"Conjecture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the reversioners. He intimated that it was possible that Winburn had done this while acting as the agent of Colonel Desmit, but this was probably not susceptible of proof, on account of the death of Desmit. He only stated it as a conjecture at best. ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... said Lacour, favoring the mistake; "though you have the advantage of me. I cannot possibly conjecture whom I ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... overhead, that she had awakened to the knowledge of her love for Crispin. And so to him strayed now her thoughts, and to the fate her father had sent him to; and thus back again to her father and the evil he had wrought. It is matter for conjecture whether her loathing for Gregory would have been as intense as it was, had another than Crispin ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... likely that any part of this history was ever written. What it might have been we can only regretfully conjecture: it has perished with the uncompleted novel, and all the other dreams of that principle of the creative intellect which the world calls Ambition, but which the artist ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... could be nothing within it unfamiliar to him. Sometimes he thought that as colors and forms appeared to differ by night from their familiar daylight aspects, so sounds altered with the passage of Kudu and the coming of Goro, and these thoughts roused within his brain a vague conjecture that perhaps Goro and Kudu influenced these changes. And what more natural that eventually he came to attribute to the sun and the moon personalities as real as his own? The sun was a living creature and ruled the day. The moon, endowed with brains and ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... went on boldly. "These men are not your agents; they are not the agents of Graustark. May I be permitted to say that they are spies set upon me by a man who has an object in disgracing me? Who that man is, I leave to your royal conjecture." ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... "Probably conjecture is all that can now be expected respecting the rise and progress of these changes. It is, indeed, beyond all doubt, that by the constitution, even as subsisting under the early Normans, the great council shared the legislative power with the king, as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... and strong doses of the divine essence. To reach success, he felt, as Remonencq half felt, that he was ready for anything, for crime itself, provided that no proofs of it remained. He had faced the Presidente boldly; he had transmuted conjecture into reality; he had made assertions right and left, all to the end that she might authorize him to protect her interests and win her influence. As he stood there, he represented the infinite misery of two lives, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... reproduction is of interest in that it shows at a glance all of the nautical instruments that Hudson had at his command; and of a still greater interest in that the map which is a part of it exhibits what at that time, by exploration or by conjecture, was the known world. To the making of that map Hudson himself contributed: on it, with a previously unknown assurance, his River clearly is marked. The inadequate indication of his Bay probably is taken from ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... just now," he said, "and he sticks to his story. I fear, too, that I was wrong in my conjecture with regard to his madness. He must have had a temporary madness when he drew up and signed the false report. I suppose we ought ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... advantage, claiming to have recognised the queen whom he had seen at Paris, and the king by his likeness on an assignat. On a later day he declined all direct responsibility, and said that he followed the coach in consequence of orders forwarded from Chalons, not on his own initiative or conjecture. When he gave the second version he was a prisoner among the Austrians, and the questioner before whom he stood was Fersen. At such a moment even a man of Drouet's fortitude might well have stretched a point in the endeavour to cast off odium. Therefore the account recorded by Fersen has not ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... be any who believe what some have written by conjecture, that Socrates was indeed excellent in exciting men to virtue, but that he did not push them forward to make any great progress in it, let such reflect a little on what he said, not only when he ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... tone after so cold a silence. He was assured that she intended him to put the construction upon her words which he had afterwards done, but then why retire into impenetrable reserve again—why take no further notice of him—what ailed her? Andrea lost himself in a maze of conjecture. Nevertheless, the warm atmosphere of the room, the luxurious chair, the shaded lamp, the fitful gleams of firelight, the aroma of the tea—all these soothing influences combined to mitigate his pain. He went on dreamingly, aimlessly, as if wandering through ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... there to mount it? whom has the empress named as her successor? No one dared to speak of it; the question was read in all eyes, but no lips ventured to open for the utterance of an answer, as every conjecture, every expression, if unfounded and unfulfilled, would be construed into the crime of high-treason as soon as another than the one thus indicated should be ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... manoeuvres, notably round the Magersfontein hills before the battle, they have not only failed to make the proper responses to our moves, but have neglected to take notice of them in any way whatever. Not a gun speaks, not a man is to be seen. We demonstrate before empty hills. Creepily, you may conjecture the fierce eyes along the rock edge, but nothing shows. In vain we circle about the plain, advance, retire, curtsey, and set to him; our enemy, like the tortoise, "will not join the dance." Nothing is more discouraging. It is like playing to an empty house. However, as ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... of Essex. Beyond this we know nothing; nothing about the details of his escape, nothing of the fate of his manuscripts, or the condition in which he left his work, nothing about the suffering he went through in England. All conjecture is idle waste of time. We only know that the first of English poets perished miserably and prematurely, one of the many heavy sacrifices which the evil fortune of Ireland has cost to England; one of many illustrious victims to the madness, the evil customs, the vengeance of an ill-treated ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... in the dark house on the Boulevard Froissart were active and resourceful rascals, he had no doubt. Whether they would be able to make anything of the cigarette case he had stupidly left behind he could not conjecture; but the importance of recovering the packet he had cut from Chauvenet's coat was not a trifle that rogues of their caliber would ignore. There was, the purser said, a sick man in the second cabin, who had kept close to his berth. The steward believed the man ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... oaks still put forth their leaves, man lost the perfect knowledge of the One True God, the Ancient Absolute Existence, the Infinite Mind and Supreme Intelligence; and floated helplessly out upon the shoreless ocean of conjecture. Then the soul vexed itself with seeking to learn whether the material Universe was a mere chance combination of atoms, or the work of Infinite, Uncreated Wisdom:... whether the Deity was a concentrated, and the Universe an extended immateriality; ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... credulous Blennerhassett, who was persuaded to purchase a million acres on the Washita River in northern Louisiana. Thither the expedition which started out from Blennerhassett's Island was ostensibly directed. How far Burr's plans went beyond the occupation of this tract is a matter of conjecture. One of Blennerhassett's servants may inadvertently have told the truth when he said that they were "going to take Mexico, one of the finest and richest places in ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... all, these testimonies belong to the region of conjecture. Let me close this chapter by a narrative of fact, derived from the late Lord de Ros, who was an eye-witness of the events which he narrated. Arthur Thistlewood (whose execution for the "Cato Street Conspiracy" ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... and rain-doors opening, and voices of women in converse. By the language of the women Hoichi knew them to be domestics in some noble household; but he could not imagine to what place he had been conducted. Little time was allowed him for conjecture. After he had been helped to mount several stone steps, upon the last of which he was told to leave his sandals, a woman's hand guided him along interminable reaches of polished planking, and round pillared angles too ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... staying in the house where the marriage was celebrated: she was simply there; Jesus and the disciples were called, invited, to the wedding. Some relationship, it has been suggested, between S. Mary and the bride or groom led to her presence in the house. That however is mere conjecture. The marriage in any case was a wonderful one, for both Jesus and Mary were there. It was therefore the ideal of all weddings which seem to lack the true note of the new matrimony which springs from the ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... from conjecture to everyday conditions, "have you thought over what I said to you about this marriage ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... never considered such a possibility before. What should she do? She would be a widow without children and without means, for she knew that Wilbur had laid up little if anything. She would have to begin life over again—a pathetic prospect, yet interesting. Even this conjecture of such a dire result conjured up a variety of possible methods of livelihood and occupation ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... strength for. Horror broke her down. In the contingency one thing only presented itself to her paralysed regard—that here she was doomed to abide, in a hideous contiguity to the dead husband and the living, and her conjecture did, in fact, bear itself out. That night she lay between the two men she had married—Heddegan on the one hand, and on the other through the partition against which the bed stood, ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... echoed the wish with all his heart, though he did not give his thoughts tongue. He began to conjecture that some new aspect of the affair had been presented to his client's mind by the encounter with Elizabeth in the Forest. And he was right. The old squire had conceived for her a sort of paradoxical love at first ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... made his escape. The rescued knight then raised the visor of his helmet, and a long white beard fell down upon his breast. The majesty and venerable air of this knight made Tristram suspect that it was none other than Arthur himself, and the prince confirmed his conjecture. Tristram would have knelt before him, but Arthur received him in his arms, and inquired his name and country; but Tristram declined to disclose them, on the plea that he was now on a quest requiring secrecy. At this moment the damsel ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... learning that the place had long borne the reputation of being haunted, the ghosts being supposed to be the earth-bound spirits of the executed criminals. Whether this was so or not must, of course, be a matter of conjecture—the herd of hogs may well have been the phantasms of actual earth-bound pigs—attracted to the spot by a sort of fellow-feeling for the criminals, whose gross and carnal natures would no doubt appeal ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... literature, should impress it upon the young as the supernaturally inspired word of God and the accurate record of objective occurrences, is a piece of the plainest and most shocking dishonesty. Let a youth be trained in simple and straightforward recognition of the truth that we can know, and can conjecture, nothing with any assurance as to the ultimate mysteries of things. Let his imagination and his sense of awe be fed from those springs, which are none the less bounteous because they flow in natural rather than supernatural channels. Let him be taught the historic place and source of the ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... hostile band has attacked the Tovas tribe, massacred all the men, and carried off the women? For in the Chaco are various communities of Indians, often at deadly feud with one another. Though such conjecture seems improbable, the thing is yet possible; and to assure himself, Halberger at length resolves upon going over to the tolderia of the Tovas. Ordering his horse saddled, he mounts, and is about to ride off alone, when a sweet ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... on dreams as divine portent. He refers to the skilled interpretations of dreams as a true divination; but adds that, like all other arts in which men have to proceed on conjecture and on artificial rules, ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... man had the idea of "making" things, he might conjecture as to a Maker of things which he himself had not made, and could not make. He would regard this unknown Maker as a "magnified non-natural man." These speculations appear to me to need less reflection than the long and ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... the question who would be the next favourite, the king's passion for the Countess de la Guiche being evidently on the wane, and that which he presently evinced for Madame de Guercheville being as yet a matter of conjecture. ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... that he had better make the attempt at night, but when he stood on the brink in the darkness the gulf at his feet looked like a veritable descent into Avernus. If he should be caught down here, his fate would be sealed. What Meldrum and Tighe would do to a spy was not a matter of conjecture. The thought of it brought goose-quills to his flesh and tiny beads of ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... in England when Crecy and Agincourt were fought, as Captain BATHURST told the House of Commons recently. How the War Office did without its afternoon tea in those barbarous days it is impossible to conjecture. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... must be convinced, converted, and saved. That legion of devils that was in the possessed, with all the sins which he had committed in the time of his unregeneracy, could not take away his life before his conversion (Mark 5). How many times was that poor creature, as we may easily conjecture, assaulted for his life by the devils that were in him, yet could they not kill him, yea, though his dwelling was near the sea-side, and the devils had power to drive him too, yet could they not drive him further than the mountains ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... know, a learned and accurate statistician; he prepared this statement honestly, we have no doubt. He has stated what was shown to him, and what he was permitted to see, but what was concealed from him was beyond his reach. The field for conjecture is left open. ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... he treats of an intrigue with some unknown woman. The identification of the young man of the first seventeen sonnets with other friends who are praised in later sonnets is not certain, though in some cases probable; and much research and conjecture have entirely failed to make clear the relations between the poet, the rival poet, the lady, and the friend. The Sonnets furnish us with no knowledge of Shakespeare's personal affairs, and only a meager basis even for gossip as to some of his ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... dialectics from Hegel, but sometimes, it is true, sinks into weaknesses of which these philosophers would hardly have been guilty. So, for instance, when he simply identifies religious faith with conjecture, he takes a superficial view which he has in common with Haeckel who, among other things, repeatedly says that faith begins where knowledge ceases. Dialectical motion is everything to him. In pursuing this dialectical motion, he gives us a multitude ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... deeds Timorous and slothful: yet he pleas'd the eare, And with perswasive accent thus began. I should be much for open Warr, O Peers, As not behind in hate; if what was urg'd 120 Main reason to perswade immediate Warr, Did not disswade me most, and seem to cast Ominous conjecture on the whole success: When he who most excels in fact of Arms, In what he counsels and in what excels Mistrustful, grounds his courage on despair And utter dissolution, as the scope Of all his aim, after some dire revenge. First, what Revenge? the Towrs of Heav'n ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... catch. He was soon joined by Miss O'Dwyer, who appeared with her head and neck swathed in a fluffy shawl and the train of a silk skirt gathered in her hand. The view of several flounces of nebulous white petticoat confirmed Hyacinth in his conjecture that she was bound for Miss Goold's party. No one who could be supposed to be a member of Captain Quinn's corps appeared on the platform, and Hyacinth became painfully conscious of the shortcomings of his costume. He thought that even Miss O'Dwyer glanced at ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... a summer sea in this latitude, with a very steady breeze from the westward. The overcoats they wore were hardly necessary, and they had put them on mainly to conceal their changed garments from the crew of the ship, who could only conjecture ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... resolvable into touch by more or less easy stages; and secondly, that the question is one of fact and of the more evident deductions therefrom, and should not be carried back to those remote beginnings where the nature of the facts is so purely a matter of conjecture and inference. ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... having come so far, I do not like the idea of quitting the country without at least enough of the gold and shining stones to repay me for the toil and peril of my adventure. And I suppose that when I announce my intention of quitting the palace the queen will at once conjecture that I have been in communication with you, and have learned the truth concerning her. Will she attempt to detain ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... There was little communication to blend the different modes of speech prevailing in different parts of the country. It belongs,[24] according to students of English, to the Midland dialect of the fourteenth century. The author is beyond conjecture. ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... wanting some who suspected my uncles of being concerned in my father's fate, on the supposition that they would all share in the patrimony destined for him; and this conjecture was strengthened by reflecting that in all his calamities they never discovered the least inclination to serve him; but, on the contrary, by all the artifices in their power, fed his resentment and supported his resolution of leaving ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... very clean and tidy, and that confirmed him in his conjecture, as he was curious to verify its truth, he went into the three rooms which opened into one another. The bedroom, came first; next there came a kind of a drawing-room, and then a dining-room, which evidently served as a kitchen, for a Dutch tiled stove stood in the middle of it, on which a stew ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... anxiety, in observing that the crew were inclined to quarrel with each other. The cause of this we could not understand, but the fact was very evident. A party seemed to be formed against the captain, and it appeared to us that Silva was at the head of it. Of course this was only conjecture. He was certainly not on such good terms with the captain as he had been at first. He was not a man of a quarrelsome or ambitious disposition, and probably some of the rest of the crew put him forward as their chief, knowing that he would ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... ancestry were shrouded in mystery; even his age was a matter of pure conjecture. Although he was of the Maltese race, I have reason to suppose that he was American by birth as he certainly was in sympathy. Calvin was given to me eight years ago by Mrs. Stowe, but she knew nothing of his age or origin. He walked into her house ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... The whole of this section indeed is written somewhat hastily, like a scroll-copy, probably by Richard Bannatyne, his Secretary, from dictation; but whether it was merely rewritten in 1571, or first added in that year to complete Book Fourth, must be left to conjecture. ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... supposition, assumption, assumed position, postulation, condition, presupposition, hypothesis, blue sky hypothesis, postulate, postulatum[Lat], theory; thesis, theorem; data; proposition, position; proposal &c. (plan) 626; presumption &c. (belief) 484; divination. conjecture; guess, guesswork, speculation; rough guess, shot, shot in the dark [coll.]; conjecturality[obs3]; surmise, suspicion, sneaking suspicion; estimate, approximation (nearness) 197. inkling, suggestion, hint, intimation, notion, impression; bare supposition, vague supposition, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... dwelt together, had a common stock of savage fables, and a common or kindred language. After their dispersion, the fables admitted discrepancies, as stories in oral circulation occasionally do. This is the only conjecture which I feel justified in suggesting to account for the resemblances and incongruities between the myths of the mare Demeter-Erinnys ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... his treatment of the character of the cup-bearer. Does he make it his chief care to enhance the character of the Queen? Note the new characters introduced,—Paulina, Antigonus, Autolycus, the clown (in place of the wife in Greene). Conjecture any reason for his different names. The introduction of Autolycus makes the play more amusing on the stage, but is his part as well planned as Capnio's for leading up to the denouement? Greene lets his mariners off alive after they set Fawnia ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... earnestness, as beautiful as it was unintelligible. I sought through all my recollections of ancient and modern impersonations—of mythology, history, Scripture, and poetry—but could find nothing to furnish a solution. The structure and the figure surpassed even conjecture. Velleda, and Lot's wife, according to an old picture in the catechism, were the only resemblances I could recall, but the surroundings evidently ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... seriously propose that a claim for pension should rest upon a conjecture as to what would have caused death if it had not occurred ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... crossing the ocean preceded the era of the great floating palaces. The era of railroad-building had only just started in America. Horseless carriages propelled by gas or electricity were in a state of conjecture. Politically in America the Civil War had not been fought or ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... Athenaeus and Julius Pollux, with a few words in Hesychius and the Etymologicon Magnum, is the whole amount of our information. Writers since the revival of letters have mostly copied each other, from Coelius Rhodiginus down to Gesner, who derives his conjecture from Turnebus, whose notion is derived from Julius Pollux,—and so we move in a circle. We sadly want a Greek Apicius, and then we might resolve the knotty question. I fear we must give up the notion of cuttle-fish ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... last hopeless point of view he still strove, as if it had become a habit of his mind, to reach some conjecture as to why and how he had lost her. Shaken rudely by the uncompromising fact, he had suddenly found himself confronted by a thing he had never before faced—his own innermost, unmitigated, arid unbedecked self. He saw all the garbs of pretence and egoism that he had worn ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... back. At this gate, three youths dressed like witches met the king, declaring they were the same that once met Macbeth and Banquo, prophesying a kingdom to one and to the other a generation of monarchs, that they now appeared to show the confirmation of the prediction. Warton's conjecture is that Shakespeare heard of this, or perhaps was himself in the crowd that watched the boys as they came whirling out in their weird dance, and that then and there was conceived what was to become so mighty a ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... friends were, or what induced her to take so adventurous a journey in search of them, we cannot say. Her sureties were also sureties for a certain Mary Elliott, so they may have been friends intending to travel together. But, according to Sydney Grier's conjecture, Mary Elliott did not, after all, sail in the Bombay Castle, but remained behind to marry a certain Captain Buchanan, sailing with him to India the following year. Captain Buchanan lost his life in the Black Hole, and his widow (whether she was Mary Elliott or not) married ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... that the poles of river cairns usually demand accommodation to the extent of six feet of diameter, in the centre of the solid mass of stones, and, as the Langbank site has no central well, the tentative conjecture that it was a river cairn is not put forward. Dr. Murray suggests that the Dumbuck cairn "may have been one of the works of 1556 or 1612," that is, of the modern age of Queen Mary and James VI. The object of such Corporation cairns "was no doubt to mark the limit of their jurisdiction, ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... suffered least. He felt about quickly for the searchlight as he lay on the floor. Before he could recover it the boys heard the outer door slam and knew that someone had passed out of the building after the sudden attack. Who it might have been they could only conjecture. ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... the ear. This incident determined his career. Whether it crystallized long-cherished fancies into sudden action, or whether it was of itself the initial cause of his resolve, is now mere matter of conjecture; probably the former. The three friends, Gallatin, Badollet, and Serre seem to have amused their leisure in planning an ideal existence in some wilderness. America offered a boundless field for the ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... Cambridge, the fatal approaches of the white horse and his rider were dreaded by the trained troops of Britain, and every wound inflicted by Hezekiah needed no repeating. But on reaching Cambridge, the regulars, greatly to their comfort, missed the old man and his horse. They comforted themselves by the conjecture that he had, at length, paid the forfeit of his temerity, and that his steed had gone home with a bloody bridle and an empty saddle. Not so.—Hezekiah had only lingered for a moment to aid in a plot which had been laid by Amni Cutter, for taking the baggage-waggons ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... from making the Eatooa propitious to their nation, as they ignorantly believed, would be the means of drawing down his vengeance; and that, from this very circumstance, I took upon me to judge, that their intended expedition against Maheine would be unsuccessful. This was venturing pretty far upon conjecture; but still, I thought, that there was little danger of being mistaken. For I found, that there were three parties in the island, with regard to this war; one extremely violent for it; another perfectly indifferent about ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... of constitution. Amid this vast number of worlds with which space is tenanted, are there any inhabited by living beings? To this great question science can make no response: we cannot tell. Yet it is impossible to resist a conjecture. We find our earth teeming with life in every part. We find life under the most varied conditions that can be conceived. It is met with under the burning heat of the tropics and in the everlasting frost at the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... only recently that Ives had taken to coming to The Patriot office. No small interest and conjecture were aroused among the editorial staff as to his exact status, stimulus to gossip being afforded by the rumor that he had been, from Marrineal's privy purse, shifted to the office payroll. Russell Edmonds solved and imparted the ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... vague conjecture or fruitless fears for the future lie with sufficient weight upon my mind to keep me from my rest, and so tonight I threw myself upon my sleeping silks and furs and passed at ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... co-ordinating theories, and have found sufficient enjoyment in purely intellectual activity. After a fashion that was the actual result. How far, indeed, Bentham could have achieved much in the sphere of pure philosophy, and what kind of philosophy he would have turned out, must be left to conjecture. The circumstances of his time and country, and possibly his own temperament generally, turned his thoughts to problems of legislation and politics, that is to say, of direct practical interest. He was therefore always dealing with concrete facts, and a great part of his writings may be considered ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... myself kept a close prisoner for that night and a part of the next day in the house of a rich Indian, which stood beside the Morattoe ditch. From this place I could hear some noise of guns occasionally, and was obliged to conjecture how the fight was going on. There was something very trying and painful in being near enough to a battle-field to share its anxieties without being allowed to join in the work. But I had a pretty sure presentiment that the ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... Bloomsbury address and handed her the leaf torn from the pad. She folded it up, moved away, turning back to smile. As she turned she happened to look downward; then she stooped and picked the card from her dress. A conjecture of horror smote Paul. He made a step forward and stretched out his hand; but not before she had instinctively glanced first at the writing and then at his barren waistcoat. She repressed a slight gasp, regarding him with steady, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... conception, or we should not have had his hypothesis of a subtle ether, the occult cause of gravitation; and his writings prove, that although he deemed the particular nature of the intermediate agency a matter of conjecture, the necessity of some such agency appeared to him indubitable. It would seem that, even now, the majority of scientific men have not completely got over this very difficulty; for though they have at last learned to conceive the sun attracting the earth without any intervening ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... in hope or fear I awaited the issue, I scarcely know. I dared not glance beyond the passing hour; dared not conjecture what the end would be. The past was dead; the future yet unborn. For the moment my whole being was concentrated upon the conflict between life and death, which was witnessed only ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... and his short figure was rigidly erect. The cause of his excitement—she had noticed it—was some word uttered by Seitz Siebenburg. Her father was the only person who had understood it, but she was not mistaken in the conjecture that it referred to her and the Swiss knight, and she believed it to be ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... countenance had betrayed towards the one who was present with him at the time of his death. Could it be that he had given me the wrong paper or was he, as Mrs. Pollard had intimated, not responsible for his actions and language at that time. I began to think the latter conjecture might be true, and was only hindered in the enjoyment of my old tranquility by the remembrance of the fearful ordeal I had been subjected to in the mill, and the consideration which it brought of the fears ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... the thirteenth or fourteenth century rather than of the nineteenth. He is an anomaly among its scholars, writers, and divines. He is not thorough on any one subject though at home on all. What a finished collegiate education would have done for him I am baffled to conjecture. He is genuine, and I love him for that; it is the crown of all virtues. But I must stop. I only intended to ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... respect. She could have spurned the form that knelt at her feet, not for love, but for pardon. She pointed to the door with the gesture of an insulted queen. She knew no more till she was alone. Then came that rapid flash of conjecture peculiar to the storms of jealousy; that which seems to single from all nature the one object to dread and to destroy; the conjecture so often false, yet received at once by our convictions as the revelation of instinctive truth. He to whom she had humbled herself loved another; ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... this, successfully accomplished, becomes an incentive to others like it. It leads on to such, and supplies incessant encouragement to them. We may not know, or probably conjecture, what these are to be, in the city or the State, in the years that shall come. But, whatever they may be, for the more complete equipment of either with conditions of happiness and the instruments of progress, they will all take an impulse from that which ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... because the intermediate links have actually been found, but because analogy leads the observer to suppose either that they do now somewhere exist, or may formerly have existed; and here a wide door for the entry of doubt and conjecture ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... than a man who traverses everything in a round, and pries into the things beneath the earth, as the poet says, and seeks by conjecture what is in the minds of his neighbors, without perceiving that it is sufficient to attend to the deity within him, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... manner of thinking and writing, I make no doubt to declare that those wretched plays, Pericles, Locrine, Sir John Oldcastle, Yorkshire Tragedy, Lord Cromwell, The Puritan, and London Prodigal, cannot be admitted as his. And I should conjecture of some of the others (particularly Love's Labour's Lost, The Winter's Tale, and Titus Andronicus), that only some characters, single scenes, or perhaps a few particular passages, were of his hand. It is very probable what occasion'd some Plays to be supposed Shakespear's ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... have heard nothing of Miss Wooler yet since I wrote to her, intimating that I would accept her offer. I cannot conjecture the reason of this long silence, unless some unforeseen impediment has occurred in concluding the bargain. Meantime a plan has been suggested and approved by Mr. and Mrs. —— and others which I wish now to impart to you. My friends recommend, if I desire to secure permanent ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... had got so deep into the wreck-pack, she being so lately added to it, I could not determine; but my conjecture was that some storm had broken the pack and had driven her down into it, and then that the opening had closed again, leaving her fast a good way in its inside. But about the way of her getting there ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... revulsion had taken place in the mind of the cibolero. There was every probability that Antonio's conjecture was correct. The "whistle" is a peculiar signal of the Pane tribes. Moreover, the fact of so many of the marauders being on foot—that was another peculiarity. Carlos knew that among the Southern Indians such ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... more than ever. Where could Sir Percy be going just now in the DAY DREAM? On Armand's behalf, he had said. Well! Sir Percy had influential friends everywhere. Perhaps he was going to Greenwich, or . . . but Marguerite ceased to conjecture; all would be explained anon: he said that he would come back, and that he would remember. A long, idle day lay before Marguerite. She was expecting a visit of her old school-fellow, little Suzanne de Tournay. With all the merry mischief ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... too, that we can discern at the very end of the notes, some indistinct reference to 'broiled bones'; and then the words 'cold' 'without' occur: but as any hypothesis we could found upon them must necessarily rest upon mere conjecture, we are not disposed to indulge in any of the speculations to ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... descend dawn-like on the mind, sublime premonitions of beautiful gates of laws. It is these launching tentatives which bring phenomena to interior and metaphysical tests and bear the mind swift-winged to Nature. Of course, there are various kinds of conjecture, and its value will depend on the brain from which it departs. But a powerful spirit will justify Hypothesis by the high functions to which he puts it. His guesses are not for nothing. Many and long processes go ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... destructive battle first, because they belonged to persons who had attained their full size, whereas in the mound adjoining were found the skeletons of persons of all ages, and, secondly, they were here in the utmost confusion, as if buried in a hurry. May we not conjecture that they belonged to the people who resided in the town, and who were victorious in the engagement? Otherwise they would not have been thus honorably buried in ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... author of "Wild Sports of the West" says of the Par, as I have noted previously, "That it has very much the appearance of a Hybrid between the Salmon and the Trout, and (in a note) that the natural history of this fish is doubtful. Some conjecture that it is a Hybrid between the Salmon and Trout, because it is only found in rivers which are frequented by Salmon. Others think it a cross breed between the sea Trout and river Trout," and then he speaks of this "hybridous diminutive," as if he ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... uplying pasture fields. At times the fox has a pretty well-defined orbit, and the hunter knows where to intercept him. Again he leads off like a comet, quite beyond the system of hills and ridges upon which he was started, and his return is entirely a matter of conjecture; but if the day be not more than half spent, the chances are that the fox will be back before night, though the sportsman's patience seldom holds out ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... yet seek the aid of this self-styled infallible power to exalt an institution that originated with her. How readily she will come to the help of Protestants in this work, it is not difficult to conjecture. Who understands better than the papal leaders how to deal with those who ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... conjecture as to who it might be, because the trail would lead them to the man himself, and it mattered nothing who or what he was—there was only one course to take with an assassin. So they said nothing, but rode on with squared jaws and set lips, the seven ponies breast to breast ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... and compared. Their recognised function, in fact, was that of milestones on the great celestial highway traversed by the planets, as well as on the byways of space occasionally pursued by comets. Not that curiosity as to their nature, and even conjecture as to their origin, were at any period absent. Both were from time to time powerfully stimulated by the appearance of startling novelties in a region described by philosophers as "incorruptible," or exempt from change. The catalogue of Hipparchus ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... said, "I implore your aid—but tell me, are you a goddess or are you a mortal woman? If you are a goddess and dwell in heaven, I can only conjecture that you are Jove's daughter Diana, for your face and figure resemble none but hers; if on the other hand you are a mortal and live on earth, thrice happy are your father and mother—thrice happy, too, are ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... in the intense retirement and rustication of this period, Mrs. Marshall-Smith needed little attention paid to her toilets, Pauline also was apparently enjoying an unusual vacation. A short time after making the conjecture about her stepson's tutor, Aunt Victoria had added the suggestion, level-browed, and serene as always, "Perhaps he and Pauline are seeing the ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... old raja. In the above article, the latter seeks to identify Rajamora or Soliman with the Raxobago of San Agustin, and declares that Rajamatanda and Lacandola are identical. The confusion existing in later writers regarding these names is lacking in Morga, and Rizal's conjecture appears correct. ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... Bingstetter, wavin' away the interruption. "No bypaths. The trained mind rejects everything contributory, subordinate. It refuses to be led off into a maze of unsupported conjecture. It seeks only the vital, primogenitive fact, the hidden truth at the heart of things. And that ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... river wound its devious way, with serpentine crooks and curves, through the downs and across the meadow, emptying into the ocean some distance east of the gleaming beach. That its source was far up in the secretive hills was not a matter of conjecture, however; the incessant hiss and roar of a cataract was plainly heard by ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... have suggested that the suicidal tendency is dependent on heat; but June is not the hottest month, nor is December the coldest. Durkheim has tested this conjecture by comparing temperatures with suicides in France, Italy, and Prussia. He finds that, in all three of these countries, suicides reach their maximum in June and their minimum in December, while the temperature does not rise to its maximum until July and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... cordiality, the words, "my brother the bishop," she recollected that the bishop had a very amiable, accomplished, and remarkably handsome son; so she arranged directly in her imagination that this was the person to whom Lady Julia was engaged. Being now thoroughly convinced that this last conjecture was just, she thought no more about Lady Julia's affairs; but turned her attention to Lady Sarah, whose cold and guarded manners, however, resisted her utmost penetration. Disappointed in all her attempts to lead to sentiment or love, the conversation ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... Bridesmaids were patting one another's sashes awry and speaking of the Bride's freckles. Coachmen tied white ribbons on their whips and bewailed the space of time between drinks. The minister was musing over his possible fee, essaying conjecture whether it would suffice to purchase a new broadcloth suit for himself and a photograph of Laura Jane Libbey for his wife. Yea, Cupid ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... really intended taking him prisoner," replied the rat, "the object of that bludgeon is to me a matter of mere conjecture. However, it is easy enough to see you have changed your mind; and it may be barely worth mentioning that I have ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... begin to suspect, without any aid from science, that there were two currents, one of which comes round in a curve and effects the exit for the other which the window had driven in; just as in the Straits of Gibraltar there is manifestly an upper current setting one way, which you therefore conjecture to argue a lower current setting the other, and thus redressing the equilibrium. Here the smoke corresponds to bits of chip or any loose suspended body in the Gibraltar current. What answers to the current of water is ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... unknown, but it is believed to be the joint production of two of the most eminent physicists in Great Britain, and certainly the accurate knowledge and the ingenuity and subtlety of thought displayed in it are such as to lend great probability to this conjecture. Some account of the argument it contains may well precede the suggestions presently to be set forth concerning the Unseen World; and we shall find it most convenient to begin, like our authors, with a brief statement ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... slightly and her breath came quickly. She looked bold, provocative, expectant, yet sincere. Child or woman, she had to be taken seriously. Here indeed was the mystery that had baffled Lane. He realized his opportunity, like a flash all his former thought and conjecture about ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... "God has a reason for all His arrangements, and I think it is allowable for us to conjecture what that reason may be; but though we cannot find it out, we may be ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... finally, encouragement, at least. Of course she had seen my accident, from above; of course she had sent the harvest laborer to aid me home. It was quite natural she should imagine some special romantic interest in the lonely dell, on my part, and the gift took additional value from her conjecture. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... No conjecture can be hazarded as to how the smallest particle of matter became so imbued with faith that it must be considered as the beginning of LIFE, or as to what such faith is, except that it is the very essence of all things, and that it has ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... year 1306,—summoned, as being at that time the acknowledged master of painting in Italy. By what steps he had risen to this unquestioned eminence it is difficult to trace; for the records of his life, strictly examined, and freed from the verbiage and conjecture of artistical history, nearly reduce themselves to a list of the cities of Italy where he painted, and to a few anecdotes, of little meaning in themselves, and doubly pointless in the fact of most of them being inheritances of the whole race of painters, and related successively of all ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... succeeded in obtaining a sight of this edition of the Epistles. And I should feel much obliged to any one who would quote the "conjecture," and so enable your readers to gauge its "audacity" for themselves. Is it not odd that Reiff should have made no remark on the utter want of connection between the "honor manifestus," and the "ludibria" of Olaus? or on the [Greek: kata to legomenon] of the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... having in the first part of the contest done things worthy of themselves, and having for the most part, although not all, yet the majority, avoided the (not) falling into ditches and the like incurably at least, came presently to the wooden fence, which I conjecture to be the wall meant by the Delphic oracle. It being then necessary either remaining on the hither side to be driven away from all hope of the prize or leaping to run risks concerning their lives, and the ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... continued activity of healing must have served greatly to strengthen the determination of the disciples to cling to Jesus, let the leaders say what they would. We can only conjecture what various teachings filled the days, and what personal fellowship the disciples had with him who spake as never man spake. There was need for advance in the faith of these loyal friends. Their enthusiastic declaration when the multitudes turned ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... exclaimed, "I am sure you would make an excellent tragedian; remain with us and take a part in the 'Andromache.'" Theatricals were at that time the prevailing taste and amusement in her house. I excused myself from her kind conjecture and proposal, and the conversation returned to M. de Chateaubriand and his article, which was greatly admired, while at the same time it excited some apprehension. The admiration was just, for the passage was really eloquent; neither was the alarm without grounds, for the 'Mercury' was ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... a poet's defection from the cause of progress and liberty. Who this poet might be was for some time a matter of conjecture. Wordsworth, Southey, and Charles Kingsley, all of whom had gone from radicalism in their youth to conservatism in their old age, were severally proposed as the original of Browning's portrait. The poem was published in 1845, two years after Wordsworth was made poet laureate. Early in 1845 Wordsworth ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... easy to conjecture that the haughty, unpopular, aristocratic old General[55] would not be as acceptable as a young man of thirty-five, fascinating in manner, gifted in speech, and not yet openly and offensively partisan; but it ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... become sterile at thirty? Where, if not in dealing with motives and causes, may one be fancy-free? Here there are many, of which the first to be given is mere conjecture, but conjecture, I fancy, not inconsistent with such facts as are known. When Congreve produced his first comedy, he was but twenty-three, fresh from college and the country, ignorant, as we are told, of the world. He ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... These colonists, after having remained about twelve months and explored the adjacent country, became so discouraged and exhausted by fatigue and famine, that they abandoned the country. Sir Richard Grenville returning shortly afterwards to America, and not being able to find them, and at a loss to conjecture their fate, left in the island another small party of settlers and again set ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... Signor Gradenigo, first searching in a secret drawer, whence he drew a small bit of paper, to which a morsel of wax adhered; "canst thou form any conjecture, by the impression, concerning ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... butter; but what would be the result if, at this full speed, the engine by any accident were to be diverted against a mass of solid rock, such as sometimes is to be seen at the entrance of a tunnel, it is impossible to calculate or even to conjecture. It is stated by the company's superintendent, who witnessed the occurrence, that some time ago an ordinary accident happening to a luggage train near Loughborough, the wagons overrode each other until the uppermost one was found piled ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... made his argument on the following day, when the consideration of the question was resumed. In answer to the objection that negro voting would "lead to the amalgamation of the races or social equality," he said: "On this subject there is nothing left to conjecture, and no ground for alarm. Negro suffrage has been very extensively tried in this country, and we are able to appeal to facts. Negroes had the right to vote in all the Colonies save one, under the Articles ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... for a few incoherent mumblings. What she might say, what distressing family secret she might repeat in William's hearing, should she take another talkative turn, was beyond conjecture. ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... places we were already acquainted with. At once I thought of Denson's disappearance unobserved by the housekeeper. Could this be the key of some private exit from the office building? I resolved to test that conjecture first, and it turned out to be the right one. Being successful so far, of course I turned to the other new key and tried ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... passages are Shakspere's own, not quotations: the Quartos differ. But when he wrote them he had in his mind a phantom of Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage. I find Steevens has made a similar conjecture, and quotes from Marlowe two of the passages I had marked as being ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald |
