"Disbelief" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bleeding from the sword of Rome, and still trembling at her anathema, the reformed churches were little likely to remember any of her benefits, or to regard any of her teaching. Forced by the Romanist contumely into habits of irreverence, by the Romanist fallacies into habits of disbelief, the self-trusting, rashly-reasoning spirit gained ground among them daily. Sect branched out of sect, presumption rose over presumption; the miracles of the early Church were denied and its martyrs forgotten, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... turn to the book itself. And first, as to its author. The reader of the New Heloisa will remember that the heroine, after her repentance and her marriage, has only one chagrin in the world; that is the blank disbelief of her husband in the two great mysteries of a Supreme Being and another world. Wolmar, the husband, has always been supposed to stand for Rousseau's version of Holbach, and Holbach would hardly have complained of the portrait. The Wolmar ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... came upon Jurgen, there in the garden between dawn and sunrise, and a disbelief in such injustice ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... gave a bound as the sowar announced the approach of the enemy, and I glanced at Ny Deen, in whose face I saw astonishment and disbelief for the moment. But it was only for the moment. Directly after, he gave several orders in a quick, decisive manner, and the officer to whom he spoke dashed off to obey ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... popular investigation of the supposed house of captivity was made, he says that he and others, finding the dungeon not to be square, small, and darkish, but a long, narrow slit of a loft, half full of hay, expressed disbelief. Yet it was proved that he went on suggesting to Lyon, Elizabeth's master, that people should give money to Elizabeth, and 'wished him success.' The proof was a letter of his, dated February 10, 1753. Also, Nash, ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... doubt respecting, and ultimately disbelief in, the reality of the super-sensible, or the transcendental, or the validity of the evidence on which the belief in it is founded, such as reason or revelation, and in religious matters is tantamount to infidelity more or ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... in the adjustment of the probabilities, accorded the homely verisimilitude of their worldly-wise representations the meed of a simple and respectful credulity. The mountaineers were ignorant indeed in their sort, but far too sophisticated to entertain aught but the most contemptuous disbelief in her pretensions of special foresight and mysterious endowment. They did not fear her discrimination, and told their story, through an interpreter, with a glib disregard of any uncanny perspicacity on her part. She was one ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... last. My father's thoughtless act I chide That gave thee honoured place, Whose soul, from virtue turned aside, Is faithless, dark, and base. We rank the Buddhist with the thief,(388) And all the impious crew Who share his sinful disbelief, And hate the right and true. Hence never should wise kings who seek To rule their people well, Admit, before their face to speak, The cursed infidel. But twice-born men in days gone by, Of other sort than thou, Have wrought good deeds, whose glories ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... wilful unreason, or in disbelief of his promise, she looked at this parting as though it might be final. Without him she could see no charm ahead. And yet.... Tough, leathery heart—indestructible spinner she knew herself to be—no sooner should the dew fall from this enchanting ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... had been led to a settled disbelief in Bacon's scientific greatness, that reasoned "prejudice" against which Spedding himself was moved to write twice in defence of Bacon. In his first letter he criticised a passage in the lecture touching this question. On the one hand, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... found themselves in a minority when the new Parliament assembled in November. The Duke of Wellington was Prime Minister, the last man from whom the popular cause could expect to receive any concessions. At the opening of the session the premier took occasion to declare his disbelief "that the state of representation could be improved or be rendered more satisfactory to the country at large than at the present moment." "I am fully convinced," he said, "that the country possesses a legislature which answers all the good purposes of legislation, and this to a greater degree ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... would say, trying to express scornful disbelief when, in truth, he was awed and doubtful. Always he would glance involuntarily back along the path behind him. Then her low birdlike laughter would rise ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... in the chief engineer's quarters at the atmosphere station was crowded with workers, enlisted Solar Guardsmen and officers of the Solar Guard. They stood around staring in disbelief at ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... of your opinion, Flora," said Lyndsay, "in spite of my disbelief in signs and omens. There is something beyond mere accident in ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... out in his dealings with Mary's family. Walter Gray came home to find his daughter's grand lover stretching his long figure on the grass at her feet, while the smaller Grays, their shyness quite departed, rolled and tumbled over him as confident as puppies. To be sure Walter Gray, with his disbelief in distinctions of rank as otherwise than accidental, was not unduly elated by the fine company in which he found himself. He looked hard and long at Robin Drummond as hand met hand. Then a bright look of reassurance came over his face. He could trust ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... Frowenfeld in quick response. "I have no stronger disbelief than my disbelief in insurrection. I believe that to every desirable end there are two roads, the way of strife and the way of peace. I can imagine a man in your place, going about among his people, stirring up their minds to a noble discontent, laying out his means, sparingly here and ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... you admit such an idea, and still more of proclaiming it. I pledge you my word that I do not consider the king is in danger; I have seen many cures equally extraordinary with his." I shook my head in token of disbelief. I had uttered what I firmly supposed the truth, and the sight of my evil genius in the person of the prophet who had awaited my return to Versailles, turned the encouraging words of Bordeu into a cold, heavy chill, which struck to my heart. Bordeu quitted me to resume his attendance ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... wonderful power of Dickens in making characters from those who were in a world sense undistinguished. On this position Chesterton lays great stress. It was this, he thinks, that made him an optimist. It was the same position that made Browning an optimist. It is the disbelief in the Divine image in Man that makes ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... his leg and the loss of four teeth and a small spring wagon. At length, when she could be trusted to carry his wares to Murphy's Camp, and could be checked from entering a shop with the cart attached to her,—a fact of which she always affected perfect disbelief,—her education was considered as complete as that of the average California donkey. It was still unsafe to leave her alone, as she disliked solitude, and always made it a point to join any group of loungers with her unnecessary cart, and even to follow some good-looking ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... look came over the Baron's face. He glanced from one of us to the other—with the cunning, and somewhat the look, of a cat. The Vicomte was blandly indifferent. As for me, I had, I am told, a hard face in those days—hardened by weather and a disbelief in human nature ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... Roger with a note of disbelief in his voice. "We made it!" And then, with the realization that he was still a Space Cadet for at least another term, he turned and began pounding Astro on the back. "You big Venusian ape, we ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... Religion about which Dr. Lightfoot has been writing cannot be my work, but is simply a work of his own imagination. That work cannot possibly have contained, for instance, the chapter on "Anthropomorphic Divinity," [36:2] in which, on the contrary, I studiously commit myself to very decided disbelief in such a "Personal God" as he means. In no way inconsistent with that chapter are my concluding remarks, contrasting with the spasmodic Jewish Divinity a Supreme Being manifested in the operation of invariable laws—whose very invariability ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... mirthless laugh of disbelief and ridicule. "Ba su, master, the Lord was watching you. There was two silver bits inside that coffin, on ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... own words is he convicted of disbelief in the most holy Catholic faith," said the grand inquisitor. "But I find, by a memorial which was addressed to me many mouths ago—indeed, very shortly after the arrest of this miserable unbeliever—and signed ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tip-toe, looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of infinite pity, and a ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... of ours are not fools. They are a keen lot. They judge our religion by us who profess it, as we do with them and theirs. There may come a wide-spread practical disbelief, or lack of belief, that there is any practical power in Christ to change a man's life, and really control his actions. And it will be a perfectly logical conclusion from what they find in us Christian nations ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... at each other in disbelief. The idea of two men openly violating the laws of the expedition, treating the Solar Alliance citizens as if ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... the legend; of which reason vainly expresses its disbelief, as long as the eye of faith can discern physical proofs of its truth in the deep furrow which, crossing the mountain in detached portions, terminates abruptly in the lake; for it seems that when the two oxen were summoned by their mistress, they were ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... of these ideas is, of course, only partial; for we are equally susceptible to the negative suggestions of the whiteness of the marble and the smallness of the outline of the tree. Every work of art represents a sort of compromise between reality and unreality, belief and disbelief. ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... been. He loved the Church of England devotedly and unfailingly; but he always looked upon her as the Old Church, rather than as a reformed body; and to his unquestioning mind a few extra dogmas would never have presented any difficulty. It was disbelief, doubt, that he abhorred. Like Sir Thomas Browne, he was greedy for more mysteries, more marvels, more sublimities for unhesitating acceptance. He was always in sympathy both with the Roman and the early Greek Churches, and sometimes in his own ritual he borrowed from ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... scientist nodded. Phineas Roebach snorted his disbelief, while Washington White gave vent to his trouble of mind ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... newspaper in which the articles had been published, and the disagreeable incident was expected to end there. But this would not have satisfied the truculent M. Tremplier, and in the next number of his paper he expressed in arrogant terms an utter disbelief in Mr. Hamerton's denial, and venomously attacked him for his nationality, literary pretensions, etc., winding up his diatribe, as usual, by a challenge. This was too much, and my husband resolved to start for Autun immediately, and to horsewhip the ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... the crassness of things, "I'll consider the advisability of sending in my own papers. Dash it!" He said something quite different, but his friends may read this record, and they would repudiate an exact version with scorn and disbelief. "Are we going to admit ourselves beaten by a half-bred hound like Hilton Fenley? Not if I know it, or I know you. We've got the noose 'round his neck, and you and I will pull it tight if we ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... plays in which he can have taken only