"Conjectural" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the date of birth of Antonio Stradivari, is a living Belgian writer, Monsieur Fetis, who has not stated from whence {583} he has adopted it. I find that the Paris Biographie Universelle gives no fixed date, but only a conjectural one, about 1670, so that 1664 ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... to primitive times. There is no evidence to prove whether the original edifice had, or had not, a third story; since the chamber seen by the Arabs was no doubt a late Babylonian work. The third story of the accompanying sketch must therefore be regarded as conjectural. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... States which must be such that it will be supported if the Constitution, laws, or treaties are given one construction, or defeated if given another. Second, a genuine and present controversy as distinguished from a possible or conjectural one must exist with reference to the federal right. Third, the controversy must be disclosed upon the face of the complaint ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... countries, the enjoyment of certain political rights depends upon the amount of property. But, in these same countries, property is expressive, rather than attributive, of the qualifications necessary to the exercise of these rights. It is rather a conjectural proof than the cause of these qualifications."—Rossi: Treatise on ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... progress; and then the breeze drew gradually round into one quarter, and commenced blowing with a steadiness that they had not experienced before that night. Paul suspected this change, though he had no certain means of knowing it; for as soon as the wind baffled, his course had got to be conjectural again. As the breeze freshened, the speed of the boat necessarily augmented, though she was kept always on a wind; and after half an hour's progress, the gentlemen became once more uneasy ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... was, as our morning senses told us, nothing of the kind. She tried to sketch her remembrance of both that and the gable of the mullion chamber, and Martyn prowled about in search of some hiding-place. Our antiquarian friend, Mr. Stafford, had made a conjectural drawing of the Chapel restored, and all the portfolios about the house were searched for it, disquieting mamma, who suspected Martyn's Oxford notions of intending to rebuild it, nor would he say that it ought not to be done. However, he with his more advanced ecclesiology, pronounced Mr. ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... imagination), the nightly forest noises, the glimpse, perhaps, through the leaves, of a painted savage face, uncertain whether of redman or Devil, but more likely of the latter, above all, that measureless mystery of the unknown and conjectural stretching away illimitable on all sides and vexing the mind, somewhat as physical darkness does, with intimation and misgiving,—under all these influences, whatever seeds of superstition had in any way got over from the Old World would find an only too congenial soil ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... and sought systematic methods of proof. They thus prepared the way for a more perfect philosophy than that taught by the Ionians, the Pythagoreans, or the Elentae, since they showed the vagueness of their inquiries, conjectural rather than scientific. They had no doctrines in common. They were the barristers of their age, paid to make the "worse appear the better reason," yet not teachers of immorality any more than the lawyers of our day,—men of talents, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... occasionally in one that will bear the test of examination after it has been placed aside, and carefully considered when the impression of novelty has worn off. I think we may safely appeal to all critics who occupy themselves much with conjectural criticism, and ask them if TIME does not frequently impair the complacency with which they regard their efforts on ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... letter, I was staying in the same house with the Bishop, and showed it to him. He said, 'I am very glad he takes it in that way, he is such a capital fellow.'") It is uncommonly clever; it picks out with skill all the most conjectural parts, and brings forward well all the difficulties. It quizzes me quite splendidly by quoting the 'Anti-Jacobin' versus my Grandfather. You are not alluded to, nor, strange to say, Huxley; and I can plainly ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... then arose, and the audience departed, greatly wondering at the talent displayed by Alan Fairford at his first appearance in a case so difficult and so complicated, and assigning a hundred conjectural causes, each different from the others, for the singular interruption which had clouded his day of success. The worst of the whole was, that six agents, who had each come to the separate resolution ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... together the fragments ora letter which has been torn and scattered to the winds. Many words of deep significance, many entire sentences, and those possibly the most important ones, have flown too far on the winged breeze to be recovered. If we insert our own conjectural amendments, we perhaps give a purport utterly at variance with the true one. Yet unless we attempt something in this way, there must remain an unsightly gap, and a lack of continuousness and dependence in our narrative; ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... conjectural strategy attributes to Joshua a ready grasp of the essential features of the military position and skill in dealing with them, it certainly does not attribute to him any greater skill than it is reasonable to suppose he possessed. The Hebrews have repeatedly proved, not ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... conjectural, and very improbable, is therefore far from conclusive: It is certain that there never was a more intricate affair than this. We have read the trials of all those who suffered for this murther, chiefly ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... of that foundation on which is built the mighty fabric? Even the infirmities and vices of the men who piled the first stones of great empires, are chronicled in history as facts deserving record. The portrait of an ancient hero is a treasure beyond value, even though the features be but conjectural. How much more precious would be a faithful portrait of his character, in which the features should be his salient traits—the expression, outline, and ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... Terence copied Menander, whether, as he states of the passage in the Adelphi taken from Diphilus, verbum de verbo in the lovelier scenes—the description of the last words of the dying Andrian, and of her funeral, for instance—remains conjectural. For us Terence shares with his master the praise of an amenity that is like Elysian speech, equable and ever gracious; like the face of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... leaves containing title and dedication by Paulus Manutius to Guillaume Pellicier, Bishop of Montpellier, 331 numbered leaves of text, 10 unnumbered leaves of translations of the Greek passages, conjectural emendations which the editor "would not hesitate to adopt it he should ever find an ancient MS. to confirm them" and a final leaf with colophon and anchor. The Scholia, 24 unnumbered leaves, have a separate ...
— Catalogue of the William Loring Andrews Collection of Early Books in the Library of Yale University • Anonymous
... but think or not, By Heaven that hears I tell you the clean truth, As clean as blood of babes, as white as milk: O Merlin, may this earth, if ever I, If these unwitty wandering wits of mine, Even in the jumbled rubbish of a dream, Have tript on such conjectural treachery— May this hard earth cleave to the Nadir hell Down, down, and close again, and nip me flat, If I be such a traitress. Yield my boon, Till which I scarce can yield you all I am; And grant my re-reiterated wish, The ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... my morning paper early enough to be able to send down to the office a correction of any error in my conjectural notice of the last act, and reception of the play, or even a report of the speech at the end; and if the theatre had been burnt down, or the leading player had fallen in a fit, I would have sent an account ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... composed a packet of Original Letters, and sent the volume to press. The origin of the "Appendix, by Way of Vindication of Mr. Duncan Campbel" remains unknown, and any theory about the authorship of the "Secret Memoirs" must be regarded in last analysis as largely conjectural.[11a] ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... "that from this point I shall have to be largely conjectural. Welkin wasn't able to be very definite, except as to moments, and he had his data almost altogether from his wife. Braybridge had told him overnight that he thought of going, and he had said he mustn't ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... must have been the one universal finish to the walls. The use to which we have put them is quite in harmony with the spirit of Mesopotamian architecture, but there is no direct evidence of their presence in these buildings. In this particular our restoration is conjectural. ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... unincorporated societies, these figures show an increase in income of 30%, in assets of 23%, and in profit balances of 46%, and a diminution of the properties in possession and mortgages in arrear of 14% in the nine years. The total assets and income are more than three times the amount of the conjectural estimate made for 1870 by the royal commission. It is not too much to say that a quarter of a million persons have been enabled by means of building societies to become the proprietors ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... are told, "There is one performance, ascribed to the pen of the Doctor, where the prostitution is of so singular a nature, that it would be difficult to select an adequate motive for it, out of the mountainous heap of conjectural causes of human passions, or human caprice. It is the speech of the late unhappy Dr. William Dodd, when he was about to hear the sentence of the law pronounced upon him, in consequence of an indictment for forgery. The voice of the public has given the honour of manufacturing ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... indeed with a shilling, but with an old bed!"[211] All this seems judicious, till Steevens asserts the conjugal affection of the bard, tells us, that the poet having, when in health, provided for her by settlement, or knowing that her father had already done so (circumstances entirely conjectural), he bequeathed to her at his death not merely an old piece of furniture, but, PERHAPS, as a mark of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... 4-warp weaving were found in the miscellaneous fiber collection (139544) and in a group of woven fragments (139554). None was found in connection with the finished articles of the collection, so that their use is purely conjectural. The warp is generally 2-ply, Z-twist, medium- to hard-twist cordage; the weft is the same, but generally lighter in weight than ...
— A Burial Cave in Baja California - The Palmer Collection, 1887 • William C. Massey
... of the Dardanelles shall be shifted to other owners is entirely different. It constitutes, however, a conjectural eventuality which the present situation does not contemplate, I believe, and on which I shall, therefore, express no opinion. My only concern at present is to give an approximate definition, as best I can, of those weighty interests which may lead to another war after ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... Tatian have given his name to a collection of materials begun, used, and left in a more or less advanced stage of compilation, by Justin? However, we can really do little more than note the resemblance: any theory we may form must be purely conjectural. ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... has led from the lowest forms of life up to man, sees in progress the fundamental law of the universe, and thus admits the difference between earlier and later into the very citadel of its contemplative outlook. With its past and future history of the world, conjectural as it is, I do not wish to quarrel. But I think that, in the intoxication of a quick success, much that is required for a true understanding of the universe has been forgotten. Something of Hellenism, something, ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... before Verrall had thought of coupling together the free-thinking and the episode in the play. This is what Verrall did. Ion sees that the oracle can lie, and, therefore, "Delphi is plainly discredited as a fountain of truth." The explanation is, of course, somewhat conjectural. Homer, who was certainly not a free-thinker, made his deities sufficiently ridiculous, and, at times, altogether odious. Mr. Lang says with truth: "When Homer touches on the less lovable humours of women—on the nagging ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... first years of his career, no records exist. The whole of his earlier life, indeed, is dubious and conjectural, founded as it is on the half-dozen dark and evasive chapters devoted by Hernando, his son and biographer, to the first half-century of his father's times. It seems certain, however, that these unknown years were stormy, laborious, and eventful; "wherever ship ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... insignificant when compared with the conflicts in valuation which are likely to arise from the differences of opinion among the numerous appraisers of merchandise. In many instances the estimates of value must be conjectural, and thus as many different rates of value may be established as there are appraisers. These differences in valuation may also be increased by the inclination which, without the slightest imputation on their honesty, may arise on the part of the appraisers in favor ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... not be sure when its end was exactly "flush" with the head of the cask. The mistake of an inch—it might be several—would falsify all my computations, and render them of no use. It would not do to proceed upon such a conjectural basis, and for a while I was puzzled, and had ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... "The variations of the inscriptions," says a late conservative writer, "in the Septuagint and the other versions sufficiently prove that they were not regarded as fixed portions of the canon, and that they were open to conjectural emendations." [Footnote: Speaker's Commentary, iv. 151.] Dr. Moll, the learned author of the monograph on the Psalms in Lange's "Commentary," says in his introduction: "The assumption that all the inscriptions ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... at that conjectural solution of his perplexities when a voice was heard singing, or rather modulated to that kind of chant between recitative and song, which is so pleasingly effective where the intonations are pure and musical. They were so in this instance, and Kenelm's ear caught every word ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... through the fairest and most moving spectacle in nature's processional, and saw afar off, in conjectural vision, a formless sort of place which was Seattle. They surveyed its impalpable outlines, its undefined dimensions, with a certain cool glitter of hard-and-fast resolve. There rose before his fancy, out of the chaos of these shapeless imaginings, some faces of men, then more behind them, then ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... suitable. In some departments the science of the Greeks was remarkable, though it is completely overshadowed by their philosophy; yet it was largely based on what has proved to be a wrong method of procedure, viz the introspective and conjectural, rather than the inductive and experimental methods. They investigated Nature by studying their own minds, by considering the meanings of words, rather than by studying things and recording phenomena. This wrong (though by no means, on the face ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... Identification] Some corrections are conjectural. Numbers were only changed when there was a discrepancy between a catalog entry and ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... abridgment which some one had made for his own improvement. On one point all philological critics are unanimous: namely, that the text is very much corrupted, and they have endeavoured to restore it by conjectural emendations. Its great obscurity is either expressly complained of by commentators, or substantiated by the fact, that all in turn reject the interpretations of their predecessors, while they cannot approve their own ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... points must be carefully kept in mind; the first is the distinction between theory and conjecture on the one hand, and well ascertained facts on the other. We shall have much to do with theory, and with conjectural interpretations of observed facts. These can never stand on the same footing as the facts themselves, but can only be regarded as invested with greater or less probability. If it is found that these theories do explain many ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... same point. The currents of the Caribbean sea must pass between those lands. He was persuaded, therefore, that there must be a strait existing somewhere thereabout, opening into the Indian sea. The situation in which he placed his conjectural strait, was somewhere about what at present is called the Isthmus of Darien. [110] Could he but discover such a passage, and thus link the New world he had discovered with the opulent oriental regions of the old, he felt that he should make a magnificent close to his labors, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... are, of course, conjectural; but those given are accepted by high authorities. Paul was about forty-four at the time ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... Mid-Western State, and as this gentleman found the curious little reptiles he was in search of under a root or in a cranny of rock he repeated their many-syllabled names. Curious to know what these names literally meant and whence derived, the writer made inquiry, sometimes hazarding a conjectural etymology. To his astonishment and dismay he found this "scientist," whom he had looked up to, entirely ignorant of the meaning of the terms he employed. They were just arbitrary terms to him. The little hopping and crawling creatures might as well have ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... those at which a copy of the respective works was deposited at the Paris Bibliotheque du Conservatoire de Musique, the dates without an asterisk in parentheses are derived from advertisements in French musical journals; the square brackets [ ] enclose conjectural and approximate dates and additional information; and lastly, the dates without parentheses and without brackets were obtained by me direct from the successors of the original German publishers, and consequently are more exact and trustworthy ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... belonged. This lover of liberty, this gentle rebuker of kings, was of the free-thinkers, at least in the sympathy of political thought. Nay, the Revolution itself is foreshown in a remarkable glimpse of conjectural prophecy which occurs in the "Telemachus." Idomeneus is a headstrong king, whom Mentor is made by the author to reprove and instruct, for the Duke of Burgundy's benefit. To Idomeneus—a character taken, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... himself single-handed against the capricious tyrant who ruled the world, and who wished to cast on the Christians the stain of his greatest crime, the conflagration of his capital. As we have said, all details pertaining to the life of Paul after his arrival at Rome are simply conjectural, and although interesting, they cannot give us the satisfaction ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... and talent for meditation he is possessed of. Let him strive to keep a free, open sense; cleared from the mists of prejudice, above all from the paralysis of cant; and directed rather to the Book itself than to the Editor of the Book. Who or what such Editor may be, must remain conjectural, and even insignificant:[1] it is a voice publishing tidings of the Philosophy of Clothes; undoubtedly a Spirit addressing Spirits: whoso ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... think it not improbable that he visited the Bermudas; but it seems much more likely, that he should amuse himself with forming an imaginary scene, than that so important an incident, as a visit to America, should have been left floating in conjectural probability. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... forward movement of the train in which he so strangely found himself, he had fits of impulse to leap out and take the next train back. But, back where? He had the assurance of his colored friend and brother that forward was New York. Backward was the void conjectural. Slowly the dawn whitened at the window. He raised the curtain and saw the rocks and fences and snow of a winter's landscape—saw them with a shock which, lying prone as he was, gave him the sensation of staggering. It was ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... venture, only conjectural to us at this distance, he knew well; but in him there was nothing that shrank from danger, though he did not court it after the rash manner of many of his compeers. Neither reckless nor riotous, Boone was never found among those who opposed ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... he said nervously, "I begin to fear that perhaps after all I am unworthy. Now about those Articles of Religion: I may perhaps have given some of them a conjectural and commentating assent. Possibly I have ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... certain collocation of its particles relatively to one another. In the example of the wall, it consists in a new collocation of two things relatively to each other—the wall and the paint. In the example of the molding influences on the human mind, its being a collocation at all is only conjectural; for, even on the materialistic hypothesis, it would remain to be proved that the increased facility with which the brain sums up a column of figures when it has been long trained to calculation, is the result of a permanent new arrangement of some of its material particles. We must, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... transferred to a recess of the vestry chamber. Of the poet, Mr. Forster says, "no memorial indicates the grave to the pilgrim or the stranger, nor is it possible any longer to identify the spot which received all that was mortal of the delightful writer." The present site is entirely conjectural; but it appears from the following note, communicated to us by T.C. Noble, the well-known City antiquary, that the real site was remembered as late as ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... them. If it cost twice as much labour to kill a beaver as to kill a deer, one beaver would be worth two deer. In accepting this bit of what Smith's commentator, Dugald Stewart,[332] calls 'theoretical' or 'conjectural' history, Ricardo did not mean to state a historical fact. He was not thinking of actual Choctaws or Cherokees. The beaver was exchanged for the deer about the time when the primitive man signed the 'social contract.' He is a hypothetical person used for purposes of illustration ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... give all the results of this collation in notes at the foot of the page, and to add to these conjectural emendations collected and suggested by ourselves, or furnished to us by our correspondents, so as to give the reader in a compact form a complete view of the existing materials out of which the text has been constructed, or ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare
... narrative.' Sometimes it is possible 'with more or less probability to detect the naked fact which may lie beneath the imaginative or marvellous language in which it is recorded; but even in these cases the solution can be hardly more than conjectural.' In other cases 'the supernatural so entirely predominates and is so of the intimate essence of the transaction that the facts and the interpretation must be accepted together or rejected together.' In such cases ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... A conjectural restoration of the Priory buildings, as they stood in Prior Bolton's time, based on the records available in 1893, and the architectural fragments which then remained, shows them to have been bounded on the northern side by the Church, which extended from the Lady Chapel at its eastern extremity ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... reconstruct or represent to ourselves with a fair degree of probability the various stages through which this particular phase of religion may be supposed to have passed in the great civilised races before the dawn of history. Of course all such reconstructions must be more or less conjectural. In the absence of historical documents that is inevitable; but our reconstruction will be more or less probable according to the degree in which the corresponding stages of evolution are found to resemble or differ from each other in the various races of men. If we find ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... Women and the Eoiai, preserved only in scanty fragments, attempt to fix in canonical form the cloudy mixture of dreams and boasts and legends and hypotheses by which most royal families in central Greece recorded their descent from a traditional ancestress and a conjectural God. The Works and Days form an attempt to collect and arrange the rules and tabus relating to agriculture. The work of Hesiod as a whole is one of the most valiant failures in literature. The confusion and absurdity of it are only equalled by its strange helpless ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... that the late Professor Marsh devoted to searching for dinosaurs in the Jurassic and Cretaceous formations of the West, he did not obtain any skeletons of carnivorous kinds anywhere near as complete as these, and their anatomy was in many respects unknown or conjectural. By comparison of the three Allosaurus skeletons with one another and with other specimens of carnivorous dinosaurs of smaller size in this and other museums, particularly in the National Museum and the Kansas University Museum, we have been able to reconstruct ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... g: This number is conjectural, but cannot be far from the truth, as Mr. McElvaine, the sub-agent, states that but 8 or 10 ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... upon his meaning, for as you may easily judge, what with cabinet, board, and Oak Farm, I have enough in my head to-day—and the subject is a fine and subtle one. But I may perhaps be able to think upon it to-night, in the meantime I think yours is a very just conjectural sketch. We have not got in cabinet to-day to the really pinching part of the discussion, the Roman catholic religious education. That comes on Monday. My mind does not waver; pray for me, that I may do right. I have an appointment with ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... list of some six hundred persons, yet not one of his particular company was ever brought to trial. As each leader kept to himself the names of his proselytes, and as Monday Gell was the only one of these who turned traitor, any opinion as to the numbers actually engaged must appear altogether conjectural. One witness said nine thousand; another, six thousand six hundred. These statements were probably extravagant, though not more so than Governor Bennett's assertion, on the other side, that "all who were actually concerned had been brought to justice,"—unless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... interval of sombre gray that comes between the darknesses can be called day. For a week, now, we have not seen the sun. Our ship's position in this waste of storm and sea is conjectural. Once, by dead reckoning, we gained up with the Horn and a hundred miles south of it. And then came another sou'west gale that tore our fore-topsail and brand new spencer out of the belt-ropes and swept us away to a conjectured longitude east of ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... been modernized in spelling, and, to some extent, in algebraical notation; it also seems that conjectural methods of introducing interpolations into the text have been necessary. For all this we are sorry: the scientific value of the collection is little altered, but its literary value is somewhat lowered. But it could not be helped: the ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... far his love troubles are purely conjectural," said Sewell with a laugh. "I'm bound to say that Barker himself didn't say a word to justify the conjecture that he was either in love or wished to be out of it. However, I've given him some wholesome advice which he'll be ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... trustworthiness as a guide in other departments of criticism, where, from the nature of the case, no test can be applied. In the land of the unverifiable there are no efficient critical police. When a writer expatiates amidst conjectural quotations from conjectural apocryphal Gospels, he is beyond the reach of refutation. But in the present case, as it so happens, verification is possible, at least to a limited extent; and it is important to avail ourselves of ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... scholastic commentaries, such as we find in India from Yaska in the fifth century B.C. down to Sayana in the fourteenth century of the Christian era. This is what Professor Wilson has done in his translation of the first book of the Rig-veda; and by strictly adhering to this principle and excluding conjectural renderings even where they offered themselves most naturally, he has imparted to his work a definite character and a lasting value. The grammar of the Veda, though irregular, and still in a rather floating state, has almost been mastered; the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... Russia, he does not look upon her force and her ambition with the alarm generally entertained of that encroaching and immense power. He even thinks that, even if she possessed Constantinople, she could not long retain it. As all this is future, and of course conjectural, we may legitimately express our doubts of any authority on the subject. That Russia does not think with the Marquis is evident, for all her real movements for the last fifty years have been but preliminaries to the seizure ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... violate the rights of others. She may use any precautions dictated by the prudence or fears of her officers, either as to delay, or the progress or course of her voyage; but she is not at liberty to inflict injuries upon other innocent parties simply because of conjectural dangers. ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... to the time of the completion of the canal, which will be at least six years later than the lock canal, and the purchase price, the total cost to the United States will aggregate $563,000,000. In this case, however, parts of the estimate are more or less conjectural—such as the cost of diverting the Chagres to permit the building of the Gamboa dam and the cost of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... and Chouan movements, of which Burke here complains, has never been fully explained. The poltroonery of the Bourbon princes, and the factions of the emigrants, throw a certain but not a complete light on it; and though conjectural explanations are obvious enough, there is little positive evidence ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... and feel without the assistance of this body; that deprived of this body and robbed of its senses, this soul will be able to live, to enjoy, to suffer, be sensitive of enjoyment or of rigorous torments. Upon such a tissue of conjectural absurdities the wonderful opinion of the immortality of the ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... seldom able to describe the plainest case without employing a phraseology of which every word is a theory; the simplest narrative of the most illiterate observer involves more or less of hypothesis;'—yet both by the observer himself and by most of those who listen to him, each of these conjectural assumptions is treated as respectfully as if it were an established axiom. We are supposed to deny the possibility of a circumstance, when in truth we only deny the evidence alleged for it. We allow the excellence of reasoning from certain data to captivate our belief in the truth of the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 1: On Popular Culture • John Morley
... can be answered 'immediately'; but No. 3 takes two hours. The 8th, 9th, and 10th were considered together, and are estimated to have taken an hour and a half, between 7 and 11.30 P.M.; though, as he was in an omnibus for part of the time and there fell asleep, this must be conjectural. The 13th question could not be answered at all; but was luckily not important. He had answered the 11th and 12th during a railway journey to Paris on October 2, and had thereupon made ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... regions. There remains, of course, the Yellow Peril; but by the time that begins to be serious it is quite likely that the birth-rate will also have begun to decline among the races of Asia If not, there are other means of dealing with this question; and in any case the whole matter is too conjectural to be set up seriously as a bar to our hopes. I conclude that, though no certain forecast is possible, there is not any valid reason for regarding the possible increase of population as a ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... the theme again before I abandoned it, and was so fortunate as to get him to admit a degree of improvement such as led to his desiring to recall his conjectural judgment on my possibilities as a sonnet-writer, but as the letters in which he characterises the advance are neither so terse in criticism, nor so interesting from the exposition of principles, as the one ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... but so abstruse in its nature and so quaint in its expression, that the House never comprehended it, and the unfortunate minister who had to answer, even with twenty-four hours' study, was obliged to commence his reply by a conjectural interpretation of the query formally addressed to him. But though they were silent in the House, their views were otherwise powerfully represented. The weekly journal devoted to their principles ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... (Luther's Philip, who insisted on the supplementary Wife), are all I know of him; and he is somewhat tragic to me there, turning ivory in this extremely anarchic world. What the passages between him and Friedrich Wilhelm were, on this occasion, shall remain conjectural to all creatures. Friedrich Wilhelm said, this Sunday evening at Darmstadt to his own Prince: "Still here, then? I thought you would have been in Paris by this time!"—To which the Prince, with artificial firmness, answered, He could certainly, if he had wished; [Seckendorf (in Forster, ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... particular facts demanding explanation or generalization, and try to find some accepted law that explains them. Failing in that, you are driven to guess at a general law, i.e., to formulate a hypothesis that will fit the known facts. Then, having found such a conjectural general law, you proceed to deduce its consequences; you see that, if the hypothesis is true, such and such facts must be true. Next you go out and see whether these facts are true, and if they are, your hypothesis {475} is verified to that extent, ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... seem to have come up through the interstitial spaces of the conglomerate instead of in the more or less open fissures of the gold-bearing quartz-veins. The chemical conditions under which gold is thus deposited are still conjectural. Gold has long been known to exist in sea-water, in the form of an iodide or a chloride; and one skilful metallurgist at Johannesburg told me that he believed there was as much gold in a cubic mile of sea-water ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... could be profitably employed. Sandy Flash was not the game to be unearthed by a loud, numerous, sweeping hunt; traps, pitfalls, secret and unwearied following of his many trails, were what was needed. So much time had elapsed that the beginning must be a conjectural beating of the bushes, and to this end several small companies were organized, and the country between the Octorara and the Delaware ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... seemed to have lost the right use of their eyes, or to have looked through a magnifying glass. With these the argument of emancipation, which they would have rejected at another time as ridiculous, obtained now easy credit. The massacres too and the ruin, though only conjectural, they admitted also. Hence some of them deserted our cause wholly, while others, wishing to do justice as far as they could to the slaves on the one hand, and to their own countrymen on the other, adopted a middle line of conduct, and would go no further ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... appear the most extraordinary. These principles we have found to be sufficiently convincing, even with regard to our most certain reasonings from causation: But I shall venture to affirm, that with regard to these conjectural or probable reasonings they still acquire ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... had quite as vivid interest for him. Not much could be told him at first, but his curiosity instantly arose to fever pitch. "In reference to that Daily News revolution," he wrote from Geneva on the 26th, "I have been walking and wondering all day through a perfect Miss Burney's Vauxhall of conjectural dark walks. Heaven send you enlighten me fully on Wednesday, or number three will suffer!" Two days later he resumed, as he was beginning his journey back to Lausanne. "I am in a great state of excitement ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... difficulty was overcome, and it was possible to sketch the probable series of our ancestors. It must be well understood that not only is the whole series conjectural, but no living animal must be regarded as an ancestral form. The parental types have long been extinct, and we may, at the most, use very conservative living types to illustrate their nature, just as, in the ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... sporadically, amid the opprobrium of their fellows, who, as a rule, are physically incapable of performing the operation, and look upon it with the liveliest disgust." He adds: "The only physical cause for the practice which suggests itself to me, and that must be owned to be purely conjectural, is that within the Sotadic Zone there is a blending of the masculine and feminine temperaments, a crasis which elsewhere only occurs sporadically" (Arabian Nights, 1885, vol. x, pp. 205-254). The theory of the Sotadic ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the Gospels to their respective authors had been arbitrary or conjectural, they would have been ascribed to more eminent men. This observation holds concerning the first three Gospels, the reputed authors of which were enabled, by their situation, to obtain true intelligence, and were likely to deliver an honest account of what they knew, but were persons not ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... its influence on the science of medicine, we may observe that, from the time of Hippocrates till almost the present day, medicine has not deserved the name of a science but, as he called it, of a conjectural art. At present however, by the application of the laws of life, and of the new chemistry, there is beginning to appear in physiology and pathology, something like the simplicity and certainty of truth. In proportion as the ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... is aware of the numerous treatises published on this subject; but they appear to him, for the most part, to be the result not so much of experience as of vague and conjectural speculation, and not sufficiently embodying what is practical ...
— A Manual or an Easy Method of Managing Bees • John M. Weeks
... reference to the Deity. But there is something vastly worse than childishness, in his insinuation as to what Omnipotence might do in preventing, not remedying evils. They breathe a spirit of malevolent disaffection, which is indeed but very imperfectly smothered in the decent language of conjectural propositions. A sounder philosophy than his own would have told Dr H. in the words of Bacon, that "the prerogative of God extendeth as well to the reason, as to the will of man;" and that therefore it became him humbly to contemplate what God has done, rather than to speculate as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... are purely conjectural; the least unsatisfactory being Cornill's: The houses ... shall be torn down against which the Chaldeans are coming to fight with mounds and sword and to fill with the corpses of men whom I have smitten ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... are more, they are all: For them are past and future spread together Like a green landscape lit by golden weather: For them the rhythmic change conjectural Of time and place is but the question whether Their God shall stand (as ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... alone. But at the same time he puts aside with just indignation Pope's supercilious talk about the "dull duty of an editor"; and after giving an admirable summary of what that dull duty is, declares that one part of it alone, the business of conjectural criticism, "demands more than humanity possesses." Yet it is that part of his functions, the part which appeals most to vanity, that he exercised with the most sparing caution. He saw that it was not in emendation but in interpretation that the critic could now be most useful. For this last task ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... Stepharnis of 1602), and his Pindar (the Benedictus of 1620), are still extant, with marginal memoranda, which should seem to evince careful and discerning reading. One critic even thought it worth while to accuse Joshua Barnes of silently appropriating conjectural emendations from Milton's Euripides. But Milton's own poems are the beat evidence of his familiarity with all that is most choice in the remains of classic poetry. Though the commentators are accused of often, seeing an imitation where there ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... region traversed from east to west—from the base of the Rocky Mountains to the Bay of San Francisco—by a great river called the Buena Ventura: which may be translated, the Good Chance. Governor McLaughlin believed in the existence of this river, and made out a conjectural manuscript map to show its place and course. Fremont believed in it, and his plan was to reach it before the dead of winter, and then hybernate upon it. As a great river he knew that it must have some rich bottoms, covered with wood and grass, where the wild animals ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... are exhibited by the Galapagos Islands, which contain little groups of plants and animals peculiar to themselves, but most nearly allied to those of South America, have not hitherto received any, even a conjectural explanation. The Galapagos are a volcanic group of high antiquity and have probably never been more closely connected with the continent than they ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... investigated the methods of casting a nativity, but a suspicion, or, indeed, rather more than a suspicion, seems to have crossed his mind as to the value of these astrological predictions, for he says in fine, "I found astrology to give generally strong conjectural hints, not perfect declarations." ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... compact moon as we now see it. I must, however, specially draw your attention to the clearly-marked line which divides the facts which dynamics have taught us from those notions which are to be regarded as more or less conjectural. Interpreting the action of the tides by the principles of dynamics, we are assured that the moon was once—or rather the materials of the moon—in the immediate vicinity of the earth. There, however, dynamics leaves us, and unfortunately withholds ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... than two leagues from the mouth of the strait, if more it was only a little more. The coast of the island then turned north close to that of Spain, and was joined to the island of Cadiz or Gadiz, or Caliz, as it is now called. I affirm this for two reasons, one by authority and the other by conjectural demonstration. The authority is that Plato in his Critias, telling how Neptune distributed the sovereignty of the island among his ten sons, said that the second son was called in the mother tongue "Gadirum," which in Greek we call "Eumelo." ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... unknown country, where all kinds of perils might await them. They were yet, in fact, a thousand miles from Astoria, but the distance was unknown to them at the time: everything before and around them was vague and conjectural, and wore an aspect ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... any Christian church in Roman Winchester, and though we may be sure that such a building certainly existed, no excavation has so far laid bare its foundations. Indeed we are almost as ignorant of Roman as we are of Celtic Winchester. Even the lines of its walls are conjectural, we suppose them to be the same as those of the Middle Age, yet such foundations of Roman buildings as have been discovered, lie not only within an area much more restricted than that which the mediaeval walls enclosed, but in certain instances outside them. No discoveries of Roman foundations ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... egnia: "muffish" segnis; ... "uffish" egnis. This is a conjectural analogy, but I can suggest no ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... quoted in this work, was a distinguished English antiquary, born in the year 1715, and deceased in 1804. His most celebrated work is "A New System of Ancient Mythology," which appeared in 1773-76. Although objectionable on account of its too conjectural character, it contains a fund of details on the subject of symbolism, and may be consulted with advantage ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... have suffered. However, as Mr. Wilson himself has always maintained an obstinate silence on the subject, and as the mere fact of the loss (however probable) is not more accurately known to me than its extent, or its particular mode, or its cause,—I shall not allow myself to make any conjectural speculations on the subject. It can be interesting to you and me only from one of its consequences, viz. its leading him afterwards to seek a professorship: for most certain it is, that, if the splendour of Mr. Wilson's youthful condition as ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... similar observation: "It is asserted also that the Nihilist societies have profited by the situation to incite and encourage the peasants and lower classes of the towns and cities in order to increase the embarrassments of the Government, but the charge is probably conjectural and not based on very tangible facts." See House of Representatives, 51st Congress, 1st Session. Executive ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... cannot be denied, however, that some or most of the snakes in which no rattles appear, are nevertheless intended for rattlers. It may have been that the figures were so well understood that the addition of rattles in the drawings was quite unnecessary. This, however, is quite conjectural. The species of rattlesnake is probably Crotalus basiliscus or C. terrificus of southern Mexico and adjacent regions, not C. horridus or adamanteus as supposed by Stempell since these two species are confined to the United States. Among ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... thought which leads to magic, fetishism, and the lower superstitions may just as well be called primitive science as called primitive religion. The question thus becomes a verbal one again; and our knowledge of all these early stages of thought and feeling is in any case so conjectural and imperfect that farther discussion would not be ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... reads "aforesaidel" corrospondent and agreeing with spelling as in original Sidenote: A petiment in corrupt English. reading "petiment" conjectural Sidenote: Anaglipts are cunning carues and grauers. reading conjectural: beginning of each line is missing naglipts / e cunning / arues and / rauers effected by many seuerall workmen text reads "wookmen" Bagistanus must giue place text reads "geue" although the Obelisk of Iupiter ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... in the text and that of B recorded as a variant. I have preferred the reading of A to B, when it gives an obviously better sense, or is metrically superior. I have also included in the Text fifty lines at the beginning of Act II, Scene 2, which are found only in A. Some slight conjectural emendations have been attempted which are distinguished by "emend. ed." in the footnotes. In these cases the reading of the quartos, if unanimous, is denoted ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... very affectionately, saying, 'Dear sir, do not forget me!' We settled, that he should write an account of the Isle of Sky, which Dr Johnson promised to revise. He said, Mr M'Queen should tell all that he could; distinguishing what he himself knew, what was traditional, and what conjectural. ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... collar, according to Gifford, derived from picca, a spearhead, owing to the spiky nature of the folds. Hence it may have been applied as a nickname to the hall and street, but there are numerous other conjectural derivations. The name was originally given to the part extending from the Haymarket to Sackville Street. From that point to Brick Street was styled Portugal Row, from Catharine of Braganza, wife of Charles II. The stone bridge ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... dining-car was attached to their train that they were both able to escape for an hour into the care-free mood of their earlier travels, when they were so easily taken out of themselves. The time had been when they could have found enough in the conjectural fortunes and characters of their fellow-passengers to occupy them. This phase of their youth had lasted long, and the world was still full of novelty and interest for them; but it required all the charm of the dining-car now to lay ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... surrounded by a bank. This slope is probably formed by the ruins of the gateway and tower having been pitched into the ditch, as the readiest way of getting rid of them when the castle was dismantled afterwards. We are indebted to the late Sir John Cowell for the conjectural plan ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... is not certainly known by the saints, nor at all believed by her; wherefore her plagues must come unlooked for by her. And as to the saints, their guesses as to the time of her ruin must needs be conjectural and uncertain. For her part, she shall say, and that when she stands where she must suddenly fall, "I shall ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... they been subject to final corruption, some change would have been discerned in so long a time. To this it is answered, that the little change as yet perceived, doth rather prove their newness, and that they have not continued so long; than that they will continue forever as they are. And if conjectural arguments may receive answer by conjectures; it then seemeth that some alteration may be found. For either Aristotle, Pliny, Strabo, Beda, Aquinas, and others, were grossly mistaken; or else those parts ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... a multitude of causes, a variety of processes, which shade into each other and gradually produce the belief in powers invisible, infinite, and divine. What tribe is unacquainted with dreams, visions, magic, the apparitions of the dead? Add to these the slow action of thought, the conjectural inferences, the guesses of crude metaphysics, the theories of isolated men of religious and speculative genius. By all these and other forces manifold, that emotion of awe in presence of the hills, the stars, the sea, is developed. Mr. Max Muller cuts the matter shorter. The early ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... unquestioning confidence. Henceforth, he could believe anything for the very same reason that had, at first, made him believe nothing. Having no idea of the bounds of human reasoning and penetration, he saw no limits to the conjectural genius of his companion. With perfect faith, therefore, he inquired: "And what was the accomplice saying to the woman with the ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... especially the most truth-telling, of all possible "lives." No letters indeed are likely to increase the literary repute of the author of the Confessions and of the Caesars; but they may very well clear up and fill in the hitherto rather fragmentary and conjectural notion of his character, and they may, on the other hand, confirm that idea of both which, however false it may seem to his children, and others who were united to him by ties of affection, has commended itself to careful students of his ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... that Columbus set sail from the bar of Saltes, a small island formed by the rivers Odiel and Tinto, in front of Palos, steering for the Canary Islands, from whence he intended to strike due west. As a guide by which to sail, he had the conjectural map or chart sent him by Paolo Toscanelli, of Florence. In this it is supposed the coasts of Europe and Africa, from the south of Ireland to the end of Guinea, were delineated as immediately opposite to the extremity of Asia, while the great island ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... general features of a reflective experience. They are (i) perplexity, confusion, doubt, due to the fact that one is implicated in an incomplete situation whose full character is not yet determined; (ii) a conjectural anticipation—a tentative interpretation of the given elements, attributing to them a tendency to effect certain consequences; (iii) a careful survey (examination, inspection, exploration, analysis) of all attainable consideration which will define and ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... the proposed and rejected Constitution of 1886 as with the existing Constitution of England. While however our constitution-makers tender for the acceptance of the nation a scheme of fundamental change, whereof the effect is uncertain, conjectural, and perilous, and the permanence is not guaranteed by its authors, Englishmen are well satisfied with their old constitution; they may desire its partial modification or expansion, they have never even contemplated its overthrow. Politicians, in short, who ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... the more or less conjectural, prehistoric period of Horncastle's existence in Chapter I, and with the Manor and its ownership in Chapter II, we now proceed to give an account of the town's institutions, its buildings, and so forth. Among these the Parish Church, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... ourselves in the infinite void of the conjectural world, our business is with what is likely to be affected, for the better or the worse, by the wisdom or weakness of our plans. In all speculations upon men and human affairs, it is of no small moment to distinguish things of accident from permanent causes, and ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... inquiry concerning matters of which he positively knew that they had called for an explanation. He knew it, because he presumed to censure them for doing so. To the hypothesis of a further inquiry he gives a conjectural answer of such a kind as probably, in an account of a doubtful transaction, and to a superior, was never ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... poor ancestors. How they contrived to make the ends meet, surpasses our conjectural powers. What a weary waste must have seemed expanding before their eyes, between morning and night! Don't tell us that the human female never longs for other ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various |
