"Disbelief" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fixed itself too strongly in their imagination. Indeed, my belief is that even could they have seen the waistcoat, its insignificant marks would have appeared murderous patches to their eyes. I had seen it, and my report was listened to with ill- concealed disbelief, when not with open protestation. And when Kerkel was discharged as free from all suspicion, there was a low growl of disappointed wrath heard from ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... distinctly, and I could see the faces, with their expressions, of those whom he addressed. The greater part manifested the deepest interest and sympathy with him who addressed them, but upon the countenances of some sat scorn and contempt—ridicule, doubt, and disbelief. As the voice fell upon my ear, in this my nearer position, I was startled. 'Surely,' I said, 'I have heard it before, and yet as surely I never before heard a Christian preach.' The thought of Probus flashed across my mind; and suddenly changing my place—and by passing round ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention to ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... words is he convicted of disbelief in the most holy Catholic faith," said the grand inquisitor. "But I find, by a memorial which was addressed to me many mouths ago—indeed, very shortly after the arrest of this miserable unbeliever—and signed by Manuel ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... at him with peculiar steadfastness. There was nothing in her eyes or her expression to suggest belief or disbelief in his words. ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Coroner, he waited for his dismissal, and receiving it, walked back not to his lonely corner, but to his former place between his father and brother, who received him with a wistful air and strange looks of mingled hope and disbelief. ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... disbelief at this, she put her arms round his neck, and raised her tear-stained face to his: her eyes were blurred and sunken with crying, and her lips were white. He knew every line of her face by heart; he had known it in so many moods, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... francs to the first comer, heretic, scoffer or infidel, that might take a fancy to buy it. This would hardly have been the case when the pope was absolute master of Rome and of all in it. The thing could not have happened save by the dishonesty and cynical disbelief of some priest, and indeed probably of more than one. And, upon the whole, it struck me as a second curious indication of the somewhat breakneck speed with which the threads of history are spinning themselves in these days ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... wrists, from which the bandages had fallen without his notice. A deep red ring encircled each, and it was obvious from their faces that others believed, even if the lieutenant did not. But he, too, dropped at least a part of his disbelief. ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... to the genuineness of your story has turned up," said Gortsby, holding out the cake of soap; "it must have slid out of your overcoat pocket when you sat down on the seat. I saw it on the ground after you left. You must excuse my disbelief, but appearances were really rather against you, and now, as I appealed to the testimony of the soap I think I ought to abide by its verdict. If the loan of a sovereign is any ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... 2. His disbelief that Lord Aberdeen would be able to join in any Government abandoning Sir R. Peel's principles, as he had been consulted before and after Sir James's late speech in which ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... own life the development of a nation. He progresses from unquestioning happiness to childish inquiry and wonder, from fairy tales of princes and dragons to actual knowledge; through inquiry to doubt, through faith to disbelief, through civilisation ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... good-tempered and light-hearted. He could check it by an exhibition of frankness. But this frankness was impossible to him, and as it was impossible he must allow Doro to suspect him of sordid infamies. He knew, of course, the Neapolitan's habitual disbelief in masculine virtue, and did not mind it. Then why should he mind Doro's laughing thought of himself as one of the elderly crew who cling to forbidden pleasures? Why should he feel ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... peace. She was a wife—I would never let her know that all my heart was hers. This I determined. But man is weak, and the very atmosphere of France dried up the springs of every honest impulse. Everywhere was scoffing, raillery and disbelief. Honor, friendship and virtue were regarded as the vain chimeras of a fool. Why should not I ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... narrative is to all but the narrator. It would be dismal even if sprightly and vivacious, for all men are rivals in woman's favor, and to relate your successes to another man is to rouse in him a dumb resentment, tempered by disbelief. You will not convince him that you tell the tale for his entertainment; he will hear nothing in it but an expression of your own vanity. Moreover, as most men, whether rakes or not, are willing to be thought rakes, he is very likely to resent a stupid and unjust inference ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... to be of your opinion, Flora," said Lyndsay, "in spite of my disbelief in signs and omens. There is something beyond mere accident ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... written by recent or living travellers."[179] The scorn passed upon "travellers' tales," the application of the term "romance" to the early descriptions of voyages, have done the same amount of mischief to these early chapters of history as the constant disbelief in the value of tradition has done to the ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... eminent degree, that any farmer who has the power to obtain it, evinces great folly and perverse obstinacy, if he continue to cultivate his land without applying it; either for want of faith, or pretended disbelief in its efficacy; or because he thinks the price fixed upon it by the Peruvian Government, "unjustifiably high;" or because although he has no doubt it will answer in the moist climate of England, is sure it will never answer in this dry climate; ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... or hinted at in the course of this argument must have formed themselves in the minds of at least a few Filipinos of independent character. Otherwise how shall we account for the fact that some declare their disbelief in the possibility of independence? How else shall we explain what is far more significant, the silence under this head of the really first-rate men of the Archipelago? Is it not worthy of note that Rizal himself, the posthumous apostle of the Philippines, never ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... persons except the Epicureans.[453] Among the Fathers of the Church there was some difference of opinion; while in general they denied the existence of human beings beyond the limits of their Oecumene, or Inhabited World, this denial did not necessarily involve disbelief in the globular figure of the earth.[454] The views of the great mass of people, and of the more ignorant of the clergy, down to the time of Columbus, were probably well represented in the book of Cosmas Indicopleustes already cited.[455] Nevertheless ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... keeping our prisoner. Mott lay on the floor, his body still warm, quite dead. I judged that he had expired within the past few minutes. He had been struck with some blunt instrument and then knifed. The man had paid for his obstinate disbelief with his life. ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... disillusion of those people, if they had ever expected anything of Tolstoi, and if they really believed that this demagogue Prince, who stands in nice poses in the middle of drawing-rooms and of prison cells, talking nonsense with a convincing disbelief, was in any sense a mouthpiece for Tolstoi's poor simple little gospel. Tolstoi according to Captain Marshall, I should be inclined to define him; but I must give Mr. Tree his full credit in the matter. When he crucifies himself, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... said Alice, rising with an air of cold dignity, which plainly indicated her entire disbelief of the statement she had just heard—"Say no more: you have mistaken your position, when you seek to prejudice me against a gentleman whom I am so soon to call my husband. Nay, not a word more—I will not listen to you. The Chevalier Duvall is the very soul of honor; and to accuse him—how ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... interrupted Leslie, "you have no right to assume that a disbelief in a general Good, however genuine, necessarily involves a sheer egoism in conduct? For a man might find that his own Good consisted in furthering the Good of other people; and in that case of course he will try to ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... said nothing, the expression on his face was one of such utter disbelief that even Tom noticed it and turned ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... minds of the people to themselves, and to reconcile them to their own purposes, by the assistance of superstition: but by their contempt for auguries, and their inward conviction of their falsity, they were led into a disbelief of the Divine Providence, and to despise religion itself; conceiving it inseparable from the numerous absurdities of this kind, which rendered it ridiculous, and consequently unworthy a ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... thoughts was growing more and more unendurable every moment. A confusion of doubts, questions, suspicions which she could not at once see clearly enough to cast off, and sorrow, raged and fought in her mind with indignant rejection and disbelief of them. What should she do? How could she tell what was right? Mr. Richmond! She would ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... rim of the ledge and looked at him; warily, as he looked at it. With the wariness was something like question, and almost disbelief. ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... cat-sized creature with a valuable fur imported from Hudson's Bay and Canada in prodigious numbers.—"My eye and Betty Martin," is a common expression implying disbelief; a corruption of ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... he calls it by an ugly name!" Then it occurred to her that the world tells lies every day,—telling on the whole much more lies than truth,—but that the world has wisely agreed that the world shall not be accused of lying. One doesn't venture to express open disbelief even of one's wife; and with the world at large a word spoken, whether lie or not, is presumed to be true of course,—because spoken. Jones has said it, and therefore Smith,—who has known the lie to be a lie,—has asserted his assured belief, lying again. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Suppose he had proved to the world's satisfaction that all religion is a hoax, and all men professing it are liars, how does that comfort me in my hour of sorrow? Scoffing will not sustain a man in his solitude, when he has nobody to scoff at; and disbelief is only a bottomless tub, which will not float me across the dark river. If Infidels intend to convert the world, they must give us some positive system of truth which we can believe, and ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... him, bewildered, amazement, disbelief, and anger flowing in quick waves across her face. The three men held their breaths. Moreland, Senior, took a step toward her; Mr. Farnam's mouth dropped a little open as he waited, panic-stricken, for ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... laboured with courage, as they had been taught, rejoicing in the hope of the promise given them. Their greatest danger was in the disbelief of their teachers. Though every one had a copy of the law, few read it; all were ready, by some excuse, to avoid this duty. Some asserted they knew it, yet never thought on it: some called these the laws ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... important end would be answered by recording such opinions, or by collecting the history of all the cases they could find in which no evidence of the influence of contagion existed, I believe they are in error. Suppose a few writers of authority can be found to profess a disbelief in contagion,—and they are very few compared with those who think differently,—is it quite clear that they formed their opinions on a view of all the facts, or is it not apparent that they relied mostly on their own solitary experience? Still further, ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... beings are among the agents of torment. In the second circle the torments commence with the sin of incontinence; and the punishment goes deepening with the crime from circle to circle, through gluttony, avarice, prodigality, wrath, sullenness, or unwillingness to be pleased with the creation, disbelief in God and the soul (with which the punishment by fire commences), usury, murder, suicide, blasphemy, seduction and other carnal enormities, adulation, simony, soothsaying, astrology, witchcraft, trafficking with the public interest, hypocrisy, highway robbery ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... all Jewish prayer is not petition but praise. Still, Judaism believed, not that prayer would be answered, but that it could be answered. In modern times the chief cause of the weakening of religion all round, in and out of the Jewish communion, is the growing disbelief in the objective validity of prayer. And a similar remark applies to the belief in miracles. But to a much less extent. All ancient religions were based on miracle, and even to the later religious consciousness a denial of miracle seems to deny the divine Omnipotence. ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... London particular that had been experienced for years. It was the sort of day when the City clerk has the exhilarating certainty that at last he has an excuse for lateness which cannot possibly be received with harsh disbelief. People spent the day indoors and hoped it ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... sceptic. His utter disbelief in Christian's testimony regarding the footprints was based upon positive scepticism. His reason refused to bend in accepting the possibility of the supernatural materialised. That a living beast could ever be other than palpably bestial—pawed, ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... man was perverse in his agnosticism; he was stubborn in disbelief. It was on his nerves; on his conscience; he ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... turned toward his bride. There was disbelief, hope, despair, in his face, which had grown older by years with the ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... her and at me, fearfully at first, then with a strange look in her eyes, between awe and disbelief ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... Admiration mingled with disbelief in the barmaid's voice. A little stir of interest went round the crowded, smoky room ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... suppose him ignorant that Materialism, as he taught it, is totally irreconcileable with that God, and that Religion in which he professed to believe. Belief in inconceivable entities cannot be reconciled with disbelief of all entities, save those of which we can frame clear and distinct ideas. Nor is it easy to persuade oneself that Locke could so far have done violence to his own principles as to feel 'lively faith' in a 'science' with no other aim, end, or ground-work, than 'the ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... the dust of unremembered nothings, and the name of Sah-luma shall carry no meaning to any man born in the coming here-after! For thou hast cherished within Thyself the poison that withers thee, ... the deadly poison of Doubt, the Denial of God's existence, ... the accursed blankness of Disbelief in the things of the Life Eternal! ... wherefore, thy spirit is that of one lost and rebellious,—whose best works are futile,— whose days are void of example,—and whose carelessly grasped torch of song shall be suddenly snatched from thy hand and extinguished in darkness! God ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... me.' He laughed oddly, a tremulous little crow of a laugh, at the same time stroking his head, as if to deprecate disbelief. 'You never heard of the sale of the Christopherson library? To be sure, you were too young; it was in 1860. I have often come across books with my name in them on the stalls—often. I had happened to notice this just before ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... the universe, like Omar Khayyam, according to the heart's desire. And nothing can be more different than such an instinct from the alleged satisfaction in playing with dolls and knowing that they are not real people. By an odd paradoxical coincidence, that very disbelief in the real character of art, and that divorce betwixt art and utility, is really due to our ultra-practical habit of taking seriously only the serviceable or instructive sides of things: the quality of beauty, which the healthy mind insists upon in everything it deals with, ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... knowledge of the phenomena which we recognize through the senses. A scientific fact is a fact perceived by the senses. Scientific evidence is evidence addressed to the senses. At one of the meetings of the Victoria Institute, a visitor avowed his disbelief in the existence of God. When asked, what kind of evidence would satisfy him? he answered, Just such evidence as I have of the existence of this tumbler which I now hold in my hand. The Rev. Mr. Henslow says, "By science is ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... the waste of forensic dispute, being always distinguished by vigor and soundness, though without any literary quality, such as Clay's occasional performances had. Berkeley, who covered his own lazy and miscellaneous reading with the mask of eclecticism, and proclaimed his disbelief in a prescribed course of study, was wont to say that Doddridge was the only man that he knew who was using the opportunities given by the college for all they were worth, and really getting out of "the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... sufficiently disposed to usurp a latitude for themselves, without taking a licence also from infidelity to enlarge their range. It is, therefore, fortunate that, for the causes just stated, the inroads of scepticism and disbelief should be seldom felt in the mind till a period of life when the character, already formed, is out of the reach of their disturbing influence,—when, being the result, however erroneous, of thought and reasoning, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... comes out more strongly marked. All these inimitable niceties the finished art of a great actor can alone properly express. Shylock is a man of information, in his own way, even a thinker, only he has not discovered the region where human feelings dwell; his morality is founded on the disbelief in goodness and magnanimity. The desire to avenge the wrongs and indignities heaped upon his nation is, after avarice, his strongest spring of action. His hate is naturally directed chiefly against those Christians ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... pensions, the death of his father, and lucky financial speculations brought Voltaire independence. He travelled in 1722 to Holland, met Jean-Baptiste Rousseau on the way, and read aloud for his new acquaintance Le Pour et le Contre, a poem of faith and unfaith—faith in Deism, disbelief in Christianity. The meeting terminated with untimely wit at Rousseau's expense and mutual hostility. Unable to obtain the approbation for printing his epic, afterwards named La Henriade, Voltaire arranged for a secret impression, under the title La Ligue, at Rouen (1723), whence ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... Prince, "Thou sayest sooth, O King, but if thou summon thy slaves and thy soldiers and they fall upon me and slay me, as thou pretendest, thou wouldst but publish thine own disgrace, and the folk would be divided between belief in thee and disbelief in thee. Wherefore, O King, thou wilt do well, meseemeth, to turn from this thought to that which I shall counsel thee." Quoth the King, "Let me hear what thou hast to advise;" and quoth the Prince, "What I have to propose to thee is this: either ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... must tell her. To do this he found it necessary to sit on the sofa close to her. What he told her made her blush very rosy again, and stammer a little as she declared her disbelief in all he said, and was sure there were the prettiest girls in the world in New York, and that he had never thought of her a moment. And no, she would not listen to him—she did not believe a word he said; and—yes, of course, she was glad to see any old friend; ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... adjustment of the probabilities, accorded the homely verisimilitude of their worldly-wise representations the meed of a simple and respectful credulity. The mountaineers were ignorant indeed in their sort, but far too sophisticated to entertain aught but the most contemptuous disbelief in her pretensions of special foresight and mysterious endowment. They did not fear her discrimination, and told their story, through an interpreter, with a glib disregard of any uncanny perspicacity on her part. She was one of the many Indians of the reservation who speak no English. Her ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... maxims, so that they might discover the weak side of every man, and so be able to outwit him. Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur. According to this, every man had his price. They did not believe in the Nemesis of a divine destiny; on the contrary, disbelief in the higher justice was taught. One must be so elastic as to suit himself to all situations, and, as a caricature of the ancient ataraxy, he must acquire as a second nature a manner perfectly indifferent to all ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... chiefly among insects and especially among butterflies that we find the greatest number of such cases. Several of these have been minutely studied and every detail has been investigated so that it is difficult to understand how there can still be disbelief in regard to them. If the many and exact observations which have been carefully collected and critically discussed for instance by Poulton[47] were thoroughly studied the arguments which are still frequently urged against ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... astounded: he had certainly probed deep this time into the feminine nature. With every desire and instinct to disbelieve the facts, the deeper his inquiries went, the stronger the evidence rolled up: there was no gainsaying it; no sense in a further disbelief of it. ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... Bruno-Bauer, and Feuerbach. At Oxford,' he added, 'these pernicious doctrines are demoralizing the university. Blanco White and John Sterling were but the pioneers of a large party of university men, who are preparing to avow their disbelief in Christianity.' The Doctor was right. Francis Newman, brother of the Puseyite Newman, who seceded to the Romish Church, and belongs now to the Oratory of St. Philip Neri,—Froude, brother of the deceased Puseyite ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... proud of it. There must be something good mixed with his common clay for him to achieve so much. I am glad and proud, as proud as I am of General Washington's thanks the other day; you need not look at me with such disbelief in your eyes, for I only say what is true. So now tell me ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... till I'm through," Andy advised, still wholly unconscious of their disbelief. "Yuh was all kinda skeptical when I told yuh he had a guilty conscience, but I was right about it, and come mighty near laying out on the range to-night with my toes pointing straight up, ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... the situation and character as established by the dramatist on the imaginative level. The author's words on illusion recall the passage in Dryden about reason's suffering itself to be "hoodwinked" by imaginative presentation, foreshadow Coleridge's "willing suspension of disbelief," and directly suggest Johnson's passages on the subject. Experience will show, he says, "that no Dramatick Piece can affect us but by the Delusion of our Imagination; which, to taste true and real Pleasures at such Representations, must undergo a very great Imposition." ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... sudden and chilly silence; men looked at one another. Obviously no man could have traveled that distance between dawn and dark, but it was as well not to express disbelief to a man who could tell a lie as big ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... recovered to retract my disbelief in kitchen soap, and—and in your skill," she added, with a ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... and on his return to the foc's'le Jem was all attention for him to proceed with his promised yarn about the real pirates of whom he had spoken, the worthy seaman continuing to express a strong disbelief in their entity. ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... doubt respecting, and ultimately disbelief in, the reality of the super-sensible, or the transcendental, or the validity of the evidence on which the belief in it is founded, such as reason or revelation, and in religious matters is tantamount to infidelity more or ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... main objections set forth at length were: First, the alleged unconstitutionality of the whole proceeding; second, the inadequacy of the security. All those speaking against the measure affected a total disbelief that the receipts would be sufficient to enable the company to return the money advanced, and, of course, a spasm of economy nearly rent these statesmen ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... be incredulous. While he dared not break in again with any remark of his own, he took occasion to sniff as loudly as he could, and in this manner show his utter disbelief in the story given out by the skipper of the craft they ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... indeed in the full sense of the word theology, if we confine the term strictly to a reasoned knowledge of a God; for the example of Buddhism proves that a belief in the existence of the human soul after death is quite compatible with disbelief in a deity. But if we may use, as I think we may, the phrase natural theology in an extended sense to cover theories which, though they do not in themselves affirm the existence of a God, nevertheless appear to be one of ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... we