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Intelligible   Listen
adjective
Intelligible  adj.  Capable of being understood or comprehended; as, an intelligible account or description; intelligible pronunciation, writing, etc. "The intelligible forms of ancient poets."
Synonyms: Comprehensible; perspicuous; plain; clear.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Intelligible" Quotes from Famous Books



... recently been published, and declared "unintelligible;" and Mr. Browning was pondering this fact and concluding that he had failed to be intelligible because he had been too concise, when an extract from a letter of Miss Caroline Fox was forwarded to him by the lady to whom it had been addressed. The writer stated that John Sterling had tried to read the poem and been repelled ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... of nonsense and impiety has been recently thrown upon the public in relation to the "higher law," by men who had political and pecuniary interests depending on the good-will of the slaveholders. The whole subject is perfectly simple and intelligible, and has been intentionally ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock

... to be tapping half-carelessly, half-nervously, with her key on the panel of her door. It meant nothing to her comrade, but to the passing man it resolved itself into an intelligible and coherent message. For it was in Morse, and to his trained and adept ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... himself more enlightened, for having substituted the vague words spirit, incorporeal substance, &c. to the more intelligible terms nature, matter, mobility, necessity? However this may be, these obscure words once imagined, it was necessary to attach ideas to them; in doing this, he has not been able to draw them from any other ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... in my own view, for its personal merits. The name is so singularly appropriate that one would like to hear the inventor's reasons for transfiguring it. Vexillum we know, and vexillarius, but vexillarium goes beyond my Latin. However, it is an intelligible word, and those acquainted with the appearance of "regimental colours" in Old Rome perceive its fitness at a glance. The flat bloom seems to hang suspended from its centre, just as the vexillum figures ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... Brute, and in it, in imitation of the English, he traces the Scottish royal lineage to Brutus. Although by no means equal to Chaucer, he is far superior to any other English poet of the time, and his language is more intelligible at the present day than that of Chaucer or Gower. Sir Walter Scott has borrowed from Barbour's poem in his ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... philosophy so beneficent, so enlightened, so ideal, and at the same time so practical,—so Christian, as we may say without exaggeration,—and which has the further advantage of resting morality on a principle intelligible to all capacities? Have we not found that which Socrates and Plato 'grew old in seeking'? Are we not desirous of happiness, at any rate for ourselves and our friends, if not for all mankind? If, as is natural, we begin by thinking ...
— Philebus • Plato

... implanted in their hearts, viz., that they would conquer, alas even they, possessed of great wisdom, are lying on a field, struck (with weapons) and deprived of life. The significance of the word Death hath today been made intelligible, for these lords of earth, of terrible prowess, have almost all been dead. Those heroes are lying motionless; reft of vanity, having succumbed to foes. Many princes, filled with wrath, have been victimised before the fire (of their enemies' wrath). A great ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... containing a certificate of character and an allusion to circumstances which, in the writer's judgment, made it especially desirable that she should find shelter in our Community. There was a hint, not very intelligible, implying either that Priscilla had recently escaped from some particular peril or irksomeness of position, or else that she was still liable to this danger or difficulty, whatever it might be. We should ill have deserved the reputation of a benevolent fraternity, had we hesitated to entertain ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... impression, which had life behind it, however ingeniously travestied. His stories have no unity of action, but through a great diversity of characters and incidents they maintain their unity of treatment. That is not the highest ideal of the novel, but it is an intelligible one, not lacking famous examples; ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn

... were placed in the roads, than by those who had been sent out to attack them. At length, a few effected their escape, through the midst of the enemy's posts, but were so filled with terror, that they excited a general consternation in the camp, rather than brought intelligible information. ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... in code," said Bill. "The 'S.O.S.' several times. Then: 'Aground. Rounding inlet, east channel, headed out. Hurry.' There was a lot of stuff in between, but not intelligible." ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple

... was begun, I had my chief delight in the hope that the completed book would gratify a venerable friend, to whose inspiration my first idea of the work was due, and that I might be allowed to place his honored name upon this page. The ambition was at once lofty and intelligible. While he was the foremost citizen of New York State, we of the Mohawk Valley thought of him as peculiarly our own. Although born elsewhere, his whole adult life was spent among us, and he led all others in his love for the Valley, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... on, the truth always survives. I believe nothing of the sort. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that an idea that happens to be true—or, more exactly, as near to truth as any human idea can be, and yet remain generally intelligible—it seems to me that such an idea carries a special and often fatal handicap. The majority of men prefer delusion to truth. It soothes. It is easy to grasp. Above all, it fits more snugly than the truth into a universe of false ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche

... evidently owing to the action of the iron rivets which have been causelessly used at the two horizontal joints. There was nothing whatever in the construction to make these essential, and, but for this error, the entire piece of work, as delicate as an ivory tablet, would be as intelligible to-day as when it was laid in ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... the missiles hurled by the infuriated alderman, who, in his heart, had a holy horror of such persons, and would have killed a dozen of them without shedding a tear, though they had several times made very intelligible English of his very unintelligible speeches. Fatigued and almost out of breath, they, however reached the grand hotel in good time, and quite took possession of the landlord's best parlor, though he was ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... whole, the evidence seems to support Napoleon's opinion that Robespierre was incapable of voting for the death of anybody in the world on grounds of personal enmity. And his acquiescence in the ruin of Danton is intelligible enough on the grounds of selfish policy. The Committee hated Danton for the good reason that he had openly attacked them, and his cry for clemency was an inflammatory and dangerous protest against their system. Now Robespierre, rightly or wrongly, had made up his mind that the Committee was the instrument ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... he came on deck, and actually gave me the following very intelligible order. "Mr, What's-his-name, have ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... that he was alone—that he could never hope for sympathy from his wife as long as he lived. Mr. Bradshaw's words that evening recurred to him. God's purpose in choosing to smite Jephthah in that way was partly intelligible, and, after all, Jephthah was elected to redeem his country too. But what could be God's purpose in electing one of his servants to indifference and absence of affection where he had a right to expect it? Could anybody be better ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... husband. Another, Paulina, a widow, resides in San Rafael. Bertha and Augusta live with the father at Brighton, Sacramento County. Both these children are hopelessly idiotic. Bertha is twenty-six years of age, and has never uttered an intelligible word. Augusta is fifteen years old, weighs two hundred and five pounds, and possesses only slight traces of intelligence. Teething spasms, occurring when they were about two years old, is the cause ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan

... spoken like a sage, Cary. See if I don't cater for you judiciously. When women are sensible, and, above all, intelligible, I can get on with them. It is only the vague, superfine sensations, and extremely wire-drawn notions, that put me about. Let a woman ask me to give her an edible or a wearable—be the same a roc's ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... over here to fill our domestic ranks are beyond training. Truly, training is, for the most part, so far beyond them, that it is no easy matter to simplify even the first rudiments of the science of civilization sufficiently to render them intelligible to these fair countrywomen of yours. Patience is a fine thing, and might accomplish something, perhaps; but there are insuperable bars to any hope of their progress in the high wages which they can all command at once, whether they ever saw ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... association with what is beneficial (suitable food, mates, friends, safety, home, the nest), or with what is injurious (unsuitable food, poison, enemies, danger, strange surroundings, solitude). Hence it is intelligible that the man accustomed to garlic or onions in his food is strongly attracted by their smell. So too the man whose tribe or companions have learnt by necessity to eat slightly putrid meat, fish, and cheese is attracted by their odour, though for others these odours are associated ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... of water, for God's sake!" said a scarcely intelligible whisper, from the suffocating gloom of ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... lady smiled benignly, as though rather tickled with that joke, and was understood by the boys to protest that she had eaten more than enough, though her squeak had not yet become intelligible ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne

... thus presented by you, are abstract questions of law,— namely, of the construction of statutes. They are distinctly and clearly stated, so as not to require of me any investigation of external facts to render them more intelligible. Nor do they require of me to attempt to make application of them to any actual case, conflict of right, or controversy either between private individuals or such individuals and ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews

... principle."[24] The ovum is for Harvey more a concept than an observed fact, and, as stated by one student of generation, "The dictum ex ovo omnia, whilst substantially true in the modern sense, is neither true nor false as employed by Harvey, since to him it has no definite or even intelligible meaning."[25] ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer

... several false alarms had thrilled him with happiness. One was a cablegram from Gibraltar in which the only words that were intelligible were "congratulate" and "engagement." This lifted him into an ecstasy of joy and excitement, until, on having the cable company repeat the message, he learned it was a request from Miss Kirkland to congratulate two mutual friends who had just announced their engagement, ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis

... at first sight, however, such a lack of specification appears wofully incompatible with any intelligible transmission of ideas. So communistic a want of discrimination between the meum and the tuum—to say nothing of the claims of a possible third party—would seem to be as fatal to the interchange of thoughts as it proves destructive to the trafficking in commodities. ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... a disinfectant. I should, however, say in justice to our literary men, that they have not altogether succumbed to the demand for cachinnations. A school, which first drew breath before the Great Skirmish began, has perfected itself, till now we have whole tomes where hardly a sentence would be intelligible to any save the initiate; this enables them to defy the Watch Committees, with other Philistines. We have writers who mysteriously preach the realisation of self by never considering anybody else; of purity through experience ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... to the troubled air such a proportion of vital parts, as would make it again, for a good while, fit for respiration whether by dissipating, or precipitating the grosser exhalations, or by some other intelligible way, I must not now stay to examine, contenting myself to add, that having had the opportunity to do some service to those of his relations that were most intimate with him, and having made it my business to learn what this strange liquor might be, they constantly affirmed that Drebel would ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... cannot bate them an ace. Let them stay in their own barren mountains, and puff and swell, and hang their bonnets on the horns of the moon, if they have a mind; but what business have they to come where people wear breeches, and speak an intelligible language? I mean intelligible in comparison with their gibberish, for even the Lowlanders talk a kind of English little better than the negroes in Jamaica. I could pity the Pr—, I mean the Chevalier himself, for having so many desperadoes about him. And they learn their ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... their heads with nice speculations about the modus of the Three in One.' 'All this discourse about being and person is foreign and not pertinent, because if both these terms were thrown out, our doctrine would stand just as before, independent of them, and very intelligible without them. So it stood for about 150 years before person was heard of in it, and it was later before being was mentioned. Therefore, if all the objection be against these, however innocent, expressions, let the objectors drop the name and accept the thing.' It was no wish of Waterland to argue ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... the acquisition of which had long been an object of Lacedaemonian ambition. To make the joke intelligible here, we must suppose Pellen was also the name of some notorious courtesan ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... noble and elevated being only. The deep contempt for prevailing immorality which naturally leads to cynicism, and a heart which beats for everything great and glorious,—virtues which then had no existence, —speak from the pages of the Roman in a language intelligible to every ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... half appealing and half defiant at the people, but the stalwart Suzanne who followed her was wholly grim and challenging. Then something strange occurred. John had the most intense anxiety for her to look at him. He had no belief whatever in anything supernatural, but sound, intelligible words were made to travel on waves of air, and it was barely possible in this unexplored world that thought too might be propelled in the ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler

... restraint and a personality so complete and so compelling that they simply held the field and permitted no outburst. Her voice was cool and high and natural. Then he noticed her flick a glance at himself, sideways, and yet perfectly intelligible. He stood up. ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... did not give himself time to re-read this letter, in order to make it more intelligible, before he wrote to one of his professional compeers, requesting him to fill his place during his unavoidable absence, on the melancholy occasion of his brother's expected death; and having so done, he immediately ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Clarence the only hand he was able to use, Lord Ulswater raised it to his brow, as if in the effort to clear remembrance; and then, turning to Wardour, seemed to ask the truth of Clarence's claim,—at least so the old man interpreted the meaning of his eye, and the faint and scarce intelligible words ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... ordinary observers, and in this respect, the collection was of much less interest to us than the exhibition we had lately seen in the unfortunate Crystal Palace at New York, where the models exhibited were of the full size of the machines meant to be used, and consequently almost intelligible to an unprofessional person. Besides what may be strictly considered models, there were in the rooms some objects more suited to an ordinary museum. Such were various autographs, and many relics of Washington; and a case containing locks of ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... which they were occasionally interspersed, consisting chiefly of comparative strictures upon celebrated beauties, hints of impending bankruptcies, and witticisms upon recent divorces, were yet more disagreeable to her, because more intelligible. Wearied, therefore, with uninteresting anecdotes, and offended with injudicious subjects of pleasantry, she waited with impatience for the moment of retiring; but Mrs Harrel, less eager, because better ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... beneath the sky, an enemy to filial affection so destructive as slavery. It had made my brothers and sisters strangers to me; it converted the mother that bore me, into a myth; it shrouded my father in mystery, and left me without an intelligible beginning ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... single document is found relative to the connexion subsisting between them during the reign of Mary. This is a short and uninteresting letter addressed to Cecil by sir Thomas Benger, one of the princess's officers, in which, after some mention of accounts, not now intelligible, he promises that he and sir Thomas Parry will move the princess to grant his correspondent's request, which is not particularized, and assures him that as his coming thither would be thankfully received, so he wishes that all the friends of the princess entertained the same sense ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... very sources of existence failed, and the firm brain wandered for a moment, he was once heard to say: 'Let us go to S. Mark, for it is late.'[173] The very last words he uttered, frequently repeated, but scarcely intelligible, were: 'Esto Perpetua.'[174] May Venice last forever! This was the dying prayer of the man who had consecrated his best faculties to the service of his country. But before he passed away into that half slumber which precedes ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... intelligible that Monsieur Crevel should have spoken to Hulot about Madame Marneffe, as knowing what was a secret to the rest of the world; for, as Monsieur Marneffe was away, no one but Lisbeth Fischer, besides the Baron and Valerie, was initiated into ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... his landlord, who had just returned from his "reading-room," and now appeared, without a tie and in his shirt-sleeves, looking pale and wild, as was, perhaps, intelligible in the circumstances. As he entered his unfamiliar marble halls he staggered, and his red eyes rolled and his mouth gaped in a cod-like fashion. "They've been at it 'ere, too, seemin'ly," ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... uncovered rocks was still splashing, and a strong wind howling through the trees added to the din. Only at close range could the girls make their voices intelligible. But it was so good to be within shelter. Welcome indeed is any port ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis

... herself understands of things that have a real subsistence; and to consider nothing true which she views through the medium of others, and which differ under different aspects;[32] for that a thing of this kind is sensible and visible, but that what she herself perceives is intelligible and invisible. The soul of the true philosopher, therefore, thinking that she ought not to oppose this deliverance, accordingly abstains as much as possible from pleasures and desires, griefs and fears, considering that when any one is exceedingly delighted or alarmed, grieved or influenced ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato

... "Well, that is intelligible," said Lady Selina Farrell, looking at her neighbour, as she crumbled her dinner-roll. To crumble your bread at dinner is a sign of nervousness, according to Sydney Smith, who did it with both hands ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... do, and so does everybody; but the crowd profits by us in the end. When they understand my music, it will be an education to them; and the whole aim of mankind is to render life intelligible.' ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... to remove in a measure this objection by using as often as convenient the cant lingo of the corps. A vocabulary which shall contain it all, or nearly all, becomes necessary. I have taken great care to make it as full as possible, and at the same time as intelligible as possible. ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... his time in fishing and hunting, and where he finally died at an advanced age. From thence his remains were conveyed to Frankfort, the capital of Kentucky, where they now repose; and where a rough slab, with a few half intelligible characters thereon, points out to the curious stranger the last earthly resting place of the noblest, the most daring, and famous hunter and pioneer the world has ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett

... and to digest all vice, is in truth an expression of pathetic innocence. It betrays a rudimentary impulse to follow every beckoning hand, to assume that no adventure and no bewitchment can be anything but glorious. Such an attitude is intelligible in one who has never seen anything worth seeing nor loved anything worth loving. Immaturity could go no farther than to acknowledge no limits defining will and happiness. When such limits, however, are gradually discovered and an ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... should certainly not have been so for the editor, who should have done what Broome was said to have done for Pope in his Homer,—"gone before and swept the way." An edition of an English author ought to be intelligible to English readers, and, if the editor do not make it so, he wrongs the old poet, for two centuries lapt in lead, to whose works he undertakes to play the gentleman-usher. A play written in our own tongue should not be as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... twenty-seven years, and finally broke up the Athenian Empire. The cause of that war was the envy and hatred excited in the other states of Greece by the power and greatness of Athens; and in order to make our story intelligible we must indicate briefly the steps by which she rose to that dangerous eminence, and drew upon herself the armed hostility of half ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... the absorbed students; "Franz and old Daniel are together in the night-time, and Franz is telling a dream from which he has awakened in terror—listen!" And in a low voice she read something, of which not one word was intelligible to me; for it was in an unknown tongue—neither French nor Latin. Whether it were Greek or ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... been a bit more intelligible in the XV Century than it would be now. Brondeynge will ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton

... the meaningless words while my poor little brain and imagination tried to find some joy, some picture, some tangible delight, some inspiration in the mournful, oppressive poem. If I had then been assigned intelligible verses to copy, an Elizabethan lyric, a song that sang because it had to, a bit of imagery, my childish fancy would have been fired, and I should not have had to wait till I was eighteen years old ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... a ting! such a ting! I nebber tink a could appen! neber tink he die! Oh, Lor-a-gor! aint burykeep em till masser Richard get backgot a grabe dug Here the feelings of the negro completely got the mastery, and, instead of making any intelligible explanation of the causes of ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... work, nor do it lazily, you may always get enough form to be satisfactory. An extra quarter of an hour, distributed in quietness over the course of the whole study, may just make the difference between a quite intelligible drawing, and a slovenly and obscure one. If you determine well beforehand what outline each piece of color is to have, and, when it is on the paper, guide it without nervousness, as far as you can, into ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin

... explosion was soon explained by the apparition of an old negro's bald head thrust in at the door, his white goggle eyes contrasting with his jetty poll, which was wet with rain, and shone like a bottle. In a jargon but half intelligible he announced that the kitchen chimney had been ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... Mr Elliot! It was the only intelligible motive. Captain Wentworth jealous of her affection! Could she have believed it a week ago; three hours ago! For a moment the gratification was exquisite. But, alas! there were very different thoughts to succeed. How was such jealousy to be quieted? How ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... the opening of the fifth century, a Celtic migration seems to have set in from the Irish coasts. The details of this migration are unknown, and the few traces which survive of it are faint and not altogether intelligible. The principal movement was that of the Scotti from North Ireland into Caledonia, with the result that, once settled there, or perhaps rather in the course of settling there, they went on to pillage Roman Britain. ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield

... sketch which we are compelled to give of her career, it is unnecessary that we should do more than glance at the licentiousness of her private conduct; our business is simply to trace such an outline of her varying fortunes as may suffice to render intelligible the position of Henri IV at the period of ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... through which there mingled dim shapes and quiet voices, followed by dreamless sleep, and an awakening to weakness that made the lifting of his eyelids an effort and the movement of his hand a weariness. The first object that loomed intelligible through the fog in which he seemed to move was a little plain face with great blue eyes carrying in them a cloud of maternal anxiety. Suddenly the cloud broke and the sun burst through in a joyous riot, for in a ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor

... the sick. The existence of this beneficent power in the human constitution, more restorative and pleasant than all medicines when present in sufficient fulness, is rapidly becoming known throughout our country, and is made intelligible as to its origin, nature and application by Sarcognomy, as I am teaching in the College of Therapeutics. Medical colleges, in their ignorance and jealousy, unwisely exclude and war against this nobler and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various

... which these few words, thus uttered, were so well calculated to convey. Mr. L—l (the student) swooned. The nurses immediately left the chamber, and could not be induced to return. My own impressions I would not pretend to render intelligible to the reader. For nearly an hour, we busied ourselves, silently—without the utterance of a word—in endeavors to revive Mr. L—l. When he came to himself, we addressed ourselves again to an ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... was one of those rare and splendid ones in which there seems to be no mist or doubt, and nothing but a universal clarification more and more complete. All the colours were transparent. It seemed like a triumphant prophecy of some perfect world where everything being innocent will be intelligible; a world where even our bodies, so to speak, may be as of burning glass. Such a world is faintly though fiercely figured in the coloured windows of Christian architecture. The sea that lay before them was like ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... everywhere; and she charmed every one. In spite of this, or, perhaps, because of this, since Fate is so perverse, she cared only for one man, and he was Major Vansuythen. Had she been plain or stupid, this matter would have been intelligible to Kashima. But she was a fair woman, with very still gray eyes, the colour of a lake just before the light of the sun touches it. No man who had seen those eyes could, later on, explain what fashion of ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling

... filled her with admiration. She had never seen anything like that before. If she had, perhaps, known kindness in her life, she had never met the forms of simple courtesy. She was interested by it as a very novel experience, not very intelligible, but distinctly pleasurable. ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... relative of the same name, but with small capacity for governing, was appointed Prince of the Mountains. The mission families returned from Cyprus before the end of the year, and the seminary was resumed; but those students who had been taught enough of English to make themselves intelligible as interpreters, had all been drawn away by the high wages which British officers paid for such services. The place of Tannus, Arabic teacher in the seminary, who was sick, was supplied by Butrus el-Bistany, from the Maronite College at Ain Warka. He had written ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson

... arguments of the two rival professors with considerable pleasure. The Warsaw oculist was a German, but spoke French very well; however, he attacked Tadini in Latin. The Italian checked him by saying that their discourse must be conducted in a language intelligible to the lady, and I agreed with him. It was plain that Tadini did not know a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... and surer. But so we cannot do, though we must do what we can. And if we had Books, wherein are the Pictures of all Creatures, Herbs, Beasts, Fish, Fowls, they would stand us in great stead. For Pictures are the most intelligible Books that Children can look upon. They come closest to Nature, nay, ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius

... between these crystalline masses and stratified rocks, with respect to their outwardly apparent structure, is the subtle complexity and number of ranks in their crystalline cleavages. The stratified masses have always a simple intelligible organization; their beds lie in one direction, and certain fissures and fractures of those beds lie in other clearly ascertainable directions; seldom more than two or three distinct directions of these fractures being admitted. But ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... To be intelligible, I must commence by some very brief remarks on the tissues of vegetables. There are two sorts distinguished among plants; some seem of no importance in the phenomena of nutrition; others, on the contrary, tend to the assimilation of the organic or inorganic components which should ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various

... approaches more nearly to that which we speak. Although the first public document in English (1256), which belongs to the reign of Henry III, is scarcely to be understood without study, a poem written in his son's time is tolerably intelligible.[162] ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... is entirely unnecessary to explain the scheme. My determinations will not be influenced by a statement which no mortal eloquence will make intelligible to me." ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... the book is really an era in the intellectual history of Europe, and I think that the Edinburgh Review ought at least to have given a luminous abstract of it. The very circumstance that Niebuhr's own arrangement and style are obscure, and that his translators have need of translators to make them intelligible to the multitude, rendered it more desirable that a clear and neat statement of the points in controversy should be laid before the public. But it is useless to talk of what cannot be mended. The best editors cannot ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... namely, the inflected edges, or the polished inner sides of the labellum; the two orifices and their position close to the anthers and stigma, - the large size of the medial rudimentary stamen, - are rendered intelligible. An insect which enters the labellum is thus compelled to crawl out by one of the two narrow passages, on the sides of which the ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... own want of clearness of speech. He will 'carry them over the stream;' he will answer for them when the argument is beyond their comprehension; he is afraid of their ignorance of mathematics, and thinks that gymnastic is likely to be more intelligible to them;—he has repeated his words several times, and yet they cannot understand him. The subject did not properly take the form of dialogue, and also the literary vigour of Plato had passed away. The old men speak as they might be expected to speak, and in this there is a touch of dramatic ...
— Laws • Plato

... of affection which we can give to those left behind, is to leave their worldly affairs in such a state as to excite neither jealousy, nor anger, nor heartrendings of any kind, at least for the immediate future. This can only be done by a just, clear, and intelligible disposal of whatever there is to leave. Without being advocates for every man being his own lawyer, it is not to be denied that the most elaborately prepared wills have been the most fruitful sources of litigation, and it has even happened ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... throbbed through the palace, striking an hour that was no more intelligible than the jargon of a ship's clock to a landsman. Somewhere an orchestra thrilled into haunting sound, poignant with disclosures barely missed. Overhead, through the mighty rafters of the conical ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... said the major, with a shrug, a movement of the eyebrows and a motion in the corners of his mouth which were not intelligible signs to Mrs. Emerson. That they meant something more than he was prepared to utter in words, she was satisfied, but whether of favorable or unfavorable import touching her absent husband, she could not tell. The impression ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur

... a day. I knew it would, and at the last I began to dread the time, as if a heavy note were falling due, and I had no funds to meet it. My head was in a whirl when I broke the seal. The fact in it stared at me blankly, at once, but it was a long time before the words and sentences became intelligible. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various

... and perhaps another just peering from the orifice of a capacious back pocket; and at a certain season of the year he might be seen, dressed in white, before the altar of a certain small popish chapel, chanting from the breviary in very intelligible Latin, or perhaps reading from the desk in utterly unintelligible English. Such was my preceptor in the French and Italian tongues. 'Exul sacerdos; vone banished priest. I came into England ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... the captain. "It is impossible that the very same words should have been effaced in each document, and by putting the scraps together we might gather some intelligible meaning out ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... and ought to be ever becoming more so; not only being nourished and growing stronger and stronger through the word of the Lord and through heart-communion with Him, to which He calls us, giving Himself to us as the meat and drink of eternal life, but every one striving to make his new life intelligible to others about him, and to influence them by it. Oh, that we had our eyes more and more steadily fixt on the risen Savior! Oh, that we could ever be learning more and more from Him to breathe out blessing, as He did when He imparted His Spirit to the ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser

... of an angry woman, and, recoiling as she swept by, lost his unsteady foothold, and rolled helplessly on the sofa. Here, after one or two unsuccessful attempts to regain his foothold, he remained, uttering from time to time profane but not entirely coherent or intelligible protests, until at last he succumbed to the exhausting quality of his emotions, and the narcotic ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... you!" Had not the Lord Jesus designed by these words to show what an overthrow will one day be made among professors, he needed not to have you'd it at this rate, as in the text, and afterwards, he has done; the sentence had run intelligible enough without it; I say, without his saying, "I say unto you." But the truth is, the professor is in danger; the preacher and the hearer, the workers of miracles, and workers of wonders, may all be in danger ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... what success! He recollected Governor Craig's advice, and kept his temper, but it was really very provoking to see men of fine endowments and excellent natural understanding, too inattentive to make themselves masters of a very important subject, which had been placed before them, in an intelligible manner. When Mr. Peel asked him if the English members of the House were always with the government, Mr. Ryland said that in every case of importance, with the exception of Mr. James Stuart, formerly Solicitor-General, the English members always supported the views ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... eyes. And then, O king at the gate of the kitchen, the princess of Panchala saw Bhimasena staying, like an infuriate elephant of gigantic proportions. And looking upon him with wonder-expanded eyes, Draupadi, by means of words intelligible to them alone, said, 'I bow unto that prince of the Gandharvas, who hath rescued me.' At these words of her, Bhima said, 'Hearing these words of hers in obedience to whom those persons were hitherto living in the city, they will henceforth range here, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... not think we should pass over the expression "carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom." Notice that our Lord makes it simple and intelligible for the Jews by using their own phrase, "Abraham's Bosom," their name for the state of the faithful departed immediately after death. And He says, Lazarus "was carried by the angels." If anybody else but Jesus had said it, we might pass this over as a piece of poetic imagery. But it ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth

... prophesy a similar career and fate for the theory of Relativity. The technical physical theory, at present imperfectly understood, will become still more vague and dim. History repeats itself, and Relativity, like Evolution, after receiving a number of intelligible but somewhat inaccurate popular expositions in its scientific aspect, will be launched on a world-conquering career. We suggest that, by that time, it will probably be called Relativismus. Many of these larger applications will doubtless ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... which in a certain way proceeds from that which is seen, to that which sees, the act of seeing is put into effect, so in the intellectual region, where shines the sun of the intellect, acting between the intelligible species formed as proceeding from the object, our intellect comes to comprehend something of the divinity, or something inferior to it. Because, as our eye, when we see, does not receive the light ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... sufficiently with metaphysics,' says a third; 'you should reproduce in popular and intelligible form the vast thoughts of Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... practical sagacity, his eminent talents for war and for government, the moderation and the conscientiousness which, though a usurper and a zealot, he displayed in the use of power. He was, as we have said, a genuine Puritan. This must be understood, or no intelligible view of his character can be taken. It is not only hostility to his memory which has attributed to him a studied hypocrisy; the love of the marvellous has lent its aid. Such a supposition was thought to magnify his talents and his genius. It was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... become the country gentleman, against whom the indictment is not so much that his only pursuit is pleasure, as that his only pleasure is pursuit. 'The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate' were intelligible while the rich man protected the poor man from being plundered and killed by marauders; but in our times nobody wants a castle or to live under the shadow of a castle. The clerical profession was a ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... but inwardly full of adventure and excitement. His last huge prophetic works, like Jerusalem and Milton (1804), were dictated to him, he declares, by supernatural means, and even against his own will. They are only half intelligible, but here and there one sees flashes of the same poetic beauty that marks his little poems. Critics generally dismiss Blake with the word "madman"; but that is only an evasion. At best, he is the writer of exquisite lyrics; at worst, he ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... This question seems intelligible, yet on closer examination reveals itself as meaningless, for it presupposes the existence of no constitution, but only a mere mass of atomic individuals. How a mass of individuals is to come by a constitution, whether by its own efforts or by those ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... ungracious after all, then. He felt a great joy at the thought, and shame, too, for having so misjudged her. 'If I had ever received it,' he said, 'I hope you will believe that you would have seen me before this; but I asked for news of you from that burly old impostor of a guard, and he—he gave me no intelligible message' (Mark remembered suddenly the official's extempore effort), 'and certainly ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... went away, and within an hour of his young master's departure Smerdyakov was taken with an epileptic fit. But that's perfectly intelligible. Here I must mention that Smerdyakov, oppressed by terror and despair of a sort, had felt during those last few days that one of the fits from which he had suffered before at moments of strain, might be coming upon him again. ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... last, hardly intelligible assertion, when the curtain of the room was pushed aside, and in came a short, plump, rosy-faced little maiden of twelve, with a clearly chiselled Greek profile and lips as red as a cherry. Her white chiton was mussed and a trifle ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... intelligible, Mr. Cannon signified that the guess would do; and still meditating aloud in his ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... Christ and St. Paul and St. John had said—these things were so. He had escaped, owing chiefly to his isolation from the world, that vast expansion of Ritschlian ideas that during the last century had been responsible for the desertion by so many of any intelligible creed. For others this had been the supreme struggle—the difficulty of decision between the facts that words were not things, and yet that the things they represented were in themselves objective. But to this man, sitting now in the moonlight, listening to the far-off tap of hoofs ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... these one hundred and fifty characters, many of them mere repetitions, it remained for me to discover a key whereby their meaning might be rendered intelligible. ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green

... on the occasion, which unfortunately has not been preserved, and Esther was disgusted with Henry because he could give no intelligible description of the latest London hats; and all examined with due reverence ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... his later period of definite religious assent, "because the world is so beautiful: the world of ideas—living spirits, detached from the divine nature itself, to inform and lift the heavy mass of material things; the world of man, above all in his melodious and intelligible speech; the world of living creatures and natural scenery; the world of dreams." What he really did say, by way of A Tombless Epitaph, is ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... Given in connection with the natural faculties of intellect and will, they are exhibited in the attainment of the supernatural order of things. With intellect goes Faith, as it were the intellect applied to things not intelligible; with Will go Hope and Charity or Love: Hope being the Will exercised upon things not naturally desired, and Love the union of Will with what is not naturally ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... were borne upwards to perhaps an equal distance, when the increasing light warned us of our approach to its superior limits, and shortly after, the sun and we rising together, a scene of splendour and magnificence suddenly burst upon our view, which it would be vain to expect to render intelligible by any mode of description within our power. Pursuing the illusion, which the previous events had been so strongly calculated to create, the impression upon our senses was that of entering upon a new world to which we had hitherto been strangers, and in which not a ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous

... he was able to give her an intelligible account of what had taken place. She asked him if he had found it dead. In answer he could only shake his head, but that head-shake had a whole tragedy in it. Then she examined "the little one," but could find no mark of any wound upon it. ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... sick man lay, as he had left him, quietly looking at the shaded lamp, very feeble—very, very feeble and wasted. The Doctor sat down beside him, felt his pulse, and asked him a few questions, to which the faint replies were lucid and intelligible. ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming

... hope to be entertained is, that they may be rendered intelligible; and this, it is trusted, will be effected by means of the following references; though the multitude of parts that it seemed necessary to introduce, may have given rise to an appearance of confusion, which the author could only have avoided, by subjecting ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... and sat me down to read. As I turned over page after page the interest became absorbing; but how familiar it seemed; how my mind leapt forward to presage the conclusions, how natural it was, how coherent, how subtle, and yet how intelligible. I was dazzled, blinded by the light in which disjointed facts were seen as parts of a mighty whole, and all my puzzles, riddles, problems, seemed to disappear. The effect was partially illusory in one sense, in that they all had to be slowly unravelled ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... of proceedings will be fairly obvious. The Prayer-book did not originate with Parliament, nor was it in any true sense authorized by the Crown in Parliament. The action of the legislature on the first and the last occasion is perfectly intelligible. A Book of Common Prayer was in existence, drawn up and approved by ecclesiastical authority, on the first occasion it is not quite clear after what fashion, on the last occasion by the unquestioned exercise of synodical powers. This Book, so approved, was then, by authority of Parliament, imposed ...
— The Acts of Uniformity - Their Scope and Effect • T.A. Lacey

... successful progress. They are the important and central ideas of the subject. It was a marked quality of Pestalozzi to sift out these simple fundamentals and to master them. It is for us to make these simple elements intelligible and interesting by the use of concrete types and illustrations drawn from nature and from human life. If we speak of history and nature as the two chief subjects of study, the simple, fundamental relations of persons to each other in society, and the simple, typical objects, forces, and laws ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry

... It was from Louie, still dated from the country town near Toulouse, and announced the birth of her child—a daughter. The letter was scrawled apparently from her bed, and contained some passionate, abusive remarks about her husband, half finished, and hardly intelligible. She peremptorily called on David to send her some money at once. Her husband was a sot, and unfaithful to her. Even now with his first child, he had taken advantage of her being laid up to make love to other women. All the town cried shame on him. The priest ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... set about the compilation of his work. His first purpose was to confine it to the events that followed the arrival of Blasco Nunez; but he soon found, that, to make these intelligible, he must trace the stream of history higher up towards its sources. He accordingly enlarged his plan, and, beginning with the discovery of Peru, gave an entire view of the conquest and subsequent occupation of the country, bringing the narrative down to the close of Gasca's ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... called rosaceous; and my first point will be to make sure of my pupils having a clear idea of the central and unquestionable forms of thistle, grass, or rose, and assigning to them pure Latin, and pretty English, names,—classical, if possible; and at least intelligible and decorous. ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... were fixed upon her. He tried to answer her question, which he had only half heard. But he could not form an intelligible sentence. There was a giddiness in his brain which he had never felt before; he trembled, and the victim of an impulse which forced him toward her, he threw his arms about her and ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... also, we owe two readings of Shakespeare that have made intelligible what was previously "a contradictory inconceivable." Did it ever occur to dealers in familiar quotations that there was a deal of nonsense in the following lines as they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... but to the very last we may be truly said to believe far more than we know. 'Indeed,' said Butler, 'the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence with which we are obliged to take up in the daily course of life, is scarce to be expected.' Nay, in an intelligible sense, even the 'primary truths,' or 'first principles,' or 'fundamental laws of thought,' or 'self-evident maxims,' or 'intuitions,' or by whatever other names philosophers have been pleased to ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers

... probably the wastest chaos of all the Sections of Friedrich's History. And has, alone of them, gone over the whole world; being withal amusing to read, and therefore well and widely remembered, in that mendacious and semi-intelligible state. To lay these goblins, full of noise, ignorance and mendacity, and give some true outline of the matter, with what brevity is consistent with deciphering it at all, is now our sad task,—laborious, perhaps disgusting; not impossible, if ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... have been the subject of much speculation and discussion. Liquamen, laser, muria, garum, etc., belong to these. They will be found in our little dictionary. But we cannot refrain from discussing some at present to make intelligible the most essential part ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... against the pane, peering out at a somber and lowering sky; then I returned to the bedside. That I was going away to-morrow was the only thought in my mind and, little by little, the word "depart" became intelligible to me. "Ah! God!" I suddenly cried, "my poor mistress, I am going to lose you and I have not ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... this work will be tolerably obvious from its title, and we cordially recommend the author and his book to all who are suffering from nervous debility and general weakness. Mr La'Mert has treated the subject in a very scientific and intelligible manner."—Wakefield Journal. ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various

... my excuse. It was easily found. I had only to tell my poor mother of Mrs. Van Brandt's refusal to marry me, and there was an intelligible motive assigned for my proposing to leave London. The same night I wrote to inform Mrs. Van Brandt of the sad event which was the cause of my sudden departure, and to warn her that there no longer existed the slightest necessity for insuring her life. "My lawyers" ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... and distinct enough to leave their mark on society as well as on literature. These masks or replicas of his own personality were formative of thought, and were powerful agents in the evolution of sentiment and opinion. In language which was intelligible and persuasive, under shapes and forms which were suggestive and inspiring, Byron delivered a message of liberation. There was a double motive at work in his energies as a poet. He wrote, as he said, because "his mind was full" of his own loves, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... day, and compare their pages, changing things personal into things impersonal. The expulsion and banishment of the old shapeless mundane deities by a new and more beautiful race of gods, the cosmical divinities, the powers and rulers of an ordered world, are intelligible enough when translated into our modern geological nomenclature. The leaves of the Stone Book, as the rocky layers of the earth have been called, and the blue hieroglyphic page of heaven, also, are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... plays clumsily the tricks, he acquired from the conjurors here in Egypt. I wish you better success with the same materials. But in my opinion all philosophers should speak clearly. The highest things are the purest and brightest; and the best writers are those who render them the most intelligible to the world below. In the arts and sciences, and particularly in music and metaphysics, this is difficult: but the subjects not being such as lie within the range of the community, I lay little stress upon them, and wish authors to deal with them as ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... of the original, turning on the Swiss word Lawine, it is impossible to render intelligible to the English reader. The giants in the preceding line are the rocks that overhang the pass which winds now to the right, now to the left, of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... imagination posts forward, when she only hires her Pegasus from memory. Or sometimes it is only a quit-rent, which the intellectual cultivator, who farms an idea, pays to the original proprietor; or rather,"—(seeing that he was not making the matter more intelligible by his explanation,)—"or rather, it is when we convey our own thoughts by the means of the more perfect expressions ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various

... crowd, and to my great relief began speaking to me. It was Monsieur the Mayor. As best I could, I explained that I had lost my way and had found it necessary to come down for the purpose of making inquiries. I knew that it was awful French, but hoped that it would be intelligible, in part at least. However, the Mayor understood not a word, and I knew by the curious expression in his eyes that he must be wondering from what weird province I hailed. After a moment's thought he said, "Vous etes Anglais, monsieur?" with a smile of very real pleasure. ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall

... rod, in the child's eternal hope of magic, and when magic came and three, four, five chocolates dropped obediently in their hands, Mary listened to what they said. It was not much, and it was not very coherent, but it was wholly intelligible. ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale

... Caepio's proposal to the senatorial mind is, therefore, perfectly intelligible; but it is very probable that there were many members of the nobility who were wholly insensible to this attraction. The men who would descend a few steps in order to secure a profitable concord between the orders, ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... been gasping throughout this harangue, for the intellectual pressure of Marriott's conversation (of which there was always plenty) was generally too much for him, caught thankfully at the last remark as being the only intelligible one uttered up to ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse

... is intelligible enough, stinging, and witty. As if the young men of the Flavian family could fancy no wives but such as they had won by violence from other men, he affects in a bitter sarcasm to take for granted that Titus, as the first step towards marrying, counselled his friends ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... by refusing to concur in the continuance' of the mutiny act. A standing army was obviously necessary; but by making believe very hard, we could shut our eyes to the facts, and pretend that it was a merely temporary arrangement.[14] The doctrine had once had a very intelligible meaning. If James II. had possessed a disciplined army of the continental pattern, with Marlborough at its head, Marlborough would hardly have been converted by the prince of Orange. But loyal as the gentry had been at the restoration, they had taken very good care that the Stuarts ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... mucho bueno, Tejano!" given in like ungrammatical phrase, in order that it may be intelligible to the person to whom it ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... serve for a tolerable specimen of Swift's remarks. The whole should be given, if it were possible to make them intelligible, without copying the version which is ridiculed; a labour for which our readers would scarcely thank us. A few detached stanzas, however, with the Dean's notes on them, shall be transcribed." Thus writes Scott; ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... the halfs of corks, shirt-buttons, and flowerets pulled from the vases. One child, with a bandaged head, who was determined to be heard at any cost, stammered out to her some story about a head-over-heels tumble, not one word of which was intelligible; another insisted that my mother should bend down, and then whispered in her ear, "My father ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis

... reversing your usual practice, and printing the text in italics and the stage directions in roman type. My request will, I hope, prove intelligible.] ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various

... questionings. Was this lady safe? Again the nod and murmur of assent. Did she want help? Vehement the confirmation. He repeated, with careful emphasis, "I will reward you well for your help," and this time the direct simplicity of her reply was entirely intelligible: ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... book-keeping, geometry, mathematical astronomy and a knowledge of the higher curves. Out of the prehistoric shrugs and sounds and grimaces we have oral speech—much of it worthless, and not all of it yet wholly intelligible. We are still continually being understood to say what we never meant to say: we are forever putting our private interpretation on the words of other men. Even yet, we are all too stupid. In our dreariest moments does there not come to us sometimes a voice ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... half of our own collection serves to make this period comprehensible, yea, immediately intelligible. They were written partly at Noethenitz, partly at Dresden, and are directed to an intimate and trusted friend and comrade. The writer stands revealed in all his distress, with his pressing, irresistible desires, but on the road to a new and distant ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... it out concisely and lucidly he will gradually perfect his apprehension of it. Were he to solve a difficult problem, he would probably regard his grasp of the solution as insecure and incomplete until he had succeeded in making it intelligible to the mind of another. When perception is deeply tinged with emotion, as when one sees what is beautiful, or admires what is noble, the attempt to express it in language, action, or art, seems to be dictated by some inner necessity of one's nature. The ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... speech, read with fair intelligence, and write in a passably intelligible manner the foreign language or languages, the social, political, and intellectual necessities of the ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... little poetic feeling, nor did genuine passion ever inflame into fervor of declamation his quiet, argumentative style. But he had humor; he spoke simple, clear, strong English; he used no unnecessary words. He always made his meaning plain and intelligible, and he had an admirable faculty for illustrating every argument by something drawn from reading or from observation or from experience. He was, in fact, the very perfection of a common-sense talker, a man fit to deal with men by ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... God had subdued their hearts, we read but little of penances, or self-expiations, or forms of worship, or church ceremonies, or priestly rigors, or any of the slaveries and formalities which bound ordinary people. Their piety was mystical, sometimes visionary, and not always intelligible, but deep, sincere, and lofty. Of the two women, I think Saint Theresa was the more remarkable, and had the most originality. Madame Guyon seems to have borrowed much from her, especially ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord

... the happy discovery of Tait and Dewar,[2] that the length of the free path of the residual molecules of air in a good modern vacuum may amount to several inches! Clausius' and Maxwell's explanations of the diffusion of gases, and of thermal conduction in gases, their charmingly intelligible conclusion that in gases the diffusion of heat is just a little more rapid than the diffusion of molecules, because of the interchange of energy in collisions between molecules,[3] while the chief transference ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various

... recognized it in Homer. The hiatus, and the various perplexities of metre, occasioned by the loss of the digamma, were corrected by different grammatical stratagems. But the whole history of this lost letter is very curious, and is rendered intelligible only by the supposition that the Iliad and Odyssey belonged for a wide space of time to the memory, the voice, and the ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske



Words linked to "Intelligible" :   perceivable, apprehensible, understandable, comprehendible, graspable, intelligibility, unintelligible



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