"Incredulity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wonder, half of incredulity, ran through me at the touch of the soil of Mars. Here was I, actually on that planet, which had seemed so far away, so inaccessible, and so full of mysteries when viewed from the earth. And yet, surrounding me, were things—gigantic, ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... and whey, or something else;" the second was: "No, she is a shade hypocriticaler than other girls—before they are married, that is all;" and, acting on this latter conviction, she smiled a lofty incredulity, and fell to counting on her fingers all the moneyed ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... exclusive of presents, had cost an hundred thousand pounds. The two conductors were confounded at this asseveration, which, being communicated to the cheesemonger, he shook his head with a significant grin; and, though he did not choose to express his incredulity in words, gave our hero to understand, that he did not much depend upon his veracity. From the house of this Dutch naturalist, they were draggled all round the city by the painful civility of their attendants, who did not quit them till the evening ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... gives me some pleasure. In the evening I find there was nothing in it. What do I gain by this, but the dissatisfaction to find that I had been imposed upon? Hence it is that men are much more naturally inclined to belief than to incredulity. And it is upon this principle, that the most ignorant and barbarous nations have frequently excelled in similitudes, comparisons, metaphors, and allegories, who have been weak and backward in distinguishing and sorting their ideas. And it is ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... say up?" The professor's voice held incredulity. Whereupon his hostess had most unkindly smiled: "You're not much of a walker, are you?" was her ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... after another the articles that seemed specially called for. Ah, how pleasant it was! It was like personal contact with the weak and the weary, giving a touch of comfort and help each time. Hazel had learned the use of the cheap calico counter, which once had excited her wonder and incredulity; she chose the prettiest patterns she could, but even she was fain to see that it was better to give prints or mohairs to a great many who wanted them, than a silk gown to one here and there who perhaps could rarely wear it if she had it. In like ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... jaw dropped, accentuating the gaunt leanness of his hollow-cheeked, emaciated face, gazed at Doc Madison with a curious mingling of incredulity and ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... are we; and the few missionaries whose inspiring sympathy helped us through those earlier years were in places far from us, and so were all the Reformers. So perhaps it was not wonderful that, beset by doubting letters from home and a certain amount of not unnatural incredulity in India, we sometimes almost wondered if we ourselves were dreaming. "Well, if they do exist, I hope you will be able to find them!"—varied by, "Well, if you do find them, they will be a proof of their own existence!"—were ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... result of these inquiries must be allowed to be, to a large extent, negative. In many quarters, where thirty or forty years ago we should certainly have found acquiescence, honest if dull, in the received religious systems of Europe, we now discern incredulity, more or less far-reaching, about "revealed religion" altogether, and, at the best, "faint possible Theism," in the place of old-fashioned orthodoxy. And earnest men, content to bear as best they may their own burden of doubt and disappointment, ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... Provincials defended their national palladium with clamors and arms and new visions condemned to death and hell the profane sceptics who presumed to scrutinize the truth and merit of the discovery. The prevalence of incredulity compelled the author to submit his life and veracity to the judgment of God. A pile of dry fagots, four feet high and fourteen long, was erected in the midst of the camp; the flames burnt fiercely to the elevation of thirty cubits; and a narrow path of twelve inches ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... endeavored to inculcate; most insolently alleging that, from their conduct, the advocates of Christianity did not seem to believe in it themselves. Was not this too much for human patience? Would not one suppose that the benign visitants from Europe, provoked at their incredulity and discouraged by their stiff-necked obstinacy, would for ever have abandoned their shores, and consigned them to their original ignorance and misery? But no: so zealous were they to effect the temporal comfort and eternal salvation of these pagan infidels that they ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... from Inza that afternoon, he had made a free and full confession of his fault. She had listened with pained surprise, almost with incredulity, but she had not shown the scorn that Frank felt he fully deserved. However, she had exacted a pledge, which he had freely given, and, returning to the academy, he felt that he was himself once more. His step was elastic, his ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... any rate one is to put other people's happiness before one's own?" said Elizabeth with a mixed expression of incredulity ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... subject. Thus shut up to his own resources, the masterful little fellow, about his eighth year, drawing charcoal diagrams on the floor, made perceptible progress in working out geometry for himself. At sixteen he produced a treatise on conic sections that excited the wonder and incredulity of Descartes. Later, he experimented in barometry, and pursued investigations in mechanics. Later still, he made what seemed to be approaches ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... ejaculation on the part of those thus catching glimpses of his upturned countenance. More than once efforts were made by hunters who encountered him to form his acquaintance; but they were always courteously repelled. Finally he came to be spoken of as the "hermit;" and it was with astonishment, almost incredulity, that, in the spring of his third year in the Adirondacks, he was found at "Paul Smith's" offering his services as guide to a party of gentlemen who, their guide having fallen suddenly ill, were in sore straits for some one to take them down ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... sensation whatever. Almost with incredulity, they watched the glass walls cloud, realized that the fogging vapor was formed of exudations from their own substance. Then physical reaction ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... not extant now, but) that the historians of the next generation never saw it. Geoffrey's History at once created a tremendous stir in the literary world—nor was it accepted on trust—but received with suspicion and incredulity. Thus William of Newburgh, in the latter part of the twelfth century, calls Geoffrey roundly, "a saucy and shameless liar." William, of course, did not know Welsh, and could not have made anything out of the Britannic book, even if he had seen it. This ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... fluttering prostration of color at Jeremy's feet. He ejaculated, "God bless me," and started back. William's face was inscrutable, unguessed lines appeared about his severe mouth. Her own sensation was one of incredulity touched with mounting anger and feeling of outrage. The woman rose, but only to sink again before William: she was on her knees and, supported by her hands, bent forward and touched her forehead to the floor three ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... athletic as to give him the appearance of a young giant; and on being asked his age at the police office, that it might be inserted in his passport, his reply was received with a smile of astonishment and incredulity, which afforded much subsequent amusement to his elder fellow travellers. At the age of sixteen his strength and activity were so great, that few men could have stood up against him with any chance of success. On his return to Guernsey, every interest the family possessed was anxiously ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... the strange woman was trifling with us, and had simply made up this story after the event. Mohun saw my incredulity, and said, ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... require all the evidence of history to credit, that, in times deeming themselves enlightened, human beings should have been honoured with public approval, in the very proportion of the misery they caused, and the mischiefs they perpetrated. They will call upon all the testimony which incredulity can require, to persuade them that, in passed ages, men there were—men, too, deemed worthy of popular recompense—who, for some small pecuniary retribution, hired themselves out to do any deeds of pillage, devastation, and murder, which ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... this way because thou lovest me, Sancho," said Don Quixote; and he ascribed his squire's incredulity to a lack of knowledge of the world and assured him that when the time came he would tell him even more that took place in the cave, which would make him believe ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of nothing for days after your lesson on coral-reefs, but of the tops of submerged continents. It is all true, but do not flatter yourself that you will be believed till you are growing bald like me, with hard work and vexation at the incredulity of the world." On May 24th, 1837, Lyell wrote to Sir John Herschel as follows:—"I am very full of Darwin's new theory of coral-islands, and have urged Whewell to make him read it at our next meeting. I must give up my volcanic crater ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... measures to the understanding of the common people. Never bewildered by the solicitations of party, nor terrified by the menace of opposition, he has controlled with moderation, and yielded with dignity, as the exigencies of the time demanded. Entering upon office with his full share of the common incredulity, perceiving no more than his fellow-citizens the magnitude of the crisis, he has steadily risen to the height of the great argument. No suspicion of self-seeking stains his fair fame; but ever mindful of his solemn oath, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... Africa. He probably followed very much the same route as Sir Richard Dalyngridge and Saxon Hugh when they voyaged with Witta the Viking. He wrote in Punic a record of his adventures, which was received with the incredulity usually accorded to travellers' tales. Among the wonders he encountered were some hairy savages called gorillas. His work was translated into Greek and later on into several European languages, so that the word became familiar ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... of the house, coming up the kitchen stairs, confirmed the statement. In pity for his torpid incredulity she begged him to examine her house from top to bottom, and herself ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... headlong speed for hundreds of miles along a ferruginous track, the most temporary deviation from which would produce the inevitable cataclysm and no end of a smash, the working majority would have expressed their candid opinion of such rhodomontade by cocking the contemptuous snook of incredulity. ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... the boys were conducted at once to the governor—a stern and haughty-looking Spaniard, who received the account given by the captain with an air of incredulity. ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... the preceding chapter how the equality of conditions leads men to entertain a sort of instinctive incredulity of the supernatural, and a very lofty and often exaggerated opinion of the human understanding. The men who live at a period of social equality are not therefore easily led to place that intellectual authority to which they bow either beyond ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Entertainment, dart through the air with passengers and luggage bound for definite localities, turning hither and thither, or alighting on the earth according to the will of a steersman—we confess to a feeling which is apt to wrinkle our visage with the smile of incredulity; but we sternly rebuke the smile, for we know that similar smiles wreathed the faces of exceedingly wise people when, in former days, it was proposed to drive ships and coaches by steam, and hold instantaneous converse with our friends across ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... magnetism, defending it in the name of science. There was only one person who smiled, a vigorous young fellow, a great pursuer of girls in the town, and a hunter also of frisky matrons, in whose mind there was so much incredulity about everything that he would not even enter upon ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... manner struck me like a blow in the face. Allan Morris had spoken of a mocking person who jeered and smiled. And that described this man exactly. There was mockery in every glance of his dull eyes; every twitch of his mouth was a fleer; with each gesture he seemed making game of one; sneering incredulity was stamped ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... hard not to let her listless air of incredulity freeze the marrow of his bones and the blood in his veins, or cut him so deeply as to destroy his enrooted hope ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... author at the time, perhaps proud of my bantling: "I beg your pardon," I say, "it was written by your humble servant." "Indeed!" was all that the man replied, and he shrugged his shoulders, turned his back, and talked to his other neighbor. I never heard sarcastic incredulity more finely conveyed than by that "indeed." "Impudent liar," the gentleman's face said, as clear as face could speak. Where was Magna Veritas, and how did she prevail then? She lifted up her voice, she made her ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the unfolding growth, maturity, and decay of medical creeds; to discern the power of those master-minds, that, far beyond the ages in which they lived fore-shadowed the forth-coming discoveries that were to make other men immortal; to sigh over the incredulity of whole races, whose blind and dogmatical adherence to the theories of some prominent physiologist or anatomist—was at once silenced by the light of a new truth, suddenly and clearly promulgated by a single mind. ...
— Allopathy and Homoeopathy Before the Judgement of Common Sense! • Frederick Hiller
... was to doubt every statement that Samuel made, and repeat his incredulity three times, each time in a louder tone of voice and with a more ferocious expression of countenance. Then, if the boy stuck it out, he concluded that he was telling the truth. By this exhausting method ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... at the Salpetriere Hospital, and in the same paper there was a long leading article upon the subject. The report of the experiments was to me so amazing that at first I could not bring my mind to believe in it. As you will, I am sure, feel some incredulity, I have cut out the paragraph, and here it is pasted at the bottom ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... "Behold our enemies ones more defeated. Let incredulity be silent and the atheist confounded. Our annals will be the story of the wonders of Providence... Widows, cease to bemoan the loss of a loved husband; you are not left alone; you belong to the country. Orphans, you have found ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... catholic, in the widest acceptation of the word. I am, by inquiry and conviction, as well as by inclination and feeling, a Christian; life would be intolerable to me if I were not so. "But," says Saint Evremont, "the most devout cannot always command their belief, nor the most impious their incredulity." I acknowledge with Sir Thomas Brown that, "as in philosophy, so in divinity, there are sturdy doubts and boisterous objections, wherewith the unhappiness of our knowledge too nearly acquainteth us;" and I confess with him that these ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... her with absorbed attention. She seemed to accept the idea of an elixir of youth without any incredulity, and did not find anything extraordinary in the fact of its discovery. In that respect, I fancied, she was typical of a large class of women—that class that thinks a doctor is a magician, or should ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... others, who think the bravado of asserting the impossibility of the overthrow may be a good policy for deterring the attempt. There has not been one of the great alterations effected by the popular spirit within the last half-century, that was not preceded by professions of contemptuous incredulity, on the part of the applauders of things as they were, toward those who calculated on the effects of that spirit. There were occasionally betrayed, under these shows of confidence and contempt, some signs of horror at the undeniable excitement and progress of popular feeling; but the ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... reasoned that, if the house were not full to overflowing, Gehazi would not be standing outside. Only after Gehazi's dismissal did the disciples of Elisha increase marvellously. That Gehazi had no faith in the resurrection of the dead, is shown by his incredulity with regard to the child of ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... this maneuvering of pins as mere pastime. His countenance expressed his perfect incredulity. Napoleon, perceiving this, addressed to him some of his usual apostrophes, in which he was accustomed playfully to indulge in moments of relaxation, such as, You ninny, You goose; and rolled up the map. Ten weeks passed ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... quiet little laugh at my incredulity, and sat straightway down to write half a dozen letters of inquiry to as many different friends in the environs of New York. I resumed the Evening Post. As to anything coming of her plans I no more dreamt of it than ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... takes an average individual, identifies him with the world as we know it, and then proceeds gradually to bring his marvel within the range of this individual's apprehension. We see the improbable, not too definitely, through the eyes of one who is prepared with the same incredulity as the reader of the story, and as a result the strange phenomenon, whether fallen angel, invisible man, converted beast or invading Martian, takes all the shape of reality. That this shape is convincing is due to the brilliance of Mr Wells' imagination and his power of graphic expression; the ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... The incredulity and even derision with which the latter doctrine is received by "practical men," should not affright the collected thinker, as it certainly is not so chimerical as they pretend. The writer De Senancourt, not at all of a religious turn, in speculating ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... was the signal for a reaction; there was a sudden transition from intolerance to incredulity, from the spirit of obedience to that of discussion. Under the regency, the third estate acquired in importance, by their increasing wealth and intelligence, all that the nobility lost in consideration, and the clergy in influence. ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... market. The first thing the wicked sisters did was to flourish these invitations triumphantly before the eyes of Pollimariar, who declared she did not believe a word of it; indeed, she professed such aggressive incredulity that she had to be severely beaten. But she denied the invitations to the last. She thought it ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... able to apologize with equal plausibility for the extrusion of Gloster's eyes, which seems an act too horrid to be endured in dramatick exhibition, and such as must always compel the mind to relieve its distress by incredulity. Yet let it be remembered that our author well knew what would please the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... shook his head again and passed on to the next case. The girl was an American too, and these American nurses were always so optimistic, so faithfully persistent, she might pull him through, but—the smile of incredulity still lay on the lips of ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... I can make out—yes," Denis replied. He was so completely bewildered by the rebuff, that the incredulity of his two seniors made it seem all ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... of incredulity, I may add that I wrote those words down at the time, added the date and address, and signed them; so there ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... it you before," he said, "but you would not have believed it. Soon—in a very few moments—the news will be known. You will see it break away in waves from that building down there, so I will bear with your incredulity. The German and British fleets have met, and the victory has ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his whip threateningly, when he saw the Egyptian, It is not too much to say that he swayed in the saddle. The horse galloped on, though he had lost hold of the reins. He looked behind until he rounded a corner, and I never saw such amazement mixed with incredulity on a human face. For some minutes I expected to see him coming back, but when he did not I ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... a very strong will- power to heal," or, "It must require a great deal of faith [25] to make your demonstrations." When it is answered that there is no will-power required, and that something more than faith is necessary, we meet with an expression of incredulity. It is not alone the mission of Christian Science to heal the sick, but to ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... labor, I shrank from it as too fatiguing—and also as superfluous; since, if the proofs had satisfied the compatriots of Catalina, who came to the investigation with hostile feelings of partisanship, and not dissembling their incredulity,—armed also (and in Mr. de Ferrer's case conspicuously armed) with the appropriate learning for giving effect to this incredulity,—it could not become a stranger to suppose himself qualified for disturbing a judgment that had been so deliberately ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Lord Southdown, at your service—not Lord Tomnoddy, as my whimsical friend Tomkins dubbed me the other day. It is perfectly true," he added somewhat haughtily, and then with a smile resumed: "but I suppose I must not take offence at your look of incredulity, seeing that I was a consenting party to that awful piece of deception which Tomkins played off upon you. Ha, ha, ha! excuse me, but I really wish you could have seen yourself when that mischievous friend of mine accused you of—of—what was it? Oh, yes, of playing fast and ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... Reverend Father," said Mora, leaning upon the table, her face framed in her hands, and looking with knitted brows at the Bishop; "it almost seems to me that you regard the entire vision with a measure of secret incredulity." ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... as I saw him this morning. Don't you see him?" She could not measure the time that the vision remained; but it was long enough for several questions and answers to pass rapidly between herself and other members of the family. In reply to their persistent incredulity, she said, "It is very strange that you don't see him; for I see him as plainly as I do any of you." She was so obviously awake and in her right mind, that the incident naturally made an impression on those who listened to her. Her mother looked at her watch, and despatched a messenger to inquire ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... had been so much incredulity avowed regarding the courage of the negroes; so much wit lavished on the idea of negroes fighting to any purpose, that General Banks was justified in according a special commendation to the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Regiments, and ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... see what's happened to him before you call it 'luck,' Duffer. But you must remember that nobody except Ferlini and a few superstitious blacks ever believed that the mountain had a secret. Incredulity has protected it. And Corkran had to work like a thousand devils if he hoped to get hold of anything before he was found out. I believe he has got hold of something, and—that it then got hold of him. But we ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... only be from the Protestant Episcopal Church of England, to that of Calvin; or a rescue from one of the devil's furnaces, to pop them into another." I laughed at this story, I suppose with a little incredulity, but my Irish friend insisted on its truth, ending the conversation with a significant nod, Catholic as he was, ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and water, were the sure consequences of resistance. Their tyranny had no other limit than their own caprice. To whom shall the unfortunate felon appeal? To what purpose complain, when his complaints are sure to be received with incredulity? A tale of mutiny and necessary precaution is the unfailing refuge of the keeper, and this tale is ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... Criminals. It was only when she was within this vast and grim abode of madness that she realized the horror of her situation. It was only when she was received by the kind physician and read pity in his eyes, and saw his look of hopeless incredulity when she attempted to tell him that she was not insane; it was only when she passed through the ward to which she was consigned and saw the horrible creatures, the victims of a double calamity, whose dreadful faces she was hereafter to see daily, and was locked into the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... these days of incredulity, the supernatural element in the story of Sir Roger of Walderne may appear forced or unreal. But the incident is one of a class which has been made common property by writers of fiction in all generations; it occurs at least thrice in the Ingoldsby Legends; Sir Walter Scott gives a terrible ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... Incredulity heightened the boyishness in Peter's tone. James Thorold wheeled around until he faced him. "Peter," he said huskily, "there's something you'll have to know before I go to Forsland—if ever I go to Forsland. You'll have to decide." The boy shrank from the ominous cadence ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... was not, however, until 1877 that Professer Bell, in a public lecture given at Salem, Mass., astonished his audience, and the whole country as well, by receiving and transmitting vocal messages from Boston, twenty miles away. Incredulity had no more a place as it respected the feasibility of talking to persons at a distance. The experiments of Gray at Chicago, a few days later in the same month, were equally successful. Messages were distinctly ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... home. Some few, indeed, like General Arnold, to whom I recounted the affair a fortnight later when he marched up the Valley, frankly said that I was a fool for my pains, and doubtless many others dissembled the same opinion. But they all, with one accord, expressed surprise, admiration, even incredulity, at the despatch with which we accomplished ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... made with the thermometer between eighty and ninety, impress one with a kind of awe. "What regions must they be," thought I to myself, "thus sealed up in eternal snows, while the country at their feet lies scorching in the very fire!" A shadow of incredulity mingled itself with my reflections. On the whole, I bought ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... or else a comparison of it as equally true with them, as equally a psychological development of the religious intelligence, which is the view prevalent in many noted works on the philosophy of history in the present.(289) It was the second of these ideas, expressive of actual incredulity, which existed in the thirteenth century. It is traceable in the imputation made by Gregory IX(290) against the celebrated emperor Frederick II, that he had spoken of Moses, Christ, and Mahomet, as the three great impostors who had respectively deceived the Jews, the ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... was there but three days. The very first day I came upon an old friend of yours—quite unexpectedly—in Henrietta Street. Now you never in the world would guess whom. None other than Mr. Samuel T. Philander. But it is true. I can see your look of incredulity. Nor is this all. He insisted that I return to the hotel with him, and there I found the others—Professor Archimedes Q. Porter, Miss Porter, and that enormous black woman, Miss Porter's maid—Esmeralda, you will recall. While I was there Clayton came in. They are to be married ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... he said, getting to his feet. There was incredulity in his voice, and a certain amount of bewilderment. The ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that priory repeated the story which they found in their chronicle to all who came to visit their establishment in Cornwall. They told the name, among others, to William of Worcester, and to prevent any incredulity on his part, they gave him chapter and verse from their chronicle, which he carefully ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... doom of the false tongue. It might have done him good if there had been sufficient encouragement to him to make him try to win a new character, but it only added a fresh terror to his mind; and nurse grew fond of manifesting her incredulity of his assertions by always referring to Griff or to me, or even to little Emily. What was worse, she used to point him out to her congeners in the Square or the Park as 'such a ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that 'she had heard of instances where ladies were so determined not to exceed the fashionable measurement that they had actually held on to a cross-bar while their maids fastened the fifteen- inch corset,' has excited a good deal of incredulity, but there is nothing really improbable in it. From the sixteenth century to our own day there is hardly any form of torture that has not been inflicted on girls, and endured by women, in obedience to the dictates of an unreasonable and monstrous Fashion. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... statement was of itself eloquent. The young secretary felt every eye fastened upon himself, and, though his own eyes were fixed on the coroner's face, he saw reflected even there the general expression of mingled astonishment, incredulity, and resentment. Unmoved, however, he awaited, coolly and impassively, the ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... Harvard Graduates' Magazine, presents him as he was soon after the war was over. He had recovered from the hardships, the face is fairly well rounded but still rather that of a beardless, laughing boy than of a man. A stranger studying the face would hear with incredulity the story of the responsibilities and dangers which that face had confronted. He laughed it all off lightly, and that was his way when occasionally in his later years he came to ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... an event created such a sensation in Stokebridge. At first the news was received with absolute incredulity, but when it became thoroughly understood that Bill Haden's boy, Jack Simpson, had licked Tom Walker, the wonder knew no bounds. So struck were some of the men with Jack's courage and endurance, that the offer was made ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... always listened in the greatest amazement (and with some incredulity, too, it must be confessed) to his friend's predictions, could only look the surprise he felt. How any one, by simply looking at a pony's track, could tell what a party of men whom he had never seen were going to do, he could ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... him with incredulity. Only the day before he would have put full confidence in his statement; but he had learned a lesson, thanks to ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... lapidary phrase and the pious memoir (corrected by the maiden sister and the family divine), Borrow dared to substitute the genus homo of natural history. Perhaps it was only to be expected that, like the discoveries of another Du Chaillu, his revelations should be received with a howl of incredulity. ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... irreligion^, indevotion^; godlessness, ungodliness &c adj.; laxity, quietism. skepticism, doubt; unbelief, disbelief; incredulity, incredulousness &c adj.^; want of faith, want of belief; pyrrhonism; bout &c 485; agnosticism. atheism; deism; hylotheism^; materialism; positivism; nihilism. infidelity, freethinking, antichristianity^, rationalism; neology. [person who is not religious] atheist, skeptic, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... yours?" asked Bagley, at the same time that his eyes lighted up at the chance of an auditor free from the incredulity of ignorance. ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... example, Allan himself was there; the Gratcher-eye could not tell if his hat was on his head or off. But this by no means proved that the Gratcher-eye did not exercise its magic function when a Gratcher actually approached, and Allan knew it. He would stand staunchly, with a fine incredulity, while the little boy called off the strides, perhaps, until he announced "Now he's just passed the well-curb—now he's—" but here, scoffing over an anxious shoulder, Allan would go in where Clytie was baking, feigning a ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... size was such, or seemed to be such, that I fear to say a word about it; not because language does not contain the word, but from dread of exaggeration. But his shape and colour may be reasonably told without wounding the feeling of an age whose incredulity ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... accents expressed incredulity. "You must be wrong. Why, the young woman wouldn't even accept the reward. And it ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... with ironical incredulity, and asked: "Are you a Christian? Well, so am I a Christian. Nearly all the people in the world are Christians. Well, why do you ask then? You know the way they all live; they ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... of the male nurses from the hospital, she had turned toward him the old look of resentment: but, instead of the brief and chilling glance she had thought to use, found herself staring, gaping, in amazement and incredulity. She did not believe, for the first moment, that the wreck she saw was Tatsu. This bowed and shrunken ghost of suffering,—this loose, pallid semblance of a man, the beautiful, defiant, compelling demigod of the mountains that ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... noble theft indeed! I now murmured a bit myself, striving to convey an active incredulity that yet might be vanquished by facts. The lady quite ignored this, diverging to her own opinion of New York. She tore the wrapper from a Sunday issue of a famous metropolitan daily and flaunted its comic supplement at me. "That's how I always think of New York," ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... of him and his mother on the other, each holding a hand of his and gazing on him with mingled incredulity, surprise and delight, as if, indeed, they could not realize his presence except by devouring ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Congress restored and extended his patent, Evans felt that better days were ahead, but, as said already, he was too far ahead of his time to be understood and appreciated. Incredulity, prejudice, and opposition were his portion as long as he lived. Nevertheless, he went on building good engines and had the satisfaction of seeing them in extensive use. His life came to an end as ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... intrinsic interest and racy delivery, made a very deep impression on me—he added that the important facts discovered in the course of the cruise had, without a moment's delay, been communicated to the proper authorities, who, after some dignified incredulity, due in part, perhaps, to the pitiful inadequacy of their own secret service, had, he believed, made use of them, to avert a great national danger. I say 'he believed', for though it was beyond question that the danger was averted for the time, it was doubtful whether they had stirred ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... fifteen years since this pleasantry began to be invariably reproduced at the commencement of every winter, and always with the same success. One begins to meet in society a few Parisians who shrug their shoulders with an air of incredulity when you speak to them of the sea-serpent, but no one dares to evince the least skepticism touching the new opera of Rossini. We received this morning a letter from our correspondent at Bologna, and he furnishes us with details which explain ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... Bush, W., had been the heroine of divorce proceedings under queer circumstances, that her husband wasn't dead at all, and that that dear little puss Sally was Goodness-knows-who's child, we feel certain that the information would have been cross-countered with a blank stare of incredulity. Why, the mere fact that Mrs. Nightingale had refused so many offers of marriage was surely sufficient to refute such a nonsensical idea! Who ever heard of a lady with a soiled record refusing a good ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... white "sun," trying to comfort himself with the thought that the brilliant luminary was merely a queer blue lamp, that he was upon a tiny experimental world in a laboratory. But the thought brought him no relief; only confusion and a sense of incredulity. ...
— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson
... told Arthur and saw the expression that succeeded his first blank stare of incredulity did she realize what the world, her "world," would think of her engagement to Theodore Hargrave. It was illuminative of her real character and of her real mind as to Ross, and as to Dory also, that, instead of being crushed by her brother's look of downright horror, she straightway ejected ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... Porfiry Petrovitch laughed and was ready to go on laughing, but obviously looked for explanations. Zametov had been sitting in the corner, but he rose at the visitors' entrance and was standing in expectation with a smile on his lips, though he looked with surprise and even it seemed incredulity at the whole scene and at Raskolnikov with a certain embarrassment. Zametov's ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... showed the same discretion and reticence as the magistrates. The bigoted believed, the hypocrites pretended to believe; and the worldly-minded, who were numerous, discussed the doctrine of possession in all its phases, and made no secret of their own entire incredulity. They wondered, and not without reason it must be confessed, what had induced the devils to go out of the nuns' bodies for two days only, and then come back and resume possession, to the confusion of the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... narrative will be received: with entire incredulity, but I think it well that the public should be put in possession of the facts narrated in "An Antarctic Mystery." The public is free to believe them or not, at its ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... sufficiently rapid to prevent their carrying their intention into effect; and although the insurgents were informed that we had actually crossed the river they refused to believe the report, and, it was said, hanged the man who brought it. Their incredulity was strengthened by the small dimensions of the ground taken up for our camp, and the few tents which were pitched, and they made up their minds that these were only being prepared for the troops belonging to the Agra garrison, and ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... a question put once to a group of disciples, in astonishment and incredulity, by this Apostle, when he said to the twelve disciples in Ephesus, 'Did you receive the Holy Ghost when you believed?' The question might well be put to a multitude of professing Christians amongst us, and I am afraid a great many of them, if they answered truly, would answer as those disciples ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... poetry is the poetry of hope. Europe did not adopt his politics in the generation that followed the Napoleonic Wars, and the result is we have had an infinitely more terrible war a hundred years later. Every generation rejects Shelley; it prefers incredulity to hope, fear to joy, obedience to common sense, and is surprised when the logic of its common sense turns out to be a tragedy such as even the wildest orgy of idealism could not have produced. Shelley must, no doubt, still seem a shocking poet ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... acquired in honorable battle. And further, he may regale us with tales of hair shirts and bastinadoes suffered by him in the Republic. But alas, he is Telemachus, grey-bearded and full of memories. And the youth of Athens, fallen upon softer ways, listen with envious incredulity to such tall tales. ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... cottage, but the old woman could give him no information; she could only suggest that the ghosts must to a certainty have had something to do with it. When he replied that he did not believe in such things, she answered that they had evidently carried off his daughter to punish him for his incredulity, and to prove their existence to him. He hurried round from cottage to cottage, but the people only opened their eyes and mouths wide with astonishment, and gave him no information likely to be of the slightest use. Disappointed, he returned to the Tower. There the search had continued ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... every one of my statements, and proving them has also proved that my opponents were of two kinds. Those who had doubted simply because the discoveries were new and strange have been gradually converted, while those whose incredulity was based on personal ill-will to me have shut their eyes to the facts and have endeavoured to asperse my moral character and to ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... flushed with a sort of pleasurable defiance. The stranger stooped and whispered something in his ear. There was a moment's pause, in which the dwarf looked into the other's eyes with an intense curiosity—or incredulity—and then Medallion lifted the little man on to the railing of the veranda, and over the heads and into the hearts of the people there passed, in a divine voice, a song known to many, yet coming as a new revelation ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... forehead; he ran his hands through his hair nervously. Misreading the look in Fred's face for incredulity, he ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... enclosed, I further humbly present to consideration the doubtfulness and unsafety of admitting spectre testimony against the life of any that are of blameless conversation, and plead innocent, from the uncertainty of them and the incredulity of them; for as for diabolical visions, apparitions, or representations, they are more commonly false and delusive than real, and cannot be known when they are real and when feigned, but by the Devil's report; ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... was the festival of Corpus Christi, she had been graciously granted the rare treat of a whole hour to spend as she pleased. She had chosen to spend it in hearing the latter half of a sermon preached at Paul's Cross. For, despite Mistress Winter's disdainful incredulity, the assertion was the simple truth; though that lady, being one of the numerous persons who cannot imagine the possibility of anything unpleasant to themselves being delightful to others, had been unable to give credence to the statement. As to the charge of dancing in Finsbury ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... country; but I am forced to the task by the use which has been made of the atrocities of the French as an argument against negotiation. I think I have said enough to prove that if the French have been guilty we have not been innocent. Nothing but determined incredulity can make us deaf and blind to our own acts, when we are so ready to yield an assent to all the reproaches which are thrown out on the enemy, and upon which reproaches we are gravely told to continue the war. CHARLES ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... of the world would be in October following. But now Luther thought that he had had trial enough, and gave so little credit to him, that he (though he loved the man) silenced him for a time, which our apocalyptical prophet took very ill at his hands, and wondered much at his incredulity. Well, that month and some after that over, our prophet (who had made no little stir in the country by his prophesying) was cast into prison for his obstinacy. After a while Luther visited him, thinking ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... an officer approached the fort with a summons to surrender. He brought also a paper containing the names of the captive French officers, though some of them were spelled in a way that defied recognition. Pouchot, feigning incredulity, sent an officer of his own to the English camp, who soon saw unanswerable proof of the disaster; for here, under a shelter of leaves and boughs near the tent of Johnson, sat Ligneris, severely wounded, with Aubry, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... collection of facts, to put out of their minds the idola which Bacon has so finely described. But these rules are too general to be of much practical use. The question is, What is a prejudice? How long does the incredulity with which I hear a new theory propounded continue to be a wise and salutary incredulity? When does it become an idolum specus, the unreasonable pertinacity of a too sceptical mind? What is slight ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... seated. It lacked only a few minutes of the time for opening the school. It was not long before the seats were filled, and Maria heard Wollaston's voice reading a selection from the Bible. Then she bent her head, and heard him offering prayer. She felt a sort of incredulity now. It seemed to her inconceivable that the boy whom she had known could be actually conducting the opening exercises of a school with such imperturbability and self-possession. All at once a great pride of possession ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... believe!" exclaimed Ardan. "The Chair must be excused for reminding the honorable gentleman that it can not accept his incredulity as a sound and valid argument. These two movements have certainly equal periods now; why ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... the hills, every spinney, every hedgerow was thoroughly examined. But that first night of grief had broken down my shame: I told my wife the whole truth in the presence of Reverend Richard Walsh, the Congregational minister, and in spite of her absolute incredulity, and, I may add, scorn, next morning I repeated it to Chief Inspector Notcutt of Salisbury. Particulars got into the local papers by the following Saturday; and next I had to face the ordeal of the Daily Chronicle, Daily ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... terrifying impression on the troops. From that moment prisoners no longer declared themselves sure of success. For a certain time they had been consoled by the announcement of the capture of Warsaw. This pretended success having proved to be fictitious, incredulity became general. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... that I sometimes doubt if I have ever been really attached since. Be that as it may, hearing of her marriage several years after was like a thunder-stroke—it nearly choked me—to the horror of my mother and the astonishment and almost incredulity of every body. And it is a phenomenon in my existence (for I was not eight years old) which has puzzled, and will puzzle me to the latest hour of it; and lately, I know not why, the recollection (not the attachment) ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... gold vessels, and gigantic jewels without attracting the notice of some enterprising journalist. He would be interviewed; the story of his curiously acquired riches would go the round of the papers; he would find himself the object of incredulity, suspicion, ridicule. In imagination he could already see the headlines on ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... repeated slowly, frozen incredulity in his eyes; and she, fearing she had gone too far, caught at the hand she had ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... The bitter incredulity of his accent was too pronounced to be feigned, as indeed it was not, and she lifted her head, reassured. "I might have known it," she said, dashing away her tears with a tremulous little laugh, "but I loved you so. And she warned me against you. She said you ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... eight machine-guns, 1021 rifles and a quantity of ammunition, etc. The moral result of this battle can hardly be overestimated. It had never been seriously believed in Europe that a Russian army could be conquered by a Japanese in a fair fight, and probably that incredulity influenced Kuropatkin when he ordered Sassulitch to defy strategical principles by attempting to hold a radically defective position against a greatly superior force. In a moment, the Japanese were crowned with military laurels ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Fear and incredulity were blent in his voice. He had paled under his tan until his face was the colour of clay, and there was a wild fury in his beady eyes. His negroes looked at him, grinning idiotically, all teeth ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... Jane, "and we have been blaming that girl! She helped her brother to get back to college!" The voice reeked with dismay and incredulity. ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... my frantic cables your box reached here safely, but it has not reached me. Picture if you can my amazed incredulity yesterday to see an exact replica of myself as I once was, walking on the dock. I rubbed my eyes and stared. Yes, it was my purple gown. My first impulse was to jerk it off the culprit, but I decided on more diplomatic tactics. A very little detective work elucidated the mystery. You had addressed ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... your word for it," repeated Cervera, with incredulity bright in her sensuous eyes. "You know what I told you, Rufe. I'll not tamely permit that pale-faced nightingale to come between you and me. You know what I told you. I would kill her ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... speak. She was startled, almost frightened, almost shocked by the profundity of his gaze upon her. Her heart stood still and gave a great leap. Chiefly she was aware of an immense astonishment and incredulity. An hour before he had never seen her, had never heard of her—and during that hour she had been barely aware of him, absorbed in herself, indifferent. How could he ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... friendly admonition, and runs on incredulous of the risk. Soon in the midst of surrounding reefs he shall when too late repent his temerity, and wish, that content with the experience of others he had not authenticated by the shipwreck of his hopes, the folly of his incredulity, and the reality of the danger! It is with governments as with individuals. The institutions which have occasioned anarchy and devastation before, will, if persisted in, produce them again. Vile and detestable as have been the ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... said he. "I assure you that I want to see the South win." What he did not know was that words seldom convince women. But he added something which reduced her incredulity for the time. "Do you cal'late," said he,—that I could work for your father, and wish ruin to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... settled although hidden belief in the doctrines of the Metempsychosis. Of the doctrines themselves—that is, of their falsity, or of their probability—I say nothing. I assert, however, that much of our incredulity—as La Bruyere says of all our unhappiness—"vient de ne pouvoir etre ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... believers should make when on the brink of the grave," replied Madame Clemenceau, in her gravest tone to repress the tendency to frivolity, for she had not resented the incredulity as regarded herself. ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... things coolly. The passions of youth never influence my admiration, and when I am as withered, decrepit, wrinkled, as Tithonus in his swaddling bands, my opinion will be still the same. But I forgive your incredulity and want of sympathy. In order to understand me fully, it is necessary that you should see Nyssia in the radiant brilliancy of her shining whiteness, free from jealous drapery, even as Nature with her own hands moulded her in a lost moment of inspiration which ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... information had been received charging him with being concerned in the assassination of the late Emperor, and of being an advanced member of the Nihilist party. His vehement denials were received with scornful incredulity, his departure for England just after the assassination, and his prolonged absence from Russia, of course gave colour to the accusation, and he was ordered off to his ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... the poisoned consciousness awoke in her mind that she was fast growing old, and her face was growing less lovely. This was the first germ of Hetty's unhappiness. It had been very hard for her in the beginning to believe herself loved: now all her old incredulity returned with fourfold strength; and now it was not met as then by constant and vehement evidence to conquer it. Here again, had Hetty been like other women, she might have been spared her suffering. Had it been possible for her to demand, to even invite, ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... door. He did not know how to strap on the snow-shoes. She watched his first attempt with great curiosity; looking up, he was made the more determined to succeed with them by seeing the pain of incredulity returning to her eyes. ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... remember certain experiences that fill us with incredulity even while we admit that the facts could be proved before a jury of twelve men. So Casey Ryan, having lost his outfit and come so near to death that he could barely keep his feet under him, walked into a tent and stood there thinking it couldn't ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... seemed to contain matters of a dangerous import, and that he knew them not to be the handwriting of the persons whose names were subscribed to them. This incident still further confirmed the king in his incredulity. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... despite all the struggles borne, was shared likewise by another man than Favre—by Germano Sommeiller, the creator of the Mont Cenis Tunnel. When the work of the first piercing of the Alps was yet in the period of attacks and incredulity, Sommeiller wrote his brother the following letter: "Always keep me posted my dear Leander, as to what the laughers are saying and remember the proverb that 'he will laugh well who laughs last!' The majority ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... a sense of growing angry incredulity. The fellow couldn't be as much of a fool as he seemed! Therefore, he had devised this hoax after he realised he would be captured, to cover up his real purpose which could only be that of a spy. Menesee saw that Administrator ...
— Oneness • James H. Schmitz
... Pen, I hope to say them in earnest, and by the blessing of God to keep my vow. But you—what tie binds you? You do not care about many things which we poor women hold sacred, I do not like to think or ask how far your incredulity leads you. You offer to marry to please our mother, and own that you have no heart to give away. Oh, Arthur, what is it you offer me? What a rash compact would you enter into so lightly? A month ago, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... No woman could listen to such words unmoved, when her armor of incredulity fell from her as Lesley's armor had fallen. Hitherto she had felt a scornful disbelief in the reality of Oliver's love for her. But now that disbelief had gone. There was a ring of passionate feeling in Oliver's tones which could not be simulated. The coldness, the artificiality of the man had ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... incredulity, which pleased his companion, in the man's face, but his voice vaguely ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... "Watch thy brethren?" Even the Saviour himself did not thus attempt to correct the faults of his disciples. He rebuked them, indeed, and sometimes sharply; but he was not continually reminding them of their faults. He was not incessantly brow-beating Peter for his rashness, nor Thomas for his incredulity, nor the sons of Zebedee for their ambition. But he "taught them as they were able to bear it;" and that rather by holding up before their minds the truth, ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... white hands with the tips of his fingers forming a cone, Mr. Palma leaned back in his chair and listened, while no hint of surprise or incredulity found expression in his cold, imperturbable face. When the recital was ended, he merely inclined ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... some species, as we shall see, there are tints approaching to brightness. Notwithstanding this family likeness in colour, any person, not an ornithologist, looking at a collection of specimens comprising many genera, would hear with surprise and almost incredulity that they all belonged to one family, so great is the diversity exhibited in their structure. In size they vary from species smaller than the golden-crested wren to others larger than the woodcock; but the differences in size are as nothing compared with those shown ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... earth was spherical, and that the East Indies, the great El Dorado of the century, might be reached by circumnavigating the globe. If we picture to ourselves the mental condition of the age and the state of science, we shall find no difficulty in conceiving the scorn and incredulity with which the theory of Columbus was received. We shall not wonder that he was regarded as a madman or as a fool; we are not surprised to remember that he encountered repulse upon repulse as he journeyed wearily from court to court, and pleaded in vain to the sovereigns ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... absurd to observe the incredulity of Europeans as to the possibility of cutting off a head with the kinjal: it is necessary to live only one week in the East to be quite convinced of the possibility of the feat. In a practiced hand the kinjal is a substitute for the hatchet, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... incredulity; but he did not put his feelings into words, for he perceived in Lize a type with which he was entirely familiar—one to be handled with care. "What are you two women doing here? Are you related to ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... and ready to work under her. He brought letters in high praise of the late school master, and recommendations of his widow from the clergyman of the parish where they had lived; and place and name being both in the "Clergy List," even Ermine and Alison began to feel ashamed of their incredulity, whilst as to Grace, she had surrendered herself completely to the eager delight of finding a happy home for the little children in whom she was interested. Grace might laugh a little at Rachel, but in the main her trust in her sister's superiority always led her judgment, and in the ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge |
