate. The Coachwhip Snake, found in the southeast, is even more agile than the Black Snake, and like that serpent, will eat smaller snakes. It gets its name from its slender structure and similarity ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... that all the hostages (otages) were to be shot. Rigault wrote the order himself. It does not bear any of the fantastic seals they are so fond of, and of which they have an incredible quantity. It has been written on a paper (une declaration d'expedition du chemin de fer d'Orleans). Probably he was trying to get away. It was the last order he gave, and the last fuse to be used to set fire to ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... be crushed by them; no one noticed her, and she seemed to wish to escape even what little notice she attracted. If Melchior had been a kind-hearted man, it would have been credible that he should prefer Louisa's simple goodness to every other advantage; but a vainer man never was. It seemed incredible that a young man of his kidney, fairly good-looking, and quite conscious of it, very foolish, but not without talent, and in a position to look for some well-dowered match, and capable even—who knows?—of turning the head of one of his pupils among the people of the town, should suddenly ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... by the melodious harmony of birds, or by the sweet airs of women and children gathering filberts in their season. Down the side of the mountain, after a shower of rain, flow a hundred white streams, which rush with incredible velocity and noise into the lake, and spread their froth upon its surface. On one side, the water-eagle sits in majesty, undisturbed, on his well-known rock, in sight of his nest, on the face of Ben Venue; the heron stalks among the reeds in search of his prey; and the sportive ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... decorous little servant girl, but by one of our hosts in person. He was a short, but shapely young gentleman, with curly dark hair and a square, snub-nosed face. He wore slippers and a sort of blazer of some incredible college purple. ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... worthy people who have so kindly received us, I revise my record of these adventures once more. Not a fact has been omitted, not a detail exaggerated. It is a faithful narrative of this incredible expedition in an element inaccessible to man, but to which Progress will ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
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