"Inconceivable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and his ground, he has a map under his eyes, he sees what he is doing. He is sure of his reserves, he possesses them, he keeps them back, he utilizes them when he wishes, he always has them by him. "But for ourselves," cried I, "we are in an undefined and inconceivable position. We are stepping at a venture upon unknown risks. Who is against us? We hardly know. Who is with us? We are ignorant. How many soldiers? How many guns? How many cartridges? Nothing! but the darkness. Perhaps the entire people, perhaps no one. Keep a reserve! But ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... forcibly. Narrow, blind, bigoted young man. And it was amusing to think, as a comment on his fierce consciousness of Herr Lippheim's unfitness, that here Herr Lippheim was, admitted to the very heart of Karen's sorrow. It was inconceivable that anyone but very near and dear friends should have been tolerated by her to-day. Karen, too, after her fashion, was an artist. The music, no doubt, was helpful to her. Soft thoughts of her great, lacerated friend, speeding now towards her solitudes, filled Mrs. Forrester's eyes ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... astonishing delight, beheld the ample plains, the beauteous tracts below. On the other hand, I surveyed the famous river Ohio that rolled in silent dignity, marking the western boundary of Kentucky with inconceivable grandeur. At a vast distance I beheld the mountains lift their venerable brows, and penetrate the clouds. All things were still. I kindled a fire near a fountain of sweet water, and feasted on the loin of a buck, which a few hours before I had killed. The ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... lingers where appetite hurries on; it is only the Newtons who stay to meditate over the fall of an apple, too trivial for the attention of the clown. It is by this noble slowness that the highest minds faintly emulate that inconceivable deliberateness and delicacy of gradation with which solar systems are built ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... When Bostil or Aunt Jane or any one else was present Lucy was kind, pleasant, agreeable. What made her flush red at sight of him and then, pale? Why did she often at table or in the big living-room softly brush against him when it seemed she could have avoided that? Many times he had felt some inconceivable drawing power, and looked up to find her eyes upon him, strange eyes full of mystery, that were suddenly averted. Was there any meaning attachable to the fact that his room was kept so tidy and neat, that every day something was added to its comfort or color, that he found fresh flowers ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... that could nether speak nor go for the first 6 quarters of a year as at present. This it seimes absurd to think, since that would have argued wery much imperfection in the man, which I wil be wery loath to think him capable of as he was in that state: the other syde seimes as absurd, since its inconceivable to think whow Ewe could have born a strong, robuste man of Adams strenth at the age of 30 years ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... oppressiveness. The Jews believed that they had drunk to the dregs the cup of misery, and that God must send them a Redeemer. There were no prophets to preach as at the time of the struggle with Babylon and Assyria, that the oppression was God's chastisement for their sins. And it was inconceivable to them that the power of wickedness should be allowed to triumph ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... possessed by this new idea. He worked over it that day and far into the night. His vivid imagination leaped into the future, brushing aside all obstacles, and he realized that here in his hands was an instrument capable of working inconceivable good. He recalled the days and weeks of anxiety when he was hungry for news of his loved ones; he foresaw that in affairs of state and of commerce rapid communication might mean the avoidance of war or the saving of a fortune; that, in affairs nearer ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... I am to be introduced to him! The Duke of St. James, Mr. Dacre! Mr. Dacre, the Duke of St. James! What an insult to all parties! How supremely ludicrous! What a mode of offering my gratitude to the man to whom I am under solemn and inconceivable obligations! A choice way, truly, to salute the bosom-friend of my sire, the guardian of my interests, the creator of my property, the fosterer of my orphan infancy! It is useless to conceal it; I am placed in the most disagreeable, the most inextricable situation. 'Inextricable! ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... they sprang from their backs on board them, headed by their leader, and, to the astonishment of those who beheld them from the shore, captured every one of them. To English officers it may appear inconceivable that a body of cavalry, with no other arms than their lances, and no other mode of conveyance across a rapid river than their horses, should attack and take a fleet of gunboats amidst shoals of alligators; but, strange ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... acres of unused land, it would be inconceivable folly to project into the inoffensive atmosphere twenty-eight stories of wood and iron merely to buy and sell the products of man's brain and hands. But while our Twentieth Century feverish activities are ostensibly engaged in the external ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... will tell as a compact and intelligible mass, a little way off, though confused when seen near; but also a dark touch gains at a little distance in apparent darkness, a light touch in apparent light, and a colored touch in apparent color, to a degree inconceivable by an unpractised person; so that literally, a good painter is obliged, working near his picture, to do in everything only about half of what he wants, the rest being done by the distance. And if ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... crushed and raging. She sank down again into the great red chair, and sat there crumpled, her elbows on the table, her face in her hands—a face that was on fire with shame and passion. She had offered herself, and she had been refused! The inconceivable had befallen her. The humiliation of it seemed to her something that ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... atmosphere, that rainbow work of fancy that clothes what is naked and seems to ennoble what is base; in each, life falls dead like dough, instead of soaring away like a balloon into the colours of the sunset; each is true, each inconceivable; for no man lives in the external truth, among salts and acids, but in the warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, with the painted windows ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... state of indescribable horror, I saw the light gradually fade away from the tops of the mountains, giving the scene around me a dim and spectral ghastliness, which, to those who were never in such a situation, is altogether inconceivable. ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... upon something else, that something else being, in the opinion of the Mercantilists, money. Notwithstanding what may be called the tangible absurdity of this doctrine, it remained unquestioned for generations; nay, to be candid, most men still cling to it—a fact which would be inconceivable did not the doctrine offer a very simple and plausible explanation of the enigmatical phenomenon that increasing capacity of production does not necessarily bring with it ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... gates are not for ever open. The time may come when those shall stand before them unto whom the words, "Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me," shall sound the death-knell of all hopes throughout an inconceivable eternity. ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... at the importance of his own position in the military outpost, through the arrival of the strangers. That this grave political enthusiast and civilian should be on familiar terms with a young Englishwoman of rank was at first inconceivable to the officers. And that he had never alluded to it before seemed to them ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... my eyes, there they stood. Twenty-five happy faces smiling into mine, and twenty babies to match. It was the kiddies that saved the day. I was not a little bewildered, and tears stung my eyes. But with one accord the babies set up a howl at anything so inconceivable as a queer foreign thing with a tan head appearing in their midst. When peace was restored by natural methods, ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... importance to this prediction of a change in the month of March. I deplored, as every one did, the inconceivable errors of "Ferrand and Company," and I hoped that the Government would gradually return to those principles which were calculated to conciliate the feelings of the people. A few days after another of my friends called on me. He had exercised ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... his chair. The idea that his son could love anyone and not be loved in return was plainly quite inconceivable. ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... so strenuously exclude the idea of revelation, i.e., the acquiring of imparted information from higher sources? Savages can certainly have "revelation" from civilised men. Why, then, should it be inconceivable that human beings should receive information from beings in the universe higher than themselves? It may or may not be the case that they do; but there is no scientific ground for dogmatism on the subject, nor any reason for asserting ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... be regarded as the ghosts of heavenly bodies. The heads, in some cases, may consist of separate solid fragments, though on this astronomers are by no means agreed, but the tails at any rate are in fact of almost inconceivable tenuity. We know that a cloud a few hundred feet thick is sufficient to hide, not only the stars, but even the Sun himself. A Comet is thousands of miles in thickness, and yet even extremely minute stars can be seen through ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... Boccaccio's vivid Italian Cressida; Chaucer's inimitable Pandarus, the first pleasing example of the English talent for humorous portrayal in fiction; the wonderful passage, culminating in a more wonderful single line,[69] of that Dunfermline schoolmaster whom some inconceivable person has declared to be only a poet to "Scotch patriotism"; the great gnomic verses of Shakespeare's Ulysses, and the various, unequal, sometimes almost repulsive, never otherwise than powerful, pageantry of that play, which has been perhaps more misjudged than any other of Shakespeare's,—all ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... Mother feared that a ferry was going to collide with them, when beautiful youths in boating hats popped out of state-rooms like chorus-men in a musical comedy, when children banged small sand-pails, when the steamer rounded the dream-castles of lower New York, when it seemed inconceivable that the flag-staff could get under Brooklyn Bridge—which didn't clear it by much more than a hundred feet—when a totally new New York of factories and docks, of steamers bound for Ceylon and yachts bound for Newport, ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... with Flora Macdonald, are highly romantic and wonderful. Equally wonderful is the fact that, of the many to whom his secret was intrusted, not one was disposed to betray him, even in view of so splendid a bribe as thirty thousand pounds. But this fact, though surprising, is not inconceivable. Had Washington been unfortunate in his contest with the mother country, and had he wandered as a fugitive amid the mountains of Vermont, would not many Americans have shielded him, even in view of a reward of one ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... a growing demand for personality and initiative in elected persons. The press, which was once entirely subordinate politically to parliamentary politics, adopts an attitude towards parliament and party leaders nowadays which would have seemed inconceivable insolence in the days of Lord Palmerston. And there has been a vigorous agitation in support of electoral methods which are manifestly calculated to subordinate "delegated" ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... how great is your happiness; you can think of death without fear. The troubles and griefs of life do not distress you as they do the poor worldling, who looks only to the enjoyments of this life for comfort. If a Christian, you have sweet foretastes of that joy which is unspeakable and inconceivable by mortals. Though a sinner still, you feel that your sins are pardoned, and that through the merits of a crucified Saviour you will at last be accepted of God. I would fondly hope, my dear sister, that this is your happy case. But if not, ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... Adrian's original manuscripts. She had every reason to believe in their existence. Wittekind had never seen them. Vandal and Goth and every kind of Barbarian that she considered Jaffery to be, it was inconceivable that he had deliberately destroyed them. It was equally inconceivable that he had sold the precious things for vulgar money. They remained therefore in his possession. Why did he lie? We could supply no satisfactory answer; and the more solutions we offered the more did we confirm in her ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... saw a dark mass of rock, weighing hundreds of tons, descending like a prodigious meteor, hurled from the heavens. It had been loosened on the mountain crest a half mile above, and was plunging downward with inconceivable momentum. Striking some obstruction, it rebounded like a rubber ball against the opposite side of the gorge, then recoiled, still diving downward, oscillating like a pendulum from wall to wall, whirling with increasing speed until it crashed to the bottom of the gorge with a shock so terrific ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... two answers to this question. One answer comes from those in the Church who still cling to the theory that there must be no race division whatever in the Church, that there must be under all conditions conceivable or inconceivable one Bishop in the same territory to all kinds, classes and races of people. "No," say they, "no negro Bishop. Whatever be your divisions in Councils or Convocations or Conventions, let one white Bishop be the bond of unity." ...
— Church work among the Negroes in the South - The Hale Memorial Sermon No. 2 • Robert Strange
... It is fundamentally because the English people have discerned that kingship is not necessarily incompatible with popular government that the monarchy has persisted. If royalty had been felt to stand inevitably in the path of democratic progress, it is inconceivable that all the forces of tradition could have pulled it through the past seventy-five or eighty years. As it is, while half a century ago there was in the country a small republican group which was fond of urging that the monarchy was but a source of needless ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... profession would depend very largely on women." Certainly, if he had to decide to-night, he would rather return to Marion, Ohio, than join his staff. Such a retreat from the glories of Chicago would be inconceivable to old Hitchcock and to the girl. He reflected that he should not like to put himself away ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... that contained a hundredth part of the sweetness and music that was comprised in that simple and unsophisticated ejaculation; it decided in an instant, and beyond all possibility of doubt, who and what was the speaker. His joy was inconceivable, and he could scarce refrain from giving vent to it in a loud shout. Returning immediately, he communicated the joyful intelligence to his friends; and the whole party, with light hearts and rapid steps, advanced towards the beach. ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... negligence and fallacy of the details, Mr. Whitbread, on the contrary, with an unrelenting accuracy, laid open the minutiae of every transaction, and made evasion as impossible to others, as it was alien and inconceivable to himself. He was, perhaps, the only person, whom Sheridan had ever found proof against his powers of persuasion,—and this rigidity naturally mortified his pride full as much as it thwarted and disconcerted ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... help pausing here for a moment, to reflect upon the expressions of surprise which this minister has let fall relative to the excesses he relates. To him the departure of the troops from their ancient principles of loyalty and honor seems quite inconceivable. Surely those to whom he addresses himself know the causes of it but too well. They know the doctrines which they have preached, the decrees which they have passed, the practices which they have countenanced. The soldiers ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... gained him time and covered his retreat. He challenged my sincerity, my sanity, almost my humanity, and that of course widened our breach and confirmed our rupture. He did everything in short but convince me either that I was wrong or that he was unhappy; we separated, and I left him to his inconceivable communion. ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... many cases, painless childbirth could be a possibility by a little attention to diet, exercise and other hygienic measures during the last few months of pregnancy. Knowing this, it seems inconceivable that any woman would neglect to so fully inform herself on these matters that both she and her child could have all benefit of the ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... and a half hours later by the clamours and shakings of the exasperated monk. Protesting that such a sleep at such a time was a thing inconceivable, Balbi informed him that ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... Mekka." On the dignified bearing and self-possession of our youthful sovereign, the Khan enlarges in the strain of eulogy which might be expected from one to whom the sight of the ensigns of sovereignty borne by a female hand was in itself an almost inconceivable novelty, declaring, that "the justice and virtues of her Majesty have obliterated the name of Nushirvan from the face of the earth!" But the remarks of the simple-minded Parsees on the same subject will be found, from their honest sincerity, we suspect, more germane to the matter—"We saw ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... around a moment, and then said gallantly, "I will get you the moss, Miss Alford." They saw that in some inconceivable way he intended crossing where they stood. The gorge was much too wide for the most vigorous ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... all sides in wild confusion flew The dust and leaves, the branches and the stones, With hideous tumult, inconceivable. ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... what place they were printed. They are undoubtedly deliberate forgeries. They purport, even in respect of errata, to be identical with the genuine issue of 1807; but they were not set up from the same type, and it is inconceivable that a second issue, set up from different type and with slightly different ornaments, was printed by Ridge for piratical purposes. To cite a few obvious differences—in the title of the large-paper copies the first A of the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... Hindustan; of South America and South Asia; among the jungly banks of the Godavery and the woody shores of the Pamoni, of the Oroonoko, and the Bramahputra—in short, in every sunny clime and region where the rigours of his own winter are not only unknown, but inconceivable. There is something sublime in the mere consideration of the prodigious remoteness from one another of the various points from which these animals have thus been collected; something gratifying to human pride, in the thought that neither the freezing atmosphere of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... sun setting into a purple ocean looked with a fiery stare upon the enormous wall of the Cordilleras, worthy witnesses of his glorious extinction. But it is inconceivable that it should have seen the ant-like men busy with their absurd and insignificant trials of killing and dying for reasons that, apart from being generally childish, were also imperfectly understood. It ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... military genius of a high order guided the movement. Only a small detachment of troops could be sent out from the central position at the Tuileries. As they could not be everywhere, the intrenchments of the populace rose in various parts of the city, unopposed, with inconceivable rapidity, and with almost military precision. Large bodies advanced simultaneously to the gunsmiths' shops, to the police stations and guard-houses, to the arsenal and powder manufactory, to the artillery depot of St. Thomas Aquinas; and the guns, muskets, and ammunition ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... to do, or whether that institution ought to alter, but about what that institution actually is. One party, then as now, only cared for it because it was Catholic, and the other only cared for it because it was Protestant. Now, something had certainly happened to the English quite inconceivable to the Scotch or the Irish. Masses of common people loved the Church of England without having even decided what it was. It had a hold different indeed from that of the mediaeval Church, but also very different from the barren prestige of gentility ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... to get her hands on the balcony, which reminded her of Mrs. Jellyby's closet, full to overflowing with every conceivable and inconceivable thing. The floor was strewn with coats, dresses and hats while the shoes were neatly hung on a row of hooks. Very pretty, well-shaped shoes they were, too, as it seemed Jo's feet ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... inclined to think, however, that Mr. Schoeffel has included the losses made in the other cities visited by the company. There were only sixty-one representations at the Metropolitan Opera House, and it is inconceivable that they averaged a deficit of over $9,000 each. They could not have cost that sum in fact, and many of the performances drew houses which at the prevailing prices (orchestra $6) must have yielded handsome returns. Whatever the sum which loomed up as a prospective loss, however, it was ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... page in the modern history of Hellenism, has been ever since its foundation the capital of Epirus in every point of view. It is only the bad faith of the Turkish Government which could take advantage of the inconceivable patriotism of the Albanians to create all of a sudden an Albanian nationality. It is true that there does exist an Albanian race, an insignificant branch of that powerful tree of the Hellenic family; but this race has never played an important, independent, free part in history. ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... methods. And if so, it is a real awakening—that and the combination with the students. I read the translations from Japanese every few days, and it would be very interesting to know whether their ignorance is real or assumed. Probably some of both—it is inconceivable that they should be as poor judges of Chinese psychology as the articles indicate. But at the same time they have to keep up a certain tone of belief among the people at home—namely, that the Chinese really prefer the Japanese to all other foreigners; for ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... significance in America that it had just gained in France; to swear eternal fidelity to liberty, equality, and fraternity, as if these were lately discovered rights which had been denied the common people for centuries by kings and nobles, who had always lived in the next street in inconceivable luxury wrung from the blood and sweat of the poor; to form Jacobin clubs pledged to the suppression of the tyranny of aristocrats in a country where, as Samuel Dexter said of New England, there was hardly ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... wind-flood overhead were roaring down the side canyons and over the cliffs, arousing the rocks and the trees and the streams alike into glorious hurrahing enthusiasm, shaking the whole Valley into one huge song. Yet inconceivable as it must seem even to those who love all Nature's wildness, the storm was telling its story on the ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... the room with a renewal of hostilities. He would lose his game of golf to-day as it was, for apart from the fact that he would scarcely have time to change his clothes (the idea of playing golf in a frock-coat and top-hat was inconceivable) and catch the 11.20 tram, he could not be seen in Puffin's company at all. And, indeed, in the future, unless Puffin could be induced to apologize and Miss Mapp to forgive, he saw, if he was to play golf at all with his friend, that endless deceptions and subterfuges were ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... doctrine has a double basis. In the first place, it is a corollary of the doctrine of two natures. In the second, it is established by the recorded facts of the gospel narrative. To take first the a priori argument. A nature without a will is inconceivable. A cognitive faculty without the dynamic of the volitional would be a machine without driving force. The absurdity of the supposition, indeed, is not fully brought out by the simile. For we can consider the machine at ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... account as sires and dams. Were I a judge at a cattle show, I certainly should disqualify every extremely fat animal entered for competition amongst the breeding stock. Unless parents are healthy and vigorous, their progeny are almost certain to be unhealthy and weakly; and it is inconceivable that an extremely obese bull and an unnaturally fat cow could be the progenitors of healthy offspring. We should by all means improve our live stock; but we should be careful not to overdo the thing. If we must have ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... animal motion, or apply our limbs to their proper use and office. That their motion follows the command of the will is a matter of common experience, like other natural events: But the power or energy by which this is effected, like that in other natural events, is unknown and inconceivable.[12] ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... revealed the intruders, and all the monkeys, except pink-face, crowding the trees above the spot where they stood, gazed down upon them with expressions in which unparalleled indignation and inconceivable surprise ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... arrival I embarked for Stamboul, the Turkish quarter, in one of those long caicks which are as it were the hackney coaches of Constantinople. The least oscillation is sufficient to upset these light barks, which are impelled with inconceivable rapidity by two or three fine light-looking Arnaouts, dressed in silken shirts. In two minutes, having traversed the Golden Horn, passing through an immense crowd of boats of every form, and ships of every nation, we disembarked upon a landing-place even more dangerous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... give them bread so long as they remain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, "Make us your slaves, but feed us." They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, worthless and rebellious. Thou didst promise them the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... on the bolder and more practical minds of the Western Latins, and gives a sketch of Bernard and his Abbey of Clairvaux, which brings pleasantly enough before us the ways and works of a long-dead world, which was all but inconceivable to us till Mr, Carlyle disinterred it in his picture of Abbot Sampson, the hero of ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... the contemplation of the pictures that covered the panes of glass in the door, turning them into a model chart of inconceivable animals, four-cornered trees and impossible soldiers. He was glancing continually to one side, like a criminal who fears that he is going to be caught in the act. It was manifest that he had something in view which must be concealed from passers-by, and from posterity, for that matter. His ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... at last, that he really intended to make her a declaration of love. It was unheard of, almost inconceivable. But there he was at her feet, looking very handsome in the moonlight, his face turned up to hers with an unmistakable look of devotion in its rather grave lines. His voice, too, had a new sound in it. Indifferent ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... this I had my enclosures for my cattle, that is to say, my goats: and as I had taken an inconceivable deal of pains to fence and enclose this ground, I was so uneasy to see it kept entire, lest the goats should break through, that I never left off, till with infinite labour I had stuck the outside of the hedge so full of small stakes, and so near to one another, that it was rather ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... Strong tried to figure out the connection. Hardy's reputation was spotless. It seemed inconceivable that he could be involved with Vidac. And yet Hardy had selected Vidac as his right-hand man. And Vidac couldn't have gotten away with his treatment of the colonists unless Hardy had silently ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... they never differed; that Mr. Browning never thought an Act of Parliament good when Mrs. Browning thought it bad; that Mr. Browning never thought bread stale when Mrs. Browning thought it new. Such unanimity is not only inconceivable, it is immoral; and as a matter of fact, there is abundant evidence that their marriage constituted something like that ideal marriage, an alliance between two strong and independent forces. They differed, in truth, about a great many things, ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... celebrate whatever our fancy painted. Now it was an imaginary birthday—a movable feast that came to be very popular in our select artistic circle; again it was the possible—dare I say probable?—sale of a picture at a quite inconceivable price. There were always occasions enough. Would it had been the case ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... youth. The son of that great Gatholian noble who had given his life so gloriously, however futilely, in an attempt to defend Gahan's sire from the daggers of the assassins. Tasor an under-padwar in the guard of O-Tar, Jeddak of Manator! It was inconceivable—and yet it was he; there could be no doubt of it. "Tasor," Gahan repeated aloud. "But it is no Manatorian name." The statement was half interrogatory, for Gahan's curiosity was aroused. He would know how ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... they overwhelmed by a sense of his littleness and insignificance! They see the earth which he inhabits dwindle to a speck in the unimaginable infinities of space, and the brief span of his existence shrink into a moment in the inconceivable infinities of time. And they ask, Shall a creature so puny and frail claim to live for ever, to outlast not only the present starry system but every other that, when earth and sun and stars have crumbled into dust, shall be built upon their ruins in the long long hereafter? ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... her shabby purse, and Claire made no protest. In a similar position she herself would have wished to pay, but it was inconceivable that she should ever be in such a position. However hurried a man might be— She rubbed her hand on her knee with a little shudder of distaste. "Wretch! He would make love to me, too, if I would allow it! How can Cecil possibly ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... truths, and useful knowledge. Let the vain chimeras which beset the people be dissipated, and very soon rational opinions will fill the minds of those who were believed fated to be always in error. To annihilate religious prejudices, it would be sufficient to show that what is inconceivable to man can not be of any use to him. Does it need, then, anything but simple common sense to perceive that a being most clearly irreconcilable with the notions of mankind, that a cause continually opposed ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... bending moments is condemned—it is condemnation of methods of calculating. Point Seven recommends reinforcing a beam for its simple beam moment. This is the greatest bending it could possibly receive, and it is inconceivable that failure could be due to this suggestion. Point Seven recommends a reasonable reinforcement over the support. This is a matter for the judgment of the designer or a rule in specifications. Failure could scarcely be attributed to ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... ignominiously punished.[120] It is well-nigh incredible that the Zuniga who championed Copernicus, and displays vigilant self-restraint in his writings, should have been guilty of such flightiness as is brought home to his namesake; it is by no means inconceivable that the Zuniga who deposed against Luis de Leon should have been guilty of occasional lapses. He is said to have been impetuous as well as vindictive;[121] he had the dangerous gift of pulpit eloquence[122] and may have acquired the trick of saying rather more ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... unbelievable. It was a horrible, monstrous thing, a screaming fury, a wall that smote and passed on but that continued to smite and pass on—a wall without end. It seemed to him that he had become light and ethereal; that it was he that was in motion; that he was being driven with inconceivable velocity through unending solidness. The wind was no longer air in motion. It had become substantial as water or quicksilver. He had a feeling that he could reach into it and tear it out in chunks as one might do with ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... The dim light could not show us both its walls at once. The fall of the waters which were carrying us away exceeded that of the swiftest rapids in American rivers. Its surface seemed composed of a sheaf of arrows hurled with inconceivable force; I cannot convey my impressions by a better comparison. The raft, occasionally seized by an eddy, spun round as it still flew along. When it approached the walls of the gallery I threw on them the light of the lantern, and I could judge somewhat of the velocity of our speed by ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... indication of his presence, there is divinity, albeit not manifest. This is the case when he is grieved and withdraws his grace. On the other hand, when he discloses his grace, there is both the essence and its manifestation. But the third aspect is inconceivable for God, namely, a manifestation of divinity without the essence. This is rather a trick of the devil and his servants, who usurp the place of God and act as God, though they are anything but divine. An illustration of this we find in Ezekiel 28, 2, where the king of Tyre is ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... you," said the Captain, "to send two unendurable and inconceivable bores to intercept me with rubbish about which I neither know nor care any more than ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... on fire, and smoke and flames met them at every turn; for the conflagration spread with incredible speed. An inconceivable confusion succeeded: one sought for another; one called on another; mother ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... bite of the cobra is probably mortal,' is called a Contingent or Problematic Modal: 'Water is certainly composed of oxygen and hydrogen' is an Assertory or Certain Modal: 'Two straight lines cannot enclose a space' is a Necessary or Apodeictic Modal (the opposite being inconceivable). Propositions not ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... not conceivable now that the rustic speaking in a patois could write Venus and Adonis, manifestly it was inconceivable in 1593, when Venus and Adonis was signed "William Shakespeare." No man who knew the actor (as described) could believe that he was the author, but there does not exist the most shadowy hint proving that the faintest doubt was thrown on the actor's authorship; ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... an assurance almost inconceivable, took it within his own, and giving it a hard shake, after the English ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... themes in a key of grave, universal beauty. Of the new note that came into the Norwegian lyric with Bjoernson, I can discover no hint in his predecessors. Such a poem as, for instance, "Nils Finn," with its inimitably droll refrain—how utterly inconceivable it would be in the mouth of Wergeland or Welhaven! The new quality in it is as unexplainable as the poem itself is untranslatable. It has that inexpressible cadence and inflection of the Norse dialect which ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the furthest star, God is still the Author of our being, the Framer of the world and all that therein is, the Cause without which there would have been no effects. If, after creating the world, He withdrew from it to an inconceivable {92} distance, it is none the less His handiwork; if it is in and through His absence that the cosmic mechanism has got out of gear, it is yet He who willed to be so absent, well knowing what results would supervene; if a power other than He and hostile to Him has ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... disdained the company of men of approximately his own age or thereabout; he had refused an opportunity to partake of refreshment suitable to his years; and now he stepped into the Bon Ton toy store and bought for cash—most inconceivable of acquisitions!—a little wagon that was painted bright red and bore on its sides, in curlicued letters, the ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... that the only tenable interpretation of the record in the rocks is that numerous populations of creatures, distinct from one another and from present forms, have risen and passed away; and that the geologic ages in which these creatures lived were of inconceivable length. The rank and file came thus, with the aid of fossil records, to realize the import of an idea which James Hutton, and here and there another thinker, had conceived with the swift intuition of genius long before the science of paleontology came into existence. The Huttonian proposition that ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... conceal the fact. He should not have lost a moment, after the death of his cousin, in making that letter public. It ought instantly to have been placed in Coroner Whidden's hands. Richard's action is inconceivable, unless—unless"— ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... flowers, the grass, the waters, and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of Spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which, by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to dances of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone. Sterne ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... It is inconceivable, the agony with which this public veneration tortured him. It was his genuine impulse to adore the truth, and to reckon all things shadow-like, and utterly devoid of weight or value, that had not its divine essence as the life within their ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in order that the queen might treat her as his son's betrothed. When they arrived at the palace, and entered the vast hall in which her majesty was seated, Isabella's escort halted at the lower end, and she herself advanced alone in all her inconceivable beauty, producing an effect like that of a brilliant meteor shooting through the sky on a calm clear night, or of a sunbeam darting at the first dawn of day through a mountain gorge. A comet she seemed, portending ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... fairly crushed hope out of him. The lights upon the shore were as distant as fixed stars. This was a country of heavy tides, he reflected, and he began to fear that the current was sweeping them out. He turned to look for the ship, but could see no traces of her, and since it was inconceivable that the Nebraska could have sunk so quietly, her disappearance confirmed his fears. More than once he fancied he heard an answer to his cries for help— the rattle of rowlocks or the splash of oars—but ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... weeks ago an admission like that would have been inconceivable. It was odd, he thought, how one thing led to another and produced an end that could not be foreseen. Now he could lie and dissemble with the best. He had no compunction about falsifying a requisition, or stealing what he could not obtain with apparent honesty. His character had sunk to an all-time ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... with freedom,—is a truth taught by Christ, is a truth proclaimed by the Church; and the faith of Christians in this principle, in spite of hesitations and misgivings, of oppositions and obstacles and inconceivable difficulties, has finally given to it its modern vigor and beneficent power. The spirit of love and mercy, which is the spirit of Christ, breathes like a heavenly zephyr through the whole earth, and under its influence the age is moved to attempt greater things than hitherto have seemed possible. ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... and rocky desert. The city was thirty miles away; there was but one road, which went no further than my father's door; the rest were bridle-tracks impassable in winter; and we thus dwelt in a solitude inconceivable to the European. Our only neighbour was Dr. Grierson. To my young eyes, after the hair-oiled, chin-bearded elders of the city, and the ill-favoured and mentally stunted women of their harems, there was something agreeable in the correct manner, the fine bearing, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... well as we: and consequently they have no other game to play. But, what merit they can build upon having joined with a Protestant army, under a King they acknowledged, to defend their own liberties and properties against a Popish enemy under an abdicated King; is, I confess to me absolutely inconceivable; and I believe will equally be so for ever, to any ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... service to the nation, which few, I think, will deny, the benefits of the whipping-post must be very apparent, as being a necessary instrument to such an execution. Indeed, the service it does to a country is inconceivable. I, myself, know a man who had proceeded to lay his hand upon a silver spoon with a design to make it his own, but on looking round, and seeing the whipping-post in his way, he desisted from the theft. Whether he suspected that the post would impeach him or not, I ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... to M. de Montmorency, and, therefore, in his menaces he let fall some hints with relation to those letters to the disadvantage of Madame de Guemenee. She thereupon ridiculed him no longer, but went almost raving mad, and fell into such an inconceivable melancholy that you would not have known her, and retired to Couperai, where she ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... and of short reach. There was positively no duty to the State which a youth was bound to observe. Broadly, it might be said that at that time discipline simply did not enter at all into the life of the poor of the towns, and charity of every conceivable and inconceivable kind did enter into ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... inconceivable, except that under duress of great pain Lilly could have engaged services so obviously quasi professional, but she was past that perception by now, her nerves from brow to shoulder crackling like ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... of awkwardness with agility—of the clumsy with the graceful. He would stumble in stepping across the floor of a drawing room; he would trip himself up on a smooth-shaven grass-plot, and he would tumble in the most inconceivable manner in ascending the commodious, facile, and well-carpeted staircase of an elegant mansion, so as to bruise his nose or his lip on the upper steps, or to tread upon his hands, and even occasionally ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... absolutely shone with burnished gold, and glowed with pictures; its walls were a quarry of precious stones, so valuable were the marbles out of which they were wrought; its columns and pillars were of inconceivable costliness; its pavement was a mosaic of wonderful beauty, and there were four twisted pillars made out of stalactites. Perhaps the best way to form some dim conception of it is to fancy a little casket, inlaid inside with precious ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... under full steam; the black smoke whirled in spirals about the sparkling summits of the icebergs; the weather was changeable, turning from a dry cold to a snowstorm with inconceivable rapidity. Since the brig drew but little water, Hatteras hugged the west shore; he did not want to miss the entrance of Bellot Sound, for the Gulf of Boothia has no other entrance towards the south than the slightly known sound of the Fury and ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... was still so considered by the opponents of the system of Copernicus. It had, indeed, been necessary for Aristarchus to explain the fact as due to the extreme distance of the stars; a perfectly correct explanation, but one that implies distances that are altogether inconceivable. It remained for nineteenth-century astronomers to show, with the aid of instruments of greater precision, that certain of the stars have a parallax. But long before this demonstration had been brought forward, the system of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... are free from age-long prejudices, hatreds, and past scores. But if this great conflict does not lead along the lines of the constructive forces and the working out of a new world method, then the future of Europe and of the world is dark indeed. Surely it will lead to a new order—it is almost inconceivable ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... ecclesiastical and professional humbug which saves the face of the stupid system of violence and robbery which we call Law and Industry. Even atheists reproach me with infidelity and anarchists with nihilism because I cannot endure their moral tirades. And yet, instead of exclaiming "Send this inconceivable Satanist to the stake," the respectable newspapers pith me by announcing "another book by this brilliant and thoughtful writer." And the ordinary citizen, knowing that an author who is well spoken of by a respectable ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... deacon had time to count eight steps; then another broke, and six steps; later a third. As before, nothing could be seen, and in the darkness one could hear the languid, drowsy drone of the sea. One could hear the infinitely faraway, inconceivable time when God ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of that! That's a hundred years ago. He'll just make mamma and Uncle Regie of no good at all! And then there's a girl too—' (in a tone of inconceivable disgust) 'I don't want strange girls—an awful stuck-up swell of a Londoner, not able to do anything! I wish I had gone to spend Christmas with Bruce! I would if I had known it was ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... end, out of which he would suck the contents. He was a very good ratter, and also killed many snakes against which I pitted him. His way seemed to be to tease the snake into darting at him, when, with inconceivable rapidity, he would pounce on the reptile's head. He seemed to know instinctively which were the poisonous ones, and acted with corresponding caution. I tried him once with some sea-snakes (Hydrophis palamoides), which are poisonous, but he could get no fight out of them, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... suffering which it caused my beloved Master, the Baal Shem, yet Sabbatianism did not really play much part in my early life, because such severe measures were taken against it by the orthodox Rabbis that it seemed to be stamped out, and I myself, as I began to reflect upon it, found it inconceivable that a Jewish God should turn Turk: as well expect him to turn Christian. But indirectly this redoubtable movement entered largely into my life by way of the great Eibeschuetz-Emden controversy. For it will not be stale in the memory ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the legends [myths] about men, beasts, and gods so wildly incredible and revolting? . . . The answer is that the earliest men were in a state of almost inconceivable ignorance and savagery, and that the Greeks inherited their myths from people in the same savage stage (en un pareil etat de sauvagerie). Look at the Kaffirs and Iroquois if you want to know what the earliest men were like, and remember that the very Iroquois ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... desirable to know if the former Chancellor was present at the audience; it is regrettably not inconceivable, but is a new proof of the incompetence of the Chancellor, that he did not, according to his duty, inform his Imperial Lord of the political personality and character of ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... art, O Devayani, no daughter of a hired adorer, of one that asketh for alms and accepteth gifts. Thou art the daughter of one that adores none, but of one that is adored by all! Vrishaparvan himself knoweth it, and Indra, and king Yayati too. That inconceivable Brahma, that unopposable Godhead, is my strength! The self-create, himself, gratified by me, hath said that I am for aye the lord of that which is in all things on Earth or in Heaven! I tell thee truly that it is ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... bit at and clung to equally capable defensive screens of pure force. As these inconceivable forces met, the glare of their neutralization filled all nearby space. And ships and skeletons alike were disappearing in chunks, blobs, gouts, streamers and sparkles of rended, ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... was amply protected. His enemies shrieked that his statements were based on juggled figures; that even if the number of soldiers was adequate, the quality and equipment were wretched; in a word that he lied. It is a shame-less controversy inconceivable were there not many men in whom politics and prejudice far outweighed patriotism. In all this, Hitchcock was Stanton's trump card. He who had refused to advise McClellan, did not hesitate to denounce him. In response to a request from Stanton, he made a report sustaining Wadsworth. ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... detached bands he met, Morgan crossed the Ohio line—tearing up roads, cutting telegraphs, and inflicting much damage and inconceivable panic—until he reached within five miles of Cincinnati. Of course, with his merely nominal force, he could make no attempt on the city; so, after fourteen days of unresting raiding—his command pressed, worn out and broken down—he headed for the river once more. ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... the latter day glory is to take place through human instrumentality, can it be expected without some mighty movement on the part of the church? Can a work of such inconceivable magnitude be effected, till every redeemed sinner shall lay himself out in the enterprise, as worldly men do in their projects? If the promises of God are to be fulfilled through the efforts of men, what hope can there be of the glorious day, till men are resolute ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... bright particular manicure girl was engaged. She was doing the nails of an overdressed man and giggling with him. Babbitt hated him. He thought of waiting, but to stop the powerful system of the Pompeian was inconceivable, and he was instantly wafted ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... do our planets going round the sun. Heat the iron intensely. What happens? You get what you call white heat. The white heat and the white light come from the increase of wave motion in this ether, and this ether, absolutely imponderable, of a tenuity inconceivable, possesses elasticity greater and more powerful than that ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... which to create a dozen bloody rebellions." How any race with the blood of the tropics boiling in their veins, with the traditions of old oppressions burning in their memory, can ever forget or forgive this language and these unbridled outrages is inconceivable. He is mad who does not see that the gulf of caste, too wide before, has widened and deepened almost unfathomably by the influence of the events of the last few months. He is mad, too, who thinks that Morant Bay, or the parish of St. Thomas in the East, with their unshrived ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... and suffering. She drove him away. Like a cowed, lurking devil he was driven off, his mind working cunningly against her, devising evil for her. But she drove him off. In his moments of intense suffering, she seemed to him inconceivable, a monster, the ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... force, are all dismissed as unthinkable. It is not very clear in what sense that word is to be taken. Sometimes it seems to mean, meaningless; at others, self-contradictory or absurd; at others, inconceivable, i. e. that of which no conception or mental image can be formed; at any rate, it implies what is unknowable and untenable. The result is, so far as matter is concerned, that we know nothing about it. "Our conception ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... Etruscans—not a feeling they had that we can share in; and these pictures of them will be to us valuable only as the sculpture under the niches far in the shade there of the old parish church, dimly vital images of inconceivable creatures whom we shall never ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the military gentleman, with an emphasis which made Mr. Cymon Tuggs withdraw his eyes from the young lady's face with inconceivable rapidity. 'Which young men—where?' and the military gentleman clenched his fist, and glared fearfully on the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... off the knavish business successfully—I could not believe it. On the other hand, there was the British private. I have known him all my life, God bless him! Thank God, it is my privilege to know him now, as he lies knocked to bits, cheerily, in our hospital. It was inconceivable that out of sheer funk he could abandon a popular officer. And his was not even a scratch crowd, but a hard-bitten regiment with all sorts of glorious names ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... been generally taught, it is utterly unintelligible, and owes all its proselytes to the propensity so common among men, to mistake distinct images for clear conceptions; and vice versa, to reject as inconceivable whatever from its own nature is unimaginable. But as soon as it becomes intelligible, it ceases to be materialism. In order to explain thinking, as a material phaenomenon, it is necessary to refine matter into a mere modification ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... It was inconceivable that mankind would become extinct. The whole vast resources and pooled intelligence of surviving humanity were focused upon Thurston's Disease. And the disease would yield. Humanity waited with childlike confidence for the miracle that would save it. And the miracle would ...
— Pandemic • Jesse Franklin Bone
... first was a kaleidoscopic array of colors and shapes, but the amazing, astounding, inconceivable thing about the scene was that there was no single color I could recognize! The eyes of van Manderpootz, or perhaps his brain, interpreted color in a fashion utterly alien to the way in which my own functioned, and the resultant spectrum was so bizarre that there is simply no way of describing ...
— The Point of View • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... about one degree above the horizon on a true west bearing. From this point, as from the narrow point of a funnel, streams of light, resembling brightly illuminated vapour or smoke, appeared to be incessantly issuing, increasing in breadth as they proceeded, and darting with inconceivable velocity, such as the eye could scarcely keep pace with, upwards towards the zenith, and in the same easterly direction which the former arch had taken. The sky immediately under the spot from which ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... of the few great jurists and administrators whom America has ever produced, and it is inconceivable that he did not understand what he was doing. He knew perfectly well that, other things being equal, the simplest administrative mechanism is the best, and he knew also that he was helping to make an extremely complicated mechanism. Not only so, but at the heart of this complexity lay the ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... countenance expressed nothing but calm scorn and defiance. He was evidently working himself into that state of mind which these redskin warriors endeavour to assume when they are captured and taken to the stake and the torture, there to prove their title to the name of brave by enduring the most inconceivable agonies with stoical indifference, or there to bring discredit on their tribe, infamy on their name, and joy to their enemies, by breaking down under the infliction of tortures at the bare mention of which ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... With inconceivable ingenuity, the victim is seized and thrown to the ground, and the wasp plunges her sting, not at random into the body, which would involve the risk of death, but at determined points, exactly into the seat of those invisible nervous ganglions whose mechanism ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... even allude to individual instances whom we both know, but does it not remind you, on the whole, of the tone of French manners previous to the revolution—that "decence," which Horace Walpole so admired,[2] veiling the moral degradation, the inconceivable profligacy of the higher classes?—Stay—I have not yet done—not to you, but for you, I will add thus much;—our modern idea of delicacy apparently attaches more importance to words than to things—to manners than to morals. You will ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... from the saying of Descartes that the universe is a continuous creation, Malebranche deduced or rather concluded that our thoughts and actions are acts of God. There can be no action of the body on the soul to produce ideas; that would be inconceivable; but on the occasion, for instance, of our eyes resting on an object, God gives us an idea of that object, whether in conformity or not we cannot tell; but at any rate He gives us that idea of the object which He wishes us ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... bonds of friendship and interest which would thus have to be broken merely because of an insignificant jog in a boundary remote from both the nations made war between the United States and Great Britain seem absolutely inconceivable, until people realized that neither country could yield without an admission of defeat both galling to national pride and involving fundamental principles of conduct and policy for ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... through them of the whole earth; those courtiers covered with gold and scarlet, uncertain of the morrow, but mightier meanwhile than kings,—all this together seemed a species of hellish kingdom of wrong and evil. In his simple heart he marvelled that God could give such inconceivable almightiness to Satan, that He could yield the earth to him to knead, overturn, and trample it, to squeeze blood and tears from it, to twist it like a whirlwind, to storm it like a tempest, to consume it like a flame. And his Apostle-heart was alarmed by those ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... words. I did not decipher it all; I did not decipher the half. I did not need to. A spirit of divination was given me in that awful hour which enabled me to grasp its full meaning from the few sentences I did pick out. And that meaning! It was horrible, inconceivable. Murder was taught; but murder from a distance, and by an act too simple to awake revulsion. Were the wraiths of my two ancestors who had played with the spring hidden in the depths of this old closet, drawn up in mockery beside me during the hour when I stood ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... that of which we all are thinking in these days is war between civilized men. One civilized man cannot improve another civilized man by killing him, although it is not inconceivable that a civilized man may do humanity a service by destroying human savages, for with the savages he must destroy ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... Bernard," said Edmee; "for after all I ought to be grateful to him; in spite of his reservations and conditions, he performed a great and inconceivable action, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... and the place, for the holy spirit cautioned him, "Take heed, these things will surely come to pass."[17] But when Joseph repeated his dream to his brethren, in the presence of his father, Jacob rebuked him, saying, "I and thy brethren, that has some sense, but I and thy mother, that is inconceivable, for thy mother is dead."[18] These words of Jacob called forth a reproof from God. He said, "Thus thy descendants will in time to come seek to hinder Jeremiah in delivering his prophecies."[19] Jacob may be excused, he had spoken in this way only in order to avert the envy ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... principal and necessary warfare. The United States could not have encountered Great Britain single-handed—true; but there was not then the slightest prospect of her having to do so. The injuries of which she complained were incidental to a state of European war; inconceivable and impossible apart from it. She was therefore assured of the support of most powerful allies, occupying the attention of the British navy and draining the resources of the British empire. This condition of things was notorious, as was the fact ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... were semi-independent nobles, and the rest mere farmers of revenue, who bid against one another at the periodical settlements. Tenant right apart, the conception of private property in the soil was inconceivable to the Indian mind. Every one knows that it was borrowed by English lawyers from the Roman codes, when commercialism destroyed the old feudal nexus. Lord Cornwallis's permanent Settlement of 1793 ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... admitted to offer a full and consistent explanation of all the facts of science. There can be no better cause for any given formation than that God created it so. Men of science, however, allege that creation (out of nothing) is 'scientifically inconceivable;' but this is only throwing dust in our eyes; of course, science can not verify it, neither can it verify any other theory of causation. The question is whether reason can accept the fact, though science can not even imagine the process? If not, there is nothing for us but the eternity of ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... cleared the ford, the batteries of the island and the flanking batteries on the right bank opened with deadly effect. How any British officer could have been so imprudent as to give the order to charge into the nullah is almost inconceivable; that the error was not evident, while the brave men were being mowed down by an artillery fire, which they could do nothing to silence, is still more marvellous; such, however, was the case. Colonel Havelock dashed into ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... are curiously distorted in order that both eyes may be on the upper side, where alone they would be of any use. It was objected by Mr. Mivart that a sudden transformation of the eye from one side to the other was inconceivable, while, if the transit were gradual the first step could be of no use, since this would not remove the eye from the lower side. But, as Mr. Darwin shows by reference to the researches of Malm and others, the young of these fish are quite symmetrical, and during their growth exhibit to us the ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... entertainment by their manoeuvres. One would approach at first warily through the shrub-oaks, running over the snow crust by fits and starts like a leaf blown by the wind, now a few paces this way, with wonderful speed and waste of energy, making inconceivable haste with his "trotters," as if it were for a wager, and now as many paces that way, but never getting on more than half a rod at a time; and then suddenly pausing with a ludicrous expression and a gratuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in the universe were fixed on him—for ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... already reached the capital of Chaldea. The vast plain before the city swarmed with moving thousands of Medes and Persians. At this time no warriors were finer in appearance than the battlemen of the Persian prince. Their discipline had reached to an almost inconceivable degree of perfection. The wishes and desires of their great commander had become their law; and each one vied with the other in rendering obedience to his orders. Their fame had spread throughout lower Asia, and through many parts ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... line, lowers and will disappear soon; looks at the stars, the slow and regulated march of which he has observed, as have all the people of his trade, during so many nocturnal hours; is troubled in the depth of his mind by the proportions and the inconceivable ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... the joyful festival at Shiloh at the turn of the year, the reason for his doing so was not that he could have had no opportunity at his home in Ramah or Gibeah for eating and drinking before the Lord. Any strict centralisation is for that period inconceivable, alike in the religious as in every other sphere. This is seen even in the circumstance that the destruction of the temple of Shiloh, the priesthood of which we find officiating at Nob a little later, did not exercise the smallest modifying influence upon the character ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... airs of inconceivable rapture—thou weavest hearts into one with a single touch of thy fairy fingers, and with a breath again dividest them—thou forcest tears—thou driest them with a smile—alas! the next moment thou frightenest the wan smile from the quivering lip for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... conceive that the Russians would be beaten in a pitched battle by the English and French—but that they should have been so quickly followed up by the allies, as not to be able to shut their gates and man their walls, is to me inconceivable. Why, the Russians retreat like the wind, and have a thousand ruses at command, in order to retard an enemy. So at least I thought, but it is plain that I know nothing about them, nor indeed much ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow |
