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More "Inconceivable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... truths in our mind, Shakespeare's intense sensitiveness and sensuality, and his almost inconceivable snobbishness, we may now ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... forward—The noise above stairs was dreadful—I blundered and missed the stairs, but the terrified boy had run after me to shew me. I heard two pistols fire as I ascended—The horror that struck my heart was inconceivable!—A fellow armed with a bludgeon was standing to guard the door. My pistols were unlocked and ready: I presented and bade him give way—He instantly obeyed—I made the lock fly and entered!—The first object that struck my sight was Frank, besmeared with ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... before. She said to herself that it would never come to anything but misery and pain; yet even misery was better than nothingness, and he who had loved had lived. To think that a quiet, middle-aged Englishwoman, a pattern of domestic duty, should think thus, and exult in her son's inconceivable and, as she believed, unhappy passion, is almost too much to be ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... would not join the marriage party; refused to eat with it or sit with it at all. Day after day, for six days, flatly refused; and after nightfall of the sixth, glided out with her foster-brother into the woods, into by-paths and inconceivable wanderings; and, in effect, got home to Denmark. Brother Svein was not for the moment there; probably enough gone to England again. But Thyri knew too well he would not allow her to stay here, or anywhere that he ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... among other things, a very pretty brass-bound chest being thrown about like a feather. . . . The unhappy Ostend packet, unable to get in or go back, beat about the Channel all Tuesday night, and until noon yesterday; when I saw her come in, with five men at the wheel, a picture of misery inconceivable. . . . The effect of the readings at Hastings and Dover really seems to have outdone the best usual impression; and at Dover they wouldn't go, but sat applauding like mad. The most delicate audience I have seen in any provincial place, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... should proceed to destroy the capitol or set fire to the arsenal. He who should make these attempts, would be a bad tribune. He who assails the power of the people, is no longer a tribune at all. Is it not inconceivable, that a tribune should have power to imprison a consul, and the people have no authority to degrade him when he uses that honor which he received from them, to their detriment? For the tribunes, as well as the consuls, hold ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... father was a decurion. I have bartered my nobility—for which I feel neither shame nor sorrow—for the sake of others." It is difficult to reconcile this statement with the assurance given in the "Confession" that his father was a humble deacon. "It is inconceivable," as Father Bullen Morris argues, "that the Saint, sprung from a noble family, should base his claim to nobility on the fact that his father, Calphurnius, was a deacon. On the other hand, the theory that Calphurnius was a Roman officer fits in with both ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... blindfold me and lead me in. When I opened my eyes, there they stood. Twenty-five happy faces smiling into mine, and twenty babies to match. It was the kiddies that saved the day. I was not a little bewildered, and tears stung my eyes. But with one accord the babies set up a howl at anything so inconceivable as a queer foreign thing with a tan head appearing in their midst. When peace was restored by natural methods, ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... now that the rustic speaking in a patois could write Venus and Adonis, manifestly it was inconceivable in 1593, when Venus and Adonis was signed "William Shakespeare." No man who knew the actor (as described) could believe that he was the author, but there does not exist the most shadowy hint proving that the faintest doubt was thrown on the actor's authorship; ignorant ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... that in obtaining the intimate history of a woman a difficulty is met with in the natural reluctance to telling what often seems to the patient painful and unnecessary details. To some people it seems inconceivable that fears, pains and aches, sleeplessness, etc., can arise out of difficulties like the monotony of housework, temperament, or troubles with the husband. Furthermore, though some women understand well enough the source of their conflicts, they are ashamed to tell and rest mainly ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... would ye endure life without that hope, ye discerning ones? Neither in the inconceivable could ye have been born, nor in ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... that rainbow work of fancy that clothes what is naked and seems to ennoble what is base; in each, life falls dead like dough, instead of soaring away like a balloon into the colours of the sunset; each is true, each inconceivable; for no man lives in external truth, among salts and acids, but in the warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, with the painted windows and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... such a language inconceivable. Instead of summarizing all our experiences of a thing by one word, its name, we should have to recall by appropriate adjectives the various sensations we had received from it; the objects we think of would be disintegrated, or, rather, would never have been unified. For "sun," they would ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... crowd would gather on the pavement and disperse again. To each and all the speakers, the one intolerable thing was the total disappearance of the poor lost one. No body—no clothes—no tangible relic of the dead: it was a sore trial to customary beliefs. Heaven and hell seemed alike inconceivable when there was no phantom grave-body to make trial of them. One woman after another declared that it would send her mad if it ever happened to any belonging of hers. "But it's a mercy there's no one to fret—nobbut t' little gell—an she's ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... by the superficiality of your cui bono, and shall make you the answer that I am willing for an exceedingly paltry honorarium to rush into the Gordian knot and write you the most superior essays on every conceivable and inconceivable subject under the sun, as per enclosed samples which I forward respectfully for your delightful and golden opinions, guaranteeing faithfully that all of your readers in every hemisphere and postal district will fall in love with such a ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... the wind and its pressure, the sea rose. It jumped, it leaped, it soared straight toward the clouds. Remember, from every point of the compass that inconceivable wind was blowing in toward the center of calm. The result was that the seas sprang up from every point of the compass. There was no wind to check them. They popped up like corks released from the bottom of a pail of water. There was no system to them, no stability. They ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... some slight obstacle. At length Miss Strictland, who had lately been very courteous to Mr. Vivian, took an opportunity of drawing him into one of the recessed windows; where, with infinite difficulty in bringing herself to speak on such a subject, after inconceivable bridlings of the head, and contortions of every muscle of her neck, she insinuated to him her fears, that my Lord Glistonbury's confidence had been very ill placed in Lord Lidhurst's tutor: she was aware that Mr. Russell had the honour of Mr. Vivian's friendship, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... a thing, under all its circumstances, inconceivable, that everything should by the Emperor be abandoned to the king of Prussia. That monarch was considered as principal. In the nature of things, as well as in his position with regard to the war, he was only an ally, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... poet families. A close corporation, they appear to have resented every innovation, and were content to continue the tradition of their ancestors. The direct consequence of this tenacious clinging to the fashions of by-gone days rendered it impossible, nay almost inconceivable, that the literary men of Ireland should have exerted any profound or immediate influence upon England or western Europe. Yet, nowadays, few serious scholars will be prepared to deny that the island contributed in considerable measure ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... Dorsenne. "It is inconceivable, but it is thus. Ah! she is truly the worthy friend of that knave Hafner, whom his daughter's broken engagement has not grieved, in spite of his discomfiture. I forgot to tell you that he had just sold Palais Castagna to a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... this about his own momentary personality; and then, drawing the ground from under his feet, as if by some cataclysm of nature, to plunge him into the unfathomable abyss sown with enormous suns and systems, and among the inconceivable numbers and magnitudes and velocities of the heavenly bodies. So that he concludes by striking into us some sense of that disproportion of things which Shelley has illuminated by the ironical flash of these eight words: The desire of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his bed for seven sleepless hours, Barnes arose and gloomily breakfasted alone. He was not discouraged over his failure to arrive at anything tangible in the shape of a plan of action. It was inconceivable that he should not be able in very short order to bring about the release of the fair guest of Green Fancy. He realised that the conspiracy in which she appeared to be a vital link was far-reaching and undoubtedly pernicious in character. There was not the slightest doubt in his mind ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... unbounded passion for low wit, the importance she gave to every kind of printed trash, either complimentary or abusive, the despotism and transports of her oracles, her excessive admiration or dislike of everything, which did not permit her to speak upon any subject without convulsions, her inconceivable prejudices, invincible obstinacy, and the enthusiasm of folly to which this carried her in her passionate judgments; all disgusted me and diminished the attention I wished to pay her. I neglected ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... God, that he should do wickedness; and from the Almighty that he should commit iniquity." An evil God, one that could commit evil would be a contradiction in terms, an impossible, inconceivable idea. Job seemed to doubt that the principle on which the universe was conducted was one of absolute equity. He must know that God is free from all evil-doing. However hidden the meaning of His dealings, He is always just. God never did, never will do wrong to any of His creatures; He ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... morning journeys up to class, infinite yawnings during lecture and unquenchable gusto in the delights of truantry, made up the sunshine and shadow of my college life. You cannot fancy what you missed in missing him; his virtues, I make sure, are inconceivable to his successors, just as they were apparently concealed from his contemporaries, for I was practically alone in the pleasure I had in his society. Poor soul, I remember how much he was cast down at times, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of grave, universal beauty. Of the new note that came into the Norwegian lyric with Bjoernson, I can discover no hint in his predecessors. Such a poem as, for instance, "Nils Finn," with its inimitably droll refrain—how utterly inconceivable it would be in the mouth of Wergeland or Welhaven! The new quality in it is as unexplainable as the poem itself is untranslatable. It has that inexpressible cadence and inflection of the Norse dialect which you feel (if you have the conditions for recognizing ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... of His mouth were given These phrases. O replace them whence they came. He, only, knows our inconceivable "Heaven," Our hidden "Father," and the ...
— A Father of Women - and other poems • Alice Meynell
... immense Space which those take up, and which they move in at this Time, must be supposed, before they had Being, to be plac'd there: As God himself was, and existed before all Being, Time, or Place, so the Heaven of Heavens, or the Place, where the Thrones and Dominions of his Kingdom then existed, inconceivable and ineffable, had an existence before the glorious Seraphs, the innumerable company of Angels which attended about the Throne of God existed; these all had a Being long before, as the Eternal Creator of them ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... thumping outside. The Sudberrys were well acquainted by this time with that sound and its cause. At first it had filled Mrs Sudberry with great alarm, raising in her feeble mind horrible reminiscences of tales of burglary and midnight murder. After suffering inconceivable torments of apprehension for two nights, the good lady could stand it no longer, and insisted on her husband going out to see what it could be. As the sound appeared to come from the cottage, or off-shoot from the White ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... remained in it, unless it had been sent abroad for food, or other perishable commodities; but these were supplied by a small portion of the fruits of the farm, in which the farmer allowed he had a very good bargain. In fact, it is inconceivable what sums may be collected by starving only, and how easy it is for a man to die rich if he will but ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... The reflex action of the working of the spirit of freedom on these shores of the new hemisphere upon the welfare of the countless millions of the Old World, has been of a value incalculable and inconceivable to the minds against ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... necessities, and most of them in a troubled and greatly excited state of mind. The emancipation of the slaves had destroyed the traditional labor system upon which they had depended. Free negro labor was still inconceivable to them. There were exceptions, but, as a rule, their ardent, and in a certain sense not unnatural, desire was to resist its introduction, and to save or restore as much of the slave labor system ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... Above all these elements of man, controlling all, and preserving its individuality throughout, is "spirit." Yet even this, when absorbed into Nirvana, is lost in that great whole which includes all things and is Nature herself. Lost, do I say?—yes, lost for inconceivable ages upon ages, yet destined to come forth again at some moment in eternity, and to begin its round through the ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... deceived. As she could not understand how the same men who had depressed monarchy desired to sustain it, she played a double and ignoble part. The tactics of the Feuillant advisers brought a revival of popular feeling in favour of the Court, which seemed inconceivable at the epoch of the arrest. King and queen were applauded in the streets, and at the theatre the cry "Long live the king!" silenced the cry "Long live the nation!" This was in October 1791, before the Legislative ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Empire."[22] These are great changes, and without entering too deeply into details of how these new bodies are to be brought into being, it is certain that one of the conditions of their successful working is that they must be fully representative. It is inconceivable that a national council can be set up for Wales, or for Scotland, or for Ireland, without provision for the adequate representation of minorities. Lord Morley, in instituting the new Councils in India, was compelled to make provision for the representation of Muhammedans. Mr. ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... the little cabin, at the painted beams, at the tarnished varnish of bulkheads; he looked round as if appealing to all its shabby strangeness, to the disorderly jumble of unfamiliar things that belong to an inconceivable life of stress, of power, of endeavour, of unbelief—to the strong life of white men, which rolls on irresistible and hard on the edge of outer darkness. He stretched out his arms as if to embrace it and us. We waited. The wind and ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... no doubt inconceivable, in the case of any modern nation, that a climax of the kind just indicated could never reach its completion. If all the capitalists, for example, of Great Britain or America, were suddenly determined ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... it is stated, are allowed to travel on this route, and some quaint instances of inconceivable official formality on the part of the Government of India are cited. For instance, a German was allowed to travel by the route from Quetta to Sistan, but another German who wished at the same time to travel from Sistan to Quetta was arrested at the frontier, detained ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... understand, at last, that he really intended to make her a declaration of love. It was unheard of, almost inconceivable. But there he was at her feet, looking very handsome in the moonlight, his face turned up to hers with an unmistakable look of devotion in its rather grave lines. His voice, too, had a new sound in it. Indifferent as he might be by daylight ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... would be purer, live faster, do greater, die younger. What magnificent physical improvements, we may suppose, will then aid the powers of the soul! The old world would then be subdued, nevermore to strike a blow at its lithe conqueror, man. The department of the newspaper, with inconceivable photographic and telegraphic resources, may then be extended to the solar or the stellar systems, and the turmoils of all creation would be reported at our breakfast-tables. Men would rise every morning to take an intelligible ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... lip, on the right side, near the base of his flaring nostril. Many moles have hairs in them; Pierre's mole had not merely half a dozen hairs, but a whole crop. They grew thick and long; and, with a perversion of vanity almost inconceivable in a sane person, Pierre had twisted these hairs together, as a man twists a mustache, and had trained them to grow obliquely across his cheek bone. He was a big fellow, for a Frenchman, and, as he walked towards Cleggett with a mincing elasticity of gait, ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... was not gathered at the ankles, but hung loose like occidental trousers; and the day we met she wore simply her own hair. There was not much of it on top, and she had it cut short in the neck. She was rather a terrible figure. Her having ever been married would have been inconceivable, except ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... around them.] ere long they venture to put forward one foot—they then repeat the effort and walk a little, holding at the same time by a chair; and lastly they acquire, with joy to them inexpressible and to us inconceivable, the ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... manager was at his Avit's end, till Tottola, the librettist, suggested a prayer for the Israelites before and after the passage of the host through the cleft waters. Rossini instantly seized the idea, and, springing from bed in his night-shirt, wrote the music with almost inconceivable rapidity, before his embarrassed visitors recovered from their surprise. The same evening the magnificent Dal tuo stellato soglio ("To thee, Great Lord") was ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... that institution ought to alter, but about what that institution actually is. One party, then as now, only cared for it because it was Catholic, and the other only cared for it because it was Protestant. Now, something had certainly happened to the English quite inconceivable to the Scotch or the Irish. Masses of common people loved the Church of England without having even decided what it was. It had a hold different indeed from that of the mediaeval Church, but also very different ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... the engagement began, and the protestant camp was attacked in three places with inconceivable fury. The fight was maintained with great obstinacy and perseverance on both sides, continuing without intermission for the space of four hours; for the several companies on both sides relieved each other alternately, and ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... staffed by officers of the Reserve before the war. Whatever their pre-war associations, if any, with the War Ministry, hostilities must have found them keenly alive to the possibilities of their unique research and organic chemical producing facilities. It is inconceivable that this military personnel should not have greatly assisted the I.G. in its operations, inventions and general assistance for ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... Examples of this poverty of number knowledge are found among the forest tribes of Brazil, the native races of Australia and elsewhere, and they are considered in some detail in the next chapter. At first thought it seems quite inconceivable that any human being should be destitute of the power of counting beyond 2. But such is the case; and in a few instances languages have been found to be absolutely destitute of pure numeral words. The Chiquitos of Bolivia had no real numerals whatever,[1] ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... his own sublime self, the heart and focus of Political Nature; left in this manner, now when the sordid English and Dutch declined spending blood and money for him farther. "Ungrateful, sordid, inconceivable souls," answered Karl, "was there ever, since the early Christian times, such a martyr as you have now made of me!" So answered Karl, in diplomatic groans and shrieks, to all ends of Europe. But the sulky English and Allies, thoroughly tired of paying and bleeding, did not heed him; ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the sea are inconceivable, and have contributed to bring about what you could never expect to see, a force almost equal to the enemy in number, and you know that less would do our business. Besides, never men were so transported as to be brought in such secrecy so ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... time, sufficiently showed to be no common man. Many grave persons were offended at the vehement sentiments expressed in the Robbers; and the unquestioned ability with which these extravagances were expressed, but made the matter worse. To Schiller's superiors, above all, such things were inconceivable: he might perhaps be a very great genius, but was certainly a dangerous servant for his Highness the Grand Duke of Wuertemberg. Officious people mingled themselves in the affair: nay, the graziers of the Alps were brought ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... of life in Alaska is all but inconceivable. The summer tourist can hardly realize it, because he brings to the settlement the only variety it knows; and this comes so seldom—once or twice a month—that the population arises as a man and rejoices so long as the steamer is in port. Please to picture this people after the excitement is ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... the manifest identity of the two translations. So that unless Spenser's publisher, to whom the poet had certainly given some of his genuine pieces for the volume, is not to be trusted,—which, of course, is possible, but not probable—or unless,—what is in the last degree inconceivable,—Spenser had afterwards been willing to take the trouble of turning the blank verse of Du Bellay's unknown translator into rime, the Dutchman who dates his Theatre of Worldlings on the 25th May, 1569, must have employed ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... then they narrowed. The Colonel thought there was another woman. How could he, proud soul, even think for a moment that Virginia herself had betrayed him? No, to his high mind it was inconceivable that a daughter of his should violate a trust; and ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... had scarcely been made when Corbulo with inconceivable swiftness reached the Euphrates and there waited for the retreating force. When the two armies approached each other you would have been struck with the difference between them and between their generals: one set were fairly aglow with delight at their ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... enough for us to distinguish the discharge of every single piece. I remarked on this occasion the incredible exertions of the French voltigeurs, who defended a ditch near the Kuhthurm, ran to and fro on the bank with inconceivable agility, availed themselves of the protection afforded by every tree and every hedge, and fired away as briskly as though they had carried with them the confederation of the Rhine, as their own property, in their cartouch-boxes. ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... wielder of power appears to cause the event; physically it is those who submit to the power. But as the moral activity is inconceivable without the physical, the cause of the event is neither in the one nor in the other but in the union of ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Sontag or Malibran ever warbled a note that contained a hundredth part of the sweetness and music that was comprised in that simple and unsophisticated ejaculation; it decided in an instant, and beyond all possibility of doubt, who and what was the speaker. His joy was inconceivable, and he could scarce refrain from giving vent to it in a loud shout. Returning immediately, he communicated the joyful intelligence to his friends; and the whole party, with light hearts and rapid steps, advanced towards the beach. Just as they stepped ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... accustomed to having men show their appreciation of the fact. It was new to her thus essentially to be ignored, and not quite agreeable. There could be no tender interest between herself and this handsome barbarian. The idea even of flirtation was quite inconceivable. Nevertheless, it was strange that he should be so imperceptive of her charms. Doubtless, his eyes were blind to the refinements of beauty. They should be opened. It would be dreadful if the fellow should grow away from the girl who was waiting for him. And yet—Josephine checked ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... is abundant evidence of variation—none of what is ordinarily understood as progression; and, if the known geological record is to be regarded as even any considerable fragment of the whole, it is inconceivable that any theory of a necessarily progressive development can stand, for the numerous orders and families cited afford no trace of such ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... considered to be a judge of horseflesh, and to have a most tremendous interest in horse-training and racing? Yet it would be half our little incomes out of our pockets if we didn't take on to have those sporting tastes. It is the same (inconceivable why!) with Farming. Shooting, equally so. I am sure that so regular as the months of August, September, and October come round, I am ashamed of myself in my own private bosom for the way in which I make ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... exertions to tear away the serpents with his hands, they turned themselves still tighter, stopped his breath, and he fell to the floor, where he continued for a moment, as if in the most inconceivable agony, rolling over, and covering every part of his body with his own blood and froth, until he ceased to move, and appeared to have expired. In his last struggle, he had wounded the black serpent with his teeth, as it was striving, as it were, to force its head into ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... no more than a lyric poem or a burst of music. Every one in his practical moments acknowledges tacitly, at least, the difference between the intrinsic goodness and badness of experiences. A life of even delight or even wretchedness, or of colorless indifference, is not inconceivable, but it is not the lot of any actual ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... arches. Now, it does not matter two soldi to the history of art who built, but who designed and carved the Loggia. It is out and out the grandest in Italy, and its archaic virtues themselves are impracticable and inconceivable. I don't vouch for its being Orcagna's, nor do I vouch for the Campo Santo frescoes being his. I have never specially studied him; nor do I know what men of might there were to work with or after him. ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... position, lying on the back, that shouted its sinister evidence at General Feraud. He could not possibly imagine that it might have been deliberately assumed by a living man. It was inconceivable. It was beyond the range of sane supposition. There was no possibility to guess the reason for it. And it must be said that General D'Hubert's turned-up feet looked thoroughly dead. General Feraud expanded his lungs for a stentorian shout to his seconds, but from ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... ocean. And looking out on its boundless space, covered with the blue vault lighted by millions of worlds and floating over, to me, bottomless waters, I feel so lost in space, such an infinitesimal atom, that the doctrine of the sparrow that falls seems a chimera, and a God inconceivable. I wonder if this is not so with others. I wonder if all of us do not shrink from this immensity and take refuge in our own hearts where alone we can hear the voice of God, and where, at any hour or in any scene, we can find ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... outbuildings of the temple the most inconceivable mountebanks have taken up their quarters, their black streamers, painted with white letters, looking like funereal trappings as they float in the wind from the top of their tall flagstaffs. Hither we turn out steps, as soon ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... manner of mortal man, so far as he can conceive of personality. Limitless personality is inconceivable. His person and perfection are neither self-created, nor discerned through imperfection; and of God as a person, human reason, imagination, and revelation give us no knowledge. Error would fashion Deity in a manlike mould, while Truth is moulding ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... failure, to my sense, that I cannot refuse the implication which comes along with it: that only theoretically, only as it were by deference to others, did the attribute, in that particular apprehension of it, move him to admiration. I do not, of course, mean anything so inconceivable as that he questioned the loveliness of the "pure in heart"; I mean merely that he questioned the artificial value which has been set upon physical chastity—and that when departure from this was the circumstance through which he had to show the more ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... choice was made. And as she grew accustomed to the stern companionship she often found herself wondering how a woman of such curiously harsh disposition could ever have been the victim of such a passion as was attributed to her. It was almost inconceivable, especially when she tried to picture the father, whom she had never known, but who was reputed to be such an intensely human man, so full of the many frailties ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... say," said Cutts, with singularly elaborate articulation—"You don't mean to say that you were such an inconceivable ass as to pay up your letter of allotment? Well—I never heard of such a piece of deliberate infatuation! Why, man, a blacksmith with half an eye must have seen that the game was utterly up a week before the calls were due. I don't think there is a single man out of Scotland who ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... very many witnesses, as many sometimes as eight at a single sitting. And there are the photographs which include Miss Cook and show that the two women were quite different. Was he honestly mistaken? But that is inconceivable. Read the original narrative and see if you can find any solution save that it is true. If a man can read that sober, cautious statement and not be convinced, then assuredly his brain, is out of gear. Finally, ask yourself whether any ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... received letters from Malta, which gave birth to most extraordinary suspicions. The agonized feelings of his heroic mind are not to be described; but, nothing could for a moment divert him from the painful discharge of it's duty. In a state of inconceivable agitation, he wrote the following letter to Sir ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... distance from, one another. If this be so, it follows that there must be two totally different kinds of causes of motion: the one impact—a vera causa, of which, to all appearance, we have constant experience; the other, attractive or repulsive 'force'—a metaphysical entity which is physically inconceivable. Newton expressly repudiated the notion of the existence of attractive forces, in the sense in which that term is ordinarily understood; and he refused to put forward any hypothesis as to the physical cause of the so-called 'attraction of gravitation.' As ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... only did those abominable things because I was ill—when I was not myself; whereas now I am well, and the evil has passed from me. Besides, I only showed that wicked side of my nature to Christopher, through my love; it is inconceivable that I could ever have acted that way with another man. Christopher knows that. He knows there is no possible doubt about that. How much difference does this knowledge make to ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... supposition. It was a wide gallery. The dim light could not show us both its walls at once. The fall of the waters which were carrying us away exceeded that of the swiftest rapids in American rivers. Its surface seemed composed of a sheaf of arrows hurled with inconceivable force; I cannot convey my impressions by a better comparison. The raft, occasionally seized by an eddy, spun round as it still flew along. When it approached the walls of the gallery I threw on them the light of the lantern, and I could judge ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... of the princess is very noble and well sustained. When I said I did not conceive her meaning, I expressed myself ill. I did not suppose she, did intrigue with Bireno; but I meant that it was not natural Paladore should suspect she did, since it is inconceivable that a princess should refuse her cousin in marriage for the mere caprice of intriguing with him. Had she managed her father, and, from the dread of his anger, temporized about Bireno, Paladore would have had more reason to doubt ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... inconceivable, and the two looked again to the rear to learn the cause of her unaccountable delusion. Five minutes later Sanders ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... peak that bobs up its twenty thousand feet of snowy grandeur serenely in his path. What a Ceasar is lost to this benighted world, because in its blindness, it will not search out such men as Alkali and ask them to lead it onward to deeds of inconceivable greatness. Alkali Bill can whittle more chips in an hour than some men could in a week. Much of the Humboldt Valley, through which my road now runs, is at present flooded from the vast quantities of water that are pouring into it from the Ruby Range of mountains now visible to the southeast, and ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... which population increases when unchecked, and with such a body of evidence before him to elucidate even the manner by which the general laws of nature repress a redundant population, it is perfectly inconceivable to me how he could write the passage that I have quoted. He was a strenuous advocate for early marriages, as the best preservative against vicious manners. He had no fanciful conceptions about the extinction of the passion between the sexes, ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... walks—those fast-flying delicious days that I passed all alone by myself, with my good and simple Therese, my beloved dog, my old cat, with the wild birds and the roes of the forest, with all Nature and her inconceivable Maker. ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... mine shall prove successful, I may in my next Journey that way, take an Abstract of their most admirable Tracts in Navigation, and the Mysteries of Chinese Mathematicks; which out-do all Modern Invention at that Rate, that 'tis Inconceivable: In this Elaborate Work I must run thro' the 365 Volumes of Augro-machi-lanquaro-zi, the most ancient Mathematician in all China: From thence I shall give a Description of a Fleet of Ships of 100000 Sail, built at the Expence of the Emperor Tangro the 15th; who ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... of our system is a consequence of this. The parts, into which the ideas of space and time resolve themselves, become at last indivisible; and these indivisible parts, being nothing in themselves, are inconceivable when not filled with something real and existent. The ideas of space and time are therefore no separate or distinct ideas, but merely those of the manner or order, in which objects exist: Or in other words, it is impossible to conceive either a vacuum and extension without ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... with terror, and looked timidly at the two ladies. It was evidently almost inconceivable to herself that she could sit down beside them. At the thought of it, she was so frightened that she hurriedly got up again, and ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Principles, endeavours to press Sir W. Hamilton into the service of Pantheism and Positivism together, by adopting the negative portion only of his philosophy—in which, in common with many other writers, he declares the absolute to be inconceivable by the mere intellect,—and rejecting the positive portions, in which he most emphatically maintains that the belief in a personal God is imperatively demanded by the facts of our moral and emotional consciousness. ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... utterly that only the slow action of the ages could again restore it; although of course much could be done to prevent the still further eastward extension of the Mongolian Desert if the Chinese Government would act at once. The accompanying cuts from photographs show the inconceivable desolation of the barren mountains in which certain of these rivers rise—mountains, be it remembered, which formerly supported dense forests of larches and firs, now unable to produce any wood, and because of their condition a source of danger ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... It is inconceivable, the agony with which this public veneration tortured him. It was his genuine impulse to adore the truth, and to reckon all things shadow-like, and utterly devoid of weight or value, that had not its divine essence as the life within their life. Then what ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... told by a well-informed source, these assertions do not at all correspond to the facts; furthermore, from the very nature of the steps undertaken by the dual monarchy in Belgrade, this would have been entirely inconceivable. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... course would, on the whole, have been to impeach on the Rohilla charge, and to acquit on the Benares charge. Had the Benares charge appeared to us in the same light in which it appeared to Mr. Pitt, we should, without hesitation, have voted for acquittal on that charge. The one course which it is inconceivable that any man of a tenth part of Mr. Pitt's abilities can have honestly taken was the course which he took. He acquitted Hastings on the Rohilla charge. He softened down the Benares charge till it became no charge at all; and then he ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... despotism as complete as ever ruled either Turkey or Prussia. True it is that the Zionist movement will offer, even as it has offered in the past, a strenuous opposition to Germanisation, but it would be crediting it with an inconceivable vitality to imagine that it will be able to resist the blandishments that Germany is certainly prepared to shower on it. For great as is the progress the Jewish settlers made in Palestine during the twenty or twenty-five ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... become unbelievable. It was a horrible, monstrous thing, a screaming fury, a wall that smote and passed on but that continued to smite and pass on—a wall without end. It seemed to him that he had become light and ethereal; that it was he that was in motion; that he was being driven with inconceivable velocity through unending solidness. The wind was no longer air in motion. It had become substantial as water or quicksilver. He had a feeling that he could reach into it and tear it out in chunks as one might do with the meat in the carcass of a steer; that he could seize hold of the wind ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... said the Ancient again. Then followed a terrible spectacle. The man went raving mad. He bounded into the air to a height inconceivable. He threw himself upon the ground and rolled upon the rock. He rose again and staggered round and round, tearing pieces out of his arms with his teeth. He yelled hideously like one possessed. He grovelled, beating his forehead against the ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... being pursued, he fled with incredible swiftness to the Table Mountain at the back of the town, whence this single miscreant, still animated by the effect of the opium, for two days resisted and defied every force that was sent against him. The alarm and terror into which the town was thrown were inconceivable; for two days none ventured from within their houses, either masters or slaves; for an order was issued (as the most likely means of destroying him, should he appear in the town) that whatever Malay was seen in the streets should be instantly killed ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... in disgrace and exile at Mekka." On the dignified bearing and self-possession of our youthful sovereign, the Khan enlarges in the strain of eulogy which might be expected from one to whom the sight of the ensigns of sovereignty borne by a female hand was in itself an almost inconceivable novelty, declaring, that "the justice and virtues of her Majesty have obliterated the name of Nushirvan from the face of the earth!" But the remarks of the simple-minded Parsees on the same subject will be found, from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... ever betrayed that ignorance."—Bourrienne. I., 19, 21: At Brienne, "unfortunately for us, the monks to whom the education of youth was confided knew nothing, and were too poor to pay good foreign teachers.... It is inconceivable how any capable man ever graduated from this educational institution."—Yung, I., 125 (Notes made by him on Bonaparte, when he left the Military Academy): "Very fond of the abstract sciences, indifferent to others, well grounded ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... only Olivier from the state of nothingness into which he cast all human beings).—Art is no more true than love. What room does it really occupy in life? With what sort of love do they love it, they who declare their devotion to it?... The poverty of human feeling is inconceivable. Outside the instincts of species, the cosmic force which is the lever of the world, nothing exists save a scattered dust of emotion. The majority of men have not vitality enough to give themselves wholly to any passion. ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... therefore, it is intended to regard the right of private capture at sea as still subsisting. Without it, indeed, naval warfare is almost inconceivable, and in any case no one has any experience of such a truncated method of war on which ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... Solitude:'—"The most agreeable compliment you could pay him was, to imply that you had not observed him in a house or a street where you had met him. Whilst he suffered at being seen where he was, he consoled himself with the delicious thought of the inconceivable number of places where he was not. All he wished of his tailor was to provide that sober mean of colour and cut which would never detain the eye for a moment.... He had a remorse, running to despair, of his social GAUCHERIES, and walked miles and miles to get the twitchings out of ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... water. One dead camel's skeleton is uncommonly like another, and they lay about in various directions, showing that caravans converged to or diverged from El Obeid by different routes. When the sun burst forth with all that inconceivable grandeur which drives artists who visit the country to despair, and causes untravelled gazers on their pictures to accuse them of exaggeration, when their efforts have as a fact fallen far short of the reality, Harry's eyes scanned the ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... that evening Lydia Carr completely routed Dundee's carefully worked-up case against her. It was inconceivable, he told himself, that a mind cunning enough to have executed this murder would give itself away in such a fashion. If she had indeed pried among her mistress' papers and found the will and note, would she not, from the most primitive instinct of self-preservation, have pretended ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... as applied to Printing are in the highest degree advantageous and admirable. Once types were cast in moulds, such as boys use for casting bullets. Now they are turned out, with inconceivable rapidity, from a casting-machine worked by steam. Ink and paper, too, are made by machinery; and when the types are set, we invoke the aid of the Steam-Press, and so print off at least fifty impressions to each one produced under the old process ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... difficulty. The time that had lapsed since the lamentable break-down had been sufficient to bring upon the scene an inconceivable crowd. After satisfying their curiosity ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... really the only parties invited who got nothing at all of the banquet, it becomes a question of some interest,—what did they get? They were merely mocked, if they had no compensatory interest in the dinner! For surely it was an inconceivable mode of honoring Jupiter, that you and I should eat a piece of roast beef, leaving to the god's share only the mockery of a Barmecide invitation, assigning him a chair which every body knew that he would never fill, and a plate which might as well have been filled with ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... the subways and tubes the stoppage of the trains had automatically discontinued the suction ventilation. The underground thousands, in mortal terror of the non-existent third-rail danger, groped their way painfully to the stations. With inconceivable swiftness the mephitic vapors gathered. Strong men staggered fainting into the streets. When revived they told dreadful tales of stumbling over ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... seem. He will be, and thereby, not therefore, seem. Yet, once more, even on him, the idea of asserting the truth in holy power such as he could have put forth, must have dawned in grandeur. The thought was good: to have yielded to it would have been the loss of the world; nay, far worse—ill inconceivable to the human mind—the God of obedience had fallen from ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... the road at a pace he could only make when he was alone. It had looked threatening when he left the house, but, as he went, the clouds piled themselves up with inconceivable rapidity, and before he was three miles out on the plain, the storm broke, with a sudden fury from which there was no escape. He took to his heels, and ran to the next village, some quarter of a mile in front of him. There, in the smoky room ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... tells us, that "he would sometimes be silent and thoughtful, and look all the while as if he were saying his prayers." A French princess, desirous of seeing the great moralist NICOLLE, experienced an inconceivable disappointment when the moral instructor, entering with the most perplexing bow imaginable, silently sank into his chair. The interview promoted no conversation, and the retired student, whose elevated spirit might have endured martyrdom, shrunk ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... if these things were true and important, it is inconceivable that the Church Fathers, the very founders of Christianity, should have been all at sea in regard to them, should have held divergent opinions, and should have been discussing these questions one way and the other for ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... friends Forster was thought of as a sort of permanent bachelor. His configuration and air were entirely suited to life in chambers: he was thoroughly literary; his friends were literary; there he gave his dinners; married life with him was inconceivable. He had lately secured an important official post, that of Secretary to the Lunacy Commissioners, which he gained owing to his useful services when editing the Examiner. This necessarily led to the Commissionership, which was worth a good ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... repeated Sylvia, bewildered. "But it is inconceivable that Anna could have left Lacville without telling me—or, for the matter of that, ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... beginning, as it has no end: the clock of Time is futile there: it might as well attempt to go in vacuo. Nevertheless, in respect to finite intelligences like ourselves, seeing that eternity is an idea totally inconceivable, it is wise, nay it is only possible, to be presented to the mind piecemeal. Even our deepest mathematicians do not scruple to speak of points "infinitely remote;" as if in that phrase there existed ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... tyranny, the tyranny of a Kultur whose ideal is the uniformity of a perfect mechanism, not the variety of life. Such a fate humanity could not long have tolerated; yet before the iron mechanism could have been shattered, if once it had been established, there must have been inconceivable suffering, and civilisation must have fallen back many stages towards barbarism. From this fate, we may perhaps claim, the world was saved from the moment when not Britain only, but the British Empire, refused to await its turn according to the German plan, threw its whole weight ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... which are reared in the vast forests of the interior, at no expense to the inhabitants, are the great staple of Servian product and export. In districts where acorns abound, they fatten to an inconceivable size. They are first pushed swimming across the Save, as a substitute for quarantine, and then driven to Pesth and Vienna by easy stages; latterly large quantities have been sent up the Danube in ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... hard at work pumping water and drenching the ruins with it; for, as they said, the great heat dried up the moisture with inconceivable rapidity, and if once these ruins fired, nothing short of a miracle could save the remainder of the houses. Other stout fellows were upon the roofs with their buckets, emptying them as fast as they were filled upon the roofs and walls, ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... beyond the doom-door was but developed from the faint sketch traced by the strivings of our spirit—to each man his own picture, but filled in, perfected, vivified a thousandfold, for terror or for joy perfect and inconceivable? ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... people have said, and do say, that that arrest was and is a great evil. I say it was and is a great good. Why? Answer: It was and would now be premature. Had it been carried out, it would have been and would now be evil, immense, inconceivable,—to master, slave, America, Africa, and the world; because neither master, slave, America, Africa, the world, were, or are, ready for emancipation. God has a great deal to do before he is ready for emancipation. He tells us so by this arrest put upon that tendency to ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... now he was definitely in communication with the enemies of Mr. King! Ah; but Mr. King did not know how formidable was the armament of those enemies! He (Soames) had overrated Mr. King; and because that invisible being could inspire Fear in an inconceivable degree, he had thought him all-powerful. Now, he realized that Mr. King was unaware of the existence of at least one clue held by the police; was unaware that his name was associated with the ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... they are compelled to believe Moses and St. Paul in the right, and the philosophers of the present day, whether male or female, in the wrong. To speak frankly, the excessive boldness of these new theories, the incalculable and inconceivable benefits promised us from this revolution from the natural condition of things in Christendom—and throughout the world indeed—would lead us to suspicion. Guides who appeal to the imagination when discussing ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... end of nearly ten years, am I allowed to supply those missing links which make up the whole of that remarkable chain. The crime was of interest in itself, but that interest was as nothing to me compared to the inconceivable sequel, which afforded me the greatest shock and surprise of any event in my adventurous life. Even now, after this long interval, I find myself thrilling as I think of it, and feeling once more that sudden flood of joy, amazement, and incredulity which utterly submerged my mind. ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... country so unwilling to supply us as at present. By military authority, we collect a kind of casual subsistence that can scarcely be called our daily bread. The fatigue of campaigning in this country is almost inconceivable. I have slept, when I have had time to sleep, in my clothes. I seldom divest myself of my sword, boots or coat; my horse is constantly saddled, and we eat when provisions are to be got, and we have nothing else to do. The dangers of the field are neither more ...
— A sketch of the life and services of Otho Holland Williams • Osmond Tiffany
... this original sin, he would be the first after the king, and we should see him, in a short time, at the head of the armies. He gains new friends every day. He insinuates himself into all hearts with inconceivable skill. He is highly honored by the men, and no less beloved by the ladies. His face is very well formed, the nose neither too large nor too small. His eyes are very soft; his skin brown, but very smooth; and his whole features animated ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... and extension of the highway system is of national importance just as is development and extension of railways, and concerted action throughout a nation is a prerequisite to an adequate policy in regard to either. It is inconceivable that any community in a nation can prosper greatly without some benefit accruing to many other parts of the country. Increased consumption, which always accompanies material prosperity, means increased production somewhere, and people purchase from many varied sources to supply the things that they ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... astonishing delight, beheld the ample plains, the beauteous tracts below. On the other hand, I surveyed the famous river Ohio that rolled in silent dignity, marking the western boundary of Kentucky with inconceivable grandeur. At a vast distance I beheld the mountains lift their venerable brows, and penetrate the clouds. All things were still. I kindled a fire near a fountain of sweet water, and feasted on the loin of a buck, which a few hours before I had killed. The sullen shades of night ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... expression which this writer uses does not necessarily mean that the temple was in the exact centre of one of the two divisions of the town, it certainly implies that it lay towards the middle of one division—well within it—and not upon its outskirts. It is indeed inconceivable that the main sanctuary of the place, where the kings constantly offered their worship, should have been nine or ten miles from the palace! The distance between the Amran mound and Babil, which is about two miles, is quite as great as probability ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... and beyond the greatest statesman of the Dark Ages. The tale that Joseph of Arimathea came to Britain is presumably a mere legend. But it is not by any means so incredible or preposterous a legend as many modern people suppose. The popular notion is that the thing is quite comic and inconceivable; as if one said that Wat Tyler went to Chicago, or that John Bunyan discovered the North Pole. We think of Palestine as little, localized and very private, of Christ's followers as poor folk, astricti globis, rooted to their towns or trades; and ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... to know that our boys at the front are concerned with two broad aims beyond the winning of the war; and their thinking and their opinion coincide with what most Americans here back home are mulling over. They know, and we know, that it would be inconceivable—it would, indeed, be sacrilegious—if this Nation and the world did not attain some real, lasting good out of all these efforts and sufferings ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... office, and that she hath observed that Sir W. Pen never had a kindness to her son, since W. Pen told her son that he had applied himself to me. That his rise hath been by her and her husband's means, and that it is a most inconceivable thing how this man can have the face to use her and her family with the neglect that he do them. That he was in the late war a most devilish plunderer, and that got him his estate, which he hath in Ireland, and nothing else, and that he ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... questioning and turning and returning of the most fundamental subjects—religion, foreign policy, and domestic economics—are quite familiar to him. But the editor was not selecting news for that real man; he was selecting news for an imaginary retired officer of inconceivable stupidity and ignorance, redeemed by a childlike simplicity. If a book came in, for instance, on biology, and there was a chance of having it reviewed by one of the first biologists of the day, he would say: "Oh, our Public won't stand ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... of Pfalz was given to his Cousin of BAIERN (Bavaria),—so far as an indignant Kaiser could. However, at the Peace of Westphalia (1648) it was found incompetent to any Kaiser to abrogate PFULZ or the like of Pfalz, a Kurfurst of the Empire. So, after jargon inconceivable, it was settled, That PFALZ must be reinstated, though with territories much clipped, and at the bottom of the list, not the top as formerly; and that BAIERN, who could not stand to be balked after twenty ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... published, or perhaps ever will be) is all to be read, though much of it appears addressed to children of tender age. It is pitched in the nursery-key, and might be supposed to emanate from an angry governess. It is, however, all suggestive, and much of it is delightfully just. There is an inconceivable want of form in it, though the author has spent his life in laying down the principles of form and scolding people for departing from them; but it throbs and flashes with the love of his subject—a love disconcerted and abjured, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... answer these conundrums: they presupposed inconceivable situations, which yet, though inconceivable, were shortly coming to pass, for Olga's advent might be expected before October, that season of tea-parties that ushered in the multifarious gaieties of the winter. Would Olga form part of the moonlit ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... be in no hurry about anything. The hunters were bringing in plenty of game, and the village life went forward merrily. But Henry judged that they were merely waiting. It was inconceivable that the Wyandots should remain there long in peace while the Indian world of all that great valley ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... especially chivalrous periods and in all especially chivalrous communities. No illustrator would portray a young planter of the Old South without his cane; and that fragrant old-school figure, a southern "Colonel," without his cane is inconceivable. Canes connote more or less leisure. They convey a subtle insinuation of some degree ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... life lasts, the irresolute will, the bodily languor, the ever-present sense of hopeless, helpless ruin. The opium-eater must take his choice between the two. On the one hand is hope, continually brightening in the future—on the other is the inconceivable wretchedness of one from whom hope ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... in the South are rather nasty things, too," continued the bachelor bird. "I'm used to them, of course, and I've proved dozens of times that there's no such thing as hypnotism; but the effect of a snake's eye on very young and inexperienced birds is inconceivable, and not to be reconciled to the Darwinian theory or Mendel's law. What between snakes, hawks, and women's hats, the life of ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... no sense a release of a separate soul; so that the birth of a child is but a new manifestation in physical form of the one soul, and in no sense the apparition of an additional soul? It is difficult to think otherwise. The birth and death of souls are inconceivable; the immortality of a vast and varying number of individual souls is equally inconceivable. Immortality implies unity, not number. The mind can grasp the possibility of one soul, the manifestation of which is the universe and ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... that spanned the heavens. The green tint deepened into emerald, assuming a delicate rose hue as it faded upward into rays that diverged from the top until the whole resembled a gigantic crown. Every ray became a panorama of gorgeous colors, resembling tiny sparks, moving hither and thither with inconceivable swiftness. Sometimes a veil of mist of delicate green hue depended from the base of the crown, and swayed gently back and forth. As soon as the swaying motion commenced, the most gorgeous colors were revealed. Myriads of sparks, no larger than snow-flakes, swarmed across the delicate green ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... Europe, could not fail to raise the entire continent against Napoleon and France, and thus to bring on the ruin of both. "Rome," as it is said by Montesquieu, "extended her empire because her wars only followed in succession. Each nation, such was her inconceivable good fortune, waited till another had been conquered, before beginning the attack." Rome fell as soon as all the nations assailed and penetrated on ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... late. The papers have been full of it. Police brutality, illegal arrests, assaults in station houses, star-chamber methods that would disgrace the middle ages. A state of affairs exists to-day in the city of New York which is inconceivable. Here we are living in a civilized country, every man's liberty is guaranteed by the Constitution, yet citizens, as they walk our streets, are in greater peril than the inhabitants of terror-stricken Russia. Take a police official of ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... would take paper if he could help it. No one knew to-day what his notes would be worth to-morrow. "Never," says Duclos, in his Secret Memoirs of the Regency, "was seen a more capricious government-never was a more frantic tyranny exercised by hands less firm. It is inconceivable to those who were witnesses of the horrors of those times, and who look back upon them now as on a dream, that a sudden revolution did not break out—that Law and the Regent did not perish by a tragical death. They were both held in horror, but the people ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... requiring highly developed skill, and apparently highly charged with emotional tone, are the precursors of pairing. They are generally confined to the males, whose fierce combats during the period of sexual activity are part of the emotional manifestation. It is inconceivable that they have no biological meaning; and it is difficult to conceive that they have any other biological end than to evoke in the generally more passive female the pairing impulse. They, are based on ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... expostulations, prayers, threats, had been all in vain to procure one smile, one word, one glance of compliance or forgiveness. And the fate of Dr. Grimshaw, with his unwon bride, was like that of Tantalus. And now the inconceivable tortures of jealousy were about to be added to his other torments, for this man now sitting by his side, and basking in the sunshine of her smiles, was the all-praised Adonis who had won ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... questionable supremacy in clouds. There is no effect of sky possible in the lowlands which may not in equal perfection be seen among the hills; but there are effects by tens of thousands, for ever invisible and inconceivable to the inhabitant of the plains, manifested among the hills in the course of one day. The mere power of familiarity with the clouds, of walking with them and above them, alters and renders clear our whole conception of the baseless architecture of the sky; and for the beauty of it, there is more ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... two impulsions; one having for its object change, the other immutability, and yet it is these two notions that exhaust the notion of humanity, and a third fundamental impulsion, holding a medium between them, is quite inconceivable. How then shall we re-establish the unity of human nature, a unity that appears completely destroyed by ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a Latin proverb which means that one man alone is no man at all. A man who should be neither son, brother, husband, father, neighbor, citizen, or friend is inconceivable. To try to think of such a man is like trying to think of a stone without size, weight, surface, or color. Man is by nature a social being. Apart from society man would not be man. "Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god." To take out of a man all that he gets from his ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... merry, could outfoot them all when he once got started on the cosmic pathos of religion and the gibbering anthropomorphisms of those who loved not to die. At such times Saxon was oppressed by these sad children of art. It was inconceivable that they, of all people, should be ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... Vaughan and her father so that she should think it was Swain who was following them; he picked up the blood-stained handkerchief, which Swain had dropped perhaps when he fled from the arbour, and placed it beside the body; and in some way inconceivable to me he pressed the prints of Swain's fingers on the dead man's robe. Now, to do that, he must have known that Swain was injured—the blood-stained handkerchief would tell him that; but he must also have known that it was his ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... make him angry with Madame des Ursins. The complaints raised against her were then universal, at least at Versailles, and at a distance it was difficult to separate those which were founded on false reports. With the well-known temper which characterised Louis XIV., it must have seemed a thing inconceivable that such importance should be conceded to a woman whom he had placed there to do his bidding. Finding that his grandson and the young queen were disposed to resist his recall of the camerara-mayor, he addressed them as a ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... is not inconceivable that objects may act directly on our consciousness without taking the intermediary of our nervous system. Some authors, the spiritualists notably, believe in the possibility of disembodied souls, and they admit by implication that these souls remain in communication with the terrestrial ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... volcano silk, with lava buttons. Whether (as the Neapolitan wits said) he had studied dancing under Saint Vitus, or whether David, dancing in a linen vest, was his model, is not known; but Mr. Brown danced with such inconceivable alacrity and vigour, that he threw the Queen of Naples into convulsions of laughter, which terminated in a miscarriage, and changed the ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... have been satisfactory to have discovered the occasion of the inconceivable licentiousness which was thus sanctioned by the legislator,—this overturning of the principles of society, and this public ridicule of its laws, its customs, and its feelings. We are told, these festivals, dedicated to Saturn, were designed to represent ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... twenty-nine years of age. And yet, under circumstances of inconceivable difficulty, with unhesitating reliance upon his own mental resources, he assumed the enormous care of creating and administering a Lew government for thirty millions of people. Never did he achieve a victory which displayed ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... a portrait can be considered, but they are some of the more extreme of those prevalent at the present time. Neither is it contended that they are incompatible with each other: the qualities of two or more of these points of view are often found in the same work. And it is not inconceivable that a single portrait might contain all and be a striking lifelike presentment, a faithful catalogue of all the features, a symbol of the person and a symphony of form and colour. But the chances ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... thickness in different parts of their length, and possess distinctive characters in each group of insects. This complex apparatus, so different from anything in the eyes of vertebrates, may subserve some function quite inconceivable by us, as well as that which we know as vision. There is reason to believe that insects appreciate sounds of extreme delicacy, and it is supposed that certain minute organs, plentifully supplied with nerves, and situated in the subcostal vein of the wing in most insects, ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... close proximity to the great Church of St. Peter's—the largest and most gorgeous church in the world. Indeed, the church and the palaces form, as it were, one vast architectural pile, which is of almost inconceivable magnificence and grandeur. ...
— Rollo in Rome • Jacob Abbott
... sneered at Lieutenant von Blutgierig as he sat at breakfast. The Belgians are indeed a stiff-necked race, but with God's help they shall be made to understand the sympathetic gentleness of the German character. But to sneer at a man in uniform is an inconceivable crime worthy only of an Englishman. The lieutenant has had to go into hospital to recover from this shameful treatment. He is a true German and ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... rhubarb pills! They turned him aside, however, and, breaking through the left flank of the khedda, he took refuge in the thickest jungle he could find. The whole khedda followed in hot pursuit, crashing through overgrowth of canes, creepers, and trees, in the midst of confusion and rumpus utterly inconceivable, therefore beyond my powers of description! We had to look out sharply in this chase, for we were passing under branches at times. One of these caught my man Quin, and swept him clean off his pad. But he ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... imperfections in the method, the demand, with the growth of the new ideas, for a new expansion of the powers of Language, in a given direction, made the contrivance of the great chemist a successful interpolation upon the speech-usages of the world. It is certainly not therefore inconceivable—because of any governing necessity that Language should be a purely natural growth—that other and greater modifications of the speech of mankind may occur; when—not an arbitrary contrivance upon an imperfect basis and of a limited application is in question, but—when ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... belabored science. It was conceded that the only tenable interpretation of the record in the rocks is that numerous populations of creatures, distinct from one another and from present forms, have risen and passed away; and that the geologic ages in which these creatures lived were of inconceivable length. The rank and file came thus, with the aid of fossil records, to realize the import of an idea which James Hutton, and here and there another thinker, had conceived with the swift intuition of genius long before the science of paleontology came into ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... deer and pheasants. Nor was this intercession unsuccessful. The reports were so drawn that Barere was afterwards accused of having dishonestly sacrificed the interests of the public to the tastes of the court. To one of these reports he had the inconceivable folly and bad taste to prefix a punning motto from Virgil, fit only for such essays as he had been in the habit of composing ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... assurance almost inconceivable, took it within his own, and giving it a hard shake, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... innumerable, flying in awful confusion through the expanse of heaven, fell before, behind, and on every side, while in the distance were visible the ships of the rebels standing erect, lofty as mountains. The fierce daring of the rebels was inconceivable; officers and men fell at their posts. Every effort to resist the onset was in vain, and a ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... were led on by the retreating Romans into a broken and marshy ground, where their movements were in every way impeded, and thousands were suddenly fixed immovable in the deep morass. At this moment, the enemy, by preconcerted signals, with inconceivable rapidity, being light-armed, formed; and, returning upon our now scattered forces, made horrible slaughter of all who had pushed farthest from the main body of the army. Dismay seized our soldiers, the panic spread, increased by the belief that a fresh ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... something which appeared like a windmill in motion, as seen from a distance on a dark night. A wind of inconceivable ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... their circulation, interesting microscopic objects) for oxygen-breeding vegetables; and for animals, the pickings of any pond; a minnow or two, an eft; a few of the delicate pond-snails (unless they devour your plants too rapidly): water-beetles, of activity inconceivable, and that wondrous bug the Notonecta, who lies on his back all day, rowing about his boat-shaped body, with one long pair of oars, in search of animalcules, and the moment the lights are out, turns head over heels, rights himself, and opening a pair ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... distinct. But in the annelid the mouth is on the second segment; here it is on the fourth. It has evidently travelled backward. That the mouth of an animal can migrate seems at first impossible, but if we had time to examine the embryology of annelids and insects, it would no longer appear inconceivable or improbable. And its backward migration brought it among the legs which were grasping and chewing the food. And in vertebrates the mouth has changed its position, though not in exactly the same way. Our present mouth is probably ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... that occasion his total following was estimated to amount to 300,000 or 400,000 persons, and the journey from Delhi to Lahore occupied two months. The burden royal progresses on this scale must have imposed on the country is inconceivable. Jahangir died in his beloved Kashmir. He planted the road from Delhi to Lahore with trees, set up as milestones the kos minars, some of which are still standing, and built fine sarais at ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... refuse the implication which comes along with it: that only theoretically, only as it were by deference to others, did the attribute, in that particular apprehension of it, move him to admiration. I do not, of course, mean anything so inconceivable as that he questioned the loveliness of the "pure in heart"; I mean merely that he questioned the artificial value which has been set upon physical chastity—and that when departure from this was the circumstance ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... he made Joe Gargery, not a man one might easily find in a forge; and Esther Summerson, not a girl one may easily meet at a dance; and Little Dorrit, who does not come to do a day's sewing; not that the man and the women are inconceivable, but that they are unfortunately improbable. They are creatures created through a creating mind that worked its six days for the love of good, and never rested until the seventh, the final Sabbath. But granting that they are the counterpart, the heavenly side, of caricature, this is not to ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... grave persons were offended at the vehement sentiments expressed in the Robbers; and the unquestioned ability with which these extravagances were expressed, but made the matter worse. To Schiller's superiors, above all, such things were inconceivable: he might perhaps be a very great genius, but was certainly a dangerous servant for his Highness the Grand Duke of Wuertemberg. Officious people mingled themselves in the affair: nay, the graziers of the Alps were brought to bear upon it. The Grisons ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... glanced about the room, at the far, closed doors where it was not inconceivable that old Miriam was lurking, and strode over to her and began talking very jerkily and huskily, ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... but their representatives in Europe are, as far as is known only to be found in the north-west highlands of Scotland, and in the island of Lewis, which consists entirely of them. And it is to be remembered, as a proof of their inconceivable antiquity, that they have been upheaved and shifted long before the Cambrian rocks were laid down "unconformably" on ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... Lemaea or of the Anthesteria—for neither is mentioned by name,—but of the Dionysia [Greek: epi Lenai]. The Basileus and the Epimeletae together directed the procession; Page 78 but the basileus alone controlled the [dramatic] contest. Here again, it is inconceivable that either Anthesteria or Lenaea should be omitted; so both must be included ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... keenly from under the quiet droop of languid lids at the Carrolls sitting in their gay fluff and flutter of silks and muslins and laces, and wondered, especially concerning Mrs. Carroll and her sister-in-law. It seemed almost inconceivable that they were ignorant, and if not, how entirely innocent! And then the expressions of their pretty, childish faces disarmed him as they sat there, their dark, graceful heads drooping before the divine teaching ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... felt his curiosity growing, and made a rash vow to find out the truth at any price. It was inconceivable, he thought, that Spicca should still have perfect control of his faculties, considering the extent of his potations. The second flask was growing light, and Orsino himself had not taken more than two or three glasses. Now a Chianti flask never ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... a goral which ran down the sheer wall opposite to us at full speed, bouncing from rock to rock as though made of India rubber. It was almost inconceivable that anything except a bird could move along the face of that cliff, and yet the goral ran apparently as easily as though it had been on level ground. I missed it beautifully and the animal disappeared into ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... the possibility of such serious consequences as offending the tutor under whose care we were placed, I (wholly ignorant of the impudence and recklessness of public school boys) considered such a solution of the mystery inconceivable. Moreover, everything around me was so strange, and so entirely 20different from the habits of life in which I had been hitherto brought up, that for the time my mind was completely bewildered. I appeared to have lost my powers of judgment, and to have relapsed, as far as intellect was concerned, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... were in constant apprehension of parting our cables, in which case we must have been almost instantly dashed to atoms against the rocks that were just to leeward of us, and upon which the sea broke with inconceivable fury, and a noise not less loud than thunder. We lowered all the main and fore-yards, let go the small bower, veered a cable and a half on the best bower, and having bent the sheet-cable, stood by the anchor all the rest ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... was the gray, ugly old palace, and its many courts, just as void of system and as inconceivable as when we were burrowing through its bewildering passages. No end of historical romances might be made out of this castle of the popes; and there ought to be a ghost in every room, and droves of them in some ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... stanzas. They seemed addressed less to the God of mercy, to the Son who listens to prayer, than to the inflexible Father, to Him whom the Old Testament shows us, overcome with anger, scarcely appeased by the smoke of the pyres, the inconceivable attractions of burnt-offerings. In this chant it asserted itself still more savagely, for it threatened to strike the waters, and break in pieces the mountains, and to rend asunder the depths of heaven by thunder-bolts. ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... expended its last flickering powers in undignified gibes at the expense of Pitt and his regicide peace. Fate denied to him the privilege of seeing Malmesbury again expelled from France and whipped back "like a cur to his kennel." The great Irishman passed away, amidst inconceivable gloom, in his 68th year, at Beaconsfield (8th July 1797). In the view of Windham and other extreme Royalists, Burke was wholly right, and Pitt's weakness was the cause of all ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... thought of the long, cheerful day to be enjoyed, and planned some rural walk, or rustic entertainment. The ills that flesh is heir to, if they occurred for a moment, appeared like idle visions. They were inconceivable as real things. As I heard the lark singing in "a glorious privacy of light," and saw the boughs of the green and gold laburnum waving at my window, and had my fancy filled with images of natural beauty, I felt a glow of fresh life in my veins, and my soul was inebriated with joy. ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... hand over his mouth with a quick but awkward schoolgirl gesture, inconceivable to any who had known her usual languid elegance of motion, and held it there. He struggled angrily, impatiently, reproachfully, and then, with a sudden characteristic weakness that seemed as much of a ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... is inconceivable how the city of Rome, whose adjacent fields were untilled, and whose vineyards had been frozen the year before, could for twelve months support such a confluence of people. He extols the hospitality of the citizens, and the abundance of food which ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... of the views they take; it is something to me so inconceivable. I am utterly at a loss how it can be ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... correspond apparently to our present stewed (dried) prunes. It is inconceivable how this sauce can be white in color, but, as a condiment and if taken in small quantity, it has our ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... engaged in earnest dialogue, as if in discussion. The chief promised his followers a spectacle,—a "bit of sport," as he facetiously termed it. Clancy has been forecasting torture, but in his worst fear of it could not conceive any so terrible as that in store for him. It is in truth a cruelty inconceivable, worthy a savage, or Satan himself. Made known to Chisholm, though hardened this outlaw's heart, he at first shrinks from assisting in its ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... It was inconceivable any literate person in the United States could be ignorant of my position. "It is neither," I returned with some dignity. "I am here to do you a favor. To help you in your work." And I explained ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... not believe it. On the other hand, there was the British private. I have known him all my life, God bless him! Thank God, it is my privilege to know him now, as he lies knocked to bits, cheerily, in our hospital. It was inconceivable that out of sheer funk he could abandon a popular officer. And his was not even a scratch crowd, but a hard-bitten regiment with all sorts of glorious ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... Still less was it conceivable that Catherine would give him the slightest pretext for such daring. The large check that Mr. Arrowpoint was to draw in Klesmer's name seemed to make him as safe an inmate as a footman. Where marriage is inconceivable, a girl's sentiments ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... in that of small capitalists. Otherwise we might see that these two forces, interwoven in interest at nearly every point, are also well matched and likely to remain so. And we should see also that it is inconceivable that they will long escape the law of social evolution, stronger than ever to-day, toward organization, ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... of religion, the conception of a person on the other hand tends to degenerate into a new kind of idolatry. Neither criticism nor experience allows us to suppose that there are interferences with the laws of nature; the idea is inconceivable to us and at variance with facts. The philosopher or theologian who could realize to mankind that a person is a law, that the higher rule has no exception, that goodness, like knowledge, is also power, would breathe a new religious life ...
— Statesman • Plato
... faithful companions of poets; but those charming phantoms scarcely visit the rest of us, even for the space of a season. We do not know how to retain them with us. If the fair shade of some Perdita should ever, through some inconceivable whim, take a notion to traverse my brain, she would hurt herself horribly against heaps of dog-eared parchments. Happy the poets!—their white hairs never scare away the hovering shades of Helens, Francescas, Juliets, Julias, and Dorotheas! But the nose alone of ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... stands, there was born—or brought out from England as an infant—a little boy named Henry Kellsey, who as a child took a great fancy to the Amerindians who came to trade at Fort Nelson. As he played with them, and they returned his affection, he learnt their language, and—for some inconceivable reason—this gave great offence to the stupid governor of the fort (indeed, when Kellsey as a grown man, some years afterwards, compiled a vocabulary of the Kri language for the use of traders, the Hudson's Bay Company ordered it to be suppressed). Stupid Governor Geyer ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... awhile to good Papa and my sisters in Paris. But it was not in my nature to remain and be a burden on them at home. I returned again to London, with recommendations: and encountered inconceivable disasters in the effort to earn a living honorably. Of all the wealth about me—the prodigal, insolent, ostentatious wealth—none fell to my share. What right has anybody to be rich? I defy you, whoever you may be, to prove that anybody has a right ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... wine, though suitable enough in considering a small State in which everybody was the effectual inspector of everybody, is entirely beside the mark under modern conditions, in which we are to have an extraordinarily higher standard of individual privacy and an amplitude and quantity of migration inconceivable to the Academic imagination. We may accept his principle and put this particular freedom (of the use of wine) among the distinctive privileges of maturity, and still find all that a modern would think of ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... imposed on them. Yet peace was not secure for a moment. The Kickapoos and Mascoutins would not leave their neighbors, the Illinois, at rest; the Saginaws made raids on the Miamis; and a general war seemed imminent. "The difficulty is inconceivable of keeping these western tribes quiet," writes the governor, ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... so much worn by men who have returned from the Haj, are annually exported to Mecca, where they are sold, as articles of real Arabic manufacture, to the confiding pilgrims. All these silks and cloths fade and wear out with inconceivable rapidity, but, until this occurs, the purchaser is but rarely able to detect the fraud of which he has been a victim. Weapons, too, are made in exact imitation of those produced by the natives of Celebes or Java, and it is often not until the silver watering ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... before the city swarmed with moving thousands of Medes and Persians. At this time no warriors were finer in appearance than the battlemen of the Persian prince. Their discipline had reached to an almost inconceivable degree of perfection. The wishes and desires of their great commander had become their law; and each one vied with the other in rendering obedience to his orders. Their fame had spread throughout lower Asia, and through many ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... Mekka." On the dignified bearing and self-possession of our youthful sovereign, the Khan enlarges in the strain of eulogy which might be expected from one to whom the sight of the ensigns of sovereignty borne by a female hand was in itself an almost inconceivable novelty, declaring, that "the justice and virtues of her Majesty have obliterated the name of Nushirvan from the face of the earth!" But the remarks of the simple-minded Parsees on the same subject will be found, from their honest sincerity, we suspect, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... Vienna to draw up the articles for her marriage-contract. "I should blush," said she, "if that proof of the quackery of my education were shown to me. I do not believe that I ever put a pencil to that drawing." However, what had been taught her she knew perfectly well. Her facility of learning was inconceivable, and if all her teachers had been as well informed and as faithful to their duty as the Abbe Metastasio, who taught her Italian, she would have attained as great a superiority in the other branches of her education. The Queen spoke that language with grace and ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... admitted unworthiness of its object. When it is not the reason for marriage, it can hardly fail to grow from the conjugal relation between one man and one woman, if the mutual duties belonging to that relation be held sacred. It is inconceivable that a mother should not love her child, inevitably cast upon her protection from the first moment of his being; the father who extends a father's care over his children finds in that care a constant source of love; and the children, waking into conscious life ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... or the other, you will hear it. It has been strange to go about all these years among my Unitarian and dissenting friends and to know that this would be the inevitable end of it. I have struggled alone for peace and certainty. I cannot get them for myself. There is an august, an inconceivable possibility which makes my heart stand still when I think of it, that the Catholic Church may verily have them to give, as she says she has. I am weak—I shall submit—I shall throw myself upon ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... are times when waves of passion sweep over him in such prodigious volume as to roll him to and fro like a pebble in the surf. Gusts of emotion blow over him with such violence as to hurl him pro and con with inconceivable fury. In such moods, if it were not for the relief offered by writing verse we really do not know what would happen to him. His verse written under the impulse of such emotions marks him as one of the greatest masters of passion, wild and yet restrained, objectionable and ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... "it is level with the water's edge, and towards the sea, as steep to as a wall of a house; that he sounded frequently within twice the ship's length of it with a line of one hundred and fifty fathoms, or nine hundred feet, without being able to reach the bottom." How wonderful, how inconceivable, that such stupendous fabrics should rise into existence from the silent but incessant, and almost imperceptible, labours of such ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various
... to the star part in any conversation. He likes nothing better than to drive home his point and then look about exultingly. He says gleefully, "I told you so." That he can ever be wrong is inconceivable to him. He knows the facts since he can readily manufacture them himself. He is self-satisfied, for in his own opinion he has never lost an argument. He is a brave and ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... The inconceivable uncertainty of the climate is, however, such, that I will not venture to state about what time this change takes place, for it is certain, that let me name what time I would, it would be easy for any weather journaliser to prove ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... fundamental safeguarding of property and of individual right. This is the high enterprise of the new day: To lift everything that concerns our life as a Nation to the light that shines from the hearthfire of every man's conscience and vision of the right. It is inconceivable that we should do this as partisans; it is inconceivable we should do it in ignorance of the facts as they are or in blind haste. We shall restore, not destroy. We shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it may be modified, not as ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... operations, indeed, were at first as inconceivable to me as a crab's or a cockchafer's. That is where all the trouble came in. For that reason alone they fascinated me and aggrieved me. From the conditions of our acquaintance—we were colleagues—I had to study him with some thoroughness, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... that individual with a fiery sideglance—was a debased idiot and the misbegotten son of a yet greater and still more debased idiot. The cashier was a green hand and an imbecile besides. It was incredible, impossible, that the overcharging had been done deliberately; that was inconceivable. But the honor of his establishment was at stake. They should both, garcon and cashier, be discharged on the spot. First, however, he would rectify all mistakes. Would monsieur intrust the miserable addition to him for a moment, for one short ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... essential nature of what is here called "directability." The man at the wheel on board the Vaterland, so long as the fires burn and the oil continues to lubricate the engines, has a power in his hands that is almost inconceivable. The ship that he is handling weighs more than the 870,000 men that comprise ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... more:—From the flimsy manner in which most modern houses are built, where every step on the stairs, and along the floors, is felt all over the house; the higher the story, the greater the vibration. It is inconceivable how much the sick suffer by having anybody overhead. In the solidly built old houses, which, fortunately, most hospitals are, the noise and shaking is comparatively trifling. But it is a serious cause of suffering, in lightly built houses, and with the irritability peculiar to some ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... In passing down an alley in the rear of the Rue Morgue, the fugitive's attention was arrested by a light gleaming from the open window of Madame L'Espanaye's chamber, in the fourth story of her house. Rushing to the building, it perceived the lightning rod, clambered up with inconceivable agility, grasped the shutter, which was thrown fully back against the wall, and, by its means, swung itself directly upon the headboard of the bed. The whole feat did not occupy a minute. The shutter was kicked open again by the Ourang-Outang as it ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... traditions. The views of others are just as dramatic, for the phenomenon is actuated by will of some sort anyhow, and wills give rise to dramas. The spiritist view, as held by Messrs. Hyslop and Hodgson, sees a "will to communicate," struggling through inconceivable layers of obstruction in the conditions. I have heard Hodgson liken the difficulties to those of two persons who on earth should have only dead-drunk servants to use as their messengers. The scientist, for his part, sees a "will to deceive," watching its chance in all of us, and able ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... opposed than these two impulsions; one having for its object change, the other immutability, and yet it is these two notions that exhaust the notion of humanity, and a third FUNDAMENTAL IMPULSION, holding a medium between them, is quite inconceivable. How then shall we re- establish the unity of human nature, a unity that appears completely destroyed by this primitive ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... unremitted labor; indeed your services were so great that it is hard to make the world believe it. Many have been most generously rewarded for services having no more proportion to yours than a mole hill to a mountain—and that all this great work should be brought about by a woman is inconceivable to vulgar minds, but I hope and believe that justice ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... hypochondriac, thinks he is swelling up like the "pipsy" husband. Isabella, in the same play, says "keeping begins to be as ridiculous as matrimony.... The insolence and expense of their mistresses has almost tired out all but the old and doting part of mankind." It is not inconceivable that in a freakish or embittered moment this singular woman threw herself with malicious joy into an ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... donc, lorsqu' Othon s'est offert Camille, A-t-il paru contraint? a-t-elle t facile? Son hommage auprs d'elle a-t-il eu plein effet? Comment l'a-t-elle pris, et comment l'a-t-il fait? Where it is almost inconceivable, that the poet could have failed to see the application which might be made of the passage, especially as he allows the confidant to answer, J'ai tout vu. That Attila should treat the kings who are dependent on him like good-for-nothing fellows: Ils ne sont pas venus, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... Trainers of performing animals are aware how these differ in plasticity of disposition and amenability to discipline; the spiritual adviser, who knows his business, must be quick to detect these various qualities in the minds of his penitents and to utilize them to the best advantage. It is inconceivable, for instance, that the convent-foundress Orsola was other than a neuropathic nonentity—a blind instrument in the hands of what we should call her backers, chiefest of whom (in Naples) were two Spanish priests, Borii and Navarro, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... with their ignorance of the people themselves. It is to be feared, however, that their disinclination to introduce poor laws arises less from actual ignorance, than from an illiberal selfishness. The facts of the case are these: In Ireland the whole support of the inconceivable multitude of paupers, who swarm like locusts over the surface of the country, rests upon the middle and lower classes, or rather upon the latter, for there is scarcely such a thing in this unhappy country as a middle class. In not one out of a thousand instances ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... settled, all eyes were turned to Mount Vernon. The masses took for granted that Washington would respond to every call of duty the public chose to make, and it was inconceivable that anyone else should fill the first term of that great executive experiment. The universal confidence in Washington and belief that he was to guide the Constitution over the more critical of its shoals, had operated more than any other factor in the ratification of that ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Brazier, as he feels her pulse, "You see, my child, that there's a God after all. You have been the cause of a great misfortune, and you must now repair it. The finger of God is in all this [it is inconceivable what they don't say the finger of God is in!]. Religion is religion: submit, resign yourself, and that will quiet you better than my drugs. Above all, resolve to stay here and take care of your ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... their way to the environs; market farmers with their rude carts; wine-sellers; fig-dealers; peddlers of oranges, of dates, of anisette, of water; of macaroni. Through the throng innumerable calashes dashed to and fro, crowded down, in true Neapolitan fashion, with inconceivable numbers; for in Naples the calash is not full unless a score or so are in some way clinging to it—above, below, before, behind. There, too, most marked of all, were the lazaroni, whose very existence in Naples is a sign of the ease with which life is sustained in so fair a spot, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... outlaw had more than revived all the old enthusiasm for him. We know on the authority of Burke that the acclamations of joy with which he was welcomed by the populace were inconceivable, and that the marks of public favor which he received were by no means confined to the lower order of the people. Several merchants and other gentlemen of large property and of considerable interest openly espoused ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... another near the left shore, where he halted at two large mat-houses. Here, as at the three houses below, the inhabitants were occupied in splitting and drying salmon. The multitudes of this fish are almost inconceivable. The water is so clear that they can readily be seen at the depth of fifteen or twenty feet; but at this season they float in such quantities down the stream, and are drifted ashore, that the Indians have only to collect, split, and dry them on the ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... developments drew attention to them. That she should consent to accompany him to this place, and that after she was there should submit, as she did, to taking all the business of the scheme upon herself, would be inconceivable in a woman of a self-respecting character; but Louise Van Burnam cared for little save her own aggrandisement, and rather enjoyed, so far as we can see, this very doubtful escapade, whose real meaning and murderous purpose she was so ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... The Abbe Prevost, who was in England at the time, says that he refused the degree out of modesty; later biographers have differed in their views as to whether modesty was one of Handel's characteristics. Others have supposed that he refused to pay the fee of L100 that was demanded, but it is inconceivable that a fee should have been demanded for an honorary degree, although it would naturally have been paid by candidates who took the degree in the normal way. The concerts were attended by large audiences, ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... the pen over the lines with inconceivable rapidity, the writer occasionally glancing over his left arm at the document he was copying. The tortoise-shell cat sat at her master's feet with an air of self-importance and a look which seemed to say, "woe be to him who dare to drive ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... there." Fanny had been listening. Immediately she married Ellen to young Lloyd, and the next moment she went to live in a grand new house built in a twinkling in a vacant lot next to Norman Lloyd's residence, which was the wonder of the city. She reared this castle in Spain with inconceivable swiftness, even while she was turning her head towards Eva on the other side, and prodding her with an admonishing elbow as Mrs. Zelotes had prodded Andrew. "That's Norman Lloyd's nephew dancing with her now," she said. Eva looked at her, smiling. Directly ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... conceive the inexpressible, inconceivable joys that are there! None but they who have tasted of them. Lord, help us to put such a value upon them here, that in order to prepare ourselves for them, we may be willing to forego the loss of all ...
— Miscellaneous Pieces • John Bunyan
... of South America and South Asia; among the jungly banks of the Godavery and the woody shores of the Pamoni, of the Oroonoko, and the Bramahputra—in short, in every sunny clime and region where the rigours of his own winter are not only unknown, but inconceivable. There is something sublime in the mere consideration of the prodigious remoteness from one another of the various points from which these animals have thus been collected; something gratifying to human pride, in the thought that neither the freezing atmosphere of the countries which surround ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... subjects by the eradication of the cause had they known of the existence of such a cause? Would they have spent their time in social festivities and in exchanging compliments had they known that they were on the brink of war? It is inconceivable! It would be a gross libel on them, one and all, to charge such a wanton ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... thrust had served but to exasperate him. The chulos ran to the rescue, waving their pink and blue cloaks. Militona grew pale; the old woman uttered lamentable ejaculations, and sighed like a stranded whale. The public, beholding Juancho's inconceivable awkwardness, commenced one of those tremendous uproars in which the Spanish people excel: a perfect hurricane of insulting epithets, of vociferations and maledictions. "Away with the dog!" was shouted on all sides; "Down with the thief, the assassin! To the galleys with him! To ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... amorphous and crystalline; but whether one or the other of these divisions be considered, their ultimate and common division will be the ATOM. By the atom we understand that portion of matter which admits of no further division, which, though as inconceivable for minuteness as space is for extent, has still definite weight, form, and volume; which under favorable circumstances, has that power or force called cohesion, the intensity of which constitutes strength of material, which every engineer is supposed to understand, but which lies far beyond the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... this ill-starred boy never had a steady drill in anything. He never remained longer at any one school than a year, and he learned at school very little that he needed most to know. In the course of his desultory schooling he picked up some Latin, a little Greek, a good deal of French, and an inconceivable medley of odds and ends of knowledge, which his wonderful memory enabled him to ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... cold and white, like the Shah of Persia's diamond plume. Then the wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms that glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold—the tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... man in the uniform of the Helmans waved his sword, and the Cossacks pulled up their horses and turned them with inconceivable dexterity. This movement showed the length of their column. The gipsy was right, ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... things were true and important, it is inconceivable that the Church Fathers, the very founders of Christianity, should have been all at sea in regard to them, should have held divergent opinions, and should have been discussing these questions one way and the other for ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... placed upon England a greater or more sacred obligation than was hers before:—to see to it that this War accomplishes the freedom, not only of Belgium and Russia and Poland and Serbia and Roumania, but of Ireland also, and of Hungary, and, if Germany so wills it, of Germany herself. It is inconceivable that we should fail; but, if we did fail, we should now have to answer to the soul and conscience of America as to our own conscience and our ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... of the fact that the Jews still had some power of self-government through the Sanhedrin, the great mass of the people hated the Romans with an almost inconceivable fury. The world had never before seen such cruel rulers. The Assyrians had been bad, but the Romans were worse. Think of that form of punishment which they inflicted carelessly every day even for minor crimes—crucifixion! ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... great military heroes of those times. But apparently these temptations rebounded from him as an arrow from a steel plate. When only a boy of seventeen, his noble relatives had been unable to conceive his refusing an honorable place in royalty's household. It had been inconceivable to the Prussian that this Frenchman had not gone to America on a quest solely for military glory. The Jacobin clubs, first by fair promises and then by the demand for his life blood, had sought to force him from liberty to license, from real freedom to debauched ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... the indifferent fashion of the usual American woman of the comfortable classes. She had always had a maid; she could not even dress herself properly without the maid's assistance. Life without a maid was inconceivable; life ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... Custer never would have rushed deliberately on destruction. If, for any reason, he had desired to end his own life, and that is inconceivable, he would not have involved his friends and those whose lives had been entrusted to his care in the final and terrible catastrophe. He was not a reckless commander or one who would plunge into battle with his eyes shut. He was cautious ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... formidable and respectable. These Ishmaels of the sea rendered an account to no man, and treated their prisoners according to the drunken whim of the moment. Flashes of grotesque generosity alternated with longer stretches of inconceivable ferocity, and the skipper who fell into their hands might find himself dismissed with his cargo, after serving as boon companion in some hideous debauch, or might sit at his cabin table with his own nose and his lips served up with ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... simply true; a woman does treat each person as a peculiar person. In other words, she stands for Anarchy; a very ancient and arguable philosophy; not anarchy in the sense of having no customs in one's life (which is inconceivable), but anarchy in the sense of having no rules for one's mind. To her, almost certainly, are due all those working traditions that cannot be found in books, especially those of education; it was she who first ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... works are ever written at all, it is difficult to imagine; but how it is, that, when written, they find publishers, is inconceivable. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... of the world I had my parents point out to me the route of his journey, a journey which would take about five months. To me his return belonged to an inconceivable and unreal future; and, most strange of all, what spoiled for me the pleasure of his home-coming, was that I at that time would be twelve or thirteen years of age—almost a ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... de Calonne, with the inconceivable levity which characterized him, "we have the agreeable resource of believing ourselves the instruments of God, according to the ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... a condition is almost inconceivable, is it not? and in this enlightened age? But it exists, and is only harmful when its victims are stubborn and rebellious. To be cheerful and pay promptly is the only sensible way ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... resources fail him; but Man remains, and the poet needs no more. The destinies of mankind—man himself, taken aloof from his age and his country, and standing in the presence of Nature and of God, with his passions, his doubts, his rare prosperities, and inconceivable wretchedness—will become the chief, if not the sole theme of poetry amongst these nations. Experience may confirm this assertion, if we consider the productions of the greatest poets who have appeared since the world has been turned to democracy. The authors ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... snort together revealed the intruders, and all the monkeys, except pink-face, crowding the trees above the spot where they stood, gazed down upon them with expressions in which unparalleled indignation and inconceivable surprise ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Rhine, as king of Bohemia. When he came upon the scaffold he said, "I have travelled through many countries, and traversed various barbarous nations, yet never found so much cruelty as at home. I have escaped innumerable perils both by sea and land, and surmounted inconceivable difficulties, to suffer innocently in my native place. My blood is likewise sought by those for whom I, and my forefathers, have hazarded our estates; but, Almighty God! forgive them, for they know not what they do." He then went to the block, kneeled down, and exclaimed ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... demand for personality and initiative in elected persons. The press, which was once entirely subordinate politically to parliamentary politics, adopts an attitude towards parliament and party leaders nowadays which would have seemed inconceivable insolence in the days of Lord Palmerston. And there has been a vigorous agitation in support of electoral methods which are manifestly calculated to subordinate "delegated" to ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... leadership in matters of religion is terribly needed in our day? Sabatier is right in saying that a religion without doctrine is a self-contradictory idea. Harnack is not wrong in saying that a Christianity without it is inconceivable. ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... trial. If realized, we shall adopt the language of the suffering apostle—"None of these things move me, neither do I count my life dear to myself, that I may finish my course with joy"—and share such blessed society—such inconceivable felicity and glory in my Father's house above, ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... touches will tell as a compact and intelligible mass, a little way off, though confused when seen near; but also a dark touch gains at a little distance in apparent darkness, a light touch in apparent light, and a colored touch in apparent color, to a degree inconceivable by an unpractised person; so that literally, a good painter is obliged, working near his picture, to do in everything only about half of what he wants, the rest being done by the distance. And if the effect, at such distance, is ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... Mercantilists, money. Notwithstanding what may be called the tangible absurdity of this doctrine, it remained unquestioned for generations; nay, to be candid, most men still cling to it—a fact which would be inconceivable did not the doctrine offer a very simple and plausible explanation of the enigmatical phenomenon that increasing capacity of production does not necessarily bring with it a ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... prospect for England; there is not an Envoy of the most petty State in Italy, but exults at it. The want of intelligence from America, hurts the cause prodigiously in Europe, and the anxiety of those who have its interest at heart, is from that circumstance, inconceivable. I hope I need not offer assurances to convince the honorable Congress of the zeal with which I wish to serve them. To be directed by that honorable body in what manner to do it most effectually, will be the happiest circumstance of ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... does not matter of what subject, or whether a sketchy or finished one, but the sketchy ones are generally cheapest, and will teach you most. Copy it as well as you can, noticing especially that Rembrandt's most rapid lines have steady purpose; and that they are laid with almost inconceivable precision when the object becomes at all interesting. The "Prodigal Son," "Death of the Virgin," "Abraham and Isaac," and such others, containing incident and character rather than chiaroscuro, will be the most instructive. You can buy one; copy it ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... covered all the proceedings of the inquisitors, and made them the arbiters of the life and honor of all Spaniards, without responsibility to anybody on earth. They were men, and as such subject to the same errors and passions as the rest of mankind, and it is inconceivable that the nation did not exact responsibility since, in virtue of the temporal power that had been delegated to them, they condemned to seclusion, imprisonment, torture, and death. Thus the inquisitors exercised a power which the Constitution denies to every authority in the land save the sacred ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... hardly within the bounds of possibility that any individual could be saved—allowing any to have been on board the boat. Yet, as the reader has seen, both Augustus and myself were rescued; and our deliverance seemed to have been brought about by two of those almost inconceivable pieces of good fortune which are attributed by the wise and pious to the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... roundhouse foreman, himself a man-queller of no mean repute, thought differently. Lidgerwood would, most likely, take to the high grass and the tall timber. The alternative was to "pack a gun" for Rufford—an alternative quite inconceivable to Lester when it was ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... singularly unfortunate in his editors. With a single exception, every edition of his poems up to the present time has contained a multitude of textual errors which, in the case of any other writer of equal eminence, would have been well-nigh inconceivable. The great majority of these errors were not the result of accident: they were the result of deliberate falsification. Blake's text has been emended and corrected and 'improved,' so largely and so habitually, that there was a very real danger of its becoming permanently corrupted; and this ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... consequence, but all are carried on so noiselessly, and quietly that the evidence of a government seems to vanish altogether, and social order to be as regular and unobtrusive as if it were a law of nature. Machinery is employed to an inconceivable extent in all the operations of labour within and without doors, and it is the unceasing object of the department charged with its administration to extend its efficiency. There is no class of labourers or servants, but all who are required to assist or control ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the elections for mayor the most inconceivable interest was excited, and in one case, that of 1828, between Messrs. Porter and Robinson, from 16,000 to 20,000 pounds, if not a larger sum, was said to have been expended in carrying the day. I recollect a worthy tobacconist, who kept a little shop ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... Calvinist, and the Lutherans had never warmly received him. The impotent monarch, instead of establishing himself in the affections of his subjects, by vigorously driving the invaders from his realms, with almost inconceivable silliness endeavored to win their popularity by balls and smiles, pleasant words and masquerades. In fact, Frederic, by his utter inefficiency, was a foe more to be dreaded by Bohemia ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... hypocrite with his other patient. He says to Mademoiselle Brazier, as he feels her pulse, "You see, my child, that there's a God after all. You have been the cause of a great misfortune, and you must now repair it. The finger of God is in all this (it is inconceivable what they don't say the finger of God is in!). Religion is religion: submit, resign yourself, and that will quiet you better than my drugs. Above all, resolve to stay here and take care of your ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... himself, more clearly and startlingly than would be otherwise possible, a revolving globe that whizzes through elemental space around a ball of fire: which, in turn, is rushing with all its satellites at an inconceivable speed from nowhere to nowhere; and to the surface of the revolving, whizzing globe a multitude of living things desperately clinging, and these living things, in the midst of cataclysmic danger, and between the twin enigmas of birth and death, quarrelling ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... and benevolent parent knows that the first and last question to ask and answer regarding a child is "What are his moral quality and strength?" Now, who is better able to judge of the true aim than thoughtful and solicitous parents? In the second place, it is inconceivable that a conscientious teacher should close his eyes to all except the intellectual training of his pupils. It is as natural for him to touch and awaken the moral qualities as it is for birds to sing. Again, the state is more concerned to see the growth of just and virtuous citizens ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... of the water, of the bowels of the earth, of many of the most dreaded aspects of disease and suffering. Only for forty years have we practiced antisepsis; only for sixty years have we had anesthetics; yet life to-day is well-nigh inconceivable without them. And all of this has been accomplished without any forethought on the part of the acknowledged rulers and leaders of mankind or any save the most trumpery and uncertain provision for research. What will the millions of years which stretch in front of us bring of power to mankind? ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... ghastliness, until finally we came within view of an enormous entrance hall, most unsightly of all that I had previously seen. It was very spacious and terribly steep, running in the direction of a gloomy red corner, full of the most inconceivable abominations and horrors: it was the royal court. At the upper end of the king's accursed hall, amidst thousands of other dread sights, by the light my companion shed, I could see in the darkness two feet of prodigious size, and so enormous as ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... experience—a world still being made and enlarged daily. It creates and settles its own problems as it goes along, and if it cannot help itself no one else can. So the Trade lives in the dark and thinks out inconceivable and impossible things which it afterwards puts ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... which we all are thinking in these days is war between civilized men. One civilized man cannot improve another civilized man by killing him, although it is not inconceivable that a civilized man may do humanity a service by destroying human savages, for with the savages ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... ever do anything wrong was an idea inconceivable to him. Nor was there much chance of his discovering it if she did. When not at work, he was constantly reading. Most people close a book without having gained from it a single germ of thought; Mr. Craig seldom opened one without falling directly into a brown study ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... self-will and forgetfulness—these it is who need the Redeemer: "I come not to call the Righteous, but sinners to repentance." From this it would seem that there are souls who, though they are in this world, are yet fundamentally righteous: not fallen, but working to receive sight. It is inconceivable to the soul that, had she ever Beheld God, she could have left Him, but not inconceivable to her that, having never Beheld Him, she may have been unfaithful on her road to Sight. She understands this awful possibility after coming to Union with Him from this earth, because then she learns ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... "Already the inconceivable fertility of the earth is yielding its bounties a hundred fold; and trade-routes circle the ends of the great Abyss; and all the vast territory once the United States has begun to open again before the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... that I have found you it is as if you and I had been rocked together on the tide of that inconceivable ocean that casts us half-awake upon life," he said dreamily. "It isn't friendship of ideas, it's a friendship of spirit. Indeed, I hope and pray never ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... The church steeples, once of an inconceivable height, were now but a scant sixty feet; and the buildings beneath them, that once had vied with old-world cathedrals, were seen ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... to see what action the snakes were taking, and to my horror I found that they had separated, and were pursuing us with inconceivable rapidity. Their huge heads were raised about eighteen inches from the ground, and their wide mouths were expanded as though ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... Narrow, blind, bigoted young man. And it was amusing to think, as a comment on his fierce consciousness of Herr Lippheim's unfitness, that here Herr Lippheim was, admitted to the very heart of Karen's sorrow. It was inconceivable that anyone but very near and dear friends should have been tolerated by her to-day. Karen, too, after her fashion, was an artist. The music, no doubt, was helpful to her. Soft thoughts of her great, lacerated friend, speeding now towards her solitudes, filled Mrs. Forrester's ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... strange and beautiful prayer—or so it seemed to me—a ray of blinding light cleaved up from where Vere stood, like a shot arrow speeding straight through house and night into inconceivable space. Then the room vanished from my sight as the great wave burst out ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... the veranda, a room in itself with its many squatters' chairs, hammocks and tables. Beyond, stretched the green expanse of plain, utterly lonely, the waters of the lagoon taking a reddish tinge where they reflected the lowering sun. It seemed an inconceivable environment to have been chosen by the Lady Bridget he had known in London, one of whose chief attractions to him had been that she represented a certain section of the aristocracy of Great Britain, decadent perhaps, but 'in ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... write to Sir Ratcliffe, Ferdinand? Must you really go? Must we, indeed, be separated? I cannot believe it; it is inconceivable; it is impossible; I cannot ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... solemnity, and your gravity," said Lord Sherbrooke, "and your not yet understanding me, almost tempt me, Wilton, to play some wild and inconceivable trick, just for the purpose of opening your eyes, and letting you see, that your friend is not such an unfeeling rascal as ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... sense of the becoming, her delicate perception of propriety. When dining alone or with Hugh, she dressed as carefully as for a ceremonious occasion. Any approach to personal disorder or neglect was inconceivable in Sibyl. Her husband had, by accident, heard her called 'the best-groomed woman in London'; he thought the praise well ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... war-chariot of Queen Boadicea, charging the legions of Caesar, or (in our own neighbourhood) that of the British warrior Raengeires, routing his Saxon foes, at Tetford, with their wheels of solid wood and other massive carpentry, would form a, then inconceivable, contrast to the future taximeter cab, to be evolved in this ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
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