"Ken" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he would have taken a carriage for a long drive in the country, along by the farm-ditches shaded by beech and elm trees; but he had to think twice of the cost of a glass of beer or a postage-stamp, and such an indulgence was out of his ken. It suddenly struck him how hard it was for a man of past thirty to be reduced to ask his mother, with a blush, for a twenty-franc piece every now and then; and he muttered, as he scored the gravel with the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... sociology, and secondly, by the reaction in general esteem which followed his death—it is not very necessary to enquire. One certainly sees fewer, indeed, positively few, references to it and to its contents now. But it was so bright a planet when it first came into ken; it exercised its influence so long and so largely; that even if it now glows fainter it is worth exploring, and the analysis of the composition of its light is ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... "Why, Ken," said Walter, more quietly, "here's a history of my life: Greek grammar, lines, detention, caning—caning, detention, lines, Greek grammar. I'm sick of it; I can't and I won't stand ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... me forget her—oh, how can it be? In kindness or scorn she's ever wi' me; I feel her fell frown in the lift's frosty blue, An' I weel ken her smile in the lily's saft hue. I try to forget her, but canna forget, I've liket her lang, an' I aye like her yet." THOM, the ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... botanical Latin nomenclature, and once more he was leaning from his saddle, peering down the aisles of the forest with a smiling, expectant interest, as if they held for him some enchantment of which duller mortals have no ken. A brown geode, picked up in the channel of a summer-dried stream, showed an interior of sparkling quartz crystal, when a blow had shattered it, which Hite had never suspected, often as he had seen the rugged spherical stones lying along the banks. All the rocks ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the weakness of Nelson. Gifted, brilliant, faulty by reason of his emotional temperament, strong by reason of his enthusiasm—his all-enthralling sense of duty, Nelson flashed like a meteor across the ken of his generation to vanish in a haze of glory. He died at the psychological moment—his life, according to this account, the sacrifice to a dazzling folly. And the man whom he loved—the man whose sterling ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... Burro Ken Ward in the Jungle The Young Pitcher The Young Lion Hunter Roping Lions in the Grand Canyon The Last of the Plainsmen The Shortstop The ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... record of the time or place of his birth, or of his early career, nor can any tell where lie his bones; we only know that his limbs were made in England, and that the great inland sea, called after him, ebbs and flows above his grave. He first comes into the ken of history, sailing on the seas, resolute to discover virgin straits and shores; and when we see him last, he is still toiling onward over the waves, peering into the great mystery. Possibly, as has been suggested, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... shreds, so be thou not * Of those whom lure of rank and title draws: Nay; 'ware of slips and turn from sin aside * And ken that bane and bale are worldly laws: How oft high Fortune falls by least mishap * And all things bear inbred ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... Imlak is of the chiefs of the Jinn? But for my goodname, thou shouldst have seen what would have betided thee of humiliation and chastisement; yet on account of the festival none may speak. Indeed thou exceedest; dost thou not ken that her sister Wakhimah is doughtier[FN209] than any of the Jann? Learn to know thyself: hast thou no regard for thy life?" So Maymun was silent and Iblis turned to Tohfah and said to her, "Sing to the kings of the Jinns this day and to- night ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... or more Since I, with note-book, ink and pen, In cap and gown, first trod the floor Which I have often trod since then; Yet well do I remember when, With fifty other fond fanatics, I sought delights beyond my ken, The ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... "I ken that fine, and it's very nat'ral, for ye've had mair nor maist; but gin ye hadna had ane for a maitter o' seventy year or mair, like us, wad ye no' hae been clean daft aboot it?" and the ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... more plainly shown than by this story of the publication of the "Magnalia?" Many anxious days did he pass over other manuscripts. Some were lost in London for seven years. One book disappeared entirely from his ken, but was recovered by his heirs. His most important and largest work, the six folio volumes of his "Biblia Americana," pursued by "Strange Frowns of Heaven" could not find a publisher and still is unprinted. Cotton Mather ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... crumpled thing that seemed beautiful To lonely, broken men, Hinting of fairer flowers and things Beyond our ken. ...
— Out of the North • Howard V. Sutherland
... to administer the popish sacraments of the host and extreme unction, absolution and the eucharist. The host sticking in his throat, water was brought instead of wine to wash it down. Afterward bishop Ken came and pronounced another absolution upon him; and here observe, that he who was justly excommunicated by a lawful minister of the church of Scotland for his gross perjury, contempt of God and religion, lechery, treachery, covenant breaking, bloodshed, &c. was now absolved, first ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... like ye to gang awa thinking I misdoobtit yer word, Francie! I believe onything ye tell me, as far as I think ye ken, but maybe no sae far as ye think ye ken. I believe ye, but I confess I dinna believe in ye—yet. What hae ye ever dune to gie a body ony richt to believe in ye? Ye're a guid rider, and a guid shot for a laddie, and ye rin middlin fest—I canna say like ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... going on his way, was totally oblivious to the doctor's sage counsel as to the merits of deep breathing. Neither did he realize in the least the splendid optimism of the stern old doctor's creed. For the hour, optimism was quite beyond his ken. He only realized that his own world had gone bad; that failure awaited him at every turn, not a downright and practical failure, either, but a nebulous and indeterminate futility. His life had been nothing but one restless struggle to arrive ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... a countenance, which she could not by any means reconcile with the recollections which it awakened. At length she said, with as much courtesy as she was capable of assuming,—"Either I have seen you before, sir, or some ane very like ye?—Ye ken the Blue room, too, and you ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... I'll jest learn all they know—pianner and all. I ken, and I will. I'll begin right now. You'll see!" And her blue eyes flashed with the glitter of steel, while her chin was thrown up ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... an ill thing to see, but he said quietly enough, 'Yes, Allie, my woman, tell him where your brother is,—if ye ken, and where he is like to be soon if he gets his deserts. Speak, lassie. Tell the minister if you are going to draw back ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... wordes ending in c, to break the sound of it; as peace, face, lace, justice, etc.; 2. behind s, in wordes wryten with this s; as false, ise, case, muse, use, etc.; 3. behind a broaken g; as knawlege, savage, suage, ald age. Ther may be moe, and these I yeld because I ken noe other waye to help this necessitie, rather then that I can think anye idle symbol tolerable ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... of the mammoth reptiles and beasts which lived before the ken of man are numerous in the fascinating West ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... the good in men Blossoms to beauty for human ken; Little by little the angels see Prophecies better of good to be; Little by little the God of all Lifts the world nearer ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... Bishop Ken, however, goes too far. Undesirable, of course, death must always be to those who are fairly well off, but it is undesirable that any living being should live in habitual indifference to death. The indifference ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... fact, already, far from his own circle and for a long while out of his ken, there was working in France the most remarkable scientist of the century, Louis Pasteur, who more than once put his scientific ability at the disposal of a stricken industry, and in his quiet laboratory revived the industrial life of a teeming population. A manufacturer who was confronted ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... gold. He was so large and effulgent that one hardly missed the sun, and his resounding purrs formed a pleasant accompaniment to the laughter and conversation which went on around Captain Jim's fireplace. Captain Jim and Gilbert had many long discussions and high converse on matters beyond the ken ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... life. And here is the mystery that has no solution: we came out of the burning nebulae just as our horse and dog, but why we are men and they are still horse and dog we owe to some Power, or, shall I say, to the chance working of a multitude of powers, that are beyond our ken. That some Being willed it, designed it, no; yet it was in some way provided for in the constitution of ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... and if they were fictions, revelation could not make them true; and whether true or not, we are neither the better nor the wiser for knowing them. When we contemplate the immensity of that Being, who directs and governs the incomprehensible WHOLE, of which the utmost ken of human sight can discover but a part, we ought to feel shame at calling such paltry ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... air, boss," said Seth, wading into the streamlet without any more ado as he spoke; "my motter's allers to go forrud, so I reckon I'll take tother side of this air stream ahead, an' you ken settle ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... we may, the crisis must come, as certainly as death comes to each individual; and whether our social system can bear the strain of such conditions is beyond human ken. Look even two centuries ahead, and what do we see? At that time the prolific energy of the people of this republic, if continued as it has been in the past, will give us more than twice the estimated population of the entire globe at ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... rife Which had come long ago on the pasture, when round me the sheep Fed in silence—above, the one eagle wheeled slow as in sleep; And I lay in my hollow and mused on the world that might lie 'Neath his ken, though I saw but the strip 'twixt the hill and the sky: And I laughed—"Since my days are ordained to be passed with my flocks, Let me people at least, with my fancies, the plains and the rocks, Dream the life I am never to mix ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... closed his article by referring to the story of Huck as the "great American novel which had escaped the eyes of those who watched to see this new planet swim into their ken." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... showing that the scheme of Christianity, as taught in the liturgy and homilies of our Church, though not discoverable by human reason, is yet in accordance with it; that link follows link by necessary consequence; that Religion passes out of the ken of Reason only where the eye of Reason has reached its own horizon; and that Faith is then but its continuation: even as the day softens away into the sweet twilight, and twilight, hushed and breathless, steals ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... an afternoon when the shining spiritual presences were making themselves visible—not with the gleaming suddenness with which they had appeared ten days before, but slowly, with vague wonders, as if finding it hard to bring themselves within mortal ken. Rounding the corner of the promenade at the end remote from the hotel, at a point from which he had the whole line of the bluff and the green depths of the valley and the slopes of the Gurten and the curtain ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken, Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... broke over him in long, soundless waves; but each time he emerged again, cold, cold as death, but still aware of self, aware of existence, albeit the world he knew had dwindled to an infinitesimal smallness, as an object very far away, and floating ever farther and farther from his ken. ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... undisturbed expression of his strong face. The watching man saw nothing unusual in his appearance, nothing to give him any clue; but Hervey was not a keen observer. Only the most apparent change would have been seen by him; the subtler indications of a disturbed mind were beyond his ken. Iredale seemed to be merely the Iredale he knew, and as he watched his lips parted with a sucking sound such as the gourmand might make ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... the existence of underlying interests. These have to desires very nearly the relation of substance to attribute, or, in a different figure, of genus to species. Our interests may be beyond or beneath our ken; our desires are strong and clear. I may not be conscious of my health interests in any deep sense, but the desires that my appetites assert are specific and concrete and real. The implicit interests, of which we may be very imperfectly aware, move us to desires ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... to suggest that the fancy seemed to be mutual. Diogenes, sick, was no longer an "imp of the devil", but a normal, appealing little child. It occurred to me that possibly the care of a sick Polydore might develop Silvia's tiny germ of child-ken. ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... large explain themselves, and are vindicated by events, and form at last the constants of human understanding. A character of the first order of greatness, such as seems to pass out of the limits and course of ordinary life, often lies above the ken of intellectual judgment; but its merits and its infirmities never escape the sleepless perspicacity of the common sentiment, which no novelty of form can surprise, and no mixture of qualities can perplex. The mind—the logical faculty—comprehends a subject, when it can trace in it ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... the like of you. Stay, sir, ye wunna find the way that gate.—Odd's mercy, he maun ken the gate as weel as I do mysel'. Weel, I wad like to ken wha ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... out of the dining-room into the mess-room of the cowboys, closing the door behind him softly, and after that what occurred was out of the prisoner's ken. ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... better so, that Babel noises, Losing all course and ken, And grief that wails and gladness that rejoices Should never wake again To shock a world of ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... least, were compelled for the moment to occupy themselves with other things. The Indian woman had to tell her of the silver fox brought in by Mu-hi-ken, an Indian of her own tribe; of the retort Achille Picard had made when MacLane had taunted him; of the forest fire that had declared itself far to the east, and of the theories to account for it where no campers had been. Yet underneath ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... the duchess said to him, but what he said to the duchess, ye ken. The way of it was this: My uncle Caimbogie was aye up at the castle, for besides his knowledge of liquor, there was nae his match for deer-stalking, or spearing a salmon, in those parts. He was a great, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... tell you, Cato, dar am Injines crawlin' around ob dis house dis very minute, 'cause I can hear dar knees and hands on de ground.' I couldn't make Big Mose keep quiet. Bimeby, he says, 'Cato, let's git up and be ready for 'em, for dey're comin'. I knows it, I ken feel it in my bones. Let's wake up Missis Mary and de niggers and fight 'em, for dey'll be here afore morning, sure.' Wal, dat nigger worrid me awful. I told him I wouldn't git up, but was going to sleep, and turned ober in bed, but I couldn't ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... we have come by divers ways To keep this merry tryst, But few of us have kept within The Narrow Way, I wist; For we are those whose ampler wits And hearts have proved our curse— Foredoomed to ken the better things And ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... that it does come—when he shall fall into the hands o' the Scotts o' Harden; an' see ye that ye do to him as he shall have done to me. But, tell me, mother, hoo are ye here? Wherefore did ye venture, or hoo got ye permission to see me? Ken ye not that if he found ye in his power, upon your life also he wad ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... Edie, "maun be, according to a' likelihood, Sir Arthur Wardour. I ken naebody but himself wad come here at this time wi' that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... seen a town and whose special glory is that he can pull uglier faces than any man in Cumberland. He will not pull them for anybody—only when he is in a good humour and for his cronies in the back parlour. To-night, perchance, we shall see his eyes roll as he roars out the chorus of "D'ye ken John Peel?" Yes, Wastdale shall be to-night's halt. And so over Black Sail, and down the rough mountain side to the inn whose white-washed walls hail us from afar out of the gathering shadows of ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... very disagreeable, and became more so as the day advanced. Here it came to pass, that, travelling rapidly over the hot and dusty plains, the wheels of our carriage began to smoke. No house was in sight—no water within ken. It was a case of difficulty; when suddenly ——- recollected that not far from thence was an old rancho, a deserted farmhouse at present occupied by robbers; and having ordered the coachman to drive to within a few hundred yards of this house, he sent a servant on horse- back with a medio ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... prideful queen, on a' aneath your ken, For he wha seems the farthest BUT aft wins the farthest BEN, And whiles the doubie of the schule tak's lead of a' the rest: The birdie sure to sing is the ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... exasperated). I ken fine he's an auld man, John, and ye're a young yin, an' Alexander's gaein' to be anither, an' I'm a lone wumman among the lot o' ye, but I'm no' gaein' to ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... heart beating as its image was thrown on the screen by the Rontgen rays. Many insects, birds and animals have keener perceptions in some respects than man. Animalculae and microbic life, themselves microscopic, have their own order of sense-organs related to a world of life beyond our ken. These observations serve to emphasise the great limitation of our senses, and also to enforce the fact that Nature does not cease to exist where we cease to perceive her. The recognition of this fact has been so thoroughly appreciated by thoughtful ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... which the unexpected never happens), as well as by similar collections of the same kind. And the special connexion of this device with a company of pilgrims might, as has been well remarked, have been suggested to Chaucer by an English book certainly within his ken, the "Vision concerning Piers Plowman," where in the "fair field full of folk" are assembled among others "pilgrims and palmers who went forth on their way" to St. James of Compostella and to saints ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... showed their dark triangular fins above the water, and turtles of several species floated on the surface; while ospreys and other sea-birds flew above our heads, darting down ever and anon to pick up a luckless fish which came within their ken. As the breeze fell light, our skipper determined to obtain a supply of turtle to feed us and his crew, and to dispose of at the first port we might touch at. He had been a turtle-hunter from his youth, and knew their ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... ranche not far away, owned by an old settler, who had his wife and daughter with him. These were the only women within our immediate ken. She was a real child of the West, this old settler's daughter, and as sweet and dainty as she was capable; about twenty years of age, I should think, and looked after as much by every man on my friend's ranche as she was by her own father. In fact, my friend Bain ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... and arrow-shot, For succour toward him from King Lot And all his host of sea-born men, Strong as the strong storm-baffling bird Whose cry round Orkney's headlands heard Is as the sea's own sovereign word That mocks our mortal ken. ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... life I love (Companionship with girls and toddy) I would not drag With drunken brag Into the ken of everybody; But in the shade Let some coy maid With smilax wreathe my flagon's nozzle, Then all day long, With mirth and song, Shall I enjoy ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... ye're doing, Davie, they're terrible taken up with it; but if they think they ken, they care nae mair for it than what I do for ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... me that any mon said sic a fuleish speech? Mon, its borne in on me that we'll tak a dooms lot of managin'. These chaps dinna ken ower weel what they're talkin' aboot. An' they maun say somethin' to please the fellows that keep them in siller. These things hae gane on in Scarva sin' auld lang syne, an' nothin' e'er stappit them. They went on when ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... antiquity as far back as human ken can reach reveal the fact that in early ages of human society the physiological question of sex was a theme of the utmost importance, while various proofs are at hand showing that throughout the past the question of the relative importance of the ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... the room. "We hae been tauld this missy is a suspectit thieving body," their leader cried. "Esther Jane Ogle, ye maun gae with us i' the law's name. Ou ay, lass, ye ken weel eneugh wha robbit auld Sir Aleexander McRae, sae dinna ye say naething tae your ain preejudice, lest ye hae tae account for ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... Kentucky wilderness, burned a camp-fire, whose faint smoke could be traced as it rose above the tree-tops. A careful study of the vapor led Deerfoot to suspect that it had served as a signal, but it was beyond his ken to ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... just idea of a cause when the effect has been made manifest to his understanding. There might have been a reason for the death of Mary Wolston—who knows? But if it were so, that reason was beyond the pale of mortal ken. ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... him maks mane, But nane sall ken whar he is gane. Ower his white banes, when they are bare, The wind sall ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... your article ("Some disputed Points in Music."—'Fortnightly Review,' July, 1876.) with much interest, except the latter part, which soared above my ken. I am greatly pleased that you uphold my views to a certain extent. Your criticism of the rasping noise made by insects being necessarily rhythmical is very good; but though not made intentionally, it may be pleasing to the females from the nerve cells being nearly ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... not much better than you ken ride," retorted Robin. This was a crusher in that company, where riding stood high above any literary attainment; for the other had been a ...
— Bred In The Bone - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... making up their minds that the city which had been their birthplace should never shelter their old age. But Lisbeth went stolidly about the daily routine of her life; Kala's smiles were as bright and as frequent as ever; and Sigmund troubled himself not at all with matters beyond his ken. ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... penetrate those complex feelings which go to make a man what his secret consciousness knows himself to be? Not even the man himself can tell the why and wherefore of his passions and motives. It is a matter beyond the human ken. It is a matter which neither science nor learning can tell us of. Verner Lablache was possessed of all that prosperity could give him. He was wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice, and no pleasure which money could buy was beyond his reach. He knew, only too well, that when the moment came, ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... of darkness and struggling, light broke and relief fell: my cramped existence all at once spread out to a plain without bounds—my powers heard a call from heaven to rise, gather their full strength, spread their wings, and mount beyond ken. God had an errand for me; to bear which afar, to deliver it well, skill and strength, courage and eloquence, the best qualifications of soldier, statesman, and orator, were all needed: for these all ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... keeping away from this street, but soon her hunger for news of Thrums overcame her prudence, and she consented to let him go back if he promised never to tell that his mother came from Thrums. "And if ony-body wants to ken your name, say it's Tommy, but dinna let on that it's ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... 'thegither, the crater'll lowp up 'ith chair anent me and tak' up a pen, in exac emeetation o' me, and keck into my 'een in his cunnin way, as if he was speering me what to write aboot; he surely maun ha' a feck o' thocht in his heed if are could gar him spak it; but ye ken his horsemanship beats a'. I had a spire-haired collie, a breed atween a Heelan lurcher, a grew, and a wolf, dog, a meety, muckle collie he is for sure—weel, gentlemen, do ye ken, he a' rides on him when ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... all origination, like the institution of any other natural state or order, is beyond our immediate ken. We see or may learn how things go on; we can only frame hypotheses ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... Io, paean! the parsley-wreathed victor hail! Io! Io, paean! sing it out on each breeze, each gale! He has triumphed, our own, our beloved, Before all the myriad's ken. He has met the swift, has proved swifter! The strong, has proved stronger again! Now glory to him, to his kinfolk, To Athens, and all Athens' men! Meet, run to meet him, The nimblest are not too ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... well enough to the door. Then the old man summoned his remaining strength, and having knotted the rope round his waist, threw himself on the ground again, and emerged with his precious charge into the roaring hurricane. Across the barren mountain slope, far above the ken of any fellow-being, in the teeth of death, the old man crept with the sleeping babe. Another threatening of the deluge of rain, which would surely accompany the tornado, added to the misery of the painful ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... it as to the former appearance of the deceased, and had then built it up in exact accordance with the original. In such cases the spirit face may show as a flat surface instead of a contour. Rigid examination has shown that the existing model was usually outside the ken ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... good dame," laughed the Earl, "'tis all for the sake of your own very sufficient charms! I trust that your good man here is not jealous, for beauty, you well do ken, ever sends the wits of a Douglas woolgathering. Nevertheless, let us have a draught of your home-brewed ale, for kissing is but dry work, after all, and little do I think of it save" (he set his cap on his head with a gallant wave of his hand) "in the case of a ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... maintenance of the individuality of which it is the foundation; and since it is pure spirit it has its continual existence in that plane of being where all things subsist in the universal here and the everlasting now, and consequently can, inform the lower mind of things removed from its ken either by distance or futurity. As the absence of the conditions of time and space must logically concentrate all things into a present focus, we can assign no limit to the subjective mind's power of perception, and therefore the question arises, why does it not keep the objective mind continually ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... Its attention is no longer directed solely to the earth with all its variety of objects, or to the physical worlds around it; but it finds itself compelled to glance further afield, and to construct hypotheses as to the nature of the matter and force which lie in the regions beyond the ken of its instruments. Ether is now comfortably settled in the scientific kingdom, becoming almost more than a hypothesis. Mesmerism, under its new name of hypnotism, is no longer an outcast. Reichenbach's experiments are still looked ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... with jugglers and mountebanks. Towards the beginning of the sixteenth century, private orchestras were maintained by the noble and the wealthy. Still the instrumental band held at best but a secondary place beside the vocal choir. "Harping," says the ancient bard, "ken I none, for song is chefe of myn-strelse." The music which it played differed in no essential respect from that intended for singing; indeed the part-song was often arranged without alteration for instruments, and so instrumental technique grew out of vocal ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... she fain have had him go on. "Lack a day, good man!" she rejoined, fondling closer to her bosom the little suckling; "get ye the wee bairn and bring it hither, and I'll mak it t'uther twin-na body'll kno't! and da ye ken hoo ye may mak the bonny wife sik a body that nane but foxes wad ken her. Just mak her a brae young sailor, and the Maggy Bell 'll do the rest on't." Hardweather here interrupted Molly's suggestion which was, indeed, most fortunate, and albeit supplied the initiative ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... of making up the herds. We must put some sheep that are wiser than the rest in every flock that they may lead the stupid ones. I dinna ken where they'd be if we didn't. We take as leaders sheep that are 'flock-wise'—by that I mean old ewes or wethers that have long been in the herds and know the ways. Sometimes, also, we put in a goat or two, for a goat has the wit to find water and food for himself. Not ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... 'if I were to offer an opeenion, it would not be conscientious. For the plain fac' is, Mr. St. Ivy, that I div not ken. We have had crackit heids—and rowth of them—ere now; and we have had a broken leg or maybe twa; and the like of that we drover bodies make a kind of a practice like to keep among oursel's. But a corp we have none of us ever had to deal with, and ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... John Peel, with his coat so gay? D'ye ken John Peel at the break of day? D'ye ken ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... Meanwhile, thus to himself he spoke: "Oh, noble is the knotted oak, And sweet the gush of sylvan streams, And good the great sun's gladding beams, The blush of life upon the field, The silent might that mountains wield. Still more I love to mix with men, Meeting the kindly human ken; To feel the force of faithful friends— The thirst for smiles that ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... Of daffodil flames amid April's cuckoo-flowers, Or a cluster of aconite mixt with weeds entwining! But, dark and lofty, a royal cedar towers By homely thorns: whether the white rain drifts Or sun scorches, he holds the downs in ken, The western vale; his branchy tiers he lifts, Older than many a generation ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... a rake, frae England he's come; The Scots dinna ken his extraction ava; He keeps up his misses, his landlord he duns, That's fast drawen' the lands o' Gight awa'. O whare ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... was a reprobate, ane the Lord hated, had gane by there wi' his sin still upon his stamach, nae doobt the creature would hae lowped upo' the likes o' him. But there's deils in the deep sea would yoke on a communicant! Eh, sirs, if ye had gane doon wi' the puir lads in the Christ-Anna, ye would ken by now the mercy o' the seas. If ye had sailed it for as lang as me, ye would hate the thocht of it as I do. If ye had but used the een God gave ye, ye would hae learned the wickedness o' that fause, saut, cauld, bullering creature, and of a' that's in it by the Lord's permission: labsters ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rivers are the Sind, Betwa, Ken, Baighin, Paisuni, Tons, Pahuj, Dhasan, Berma, Urmal and Chandrawal. The Sind, rising near Sironj in Malwa, marks the frontier line of Bundelkhand on the side of Gwalior. Parallel to this river, but more to the eastward, is the course ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... those known in his day. This cannot have been because the spirits from then unknown planets did not feel themselves called upon to communicate with the spirit of one who knew nothing of their home, for he received visitors from worlds in the starry heavens far beyond human ken. It would almost seem, though to the faithful Swedenborgian the thought will doubtless appear very wicked, that the system of Swedenborg gave no place to Uranus and Neptune, simply because he knew nothing about those planets. Otherwise, what a noble opportunity there would have been for establishing ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... to her. And she telled him a' that had befa'en her, and he telled her a' that had happened to him. And he caused the auld washerwife and her dochter to be burned. And they were married, and he and she are living happy till this day, for aught I ken.(1) ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... goods that folks here would not pay it; tea was one of the things on which this tax was put; and when Eng-land sent o-ver three ships full of tea to Bos-ton, our men would not let it be ta-ken from the ships, but broke the great chests and threw all the tea in the wa-ter. This act is known as the "Bos-ton Tea Par-ty"; and now the first signs of war were seen; a fierce fight took place at Lex-ing-ton, one ...
— Lives of the Presidents Told in Words of One Syllable • Jean S. Remy
... and her tea, after all, and went away loving Miss Ferris harder than ever. For Miss Ferris, by the mysterious process that brought all college news to her ken, had heard about Eleanor Watson and the Champion Blunderbuss, and she was looking out for Eleanor, who, she was sure from a number of little things she had noticed and pieced together, was now quite capable of looking out for herself. This confirmation ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... "points" to them, and this time the female peregrine or true falcon is sent on her way. Away she soars upwards, "waiting on and towering in her pride of place." Then the birds, lying like stones beneath her savage ken, are flushed by the dog, and the cruel peregrine, after selecting her bird, with her characteristic "swoop" brings it to the ground. If she is unsuccessful in her first attempt, she will tower again, and renew the ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... wrote, "the leddy what come jest a dey or too before yoo saled? Well, shees heer yit and I like 'er best ov al. She ain't to say real lively, yoo no, but shese good compny, and ken talk good on most enny sub-jick, and she ain't abuv spending a 'our with old Debby now'n then either. She is thee wun what is riting yure names on this verry ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... moment there may be conditions outside my ken which render a measure of the nature I have indicated impracticable, we must, nevertheless, not close our eyes to the fact that, after the recent reorganization of the Artillery, the creation of an adequate number of Cavalry regiments in the nearest future is an ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... be far beyond mortal ken, Assisted by all the arts of men, A moment's time and the space is passed, And heaven's best gifts ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... Mortimers, even when the contract was matter of policy. Would I have taken my sweet Isabel to abide her royal scorn, it might be incredulity of our marriage? Though for that matter it is more unimpeachable than her own! Nay, nay, out of ken and out of reach was our only security from our kin on either side, unless we desired that my head should follow my hand as a dainty dish for ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and it don't matter a hoot in hell to me what they are, or who they are, or what becomes of 'em. I ain't shepherdin' souls like that guy. It ain't in me, anyway. I just got to make good so that some day I ken quit these cursed forests and live easy the way I'd fancy. When that time comes maybe I'll change. Maybe I'll feel like that guy standin' doping over that spread of forest scene. I don't know. And just ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... names with glory on earth and shadows escaped from our ken, submissive to mercy in heaven. A vast chasm have my steps overleapt since we met, O Hilda—sweet Edith; a vast chasm, but a narrow grave." His voice faltered a moment, and again he renewed,— "Thou weepest, Edith; ah, how thy tears console me! Hilda, hear ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Mary! O think how ance we said— Wad ane o' us gae fickle, Or are o' us lie dead,— To feel anither's kisses We wad feign the auld instead, And ken the ither's footsteps In ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... death to drown in ken of shore; He ten times pines that pines beholding food; To see the salve doth make the wound ache more; Great grief grieves most at that would do it good; Deep woes roll forward like a gentle flood; Who, being stopp'd, the ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... last decade education has been the question du jour here; not that we have studied it physiologically and psychologically and culture-logically, as you have been doing in England. Theologies are a little beyond our ken, and we leave it to the old country to discover, by a harmonious combination of deductive and inductive teachings, what education really is. Our educational crisis has been merely legislative and administrative; but it is no small transformation for us to have emerged from the chrysalis ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... every hand! What gloomy shadows haunt its canopy! What horrors fall on high and mean degree! How hideous is the mien of its fell lords, What shrieks rise from that boundless glowing sea, How fierce the curses of the damned hordes, No mortal ken can e'er conceive ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... did my mither ken The day she cradled me The land I was to travel in, Or the death ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... effective, heart-moving oratory. Though his spoken language is to us as a sealed book, his is a mobility of countenance that will translate into, and expound by, a language shared by universal humanity, diverse mental emotions; and assure, to the grasp of universal human ken, the import of those emotions; that will express, in turn, fervor, pathos, humor; that, to find its completest purpose of unerringly revealing each passion, alternately, and for the nonce, swaying the human breast, will traverse, as it were, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... preached at Sarratt and elsewhere, and lived awhile at Totteridge; Isaac Watts lived for many years at Theobalds near Cheshunt; Philip Doddridge was at school at St. Albans. Fox, in his Journal, mentions visiting Hitchin, Baldock and other places. Tillotson was a curate at Cheshunt; Ken was born at Little Berkhampstead; Nathaniel Field, a man of prodigious learning, chaplain to James I., was born at Hemel Hempstead. William Penn, whom many considered a divine indeed, lived with his beautiful wife ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... precedent. There is yet no history of astronomy. In the desired actual placing of the present positions of the stars there would be a record which, 25,868 years hence, would enable the observer of those times to accurately measure movements of the earth now beyond mortal ken for lack of history. By the character of those movements, ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... my heart, thy ruddy valves,— It is thy master calls: Let me go down, and, curious, trace Thy labyrinthine halls. Open, O heart! and let me view The secrets of thy den: Myself unto myself now show With introspective ken. Expose thyself, thou covered nest Of passions, and be seen: Stir up thy brood, that in unrest Are ever piping keen:— Ah! what a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... Here had I been for more than three years wondering to find the shorthand writers of wide-awake and progressive America floundering in what I conceived to be the Serbonian bog of an archaic system of stenography. Unexpectedly a most superior young man came within my ken who was a disciple of Isaac Pitman. Furthermore, like myself, he was entirely self taught. No old shorthand writer who can look back a quarter of a century on his own youthful enthusiasm for the art can fail to appreciate what a bond of sympathy this discovery constituted. ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... met, and they twa plat, And fain they wad be near; And a' the warld might ken right weel, They were ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... was gone. Paul, with his bride, had vanished from human ken; Rose, a shattered illusion, gone too. Better so—of course; though, intermittently, the man she had roused in him still ached for the sight and feel of her. She gave a distinct thrill to life: and, if he could not forgive her, neither could he instantly ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... our knowledge is limited to the finite, we have no knowledge of the Infinite, the Absolute. Schiller, not satisfied with the mere fact, in this poem expresses the conviction that there must be an ethical reason for this necessity, a reason that is beyond our ken. Compare also the beautiful words of Lessing: "Nicht die Wahrheit, in deren Besitz irgend ein Mensch ist, oder zu sein vermeinet, sondern die aufrichtige Muehe, die er angewandt hat, hinter die ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... no mainner of use," he said, "to rouse the castel wi' hue an' cry! What hae we to say but 'at we faund the twa i' the gairden thegither! It wud but raise a clash—the which, fable or fac', wud do naething for naebody! His lordship maun be loot ken, as ye say; but wull his lordship believe ye, sir? I'm some i' the min' the yoong man 's awa' til's faither a'ready, to prejudeese him ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... it to confirm them in their vocation. He entered in detail as to the secret dispositions of their consciences; he foretold them many circumstances relative to the increase of his Order; he made known to them, in fine, so many sublime things beyond human ken, that they became perfectly aware that the Spirit of God rested fully on him, and that their greatest security would be in a conformity of themselves to ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... of this song, moreover, the horizon is enlarged beyond the immediate ken of the huntsman. The race-instinct, which has so strong a hold upon the Gypsies, is exalted into a wondrous sort of love which carries everything before it. This loving reality is also set over against the unloving artificiality of the first part ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... in another way. A party of natives proceed to a lagoon, or lake of still water, each carrying in his hand a small net (ken-de-ran-ko) of a semi-oval shape, about twenty inches long, from seven to nine inches across, and from five to seven inches deep. This net is kept in shape by a thin hoop of wood running round it in the upper part. With ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... pleasure of showing you. Under certain circumstances—as, for instance, hats, baby linen, gloves, silks, lace, or curtains—he would simply have bowed politely, and with a drooping expression, and making a kind of circular sweep, invited you to "step this way," and so led you beyond his ken; but under other and happier conditions,—huckaback, blankets, dimity, cretonne, linen, calico, are cases in point,—he would have requested you to take a seat, emphasising the hospitality by leaning over the counter and gripping a chair back in a spasmodic manner, and ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... my ken, and my grandmother promptly banished me. She set down the little baronet at the same time with a "Run and play, my doo!" She issued directions for me to charge myself with the responsibility. I would much rather have stayed to hear what grandmother and Miss Irma had ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... the haven near at hand To which I mean my wearie course to bend; Vere the main sheet and bear up to the land To which afore is fairly to be ken'd. —SPENSER, ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... of it to the parson. Say, if I know anything o' the boys, in a week they'll be shootin' craps with the parson fer his wages, an', in a month, they'll set up tables around in the body o' the chu'ch so they ken play 'draw' while the old man argues the shortest cut to everlastin' glory. You ain't got the boys in this city right, miss. Indeed, you ain't. Chu'ch? Why they got as much notion how to act around a chu'ch as ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... in "Field" reports: And instead of 'pots' and 'pewters' to promote the art of walking, We shall have a silver medal for proficiency in talking. Wranglers fair shall daily wrangle, who no Mathematics ken; Lady preachers fill the pulpit, lady critics wield the pen. O ye gallant, gallant heroes who the River's head have won, Little know ye what an era of confusion hath begun. I myself shall flee from ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... wonder if Jim and Ken can be thinking of visiting us over Sunday,—because Mr. Latimer is coming, you ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... "Na, na, I ken Miss Charlotte ower weel to forget her, though she has grown a deal sin' I saw her afore. This was a lassie wi' black hair, and e'en like the new wood the minister has his dinner-table, wi' the fine name—what ca' ye ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... sae far as I see—an' wha sud ken better? She's had a bien doon sittin' (sheltered quarters), and sud hae had as lang's I was to the fore. Na, na; it was nowther sae young nor ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... were like stars, and yet were not too brilliant. Glowing in their depths somewhere beyond visible ken, was the assurance of unspeakable promise; and there seemed to emanate from her personality a glowing enthusiasm which thrilled whomever ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... counsel about our abode and plantation, which was concluded to be in the west part of Elizabeth's island. The north-east thereof running from out our ken. The south and north ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... take flight. Barelli, of whom he had always spoken with the most brotherly affection, had turned against him. He and other false comrades had entered into a plot to murder him, and at the time of writing he had fled from their ken and was in hiding in some remote and populous district, awaiting the arrival of money which would enable him to return to Europe. Then, later on, there arrived another letter from Lisbon, disconnected in matter, shaky in writing, full of the wildest ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... evening; and then the ninth morning, alternating with great regularity as long as I kept tabs on him. At other times I would stumble upon him far afield, fishing in other lakes and streams; or see him winging homeward, high over the woods, from waters far beyond my ken; but these appearances were too irregular to count in a theory. I have no doubt, however, that he fished the near-by waters with as great regularity as he fished the beaver pond, and went wider afield ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... doin'," was Dixon's trembling reply, as he pointed a shaky finger at the windows. "It was t' yoong doctor from Pengarth—yo' ken him—" ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... on the frontier I came in contact with many persons who had been severely mauled or even crippled for life by grislies; and a number of cases where they killed men outright were also brought under my ken. Generally these accidents, as was natural, occurred to hunters who had ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... wondrous creatures, ye maun allow I naething can ken of beings like you; But ere the voice calls at eleven, Go ask your Father ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... he had made in his first burst of joy, "but nae doubt we are waur aff than we hae been, or suld be. And for eating—what signifies telling a lee? there's just the hinder end of the mutton-ham that has been but three times on the table, and the nearer the bane the sweeter, as your honours weel ken; and—there's the heel of the ewe-milk kebbuck, wi' a bit of nice butter, and—and—that's a' that's to trust to." And with great alacrity he produced his slender stock of provisions, and placed them with much formality ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... Great War broke out, one military name "led all the rest" in world-prominence: Kitchener. Millions of us were confident that the hero of Kartoum would save the world. It was not so decreed. Almost immediately another name flashed into the ken of every one, until even lisping children said Joffre with reverence second only to that wherewith they named Omnipotence. Then the weary years dragged on, and so many men were incredibly brave and good that it seemed hard for ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... wily quarry shunned the shock And TURNED him from the opposing rock; Then dashing down a darksome glen, Soon lost to hound and hunter's ken, In the deep Trossach's wildest ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... Lord Bromley. The tidings of her elopement without any positive proof of a bona fide marriage preceding it, had shocked him into bitter remorse for having left her, an unprotected waif and stray, to the tender mercies of the world, and now she had passed out of his ken, and he could ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... of having a mutual friend, completed Kenneth's feeling of ease and confidence, and he was soon talking unrestrainedly about the Latimers—what splendid people they were. How Jim's father was trying to save his (Ken's) father from having a very valuable patent stolen by a ring of rascals in New York City. And how Mr. Latimer's brother who was a large financier on Wall Street, was financing the lawsuit, and the stock-company that was formed on the value of ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... he had charmed me by the mere amenity of his detachment which, in this case, I cannot help thinking he had carried to excess. He went away from his rooms without leaving a trace. I wondered where he had gone to—but now I know. He vanished from my ken only to drift into this adventure that, unavoidable, waited for him in a world which he persisted in looking upon as a malevolent shadow spinning in the sunlight. Often in the course of years an expressed sentiment, the particular sense of a ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... the stupendous emergency. Regardless of instructions, expressed or implied, the master spirits of the Convention, looking beyond local prejudices and State environment, and appealing to time for vindication, with a ken that now seems more than human, discerned the safety, the well-being, the glory of their countrymen, bound up in a general Government of plenary powers, a Government "without a seam in its garment, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... I cannot go back, I must go forwards: now I must keep on loving you or be shipwrecked. I did not know that this was in me, this tide of love, this current of devotion. Destiny plays me beyond my ken, beyond my dreams. "O Cithaeron!" Turn from me now—or never, O my love! Loose me from the mast, and let the storm and wave wash me out into the sea of your forgetfulness now—or never! . . . But keep me, keep me, if your love is great enough, if I bring you any light or joy; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... mark of favor on its foremost exponent. What you dare not do is bestow a similar mark on one who is opposed to it. Your favors go only to those who represent a majority; minorities are carefully shut away from your ken. You are taught to believe that they are unimportant. Whereas the exact opposite is the truth; for it is always the minorities who have made history and ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... MacPhail swore ye was only like a goblin on a puddick-steel! "Na!" said I. "Yon's but the daft Englishman—the loony that had escapit frae the waxwarks." I was thinkin' that bein' strange and silly—if not a whole-made feel—ye'd no ken the ways o' the quicksan'! I shouted till warn ye, and then ran to drag ye aff, if need be. But God be thankit, be ye fule or only half-daft wi' yer vanity, that I was no that late!' and he reverently lifted his cap as ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... o't, to the care of his usher; and, also, the wives in Gandercleuch say, that you have engaged Paul Pattison to write a new book, which is to beat a' the lave that gaed afore it; and to show what a sair lift you have o' the job, you didna sae muckle as ken the name o't—no nor whether it was to be about some Heathen Greek, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... a lot about soldiering, Geordie," retorted Ogilvie, "no man more, but ye ken less about soldiers than a lad of ten. At Gladsmuir I said to MacIntosh, 'Let's get the damn thing over, Sandy, and be back to breakfast wi' the leddies!' And ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... are that have made stage history. Surely you remember the beruffled, rose-strewn confection in which the beautiful Elsa Marriott swam into our ken in "Mississipp'"? She used to say, wistfully, that she always got a hand on her entrance in that dress. It was due to the sheer shock of delight that thrilled audience after audience as it beheld her loveliness enhanced by this floating, diaphanous tulle cloud. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... Ken a ride on Gypsy," he called out. He dropped his hammer, disappeared in the barn and came out ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... a flight into the regions where he is less at home than in his ordinary style. Take, for instance, a passage from 'Rob Roy,' where our dear friend, the Bailie, Nicol Jarvie, is taken prisoner by Rob Roy's amiable wife, and appeals to her feelings of kinship. '"I dinna ken," said the undaunted Bailie, "if the kindred has ever been weel redd out to you yet, cousin—but it's kenned, and can be proved. My mother, Elspeth Macfarlane (otherwise Macgregor), was the wife of my father, Denison Nicol Jarvie ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... time for the carrier, to tell you that I received your letter, of which I shall say no more but what a lass of my acquaintance said of her bastard wean; she said she "didna ken wha was the father exactly, but she suspected it was some o' thae bonny blackguard smugglers, for it was like them." So I only say, your obliging epistle was like you. I enclose you a parcel of subscription bills. Your affair ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... into my eyes, and the woman, seeing them, suddenly stopped ironing and exclaimed eagerly: "Ou, mem, ye ken the family; or maybe ye'll hae been a friend of the puir thing's mither!" I was obliged to say that I neither knew them nor any thing about them, but that the child's piteous aspect had ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... to the tents or palaces of chiefs or kings for guidance in ordinary matters, so they went to the dwelling places of superhuman Powers for direction in matters that were beyond human ken. Such appeal to divine or quasi-divine beings began early in religious history. In Borneo and the islands of Torres Straits the abodes of skulls are places from which responses are obtained;[1676] speaking heads are found ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... Etruscan dynasty offered further opportunities for the growth alike of the work and influence of the college.[566] Above all, we must remember that this work was done in secret, that the mysteries of adjustment were unknown to the people when once they had passed out of the ken of family and gens, and that there could have been no appeal from the pontifices to any other body. Nay, more, we must also bear in mind that this body of religious experts was self-electing. Until the lex Domitia of 104 B.C. both pontifices and augurs filled up their own ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... two minutes. It seemed as though almost no time had elapsed before the taxi came to a stop beside the Palmer House. The two occupants descended; Smith paid the man; the vehicle slid off into space beyond their ken. And at that very moment their eyes sprang to where, barely a block away, great tongues of red fire licked above a wide building's roof—and all else but that thing ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... for ever, this expression, which broke from the lips of one to whom I was eagerly reading [Mr. Mac-Carthy's translation of] the play, 'Why, in the original this must be as grand as Dante', tends to show that such merits as do come within our ken are not likely to be thrown away upon any fair-minded Protestant. Dr. Newman, as a Catholic, will have entered, I presume, more deeply still into the spirit of these extraordinary creations; his life, however, belongs to a different ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... whizzed viciously to right and left of them. One kilted Scot passed us leading a young cow. He paid no heed to the jests and the noisy whistling of "To be a Farmer's Boy" that greeted him. "The milk 'ull be a' richt the morn's morn, ye ken," was his comfortable retort. And once a red-headed Yorkshireman broke the strain of the wait under shell-fire by calling out, "It's a ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... with the Transport of a Philosopher he beholds and admires the glorious Work, he is capable of paying at once a more devout and more rational Homage to his Maker. But alas! how narrow is the Prospect even of such a Mind? and how obscure to the Compass that is taken in by the Ken of an Angel; or of a Soul but newly escaped from its Imprisonment in the Body! For my Part, I freely indulge my Soul in the Confidence of its future Grandeur; it pleases me to think that I who know so ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... gullets, Or treat them like our slaves; The right to use the savage To aid us in our fight, To freely scalp and ravage, Each is a Southern right. Call not these claims Satanic, They're far beyond your ken: How can a low ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... mysterious old man had impressed Estein more than his extraordinary influence over this strange disciple or servant, for he seemed to be partly both; and that one who so loathed and hated the Norsemen could be made to serve his enemies at a word, seemed to point to a power beyond the ken of ordinary man. Helgi, too, was evidently struck, for he looked askance from one to the ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... excitement was toward, for the great room buzzed with talk. The courtiers drew together in groups, and it seemed that a man's name was being bandied to and fro, dark shuttlecock to this painted throng. Damans Sedley, entering the antechamber by a small side door, swam into the ken of a number of eager players gathered around a gentleman of flushed countenance, who, with much swiftness and dexterity, was wreaking old grudges upon the shuttlecock. One of the audience trod upon the player's toe; each courtier bowed until his sword stood out a straight line of steel; the maid ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... "Ye ken in this country ilka gentleman is wussed to be sae civil as to see the corpse aff his ain grounds. Ye needna gang higher than the loan-head—it's no expected your honour suld leave the land—it's just a Kelso convoy, a step and a half ower the ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... or cards with him. And, working so hard all day, he was glad to turn in early at night. Social life, therefore—unless you could call high words with a crabbed invalid a form of social life—didn't come within Gilbert's ken. It was work, work, work, and the desire to make good ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... in this meeting with Mr. Harker, Lois realized the existence of a world beyond her ken—a world that had been Justin's. New as the visitor's words had been, they seemed to open to her a vision of herculean struggle: the way this man had looked—his wife had "wondered that he was still alive." And Justin—where ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... of the planetary orbs themselves be hurried? It may be that we are able to trace the history of the solar system for some thousand million years or so; but for how much longer time must it not have a history—a history, and also a future—entirely beyond our ken? ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... thinking, most entertaining, and in fact very touching indeed. Here am I, quit of worldly affairs of every kind; for if superannuation does not mean that, what does it mean? The world then, being, as the saying is, beyond my ken, and being myself entirely removed from any accurate distinctions of space or time, these mistakes in road-measure do not seriously offend me. For in the infinite space of the heavens above (which in this contracted sphere ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... that prospective decease of his, to disturb even Archie's mental balance. Archie was the owner of the concertina; but after a couple of stinging lectures from Jimmy he refused to play any more. He said:—"Yon's an uncanny joker. I dinna ken what's wrang wi' him, but there's something verra wrang, verra wrang. It's nae manner of use asking me. I won't play." Our singers became mute because Jimmy was a dying man. For the same reason no chap—as Knowles remarked—could "drive in a nail to hang his few poor ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... the baker, who was a Burnsomaniac, "there's waur than a walk by the bank o' a bonny burn. Ye ken what ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... Your Majesty's Guards consist mostly of men who suffer from an abnormal growth. These giants, so they say, have periods where they shoot up to such an extent that they grow and grow beyond the tree-tops and disappear altogether from human ken. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... alone; then he sighed out as if the taste of it all came back to him with a faint sweetness: "I think they must both have been good to me. At the Malvern time, the particular time I just mentioned to you, Lady Julia was already married, and during those first years she had been whirled out of my ken. Then her own life took a quieter turn; we met again; I went for a good while often to her house. I think she rather liked the state to which she had reduced me, though she didn't, you know, in the least presume on it. The better a woman is—it ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James |