the slightest part, but of plays in which we know that he had no share at all—I cannot believe that his friends would have let by far the brightest jewel in his crown rest unreclaimed in the then less popular treasure-house of Shakespeare. Belief or disbelief of this kind is however but a sandy soil for conjecture to build upon. Whether or not his friends would have reclaimed for him the credit of this scene, had they known it (as they must have known it) to be his due, I must repeat that such a miraculous example of a man's genius for once transcending ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... evidence is entirely dependant on attention;—and attention is a voluntary intellectual state over which we have a direct and absolute control. As it is, therefore, by prolonged and continued attention that evidence produces belief, a man may incur the deepest guilt by his disbelief of truths which he has failed to examine with the care which is due to them. This exercise is entirely under the control of the will; but the will to exercise it respecting moral truth is closely connected with the love of that truth; and this is intimately dependent on the state of moral ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... administer the sacraments and consolations of their Church to them: there is no hardship which these heroic men will not encounter in performing their thrice holy mission. Piotrowski, who, like all Poles, was an ingrained Roman Catholic, after passing through phases of doubt and disbelief had returned to a fervent orthodoxy: this spiritual succor was most precious to himself ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... never ought to judge by appearances." "Yes," said he, "but come away, and I will show you something more." Whereupon he transported me up to where stood the churches of the city of Perdition, for every body in it had an appearance of faith, even in the age of Disbelief. First we went to the temple of Heathenism, where I could see some adoring the form of a man, others that of the sun, others that of the moon, and an innumerable quantity of similar other gods, even down to leek and garlick, and a great goddess termed Delusion, obtaining general ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... Apathy. Disbelief in South's Seriousness. Divided Opinion. Suggestions toward Compromise. Anti-coercion. Convention at Albany. Mayor Wood of New York. Buchanan's Vacillation. Treason all about Him. Star of the West Fired on. Inaction of Congress. Crittenden's ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... no modern poems or prose tales worth editing instead; half-pagan, mediaeval priest lore, believed in by men and women who have not been given anything to believe instead; easy-going, all-permitting fifteenth century scepticism, not yet replaced by the scientific and socialistic disbelief which is puritanic and iconoclastic; sly and savage habits of vengeance still doing service among the lower classes instead of the orderly chicanery of modern justice;—these are the things, and a hundred others besides, concrete and spiritual, things ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... yet, though something told him he might have to do so at last. He grew angry at the ever-recurring thought of her, and turning his face to the wall, like a man trying to shut out the light, resolved to force disbelief in her guilt until clearer testimony than his own suspicions should convict her of the death of Caroline. And yet in his secret soul he dreaded a discovery that might turn out as he feared. But he pushed the black thoughts aside; he would ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... been gay, and said she now was married; they did not believe that, though they kept their disbelief to themselves, and only Esther knew she had been gay, although all knew she had run away from home. Sarah got her living by washing for Esther's mother. I heard some funny things about ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... is the one into which we seek to enter; it is situated according to the position in which the Kachyen said it was, and, besides, it bears a strange proof of the story which ye have listened to with such ill-concealed disbelief." ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... thereby rendered themselves infamous and unworthy. The nation listened for a time with kindly pity to their indignant protests, and then buried the troublesome and persistent clamorers in the silence of calm but considerate disbelief. They were quietly allowed to sink into the charitable grave of unquestioning oblivion. It was not any personal attaint which befouled their names and blasted their public prospects, but simply the fact that they had obeyed the nation's behest and done a work assigned to them ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... some 300 miles per second, would warm our sun considerably. But there is no risk of this happening in Mercury's case—though the unseen and much more shifty Vulcan (in which planet I beg to express here my utter disbelief) might, perchance, work mischief ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... she had found her mother seated on that evening which it seemed to the girl had begun all her misery; but till now through all there had been hope—the hope given by disbelief in Leon's engagement to Elise Lesage. Now there was the sad, terrible certainty that Leon believed her false. Marie knew that though she had never pledged faith, still her eyes had shown Leon feelings which no other man had seen in them. For a moment she felt nerved to a kind of desperation: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... can hardly think it still exists—a class of persons who prided themselves on their disbelief in the reality of any such distinct disease as hydrophobia. I never thought it worth while to argue with them, for I have noticed that this disbelief is only a special manifestation of a particular habit of mind. Its advocates will be found, ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... one of my strangest experiences with Master. He healed the rebellious veterinary surgeon in spite of his disbelief, and extended the man's natural term on earth by six months, just because of my earnest supplication. Sri Yukteswar was boundless in his kindness when confronted by the ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... bear upon and have connexion with that horrid belief in witchcraft which cost so many innocent persons and crazy impostors their lives for the supposed commission of impossible crimes. In the next chapter I propose to trace how the general disbelief in the fairy creed began to take place, and gradually brought into discredit the supposed feats of witchcraft, which afforded pretext for such ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... by the different learned societies, and was enrolled a member of the Lyncaean Academy. In two years after his visit to the capital he published a work in which he declared his adhesion to the Copernican theory, and openly avowed his disbelief in the astronomical facts recorded in the Scriptures. Galileo maintained that the sacred writings were not intended for the purpose of imparting scientific information, and that it was impossible for men to ignore phenomena witnessed with their eyes, or disregard conclusions ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... moment Betty looked at him with a laugh of disbelief. Then, biting the smile upon her lips, she held out her hand with a ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... a sceptic. His utter disbelief in Christian's testimony regarding the footprints was based upon positive scepticism. His reason refused to bend in accepting the possibility of the supernatural materialised. That a living beast could ever be other than palpably ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... that all the educated ministry to-day well know, and would not for a moment deny, their disbelief in the doctrine of eternal torment, if cross-questioned. Nevertheless, many of them hate us and oppose us, because we show the people the true interpretations of God's Word, and lift before the eyes of their understanding a God of Love, Just, Merciful, Righteous altogether, ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... of the last four months came pelting. Anthony fairly opened his heart. At first, listening to the bare truth told with the confident naivete of disbelief, Valerie felt as though she were cheating the blind. After a little, this sense of shabbiness was suddenly supplanted by a perfect torment of apprehension lest Anthony should detect her hypocrisy. Presently, before her breathless interest in the narrative, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... Enlightened though he was, he was a firm believer in witchcraft, and he is chiefly remembered not as an admirer of Descartes and Bacon, and a champion of the Royal Society, but as the author of Saducismus Triumphatus, a monument of superstition, which probably contributed to check the gradual growth of disbelief ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... clear, cold, transcendent power, solely governed by the imperturbable calculation of the strictest egotism, and never drawn aside by love or hatred, by pity or religion, or by attachment to any cause. It was impossible, she found, to exaggerate his contempt for human nature and his disbelief in the reality of human virtue. A perfectly honest man was the only kind of man he never could understand. Such a man perplexed and baffled his calculations, acting on them as the sign of the cross acts on the machinations ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... judges, not seek to sway them by entreaties; that they may judge rightly according to the laws, and not by favor. For you are sworn. And how should I persuade you to break your oath, who am charged by Meletus with impiety. For by so doing, I should be persuading you to disbelief in the gods, and making that very charge against myself. To you and to the god I leave it, that I may be judged as shall be best for ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... would protect Larry Kildene, because he knew so well how many dangers there were, and that he, who had carried the Christ with all his burden of sorrows could surely keep "Sir Kildene" even through the snows of winter. In spite of an inherent and trained disbelief in all supposed legends, especially as tenets of faith, Harry felt himself comforted by her talk, yet he could not forbear questioning her as to her own faith ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... an angry snarl of disbelief. "You pays, does you? I tell you it's we who pays. You take our money and spend it on this ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... hesitation, suspense, conflict between belief and disbelief—is sometimes such torture to a conscientious man, such as you are, that it's better to hang oneself at once. Knowing that you are inclined to believe in me, I administered some disbelief by telling you that anecdote. I lead you to belief and disbelief by turns, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... rebuild the universe, like Omar Khayyam, according to the heart's desire. And nothing can be more different than such an instinct from the alleged satisfaction in playing with dolls and knowing that they are not real people. By an odd paradoxical coincidence, that very disbelief in the real character of art, and that divorce betwixt art and utility, is really due to our ultra-practical habit of taking seriously only the serviceable or instructive sides of things: the quality ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... from it. Full well he knew that Ledyard's magnifying glass was, unseen, being used against him even now. The delay was probably caused by the doctor's silent investigation of his recent life, his daily deeds. He could well imagine the amusement, contempt, and disbelief that would meet the story of his poor, blameless years during which he had played with children, worked in his garden, been friends with the common folk, not from any high motive, but to keep himself from insanity! ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... over it, saying, 'Very likely it is true. If so, it is very amusing; and if not—what matter?'—Then those young people are being bred up in a habit of mind which contains in itself all the capabilities of degradation and slavery, in self-conceit, hasty assertion, disbelief in nobleness, and all the other 'credulities of scepticism': parted from that past from which they take their common origin, they are parted also from each other, and become selfish, self-seeking, divided, and therefore weak: disbelieving in the nobleness of those who have ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... talk kind of shook my disbelief in the infallibility of the serious Irish gentleman soldier of fortune. It certainly seemed that the patriotic grafters had gone about the thing in a business way. I looked upon O'Connor with more respect, and began ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... how foolish you are! do be civil to the man,' whispered Lady Bude, who shared his disbelief in Blake; and at that moment the tinkle of an electric bell in the smoking-room below reached the expectant ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... knew to be the truth, but still we would rather have shut our eyes to the unpleasant fact. It is extraordinary that men should be able to disregard the future, even when on the very brink of the grave. Is it apathy, or stolid indifference, or disbelief in a future existence that enables them to do so? I speak of those without the Christian's hope—men who lead profligate lives; men stained with a thousand crimes; men who have never feared God, who seemed scarcely to have a knowledge of God. I ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... strange to see how readily the disbelief died out of the other's face. It was almost magical. It was as though his previous expression had been nothing but acting and his fresh attitude ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... shrinking from that. And when the darting shuttle of his thought reminded him that Myra did not shrink from it, he went out to the front room and with his body sunk deep in a leather chair he fell to pondering on this. But it led him nowhere except perhaps to a shade of disbelief in Myra and her motives, a strange instinctive distrust both of her ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Epicurean, John, in all but the disbelief in the immortality of the soul. She has evolved a theory of her own about that. It partakes of Buddhism. After I have discussed metaphysical propositions with her over which she will argue clearly, she will suddenly cut the whole knot with ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... mean a Disbelief of a Supreme Being, and consequently of a future State, under whatsoever Titles it shelters it self, may likewise very reasonably deprive a Man of this Chearfulness of Temper. There is something so particularly gloomy and offensive to human ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... has not been overcome, and the present verdict of science is that the transmission of characters acquired as the result of other than congenital factors is not proved. It would be unscientific to say that it cannot be proved in the future, but there are good a priori grounds for disbelief in the principle, while furthermore the results of experiments that have been undertaken to test its truth have been entirely negative. Rats and mice have had their tails cut off to see if this mutilation would have its effect upon their young, ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... could not be true. As he was disputing, an officer arrived from Biron to confirm the news; but this only irritated Vendome anew, and made him more obstinate. A third messenger arrived, and then M. de Vendome, still affecting disbelief of the news sent him, flew in a passion, but nevertheless mounted his horse, saying that all this was the work of the devil, and that such diligence was impossible. He sent orders to Biron to attack the enemy, promising to support him immediately. He told the Princes, at the same time, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Mr. Gladstone was only beginning. I have seen many disgusting sights in my time in the House of Commons; but I never saw anything so bad as this scene. Mr. Gladstone looked—as I thought—wan and rather tired. He had been down to Brighton; and I have a profound disbelief in these short hurried trips to the seaside. But Mr. Gladstone seems to like them, and haply they do him good. He looked as if the last trip had rather tired him out. Or was it that he had had to sit for several hours the day before at a Cabinet ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... to regard the news with mild disbelief, but he soon realized that something must have happened very nearly as the ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... devil took him as a play-fellow. Of one who had so cruelly treated her all things were possible. She half believed them. At last he told her I was dead. An acquaintance had found me in a Paris hospital and had paid for my funeral. She had no reason for disbelief. He pressed his suit. Her father and mother urged her—the fool Rushworth soon afterwards came to another crisis, and de Verneuil again stepped in and demanded Joanna as the price. She is gentle. She has a heart tenderer than that of any woman who ever lived. One day I heard ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... He laughed oddly, a tremulous little crow of a laugh, at the same time stroking his head, as if to deprecate disbelief. 'You never heard of the sale of the Christopherson library? To be sure, you were too young; it was in 1860. I have often come across books with my name in them on the stalls—often. I had happened to notice this just before you came up, and when I saw you look at it, I was ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... traveller who had made his way through the Highlands of Scotland with much the same curiosity as his descendants, a generation or two later, regarded Bruce when he returned from Abyssinia, and would probably have received most of his statements with a politer but not less profound disbelief. It was cited, as a proof of the immense popularity of the Spectator, that despite all the difficulties of intercommunication it found its way into Scotland. George the First had passed away, and George the Second was reigning in his stead, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... neither heresy nor coarseness. Every detail of this world-renowned quarrel was conducted on the part of Venice with an irreproachable dignity and diplomacy that raised it to the height of a negotiation of State, and it formed no part of the policy of the Republic to tolerate any disbelief in her own loyalty; the Venetians should stand before the world as faithful sons of the Church, bearing unmerited ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... wounds, so again I tendered congratulations. This time he accepted them. The recollection of the things he had seen, things incredible, terrible, unique in human experience, had stirred him. He talked on, not boastfully, but in a tone, rather, of awe and disbelief, as though assuring himself that it was really he to ...
— The Deserter • Richard Harding Davis
... with disbelief in the barmaid's voice. A little stir of interest went round the crowded, smoky room and ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... of the brow signifies a condition of disgust is well known, but there is yet, as I believe, a still other use of this contraction—i. e. its combination with a smile, indicating disbelief. How this union occurred seems comparatively undiscoverable— perhaps it results from the combination of the smile of denial with the frown of sharp observation. But the gesture is, in any event, reliable, and may not easily stand for anything but disbelief and doubt. Hence it is always a mistake ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... grow. She gazed and stared, injury, disbelief, pain, in her mobile expression. "Why, Frances, I didn't have a thing to do with it, not a thing! Mother and I protested against this military invasion of our house, but protests were useless. The country is under martial law, Doctor ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... as regards Mrs. Warwick than the paragraphs of Perry Wilkinson, a gossip presenting an image of perpetual chatter, like the waxen-faced street advertizements of light and easy dentistry. He has no belief, no disbelief; names the pro-party and the con; recites the case, and discreetly, over-discreetly; and pictures the trial, tells the list of witnesses, records the verdict: so the case went, and some thought one thing, some another thing: only it is reported for positive that a miniature of the incriminated ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a little feeling of qualmishness, which even his boasted disbelief in ghosts did not save him from, Mr. Henderson was about to spring upon the thing ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... through his remembrance of it. And the pain had not been, in this instance, that of simple disagreement. It was complicated by Mrs. Browning's refusal to admit that disagreement was possible. She never believed in her husband's disbelief; and he had been not unreasonably annoyed by her always assuming it to be feigned. But his doubt of spiritualistic sincerity was not feigned. She cannot have thought, and scarcely can have meant to say so. She may have ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... testimony to the force of Christian theism in building up belief, and to the power of the modern Indian atmosphere to dissipate irrational and unpractical beliefs. For, in contact with the practical instincts of Europe, the pantheistic denial of one's own personality—a disbelief in one's own consciousness, the thought that there is no thinker—was bound to give way, as well as the irrational polytheism. Very unphilosophical may have been Lord Byron's attitude to the idealism of Berkeley: "When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter, 'twas no matter what ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... world has been made poorer during this calamitous war, there is this moving passage: "I know that many hearts are turning towards something, but cannot find satisfaction in what the Christian sects offer. And many, failing to find what they need, fall back sadly into vague uncertainties and disbelief, as I often do myself." We badly need a St. Paul who will say to these and other anxious hearts, "Quod ergo ignorantes colitis, hoc ego ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... magnanimity toward the unlike. In the country we are tempted to throw stones at strange hats! But to the Scotch preacher every man in one way seems transparent to the soul. He sees the man himself, not his professions any more than his clothes. And I never knew anyone who had such an abiding disbelief in the wickedness of the human soul. Weakness he sees and comforts; wickedness he ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... Her insulting disbelief in my ability to recognize the father I had come so far to embrace would have vexed me but for the wretched thought that I was losing him again. We threaded the carriages; gazed at the horsemen in a way to pierce the hair on their faces. The little ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fact, the girl is a result of conflicting elements of heredity. I haven't met her father, but I gather that he is a good old Tory of blameless respectability, and has a deep-seated disbelief in evolution. On the other hand, the girl's mother is rather a buxom and florid descendant of a vigorous North of England family, the former members of which, with the exception of her father, were highly esteemed smugglers. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... is not always belief, or even suspension of judgment, but is sometimes positive disbelief. This can ensue only when the affirmative evidence does not amount to full proof, but is based on some approximate generalisation. In such cases, if the negative evidence consist of a stronger, though still only an approximate, ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... Asia," the Colonel brought about a sort of Buddhist revival. The Singhalese saw the Theosophists as wise men from the West, bringing frankincense and myrrh to the cradle of their prophet. Although their high priest, Sumangala, expressed disbelief in the Mahatmas, he valued the services of Colonel Olcott. He was especially moved by a request from this American for his permission to administer the pansala to another American. The ceremony took place at Madras. The ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... looked incredulous and was conscious that he ought to be amused. But, again, the sense of humor failed him in his need and despite his disbelief he was profoundly disturbed by that which he did not believe. Between our convictions and our feelings ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... sometimes he is content to manifest his will through him to whom the keeping of the instrument is entrusted. These juggleries being very ancient (from the fathers of our fathers, say the Indians), we must not be surprised that some unbelievers are already to be found; but they express their disbelief of the mysteries of the botuto only in whispers. Women are not permitted to see this marvellous instrument; and are excluded from all the ceremonies of this worship. If a woman have the misfortune to see the trumpet, she is put to death without mercy. The missionary related to ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... court, was literally petrified. The English breathed fire and flame. The sudden outburst of a volcano would not have been more startling than this piece of news which came from a clear sky. The impression made upon the populace was one of surprise which amounted to disbelief. People stopped in the streets to ask one another if ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... a premature attempt to bring Burr to justice without sufficient evidence for his conviction had produced a popular impression in his favor and a general disbelief of his guilt. This gave him an unfortunate opportunity of hastening his equipments. The arrival of the proclamation and orders and the application and information of our confidential agent at length awakened the authorities of that State to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... protested earnestly that he was in the reverse position, and that Nunaga was no more to him than the snout of a seal; but he protested in vain, for his pleasant little mother believed that she understood the language of symptoms, and nodded her disbelief smilingly. ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... Coleridge saw the images "as things"; only a mind so overshadowed by dreams, and so easily able to carry on his sleep awake, could have done so; and, with such a mind, "that willing suspension of disbelief for a moment, which constitutes poetic faith," was literally forced upon him. "The excellence aimed at," says Coleridge, "was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations," those produced ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... nothing in this chapter, devoted to locomotion, of the coming invention of flying. This is from no disbelief in its final practicability, nor from any disregard of the new influences it will bring to bear upon mankind. But I do not think it at all probable that aeronautics will ever come into play as a serious modification of transport and communication—the main question here under consideration. ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... of nothing to forgive except your old disbelief in Gretchen, and deceiving me about sending the carriage the night Jerrie came; but if there is anything else, no matter what it is, I do forgive ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... amply justified by the event. The good lady received the explanatory introduction with a snort, and a countenance expressive of contempt and disbelief, while she ironically "feared there would be nothing in the house good enough ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... his disbelief. "The child is full of dreams, Lawrence. It comes from seeing an over-abundance of these TriD shows. I have a girl the same age. I don't know what is happening to the country. They have ...
— Status Quo • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... and observed that he was a very temperate man who did not seem to be romancing, I told him something of my experiences with /Taduki/, to which he listened with a kind of rapt but suppressed excitement. When I affected disbelief in the whole business, he differed from me almost rudely, asking why I rejected phenomena simply because I was too dense to understand them. I answered perhaps because such phenomena were inconvenient and ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... fundamental problems of natural theology, not indeed in the full sense of the word theology, if we confine the term strictly to a reasoned knowledge of a God; for the example of Buddhism proves that a belief in the existence of the human soul after death is quite compatible with disbelief in a deity. But if we may use, as I think we may, the phrase natural theology in an extended sense to cover theories which, though they do not in themselves affirm the existence of a God, nevertheless appear to be one of the deepest and most ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... of that grand conception it would be vain to deny. A vast majority of mankind associate with the idea of disbelief in their Gods, everything stupid, monstrous, absurd and atrocious. Absolute Universalism is thought by them the inseparable ally of most shocking wickedness, involving 'blasphemy against the Holy Ghost,' which we are assured ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... inquiry shows disbelief in our Lord's own words, that all dominion is given to Him in heaven and earth, and that He is with us always, even to the end of the world. And next, it is a vain inquiry, based on a mistake. When we look back longingly to any past age, we look not at the ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... entered Worcester, and there received with great hauteur the apologies of the mayor and council, and the assurance that the townspeople were in nowise concerned in the attack made upon him. To this he pretended disbelief. The fine demanded was paid, the principal portion in gold, the rest in bills signed by the leading merchants of the place; for after every effort it had been found impossible to collect such a sum ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... 1819, however, this disbelief was partly destroyed by an unexpected and singular discovery. Mr. Smith, who commanded a vessel trading between Rio Plato and Chili, was naturally desirous to shorten, as much as possible, his passage round Cape Horn. With this object in view, he ran to a higher latitude than is usual in ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... his "religion" to seek, and painfully shape together for himself, out of the abysses of conflicting disbelief and sham-belief and bedlam delusion, now filling the world, as all men of reflection have; and in this respect too,—more especially as his lot in the battle appointed for us all was, if you can understand it, victory and not defeat,—he is ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... ever open and vulnerable part of Deism. The Deist, as a Deist, believes, 'implicite' at least, so many and stupendous miracles as to render his disbelief of lesser miracles, simply because they are miraculous, gross inconsistencies. To have the battle fairly fought out, Spinoza, or a Bhuddist, or a Burmese Gymnosoph, should be challenged. Then, I am deeply persuaded, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... themselves, and to reconcile them to their own purposes, by the assistance of superstition: but by their contempt for auguries, and their inward conviction of their falsity, they were led into a disbelief of the Divine Providence, and to despise religion itself; conceiving it inseparable from the numerous absurdities of this kind, which rendered it ridiculous, and consequently ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... mere madness. Had either spectator noted that the bones of the two old faces were the same, she would have condemned her own powers of observation rather than doubt the infallibility of instinctive disbelief, which is the attitude of the vernacular mind not only to what it wishes to be false, but to anything that runs counter to the octave-stretch forlorn—as Elizabeth Browning put it—of its limited experience. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... you will tell us the reason you took that early drive?" asked a commissaire, with a short, hard laugh of disbelief. ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... hand and negotiate, and that the Kaiser had sent a message to the Tsar saying he agreed. According to his story this telegram had been received in Petrograd, and had been re-written, like Bismarck's Ems telegram, before it reached the Emperor. He expressed his disbelief in the yarn. 'I reckon if it had been true,' he said, 'we'd have had the right text out long ago. They'd have kept a copy in Berlin. All the same I did hear a sort of rumour that some kind of message of that sort was ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... Lazarus acted as a confederate. Between the rejection of the stories as wholly fabulous and the acceptance of them as the evangelists themselves meant them to be accepted, there will be many shades of belief and disbelief, of sympathy and derision. It is not a question of being a Christian or not. A Mahometan Arab will accept literally and without question parts of the narrative which an English Archbishop has to ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... of the physical forces, or our disbelief in their ability to give rise to life, is like a survival in us of the Calvinistic creed of our fathers. The world of inert matter is dead in trespasses and sin and must be born again before it can enter the kingdom of the organic. We must ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... said Alice, rising with an air of cold dignity, which plainly indicated her entire disbelief of the statement she had just heard—"Say no more: you have mistaken your position, when you seek to prejudice me against a gentleman whom I am so soon to call my husband. Nay, not a word more—I will not listen to you. The Chevalier Duvall is the very soul ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... does not possess, in spite of the lying clamour of some deluded people—that liberty which she only knows by name; liberty, which is the daughter of the gospel, not liberalism, which is the son of disbelief (de la protesta); liberty, in fine, which is the supremacy of the laws when the laws are just—that is to say, conformable to the designs of nature and ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... Christianity. Mr Selvyn was not absolutely a free-thinker, he had no vices that made him an enemy to Christianity, nor that pride which tempts people to contradict a religion generally received; he did not apprehend that disbelief was a proof of wisdom, nor wished to lessen the faith of others, but was in himself sceptical; he doubted of what he could not entirely comprehend and seemed to think those things at least improbable ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... races. The party lasted more than a week; there was a great number of people, and it was very agreeable. Erskine was extremely mad; he read me some of his verses, and we had a dispute upon religious subjects one morning, which he finished by declaring his entire disbelief in the Mosaic history. We played at whist every night that the Duke was there, and I always won. The Duchess was unwell most of the time. We showed her a galanterie which pleased her very much. She produced a picture of herself one evening, which she said she was going to send to the Duchess ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... that the soul survived the man's death.[81] There are, however, exceptions; the continued existence of the soul was not an absolutely established article in the savage creed. According to the reports of travelers, it would seem that among some tribes there was disbelief or doubt on this point. A West African native expressed his belief in the form of the general proposition, "The dead must die"; that is, apparently, the dead man must submit to the universal law to which the living are subject.[82] In ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... and slowly, as though his neck were stiff, but still smiling, the stranger turned his head. When he saw the boy, his smile was swept away in waves of surprise, amazement, and disbelief. These were followed instantly by an expression of the most acute alarm. "Don't point that thing at me!" shouted the stranger. "Is it loaded?" With his cheek pressed to the stock and his eye squinted down the length of the brown barrel, Jimmie ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... it necessary to reply. I think his intention was to crake disbelief of his rival's sincerity, to throw cold water on his burning professions, perhaps even to question the excellence of his intentions. But his nerve was obviously shaken by his competitor's undoubtedly fine performance, and he craked indecisively. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... disbelief that Lord Aberdeen would be able to join in any Government abandoning Sir R. Peel's principles, as he had been consulted before and after Sir James's late speech in which he ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... hundredfold. The blades of the wheat and barley there grow to be full four fingers broad; and from millet and sesame seed, how large a tree grows, I know myself, but shall not record, being well aware that even what has already been said relating to the crops produced has been enough to cause disbelief in those who have not visited Babylonia[29]." To-day great tracts of undulating moorland, which aforetime yielded two and three crops a year, are in summer partly barren wastes and partly jungle and reedy swamp. Bedouins camp beside ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie |
