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Intelligible   /ɪntˈɛlədʒəbəl/   Listen
Intelligible

adjective
1.
Capable of being apprehended or understood.  Synonyms: apprehensible, graspable, perceivable, understandable.
2.
Well articulated or enunciated, and loud enough to be heard distinctly.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Intelligible" Quotes from Famous Books



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

... and geography, and made the most of us; she was a severe little person in her teaching and in her discipline; but she was good. We called her Miss Maria, in general. Miss Babbitt had the history; and she did nothing to make it intelligible or interesting. My best historical times thus far, by much, had been over my clay map and my red and black headed pins, studying the changes of England and her people. But Mlle. Genevieve put a new life into ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... them into new form. Christophe was too much of an artist not to do so: but he would not accept it: he forced himself to believe that he did no more than transcribe what was within himself, while he was always compelled more or less to transform it so as to make it intelligible.—More than that: sometimes he would absolutely forge a meaning for it. However violently the musical idea might come upon him it would often have been impossible for him to say what it meant. It would come surging up from the depths of life, from far beyond the ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... by the allies. Edward was a brilliant soldier, lacking, however, the prudence of his great brother, Robert. The story of his two years of fighting, ravaging, and slaying, is hard at this distance to reconcile with intelligible strategy. In the end, in 1318, the gallant Scot fell in battle near Dundalk, losing at the same time two-thirds of his army. For two years Scot and Irish had fought victoriously side by side. That is the fact of moment that comes ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... whom were suddenly and dramatically laid the burdens and responsibilities of the freedman. Among the emancipated blacks were not a few in whom there still throbbed vigorously the savage life they had but recently left behind and who could not yet speak intelligible English. Though there were many who were skilled in household arts and in the useful customary handicrafts, large numbers were acquainted only with the simplest toil of the open fields. There were a few free blacks who possessed property, ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth

... thus an essential part of death, and death of birth—both forming, by their inseparable action, the highest and first intelligible stage of the inscrutable mystery of the active power of Nature. 'This,' the reader may say, 'is, however, only the old theme, worn threadbare by poet and moralist.' Let him look more earnestly into it—let him master it, and he will find it the germ of a deeper, a bolder, and ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

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

... whereas his own work has not paid the printing expenses. He forgets that the readers who found instruction and amusement in the shallow books could have found none in his book, because he had not the art of making his ideas intelligible and attractive to them, or had not duly considered what food was assimilable by their minds. It is idle to write in hieroglyphics for the mass when only priests can ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes

... balance, he had done a great service to his people by setting out the main heads of their history over three thousand years, so that it should be intelligible to the cultured Roman society; and had he been reproached with misrepresenting and distorting many of their religious ideas, he would have replied, with some justice, that it was necessary to do so in, order to make the Romans understand. On the same ground he would ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich

... clear and easily intelligible. Granted the premise, the logic is admirable. It is not so easy, however, to see why, even granting the soundness of their opposition to co-operation with bourgeois parties and groups in the Duma, ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... subject that you can't understand, you can be very sure that the man does not understand himself what he is trying to talk about. If a man is talking about any subject, literary or what not, of which he is really master, he will be so direct, so simple, so perfectly clear and intelligible in the discussion of that subject that the most humble person can understand what ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... myself, Since it is the usage of the country, as one lives here, one may as well follow it. So I made up my mind to it cheerfully, and without the least scruple."[140] By and by he proceeded to cover this nude and intelligible explanation with finer phrases, about preferring that his children should be trained up as workmen and peasants rather than as adventurers and fortune-hunters, and about his supposing that in sending them to the hospital for foundlings ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

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

... uttered a cry of rage as he finished this awkwardly written, but tolerably intelligible letter. What could he do about it? It would hardly do to stab Myrtle Hazard, and shoot Byles Gridley, and strangle Mrs. Hopkins, every one of which homicides he felt at the moment that he could have committed. And here he was in a frantic paroxysm, and the next day was Sunday, ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... were in despair. They were lost in savage wilds, surrounded by a barbarous and hostile people, with whom, for want of an interpreter, they could hold no intelligible communication. They had now been wandering in these bewildering mazes for three months. Mountains were rising before them; dense forests were around. They had probably reached the hunting-grounds of the Pawnees and Comanches. It was the month of October; ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... examine the contents of this paper took possession of Mr. Mandeville, and in spite of the breach of good manners, and the violation of every principle of honor, he retired to an obscure corner of his garden, opened and read so much of the epistle as was intelligible to him, which ran ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison

... "Perfectly intelligible!" was my reflection on this reply; and I forthwith arrested a Whig parson,—"Who is Mr. St. ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... there are common elements. There is an ever increasing antipathy to the thought of original sin and of supernatural revelation, there is the confidence of human reason, the trust in the will of man, the enthusiasm for the simple, the natural, the intelligible and practical, the hatred of what was scholastic and, above all, the ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... rise, or even give him her hand, but there was a spot close beside her on which it was to be presumed that he would seat himself. She had a volume of Byron in her hand,—the Corsair, Lara, and the Giaour,—a kind of poetry which was in truth more intelligible to her than Queen Mab. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... regards English words (a fact pointed out long ago by the Rev. Mr Crabb), has, however, retained with great persistence hundreds of Hindu terms. Not being very familiar with peasant English, I have generally found Gipsies more intelligible in Rommany than in the language of their "stepfather-land," and have often asked my principal informant to tell me in Gipsy what I could not ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland

... tried my hand at a big Symphony (in C major); in this work I showed what I had learnt by using the influence of my study of Beethoven and Mozart towards the achievement of a really pleasant and intelligible work, in which the fugue was again present at the end, while the themes of the various movements were so constructed that they ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... like a cavalier cap slouched over the eyes) was set on edge upon the puncheon, with the hole toward myself; and through this hole, which seemed puckered up like the mouth of a very precise old maid, the creature was emitting certain rumbling and grumbling noises which he evidently intended for intelligible talk. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... knowledge from sources that are esoteric and therefore inaccessible to all except the adepts. What he has written is, therefore, neither science nor history. It has the character rather of revelation. It is impressive, but not intelligible ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... for a young fellow like you," he observed. "Don't buy any foolishness with it, and if, towards the end of the term you want a little more, and write an intelligible letter asking for it, and I think proper to let you have it—why, ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... Rizal's writings aroused, as he intended they should, the spirit of nationality, of a Fatherland which was not Spain, and put their feet on the road to progress. What matters it, then, if his historical references are not always exhaustive, and if to make himself intelligible in the Philippines he had to write in a style possibly not always sanctioned by the Spanish Academy? Spain herself had denied to the Filipinos a system of education that might have made a creditable Castilian the common language of the Archipelago. A display of erudition ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig

... own prahu the night before and that evidently his followers thought him drowned, since none of his boats had returned to search for him. Scarcely had the Malay seated himself before von Horn began questioning him in the rajah's native tongue, not a word of which was intelligible to Professor Maxon. Sing, however, was as familiar with it as was ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Buddhism and Zoroasterism developed. From the other the creed of Israel and possibly that of Egypt came. Religions that followed were afterthoughts of the divine. They were revelations sometimes more intelligible, in one instance inexpressibly more luminous, yet invariably reminiscent of ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus

... of the obscure satirical allusions contained in this poem. Doubtless the joke was perfectly intelligible to the habitues of contemporary St. Petersburg society. Viazemski of course is the ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... in the Gospel of John,—great uncertainty and inconsistency on this question. In one place, Jesus reproves[1] the demand of a miracle, and blesses those who believe without[2] miracles; in another, he requires that they will submit to his doctrine because[3] of his miracles. Now, this is intelligible, if blind external obedience is the end of religion, and not Truth and inward Righteousness. An ambitious and unscrupulous Church, that desires, by fair means or foul, to make men bow down to her, may say, "Only believe; and all is right. The end being gained,—Obedience to us,—we do ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... was intelligible to the lookers-on, but all the same the scene told its own tale. Punch's lips parted, his face turned white, and he lay back helpless, with his fingers clenched, while Pen's chest began to heave and he stood there irresolute, ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn

... which a paper would like to have, and finally I gave him a veiled but still intelligible story, which we both knew the papers were anxious to get. He told me afterwards that he sold the interview for enough to meet his present needs and his wife's journey. Some time after he entered Wall Street ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew

... be made by law for the publication and distribution, periodically, of an analytical digest of all the patents which have been or may hereafter be granted for useful inventions and discoveries, with such descriptions and illustrations as may be necessary to present an intelligible view of their nature and operation. The cost of such publication could easily be defrayed out of the patent fund, and I am persuaded that it could be applied to no object more acceptable to inventors and beneficial to the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Millard Fillmore • Millard Fillmore

... neighbours, the Esquimaux, with whom, however, they maintain constant intercourse, though not always of the most friendly kind, violent quarrels frequently occurring between them. The various dialects spoken by the other tribes are intelligible to all; in manners, customs, and personal appearance, there is also ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... ungracious after all, then. He felt a great joy at the thought, and shame, too, for having so misjudged her. 'If I had ever received it,' he said, 'I hope you will believe that you would have seen me before this; but I asked for news of you from that burly old impostor of a guard, and he—he gave me no intelligible message' (Mark remembered suddenly the official's extempore effort), 'and certainly nothing ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... was killed—poor lamb!" And they felt rewarded. They had been sure there was some mistake. The relief of hearing that word "'usband" was intense. One of these hasty war marriages, of which the dear Vicar had not approved, and so it had been kept dark. Quite intelligible, but so sad! Enough misgiving however remained in their minds, to prevent their going to condole with the dear Vicar; but not enough to prevent their roundly contradicting the rumours and gossip already coming to their ears. And then one day, when their friend Mrs. Curtis had said too ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... through the corridors like a frightened doe, in pajamas of silk, with wonderful tassels of green. He wrung his hands, and babbled like a lunatic. "Oh, my manuscripts! My manuscripts!" were the only intelligible words that ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... enlisted in the service of art and made immediately and exquisitely responsive to the emotional exaltation of music and song. Nor are these vague terms. Psychology of song and psychological action in general may seem indefinite and unintelligible. They become, however, absolutely definite and intelligible when the part played by the nerves as intermediaries between mind and muscular action of a subtle and highly refined order is appreciated. The mind presses the button, the nerves carry the messages, and muscle acts instantaneously ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller

... for Story-telling. "Our whole life, Travellers," said I, "is a story more or less intelligible,—generally less; but we shall read it by a clearer light when it is ended. I, for one, am so divided this night between fact and fiction, that I scarce know which is which. Shall I beguile the time by telling you a story as ...
— The Seven Poor Travellers • Charles Dickens

... scattered all over Rajistan, like so many eagles' nests on high rocks. The existence of the celebrated collections in Jassulmer and Patana is not unknown to the Government, but they remain wholly beyond its reach. The manuscripts are written in an ancient and now completely forgotten language, intelligible only to the high priests and their initiated librarians. One thick folio is so sacred and inviolable that it rests on a heavy golden chain in the centre of the temple of Chintamani in Jassulmer, and taken ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... knowledge of mechanical engineering. The latter must necessarily remain in my hands, because I found that the "off-hand" sketches which I introduced in my letters as explanatory of mechanical designs and suggestions were much more intelligible than any ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... MORAL competence, subjecting, even in powers more indisputably sovereign, occasional will to permanent reason, and to the steady maxims of faith, justice, and fixed fundamental policy, are perfectly intelligible, and perfectly binding upon those who exercise any authority, under any name, or under any title, in the state. The House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to dissolve the House of Commons; no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it would, its ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... and good spirits, however satisfactory to the determined classicist, will probably strike most intelligent readers as a little curious, and even, if one may use the word at all in connection with so powerful a play, undramatic. It becomes intelligible as soon as we observe that Sophocles was deliberately seeking what he regarded as an archaic or "Homeric" style (cf. Jebb, Introd. p. xli.); and this archaism, in its turn, seems to me best explained as a conscious reaction against Euripides' searching ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides

... possibly can be carried out, that all the pupils of the same mistress have each the same book, in order to learn and read therein the same lesson; so that, whilst one is reading hers in an audible and intelligible voice before the mistress, all the others, following her and following this lesson, in their books at the same time, may learn it sooner, more readily, and more perfectly. [14] The Piarists were established in ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... Assyrian odes are so simple and intelligible as this is: unfortunately most of them are mystical ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... Not having a tail, this fox, therefore, solemnly argued that tails were useless appanages. You remember your AEsop! Instead of melodic inspiration, themes were to be used. Instead of broad, flowing, but intelligible themes, a mongrel breed of recitative and parlando was to take ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... me? My dear, nothing is so easy as mystification; that is why I don't return the compliment. Yourself, you know, are not very intelligible to-night." ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... leaped, apparently to get near his father, but he missed his direction. Then, as if sight had come back, he wheeled and made strange gestures, all the while cursing incoherently. The father's shocked face began to show disgust. Then part of Joel's ranting became intelligible. ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... right are S. Michael and S. Louis of Toulouse. Between S. John the Evangelist and S. James is a monastic figure which has evidently changed places with S. John at some moment of restoration. If the two figures are transposed, their attitudes become intelligible. S. John is inculcating a message inscribed in his open book, while the monk is displaying his humble answer on his own page. The use in it of the term servus suggests that he is a Servite, though ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... by Mr Borden. A biscuit-beef is prepared by a Frenchman, M. Du Liscoet, resembling an ordinary coarse ship-biscuit; but this is said to have 'an animal, salt, and not very agreeable taste.' The American meat-biscuit, however, is prepared in a way which renders its qualities easily intelligible. It contains in a concentrated form all the nutriment of meat, combined with flour. The best wheaten flour is employed, with the nutriment of the best beef, and the result is presented for use as food in the form of a dry, inodorous, flat, brittle cake, which will keep when dry for ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various

... death-cap was drawn over his face, he continued to cry out under it, once saying, "Good bye, shentlemens, who is before me now;" and again, "May we meet in the other world." Finally he drifted away with low, half-intelligible ebullitions, as "God help me," ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... on Johnson's Island. Although the interview between them was brief, and in the presence of witnesses, she contrived to place in his hand a slip of paper, which informed him that our progress would appear in the New York Herald's "Personals" over certain initials, and so disguised as to be intelligible only to those who were initiated. Next, it was important to know the exact condition of affairs in Sandusky, up to the time of our departure from Canada; and this was effected through the agency of a gallant ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson

... Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, Mr. Barnum Brown, and the writer. There has been a considerable demand for these articles which are now mostly out of print. In reprinting it seemed best to combine and supplement them so as to make a consecutive and intelligible account of the Dinosaur collections in the Museum. The original notices are quoted verbatim; for the remainder of the text the present writer is responsible. Professor S.W. Williston of Chicago University has kindly contributed a chapter—all too brief—describing the first discoveries ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew

... risk of publishing the verses; Lucien was called "the Poet sans Sonnets;" and one morning, in that very paper in which he had so brilliant a beginning, he read the following lines, significant enough for him, but barely intelligible to ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... C. Lewis, Bart., M.P., may be cited first as one of the unbelievers. He says[39] that Thales is "reported to have predicted it to the Ionians. If he had predicted it to the Lydians, in whose country the eclipse was to be total, his conduct would be intelligible, but it seems strange that he should have predicted it to the Ionians who had no direct interest in the event." Bosanquet replies to this by pointing out that Miletus, in Ionia, was the birthplace of Thales, and also that a shadow, covering two degrees of latitude, passing through ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers

... sermon which he preached last Sunday, Mr. Hodder, for the first time in my life, made Christianity intelligible to me. I want him to know it. And there are other men and women in that congregation who feel as I do. Gentlemen, there is nothing I would not give to have had Christianity put before me in that simple and inspiring way when I ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... finger, and between five and six inches long, it reaches quite across the face, and so effectually stops up both the nostrils that they are forced to keep their mouths wide open for breath, and snuffle so when they attempt to speak, that they are scarcely intelligible even to each other. Our seamen, with some humour, called it their spritsail-yard; and indeed it had so ludicrous an appearance, that till we were used to it, we found it difficult to refrain from laughter.[91] Beside this nose-jewel, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... back part of the hut, set before me some broiled fish and parched maize. After I had eaten, my friendly host inquired into my country and the reasons of my visit. I was just enough acquainted with the language he spoke to be able to understand him, and to give an intelligible though imperfect answer. I therefore explained to him, as well as I was able, that I had crossed the great water with the warriors of the king of Britain; that we had been compelled to take up the ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... question of faith or duty is involved in the interpretation which we may give to the details of Creation. If there are some parts of the Bible in which the earliest interpretation is unquestionably the true one, there are also other parts, such as many of the prophecies, which became intelligible only when light was thrown upon them by subsequent events. And so it seems to be with the Record of Creation: it can only be rightly understood in proportion as we become acquainted with the details of the matters to which it refers. Any interpretation ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland

... such evil practices are too much overlooked by many physicians; yet it is certain that thousands of patients might, by timely warning on these matters, be saved from unspeakable mental and physical sufferings. To give sensible and intelligible directions on a subject as delicate as it is important in medical practice, it will be necessary to enter ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens

... it all, you know. I cleared up every thing in the completest way. In fact, I made a full, ample, intelligible, and perfectly satisfactory explanation of the whole thing. I showed that it was all a mistake, you know—that I was humbugged by the mails, and all that sort of thing, you know. So she relented, and we made it all up, and I took her out driving, and we had a glorious ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... has done in bringing the indigesta moles which he found before him into something like order. He made the first step, and a very considerable step it was, in translating the strange phraseology of Sanskrit grammarians into something at least intelligible to European scholars. How it could have been imagined that their extraordinary grammatical phraseology was borrowed by the Hindus from the Greeks, or that its formation was influenced by the grammatical schools established among ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... the words these voices used were intelligible to Abel Keeling, and he knew not what it was in the tone of these last words that reminded him of the honour due to the Mary of the Tower. Blister-white and at the end of her life as she was, Abel Keeling was still jealous of her dignity; ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions

... Sanskrit word is madandha. Literally rendered, it would be "juice-blind". This can scarcely be intelligible to the general European reader. Hence the long-winded adjectival clause ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... suspicion of insanity, until he had so suddenly rushed away home. It was, therefore, possible that there might prove to be some important meaning in what he had said. At first "Cobbler" Horn had gathered nothing intelligible from the impassioned apostrophe of his excited little friend; but, by degrees, there dawned upon him some faint gleam of what its meaning might be. "The sec'tary!" That was the quaint term by which Tommy was wont to designate Miss Owen. But their conversation had ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth

... be utterly impossible for me to describe all the things which were shown to me; their number was so great that I could not reduce them sufficiently to order to define and render them intelligible. Besides which my sufferings are very great, and when I speak on the subject of my visions I behold them in my mind's eye portrayed in such vivid colours, that the sight is almost sufficient to cause a weak ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich

... under the influence of stars and horoscope. Nay, more, it imported that personality into him, making him a limb or member of Christ's body, and immortal as Christ was immortal. Nearly all the passages in which the word name is used in the New Testament become more intelligible if it be rendered personality. In Rev. xi. 13, the revisers are obliged to render it by persons, and should equally have done so in iii. 4: "Thou hast a few names (i.e. persons) in Sardis which did not defile ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... remarkable degree herself aware,—were the gifts with which she had been endowed. But she knew when she might use them honestly and when she ought to refrain from using them. Ralph had looked at her as men do look who wish to be allowed to love. All this to her was much more clearly intelligible than to Clarissa, who was two years her senior. Though she had seen Ralph but thrice, she already felt that she might have him on his knees before her, if she cared so to place him. But there was that suspicion ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... for a moment what she could have to think of, but, with an intelligible gesture of welcome, she beckoned me into my own room. The aspect of it was somewhat dreary; the walls were of bare plaster, but dazzlingly white, with one little black silhouette of a woman's head hanging in a common ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... promoter of the present Edition hath ventured to discard but few more upon his own judgment, the most considerable of which is that wretched piece of ribaldry in King Henry V. put into the mouths of the French Princess and an old Gentlewoman, improper enough as it is all in French and not intelligible to an English audience, and yet that perhaps is the best thing that can be said of it. There can be no doubt but a great deal more of that low stuff which disgraces the works of this great Author, was foisted in by the Players after his death, to please ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... several letters, it is impossible to develope proceedings which it is more easy to put into execution than to describe. The process alone of printing in relief would require a vast number of pages, and some plates, in order to make it perfectly intelligible; but the greater part of what composes these branches of instruction is amply detailed in a work, which I shall communicate to you, entitled "Essai sur l'Education des Aveugles, par Valentin Hauey, auteur de la maniere de les instruire," ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... suffered, though she complained of little fixed pain. When I asked her if there was anything she wanted, her answer was she wanted nothing but death, and some of her words were: 'God grant me patience, pray for me, oh, pray for me!' Her voice was affected, but as long as she spoke she was intelligible. ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... miscellaneous character: philological, antiquarian, historical. They do not, of course, profess to supply an exhaustive commentary; but are designed to afford elucidations and illustrations of the text that may be intelligible and instructive to the English reader, and possibly to some extent ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... Barrallier and the second mate met a native in the woods whom they brought on board. "He was a little elderly man, strait made, and spoke not one syllable that was intelligible." His legs and arms bore no proportion in length to the rest of his body, and his manner of ascending the ship's ladder was remarkable and proved that he was much accustomed to climbing. His method was "to stretch out his arms as far as he could reach and then bring his feet to the ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee

... a jumble this time; for Chellalu sings just as it comes, untrammelled by thoughts about sequence or sense, and when she forgets the words she calmly makes them up. And I cannot help thinking that Chellalu is very like her song; here is an intelligible bit, a line or two in order, then a cheerful tumble up, and an irresponsible conclusion. The tune too seems in character—"Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing"; the swinging old Jacobite air had fitted itself to a nursery song about the brave fire-lilies, and something in its abandon ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael

... and if we pause over them for long enough to see by what arts and devices, on the author's part, we have been enabled to shape them so strikingly—to see precisely how this episode has been given relief, that character made intelligible and vivid—we at once begin to stumble on many discoveries about the making of ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock

... tenacissimo"—of a very hard-fisted rich fellow—a term thoroughly significant in civilised times. He is doomed, by the way, to become bankrupt, and fall into such poverty that his offspring will be found dead in a ditch—a fate also intelligible in the nineteenth century. In another place we have among the saint's suitors "plebeius pauperrimus, qui in ea habitabat regione quae Stagni litoribus Aporici est contermina." The "Stagnum Aporicum" is Lochaber; so here we have a pauper from ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... wanted to make them understand the probability that some flood had come down the channel of the Castlereagh, and that we might therefore hope to find water below its junction with the Macquarie. This, with the aid of Yuranigh, our own native, was at length made intelligible to our Barwan guide, and he shaped his course accordingly. He took us through scrubs, having in the centre those holes where water usually lodges for some time after rain, where some substratum of clay happens to be retentive ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... it is rather a singular fact, that the two intervening dialects of the Beaver Indians and Tsekanies, kindred nations, should differ more from the Chippewayan than the Carrier; the two latter nations being perfectly intelligible to each other, while the former are but very imperfectly understood by their immediate neighbours, ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean

... but sometimes unjustly. When we consider the crop of blunders that have gathered about the texts of celebrated books, we shall be grateful for the labours of brilliant scholars who have cleared these away and made obscure passages intelligible. ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley

... to the activity enjoyed. This is the state which permits the production of a highly pleasurable whole, of which each part shall also communicate for itself a distinct and conscious pleasure; and hence arises the definition, which I trust is now intelligible, that poetry, or rather a poem, is a species of composition, opposed to science, as having intellectual pleasure for its object, and as attaining its end by the use of language natural to us in a state of excitement,—but distinguished from other species of composition, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... Scots had theirs, and the Scotchman who had not yet acquired the cadence of the English, would naturally use his own in speaking their language; therefore, if he was better understood than the native, his recitative must be more intelligible than that of the English; of consequence, the dialect of the Scots had an advantage over that of their fellow-subjects, and this was another strong presumption that the modern English had corrupted their language in the article ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... two of the songs of this hitherto unheard-of poet of humble life.... Rude and bald as these things appear in a verbal translation, and rough as they might possibly appear, even were the originals intelligible, we confess we are disposed to think they would of themselves justify Dr Mackay (editor of Mackay's Poems) in placing this herdsman-lover among the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... young men who ask permission as a favour to be allowed to come here, which one has dreamed of offering me marriage? Never a single one. De Gery no more than the rest. I am attractive, but I make men afraid. It is intelligible enough. What can one imagine of a girl brought up as I have been, without a mother, among my father's models and mistresses? What mistresses, mon Dieu! And Jenkins for sole guardian. Oh, when ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... single choir. They reveled in the opportunity of combining eight vocal parts and bringing three choirs with accompanying orchestras into play at the same time. They were proud of proving how by counterpoint the most dissimilar and mutually-jarring factors could be wrought into a whole, intelligible to the scientific musician, though unedifying to the public. In the neglect of their art, considered as an art of interpretation and expression, they abandoned themselves to intricate problems and to the presentation ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... looks like while asleep, Madame," said Bingle, with the air of a shrewd bargainer. "You see, I've become quite an expert on babies. I don't believe there is a better judge of —I beg your pardon. I forgot to inquire if my English is quite intelligible. ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... beside her with peculiar pleasure, and that she listened with intense interest to an account of some exciting cricket match, though the phrases, 'caught off a tice', 'stumped off his ground', and 'the leg hit for three', were as intelligible to her as Sanskrit. She also fancied, having set her heart upon seeing it, that she saw a certain increase of gentleness in Laurie's manner, that he dropped his voice now and then, laughed less than usual, was a little absent-minded, and settled the afghan ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... other is the goal. The process which began when He rose from the dead, whatever view we may take of the condition of His earthly life during the forty days of parenthesis, could have no rational and intelligible ending, except the Ascension. Thus we should think of it not only as the end of a sweet friendship, but as the end of the gracious manifestation of the earthly life, the counterpart of the Incarnation and descent to earth, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... d'aujourd'hui," Serra di Falco's "Antichita della Sicilia," Walpole's "Ansayrii," and Canon Tristram's "Land of Israel." The difficulty has been to select from these copious stores the most salient and noteworthy facts, and to marshal them in such a form as would make them readily intelligible to the ordinary English reader. How far he has succeeded in doing this he must leave the public to judge. In making his bow to them as a "Reader" and Writer "of Histories,"[04] he has to thank them for a degree of favour which has given a ready sale to all his previous works, and has carried ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... papers justified the subsequent verdict of the Coroner's jury that Hunter committed suicide in a fit of temporary insanity, for they were covered with a lot of meaningless scribbling, the words wrongly spelt and having no intelligible connection with each other. There was one sum that he had evidently tried repeatedly to do correctly, but which came wrong in a different way every time. The fact that he had the razor in his possession seemed to point to his having ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... happy to hear so simple, easy, and intelligible an explanation of Uncle Jack's peculiarities; and I only hope that, for the future, the sides of his scalene triangle may never be ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... volume is to condense, and present in an intelligible form, all important established facts in the science of soil-culture. The author claims originality, as to the discovery of facts and principles, in but few cases. During ten years of preparatory study for this work, he has sought the rewards of industry, in sifting out the certain and the ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... not be put to death nor handed over to the princes, as he had already been, and his consent for Sedekiah's sake, as well as for his own, to prevaricate to the princes are features not found in the other reports of such interviews, but intelligible and natural after the terrible treatment he had suffered. Dr. Skinner, too, admits that the two accounts may be read as of different experiences of the Prophet, "if we can suppose that the offence with which he is charged in XXXVIII. 1 ff. could have been ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... Tecumseh, taking a roll of elm bark, and extending it on the ground, drew forth his scalping knife, and with the point presently edged upon the back a plan of the country, its hills, woods, rivers, morasses, and roads—a plan which, if not as neat, was fully as intelligible as if a surveyor had prepared it. Pleased with this unexpected talent in Tecumseh, with his defeat of the Americans near Brownstown, and with his having, by his characteristic boldness, induced the Indians, not of his own tribe, to cross the river prior to ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... never very intelligible, has been gravely called in question. The advocates and self-supposed practisers of "High Art" are beginning to be looked upon with doubt, and their peculiar phraseology to be treated with even a certain degree of ridicule. And other forms of Art are partly developed among us, which ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... fact that the Christian message and work are finding greater power over the people because conveyed to them in more intelligible terms. It can come home to them in their common life ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... partial and provisional, is the friend of Shakespeare, because it continually brings to the student of his work illustration and confirmation of its truth. There are many things in his plays which are more intelligible and significant to us than they were to the men who heard their musical cadence on the rude Elizabethan stage, because the ripening of experience has given the prophetic thought an historical demonstration; and there are truths in these plays which will be read with clearer eyes by the men of the ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... sixty or sixty-five that their hair begins to get white." The Domarr are a mountain race, nomads, shepherds, and robbers. Travellers speak of them as "Gipsies." A specimen which we have of their language would, with the exception of one word, which is probably an error of the transcriber, be intelligible to any English Gipsy, and be called pure Romany. Finally, the ordinary Dom calls himself a Dom, his wife a Domni, and the being a Dom, or the collective Gipsydom, Domnipana. D in Hindustani is found as r in English Gipsy speech—e.g., doi, a wooden spoon, is known in Europe as roi. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... magistrate, and taking from the table the volume of Beranger's songs, he endeavored to prove to the prisoner that each number in the note which he had shown M. Segmuller corresponded with a word on the page indicated, and that these various words formed several intelligible phrases. This overpowering evidence did not seem to trouble May in the least. After expressing the same admiration for this novel system of correspondence that a child would show for a new toy, he declared his belief that no one could equal ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... conception, and possessed of a collective authority even greater than his own. To retain Sparta temporarily at the head of Greece was an ambition quite consistent with the more criminal designs of Pausanias; and his whole conduct at Byzantium is rendered more intelligible than it appears in history, when he points out that "for Sparta to maintain her ascendancy two things are needful: first, to continue the war by land, secondly, to disgust the Ionians with their sojourn at Byzantium, to send them with their ships ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... the soul. The Deity he conceived as that living force which rules all and resides everywhere. Xenocrates, though like Speusippus infected with Pythagoreanism, was the most faithful of Plato's successors. He distinguished three spheres, the sensible, the intelligible, and a third compounded of the two, to which correspond respectively, sense, intellect and opinion (doxa). Cicero notes, however, that both Speusippus and Xenocrates abandon the Socratic ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... her primal, virgin sense of it; but, to set against that, she had entered more and more into possession. She had found out the secret of its working and had controlled it, reduced it to an almost intelligible method. You could think of it as a current of transcendent power, hitherto mysteriously inhibited. You made the connection, having cut off all other currents that interfered, and then you simply turned it ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair

... inadequate manner, by which I can testify to you the extreme interest which I have felt, and the great advantage which I have derived, from studying your grand and noble work on Geographical Distribution. Should you be induced to read my volume, I venture to remark that it will be intelligible only by reading the whole straight through, as it is very much condensed. It would be a high gratification to me if any portion interested you. But I am perfectly well aware that you will entirely disagree with the conclusion at which I ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... Vasishtha for his father and behaved towards the Muni as such. One day, O son of Kunti, the child addressed Vasishtha, that first of Brahmana sages, as father, in the presence of his mother Adrisyanti. Adrisyanti, hearing the very intelligible sound father sweetly uttered by her son, addressed him with tearful eyes and said, 'O child, do not address this thy grandfather as father? Thy father, O son, has been devoured by a Rakshasa in a different forest. O innocent one, he is not thy father whom thou regardest ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... himself, it is here maintained: A being can manifest itself only when it is not merely one, but has another, an opposition (the many), in itself, whereby it is revealed to itself as unity. With the addition of certain Kantian ideas, in particular the idea of transcendental freedom and the intelligible character, Schelling's theosophy now ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... Rommany, which they speak, though mixed with English words, may be considered as tolerably pure, from the fact that it is intelligible to the Gypsy race in the heart of Russia. Whatever crimes they may commit, their vices are few, for the men are not drunkards, nor are the women harlots; there are no two characters which they hold in so much abhorrence, nor do any words when ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... same as in conversation, was beyond their comprehension. At first, they gathered around every time a letter was received and listened eagerly. Then arose the desire for them to be able to make out those intelligible ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs

... had so many of her own. She had merely asked a civil question, and to be sure she knew it would meet with a civil answer. She was quite satisfied—quite. She had rather perhaps that he would have said at once that he didn't choose to be communicative, because that would have been plain and intelligible. However, she had no right to be offended of course. He was the best judge, and had a perfect right to say what he pleased; nobody could dispute that for a moment. Oh ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... satisfactory translation can be made only by one who understands the language and SPIRIT of the Russian people. As Tolstoi's writings contain so many idioms it is not an easy task to render them into intelligible English, and the one who successfully accomplishes this must be a native of Russia, commanding the English and Russian languages ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... Nemours's discourse equally pleased and offended her; she was convinced by it of the truth of all the Queen-Dauphin had led her to think; she found in it somewhat gallant and respectful, but also somewhat bold and too intelligible; the inclination she had for the Duke gave her an anxiety which it was not in her power to control; the most obscure expressions of a man that pleases, move more than the most open declaration of one we have no liking for; she made no ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette

... want to know this,' I said, speaking slowly, in fear lest my language should be little more intelligible to them than their PATOIS to me. 'There are a dozen horsemen in the old castle there, are ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... a cynicism which There is a word which I wish to say There is another reason why There is another sense in which. There is much force in There is no danger of our overrating the There is no evidence that There is no good reason why There is no mistaking the fact There is no other intelligible answer There is no parallel to There is no sufficient reason for There is none other. There is not a shadow of There is one other point connected with There is one other point to which There is something suggestive ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser

... and Michael Angelo, for these last hundred years, I cannot at this instant, for the first school which I have some power of organizing under St. George's laws, get a good print of Raphael's Madonna of the tribune, or an ordinarily intelligible view of the side ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin

... was not so easily silenced. After a few moments' conversation he broke out into most audacious Latin, in which the only words clearly intelligible were; ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... died at the age of forty-seven, had 'studied eight languages critically, eight less perfectly, but all intelligible with a dictionary, and twelve least perfectly, but all attainable.' Teignmouth's Life of Sir W. Jones, ed. 1815, p. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... pieces in the howdah and I reached for the heaviest automatically, leaning over to see whatever it was. There was nothing intelligible in the hell of noise and nothing in sight. I tell you, I could not see a hair of any creature under me—but Neela Deo. And don't fancy Neela Deo was quiet this while. My howdah was pitching me to the four quarters of ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... The greater part of people, too, understand better what is meant by a quantity of a particular commodity, than by a quantity of labour. The one is a plain palpable object; the other an abstract notion, which though it can be made sufficiently intelligible, is not altogether so ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... were as busy as beavers dam-building. They had a lot of work to do before they had their new defences right. We heard them driving stakes and spading; we heard their voices with snatches of sentences intelligible, and occasionally the energetic, shouted, guttural commands of their officers. All through that night I never heard a British officer speak above a conversational tone. The orders were definite enough, but given with a certain companionable kindliness. I have spoken of the genuine ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... the sacred life of a king ought to be kept in cotton wool, like other curiosities. Meanwhile his uncle, the Count of Syracuse, proposed the other course which, though not heroic, would have been intelligible and even patriotic. This was to absolve his subjects from their obedience, and embark on the first available ship for foreign parts. Fitting the action to the word, the Count himself started for Turin. Francis awaited the ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... translate them into intelligible English, but some conception of their style and contents may be had from one or two extracts. In explaining the situation which confronts the world, the Emperor writes: "For, if the raging avarice ... which, without ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott

... suggestive of Polo's four sheikhs (Ellis, I. 131; Owen, II. 102, 132. See also Sonnerat, II. 56.) Though the Arabs were in the habit of navigating to Sofala, in about lat. 20 deg. south, in the time of Mas'udi (beginning of 10th century), and must have then known Madagascar, there is no intelligible indication of it in any of their ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... am utterly unable to guess; but you are surely yourself too intelligent to suppose that anybody but an imbecile could be deceived by it. Spare me any more of this elaborate nonsense and once for all tell me whether you refuse to give me an intelligible account of where I am and how I came here. If so, I shall proceed to ascertain my whereabouts ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... in the Somers Collections. The author was evidently a zealous Roman Catholic, and must have had access to good sources of information. I strongly suspect that he had been in communication, directly or indirectly, with James himself. No name is given at length; but the initials are perfectly intelligible, except in one place. It is said that the D. of Y. was reminded of the duty which he owed to his brother by P.M.A.C.F. I must own myself quite unable to decipher the last five letters. It is some consolation ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... mood at all, but content myself with giving the feelings, incidents, and interests of what is purely private life, connecting them no farther with things that are of a more general nature, than is indispensable to render the narrative intelligible and accurate. With these explanations, which are made in order to prevent the person who may happen first to commence the perusal of this manuscript from throwing it into the fire, as a silly attempt to write a more silly fiction, I shall proceed at once to the commencement ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... meal, of which they partook. How much time was occupied in all this, or when the coach set out, does not appear; but they travelled the whole night, and until towards noon the next day, before they got to Colchester. This is rather more intelligible; but as to their up-journey I really am puzzled, and shall be glad ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.11.17 • Various

... good Poulains, separately and in unison, had begged the Senator to try and find out something about their curious guest, as she apparently knew too little French to make herself intelligible. ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... become meaningless. The figures employed also, like the watergourds and wine-skins of past generations and of other peoples, no longer appeal to us as familiar objects, but require an effort of the imagination to make them intelligible and vivid to our mental vision. If the translator carries these figures of speech over into his new rendering, they will often demand an explanation on their own account, and will thus fail of their original intent; while if he clothes the thought in some new figure he takes the ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... that they had no reason to suppose they were injuring any one by so doing. As this was all said in Maltese, scarcely a word of which language Zappa understood, he was not a little puzzled, and was insisting on having it repeated in some more intelligible tongue, when Marianna, who was highly delighted with it, not the less so that she knew it contained scarcely a word of truth, volunteered to translate it into Italian, and immediately began with such little additions and touches of her own as she ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... is very unintelligible in the present condition of our knowledge. But here is another passage even less intelligible and one which in its naivete almost suggests that the speaker is playing with us. George Pelham says to his friend James Howard at the first sitting at which James Howard was present:[73] "Your voice, Jim, I can ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage

... benefit. What rapture to be questioned about those very rules in French grammar which one had rubbed up the week before; to have pet passages selected from Shakespeare, and find the Latin prose for translation become gradually intelligible, as one telling substantive gave the clue to the whole! Once assured of the meaning, it was easy to pick out the words, skimming lightly over difficult phrases, but making a great show of accuracy when opportunity arose. As to the elegance of the translation from English into Latin the less said ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... was, and all the details of the busy field of labour he had left just outside the door. He wished that the walls of the square room were not so thick, that some sound from the town might come in and mingle with the chant. He strained his ear in vain to catch a word of the Hebrew which might be intelligible to him. He wondered much what sort of a man this Jew might be, actuated by what motives, impelled by what impulses to his lonely task. All the sorrow of a hope deferred through ages, and a long torture patiently borne, seemed gathered in ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... with a slight elevation of his eyebrows. "My dear madam, it is most plain, but I fear my want of good English does render me not quite intelligible." ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... dependent on a particular effort of the eye, and destroyed his surface. But his business was to give, not a distinct reflection, but the colors of the reflection in mystery and disorder upon his near water, all perfectly vivid, but none intelligible; and had he done so, the eye would not have troubled itself to search them out; it would not have cared whence or how the colors came, but it would have felt them to be true and right, and rested satisfied ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... floor, and talked I know not what awful rhodomontade. These were the confabulations of the tap-room and the kitchen; but the speculations and rumours current over the card-table and claret glasses were hardly more congruous or intelligible. In fact, nobody knew well what to make of it. Nutter certainly had disappeared, and there was an uneasy feeling about him. The sinister terms on which he and Sturk had stood were quite well known, and though nobody spoke out, every ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... Cromwell" was finished in August, 1845, when he was fifty years of age. It was the greatest contribution to English history; Mr. Froude thinks, which has been made in the present century. "Carlyle was the first to make Cromwell and his age intelligible to mankind." Indeed, he reversed the opinions of mankind respecting that remarkable man, which was a great accomplishment. No one doubts the genuineness of the portrait. Cromwell was almost universally supposed, fifty years ago, to be a hypocrite as well as a usurper. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... down his hair, smiled with great self-satisfaction, and looked up in the reader's face with the air of a man who had made up his mind to recollect every word he heard. The first two or three lines were intelligible enough; but then the technicalities began, and the little man began to look rather dubious. Then came a whole string of complicated trusts, and he was regularly at sea. As the reader proceeded, it was quite apparent that it was a hopeless case, and the little ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... were in my power to give you anything, which I have not already given, I should be oppressed by the letter now before me. But no! I feel myself rich in being poor; and because I have nothing to bestow, I know how much I have bestowed. Perhaps I shall not make myself intelligible; but the strong and unmixed affection which I bear to you seems to exclude all emotions of gratitude, and renders even the principle of esteem latent and inert. Its presence is not perceptible, though its absence could not ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... except by using such a phrase as shallow pond—and this is inadequate, because a pond has a sloping bottom and a rice field necessarily a level one—it is difficult to describe a rice field in terms intelligible to a Western farmer. The Japanese have a special word for a rice field, ta, water field, written [Kanji: ta]. It will be noticed that the ideograph looks like a water field in four compartments. Another word, hata or hatake,[59] written [Kanji: hata], ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... laboriously computed to have happened in the year 1000; but there is no exact chronology in these things, but a continual uncertain guessing after such; so that one eye in History as regards them is as if put out;—neither indeed have I yet had the luck to find any decipherable and intelligible map of Norway: so that the other eye of History is much blinded withal, and her path through those wild regions and epochs is an extremely dim and chaotic one. An evil that much demands remedying, and especially ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle

... and geological structure. We have hitherto spoken of a central chain and its ramifications in a loose manner; but it would be desirable to convey more precise ideas of the structure of this mountain island; and, as the system happens to be very simple and intelligible, it affords an example, on a small scale, which may give the unscientific reader a general idea of the nature of grander operations. Having traversed the island from north to south, and from east to west, not without an eye to its general structure ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... his value could be expressed in intelligible terms. But as a party liability, or asset,—many a good Republican wishes he knew which,—he remains an enigma. There is not one of the array of elders of either political persuasion who, while laughing at his satirical sword-play, does not watch him covertly out of the ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... performers displayed the rings upon their fingers. Pelema (the cousin—our cousin) was described as watching from the house and whenever he saw any boy not doing anything, running and doing it himself. Fanny's verse was less intelligible, but it was accompanied in the dance with a pantomime of terror well-fitted to call up her haunting, indefatigable and diminutive presence ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... opportunity: though I hardly know if these subjects require any elucidation; the facts in the New Testament being recorded in so clear a manner by the Evangelists themselves, that I think they must be intelligible even to your apprehension. ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley

... has been made to speculate upon the setting of this record in the larger record of Spanish life. That is a work for the future. But enough history of Spain and in general of continental Europe is given to render intelligible the various and varied governmental activities exercised by Spain in the island. There is, no doubt, much omitted that future research may reveal, and yet it is just to state that the record is fairly continuous, and that no salient factors in the ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk

... in experience; and, if by substance is here meant the permanent object of sensuous intuition, the possibility of a simple phenomenon is perfectly inconceivable. Reason affords no good grounds for admitting the existence of intelligible beings, or of intelligible properties of sensuous things, although—as we have no conception either of their possibility or of their impossibility—it will always be out of our power to affirm dogmatically that they do not exist. In the explanation of given phenomena, ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... These indications of an overtaxed brain increased, and eventually forced Borrow to leave London. His work was thoroughly uncongenial. He disliked reviewing; he had failed in his endeavours to render Proximate Causes into intelligible German; and it had taken him some time to overcome his dislike of the sordid stories of crime and criminals that he had to read and edit. He became gloomy and depressed, and prone to compare the real conditions of authorship with those that ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... said, nodding his head. "So you are the man who took this woman to the Merrimac. And then to your home, and Louis d'Epernay followed you there, and, naturally, you killed him. Well, it is intelligible. You were not acting for Carson after all, but were infatuated with this woman. Well—but——" He wheeled and turned to Jacqueline. "I will marry ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert

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

... time for such search, or even for the examination of well-known and published materials; and have therefore merely collected, from the sources nearest at hand, such information as appeared absolutely necessary to render the series of Plates now published by the Arundel Society intelligible and interesting to those among its Members who have not devoted much time to the examination of mediaeval works. I have prefixed a few remarks on the relation of the art of Giotto to former and subsequent efforts; ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin

... will be found a plain and intelligible guide in theory and practice, to any who desire to improve or excel, and must rely mainly on self-education.—Christian ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells



Words linked to "Intelligible" :   comprehendible, unintelligible, comprehensible, intelligibility



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