all knew to be the truth, but still we would rather have shut our eyes to the unpleasant fact. It is extraordinary that men should be able to disregard the future, even when on the very brink of the grave. Is it apathy, or stolid indifference, or disbelief in a future existence that enables them to do so? I speak of those without the Christian's hope—men who lead profligate lives; men stained with a thousand crimes; men who have never feared God, who seemed scarcely to have a knowledge of God. I have thought the matter ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... and universal charity.... Supposing Christianity to have been purely an human invention, it had been the most amiable, and the most useful invention that was ever imposed on mankind for their good." Hume acknowledges, that, "the disbelief in futurity loosens, in a great measure, the ties of morality, and may be supposed, for that reason, pernicious to the peace of civil society." Rousseau acknowledges, that, "if all were perfect Christians, individuals ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... expressions were mingled with sly allusions to Mlle. Fouchette from the women, who were consumed by envy. They had heard of the Savatiere's conquest with disbelief, now they saw it with their own eyes. The brazen thing! She was ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... bound as the sowar announced the approach of the enemy, and I glanced at Ny Deen, in whose face I saw astonishment and disbelief for the moment. But it was only for the moment. Directly after, he gave several orders in a quick, decisive manner, and the officer to whom he spoke dashed off to ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... religion, prevented me from being placed in the alternative of avowal or hypocrisy. I remember two occasions in my boyhood, on which I felt myself in this alternative, and in both cases I avowed my disbelief and defended it. My opponents were boys, considerably older than myself: one of them I certainly staggered at the time, but the subject was never renewed between us: the other who was surprised and somewhat shocked, did his best to ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... should have been taken after the exasperating parade on the 9th to guard against a possible, if not probable, outbreak, is difficult to understand; and can only be accounted for by that blind faith in the Native soldier, and disbelief in his intention or ability to revolt, which led to such ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... friend and pupil of the alchemist Arnold de Villeneuve, is reported to have learned the secrets of alchemy from his master. Later he issued two bulls against "pretenders" in the art, which, far from showing his disbelief, were cited by alchemists as proving that he recognized pretenders as distinct from true ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... at the face of his companion, and detected an expression of triumph about the eyes which led him to doubt the truth of his story. But he decided not to intimate his disbelief. ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger
... of partiality. But Aeschines denied the story. And did not Demosthenes also deny the story respecting his childish nickname, which Mr Mitford has nevertheless told without any qualification? But the judges, or some part of them, showed, by their clamour, their disbelief of the relation of Demosthenes. And did not the judges, who tried the cause between Demosthenes and his guardians, indicate, in a much clearer manner, their approbation of the prosecution? But Demosthenes was a demagogue, and ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... last. My father's thoughtless act I chide That gave thee honoured place, Whose soul, from virtue turned aside, Is faithless, dark, and base. We rank the Buddhist with the thief,(388) And all the impious crew Who share his sinful disbelief, And hate the right and true. Hence never should wise kings who seek To rule their people well, Admit, before their face to speak, The cursed infidel. But twice-born men in days gone by, Of other sort than thou, Have wrought good deeds, whose glories high Are ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... unless when I meet one who has been, like myself, in England, and with whom I can converse on the wonders we have both witnessed in that marvellous country, and which, if I venture to narrate them in public, or even among my own immediate friends and relatives, would draw on me such disbelief, that I would certainly die from grief of heart."—Here leave we Kerim Khan; not without a hope, that in spite of the apprehensions expressed in the passage just quoted, of incurring the reproach to which "travellers' tales" are supposed to be sometimes obnoxious, he has not eventually persisted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... Sombreuil, only relates that father and daughter were carried away swooning from the strain of emotion. I would not dwell on so well-worn an anecdote if I believed that it was false. The difficulty of disbelief is that the son of the heroine wrote a letter affirming it, in which he states that his mother was never afterwards able to touch a glass of red wine. The point to bear in mind is that these atrocious criminals rejoiced as much in a man to save as in a man to kill. They were servants ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... of matter occupies different portions of time. Accordingly time would have to be expressible in terms of the relations of a bit of matter with itself. My own view is a belief in the relational theory both of space and of time, and of disbelief in the current form of the relational theory of space which exhibits bits of matter as the relata for spatial relations. The true relata are events. The distinction which I have just pointed out between time and space in their connexion with matter makes ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... which Hamlet's highest endowments, his moral sensibility and his genius, become his enemies. A nature morally blunter would have felt even so dreadful a revelation less keenly. A slower and more limited and positive mind might not have extended so widely through its world the disgust and disbelief that have entered it. But Hamlet has the imagination which, for evil as well as good, feels and sees all things in one. Thought is the element of his life, and his thought is infected. He cannot prevent himself from probing and lacerating the wound in his soul. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... life, a sincere believer in the existence and attributes of the Deity. He was a firm and decided, and an openly declared unbeliever in Christianity; but he was, without any hesitation or any intermission, a Theist." His open declaration of disbelief in the inspiration of the Bible, and his total rejection of the dogmas of Christianity, laid him open to the malignant attacks and misrepresentations of the priesthood and the bigots of Europe; and so strong were they, that his life was continually in danger. Lord Brougham, in his "Men ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... of Young's colleague at the Royal Institution, Davy, and afterwards with the fame of Faraday. Carlyle refers to a remark of Novalis, that a man's self-trust is enormously increased the moment he finds that others believe in him. If the opposite remark be true—if it be a fact that public disbelief weakens a man's force—there is no calculating the amount of damage these twenty years of neglect may have done to Young's productiveness as an investigator. It remains to be stated that his assailant was Mr. Henry Brougham, afterwards ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... time. Marriage ties were lightly regarded; no gallant but boasted his amours. Revelry ran riot; drunkenness became a habit and gambling a craze. The court scintillated with brilliant wits, conscienceless libertines, and scoffing atheists. It was an age of debauchery and disbelief. ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... from the experience of others that the first terrible silence would be a hard thing to endure until the strangeness wore off. At first they huddled like two children, driving their thoughts far into unanswering space in desperate disbelief that such utter silence could be. Repelled by space, they turned to each other and found more complete union than they had thought possible. From the depth of their union they found the strength and growth and maturity to adapt, to endure, and to survive. ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... Presently a chair was drawn back, then another, and people began to filter, in slow embarrassment, toward the door. Lindsay came up with Hilda's cloak. "You won't mind my coming with you," he said; "I should like to hear the details." Beryl Stace made as if to embrace her, pouring out abusive disbelief, but Hilda waved her away with a gesture almost of irritation. Some of the others said a perfunctory word or two and went away with lingering backward looks. In a quarter of an hour Mr. Lindsay's brougham had followed the other vehicle into the lamp-lit ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... confidence in the character of the negroes than their conduct on so joyous and trying an occasion, as what they have exhibited during the brief period of their political regeneration. It may be considered as an earnest of their future peaceable demeanor; the disbelief of the sceptic will thus be put to the blush, and the apprehensions of the timid allayed. The first of August has passed, and with it the conduct of the people has been such as to convince the most jealous, as well as the most sanguine of the evil ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the APOLOGY, in which the essayist, theistically bent on abasing human pretensions, gives to his scepticism the colour of a belief in those very influences.[173] There is here, clearly, no pro-religious thesis. The whole drift of the play shows that Shakspere shares the disbelief in stellar control, though he puts the expression of the disbelief in the mouth of a villain; though he makes the honest Kent, on the other hand, declare that "it is the stars ... that govern our conditions;"[174] and though he had ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... was possible that he should not believe in them since he had seen them are unaware of the lengths to which scepticism can go in an argumentative mind. Nourished on Lucretius, imbued with the doctrines of Epicurus and Gassendi, he often provoked Monsieur de La Rochecoupee by the display of a cold disbelief in fairies. ...
— The Story Of The Duchess Of Cicogne And Of Monsieur De Boulingrin - 1920 • Anatole France
... "Maybe," sniffed Judith, in disbelief. "It can't be that he sits up to read," she resumed. "Nobody in their senses would do that. Reading may be pleasant to some folks, especially them story-books; but sleep is pleasanter. This last two or three blessed nights, since that ill news come to make ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... her face the while. The girl looked for indignation, for scornful disbelief; she saw something quite different. Mrs. Ormonde's hand trembled, but in a moment she had overcome ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... attitude; the man of ten years says the same as the man of ten months, except—and the exception is worth noting—that the former's moral sense, whatever he originally had of it, has been blunted or discouraged, and he has conceived a settled animosity against human authority, and disbelief in the justice and sincerity of its administrators. He has been the subject, during his incarceration, of such numberless acts of gratuitous tyranny, outrage and cruelty, and has seen so much of "the way ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... watchful, composed face uplifted above a line of bayonets, never failed in their magic. Like all born leaders, he seemed in these emergencies to hold a charmed life—infecting his followers with a like disbelief in death; men dropped to right and left of him with serene assurance in their ghastly faces or a cry of life and confidence in their last gasp. Stragglers fell in and closed up under his passing glance; a hopeless, inextricable wrangle around an overturned ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... disbelief. Then he shrugged, his face tired. "I might have known. Peace! Where have your ...
— The Link • Alan Edward Nourse
... his remarkable statement in a voice which he strove to divest of a triumphant inflection. No one said "Rats," though Clovis's lips moved in a monosyllabic contortion which probably invoked those rodents of disbelief. ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... her lodger on the subject of the possibility of selling the light keeper's Development holdings for him. To say the least, she received no encouragement. Galusha was quite emphatic in his expression of disbelief in that possibility. ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... would claim an invalid's privilege to stay at home. He had very rarely attended the parish church with his wife, affecting to despise such humdrum and conventional worship. He had just that thin smattering of modern science which enables shallow youth to make a merit of disbelief in all things beyond the limit of mathematical demonstration. He had skimmed Darwin, and spoke lightly of mankind as the latest development of time and matter, and no higher a being, from a spiritual point of view, than the first worm that wriggled in its primeval ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... experiences of a ghost he happens to have met along some country lane; and the fact that there are cases where an imaginative and nervous person has mistaken for a ghost a white goat or a sheet hanging on a bush only strengthens the sceptic's disbelief and makes him blind to the very large weight of evidence that can be arrayed against him. Some day, no doubt, psychologists and scientists will be able to give us a complete and satisfactory explanation of these abnormal apparitions, but ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... on another horse, that I felt the full truth of my instinctive fears. Chu Chu would not permit any one to approach her mistress's side. My mounted presence revived in her all her old blind astonishment and disbelief in my existence; she would start suddenly, face about, and back away from me in utter amazement as if I had been only recently created, or with an affected modesty as if I had been just guilty of some grave indecorum towards ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... always been that the soul survived the man's death.[81] There are, however, exceptions; the continued existence of the soul was not an absolutely established article in the savage creed. According to the reports of travelers, it would seem that among some tribes there was disbelief or doubt on this point. A West African native expressed his belief in the form of the general proposition, "The dead must die"; that is, apparently, the dead man must submit to the universal law to which ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... and sat up. His blind eyes were roving over her with an expression of disbelief. Jinnie knew he was doubting her veracity, so ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... knowledge. The public opinion, timid and enslaved, respected this imperious and, apparently, well-authenticated error. Those who saw through the delusion kept their opinion to themselves, knowing how useless it was to declare their disbelief to a people ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... of the wisest and most virtuous of the Pagans, on account of their ignorance or disbelief of the divine truth, seems to offend the reason and the humanity of the present age. [70] But the primitive church, whose faith was of a much firmer consistence, delivered over, without hesitation, to eternal torture, the far greater part of the human species. A charitable hope might ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... similar reflections the common people have made, and make yet. The step from doubt to disbelief is but short, and those brought up in the Roman Catholic religion, who hesitate about believing Pius VII. to be the vicar of Christ, will soon remember the precepts of atheists and freethinkers, and believe that Christ is not the Son of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Brent confined his dissipations to London and Paris and Vienna—anywhere out of sight and sound of his home—opinion was silent. It is easy to listen to far off echoes unmoved, and we can treat them with disbelief, or scorn, or disdain, or whatever attitude of coldness may suit our purpose. But when the scandal came close home it was another matter; and the feelings of independence and integrity which is in people of every community which is not utterly spoiled, ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... strong evidence has been given to us upon the influence of the Final School' (the examination for degrees with honors) 'upon Oxford thought, as tending to produce at least momentary disbelief.' ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... completely illustrate the effect his words and appearance had upon me than the fact that I accepted his extraordinary statement without any instinct of disbelief! Here was I, an Englishman of sound nerves, of average courage, and certainly untroubled with any superabundance of imagination, domiciled in a perfectly well-known, if somewhat cosmopolitan, London hotel, and yet willing to believe, on the statement ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had recognized Kauhi, and had seen them leave together for what they supposed was a ramble in the adjoining woods, no great anxiety had been felt, as yet. But when the little bird told his tale, there was great consternation, and even positive disbelief; for, how could any one in his senses, they argued, be guilty of such cruelty to such a lovely, innocent being, and one, too, ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... four teeth and a small spring wagon. At length, when she could be trusted to carry his wares to Murphy's Camp, and could be checked from entering a shop with the cart attached to her,—a fact of which she always affected perfect disbelief,—her education was considered as complete as that of the average California donkey. It was still unsafe to leave her alone, as she disliked solitude, and always made it a point to join any group of loungers with her unnecessary cart, and even to follow ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... and argued that if that sun had been eternal, its emanations would be co-eternal, they showed that their true doctrine required the formula—"always being begotten, and as instantly perishing, in order to be rebegotten perpetually." They showed a real disbelief in our English statement "begotten, not made." I overruled the objection, that in the Greek it was not a participle, but a verbal adjective; for it was manifest to me, that a religion which could not ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... she proceeds with sundry sol feggio's, to account for the circumstances, and show her disbelief of the explanation in a very satisfactory manner,—meanwhile, for I must not expose my reader to an anxiety on my account, similar to what the dear Fanny here laboured under, I was making the necessary preparations for flying to her presence, and clasping her to my heart—that ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... last century. By opposing it, even Voltaire incurred the reputation of bigotry, and Hume probably had to listen to a good deal of it on that memorable occasion when, dining with Baron D'Holbach, and intimating to his host his disbelief in the existence of atheists, he was informed by way of reply that he was actually at table with seventeen members of the sect.[36] That in England, too, it was a good deal talked at about the same and a somewhat later period, may be ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... wife had ordered him to be home early, and soon after the congregation had been dismissed he departed by a short cut through the woods. That afternoon an irate committee, composed principally of women, but including also a few men who had expressed disbelief in the new doctrine, arrived at the cabin of their preacher, but found there only his wife, cross-grained old Aunt Rebecca. She informed them that her husband was ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... originated and perfected in any other way, or that this is not the fitting way? If it means that it was not, if he so misuses words that by the Creator he intends an unintelligent power, undirected force, or necessity, then he has put his case so as to invite disbelief in it. For then blind forces have produced not only manifest adaptions of means to specific ends—which is absurd enough—but better adjusted and more perfect instruments or machines than intellect (that is, human intellect) can contrive and human skill execute—which ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... moral development of our race, like Bacon, Shakespeare, or Baxter. They looked on miracles as impossible, and regarded all the Bible accounts of supernatural events as fables. They were Deists. One I found who declared his disbelief in a future life. There was a gradual incline from the almost Christian doctrine of Carpenter and Channing, down to the principles ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... under Duncan Yordas," Mr. Jellicorse answered, with a smile of disbelief, craftily rousing the pugnacity of the man; "because he was not even in the army of the Company, or any other army. I mean, of course, unless there was ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Johnson defended luxury, and said that he had learnt much from Mandeville—a shrewd cynic, in whom Johnson's hatred for humbug is exaggerated into a general disbelief in real as well as sham nobleness of sentiment. As the conversation proceeded, Johnson expressed his habitual horror of death, and caused Miss Seward's ridicule by talking seriously of ghosts and the importance of the question ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... enough," said Lewis solemnly. "And then you are losing grip. A belief in sentiment means a disbelief in competence and strength, and that is the last and fatalest heresy. And a belief in sentiment means a foolish scepticism towards the great things of life. There is none of the blood and bone left for honest belief. You hold your religion half-heartedly. Honest fanaticism is a thing intolerable ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... a man the other day who did not believe in fairy tales. I do not mean that he did not believe in the incidents narrated in them—that he did not believe that a pumpkin could turn into a coach. He did, indeed, entertain this curious disbelief. And, like all the other people I have ever met who entertained it, he was wholly unable to give me an intelligent reason for it. He tried the laws of nature, but he soon dropped that. Then he said that pumpkins were unalterable ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... Lovelace to Belford.— Blesses him for sending him word the lady is better. Her charity towards him cuts him to the heart. He cannot bear it. His vehement self reproaches. Curses his contriving genius, and his disbelief that there could be such virtue in woman. The world never saw such an husband as he will make, if she recover, and will ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... various rumors of Coalitions, or attempted Coalitions, we have already expressed our disbelief in that reported to have taken place between the Grenville-Windhamites and Mr. Fox. At least, if it was ever in negotiation, we have reason to think it received an early check, arising from a strong party of the Old Opposition protesting against it. The account of this transaction, as whispered ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... the utensil takes of the matter. I might multiply examples, ad infinitum, to illustrate my meaning; but to those who are familiar with the phenomena alluded to one instance will suffice; while those who have never experienced them will probably, at all events, take refuge in disbelief, and lament themselves with a self-satisfying sorrow over the fresh proof it adduces of the truth of the Israelitish monarch's aphorism, that "all men are ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... dry, mirthless laugh of disbelief and ridicule. "Ba su, master, the Lord was watching you. There was two silver bits inside that coffin, on ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fellow is as obstinate as ever, I assure you, in his disbelief in salt water. He torments me continually by asking me to tell him the story of my shipwreck, and does not believe me after all, though he has heard it a dozen times. "Sir," he said to me solemnly, after you were gone, "will that strange gentleman pretend ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... hands, who were men of capital, stood a little higher than the clergy, and moved in society among its autocrats. But they were full of possibilities, men of action, and men, too, of thought, with already a pronounced disbelief in the custom-house. In these days of big carnivals they would have been patented as the dukes of Little ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... worst, for on the occurrence of the disaster the Mahdi was promptly informed of the loss of the Abbas and the murder of the Europeans, and it was he himself who sent in to Gordon the news of the catastrophe, with so complete a list of the papers on the Abbas as left no ground for hope or disbelief. Unfortunately, before this bad news reached Gordon, he had again, on 30th September, sent down to Shendy three steamers—the Talataween, the Mansourah, and Saphia, with troops on board, and the gallant ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... quite illegitimately narrows down the meaning of prayer to petition, may pass; it is more important for us to investigate his implied challenge—the grounds upon which he expresses his absolute disbelief in the fulfilment of ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... till evening of these events, more momentous for him than for others. He was forced to yield to evidence. A strong wall, as it were, crumbled within him; for his life had rested on two bases,—indifference in matters of religion and a firm disbelief in magnetism. When it was proved to him that the senses—faculties purely physical, organs, the effects of which could be explained—attained to some of the attributes of the infinite, magnetism upset, ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... with an endless network of knots. Each of these centres of activity, proselytising and ramifying endlessly, aims by systematic denunciation to injure the prestige of local authority, to reduce the villages to confusion, to spread cynicism and scandals, together with complete disbelief in everything and an eagerness for something better, and finally, by means of fires, as a pre-eminently national method, to reduce the country at a given moment, if need be, to desperation. Are those ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
