"Unbelievable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... followed the little woman into the house through a small front hall, from which a narrow flight of stairs shot aloft with almost unbelievable steepness, and into a large room. Albert had a swift impression of big windows full of plants, of pictures of ships and schooners on the walls, of a table set ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... in the early fifties," he said. "The Mexicans never got this far, so it was government land. Everybody got a hundred and sixty acres. And such acres! The stories they tell about how much wheat they got to the acre are almost unbelievable. Then several things happened. The sharpest and steadiest of the pioneers held what they had and added to it from the other fellows. It takes a great many quarter sections to make a bonanza farm. It wasn't long before it was 'most ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... that I was asked to believe the unbelievable. It was impossible to reconstruct in that quiet house a scene of violence. It was equally impossible, in view, for instance, of that calm and filial inscription in the history of Bolivar County, to connect Miss Emily with it. She had killed a woman, forsooth! Miss Emily, of ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... trustee two million dollars. Tyringham had not been heard of in years. The only son of a most practical father, he had been from youth a victim of the wanderlust, absenting himself from home for long periods. For ten years he had been on the list of the missing. That Hood should be this man was unbelievable. But the senior Deering seemed not to question his identity. He sat down with a deep sigh and then ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... brooks and springs flowing inside and out, and an inexpressible number of people in it,' etc. Dietrich von Schachten describes Venice in this way: 'Venice lies in the sea, and is built neither on land nor on mountain, but on wooden piles, which is unbelievable to one who has not seen it'; and Candia: 'Candia is a beautiful town in the sea, well built; also a very fruitful island, with all sorts of things that men need for living.' He describes a ride through ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... them are taking it pretty seriously, judging by their looks. But the maples and some more of them, particularly the maples, with daredevil recklessness, have resolved, as it were, to die with their boots on, and flame out in such violent and unbelievable colors that we feel obliged to take testimony in certain outrageous cases, and file away the exhibits in the Family Bible where nobody will bother them. The harvest is past, the summer is ended. Rainy days you can see how played-out and forlorn the ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... and there is none to tell us. That which is actually happening were unbelievable if we did not see it, from hour to hour, from day to day. Horror succeeding horror has in some sort blunted our sensibilities. Not only are our sympathies numbed by the immensity of the slaughter and the sorrow, but patriotism itself is chilled by the selfish thought that, having ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... the complex nature of this boy came the sex motive. Already he dreamed of having women in his arms. He looked shyly at the ankles of women crossing the street, and listened eagerly when the crowd about the stove in Wildman's fell to telling smutty stories. He sank to unbelievable depths of triviality in sordidness, looking shyly into dictionaries for words that appealed to the animal lust in his queerly perverted mind and, when he came across it, lost entirely the beauty of the old Bible tale of Ruth in the suggestion of intimacy between man and woman that it brought ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... matter of caste rites and rumours of an actually maturing husband, had brought her very near the end of her tether. Again Thea was right. Her brave impulse of the heart had only been just in time. And hard upon that unbelievable good fortune followed the news ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... said Warcraft, who poured himself another drink, began pacing the floor and took up where Banner had left off. "We've never even been lost on patrol. And now they do this. It's unbelievable! Potato fertilizer and tractor fuel. We're supposed to travel thirty-six light-years, pick up one thousand sleds of the stuff, deliver it to some God-forsaken farm planet another thirty years out, ...
— Unspecialist • Murray F. Yaco
... to the first record of my own playing, I heard things which seemed unbelievable to me. Was I, after years of public playing, actually making mistakes that I would be the first to condemn in any one of my own pupils? I could hardly believe my ears, and yet the unrelenting machine showed that in some places I had failed to play both hands exactly together, ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... that the cost of the war has now risen to the almost unbelievable total of over $130,000,000 a day.[2] That is more than the total cost of the whole war between Russia and Turkey in 1828. In a single great day in the battles on the Somme, or in Belgium, the British have used as much ammunition as they ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... winter she had fought out her problems at the little country school, relying implicitly upon Doctor Queerington's friendship and guidance. His weekly letters, couched in paragraphs of technical perfection, seemed to her oracles of wisdom and beauty. Then the amazing and unbelievable thing had happened! He, the great Doctor Queerington, her father's friend, her friend, the man whom she respected more than any one else in the world, had chosen her, a young, inexperienced girl to ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... searching hers as if what he had heard was unbelievable. "Your engagements must be very imperative. I have not seen you for nearly six months and naturally my ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... was seized by comprehension as by a fit. "Then there is an artist—the artist of whom you talk—who is one of the apaches! It is unbelievable!" ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... she who attracted the crowds—the eloquence of Monsieur Philidor which drew them within the arena. Never in their lives had the Fabiani family enjoyed such success. And now—that the Signor and Signora should go! It was unthinkable—unbelievable! Cleofonte could not permit it. But Yvonne was obdurate. There were reasons—the Signor would understand that—which made this decision inevitable. They must go—at once, as soon as the ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... uniformity of style; while the construction of most of the cathedrals ran through the centuries with various architecture in vogue at different periods. The interior, however, lacks interest, and the absence of stained glass gives an air of coldness. It seems almost unbelievable that the original stained windows were deliberately destroyed at the end of the Eighteenth Century by a so-called architect, James Wyatt, who had the restoration of the cathedral in charge. To his everlasting infamy, "Wyatt swept away screens, chapels and porches, desecrated and destroyed the tombs ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... unbelievable when I reflect that Rosalind—"daughter to the banished Duke"—and Stella and Helen of Troy, and all the other famous fair ones of history, were each like that ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... us? Milton's account of the most important event in his whole system of the universe, the fall of the angels, is evidently unbelievable to himself; and the more so, that it is wholly founded on, and in a great part spoiled and degraded from, Hesiod's account of the decisive war of the younger gods with the Titans. The rest of his ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... whom I have not spoken once in eight years." Tears of anger glistened in her eyes; her voice shrilled up. "And yet, since you have not denied it, since you put forward this pitiful plea that you have been duped, we must believe the unbelievable." ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... ride over the bridge without the fear of meeting him and with the feeling that the place was more than ever hers. It was gloriously empty of any claim but its own. To gallop across the fields, to ride more slowly on some height with nothing between her and great massy clouds of unbelievable whiteness, to feel herself relieved of an immense responsibility, was like finding the new world she had longed for. She wished sincerely that Francis would not come back; she wished that, riding one day, she might find Sales Hall blotted out, leaving no sign, no ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... be conventional in type, they are, thanks to Bjornson's sense of humour, alive; and the theme of the estrangement and reconciliation of the "newly-married couple" is treated with delicacy and charm. It is true that it is almost unbelievable that the hero could be so stupid as to allow the "confidante" to accompany his young wife when he at last succeeds in wresting her from her parents' jealous clutches; but, on the other hand, that lady, ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... dirty clothes hanging from the fire-escapes increase the depression. Nowhere in the city does one realise so fully the disadvantages of a lack of space. New York, being an island, has had no room to spread. It is a town of human sardines. In the poorer quarters the congestion is unbelievable. ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the room, as if they had pumped all the air out of it. Wouldn't it be dreadful to produce that effect on people! But they never seem to be aware of it. I remember once meeting a famous Bore; I really must tell you about it, it shows the unbelievable ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... hypnotist for many years, I have seen astounding and apparently miraculous results by individuals using self-hypnosis. Many of these cases seem unbelievable to those not familiar with hypnotic phenomena. It should be remembered, though, that many individuals seek hypnosis only when all other forms of therapy have failed. This is so common that hypnosis has come to be known as a port of last call. Yet, despite ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... fall of 1886 was a remarkable as well as a disagreeable one. We played at Princeton when the field at that time combined the elements of stickiness and slipperiness to an unbelievable extent. It rained heavily throughout the game and the proverbial 'hog on ice' could not have slipped and slathered around worse than all the players on both sides. There was a long controversy about who should act as referee (in those days we had only one official) and after ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... unable to read or to write except with the assistance of a cumbrous machine. That any man, laboring under such a disability, should yet persevere in pursuing the rocky road of the historian seems almost unbelievable; yet that is just ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... bedraggled finery berated the man who sat with bloated eyes across from her. The waiter looked on sardonically. At another table were two derelicts from one of the Garden side shows. A truculent and beady-eyed dwarf whose face hardly showed above the boards was brow-beating a cringing giant of unbelievable immensity. "You crabbed my act, you big stiff," shrilled the midget truculently—and his huge vis-a-vis fell into a ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... giant Cossack, with herculean strength and unbelievable prowess, was fighting his assailants. A sword had pierced him through the left hand, another had scratched his cheek and a third had struck him in the right shoulder. But still, unmindful of these wounds, he fought on with the same determination ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... intended his friend and partner's son to become his own son-in-law. He had the greatest respect for the Ruskins, and every reason for desiring to link their fortunes still more closely with those of his own family. But to Mrs. Ruskin, with her religious feelings, it was intolerable, unbelievable, that the son whom she had brought up in the nurture and admonition of the strictest Protestantism should fix his heart on an alien in race and creed. The wonder is that their relations were not more strained; there are few young men who would have kept unbroken allegiance to a mother whose sympathy ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... went out of the house! The possibility was so agonizing that she rose blindly from her chair and turned from the window as if the quiet street, filled with the dreamy sunshine of October, had offered an appalling, an unbelievable sight to her eyes. If he had ceased to love her, she was helpless; and this sense of helplessness awoke a feeling of rage in her heart. If he did not come back, she could never go after him. She could only sit and wait until she grew as old and as ugly as Miss Amelia. ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... was, each day saw some stride forward, some new victory that Keith had won over his blindness, until by the end of the week the boy could move about the house and wait upon himself with a facility almost unbelievable when one remembered his listless helplessness of a ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... remarkable, to others amusing, and to the minority a thing unbelievable, that before the end of the first week William should have been manager of the office so far as its routine was concerned. Every one who has had the honour of acquaintance with a first-class office boy will understand. Those who have not had that experience will not, and to them ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... and when Tex made sixty points out of a possible hundred, he felt that he had shot well. When Hopalong went to the line his friends knew that they would now see shooting such as would be almost unbelievable, that the best draw-and-shoot marksman in their State was the man who limped slightly as he advanced and who chewed reflectively on his fifty-cent cigar. He wore two guns and he stepped with confidence ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... constant and common. Leaving minor disturbances out of account, there were during this period two huge Mahommedan rebellions, besides the cataclysmic Taiping rising which lasted ten years and is supposed to have destroyed the unbelievable total of one hundred million persons. The empire, torn by internecine warfare, surrendered many of its essential prerogatives to foreigners, and by accepting the principle of extraterritoriality prepared the road to ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... back now. I was merely walking to the gate with Mr. Glenarm. It is so fine to have him back again, so unbelievable!” ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... his chance and struck. There lay the head; Solem still held the body, which jerked under his hand. The thing was done so quickly that the two sections of the bird were still one in my eyes; I could not grasp a separation so sudden and unbelievable, and it took my sight a second or two to overtake the event. Bewilderment was in the expression of this detached head, which looked as though it could not believe what had happened, and raised itself ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... an involuntary murmur or so, as the District Attorney and his assistant bent over this crude presentation of something—they hardly knew what—which this old but long trusted detective was offering them in substantiation of the well-nigh unbelievable ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... us can be satisfied when two-thirds of the American citizens chose not to vote last year in a national election. Too many Americans feel powerless against the influence of private lobbying groups and the unbelievable flood of private campaign money which threatens ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and why? An author! To her he would be no less interesting because he was unsuccessful. Stories ... love stories: and to-morrow she would know the joy of reading them! It was almost unbelievable; it was too good to be true. It filled her with indefinable fear. Until now none of her prayers had ever been answered. Why should God give particular attention to such a prayer, when He had ignored all others? Certainly there ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... him seriously. "I have thought of that. You know, I have faith in a great many unbelievable things. I can think of nothing more beautiful than the spirit that lives in the heart of a bird. I am sure, if I were dying, I would like to have a bird singing near me. Hopelessness cannot be so deep that bird-song will ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... stand on. The anima, or spirit, being merely the product of certain elements combined in life, was wiped out when those elements dissolved their union in death. It was the flame of a candle blown out. Yet with what unbelievable persistence this doctrine had survived through history. Science had annihilated it again and again, but these people resolutely stopped their ears to science. They could not answer science with ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... recreation wilderness for ninety millions of people, it is worth ninety millions of dollars, and not a penny less. It is a pleasure park of which the greatest of the nations of the earth,—whichever that may be,—might well be overbearingly proud; and its accessibility is almost unbelievable ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... his head was right down through the neck ring and inside the suit proper, his arms half withdrawn from the sleeves, knees buckled to an almost unbelievable angle considering the ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... felt like a man who had been racked, for the Rangar's strength was nearly unbelievable), he started toward where the mullah sat glowering in the cave mouth. He found the man who had carried his bag asleep at the foot of the ramp, and taking the bag away from him, let him lie there. And it took him five minutes to drag his hurt weary bones up the ramp, for the fight ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... Blue Devils had come to him, here and there and everywhere. Dorn remembered all he heard, and believed it, too, though some of the charges and some of the burdens attributed to these famed soldiers seemed unbelievable. His opportunity had now come. With the moving up to the front he would meet reality; and all within him, the keen, strange eagerness, the curiosity that perplexed, the unintelligible longing, the heat and burn ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... unbelievable situation! Historians wonder that the Aztecs of Cortez' time, with their comparatively high civilization, tolerated human sacrifices. But their human sacrifices were merciful compared with ours. What is cutting out a man's heart on an altar to propitiate a god, to hounding him to death through miserable ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... down the room to the far window and bug-eyed. One block away, at the end of Gorky Street, was Red Square. St. Basil's Cathedral at the far end, and unbelievable candy-cane construction of fanciful spirals, and every-colored turrets; the red marble mausoleum, Mecca of world Communism, housing the prophet Lenin and his two disciples; the long drab length of the GUM department store ...
— Combat • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Ferry inn, unknown to the map-maker and innocent of all use, lay a perfect floor for evening pacing with one's eyes upon the stars. It was the death mask of an ancient lake, done in purest alkali silt, and needing only the shadows cast by a low moon to make the illusion almost unbelievable. Slow precipitation, season after season, as the water dried, had left the lake bed smooth as a cast in plaster. Subsequent warpings had lifted the alkali crust into thin-lipped wavelets. But once upon the floor itself the resemblance to water vanished. The warpings and Grumblings took ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... he must be, speaking humanly, one of the wisest men in Canada. It was a scientific fact that at a time when men in the army were displaying incredible heroism, certain people at home were exhibiting unbelievable meanness. The people who used to attempt graft on the Patriotic Fund were the kindergarten of the college of national profiteers who came later. They were happily out-numbered by the people who were thankful for all they got and who in the greatest losses that ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... the answer of the world is: Once for all, your Popehood has become untrue. No matter how good it was, how good you say it is, we cannot believe it; the light of our whole mind, given us to walk-by from Heaven above, finds it henceforth a thing unbelievable. We will not believe it, we will not try to believe it,—we dare not! The thing is untrue; we were traitors against the Giver of all Truth, if we durst pretend to think it true. Away with it; let whatsoever likes come in the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... To Isabelle it was unbelievable. Everything they did during the day interested her. Her old passion for leadership spurred her on, but now it was a spur to excel in legitimate things. Her sense of rebellion was laid away, because she liked ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... dreaming over his almost unbelievable encounter with Miss Vernon—more concerned perhaps, be it said, about the fact that she had wept to part with him than about the recovery of his father's papers, when another traveller overtook him, ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... indulging his baser nature among the questionable attractions of the Inferno, she'd shot three hundred of her Precol credits on a formal black gown ... on what, yesterday, she would have considered a rather unbelievable gown. Even at an Ermetyne dinner she couldn't actually look dowdy in it. And then, accompanied by Gaya, who had turned out to be a very pleasant but not very communicative companion, she'd headed for a gambling room to make back ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... in that light against the gray of the earth, headed after them. Dane had a fleeting glimpse of curled tusks, of an open mouth, raw-red and wide enough to engulf his whole head, of shaggy legs driving at an unbelievable pace. Asaki snapped a beam from the needler. The white monster roared and came on. They dived for the scant cover offered as the graz bull died, not two yards away from the Chief Ranger, its heavy body skidding along the earth with the force of ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... which would serve to drain the subsoil. Finally, on top of all this, and to a depth of eighteen inches or so, was laid the finest soil they could procure. The result was the best possible field for intensive cultivation. It seems absolutely unbelievable that such an immense amount of pains should have been taken for such relatively small results. The need must have been very great. In many cases the terraces are only a few feet wide, although hundreds of yards in length. Usually they follow the natural ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... It is all unaccountable, unbelievable,—the ghost of the dream of a dream,—yet here it is, surrounded by the green hills, flooded with the frank light of noon, neighboured by a dirty, noisy little village of Arabs and Circassians on the east bank of the stream, and with real goats and lean, black cattle grazing between ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... illustrations of present needs and opportunities for service in this respect in the smaller communities. One of the first tasks of the church is the introduction of correct thought in regard to religious beliefs. It is almost unbelievable the amount of actual superstition and positively harmful beliefs that prevail under the guise of religion not only in rural but in urban communities. An example of this is the widespread belief in the second coming of Christ at an early date. ...
— Church Cooperation in Community Life • Paul L. Vogt
... great preparations were in the air. She went to see his father's sister, the gifted and vivacious Aunt Emily. They were to live in the country—somewhere right in the country, with grass and trees up to the door, and birds singing everywhere, and a tutor. For he was not to go back to school. Unbelievable! He was never to go back to school, and the head-master had written saying that he regretted the step, but that possibly it ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... is whispered from one to the other until everyone has heard it. The last person to whom the story was told is asked to relate it and then the person who originated the story is asked to read his written copy. It will be almost unbelievable how the facts of the story have changed in the telling. Scarcely ever will the story ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... pounced on the unbelievable thing, and called to Edwards for his light. "Worth, here's ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... landed, purportedly at the request of Obar Del Pargon, rebel leader of the anti-Presidential forces. That such an action should be condoned by the Imperial File is astounding enough; that it should be ordered by the Prime Portfolio himself is almost unbelievable. ...
— The Unnecessary Man • Gordon Randall Garrett
... of micrology, so far as the eye-piece and upper portions went, was like an ordinary microscope, but its magnifying power was to me unbelievable. It magnified the object under examination many thousand times more than the most powerful microscope in ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... Marxism. Washington's current effort to become The Pacific power and also The Asian power have been blocked and perhaps thwarted by the defeat of General MacArthur and his international forces in the Korean War of 1950-53, and by the unanticipated and unbelievable resistance mounted by the peoples of South East Asia against the repeated efforts made by Washington to replace the French imperial presence there after ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... It was unbelievable that a lumbering coach, with two fat horses, an old lady in a hoop skirt and a bow-legged coachman, could have disappeared from the face of the earth. Nevertheless, this seemed the case. Nobody knew where Cousin Ann had gone. Telephones were ringing into the night in ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... with infinite care. Presently there came the gentlest of impacts and then a clanking sound. The appearance out the vision-port became stationary, but still unbelievable. The Med Ship was grappled magnetically to a vast ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... had read so much about Switzerland that she knew how Michel Croz was killed while descending the Matterhorn after having made the first ascent. That historic accident happened long before she was born. To hear a man speak of Croz as a friend sounded almost unbelievable, though a moment's thought told her that Whymper, who led the attack on the hitherto impregnable Cervin on that July day in 1865, was ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... that twenty or thirty lions can make, deliberately bent on making it and roaring all at once, is unbelievable. They throw their heads up and glory in strength of lungs until thunders take second place and the listener knows why not the bravest, not the most dangerous of beasts has man aged to impose the fable of his grandeur on ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... few weeks later, "Jones is all right again now, but his illness has been a long hard pull. I haven't had an evening to myself since it began. But I'm paid, sir, now, more than paid for anything I've done,—the gratitude of those two people—it's unbelievable —you ought to see it. Why do you know that dear little woman is so worried for fear that my strength has been overtaxed that she wants me to take a complete rest and go on a long trip somewhere—suggested first that ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... unbelievable. Not rustling any more, but just wholesale herd-stealing, in which some big cattlemen, supposed to be honest, are equally guilty with the outlaws. On this border, you know, the rustler has always been able to steal cattle in any numbers. But to get rid of big bunches—that's the ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... world than I: I carry God in me, to give to men. And when has the sea been friendly unto man? Let it but guess my errand, it will call The dangers of the air to wreak upon me, Winds to juggle the puny boat and pinch The water into unbelievable creases. And shall my soul, and God in my soul, drown? Or venture drowning?—But no, no; I am safe. Smooth as believing souls over their deaths And over agonies shall slide henceforth To God, so shall my way be blest amid The quiet crouching terrors ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... mirror, to behold a modest, slim-waisted young woman becomingly arrayed in white linen, whose cheeks were aglow with health, whose eyes seemingly reflected the fire of a distant high vision. Not a Poppaea, certainly, nor a Delila. No, it was unbelievable that this, the very field itself of their future labours, should be denied them. Her heart, at the mere conjecture, turned ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... involuntary gestures, helping ourselves sometimes with the rifle. Mechanically the eye fastens on some detail of the declivity, of the ruined ground, on the sparse and shattered stakes pricking up, at the wreckage in the holes. It is unbelievable that we are upright in full daylight on this slope where several survivors remember sliding along in the darkness with such care, and where the others have only hazarded furtive glances through the loopholes. No, there is no firing against ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... admirably in its earlier stages. When the two emerged from Mr. Brewster's room to meet Archie, Mr. Brewster's general idea was that fortune had smiled upon him in an almost unbelievable fashion and had presented him with a son-in-law who combined in almost equal parts the more admirable characteristics of Apollo, Sir Galahad, and Marcus Aurelius. True, he had gathered in the course of the conversation that dear Archie had no occupation and ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... all this is hid, and glorious end of it is visible. This day, sentence of death is pronounced on Shams; judgment of resuscitation, were it but far off, is pronounced on Realities. This day it is declared aloud, as with a Doom-trumpet, that a Lie is unbelievable. Believe that, stand by that, if more there be not; and let what thing or things soever will follow it follow. 'Ye can no other; God be your help!' So spake a greater than any of you; opening his Chapter ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... March the date of the production was set. It gave Bambi unbelievable pleasure to read the announcements on the billboards, and to stand in front of the three-sheets in ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... movement has arisen in response to actual material needs, it is now a very great and material actuality. The workingmen of the world are, as we have seen, uniting at a pace so rapid as to be almost unbelievable. There are to-day not only great national organizations of labor in nearly every country, but these national movements are bound closely together into one unified international power. The great world-wide movement of labor, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... either with or without his consent, Mr. Richard Vanderpole, without a struggle, without any cry sufficiently loud to reach the driver or attract the attention of any passer-by, had been strangled to death by a person who had disappeared as though from the face of the earth. The facts seemed almost unbelievable, and yet they were facts. The driver of the taxi knew only that three times during the course of his drive he had been caught in a block and had had to wait for a few seconds—once at the entrance to Trafalgar Square, again ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... British officers and even the British Tommies were blase, wearing the air of the 'semaine Anglaise', and the "five o'clock tea," as the French delight to call it. That these could have come direct from the purgatory of the trenches seemed unbelievable. The Anzacs, with looped-up hats, strolled about, enjoying themselves, halting before the shops in the Rue de la Paix to gaze at the priceless jewellery there, or stopping at a sidewalk cafe to enjoy a drink. Our soldiers ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... decades, and naturally all the people do not keep an even pace. One may find culture that would grace a court alongside incredible ignorance; distinguished courtesy and sheer brutality; kindness and consideration of the rights and feelings of others together with cruelty almost unbelievable. In some sections are to be found machines belonging to the most advanced stage of industry, while nearby are in operation economic processes of the rudest and most primitive sort. One who knows the South must feel, however, that its most striking characteristic is hopefulness. The ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... neckcloth, blue pantaloons and white hat, transfixed for at least five minutes. Then, swearing some hard oaths—a thing the English always do when they are particularly pleased—Milor exclaimed, "It is exquisite! Holy Lord Mayor, it is unbelievable!" ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... what she had been in the past. She had grown strong, active, swift. She was as lovely as a wild rose. No dream of his idle fancy, but a fact! Then last—stirring him even as he tried to clarify and arrange this magic, this mystery—had come the unbelievable, the momentous and dazzling assurance that she loved him. It was so plain that it seemed unreal. While near her he saw it, yet could not believe his eyes; he felt it, but doubted his sensibilities. But now, away from the ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... the viewport, was no longer space as he had come to know it, but a strange eerie limbo, the star-tracks lengthening, shifting color until they filled the whole viewport with shimmering, gray, recrossing light. The unbelievable reaction of warp-drive thrust them through space faster than the lights of the surrounding stars, faster than imagination ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... that all his surmises were correct. The news of Donelson produced for a little while a sort of paralysis at Richmond, and when it reached Nashville, where the army of Johnston was gathering, it was at first unbelievable. It produced so much excitement and confusion that a small brigade sent to the relief of Donelson was not called back, and marched blindly into the little town of Dover, where it found itself surrounded by the whole triumphant Union army, and ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... I assented. The realization broke unbelievable across a momentary hiatus; brought me down from the false heights, to face ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... peach," was the belief of thousands of parents, and the results were appalling. Bok pursued his investigations from books direct into the "Homes of Refuge," "Doors of Hope," and similar institutions, and unearthed a condition, the direct results of the false modesty of parents, that was almost unbelievable. ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... and she came to a full stop in the front hall. It was maddening; it was unbelievable; but that neglected half hour of work threatened to wreck her entire day. With every fiber of her being in revolt, ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... a cold man, but such unbelievable heartlessness chilled him. Into his mind rushed a temptation suddenly to denounce the real slayer before them all. He checked that temptation. In the first place it would be impossible to convince five ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... the trouble lay in centralization of authority, and rigid adherence to the rule of seniority. Combined, these two processes had served to bring about a state of things that is nearly unbelievable when viewed in the light of modern love for efficiency. Young men, with the fire of ambition burning in them and a proper scorn for mere superficial ceremony, had to sweat their tempers and bow down beneath the yoke of ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... a time when the price of our bonds is considerably below their actual value," said Totten, frowning." A million pounds sterling is what their holdings really represented; according to the despatches they must have sold at a loss of nearly fifty thousand pounds. It is unbelievable that the house can be hard-pressed for money. There isn't a sounder ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... remnants of the solid-fuel take-off rockets let go. They flashed off into nothingness at unbelievable speed, consuming themselves ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... idea appealed to me. There was suddenly something fantastic, unbelievable, in the events ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... reckless speed through the skies over Washington, D. C., made history that day in the records of the earth. None, now, could doubt that here, at last, was the answer that the world had hoped for until hope had died. Unbelievable in its field of action, incredible in its wild speed, but real, nevertheless!—the countries of the earth were frantic in their acclaim. Only the men who formed the International Board of Defense failed to join in the enthusiasm. They sat by day and ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... a sharp pang of disappointment. She had expected something quite different. The adjective "astonishing" seemed strangely cold and unlike Ronnie. She had thought he would say "wonderful," or "unbelievable," or "glorious." ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... I find the first signs of this spring, now the War is over, almost unbelievable. I have watched this advent with astonishment, as though it were a phantom. The feeling is the same as when waking from an ugly dream, and seeing in doubt the familiar objects in a morning light. They seem steadfast. Are they real, or is ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... flow. He sat at the head of his table, and his eyes never left those pencilled words. His mind fought with them, discarded them, only to find them still there hammering at his brain, traced in letters of scarlet upon the distant walls. War! The great, unbelievable tragedy, the one thousand-to-one chance in life which he had ever taken! His hand almost fell to his side. There was a queer little silence. No one liked to ask him a question; no one liked to speak. It was the Duchess ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a nestful of eggs some vagrant hen had laid in the grass-tussocks, the men going forth with the tailing-mob—and at intervals the scorching recollection of that hinted scandal concerning Colin and Mrs Hensor of which Maule had told her.... Horrible... unbelievable... and yet.... ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... Providence, if one ever did find anybody in this horrible jumble. She had never seen such a mess. She believed that poor little tot had come down in here, after all; she could not see why, but then you seldom did know why children took a notion to do certain unbelievable things. Miss Allen had taught the primary grade in a city school, and she knew a little about small boys and girls and the big ideas they ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... times, that no one knows anything at all about Mekstrom's. This is unbelievable, considering that you folks have been working on it for ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... a voice from the door, the voice of one who was prouder of her even than I; it is true, and yet almost unbelievable, that any one could have been prouder ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... Bluebirds are tireless, both in supplying the nest with insect food and attending to its sanitation; the wastage being taken away and dropped at a distance from the nest at almost unbelievable short intervals, proving the wonderful rapidity of digestion and the immense amount of labor required to supply the mill inside the ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... nor had he made the slightest attempt to alter his appearance. From his bold insouciance it seemed evident that he was totally indifferent as to who recognized him. Either the man possessed moral courage of the extremest sort or else an unbelievable effrontery. ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... brings me all the treasure that I enjoy." The king thought nothing else than that Aben Hassen the Fool was trying to deceive him. He laughed; he was very angry. "What," cried he, "do you amuse me by such an absurd and unbelievable tale? Now I am more than ever sure that you have discovered a treasure and that you wish to keep the knowledge of it from me, knowing, as you do, that the one-half of it by law belongs to me. Take him away!" cried he to his attendants. "Give him fifty lashes, and throw him into ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... for young Daniel. It spurred him to further daring, and he set out on more and more distant explorations. Each time he returned from his trips with marvelous tales of what he had seen, of unbelievable numbers of buffalo and deer and wild beasts he had encountered. He always had an audience. No one listened with greater eagerness than the pretty dark-eyed daughter of the Bryans who were neighbors to the Boones. Daniel ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... well the wondrous quickness of the jungle folk and their almost unbelievable powers of hearing. To them the sudden scraping of one blade of grass across another was as effectual a warning as her loudest cry, and Sabor knew that she could not make that mighty leap without ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the time of a thousand heartbeats neither the Spokesmen or the Gens made answer to Sarka, and all the world fell utterly silent, absorbing this unbelievable thing of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... Vienna, and lost track of him for several years. Then I heard that he had married a dear friend of mine—Lady Dagmar Cooper, one of the greatest beauties and perhaps the sternest prude in England. She wrote me, soon after that unbelievable mating: "I have married Cecil Grimshaw. I know you won't approve; I do not altogether approve myself. He is not like the men I have known—not at all English. But he intrigues me; there is a sense of power ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... Gilbert was silent. The unbelievable thing must be true, then. This girl was sacrificing her own chance of advancement for the sake of her brother and sister. He looked at her with a feeling of reverence. To give up so much was commendable, but ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... conducted the trials and passed the verdict of "guilty" cannot, of course, stand blameless; but it was the long pent-up but now abnormally awakened imagination of the women that wrought havoc through their testimony to incredible things and their descriptions of unbelievable actions. No doubt many a personal grievance, petty jealousy, ancient spite, and neighborhood quarrel entered into the conflict; but the results were out of all proportion to such causes, and remain to-day among the ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... snobbery on Cooper's part as well as on that of his elite hanky. Finally, the heroine-handkerchief's protracted failure to recognize her maker, when she has proved so sensitive to her surroundings in every other fashion, is simply unbelievable. Still, there is enough to reward today's reader, if only in the story's unique "point of view" and in the recognizable foibles of Henry Halfacre and his ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... Galusha explained. The fact that any one in creation should not know what an archaeologist was seemed unbelievable, but a fact it evidently was. So he explained and the explanation, under questioning, became lengthy. Primmie's exclamations, "My savin' soul" and "My Lord of Isrul" became more and more frequent. Mr. Bloomer interjected a remark here and there. At length a sound outside caused him to look out ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... that human beings are fundamentally resilient and resourceful. Children's springs of life and vitality are powerful. Their need to affirm themselves as persons is undeniable, and any experience of love that they have is reinforcing. Experiences of unlove are to them unbelievable and point, fundamentally and finally, to the necessity and believability of love. While our children are dependent upon us for their personal environment in which to grow up, they bring powers and resources to their growing up which are independent of us. They bring something to the dialogue ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... of this recital of the facts the presence of Jimmy Stiles was no longer an unbelievable coincidence, but a logical outcome. Nickleby, having made a dicker with McIvor's man to recover the money from the stump before Podmore could get it, had attempted to kill two birds with one stone by having McIvor take Stiles ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... it at its worst, for Bryce decamped abroad last Monday without even arranging for a charwoman to clear up after him. I never saw such a disgraceful mess. It's unbelievable. He wasn't ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... to join me, and we hastily formed a plan of campaign. The lions had now disappeared over the brow of the hill. I looked at my watch and the hour was not yet nine o'clock. We were still in sight of the distant house-tops of Nairobi. It seemed unbelievable. ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... upon us; while seated upon the chests, were scores of unshaven men, smoking tea-leaves, and creating a suffocating vapor. But this vapor was better than the native air of the place, which from almost unbelievable causes, was fetid in the extreme. In every corner, the females were huddled together, weeping and lamenting; children were asking bread from their mothers, who had none to give; and old men, seated upon the floor, were leaning back against the heads of the water-casks, with ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... he knew that slowly the curtain was rising on the tragedy of the golden snare. In a way the look that he saw in her face shocked him more than anything that he had seen in Bram's. It was as if, in fact, a curtain had lifted before his eyes revealing to him an unbelievable truth, and something of the hell through which she had gone. She was hungry—FOR SOMETHING THAT WAS NOT FLESH! Swiftly the thought flashed upon him why the wolf-man had traveled so far to the south, and why he had attacked him for possession of his food supply. It was ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... illegal under Canadian law, and attempted to jump his serfdom, he was liable—as one of them expressed it—"to be found missing." It would be reported that he had suicided. Among people who did not speak English, naturally, no details would be given. It seems almost unbelievable that in a country wrestling with the whole Asiatic problem the fact has to be set down that the government has no interpreter among the Chinese who is not a Chinaman, no interpreter among the Japanese who is not a Jap. ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... of Jewish influence. It is the same with Bronterre O'Brien, the first to call himself a Social Democrat. If any or all of these men were the agents of such a conspiracy, it is remarkable that there should be an entire absence of evidence of that fact. It is quite unbelievable that there was any sort of conspiracy which affected them. For the most part they were poor and their books were published in pitifully small editions at great sacrifice to themselves. Incidentally, it is worthy of note, Karl Marx, the Jew, suffered terrible poverty. Certainly, all this does not ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... alliance between Mars and the Moon seemed almost unbelievable. How had they managed the first contact, the first negotiations leading to the compact between two such alien peoples? Had there been any flights exchanged by the two worlds, surely the scientists ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... Eric Leverage. That gentleman bowed heavily and stood aside in surprise, while an exclamation, rather profane, issued from his lips. David Carroll and a seventeen-year-old girl headed for a picture show! The thing was unbelievable. Leverage shook his head sadly and passed on as Carroll and Evelyn disappeared behind the din of ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... a gesture of comical despair. "Really," she said, "you're unbelievable. You seem to think that I must want to marry you merely because you want to marry me. I take no ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... carried the story of a little girl, who had been whisked from sight and couldn't be located. Who had probably been given an operation to make it possible for her to walk, but had been forced to pay for the operation by taking part in a cruel hoax of unbelievable magnitude. ...
— Prologue to an Analogue • Leigh Richmond
... would put Wiggate in possession of the facts. He gave himself some tasks, all the while trying to realize the truth. Fortune had smiled upon him and Blinky. Rich in one drive—at one fell swoop! It was unbelievable. The retrieving of his father's losses, the new ranches in sunny Arizona, comfort and happiness for his mother, for Bobby and Alice—and for Lucy all that any reasonable woman could desire—these beautiful and sweet dreams ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... plans. The house in Virginia was being renovated. She would take him there as soon as he could be moved. When he was strong again he would start his newspaper. Holt and Lacey were as overjoyed at the prospect of being his assistant editors as at the almost unbelievable rescue of ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... to his feet. "Tromp a traitor! Why, it is unbelievable. General Joffre has entire confidence in his ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... vicarage way, to endeavour to make everything out of something else, and to rummage out a store of old rubbish, as the first step towards manufacturing a new garment! The treasures which were to contribute towards Esther's trousseau consisted of a moth-eaten Paisley shawl, a checked silk skirt of unbelievable hideousness, a muslin scarf; yellow with age, a broken ivory fan, and a pair of mittens. A vision of Esther figuring as a bride in this old- world costume, rose before Peggy's quick-seeing eyes, the checked ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... surely come in the morning. He had no doubt that at daybreak he would see the lithe and sinuous figure of the Arrow shooting down from the blue depths, and then he and her brother would go away in search of Julie. Looking down from the air and traveling at almost unbelievable speed, their chances of finding Auersperg's party would be a hundred times better than if he merely prowled along on ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... news!" said Mrs. Greyle as she went back to her chair. "Lord Altmore called to tell me of something that he thought I ought to know. It is almost unbelievable, yet it is a fact. Marston Greyle—if he is Marston Greyle!—has offered to sell Lord Altmore the entire Scarhaven estate, by private treaty. Imagine it!—the estate which has belonged to the Greyles for ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... her poverty. Muriel and Susan had looked absolute amazement when a talkative freshman told the news as she received it from a girl who had attended the party. Mignon, however, was secretly furious at the, to her, unbelievable report that "that beggarly Stevens girl could actually sing." She had never forgiven Constance for refusing to dishonorably assist her in an algebra test, and after her unsuccessful attempt to fasten the disappearance of her bracelet upon Constance she had disliked her with ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... than she remembered her mother; and one of the older Sisters had known him in Paris and had talked of him at length, giving the flavor of his dandyism and his beauty at first hand to his young relative. He had been one of those hardy young men wearing unbelievable garments, who began to appear in the garden of the Tuileries with knives in their sleeves and cudgels in their hands, about April, 1794, and whose dash and recklessness in many matters were the first intimations that the Citizen Tallien was about to cause the Citizen ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... things are wondrous, and haply tales decked out with cunning fables beyond the truth make false men's speech concerning them. For Charis[5], who maketh all sweet things for mortal men, by lending honour unto such maketh oft the unbelievable thing to be believed; but the days that follow after are ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... incoherently, and was seized with an uncontrollable longing to get away—to be alone with this great, unbelievable happiness. In realization of his mood, she left him under pretext of ordering the luncheon. On her return she found him exuberant, in a flow ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... "Not unbelievable, but impossible, Mr. Balcom," he said. "I believe that there is some one in this thing that attacks us ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... incomprehensible, unbelievable. If she had spoken against the name of his dead father John could not have been more startled than by this questioning in his ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... unpleasant incident must have occurred, we did not press her for the story of it. Then, you came, and without mincing your words you told the whole brutal truth; and you uttered it with a spirit of brutality and bravado that would be unbelievable under any other circumstances. And when, in your own self-abasement for what you had done, you confessed to the acts of which you were guilty toward Miss Langdon, you received, at Duncan's hands, the blow you so thoroughly merited; I am frank to say to ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... subdued when there was light once more and eccentric shapes around them. There was a ring-ship—the hull like a metal wheel with a huge tire, with pipe passages from the tire part to the hub where the control room was located. It seemed unbelievable that such a relic could still exist, dating as it did from the period before gravity-fields could be put into spacecraft. It would have provided a crazy sort of gravity by spinning as it limped ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster |
