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More "Disbelieve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his bread with an air of noble indifference. "Eh? Why, indeed? He used to say 'twas for being too frolicsome. He never done no wrong—not what you might call wrong: or so he maintained, an' 'twasn't for me to disbelieve 'en. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... wicked Oliver suddenly changed his nature and won the love of Celia, we know that he is lying. The scene is not true to the great laws of human life. When George Eliot, at a loss for a conclusion to "The Mill on the Floss," tells us that Tom and Maggie Tulliver were drowned together in a flood, we disbelieve her; just as we disbelieve Sir James Barrie when he invents that absurd accident of Tommy's death. These three instances of falsity have been selected from authors who know the truth and almost always tell it; and all three have a certain palliation. They come at or near the very ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... into an exceedingly dangerous line of argument in the following words: "If this hypothesis be true, then is the Bible an unbearable fiction;... then have Christians for nearly two thousand years been duped by a monstrous lie.... Darwin requires us to disbelieve the authoritative word of the Creator." A leading journal representing the same church took pains to show the evolution theory to be as contrary to the explicit declarations of the New Testament as to those of the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... a fool in most things," said Mortimer quietly, "but I'm not such a fool as not to believe in Pan when I'm down here. And if you're wise you won't disbelieve in him too boastfully while you're in ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... nae doot; but, troth! the minister, honest man, near-han' gart me disbelieve in't a'thegither wi' his gran' sermon this mornin', about imputit richteousness, an' a clean robe hidin' a foul skin or a crookit back. Na, na. May Him 'at woosh the feet o' his friens, wash us a'thegither, and straucht oor crookit banes, till we're clean and ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... moments, he had intended to keep to himself. It might be said, too, that he had put into words what he did not really think. But the Major was, like everyone else, for good or evil, a complex character, and found it perfectly possible both to believe and disbelieve the same idea simultaneously. It depended in what stratum the center of gravity happened to be temporarily suspended. One large part of the Major knew perfectly well, therefore, that any jealousy of Frank was ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... answered coldly, "it is not in you to be honest. Your words have no ring of truth in my ears, for the note is the same as I heard once upon the Ecrehos. I was a young girl then and I believed; I am a woman now, and I should still disbelieve though all the world were on your side to declare me wrong. I tell you"—her voice rose again, it seemed to catch the note of freedom and strength of the storm without— "I tell you, I will still live as my heart and conscience ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to be brought home. Of all the facts you mention, that of the wild [illegible], when breeding with the domestic, producing offspring somewhat sterile, is the most surprising: surely they must be different species. Most zoologists would absolutely disbelieve such a statement, and consider the result as a proof that they were distinct species. I do not go so far as that, but the case seems highly improbable. Blyth has studied the Indian Ruminantia. I have ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... held and confessed by the Roman Catholic Church? If our investigation of the teachings of the Holy Scriptures convinces us that they teach Transubstantiation, we will be ready to believe and confess that doctrine, no matter who else may believe or disbelieve it. What we want to know, believe, teach and confess, is ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... says Mr. Browne gravely, "that your argument sounds as though there were some sense in it. But who am I that I should dare to disbelieve ancient history? It is unsafe to throw down old landmarks, to blow up the bulwarks of our noble constitution. Beware, Tommy! never tread on the tail of Truth. It may turn ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... expecting no more than a few days of life, and not in a state of physical lethargy, were absolutely incapable of being alarmed at the near approach of death. They might not deny, nor in the infidel sense disbelieve, what was said to them of the awfulness of that event and its consequences; but they had actually never thought enough of death to have any solemn associations with the idea. And their faculties were become so rigidly ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... flew open, and he stared up into the speaker's face. Twenty years! Somehow it did not occur to him to disbelieve this astounding statement. He struggled hard to realize its implication. Two decades had passed since last he remembered. He had been a youth ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... season, which God hath determined, when he will make a resurrection of all men from the dead, not procuring a transmigration of souls from one body to another, but raising again those very bodies, which you Greeks, seeing to be dissolved, do not believe [their resurrection]. But learn not to disbelieve it; for while you believe that the soul is created, and yet is made immortal by God, according to the doctrine of Plato, and this in time, be not incredulous; but believe that God is able, when he hath raised to life that body which was ...
— An Extract out of Josephus's Discourse to The Greeks Concerning Hades • Flavius Josephus
... that his youth and the manly sincerity with which he clung to his simple story might have some effect. It might be that a single man on that jury would be so struck with his single sturdy tale that he would refuse to disbelieve it altogether. You could never tell what might strike a man on ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... horse and the man, and then launches into a tirade against France: "You refused to believe that Italy replaced foreign influence by foreign dominion on the day on which France crossed the Alps. Do you still disbelieve in the treason which is plotting against Italy, by depriving her of her natural bulwarks, Savoy, Nice, and the maritime Alps? Do you not see, that while you are lulled to sleep by the syren song of Italian independence, ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... letter has been scattered all over the country, south and north; and though multitudes have affected to disbelieve its statements, Kentuckians know the truth of them quite too well to call them in question. The story is fiction or fact—if fiction, why has it not been nailed to the wall? Hundreds of people around the mouth of Cumberland River are personally knowing to these facts. There are the records ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... that unless the whole of the proceedings were set forth in chronological order, and with amplitude of detail, some of the group would seek to repudiate the explanation on one point or another, while the general public would disbelieve them all. To such a pass had the extremes of partyism brought the leading men in parliament. If, however, the memorandum is a very human document, it is also historically most interesting and important. ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... look with one as steady as his own. Apparently she was weighing his statement. She seemed to disbelieve it. Inwardly he was asking himself what could be the dark secret in the past of this young woman that at the mere approach of a reporter—even of such a nice-looking reporter as himself—she should shake and shudder. "If that's what you really want to know," said Sister Anne doubtfully, "I'll try ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... only believe in a life after death; they are even of opinion that they would never die at all if it were not for the maleficent arts of sorcerers who cut the vital thread prematurely short. In other words, they disbelieve in what we call a natural death; they think that all men are naturally immortal in this life, and that every death which takes place is in fact a violent death inflicted by the hand of a human enemy, though in many cases the foe is invisible and works his fell purpose not by a sword ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... lead mankind to believe the marvellously false, and to disbelieve the marvellously true, may be easily gathered. Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder's welcome. We all pay an involuntary homage ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... afflicted children, of their cunning evasions, and, in some instances, palpable falsehoods. Then, further, there was solid and substantial evidence before them that ought to have made them pause and consider, if not doubt and disbelieve. We find the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... absolute gusto, Lebrun did so. He interested his contemporaries immensely; no painter ever ruled more unrivalled. He fails to interest us because we have another point of view. We believe in our point of view and disbelieve in his as a matter of course; and it would be self-contradictory to say, in the interests of critical catholicity, that in our opinion his may be as sound as our own. But to say that he has no point of view whatever—to say, in general, that modern classic art is perfunctory and ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... mentioned by him was seen; it had shrunk to a shallow pool in a bed of sand. Here the two guides insisted that the murder had taken place, pointing to the remains of Mitchell's encampment as a proof thereof. This naturally led Hely to disbelieve their statement, but the blacks added such details to the original story as almost again convinced him. The most minute search, however, resulted in nothing, and one of the natives managed to make his escape. The other then altered ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... her purse and took out her copy; Derues snatched it, and tore it up. "Now," he exclaimed, "you are paid; I owe you nothing now. If you like, I will declare it on oath in court, and no one will disbelieve my word." ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... narrative. (2) Next you can say that the evidence is weak, and this will be bringing credit for the others where you say the evidence is strong. People will never go so far as your narrative. Cut it down to what is true, and they will disbelieve a part of it; put in these legends and they will compound for the true at the sacrifice of what may be true, ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... He however noted it, that he might prosecute his examination in the morning. He was walking on, when a deep groan came from almost beneath his feet, as it seemed. Tom was not altogether free from superstition, but though he did not disbelieve in ghosts and other foolish notions, he was too brave to be frightened by anything, and consequently ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... extravagant promises of success, sold them arms; and then, like the shameless wretch on whose evidence Cuffy and Jones were principally convicted, bore witness against their own victims, unblushingly declaring themselves to have been all along the tools of the government. I entreat all those who disbelieve this apparently prodigious assertion, to read the evidence given on the trial of the John Street conspirators, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... Constans, and some day you will know what that means." She moved away, majestically as does a goddess, conscious of her power but magnanimously refraining from using it. Constans and Ulick laughed after the manner of men-kind who find it easy to disbelieve in what they do not understand. Then, with a ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... us think they have no more, and we ought to have no more, doubt about God's existence than our own. Nevertheless, they write abundance of books to convince us 'God is,' though they never penned a line in order to convince us, we actually are, and that to disbelieve we ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... "I disbelieve you, tempter!" cried Surrey indignantly. "Wyat is too good a Christian, and too worthy a knight, to league with ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to laugh again. "Ah, you disbelieve?" he said politely. "Shall I send, then, for some proof—an ear, perhaps, or a little finger, still very warm and bleeding, to convince you?... In five minutes ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... reparation, as is possible, to those I have wronged or misled. And do ye outwardly, and from a point of false bravery, make as light as ye will of my resolution, as ye are none of ye of the class of abandoned and stupid sots who endeavour to disbelieve the future existence of which ye are afraid, I am sure you will justify me in your hearts, if not by your practices; and one day you will wish you had joined with me in the same resolution, and will confess there is more good sense in it, than now perhaps ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... realise in the right proportions to the rest of life. These right proportions, however, did not come readily, and his emotions ranged between sceptical laughter and complete acceptance. The one detail he felt certain of was this dreadful thing he had divined in Vance. Trying hard to disbelieve it, he found he could not. It was true. Though without a shred of real evidence to support it, the horror of it remained. He knew it ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... border on impossibility. The poet does not require us to be awake and believe; he solicits us only to yield ourselves to a dream; and this too with our eyes open, and with our judgment perdue behind the curtain, ready to awaken us at the first motion of our will: and meantime, only, not to disbelieve. And in such a state of mind, who but must be impressed with the cool intrepidity of Don john on the appearance ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... meaning, and suggests that meaning to the mind of any one who is listening to me. But suppose I ask him, Whether it is true: whether he believes it? He can give no answer. There is as yet nothing to believe, or to disbelieve. Now, however, let me make, of all possible assertions respecting the sun, the one which involves the least of reference to any object besides itself; let me say, "the sun exists." Here, at once, is something which a person can say he believes. But here, instead of only one, we find two distinct ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... is the true glory of existence. To disbelieve is to give ourselves into the power of death, and just so ...
— Heart's-ease • Phillips Brooks
... largest, has no opinion at all, but merely takes up the theology or no-theology of the day, and cannot properly be said to 'hold' what the Creed calls 'the Catholic faith.' It does not deny it; it may not knowingly disbelieve it; but it gives no signs of actually holding it, beyond the fact that it treats it with respect. I will venture to say, that not a country parson of them all, from year's end to year's end, makes once a year what Catholics call 'an act of faith' in that special and very ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... for temperance men; we will stand with the party that is the nearest in favor of what we deem to be the right"? They should also take into consideration that other people are as honest as they; that others disbelieve in prohibition as honestly as they believe in it, and that other people cannot leave their principles to vote for prohibition; and they must remember, that these other people are ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... him, and his whole income has been taken from him. But they will never persuade me. Nor, if they did, would I be untrue to him. It is a grand thing for a girl to have a perfect faith in the man she has to marry, as I have—as I have. I know my man, and will as soon disbelieve in Heaven as in him. But were he what they say he is, he would still have to become my husband. I should be broken-hearted, but I should still be true. Thank God, though,—thank God,—he has done nothing ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... story, but years elapsed before any other settler entered Hunger valley. They found her skeleton then in the weedy garden. The adobe stands tenantless in the new village of Martinez, and the people have so often heard that the ghosts of the Zamaconas haunt the place that they have begun to disbelieve it. ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... you disbelieve me; this is what happened," Daly rejoined. "My friend—we'll call him the man—went to the office late in the evening and after some talk, covered Hulton with his pistol. The lad had had some trouble about his debts, because ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... will interest them in him. Remember, I was reading up on Hitler, coming in from Marduk? I will tell them all a big lie. Such a big lie that nobody will dare to disbelieve it." ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... sound. Expressing myself thus abstractly and briefly, I may seem to despair of the very notion of truth. But I beseech you to reserve your judgment until we see it applied to the details which lie before us. I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... good-night absently, and Patricia, watching her hurry down the frosty street, found herself wondering at the subtle barrier that she could feel so keenly, while she yet tried to disbelieve. ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... she was subject to fits of cowardice - especially, it was said, with regard to a future state, which she professed to disbelieve in. Mr. Ellice told me that once, in some country house, while a fearful storm was raging, and the claps of thunder made the windows rattle, Lady Holland was so terrified that she changed dresses with her maid, and hid herself in the ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... for arresting his wife, children, man-servant, maidservant, and stranger within his household. The laws concerning debt, in most countries, are so unmercifully severe, that I could not altogether disbelieve his statement; and my arrest, in the present circumstances, would have been a coup-de-grace to my father's affairs. In this dilemma, I asked Owen if he had not thought of having recourse to my father's other correspondent in Glasgow, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... manufactures. In looking over the map, there does not seem to be any one to supplant us; all those, who have great advantages, have already gone before, and, till we see the example of a country renewing itself, we have a right to disbelieve that it ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... most poisonous snake; A Scylla, with her lair among the rocks, Lying in wait for luckless mariners; Death's dam, against her kin implacably Breathing her venom. What a shout she raised Of exultation, as for battle won! She feigns rejoicing at her lord's return. Believe or disbelieve me; naught I care That which must come, must come. Thou soon shalt see And rue the truth of this ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... not know by sight, should volunteer to stay behind in the camp and deceive the Trojans. Then a young man called Sinon stood up and said that he would risk himself and take the chance that the Trojans might disbelieve him, and burn him alive. Certainly, none of the Greeks did anything more courageous, yet Sinon had not been ...
— Tales of Troy: Ulysses the Sacker of Cities • Andrew Lang
... have chased Mystery for more years than I shall own, and, so far as I can see, whenever you open the door on her secret chamber, she shuts a door on the other side and is gone into a further holy of holies. I've come to disbelieve in those who tell me that they ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... letter, rebuke of those who disbelieve in the last judgment, the coming of the day of the Lord and the destruction of the world, exhortations to holiness, diligence needed, the long-suffering of Christ witnessed to by Paul, ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... is as strong as that which I have respecting any other necessary truth. In fact, the man is either very wise or very virtuous, or very lucky, perhaps all three, who has gone through life without accumulating a store of such necessary beliefs which he would give a good deal to be able to disbelieve. ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... himself a Christian in 948, plundered and destroyed the churches of East-Meath in 949, burnt 150 persons in the oratory of Drumree, and carried off as captives 3,000 persons. If the tree is to be judged by its fruits, this first year's growth of the new faith is rather alarming. It compels us to disbelieve the sincerity of Godfrid, at least, and the fighting men who wrought these outrages and sacrileges. It forces us to rank them with the incorrigible heathens who boasted that they had twenty times received ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... taken his captives into Atlantis with him. It was impossible to disbelieve Tode's statement that he had been offered the supreme power in the city. Tode's egotism would have compelled him to blurt out that fact. Besides, Tode had certainly not gone ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... and was gaining upon them. It seemed curious that he should stand forth as the champion of the herd, and do all the roaring and stamping, while the other bulls remained mute, and followed with the rest of the herd, yet so it was; but there seemed no reason to disbelieve the unpleasant fact that the monarch's example would be imitated by his subjects. The herd had now drawn so near, and the young ladies had made such a comparatively slow retreat, that they were yet many yards distant from the boundary fence, and ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... said, "you cannot trust your senses, you may as well disbelieve in your own existence and in everything around you, for you know nothing save through those senses which are liable to illusion. But we know practically that there are limits to illusion. At any rate, your maxim leads directly and ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... improbable that, if they were wrought, no evidence could establish them, is another matter. The first allegation involves a curious limitation of omnipotence; and the second affirms in effect, that, if God were to work a miracle, it would be our duty to disbelieve him! ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... recollecting the principle of the association of ideas so well developed by Locke, whom you hold in estimation, and whom, for that reason I am happy to cite to you, although to him I owe that pernicious use of my understanding which makes me disbelieve what I do not comprehend—I perceive why the public having originally attached the idea of talents to the name of Mr. Priestly, doctor in chemistry, continued by habit to associate it with the name of Mr. Priestly, doctor in divinity; ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... I who write shall have long since gone my way into the region of shadows. For indeed strange things shall happen, and secret things be known, and many centuries shall pass away, ere these memorials be seen of men. And, when seen, there will be some to disbelieve and some to doubt, and yet a few who will find much to ponder upon in the characters here graven with a ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... or Romans, is a mere assumption, originating in a false idea of what quantity is; and, that Greek or Latin verse was less accentual than is ours, is another assumption, left proofless too, of what many authors disbelieve and contradict. Wells's definition of quantity is similar to mine, and perhaps unexceptionable; and yet his idea of the thing, as he gives us reason to think, was very different, and very erroneous. His examples imply, that, like Walker, he had "no conception of quantity arising from any thing ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... unhappy Siluce; and, one after the other, these men arose and related the wrongs, the cruelties, and the injustices which they and theirs had suffered at the hands of Bimbane, accompanying their statements with proofs of so convincing a character that I no longer found it possible to disbelieve. And when at length the session was over I arose, stunned, astounded, horrified, and furious at the thought of the danger which I had so narrowly escaped, of falling into the hands of a vile, unscrupulous woman, and ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... said Afy. "If folks tell true, there was love scenes between them before he ever thought of Lady Isabel. I had that from Wilson, and she ought to know, for she lived at the Hares'. Another thing is said—only you must just believe one word of West Lynne talk, and disbelieve ten—that if Lady Isabel had not died, Mr. Carlyle never would have married again; he had scruples. Half a dozen were given him by report; Louisa Dobede for one, and Mary Pinner for another. Such nonsense! ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... he was listened to with attention; but as soon as the minds of his audience had received as much as they could hold, they began to disbelieve him. Nothing daunted, however, ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... it is true; but will those reasons restore to my daughter the tranquillity which she has lost, perhaps for ever? Will they stop the whisperings of calumny? Will they carry conviction to those strangers to me, or enemies of mine, whose pleasure it may be to disbelieve them? You have placed both yourself and me, sir, in a position of embarrassment—nay, a position of danger and disgrace, from which the strongest reasons and the best excuses cannot ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... this horrid practice prevailing among the inhabitants of this coast will scarcely be required, we have still stronger to give. One of us asked if they had any human bones with the flesh remaining upon them, and upon their answering us that all had been eaten, we affected to disbelieve that the bones were human, and said that they were the bones of a dog; upon which one of the Indians with some eagerness took hold of his own fore-arm, and thrusting it towards us, said, that the bone which Mr Banks held in his hand had belonged to that part of a human body; at the same time, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... told you because I now see that the explanation was owing, since you have been deceived. If you disbelieve me, it is ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... know whether to expect it or not himself. It was difficult to believe in that sort of thing, difficult to disbelieve in this sort of man, who entertained no shadow of doubt himself, whose excitement and suspense were as infectious as everything else about him. Pocket had come into the dark-room wheezing almost ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... take hold of Him, to detach one's self and parts of the universe from God in some mysterious way in order to reduce life to a dramatic antagonism, is not faith, but infirmity. Excessive strenuous belief is not faith. By faith we disbelieve, and it is the drowning man, and not the strong swimmer, who clutches at the floating straw. It is in the nature of man, it is in the present purpose of things, that the real world of our experience and will should appear to us not only as a progressive existence in ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... maintained that the whiteness of Handsome entitled her to the prize. Then there were about thirty sheep; but with them (in spite of frequent intercourse) we could only make out a general acquaintance—for we disbelieve altogether in the possibility of distinguishing one of the flock from the others. It must be the easiest thing in the world for a sheep to establish an alibi; and we are rather surprised that the impossibility of detection does ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... got it," he said, slowly, "this something which we all want, and for the greater part never find. He has got it. To see and recognize it early is a great thing," he continued, earnestly. "To disbelieve in it in early life, and cavil at all the caricatures and imitations, and only come to find out its reality comparatively later on, is a great ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... is an Elephant story which is almost as tough as the animal's hide, but we have no right to disbelieve it, for it is told by very respectable writers. During the war between the East Indian natives and the English, in 1858, there was an Elephant named Kudabar Moll the Second,—his mother having been a noted Elephant ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... which remained stationary and called for the other. But it by no means follows from the above fact that the rattle may not be of use to these snakes in other ways, as a warning to animals which would otherwise attack them. Nor can I quite disbelieve the several accounts which have appeared of their thus paralysing their prey with fear. Some other snakes also make a distinct noise by rapidly vibrating their tails against the surrounding stalks of plants; and I have myself ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... golden grain. It was—nay, it could have been nothing else—that very spider. The honoured work was not his, but his dead friend's. How the exchange had occurred he could not now understand, but to disbelieve that it had taken place would have been ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... yet this I am inform'd is really the Case, with regard to one of the most ingenious Divines, our Metropolis has to boast of. One Reason may perhaps be alledged, for such an unexpected Alteration of Sentiment, viz. That tho' we disbelieve these Doctrines, because they are absurd, yet we hold at the same time, others, equally repugnant to Reason, and to Common Sense; and certainly we may as reasonably embrace the one as retain the other. ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch
... pronounced useless and mischievous by able men. Nothing but that acquaintance with external nature, empirically acquired, which serves directly for the production of objects necessary to existence or agreeable to the senses, would get its utility recognized if people had the least encouragement to disbelieve it. Is it reasonable to think that even much more cultivated minds than those of the numerical majority can be expected to be, will have so delicate a conscience, and so just an appreciation of what is against their own apparent interest, that they will reject these and the innumerable ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... pounds sterling, he had esteemed them highly, and had had, until now, no opinion of another by which to correct his own judgment. So these words of the valuers cut him sharp, although he affected to disbelieve them, and tried to persuade himself that he did so. But, after all, these cares and disappointments did not touch the root of his deep resentment against Osborne. There is nothing like wounded affection for giving poignancy to anger. And the squire believed ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... to disbelieve me: the truth has pierced your heart, but you wish to deny it. Think, however, of the danger to your ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the king's physician, who was later to discover the circulation of the blood. In the course of this chapter we shall see that Harvey had long cherished misgivings about witchcraft. Probably by this time he had come to disbelieve it. One can but wonder if Charles, already probably aware of Harvey's views, had not intended from his first step in the Lancashire case to give his physician a chance to assert his opinion. In any case his report and ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... will be rude enough to disbelieve her, and, as will be seen, her supernatural powers had limits; but it was odd, though fortunate, that they should have broken down exactly at this important juncture. Who made those rebellious candles take him to that chamber and couch, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... nobles, priests, merchants, and men of luxurious life. Every other temptation is at last concentrated into this: pride, and lust, and envy, and anger all give up their strength to avarice. The sin of the whole world is essentially the sin of Judas. Men do not disbelieve their Christ; but they ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... cursed way. Methinks something has been working strangely retributive. I never was such a fool as to disbelieve a Providence; yet am I not for resolving into judgments every thing that seems to wear an avenging face. Yet if we must be punished either here or hereafter for our misdeeds, better here, say I, than hereafter. Have I not then an interest to think my punishment already not only begun but completed ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... to them rather than John's, and that they would have immediately gone home, but that they staid that they might deliver up John into my power; and when they said this they took their oaths of it, and those such as are most tremendous amongst us, and such as I did not think fit to disbelieve. However, they desired me to lodge some where else, because the next day was the sabbath, and that it was not fit the city of Tiberias should ...
— The Life of Flavius Josephus • Flavius Josephus
... cause, a knowledge of the law of that cause would, unless there was a logical error in our reasoning, enable us confidently to predict all the circumstances of the phenomenon. We might then, if we had carefully examined our premises and our reasoning, and found no flaw, venture to disbelieve the testimony which might be brought to show that matters had turned out differently from what we should have predicted. If the causes of erroneous conclusions were always patent on the face of the reasonings which lead to them, the human understanding ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... lamentable. If we would attain to knowledge of anything in God's true Creation, let us disbelieve them wholly! They are the product of an Age of Scepticism; they indicate the saddest spiritual paralysis, and mere death-life of the souls of men: more godless theory, I think, was never promulgated in this Earth. A false man found a religion? ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Rotherby," she exclaimed, "once more you have come to my help! I was so frightened at that man! He did speak to me so angrily, and he did not believe anything I told him. Indeed, it is true that my uncle is ill. You do not disbelieve ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... whether from his own temple copy, from some other original author, or from certain ancient notes. That some such plausible objection was now raised against Micaiah is very likely, otherwise Jehoshaphat, who used to disbelieve all such false prophets, could never have been induced to accompany Ahab in ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... "Believe it, or disbelieve it—it's a fact, I tell you. You've been given away somehow, and Dyer has now just got you ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... by which they had made their way across that land to regain the open sea was about three miles and a half; thence onward to the island, which they had been assured, on evidence that they could not disbelieve, to be upon the site of Gibraltar, was four degrees; while from Gibraltar to Gourbi Island was seven degrees or but little more. What was it altogether? Was it not less than thirty degrees? In that latitude, the ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... brought themselves to think it a dream, were it not that others besides themselves had seen the man, and known that Colonel Ferdinand Lefroy had been in St. Louis. Then there came to him an idea that even she might disbelieve the words which he had spoken;—that even she might think his story to have been false. But to this she soon put an end. "Dearest," she said, "I never knew a word that was true to come from his mouth, or a word that ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... vision, cutting from sight all vestige of the spectacle I watched with such soul-interest. What happened to the dead sun, I did not see; but I have no reason—in the light of that which I saw afterward—to disbelieve that it fell into the strange fire of the Green ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... disquieted. Was there, he asked, any real hardship in that? Yes, replies Fitzjames, there would be the greatest and most cruel injustice. 'It would be a disgrace to the English name and nation.' A young man goes to England and wins a place in the Civil Service. He learns from an English education to disbelieve in his old creeds; and when he goes back you tell him that he shall not be capable of marriage unless he will either falsely pretend to be a Christian, or consent to have his tongue burned with a red-hot ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... but a soldier of fortune, and can make terms for myself with either party." The blunt counsel pleased the Shah. "You are right, Najib," said Ahmad, "and the Nawab is misled by the impulses of youth. I disbelieve in the Mahratta penitence, and I am not going to throw you over whom I have all along regarded as the manager of this affair. Though in my position I must hear every one, yet I promise never to act ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... to heap upon me. But I am alarmed at the effect it may have on, and the advantage the French government may be disposed to make of, the spirit which is at work to cherish a belief in them that the treaty is calculated to favor Great Britain at their expense. Whether they believe or disbelieve these tales, the effect it will have upon the nation will be nearly the same; for, whilst they are at war with that power, or so long as the animosity between the two nations exists, it will, no matter at whose expense, be their policy, and it is to be feared will be their ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... announcement, 'The very hairs of your head are numbered.' Is there not ground for faith here? If the word of God stand in agreement with reason and experience, shall I not have faith? If my convictions are clear, to disbelieve is impossible." ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... songs given us by Mr. Mathews and his son. They were not less pleased with Mrs. Mathews, whose manners and conversation are peculiarly fascinating, and whose good looks and youthfulness of appearance made them almost disbelieve that she could be the mother of a ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... had to believe that, I should have to disbelieve half of what is best in the human story, and the whole of what we are taught about a guiding Providence and the spiritual influences which we cannot reason ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... of long series of cases like those I have cited, reported by those most interested to disbelieve in contagion, scattered along through an interval of half a century, might have been thought sufficient to satisfy the minds of all inquirers that here was something more than a singular coincidence. But if, on a more extended observation, it should be found that the ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... but, to my thinking, miracles are never a stumbling-block to the realist. It is not miracles that dispose realists to belief. The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact. Even if he admits it, he admits it as a fact of nature till then unrecognized by him. Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Lead was not found, and people were beginning to disbelieve in its existence, when suddenly indications appeared which showed that it was near at hand. Nuggets, some large, some small, began to be constantly discovered, and every day news was brought into Ballarat about the turning-up ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... patriots, was like a man who has originally, from his nursery up, been thoroughly imbued with the terror of ghosts, which by education and example afterwards he has been encouraged to deny. Half he does disbelieve, and, under encouraging circumstances, he does disbelieve it stoutly. But at every fresh plausible alarm his early faith intrudes with bitter hatred against a class of appearances that, after all, he is upon system pledged to hold false. Nothing can be more ludicrous ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... her that he would not suffer more than he had already suffered—and that in the Country Beyond he would find Nada the white girl, and happiness, and peace. Yellow Bird did not disbelieve. Her faith was illimitable. The spirits would not lie. But the unrest of the night was eating at her heart. She tried to lift herself to the whisperings above the tepee top. But they were unintelligible, like many voices ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... my very thoughts, dear Therese," said Mesmer, tenderly. "You see into my mind, and its perceptions find birth upon your lips. Let doctors sneer, and learned skeptics disbelieve, but the day will come when all must acknowledge that magnetism is truth, and all human wisdom lies. Physicians, though, will be its deadliest enemies, for they are travellers, who, having strayed from the right path, go farther ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the form of an historical novel. In that article it is justly observed that the onus rests with those who accuse Toussaint of hypocrisy to prove their allegation by facts. I would say the same of the other charge, of cruelty. Meanwhile, I disbelieve both charges, for these reasons ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... to be influenced by their talk, and he also liked the idea of sending out spies, but not wishing to act arbitrarily he submitted to God the desire of the people. God answered: "It is not the first time that they disbelieve My promises. Even in Egypt they ridiculed Me, it is now become a habit with them, and I know what their motive in sending spies is. If thou wishest to send spies do so, but do not pretend that I have ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... he felt very much disposed to disbelieve what Bill had told him, or rather, to fancy ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... had told him that she was an agent of the English police, and again and again, as she intended, he had disbelieved her. She was so incomparably his intellectual superior that she could make him believe or disbelieve precisely as she chose. She made him think that she had come to Brighton for companionship, and as a proof of her kindly forgiveness of a grave indiscretion. He believed; for never was Rust, even Rust, so idiotic as to suppose that she ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... is that of a returned sailor, speaking to his superior and telling his adventures, to induce him to send him on with an introduction to the king. At first his master professes to disbelieve him, and then the sailor protests that this happened to himself, and gives his narrative. The idea of an enchanted island, which has risen from the waves and will sink again, is here found to be one of the oldest plots for ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie
... the task was very difficult to him. How was he to keep his tongue off his son while his son was daily saying things of which any father,—any such father as Lord Brentford,—could not but disapprove? Lord Chiltern professed to disbelieve even in the wisdom of the House of Lords, and on one occasion asserted that it must be a great comfort to any Prime Minister to have three or four old women in the Cabinet. The father, when he heard this, tried to rebuke his son tenderly, strove even to be jocose. ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... the number of religious and Christian men who have relinquished all belief in the marvellous part of the Bible has largely increased within a few years. At the present time there is a strong tendency to disbelieve and deny all miracles as incredible and impossible. Renan, in his "Life of Jesus," says, "Miracles never happen except among people disposed to believe them. We banish miracles from history in the name of a constant experience. No miracle ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... whiles she thought of the indignation with which Owen would hear such beliefs. Then tempted as by the edge of an abyss, she admired Ulick's strange appearance, which helped to make his story credible. She could no longer disbelieve, so simply did he tell his tales, his white teeth showing, and his dark eyes rapidly brightening and clouding as he mentioned different spells and their effects. But so illusive were his narratives that she never quite understood; he seemed always a little ahead of her; she often ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... only lived two weeks, and Pietro and Violante gone! Only his saint to guard him—that was why she chose the new one; he would not be tired of guarding namesakes. . . . After all, she hopes her boy will come to disbelieve her history, as herself almost does. It is dwindling ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... awkward situation by protesting that she was not tired but hungry, and suggested that Dr Alder should continue his instructive conversation at supper. Mollified by this dexterous evasion, which he saw no reason to disbelieve, the dean politely escorted his companion to the regions of champagne and chicken, both of which aided the lady to sustain further doses of dry-as-dust facts dug out of a monastic past by the persevering Dr Alder. It was in this artful fashion ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... all these years in such a quiet, unnoticeable way—that Mrs. MacDougall could seem so exactly like a mother to them, and yet not be one. He was in a state of bewilderment, in which he could neither believe nor disbelieve, and so he went to sleep with a weary sigh, and left ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... the reception-room?" asked the lady, fixing her glasses and looking about her as if quite prepared to disbelieve any statement Miss Husted was about to make. That lady, much offended, ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... but magnetic attraction goes through it as sand went through the sieve. No good reasons can be given why the presence of a cat should not betray itself to certain organizations, at a distance, through the walls of a box in which the animal is shut up. We need not disbelieve the stories which allege such an occurrence as a fact and a not ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... it an acceptance of the development theory. To argue that man evolved from the monkey is an ingenious joke which will not bear the test of examination, and the Scriptural account may still be accepted. I firmly believe in man as an original creation just as much as I disbelieve in any development of the Flying Lemur (Galeopithecus) from the Bat, or that the habits of an animal would in time materially alter its anatomy, as in the case of the abnormal length of the hind toe and nail of the Jacana. It is not that the habit of running over floating leaves induced ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... as being a thunderbolt; and, on the other hand, the frequent occurrence of such dart-like objects, precisely where one might expect to find them in accordance with the theory, necessarily strengthened the belief itself. So commonly are thunderbolts picked up to the present day that to disbelieve in them seems to many country people a piece of ridiculous and stubborn scepticism. Why, they've ploughed up dozens of them themselves in their time, and just about the very place where the thunderbolt struck the old elm-tree ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... paper of her too just complaints against her husband, and written it in plain and very pungent English. Pepys, in an agony lest the world should come to see it, brutally seizes and destroys the tell-tale document; and then - you disbelieve your eyes - down goes the whole story with unsparing truth and in the cruellest detail. It seems he has no design but to appear respectable, and here he keeps a private book to prove he was not. You are at first faintly reminded of some of the vagaries of the morbid religious diarist; but at a moment's ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... baptism. In it we were made members of Christ, children of God, inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. God's love is above us and around us, like a warm, bright, life-giving sun. We may shut our eyes to it, but it is there still. We may disbelieve our baptism covenant, but it is true still. We are children of God; and nothing that we can do, no sin, no unfaithfulness of ours, can make us anything else. We can no more become not God's children, than a child can become not his own father's son. But this we can do by ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... historically identical? It is hard to disbelieve it. Yet the nations were bitter enemies. Their languages are totally unlike. These same similarities present themselves over such wide areas and between nations so remote and of such different culture, that the theory of a parallelism of development is after all ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... absolutely degrading, and exercise such a paralyzing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffering," says Oscar Wilde. "They have to be told of it by other people, and they often entirely disbelieve them. What is said by great employers of labor against agitators is unquestionably true. Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them."[235] ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... of Cassiar and Caribou, and that the bones of many were strewn broadcast across the region into which we were venturing. Perhaps it was because of the old Lancashire folk-lore I once had greedily listened to, but I could not altogether disbelieve in presentiments, and my dislike to the journey deepened until Johnston's voice rose clearly through the frosty air: "There's shining gold in heaps, I'm told, by ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... our situation was revealed in such a way as not to excite suspicion. His character was made known to us by Andrews, after his departure; and while we were wondering at his audacity, and rather inclined to disbelieve the story, the captain of the guard, who had come to bring supper, told us that a most remarkable occurrence ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... said the Provencal, quickly; "if we spoke to her, she would disbelieve us. She would no doubt appeal to Mainwaring, and Mainwaring would have no choice but to contradict us. Once put on his guard, he would control his very sadness. Lucretia, offended, might leave your house, and certainly she would regard her sister as having influenced your confession,—a ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... accordance with his merits to call him the father of lies. In controversies like this, and, in fact, in all controversies, it is more agreeable to the mass of mankind to take sides strongly with one party or the other, and either to believe or disbelieve one or the other fully and cordially. There is a class of minds, however, more calm and better balanced than the rest, who can deny themselves this pleasure, and who see that often, in the most bitter and decided controversies, ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... cause of an oppressed nationality. It would be utterly absurd to tell the story of his father's vision, and say that he looked on the South African War as a skirmish preliminary to the Armageddon. Sitting opposite to this cynical man of the world and listening to his talk, Hyacinth came himself to disbelieve in principle. He felt that there must be some baser motive at the bottom of his desire to fight, only, for the life of him, he could not remember what it was. He could not even imagine a good reason—good in the estimation of his companion—why anyone should do so foolish a thing as go out to the ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... them nor attempted to. The North-country character was an unsolved mystery to him, and that after ten years' study. "One-half o' what ye say they doot, and they let ye see it; t'ither half they disbelieve, and they tell ye so," he once said. And that explained his attitude toward them, and ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... could heal the sick and work that which would now appear to us miraculous. All this was considered facts but two or three centuries back, as no reader of old books (mostly Persian) is unacquainted with, or will disbelieve a priori unless his mind is irretrievably biassed by modern secular education. The story about the Mobed and Emperor Akbar and of the latter's conversion, is a well-known historical fact, ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... outlaw, then all these singular agreements of names, of dates, and of circumstances, will make together a far greater marvel than any that is to be found in the ballad-story itself, which some sceptics would require us to disbelieve. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... in some degree cleared the ground of difficulties, let us go back to the Lives of the Saints. If Bede tells us lies about St. Cuthbert, we will disbelieve his stories, but we will not call Bede a liar, even though he prefaces his life with a declaration that he has set down nothing but what he has ascertained on the clearest evidence. We are driven to no such alternative; our canons of criticism are different from Bede's, and so are our notions of ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... is not very long that I have learned to disbelieve in that story altogether. I fancy it was an odd whim of my poor father's, and that our family ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... disconcerted official, "I shall withdraw all my men but two, who must remain to watch and make sure of there being no concealment. Not that I disbelieve you. It is merely a formal precaution which I hope ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... worth a following. Endow the San Reve with a personal interest, the more if that interest were one mixed of love and jealousy, and her reason, if that be its name, would go blind and deaf and lapse into the merest frenzy of insanity. She would hasten to believe the worst and disbelieve the best. Under spell of jealousy, the San Reve would accept nothing that told in her own favor; and just now, despite an outward serenity—for, though sullen, she was serene—the San Reve was afire with jealousy like ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... "I neither believe nor disbelieve!" she interrupted. "Remember that you had an opportunity of denying it which you did ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... simple setting forth of good and evil in personal encounter, of innocence awhile given up to malice for its chastening and its triumph. Lo, all this so probable scene is here laid open to us, and many, against reason, disbelieve it! ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... such practices, and therefore they ought not to have been presumed. With no disposition to "set down aught in malice" against the General, we cannot refrain from saying, that, whatever he may have found it convenient to believe or disbelieve, to justify the extravagance of ungovernable passions inflamed by evil counsellors, in his moments of sober thoughts, if any such happened to him, he could not reject the testimony before him, of the termination of the war. He certainly, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... me that you had been born under a cabbage," said Natasha, "and I remember that I dared not disbelieve it then, but knew that it was not true, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Christian world from the foundation of the Church to the present time. That such has been the fact is attested by the writings of the Holy Fathers, both Greek and Latin, by daily usage and by the uninterrupted practice of the Church. . . . To doubt it, therefore, is to disbelieve the Christian Church and to brand her as heretical, and with her the prophets, apostles, and Christ Himself, who, in establishing the Church said: 'Behold I am with you all days even to the ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... the devil or his imp. With this question unsettled I shouldn't be surprised if they made these parts another visit to solve their doubts, for the bushrangers who haven't seen me will only deride those who have, and disbelieve all the statements made." ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... they were not yet there. At first the Lacedaemonians trusted the words of Themistocles, through their friendship for him; but when others arrived, all distinctly declaring that the work was going on and already attaining some elevation, they did not know how to disbelieve it. Aware of this, he told them that rumours are deceptive, and should not be trusted; they should send some reputable persons from Sparta to inspect, whose report might be trusted. They dispatched them accordingly. Concerning these Themistocles secretly sent word to the Athenians to detain them ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... poorly a principle in itself so true and ecclesiastical. You appeal in your defence to wise and sagacious intellects, who are far from enemies to Catholicism, or to the Irish Hierarchy, and you have no hope, or rather you absolutely disbelieve, that Education can possibly be conducted, here and now, on a theological principle, or that youths of different religions can, under the circumstances of the country, be educated apart from each other. The more you think over the state of politics, the position of parties, the feelings ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... a condemned criminal might speak ere the drop-bolts are drawn, my story, wild and hideously improbable as it may appear, demands at least attention. That it will ever receive credence I utterly disbelieve. Two months ago I should have scouted as mad or drunk the man who had dared tell me the like. Two months ago I was the happiest man in India. Today, from Peshawur to the sea, there is no one more wretched. My doctor and I are the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... pleased that she is inquired after of herself, she replies to him, as he inquires, in these words: 'Whoever thou art, excuse me, {but} I have not turned my eyes on any side from this water, and, busily employed, I have been attending to my pursuit. And that thou mayst the less disbelieve {me}, may the God of the sea so aid this employment of mine, no man has been for some time standing on this shore, myself only excepted, nor has any woman been standing {here}.' Her master believed her, and, turning his feet {to go ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... are a truthful young woman, Miss Dana, but, pardon me, I shall disbelieve your statement, until the ruby is ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... the path when it came close to him. He often spoke, but could never get any reply. To avoid this unwelcome visitor he forsook the field, and went to school and returned from it through a lane, in which place, between the quarry pack and nursery, it always met him. Unable to disbelieve the evidence of his own senses, or to obtain credit with any of his family, he prevailed upon Mr Ruddle to accompany ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... to be said? what is to be done?" he asked, with a look of blank despair. "I can't disbelieve it. From first to last, strange as ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... my misanthropy. My good friend Mealymouth, I will trouble you to tell me, do you go to church? When there, do you say, or do you not, that you are a miserable sinner, and saying so do you believe or disbelieve it? If you are a M. S., don't you deserve correction, and aren't you grateful if you are to be let off? I say again what a blessed thing it is that we are not ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... absolutely no respect alike, they never could meet even for purposes of hostility; there must be some common ground from which the aversion may proceed. Moreover, in this case Aunt Jane utterly disbelieved in Malbone because she had reason to disbelieve in his father, and the better she knew the son the more ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... man's blessedness. Then the joyous exclamation of our first text, which we have often had to strive hard not to disbelieve, will be no more a truth of faith but a truth of experience. Here we have had to trust that it was so, even when we could scarce cleave to the confidence. There, memory will look back on our wanderings through this great wilderness, and, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... or disbelieve them. If we disbelieve them, we shall lose confidence in the verity of any document in proportion to the element of the miraculous which that document contains. The fact that the Gospels teem with miracles destroys the claim of the Gospels to ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... risen to wealth by commerce and manufactures. In looking over the map, there does not seem to be any one to supplant us; all those, who have great advantages, have already gone before, and, till we see the example of a country renewing itself, we have a right to disbelieve that it ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... to say he had received Sir Charles's letter with pain, but, of course, he could not disbelieve him, and therefore he should invite Mr. Bassett no more till ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... my own fortitude to save me from despair.' 'Know then,' said OMAR, 'that thou art hated by ALMORAN, and that he loves ALMEIDA.' At this declaration, the astonishment of HAMET was equal to his concern; and he was in doubt whether to believe or disbelieve what he heard: but the moment he recollected the wisdom and integrity of OMAR, his doubts were at an end; and having recovered from his surprize, he was about to make such enquiries as might gratify the anxious and tumultuous curiosity which was ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... not like it, can do anything towards causing it to cease; when I think that I can do nothing to make up to those I love, any more than to those I hate, for evils I have done them and sorrows I have caused them; that in my worst moments I disbelieve in my best, in my best loathe my worst; that there is in me no wholeness, no unity; that life is not a good to me, for I scorn myself—when I think all or any such things, can it be strange if I think also that surely there ought to be somewhere a being to account for me, one to account for himself, ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... shine out in the light reflected from these. Even granting that some of the miracles recorded of our Lord are apocryphal, what of that? We do not rest upon them: we have enough and more than enough without them, and can afford to take the line of saying to the unbeliever, "Disbelieve this miracle or that if you find that you cannot accept it, but believe in the Resurrection, of which we will put forward such ample proofs that no healthy reason can withstand them, and, having accepted the Resurrection, admit it as the manifestation of supernatural power, the existence of which ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... that they gave you any other disquiet than what arose from seeing that the worthiest and most humane intentions are poison to some human beings. Oh! have not the last five years brought to light such infernal malevolence, such monstrous crimes, as mankind had grown civilized enough to disbelieve when they read any thing similar in former ages; if, indeed, any thing similar has been recorded. But I must not enter into what I dare not fathom. Catherine Slay-Czar triumphs over the good honest Poles; ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... every time I hear that answer I disbelieve it.... There is no man that every one of us could not have an opinion about! That's simply a way of ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... disbelieve me," she said, triumphant as the very devil over a branded soul all hot. "They will be sure you are mad, and they will ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... methodical congregation said straight and disagreeable things. In fact my total inability to see Hazel as Edward saw her somewhat detracted from my enjoyment of her history. That being said the rest is, thank goodness, praise. Miss WEBB is a careful and sincere workman, who, whether you believe or disbelieve in her characters, writes with such real compassion for suffering that she cannot fail to enlist your sympathy. Additionally her vein is original, and she only needs a little more experience to make a great ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... Prohibitionists to say: "We will vote for temperance men; we will stand with the party that is the nearest in favor of what we deem to be the right"? They should also take into consideration that other people are as honest as they; that others disbelieve in prohibition as honestly as they believe in it, and that other people cannot leave their principles to vote for prohibition; and they must remember, that these other people are in ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... question in the days of Henry and Elizabeth? The Supremacy;—now, was I saying one single word in favour of the Supremacy of the Holy See, in favour of the foreign jurisdiction? No, I did not believe in it myself. Did Henry VIII. religiously hold Justification by faith only? did he disbelieve Purgatory? Was Elizabeth zealous for the marriage of the Clergy? or had she a conscience against the Mass? The Supremacy of the Pope was the essence of the "Popery" to which, at the time of the composition of the Articles, the Supreme Head or Governor of the English Church ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... shone. Charlie stole a glance at Jack. His dreams of the mysterious East were being rapidly realized! "No one has ever answered it, however. It is one of those odd native yarns that are generally founded on fact, though you white men disbelieve them. Here it is ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... convinced that the sequence is irreversible, we shall be convinced that future man will be more and more completely controlled by the very highest powers or aims to which this sequence points. Otherwise we must disbelieve the continuity of history. But the germs of the future are always concealed in the history of the present. Hence—pardon the reiteration—if we can once trace this sequence of dominant functions, whose evolution has filled past ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... sad—a painful affair, Burr junior. I wanted to disbelieve in your guilt, I wanted to feel that there was no young gentleman in my establishment who could stoop to such a piece of base pilfering; but the truth is so circumstantially brought home through the despicable meanness of a boy of whose actions I feel the ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... at last she snapped out, "and I don't disbelieve them. I just let 'em alone. What do I know about 'em? Ruth tells me a story; and I believe her. I know what she saw beforehand, came true in a most remarkable way. Well, I'm sure I've no objection. One thing may be true, ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... inhabitants of this coast will scarcely be required, we have still stronger to give. One of us asked if they had any human bones with the flesh remaining upon them, and upon their answering us that all had been eaten, we affected to disbelieve that the bones were human, and said that they were the bones of a dog; upon which one of the Indians with some eagerness took hold of his own fore-arm, and thrusting it towards us, said, that the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... it must not, produce all that it could produce. And it is high time to disbelieve the legend which represents wagedom as the best incentive to productive work. If industry nowadays brings in a hundred times more than it did in the days of our grandfathers, it is due to the sudden awakening of physical and chemical ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... interrupted by their separating to dress for dinner. It left Cecilia in much perplexity; she knew not what wholly to credit, or wholly to disbelieve; but her chief concern arose from the unfortunate change of countenance which Lady Honoria had been so quick ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... for existence, we see that the most exalted end which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the creation of the higher animals{523}, has directly proceeded. Doubtless, our first impression is to disbelieve that any secondary law could produce infinitely numerous organic beings, each characterised by the most exquisite workmanship and widely extended adaptations: it at first accords better with our faculties to suppose that each required the fiat of a Creator. There{524} is a [simple] grandeur ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... falling in love is as beneficial as it is astonishing. It arrests the petrifying influence of years, disproves cold-blooded and cynical conclusions, and awakens dormant sensibilities. Hitherto the man had found it a good policy to disbelieve the existence of any enjoyment which was out of his reach; and thus he turned his back upon the strong sunny parts of nature, and accustomed himself to look exclusively on what was common and dull. He ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... isn't credulity," said Lesley, with something between a smile and a sigh, "it is faith. And I can't altogether disbelieve in poor Kingston—even now." ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... something, the proof of which no man can give to another, yet every man may find for himself. If any man say that he cannot find it, I am bound to disbelieve him. I cannot do otherwise without unsettling the foundations of my own moral nature. If he will not find it, he excommunicates himself, forfeits his personal rights, and becomes a thing—i.e., one who may be used against his will and without regard to his interest. If the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... the original sources, and the steps by which the tale arrived at its late recorders in print; and then each man's view as to the veracity of the story will rest on his sense of probability; and on his bias, his wish to believe or to disbelieve. ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... people doubt or disbelieve that sin is the cause of all suffering. I have met such. They freely aver that this cannot be so, because the brute creation suffers, which they say is sinless. It is a well conceded fact that brutes ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... appearance is Lord Brougham's. His Lordship was not reckoned precisely a veracious man; on the other hand, this was not the kind of fable he was likely to tell. He was brought up under the regime of common-sense. "On all such subjects my father was very sceptical," he says. To disbelieve Lord Brougham we must suppose either that he wilfully made a false entry in his diary in 1799, or that in preparing his Autobiography in 1862, he deliberately added a falsehood—and then explained ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... long on any subject. Yet all this is not enough to account for the fact in question—why they should feel this distaste for the very subject of religion. Why should they be ashamed of paying reverence to an unseen, all-powerful God, whose existence they do not disbelieve? Yet they do feel ashamed of it. Is it that they are ashamed of themselves, not of their religion; feeling the inconsistency of professing what they cannot fully practise? This refinement does not materially alter the view of the ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... had gone quite stale. Querida was right; he ought to lie fallow. No ground could yield eternally without rest. Querida was clever enough to know that; and he had been stupid enough to ignore it—even disbelieve it, contemptuous of precept and proverb and wise saw, buoyed above apprehension by consciousness and faith in his ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... I should disbelieve Miss Glynn's story; I am an Irish priest like yourself, sir. I have worked in London among the poor for forty years, and Miss Glynn's story is, to my certain knowledge, not an uncommon one; it is, I am sorry to say, most probable; it is what would happen to any schoolmistress in Ireland ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... time later. 'What he told in the book,' says Jacopo, 'was not as much as he had really seen, because of the tongues of detractors, who being ready to impose their own lies on others, are over hasty to set down as lies what they in their perversity disbelieve or do not understand. And because there are many great and strange things in that book, which are reckoned past all credence, he was asked by his friends on his death-bed to correct the book, by removing everything ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... to the real cause of his enmity against Don Ferdinand. The expression of his countenance was of such contending, terrible suffering, that the King hastily withdrew his gaze, vainly endeavoring to disbelieve, as he had done, ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... being crowned with bride-flowers, and lo! it was rue, and thyme gone to seed, and dead primroses that garlanded her sad, unspoken love. But she wore them with a sweet, brave submission, not affecting to disbelieve that time would surely heal love's aching pain. For she knew that goodness was omnipotent to ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... "I can't exactly say I disbelieve his story, but—well, you see, about a month afterwards I was in Phoenix again, and one night I saw the Prospector and the lunatic taking a drink at a bar together. A little later the Prospector passed me without seeing me. He was walking ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... not found, and people were beginning to disbelieve in its existence, when suddenly indications appeared which showed that it was near at hand. Nuggets, some large, some small, began to be constantly discovered, and every day news was brought into Ballarat about the turning-up of a thirty-ounce or a twenty-ounce ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... between them before he ever thought of Lady Isabel. I had that from Wilson, and she ought to know, for she lived at the Hares'. Another thing is said—only you must just believe one word of West Lynne talk, and disbelieve ten—that if Lady Isabel had not died, Mr. Carlyle never would have married again; he had scruples. Half a dozen were given him by report; Louisa Dobede for one, and Mary Pinner for another. Such ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Mannion's voice, and the voice of the lad who had let me in. "Look about you before you go out," said the waiter, speaking in the passage; "the street's not safe for you." Disbelieving, or affecting to disbelieve, what he heard, Mannion interrupted the waiter angrily; and endeavoured to reassure his companion in guilt, by asserting that the warning was nothing but an attempt to extort money by way of reward. The man retorted sulkily, ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... "The commodore told us he intended to let only around half of the Seventh Star's security force in on the Hlat deal. The other half was supposed to have been dumped out of one of the subspace section's locks early today, without benefit of suits. We had no reason to disbelieve him. Velladon naturally would want to cut down the number of men who got in on the split with him to as many as he actually needed. But if he's been thinking about eliminating us from the game, those other men may still be ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz
... and say, 'Quien sabe?' like you agnostics. When nobody shall believe or disbelieve, who ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... have on, and the advantage the French government may be disposed to make of, the spirit which is at work to cherish a belief in them that the treaty is calculated to favor Great Britain at their expense. Whether they believe or disbelieve these tales, the effect it will have upon the nation will be nearly the same; for, whilst they are at war with that power, or so long as the animosity between the two nations exists, it will, no matter at whose expense, be their policy, and it is to be feared will be their conduct, to prevent ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... had certainly probed deep this time into the feminine nature. With every desire and instinct to disbelieve the facts, the deeper his inquiries went, the stronger the evidence rolled up: there was no gainsaying it; no sense in ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... corpses. Cromwell was meditating an abolition of the Parliament, and a practical coronation of himself. The world had ceased to wonder at English democracy giving laws to their quondam rulers, and the democracy was beginning to be a little tired of itself, to disbelieve in its own irksome discipline, and to sigh for the flesh-pots of a modified Presbyterian monarchy. Cromwell, indeed, was at the height of his glory, his honours lie thick upon him, and now, if ever, he is the regal Cromwell that Victor Hugo has portrayed, the uncrowned King of England, trampling ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... legend disagree as to the age of the young countess; some say she was seventeen, and some that she was eleven, while those who disbelieve the story altogether say that she was only seven years old. But now you have heard the story, and you may take it or leave it. There is some explanation for the belief that Schubert did not dare to love or declare his love, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... who had studied them attentively. He tells us, first, that they are "great goddesses to idle men"; then, that they are "mistresses of disputings, and logic, and monstrosities, and noisy chattering"; declares that whoso believes in their divinity must first disbelieve in Jupiter, and place supreme power in the hands of an unknown god "Whirlwind"; and, finally, he displays their influence over the mind of one of their disciples, in his sudden desire ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... in absolute beauty any more than I disbelieve in absolute truth. On the contrary, I gladly suppose that the proposition—this object must be either beautiful or not beautiful—is absolutely true. Only, can we recognize it? Certainly, at moments ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... spurious, and the scientific advances which have proven the Bible to be a myth and a fable, if man still insists on "revealed religion" he must admit that sorcery and witchcraft are an integral part of the Bible teaching. He must still either believe in witchcraft or disbelieve all of the Bible. For again, one part cannot be true and another false of an ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... but mere arbitrary license, to say that all these stand for visions. The issue of truth or falsehood is intelligible; the middle supposition of confusion and mistake in that which is the basis of everything, and is definitely and in such varied ways repeated, is trifling and incredible. We may disbelieve, if we please, St. Paul's enumeration of the appearances after the Resurrection; but to resolve it into a series of visions is to take refuge in the most unlikely of guesses. And, when we take into view the whole of the case—not merely the life and teaching out of which everything grew, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... "That you believe or disbelieve concerns me not at all," the Prior answered. "Nathless, through that wall he went, for with my own eyes I saw a part of it roll ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... life of his daughter pass by him in mental review, he became painfully aware of the fact that this was the first time in her life that she had ever heard real music. "Is it possible?" he asked. He tried to think of another time that would make him disbelieve the accuracy ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... have been stretching the truth more or less, but then Hugh saw no reason to disbelieve what he said. The boy realized that in these modern days those who would succeed in the midst of fierce competition must have something very unusual to offer the fickle public in the way of adventure and novel effects. Why, the mere fact of this manager learning about the deserted ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... of the pleasures of sin; yet their happiness is complete. It would be my greatest happiness to be from this moment entirely like them. Every sin is something away from my greatest enjoyment ... The devil strives night and day to make me forget this or disbelieve it. He says, Why should you not enjoy this pleasure as much as Solomon or David? You may go to heaven also. I am persuaded that this is a lie,—that my true happiness is to ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... show your Lordships, in every step of this proceeding, that there is an inherent presumption of corruption in every act. We shall show the presumptions which preceded, we shall show the presumptions which accompanied the proof; and these, with the subsequent presumptions, will make it impossible to disbelieve them. Such a body of proof was never given upon any such occasion: and it is such proof as will prevail against the whole voice of corruption, that amazing, active, diligent, spreading voice, which has been made, by buzzing in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... perceives that what we are saying about him is the truth, will they be angry with philosophy? Will they disbelieve us, when we tell them that no State can be happy which is not designed by artists who imitate the ...
— The Republic • Plato
... At any rate, he was wrong; and the commonest knowledge of our wild world suffices to show any reasoning man the gravity of the error propounded in my quotation. As we study the history of the frivolous race of men, it sometimes seems hard to disbelieve the theory of Descartes. The great Frenchman held that man and other animals are automata; and, were it not that such a theory strikes at the root of morals, we might almost be tempted to accept it in moments of weakness, when the riddle of the unintelligible earth ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... have somewhat weakened this by trying to palm off the body of Thomas Leicester on you for the body of Mr. Gaunt. But the original mystery remains, and puzzles me. I might fairly appeal to you to disbelieve the witness. She is proved incontinent, and a practised liar, and she forswore herself in this court, and my lord is in two minds about committing her. But a liar does not always lie, and, to be honest, I think she really ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... was unable to speak. I was so overcome at this unexpected confirmation of the sight I had seen on that eventful Friday night, though I had afterwards been inclined to disbelieve the evidence of my own senses, as everybody else had done, even the skipper at last joining in with the opinion of Mr Fosset and all the rest, save the boatswain, old Masters. Yes, yes; every one them imagined that I had dreamt of "the ghost-ship" as they called my vision, and that I had ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... king's physician, who was later to discover the circulation of the blood. In the course of this chapter we shall see that Harvey had long cherished misgivings about witchcraft. Probably by this time he had come to disbelieve it. One can but wonder if Charles, already probably aware of Harvey's views, had not intended from his first step in the Lancashire case to give his physician a chance to assert his opinion. In any case his report and that of his subordinates ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... of parrots, Mr. Emerson said he had never heard a parrot say any of these wonderful things himself, but the Storer family of Cambridge, who were very truthful people, had told him astonishing anecdotes of a bird belonging to them, which he could not disbelieve because ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... another advance, and was gaining upon them. It seemed curious that he should stand forth as the champion of the herd, and do all the roaring and stamping, while the other bulls remained mute, and followed with the rest of the herd, yet so it was; but there seemed no reason to disbelieve the unpleasant fact that the monarch's example would be imitated by his subjects. The herd had now drawn so near, and the young ladies had made such a comparatively slow retreat, that they were yet many yards distant from the boundary ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... world; he thinks to show knowledge and wisdom, penetration, deep acquaintance with men and things. Poor fellow! he has exposed his own nakedness. Instead of showing that others are rotten inside, he has proved that he is. He claims that it is not safe to believe others—it is perfectly safe to disbelieve him. He claims that every man will get the better of you if possible—let him alone! Selfishness, he says, is the universal rule—leave nothing to depend on his generosity or honor; trust him just as far as you can sling an ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... the charges will be proved and that the King will be divorced. It is impossible to discover what effect the report may have in the country; it is certain hitherto that all ranks of men have been decidedly favourable to the Queen, and disbelieve the charges against her. The military in London have shown alarming symptoms of dissatisfaction, so much so that it seems doubtful how far the Guards can be counted upon in case of any disturbance arising out of this ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... cannot see any reason to disbelieve it, except that my father's character assures me it ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... I think it is not amiss to remind people of those things which they are now-a-days too apt to disbelieve; besides, we have lately had an act against witches, and I don't question but shortly we shall have one against ghosts. But come, Mr Trapwit, as we are for this once to give the precedence to comedy, e'en ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... confessed that, before getting to sleep again, Mark thought of what Aunt Chloe had said about the "ghoses"; but having been taught to disbelieve in such things, and always to seek for some natural explanation of whatever appeared supernatural or unreal, he made up his mind to wait and make the attempt to unravel this mystery by himself before saying anything ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... so," he continued. "You have suffered so much of late that you disbelieve in anything but unhappiness. You feel it must be interminable. It was all my fault. You fancy that you are alone, with a bitter hostile world arrayed against you. And since the world is your enemy, what do you care what the enemy thinks of you? Very natural too! That is what you feel. If only, ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... hand. Just when they are putting him in bear's skin his parents appear on the scene with the marriage contract. To their great dismay he refuses to sign it and when pressed, runs away.—Meanwhile Mary has heard of her lover's fickleness, which she would fain disbelieve, but alas Kezul shows her the document by which Hans renounces her. Nevertheless she refuses to wed any other man than the one her heart has chosen. Wenzel approaching again and recognizing in Mary the bride he had renounced, is now quite sorry to ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... not help if you disbelieve him. Still, you must comply with his request; otherwise, the Bishop may compel you to ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... physical laws do. If I take those same materials, and form them into a telescope, that is what mind does." This is the whole question in a nutshell. That design implies an intelligent designer, is a self evident truth. Every man believes it; and no man can practically disbelieve it. Even those naturalists who theoretically deny it, if they find in a cave so simple a thing as a flint arrow-head, are as sure that it was made by a man as they are of their own existence. And yet they want us to believe that an eagle's eye is the product of blind natural causes. ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... rather than John's, and that they would have immediately gone home, but that they staid that they might deliver up John into my power; and when they said this they took their oaths of it, and those such as are most tremendous amongst us, and such as I did not think fit to disbelieve. However, they desired me to lodge some where else, because the next day was the sabbath, and that it was not fit the city of Tiberias should ...
— The Life of Flavius Josephus • Flavius Josephus
... traveller, "very likely. I am one who goes sniffing; I am no poet. I believe in a better future for the world; or, at all accounts, I do most potently disbelieve in the present. Rotten eggs is the burthen of my song. But indeed, your Highness, when I meet with any merit, I do not think that I am slow to recognise it. This is a day that I shall still recall with gratitude, for I have found a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... such a scheme leads judicious people to disbelieve in its possibility; but in respect to Mr. Johnson it has been found that the only way to prevent the occurrence of mischief is to diffuse extensively among the people the suspicion that it is meditated. Judicious and dispassionate persons are often poor judges ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... malkontentigi. Disappointment malkontentigo. Disapprove malaprobi. Disarm senarmigi. Disarray konfuzego. Disarrange malordigi. Disaster malfelicxego. Disastrous ruiniga. Disavow malkonfesi. Disband disigi. Disbelieve malkredi. Disburse elspezi. Disbursement elspezo. Disc disko. Discard forigi, forjxeti. Discern distingi. Discernment sagaceco. Discharge eligi. Discharge (dismiss) eksigi. Discharge (a debt) elpagi. Disciple aligxanto. Discipline disciplino. Disclaim malkonfesi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... doubt that I did most thoroughly believe in Crowder. I had argued with myself against this belief to the utmost extent of my ability, and I had now given up the effort. If I should disbelieve him I would deprive myself of one of the most precious privileges of my existence, and I did not intend to do so until I found myself absolutely forced to admit that I was mistaken. Time would settle all this, and all that I had to do now was to listen, enjoy, and ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... you carry it there yourself, and did not you find it in the same place, covered in the same manner as when you left it? And if you had put gold in it, you must have found it. You told me it contained olives, and I believed you. This is all I know of the matter: you may disbelieve me if you please; but I ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... newly-discovered islands of the West. There are vague rumours and stories of his having been engaged in various expeditions —among them one fitted out in Genoa by John of Anjou to recover the kingdom of Naples for King Rene of Provence; but there is no reason to believe these rumours: good reason to disbelieve them, rather. ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... that large class of people who can neither imagine nor disbelieve in immortality. Dimmer and dimmer grew the figure but still it remained visible. As one can continue to see a star at dawn until one turns away. Or one blinks or nods and ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... were made. This morning it was followed up by the announcement of the capture of Port Hudson. The guns are pealing for true, and the Yankees at headquarters may be seen skipping like lambs, for very joy. And I still disbelieve! Skeptic! The first thing I know that "Era" man will be coming here to convert me! But I don't, can't, won't believe it! If it is true,—but I find consolation in this faith: it is either true, or not true,—if it is true, it is all for the best, and if it is not true, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... to understand, Mr. Wingfold, that you neither believe nor disbelieve the tenets of the church whose bread you eat?" said Bascombe, with the air of a ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... wished I wasn't, but life turned petty and disgusting to me. I resented everything. It is just as wonderful and radiant a star of hope to read that there is a sure way out of my tangle as if I had consumption and was promised a cure of that. I don't yet exactly believe it, but I don't disbelieve it. All I know is I want to read, read, read all the time. I was just thinking a minute ago that if we had the books here it would be perfect. This is the sort of place where it would be easiest to see that only the good is the ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... without it? we would answer, Yes: the little child is certain of its mother's existence before it is capable of knowing God, and the veriest Atheist is certain of his own existence and that of his fellow-men, even when he professes to doubt or to disbelieve the existence of God. It may be true that the essential nature and omniscient knowledge of God is the ultimate and eternal standard of truth and certainty, or, in the words of Fenelon, that "il n'y a qu'une seule verite, et qu'une seule maniere de bien juger, qui ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... Jimmy disbelieve this story. They argue that its premises are in disaccord with the known laws governing human nature, that its details do not square with the average of probability. People who have seen and conversed with Jimmy ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... helped the more to make me disbelieve him; but the key to his lies I had not, and so I merely said it would be many a day ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... Your cook, your maid, are out. Certainly you did not place it there yourself. And yet we know that someone has been in this room, or at least delivered the letter, during the past fifteen minutes. Had I not found it here myself, I should have been almost tempted to disbelieve it, but I am forced to admit ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... the moment was combing her long, fair locks; but she saw the stone come hurtling through the air, and, with remarkable presence of mind and dexterity, with her comb she fended off the missile, so that it fell between them, doing no harm. And if anyone should presume to disbelieve this tale, there lies the rock to this day, and the marks of the teeth of the Queen's comb are on it still for all to see. The distance that the King hurled this missile is not above a quarter of a mile, and the pebble itself may weigh a trifle of ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... believe that these libels have been got up at your house, and by you, because that fact has been attested by persons who have been in your service, and who have seen them in progress; beyond this no one makes me believe or disbelieve anything." ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... susceptible of much abuse and open to many corruptions; but these cannot penetrate far below the surface; they are external and obvious, not vital and secret; because at heart the voice of democracy is the voice of God. It may be silent for long, so that some will disbelieve or despair, and say in their haste that democracy is a fraud or a failure. But at last its tones will be heard, and its word will be irresistible and immortal: the word of the Lord, uttering itself through the mouth ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... to pick up incidental nuggets that happened to lie under his very footstep. Said one man to his friend: "I believe I'll go. I know most of this talk is wildly exaggerated, but I am sensible enough to discount all that sort of thing and to disbelieve absurd stories. I shan't go with the slightest notion of finding the thing true, but will be satisfied if I do reasonably well. In fact, if I don't pick up more than a hatful of gold a day I shall be ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... him know all, without disclosing names; he told me in nearly the words, that it was "a lie," for he had heard my mother say, that I was the steadiest young fellow possible, and she could trust me anywhere. This, coupled with my quiet look, and the care I took not to divulge names, made him disbelieve me; but I disclosed so many facts about women's nature, that he was somewhat astonished. He told me what he had done, about having had the clap, and what to do if I got it; then he had seduced a cottager's daughter on the estate; but his description of the taking, did not ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... Laboratories, and both brought it into the open light, and shewn the weakness of their Proofs, that have hitherto been wont to be brought for it, either Judicious Men shall henceforth be allowed calmly and after due information to disbelieve it, or those abler Chymists, that are zealous for the reputation of it, will be oblig'd to speak plainer then hitherto has been done, and maintain it by better Experiments and Arguments then Those Carneades ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... thought that he had an excellent opportunity here of avowing himself, but there was the risk that Mr. Blinkhorn would disbelieve him, and, with the boys, he felt that the truth would do anything but increase his popularity. But dissembling fails sometimes outside the copy-books, and Mr. Bultitude's rather blundering attempt at it only landed him in ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... of following his subject to the end, why had he dared to leave that Sunday-keeping, church-going, domestic, decent life, which would have become one of so ordinary a calibre as himself? There are men who may doubt, who may weigh the evidence, who may venture to believe or disbelieve in compliance with their own reasoning faculties,—who may trust themselves to think it out; but he, too clearly, had not been, was not, and never would be one of these. To walk as he saw other men walking around him,—because he was one ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... quite honest to utter a positive verdict on a book merely glanced through, or to pen glowing eulogies on the mediocre work of a friend while slighting the good one of an enemy; and may further ask whether those who, at the dictation of an employer, write what they disbelieve, are not guilty of the serious ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... matter were with Alice. It never occurred to her to disbelieve a word of the statement made to her, or to suggest to herself that it had been coloured by any fears or exaggerations on the part of her correspondent. She knew that Alice was true. And, moreover, much as she loved her brother,—willing as she had been and would still be to risk all that ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... are a liar, and the falsehoods which you have uttered, only serve to increase your guilt, and confirm me in my resolution to sacrifice both you and that guilty woman who lies yonder. Can I disbelieve the evidence of my own eyes? Must I go into particulars, and say that last night, at about this hour, in the kitchen—ha! you turn pale—you tremble—your guilt is confessed. I would have killed you last night, Anderson, but I had not ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... "it is not in you to be honest. Your words have no ring of truth in my ears, for the note is the same as I heard once upon the Ecrehos. I was a young girl then and I believed; I am a woman now, and I should still disbelieve though all the world were on your side to declare me wrong. I tell you"—her voice rose again, it seemed to catch the note of freedom and strength of the storm without— "I tell you, I will still live as my heart and conscience prompt me. The course I have set for myself I will follow; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the Provencal, quickly; "if we spoke to her, she would disbelieve us. She would no doubt appeal to Mainwaring, and Mainwaring would have no choice but to contradict us. Once put on his guard, he would control his very sadness. Lucretia, offended, might leave your house, and certainly she would regard her sister as having ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... girl, who met him with equal indignation. She turned towards him from the shop counter; her breast heaved quickly. He observed her brow, and the sudden strength of her lips. It was intolerable that she should disbelieve him. ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... Thank him, when he has held me down year after year! When he made father disbelieve in me—made me disbelieve in myself! And all ...
— The Master Builder • Henrik Ibsen
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