"Conviction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... civil service, Jefferson, it is true, made many removals from office, some doubtless unwise and even unjust; but in judging of these we must remember his profound and unquestionably honest conviction that the Federalists lacked patriotism. It was this belief which dictated his prosecution, almost persecution, of Burr, whom Federalists openly ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... that they generally make use of them for guides from one jurisdiction to another; for there is nothing left them by which they can rob or be the better for it, since, as they are disarmed, so the very having of money is a sufficient conviction: and as they are certainly punished if discovered, so they cannot hope to escape; for their habit being in all the parts of it different from what is commonly worn, they cannot fly away, unless they would go naked, ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... her, I saw that he could hardly bear, for downright agony, to look into her face, for he was stricken with the conviction that she was ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... last man," said Courtenay quietly with that conviction that can only be arrived at in one way, and that ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... lady's part which Desire began increasingly to doubt. She had already reached the point when it seemed impossible that anyone should not admire what to her was entirely admirable. Even the explanation of a prior attachment (the "Someone Else" of the professor's story), did not carry conviction. Who else could there be—compared ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... that both Dante before Tasso, and Milton after him, employed similar classical language in dealing with Christian and mediaeval motives. But this will hardly serve as an excuse; for Dante and Milton communicate so intense a conviction of religious earnestness that their Latinisms, even though incongruous, are recognized as the mere clothing of profoundly felt ideas. The sublimity, the seriousness, the spiritual dignity is in their thought, not in its ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... meeting and your marriage with Mary in the time to come. I was sleepless last night, and I was thinking of your pretty love story by the banks of the bright English lake. The longer I thought, the more firmly I felt the conviction that the poor child's green flag is destined to have its innocent influence in forming your future life. Your happiness is waiting for you in that artless little keepsake! I can't explain or justify this belief of mine. ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... reactions. By the beginning of the seventeenth century not less than four categories would suffice to classify the people of England according to their religious differences. First, there were those who still continued to adhere to the Roman see. Secondly, those who, either from conviction or from expediency or from indifference, were content with the state church of England in the shape in which Elizabeth and her parliaments had left it; this class naturally included the general multitude of Englishmen, religious, irreligious, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... striking, but merely usual and manly. It was impossible for one brought up in this view to feel that duelling—under certain provocation and fair conditions—was wrong. The custom was frequently abused, no doubt, yet the same could be said of all customs, and Orange, rightly or wrongly, held a conviction on the subject which no argument could affect. But, with a lover's unreasonableness, he had found the fight between Bodava and Castrillon an insult to the lady at stake. He suspected, too, that Castrillon had spoken lightly of her to General Prim, to Zeuill, perhaps ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... lifting up our hearts so that they may know for actual the truth of these things, he has contributed an important fragment towards an interpretation of human life. And this Browning has assuredly done. The sense of a power outside oneself whose influence invades the just-awakened man, the conviction that the secret of life has been revealed, the lying passive and prone to the influx of the spirit, the illumination, the joy, the assurance that old things have passed away and that all things have become new, the acceptance ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... no manner of doubt but Mr. Macleod had done some searching in McFarquhar's heart and had brought him under "deep conviction," as he said himself. And McFarquhar had great faith that the minister would do the same for Ould Michael and was indignant when I expressed ...
— Michael McGrath, Postmaster • Ralph Connor
... the battle of Love and Shame, which serves as climax to the elaborate description of the lovers' kissing. In short, all our old friends—the devices which every generation of seekers after style parades with such a touching conviction that they are quite new, and which every literary student knows to be as old as literature—are to be found here. The language is in its decadence: the writer has not much to say. But it is surprising how much, with all his drawbacks, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... this was cordial to him. I had spoken out of my conviction, and he knew it. "No," he said. "I do not believe it. I will never believe it of the Queen! Look you! I have thought it out in the night. The night is good for thinking out. You would not believe how many enemies I have in Spain. Margarite and ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... gathering clouds. For some time there had been spreading among the common people a conviction that the Brethren were under the special protection of God, and that any man who tried to harm them would come to a tragic end. It was just while the Brethren were sunk in despair that several of their enemies suddenly died, and people ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... I had a thought white-hot from some forge-fire of inspiration—a thought to tip an arrow of conviction and set it quivering in the mark. I would not stop to measure it; to look aside at her or any other lest one brief glance apart should send the arrow wavering from its course. So I looked the colonel boldly in the eye and drew the bow and sped ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... conviction that the scientific study of animal behavior and of animal mind can be furthered more just at present by intensive special investigations than by extensive general books. Methods of research in this field are few and surprisingly crude, for the majority of investigators ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... wonderful charity you are capable of finding something excellent even in his work," the other replied. "But let us be frank: The only thing he sometimes succeeded in doing was to flatter the crude instincts of the mob. True earnestness or conviction ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... Serbs, rather than let Austria gain power there. Now she has realized that the Slav is her enemy, but then, in May 1914, she was furious at Essad's arrest, and demanded his release. The correct course was to try and, if guilty, execute him. But trial would have meant conviction, and Italy would not hear of it. The Italian and Austrian battleships cleared for action, though the Powers had neutralized the Albanian coast. For twenty-four hours the position was precarious, but Austria once more swallowed her pride and yielded—this ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... with the ploughman's back, he said, as if she had been an ill-filled sack of wool; and when, on reaching the opposite side of the streamlet, she leaped down as slightly as she had mounted, and he turned fearfully round to catch a second glimpse of her, it was in the conviction that she was a creature considerably less earthly in her texture than himself. She had opened, with two pale, thin arms, the enveloping hood, exhibiting a face equally pale and thin, which seemed marked, however, by the roguish, half-humorous expression of one ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Brothers Banditti across the hill was peculiar. It was one of Dr. Stonehouse's many theories of life that children should be independent, untrammelled alike by parental restrictions and education, and except on the very frequent occasions when this particular theory collided with his comfort and his conviction that his son was being disgracefully neglected, Robert lived the life of a lonely and illiterate guttersnipe. He did not know he was lonely. He did not want to play with the other children in the Terrace. But he did know that for some ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... Susan that she had never before thought of examining the Golden Rule: "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." But the longer she reflected upon it, the stronger was her conviction that she did not always obey the precept; at length, she appealed to ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... attraction, except as being new- or regular-fashioned. But the villain Ondoure has almost as little of the fire of Hell as of that of Heaven, and his paramour and accomplice Akansie carries very little "conviction" with her. In short, the merit of the book, besides the faint one of having been the original framework of Atala and Rene, is almost limited to its atmosphere, and the alterative qualities thereof—things now in a way ancient history—requiring even ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... spectators anxiously watched the faces of the jury. It was not a remunerative study. In the court room the general feeling was in favor of Laura, but whether this feeling extended to the jury, their stolid faces did not reveal. The public outside hoped for a conviction, as it always does; it wanted an example; the newspapers trusted the jury would have the courage to do its duty. When Laura was convicted, then the public would tern around and abuse the governor if ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... the door immediately. There appeared to be an opening and closing of his desk, first—a scuffle, as of things being put away. When Constance entered, she saw one of the insurance books open on the table, the pen and ink near it; the others were not to be seen. The keys were in the table lock. A conviction flashed over the mind of Constance that Judith was right, in supposing the office accounts to be the object that kept him up. "What can he do with his time in ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... hours before, was his warm friend. He could scarcely believe that it was the calm majesty of death that so changed the expression of that white face, and yet, the longer he looked, the more deeply an inward conviction assured him that it was so. He chafed the chilling hands and face, he applied hartshorn and burnt feathers to the nostrils, but all these applications, though excellent in their way, could not exactly raise the dead to life, and, in this case, ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... conflict between desire to sing and his conviction of duty as special policeman, which ludicrously suggested Mr. Dick in his struggle between longing to be foolish with David Copperfield and to be grave to please Miss Betsy, he fairly gave in and ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... Regent's," said Apollonius, in a tone of sincere conviction; but Barine, over whose sunny brow a shadow had flitted when Gorgias uttered the orator's name, assented with a slight bend of the head, and then whispered hurriedly, yet earnestly, that she would answer for the old man's allowing himself to be persuaded, if he had only time ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... all? Nothing particular. Mr. Owen and John are fast friends by this time. Marjory is beginning to take an interest in natural history. Also, she has lost all faith in conviction upon circumstantial evidence. She is "o'er young to marry yet," her aunt thinks, and so do I of course, for this is not a love-story: I wish that to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... but his own was destined to hear. One who lived to be eighty, speaking of those wonderful improvisations, says: 'I still, in my old age, seem to hear the echo of those heavenly harmonies, and I go to my grave with the full conviction that there ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... decided to place the paper in the little desk again, for safe-keeping. Without the slightest curiosity her eyes fell again upon some of the writing on loose sheets. But presently she was staring at it hard as a strong conviction made its way into her brain. After this she went to the other shelf where some books had been placed and opened one of them, and then another. On the flyleaf was written, in bold characters, "Hugo Ennis." The writing was exactly the same as that which appeared on the scattered leaves, ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... my translation of the Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night will remember that, in the terminal essay (1884) on the history and character of the collection, I expressed my conviction that the eleven (so-called) "interpolated" tales, [1] though, in my judgment, genuine Oriental stories, had (with the exception of the Sleeper Awakened and Aladdin) no connection with the original work, but had been procured by Galland from various (as yet) unidentified sources, ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... November 23, 1890, was much mourned by his people. He was a man of strong and somewhat narrow views, but during his reign of 41 years his sincere love for his country was never in doubt, nor did he lose popularity by his anti-liberal attitude on many occasions, for it was known to arise from honest conviction; and it was amidst general regret that the last male representative of the House of Orange-Nassau was laid in ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... the conviction," stammered he, "that Claudet will make a good husband, and you will ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of it," said Sir Richmond with conviction. "There was always a tremendous lot of variety in my mind. In fact the thing I liked least in the real world was the way it was obsessed by the idea of pairing off with one particular set and final person. I liked to dream of a blonde goddess in her own Venusberg one day, and the next ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... not only as one wholly new, but also of universal application, and leading to absolute certainty. Doubt was to be excluded from its results. By its means, all the knowledge of which men were capable was to be attained surely and in a comparatively brief space of time. Such a conviction, extravagant as it may seem, is expressed in many passages. In the Preface to his "Parasceve," published in 1620, in the same volume with the "Novum Organum," he says, that he is about to describe a Natural and Experimental History, which, if it be once provided, (and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... what, no doubt, were pleasant dreams of wonderful white and green animals, combining the intelligence of man and strength of brutes—a new species creditable to his genius—I was perhaps unjust in my conviction as to his lack of humor. And as to the other question, whether or not he had any real human feeling for the creatures built in his own image, that was decided very soon ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... he allows that some facts can be cited in contradiction of this assertion.] Complaints of his brutality, from time to time, reached his master's ears; but though Mr. Jefferies was moved to momentary compassion, he shut his heart against conviction: he hurried away to the jovial banquet, and drowned ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... agency of the Mathers, father and son, in the witchcraft delusion. It would be quite fair to plead in their behalf the common beliefs of their time. It would be an extenuation of their acts that, not many years before, the great and good magistrate, Sir Matthew Hale, had sanctioned the conviction of prisoners accused of witchcraft. To fall back on the errors of the time is very proper when we are trying our predecessors in foro conscientace: The houses they dwelt in may have had some weak or decayed ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... or confidence, is not so easily learned as are other things. It is not so readily apprehended as the knowledge of the law written in nature, which when duly recognized by the heart overpowers with the conviction of God's wrath. Indeed, that more than anything else hinders Christians and saints from obtaining the knowledge of God's will in Christ, for it compels heart and conscience to plead guilty in every ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... principles: first, that the king could take the money of his subjects only when it was voted to him for public objects; and secondly, that he could not punish or imprison them at his will, but could only punish them after conviction, according to ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... sufficient." These two words form the complement of each other and together give the key to an efficient Christian life. The discovery and full conviction of our utter helplessness is the constant condition of spiritual supply. The aim of the Old Testament, therefore, is ever to show man's failure; that of the New, to reveal Christ's sufficiency. He has all things for us, but we ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... were favorable, a little slip of paper certifying their qualifications to teach a common school. Strange that over such an office so fierce a feud should have arisen; but when Mr. Tiverton, Squire Lamb and Lawyer Whittemore, in the full conviction that they were doing right, refused a certificate of scholarship to Laura Tisdale, niece of Mrs. Judge Tisdale, and awarded it to one whose earnings in a factory had procured for her a thorough English education, ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... were found in the executive building were indicted for murder along with Steve and Jason Hawn. Indeed, the Democrats were busy unearthing, as they claimed, a gigantic Republican conspiracy. No less than one hundred thousand dollars was offered as a reward for the conviction of the murderers, and the Republican cry was that with such a sum it was possible to convict even the innocent. In turn, Liberty Leagues were even formed throughout the State to protect the innocent, and lives ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... entertained so confidently the conviction of her ultimate surrender to convention, at moments vexed her to the verge of anger. At times, too, his disposition to interfere with her liberty tried her patience. Again and again she explained to him the unalterable fundamentals ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... the dominions of the Emperor of China, under a penalty not exceeding L100 for every such offence, or a term of imprisonment not exceeding three months, at the discretion of the court before which the conviction should take place. Mr. T. Lay was appointed consul at Canton, and Sir Henry Pottinger formally assumed the government of the island of Hong-Kong. The town destined for the seat of government, and the residence of merchants and others, was founded on the northern ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... gray eyes on him searchingly. "I reckon you're not," she said. "I reckon you're the sort of man people don't say things to unless they're right sure you will stand it. They don't trifle with you." She nodded her head with conviction. "Oh, I've heard them talk about you! I like that; that's like our men down South. You're right Southern, anyhow, in some ways. You see, I can pay you compliments because you're a safe old married man," and her eyes smiled up at him: she ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... hand of the sexton, and we took our way back to the town. George informed us, as we went, that he had been for several nights haunted by the image of his mother; and could only thus account for the conviction that had seized him, that the body of the female he had seen in the dissecting-room was that of his parent. It is a remarkable fact, and the one which chiefly induced me to give this narrative, that the scene I have now described wrought so powerfully ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... pale and shuddering, repeating that it was all over, that he would be unable to save himself and would be guillotined. Each step he saw her take, seemed to him a step nearer punishment. Fright gave him a sort of blind conviction, and the slightest movement of the young woman added to his certainty. He followed her, he went where she went, as a ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... my conviction that the Empire, in view of the development of military institutions by other Powers, can no longer delay to give to its armed forces such increase as shall guarantee the security of ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... this admirable gentleman, who was so excellent a landlord and so hard working a member of the British aristocracy. But pomposity would be far too superficial a word to apply to him; it would not adequately connote his deep-abiding and essential conviction that on one of the days of Creation (that, probably, on which the decree was made that there should be Light) there leaped into being ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... intercourse without illicit views; I delighted in the effusions of her candour and the flashes of her intelligence; I conformed, by a kind of instinctive hypocrisy, to her views; I spoke and felt from the influence of immediate and momentary conviction. She imagined she had found in me a friend worthy to partake in all her sympathies and forward all her wishes. We were mutually deceived. She was the victim of self-delusion; but I must charge myself with practising deceit both upon myself ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... calmly, from the conviction of practical necessity, stronger than any abstract political doctrine, Henry Gould had drawn the sword, so now, the times being changed, Charles Gould had flung the silver of the San Tome into the fray. The Inglez of Sulaco, the "Costaguana Englishman" of the third generation, was as far ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... lived on excellent terms with his bright gods. He asked for protection, with an assured conviction that it would be granted. At the same time, he was deeply stirred by the glory and mystery of the earth and the heavens. Indeed, the majesty of nature so filled his mind, that when he praises any one of his Shining Gods, he can think of none other for the time being, and adores him as the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... remain exactly where he had started. Though they talked all night, though she convinced him according to all the laws and principles of logic, she knew that he would still think precisely what he had thought in the beginning, for his conviction was rooted, deeper than reason, in the unconquerable prejudices which had passed from the brain into the very blood of his race. He would probably say at the end: "I admit all that you tell me, Gabriella, but my sentiment is against it;" and this sentiment, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... from it about two months, he again, by way of experiment, returned to the cud, cigar, and pipe; and but a few days were requisite to recall all his former dyspeptic symptoms. He again relinquished the habit, under the full conviction that tobacco was the sole cause of his illness, and he firmly resolved never to make further ...
— An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health • R. D. Mussey
... see no setch thunderstorms as we has 'round dis yere neck o' de woods," said she, with conviction. "Ah bet yo' ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... a tremendous personality—dramatic, wilful, generous, whimsical, at times almost cruel in pressing his own conviction upon others, and then again tender, affectionate, emotional, always imaginative, unusual and wide-visioned in his views. He is well worth Boswellizing, but I am urging him to be 'his own Boswell.'... He is inconsistent in many ways, but with a passion ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... the depth of her affliction Martha now receiv'd conviction, That a true and faithful friend Can the surest comfort lend. Night and day, with friendship tried, Ever constant by her side Was her gentle Mary found, With a love that knew no bound; And the solace she ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... husband, "said nothing of all this; confiding it only to my Father-in-law, who tried to cheer me. Nor, indeed, did I feel any fear within me, being persuaded in my conscience that, in this decision of the Arnold Case, I had proceeded according to the best of my knowledge and conviction. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... scene, and, let us hope, as well by motives of humanity as by the conviction of the utter uselessness of such a spectacle as a moral lesson, the Senate of Hamburg had commuted the punishment of death into that of a life imprisonment. Yet now they were taunted with their unreadiness to shed blood, ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... deal of vigorous gossip is talked; but if a question as to the best time for net-practice, or the erection of a board for the purpose of teaching slip-catches is mentioned, a profound seriousness falls on the group. A man sits up in his chair and speaks with real conviction and heat, with grave gestures. "The afternoon," he says, "is NOT a good time for nets; the boys are not at their best, and the pros. are less vigorous after their dinner. Whatever arrangements are made as to the times for school, ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and unswerving integrity, had just succeeded in securing the position which cost him his life. Two such brutal, cowardly murders ought to arouse the people to such systematic, concerted action as would result in the final arrest and conviction of ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... Greek chronology, the world was then approaching the end of the seven thousandth year since the creation, and the impression was universal that the end of the world was at hand. It is worthy of remark that this conviction seemed rather to increase recklessness and crime than to be promotive of virtue. Bat the years glided on, and gradually the impression faded away. Ivan, with extraordinary energy and sagacity, devoted himself to the consolidation ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... significant to find one who has seen so much of the world as Judge Gibbs has, saying, as he does: "With travel somewhat extensive and diversified, and with residence in tropical latitudes of Negro origin, I have a decided conviction, despite the crucial test to which he has been subjected in the past, and the present disadvantages under which he labors, that nowhere is the promise along all the lines of opportunity brighter for the American Negro than here in the ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... commanders, Wright and Emory and Crook, Sheridan rode down the front of his lines. Then went up a mighty cheer that gave new life to the wounded and consoled the last moments of the dying, for in every breast was firmly implanted the conviction that now at last the end was in sight, and that deep-toned shout that shook the hills and the heavens was not the brutal roar of a rude and barbarous soldiery, coarsely exulting over the distress and slaughter of the vanquished, but the glad voice of the American people (2) rejoicing from ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... temper was not alleviated, Lucilla thought peace would be best preserved by sallying out to sketch. A drawing from behind the cross became so engrossing that she was sorry to find it time for the early dinner, and her artistic pride was only allayed by the conviction that she should always hate what ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his Journal, just given, there is a passage that cannot fail to have been remarked, where, in speaking of his admiration of some lady, whose name he has himself left blank, the noble writer says—"a wife would be the salvation of me." It was under this conviction, which not only himself but some of his friends entertained, of the prudence of his taking timely refuge in matrimony from those perplexities which form the sequel of all less regular ties, that he had been induced, about a year before, to turn ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... dreamed of such a fall as this! She would have said,—indeed, she often had said,—to the archdeacon that Griselda's religious principles were too firmly fixed to be moved by outward worldly matters; signifying, it may be, her conviction that that teaching of Plumstead Episcopi had so fastened her daughter into a groove, that all the future teaching of Hartlebury would not suffice to undo the fastenings. When she had thus boasted, no such ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... Sproatly with a decision which carried conviction with it. "I certainly saw them at the hotel, but how could I imagine that they had anything of ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... various phenomena, the conviction can scarcely be resisted that the nuclei of comets not only emit their own light, which is that of a glowing gas, but also, together with the coma and the tail, reflect the light of the sun. There seems nothing, therefore, to contradict the theory that the mass of a comet may ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... whole garden of bourgeois virtues, hitherto ignored, bursting into bloom, repeated in a tone of conviction: ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... am confirmed in my creed that whoever had slavery for mammy is never serious in the effort to destroy it. Whatever such men as Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Blair will do against slavery, will never be radical by their own choice or conviction, but will be done reluctantly, and when under ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... feeling of a divine mission, which laid him so open to flattery, gave him also a keen desire to remedy the social misery around him; and in this he looked for help to Christianity. Amidst the horrors of Diocletian's persecution a conviction grew upon him that the power which fought the Empire with success must somehow come from the Supreme. Thus he slowly learned to recognise the God of the Christians in his father's God, and in the Sun-god's cross ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... of exposition in argument. The descent and education did not prove that the Americans had a fiery spirit; that was acknowledged and needed no proof. It simply sets forth the facts,—facts which he afterward uses as powerful instruments of conviction. As long as a man can use exposition, he can carry his readers with him; it is when he begins to argue, to force matters, that he raises opposition. So this use of exposition was fortunate. America was an English ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... his story: "Having entered the room, I locked and bolted both doors, carefully examined the whole room, and satisfied myself that there was no living creature in it but myself, nor any entrances but those I had secured. I got into bed, and, with the conviction that I should sleep as usual till six in the morning, I was soon lost in a comfortable slumber. Suddenly I was aroused, and on raising my head to listen I heard a sound certainly resembling the light, soft tread of a lady's footstep, accompanied with the rustling as of a silk gown. ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... of the primitive Church, which exists no longer except in the pictures of the sixteenth century and in the pages of Martyrology, was stamped with the die of the human greatness which most nearly approaches the divine greatness through Conviction,—that indefinable something which embellishes the commonest form, gilds with glowing tints the faces of men vowed to any worship, no matter what, and brings into the face of a woman glorified by a noble ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... well satisfied with what I have said on this head. It will be curious if we have hit on similar conclusions. You are about the last man in England who would deviate a hair's breadth from his conviction to please any editor ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... all other means failed; indeed, it was simpler and more expeditious than the calling of many witnesses, the testing of evidence by cross-examination, and other surer but slower methods; and especially when conviction, not truth, was the end in view, torture was a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... for it to follow; whether it is a probable consequence will presently be discussed; but it is thought, free thought upon the subject; when I began freely to think I proceeded boldly to doubt; your Letters gave me the cause for thinking, and my scepticism was exchanged for conviction; not entirely by the perusal of your Letters; for I do not think they would quite have made me an Atheist! but by attention to that answer from my friend, which I have ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner
... the words, the face of Philip left Lilburne terror-stricken with conviction. But the man's crafty ability, debased as it was, triumphed even over remorse for the dread guilt meditated,—over gratitude for the dread guilt spared. He glanced at Beaufort—at Dykeman, who now, slowly recovering, gazed at him with eyes that seemed ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... peculiar fondness. I have heard a young, elegant, and accomplished woman discourse in very choice Italian with the accent of a market-woman, and on being remonstrated with for the use of some very pungent proverbial illustration in her talk, she replied with conviction, "That is the right way to speak Tuscan. I have nothing to do with what Italians from other provinces may prefer. But pure, racy Tuscan—the Tuscan tongue that we have inherited—is spoken as I speak ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Slumbering received you then the Holy Church in its bosom; Wakened from sleep are ye now, and the light in its radiant splendor Downward rains from the heaven;—to-day on the threshold of childhood Kindly she frees you again, to examine and make your election, For she knows naught of compulsion, and only conviction desireth. This is the hour of your trial, the turning-point of existence, Seed for the coming days; without revocation departeth Now from your lips the confession; Bethink ye, before ye make answer! Think not, O think not with guile to deceive the questioning Teacher. Sharp is his eye ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... other in that family. I should reproach myself all my life for not having tried every means." They were in the last room, and Baron Hafner was just fastening the strings of an album of drawings, when the conviction took possession of the young man in a definite manner. Alba Steno, who still maintained silence, looked at him again with eyes which revealed the struggle of her interest for him and of her wounded pride. She longed, without doubt, at the moment they were about to separate, to ask him, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and more the pretty boat went over on her side. We bent all our spare lines; we unrove sheets and halyards; we used our two-inch hawser; we fastened lines part way up the mast, half way up, and everywhere else. We toiled and sweated and enounced our mutual and sincere conviction that God's grudge still held against us. Country yokels came down on the wharf and sniggered at us. When Cloudesley let a coil of rope slip down the inclined deck into the vile slime and fished it out with seasick countenance, ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... nestling in a bower of flowers. A woman is there, and a little child. He speaks with them and finds that they are his wife, his child—and the cottage their home. So, after all, it is a mistake. Some one has frightfully, irretrievably blundered. The accusation, the trial, the conviction, the sentence to death in the electric chair—all a dream. He takes his wife in his arms and kisses the child. Yes, here is happiness. It was a dream. Then—at a sign from the prison warden the fatal current ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... for your new horse tomorrow, sir." And Mr. Shaw stroked the fuzzy red head with a kind hand, feeling a fatherly pleasure in the conviction that there was something in ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... gravely, and with countenances that reflected the sentiments of the speaker. Conviction gradually wrought its influence, and toward the close of Hawkeye's speech, his sentences were accompanied by the customary exclamation of commendation. In short, Uncas and his father became converts to his way of thinking, abandoning their own previously ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Voltaire," he said, "set himself to correct the vices and follies of mankind by laughing at them, and sometimes by treating them with severity, but Rousseau conducts the reader to reason and truth by the attractions of sentiment and the force of conviction. His 'Social Compact' will one day avenge ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... his men were just putting the finishing touches to the building, when they were startled by what seemed the roar of distant thunder. On looking out of the windows not a cloud could be seen in the sky, but the reverberations continued, and at once the conviction that the noise was of cannons seized them. Throwing down their tools they ran to the bank of the lake, where nearly all the villagers at home to the number of about thirty, were already gathered, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... soon followed by foreign war. The Jacobins thought to remedy all these ills by creating a new Constitution. It was always a tradition with all the revolutionary assemblies to believe in the magic virtues of formula. In France this conviction has never been affected by the failure ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... bring about disasters on thee. Thou hast been addressed by the eldest of the Kurus, by me, by Vidura, and by Vasudeva. Thou dost not yet understand what is beneficial for thyself. I have a large force,—with this conviction thou desirest to pierce the Pandava host, abounding with heroes, like the current of the Ganga piercing the ocean abounding with sharks and alligators and makaras. Having obtained Yudhishthira's prosperity like the cast off ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... that he had gone to America, but it was not thought worth while to take any further steps towards arresting him. Mr Grey himself was decidedly opposed to any such attempt, declaring his opinion that his own evidence would be insufficient to obtain a conviction. The big men in Scotland Yard were loth to let the matter drop. Their mouths watered after the job, and they had very numerous and very confidential interviews with John Grey. But it was decided that nothing should be done. "Pity!" said one enterprising superintendent, in answer to ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... I do not doubt your conviction, Mr. Texel. It merely proves that you have never seen a British Jury exercising itself upon a question relating to the fine arts. If you had you would not be certain, for you would know that twelve tradesmen so occupied are capable of accomplishing ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... views, to have given his striped pole its old signification of the ribbon bandage which bound the arm of a patient after bleeding, and added surgery to his hair-cutting and his beard-shaving. John Flynn had the courage of utter conviction as to his own ability to master all undertakings at which he chose to tilt. An aspiration once conceived, he never parted with, but held to it as a part of his life. Non-realization made not the slightest difference. His sense of time as a portion of eternity never left him, ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... will take rank as a standard in its class. Illustrations and text are admirable.... Our own conviction is that while the future may bring forth amplified editions of the work, it will probably never be superseded. Recognizing its importance, the publishers have given it faultless form. The typography leaves nothing to be desired, the paper is calculated to stand wear and ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... could discover "missing," to Mrs. Bruce's horror, was the tattered Saturday frock. And Mary found the boots and stockings under the dressing-table, so the conviction that she had gone barefoot was forced ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... thoughts into words and see if that will lay them. That girl had a beautiful face but a cold one. Would I like to see it lighted up with the warmth of her soul set free? Yes, frankly, I would. She looked upon me with indifference. Would I like to see her welcome me as a friend? I have a conviction that I would, although no doubt everybody in my congregation would look upon her as a most unsuitable friend for me. Do I believe that she is wild, unwomanly, heathenish, as Mrs. Danby says? No, I do not, most emphatically. I believe she is a lady in the truest sense of ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... distinction between Weltschmerz and pessimism. Weltschmerz may be defined as the poetic expression of an abnormal sensitiveness of the feelings to the moral and physical evils and misery of existence—a condition which may or may not be based upon a reasoned conviction that the sum of human misery is greater than the sum of human happiness. It is usually characterized also by a certain lack of will-energy, a sort of sentimental yielding to these painful emotions. It is therefore entirely a matter of "Gemuet." Pessimism, on the other hand, purports ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... increase and the judgment is partly made wiser by experience, and partly also more acute in observation. This being so, nothing can secure us from falling away altogether from our ideas of duty, or maintain in the soul a well- grounded respect for its law, but the clear conviction that although there should never have been actions which really sprang from such pure sources, yet whether this or that takes place is not at all the question; but that reason of itself, independent on all experience, ordains what ought to take place, that accordingly ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... time he expresses his conviction over and over again that the earth is in motion. It is with him a pious belief, just as it was with Pythagoras and his school and with Aristarchus. "But" (as Dreyer says in his most interesting book, Tycho Brahe) "proofs of the physical truth of his system ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... egoism, which shall force you for a time to regard what concerns you as the only thing of any consequence, and everything else as non-existent.' Yet he goes on to talk about 'benefiting society,' is conscious of the weight which such a conviction or compromise lays upon him, and yet cannot get rid of the burden, as Nietzsche does. He has less courage than Nietzsche, though no less logic, and is held back from a complete realisation of his own doctrine because he has ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... safety and fled, marking the course of their retreat by the blood that trickled from their wounds. A coroner's jury pronounced this deed of death as 'wilful murder' against some persons unknown. A large government reward was offered, but it failed to produce a single conviction. At Castlepollard, in Westmeath, on the occasion of an attempted rescue, the chief constable was knocked down. The police fired, and nine or ten persons were killed. One of the most lamentable of these conflicts occurred at Gurtroe, near Rathcormac, in the county of Cork. Archdeacon Ryder ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... of the staircase to the hall at Christ Church, Oxford! The eye of the vulgar is entranced, the eye of the artist bewildered. That the imagination which inspired that decorative scheme was powerful, original, and noble, will not be denied; but this does not save us from the desolating conviction that the scheme itself is a specious and pretentious mask, devised to hide a hideous waste of ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... does not make converts by force. Free from fanaticism, she preaches only toleration and love. She does not even admit of persuasion, but trusts wholly to conviction for proselytes, who, when once they enter her communion, will always find her a loving mother. How different has been the conduct both of Catholic ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... bodies, or screaming in a delirium of fever as they issue from the numerous temporary hospitals, make even the stoutest hearted quail with terror. Nearly two thousand bodies have already been recovered, and as the work of examining the wreckage progresses the conviction grows that the magnitude of the calamity has ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... Pithecanthropus. The "find" included a tooth and part of a lower jaw, but these perhaps belong to some ape, for they are very discrepant. The Piltdown skull represents the most ancient human remains as yet found in Britain, and Dr. Smith Woodward's establishment of a separate genus Eoanthropus expresses his conviction that the Piltdown man was off the line of the evolution of the modern type. If the tooth and piece of lower jaw belong to the Piltdown skull, then there was a remarkable combination of ape-like and human characters. As regards the ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... the effect produced by his mention of the name of Martin. Jasper, on hearing this name, believed that every thing had been divulged, and, in the bitterness and despair of this conviction, threw off all concealment. His countenance, which had partly gained its usual colour, became pallid again, while large beads of sweat oozed from the relaxed pores and stood upon his forehead. Moving back a step or two, he sank into a chair, and averting his ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... in the late twilight to a realization that I was at home again, without the papers that meant conviction for Andy Bronson, with a charge of murder hanging over my head, and with something more than an impression of the girl my best friend was in love with, a girl moreover who was almost as great an enigma ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... winter still brought no tidings, and the poor, saddened woman yielded to the conviction that some disaster had overtaken her husband and that she would see ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... aboard were not the ones he worried about—there was no danger of sexual trouble. Strictly speaking, he was not responsible for the morals of his force. He knew that he was being terribly old-fashioned. Nevertheless, he could not argue himself out of the conviction that he ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... almost ceased to be Roman[804]—seems to have taken the form of thinking known as Pythagorean. The ideas at the root of the Pythagorean doctrine, the belief in a future life, the conception of this life as only preparatory to another, the conviction of the need of purgation in another life and of the preparatory discipline and asceticism to be practised while we are here,—these are truly religious ideas; and even among Romans the religious instinct, though it might be hypnotised, could never be entirely destroyed. When it awoke ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... consciousness that the country was at war spread very slowly, while the conviction that this was a life-and-death struggle which would seriously affect the lives and rights and habits of every individual made no headway. Only a few grasped the fact that a tremendous upheaval was going forward which marked ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... obscurity to the other trying features of the undertaking. Then there was the uncertainty whether it was the boat at all, of which he was in pursuit; and, if the boat, it might drift away from him as fast as he could follow it. Nevertheless, the perfect conviction that, without some early succour, the party on the wreck, including Rose Budd, must inevitably perish, stimulated him to proceed, and a passing feeling of doubt, touching the prudence of his course, that came over the young mate, when he was a few yards ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... that held me there, and decency bade me to put an end to our relations at once, but on his account far more than on my own; for while I flattered myself that my heart was untouched save by the emotion of a warm friendship, I could not dismiss the conviction that his feeling for me was rapidly approaching the point at which friendship becomes an impossibility. I must go, and immediately. It was foolish and culpable of me to have stayed so long. A girl in the first blush of maidenhood ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... his companion, but it was too dark to see his face. There was something, however, in his tone of voice which struck him as being peculiar. It did not sound confident of Distin's innocence. There was a want of conviction in his words too, and this set Gilmore thinking as to the possibility of Distin having in a fit of rage and dislike quarrelled with and then beaten Vane till the stick was broken and ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... were learned men who maintained that his whole story was an excellently planned romance. The narrative taken down in prison was, however, distributed in an innumerable number of manuscript copies. The great Christopher Columbus, discoverer of America, found in it a support to his conviction that by sailing west a man would at length ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... murder of a freeman, or even of a slave, was punished with death, from the conviction that men ought to be restrained from the commission of sin, not on account of any distinction of station in life, but from the light in which they viewed the crime itself; while at the same time it had the effect of showing that if the murder of a slave was deemed ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Heaven" has been called the greatest ode in the English language. Such was the contemporary verdict of some of the most respected critics of the time, and the conviction of its justness deepens with the passing of years. Recall the writers of great odes, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Collins, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge,—the best they have done will not outstare the ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... a single example, confirming all that has been said, and from which everyone may obtain conviction through the testimony of ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... any thought; and in most of our sudden judgments we are roughly correct. It is so, or seems to us to be so, as a matter of course,—that the man is a fool, or reticent, or malicious; and, without giving a thought to our own phrenological capacity, we pass on with the conviction. No one ever considered that Mr Whittlestaff was a fool or malicious; but people did think that he was reticent and honest. The inner traits of his character were very difficult to be read. Even Mrs Baggett ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... fell on my body, but ordinance of God (to by the decree of Allah (to whom belong might and whom be Honour and majesty), I felt no pain Glory!) I felt no pain, and and it was born in upon it became my conviction me that her prayer had that her prayer had ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... subsequent to the completion of the foregoing chapter, and indeed just as this book is on the point of leaving my hands, there appears in Nature {144a} a letter from the Duke of Argyll, which shows that he too is impressed with the conviction expressed above—I mean that the real object our men of science have lately had in view has been the getting rid of mind from among the causes ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... truth, and to be subject to the bishop was deemed one of the greatest of evangelical virtues. Celibacy was then confounded with chastity, and mysticism was extensively occupying the place of scriptural knowledge and intelligent conviction. And the admiration of martyrdom which presents itself in such a startling form in these Epistles was one of the characteristics of the period. Paul taught that a man may give his body to be burned and yet want the spirit of the gospel; [426:2] ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... seeming courtesy and civil self-restraint. As a matter of fact, he, Denzil, was left alone to face his fate: to dare the brilliant seduction of the witching eyes of Ziska,—to win her or to lose her forever! And consider every point as he would, the weary conviction was borne in upon him that, whether he met with victory or defeat, the result would bring more ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... that act he adopts for his own whatsoever the church believes, though he may never have hoard of it even: his faith is implicit, i.e. involved and wrapped up in the faith of the church, which faith he firmly believes to be the true faith upon the conviction he has that the church is preserved from all possibility of erring by the spirit of God.' [2] Now, as this sort of believing by proxy or implicit belief (in which the belief was not immediate in the thing proposed to the belief, but in the authority of another person who believed in ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... agencies runs to this effect not by way of deliberate and destructive antagonism, but almost wholly by force of systematic, though unintended and incidental, neglect of those values, standards, verities, and grounds of discrimination and conviction that make up the working realities of the national spirit and of dynastic ambition. The working concepts of this new, essentially mechanistic, order of human interests, do not necessarily clash with those of the old order, ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... cited this example for the sole and simple purpose of bringing home to the non-Buddhistic portion of my present audience the conviction that, in considering the life of Sakya Muni and the lessons it teaches, they must not make his followers of to-day responsible for any extravagant exuberances of past biographers. The doctrine of Buddha and its effects ...
— The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons • H.S. Olcott
... attention to more sustained and more exacting forms. It was my friend Mr. C.L. Hind who set that spring going. He urged me to write short stories for the Pall Mall Budget, and persuaded me by his simple and buoyant conviction that I could do what he desired. There existed at the time only the little sketch, "The Jilting of Jane," included in this volume—at least, that is the only tolerable fragment of fiction I find surviving from my pre-Lewis-Hind period. But I set myself, so encouraged, to the experiment ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... I set off with a full conviction that I should be flogged before night, and notwithstanding that, as full of joy as if I ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... and with every word the conviction was more strongly borne in upon me that some uncanny menace threatened the peace, perhaps ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... follow the police in their search. The discoveries which they made were ample to secure the conviction of the gang who made this house the place of their operations. To anticipate a little, we may say that Foley was sentenced to imprisonment for a term of years, and his subordinates to a term less prolonged. ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr. |
