"Conviction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thinks, he cannot readily be: the spiritual fire which is in that man; which shining through such confusions is nevertheless Conviction, and makes him strong, and without which he had no strength,—is not buyable nor saleable; in such transference of barter, it would vanish and not be. Perhaps 'paid and not sold, paye pas vendu:' as poor Rivarol, in the unhappier converse ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... who was well known to be strongly opposed to the course he had pursued, and who had lost considerable property which she held in her own right. I say that the fact of Nelson's case being always brought up as the great enormity carried more conviction to my mind of the utter weakness of the opponents' cause than anything else; and it also proved to me how ignorant many of them were of the truth, for several of them who vilified the Bill, the Government, and the Governor-General, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... while we were taking coffee, the pretended gentleman shewed a canon who was present a portrait on one of her rings. It represented a young lady who was in the company, and was an excellent likeness—an easy enough matter, as she was very ugly. My conviction was not disturbed, but when I saw the imposter kissing the young lady's hand with mingled affection and respect, I ceased jesting on the question of her sex. M. Carli took me aside for a moment, and told me that in spite ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Cabet, Voyage en Icarie, 1840, II, holds a very prominent place. He declares the abolition of religion, of the family and of the state, to be open questions, and desires to bring the practice of a community of goods to a successful issue only through the peaceful channel of conviction. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... well as in the great concerns of life, which our hero had heard with indifference from Dr. Campbell and Henry in conversation, struck him, when he saw them in a printed essay, with all the force of conviction; and he wondered how it had happened that he never before ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... it so: for, in my lucid intervals, I made good resolutions: but as health turned its blithe side to me, and opened my prospects of recovery, all my old inclinations and appetites returned; and this letter, perhaps, will be a thorough conviction to thee, that I am as wild a fellow as ever, or in ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... indifference, it seems that it was not pleasing to M. Bayle: for he was here somewhat biassed in favour of such indifference, which, notwithstanding, he contested so strongly on other occasions. He was much given to passing from one extreme to the other, not with an ill intention or against his own conviction, but because there was as yet nothing settled in his mind on the question concerned. He contented himself with whatever suited him for frustrating the opponent he had in mind, his aim being only to perplex philosophers, and show the weakness of our ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... the sergeant, but there was an utter lack of conviction in his voice. "But we'd still better comb this area and keep our detectors hot. We'll know what he was up to when ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... new idea of Washington's essential humanity has seemed too novel and startling to make its way deep into the popular conviction. I say "new idea." In reality it is a very old idea; only it has been smothered by the partisan writers of history and biography. Certainly the accounts of the first celebrations of Washington's Birthday do not sound as though our ancestors were trying to work up their ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... have hold of me, and I no longer wished to live. The doctor's momentary daily visits increased my loathing for the crew who tyrannized there in the name of Progress, and I could see no way of retaliating. I became seized with a sort of delirious conviction that if only I could die and be out of the way my friends would be far better able to contrive without me. There is no convalescence in a mood of that sort, and each morning found me nearer death than the last. Then malaria developed, to give me the finishing ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... of things immediately preceding 1870 not unnaturally gave rise to the idea that the acquisition of the arts of reading, writing, and arithmetic was the one indispensable object to be attained in the elementary education of the child. This conviction was strengthened by the system of Government grants introduced into both English and Scotch schools, payments to school managers being largely based upon the successes obtained in passes in the three ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... has widely destructive effects nowadays. Strip mines gouged out without thought of restoration, wanton land speculation and development, the casual dumping of raw wastes into streams by towns or industries and a number of other harmful practices mentioned in this report are all clearly based in a conviction that what one does to the world around him is his own sweet business. That conviction has longstanding sanctity among Americans and many who hold it are moral and upstanding folk. But in a world as heavily ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... hit back for Arizona after that deal he was mixed up in over in Dry Lake, across the range," he said with conviction. ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... deeply. It was a sign of emotion which he was powerless to deny. His eyes regarded the dusky face for some moments. Then he spoke with profound conviction. ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... him on his discovery of Mirah, and now, under the influence of Mordecai, had become irresistibly dominant. He would have sealed his mind against such constructions if it had been possible, and he had never yet fully admitted to himself that he wished the facts to verify Mordecai's conviction: he inwardly repeated that he had no choice in the matter, and that wishing was folly—nay, on the question of parentage, wishing seemed part of that meanness which disowns kinship: it was a disowning by anticipation. What ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... It was a desire to excel in the minds of men by the development of high qualities, the love, in short, of an honorable fame, that stirred him to exult in the rewards of popular favor. Yet this passion never tempted him to change a course of action or to suppress a serious conviction, to bend to a prevailing error or ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... "You are speaking without conviction, Braine," said Murray, sternly. "You say this to comfort me, and you are thinking differently. What does this mean? What desperate game is this man playing? I swear that if harm has come to that poor boy, though I die for it, I'll shoot this ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... These men also knew, as Lincoln himself did, that if this tremendous experiment was to come to fruition, it must be brought about by the people themselves; that there was no other capital fund upon which to draw. I remember an incident occurring when I was about fifteen years old, in which the conviction was driven into my mind that the people themselves were the great resource of the country. My father had made a little address of reminiscence at a meeting of "the old settlers of Stephenson County," which was held every summer in the grove beside the mill, relating ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... was in direct violation, for its "gay rainbow colours," and modish arrangement, were out of all keeping with her matronly age. One would easily have inferred from it that she was fully impressed with the conviction, that the years which had glided over her head, were not of the old-fashioned kind that contain twelve months, or at least, that she did not consider the lapse of time as at all calculated to impair the attractions of her physiognomy, however prejudicial its effect might be upon ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... confidently expected to find in the valley had still further strengthened his belief that it was destined that these treasures should never be discovered; and although when there he had listened gravely to Harry's explanations of the manner in which the lake had been formed, his own conviction that all this was the work of demons had been unshaken. If, then, a spot, which even the tradition handed down to him had in no way connected with the guardianship of demons, was so firmly watched, how much more must this be so at a spot which all legends agreed ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... Parish Church of Thornton, near Horncastle, has been lately broken open and a thin silver half-pint cup stolen out of the chest, any person giving information of the offender or offenders, shall, on conviction, receive from the parishioners of Thornton five guineas reward, and if there was an accomplice in the above sacrilege who will turn King’s evidence, he shall, on conviction, have the above reward, and every endeavour ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... is a good man, and preaches most powerfully. Mr. Jones heard him preach in New York at the last conference, and tells me he never heard such a sermon as he gave them. It cut right and left, and his words went home to every heart like arrows of conviction." ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... This conviction, however forcible at every new impression, is every moment fading from the mind; and partly by the inevitable incursion of new images, and partly by voluntary exclusion of unwelcome thoughts, we are again exposed to the universal fallacy; ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... been my earnest desire to concur with Congress in the adoption of such measures to increase the silver coinage of the country as would not impair the obligation of contracts, either public or private, nor injuriously affect the public credit. It is only upon the conviction that this bill does not meet these essential requirements that I feel it my duty to withhold from ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... writes:—"I had found it necessary to study physiognomy since leaving England, and was horrified by the appearance of my next neighbour. His forehead was low, his deep-set and restless eyes significant of cunning, and I at once set him down as a swindler or a pickpocket. My conviction of the truth of my inference was so strong that I removed my purse—in which, however, acting by advice, I never carried more than five dollars—from my pocket, leaving in it only my handkerchief and the checks for my baggage, knowing ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... must 'crystallise out' somewhere, and its final value will not so much depend on the number of states it has passed through, as how it has lived each on the way, with what depth of conviction and force of sincerity. For a modern young man to thus experience all round, and pass, and continue beyond where such great ones as St. Bernard, Pascal, and Swedenborg, have anchored their starry souls to ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... Peter Atherly's great-grandfather was an Englishman who brought over to his Majesty's Virginian possessions his only son, then a boy. It was not established, however, to what class of deportation he belonged: whether he was suffering exile from religious or judicial conviction, or if he were only one of the articled "apprentices" who largely made up the American immigration of those days. Howbeit, "Atherly" was undoubtedly an English name, even suggesting respectable and landed ancestry, and Peter ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... point farther, I will now come to the amended scheme of science markings. It would be over-refining, and would not bring conviction to the general public, to make out a case for inequality in the five fundamental branches. It may be said that Physiology is of more value than Chemistry, because it is farther on, and takes Chemistry with it; the answer is, ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... Thornton done? What were the exact words of his note? And until she could recollect, even to the placing or omitting an article, the very expressions which he had used in the note, her mind refused to go on with its progress. But the next conviction she came to was clear enough;—Mr. Thornton had seen her close to Outwood station on the fatal Thursday night, and had been told of her denial that she was there. She stood as a liar in his eyes. She was a liar. But she had no thought of penitence before God; nothing but chaos and ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... execution, and attestation, in an hour and ten minutes of the office clock, had never been equalled in Yorkshire before, and perhaps never honestly in London—taking all these things into conscious or unconscious balance, Mr. Jellicorse grew into the clear conviction that "righteous and wise" were the words to be used whenever this will ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... ridicule for his pains:—more than that, indeed, for those raising the cry that he was a madman, they procured the poor man's expulsion from his situation. Under all these discouraging circumstances, he maintained his firm conviction of the approaching end of time: so strongly was his mind bent in this direction, that "I opened the window of the house where I then was," says he, "thinking to see Christ coming in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... it is our solemn conviction that if you attempt to send a solitary soldier to these forts, the instant the intelligence reaches our people (and we shall take care that it does reach them, for we have sources of information in Washington so that no orders for troops can be issued without our getting information) ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... critics. He says "Wedlock is to Mr. Grant Allen Nehushtan. And the odd thing about it is that the net effect of the book which he has written with his heart's blood to destroy this said Nehushtan can hardly fail to strengthen the foundation of reasoned conviction upon which marriage rests." And again—"Those who do not know the author, but who take what I must regard as the saner view of the relations of the sexes, will rejoice at what might have been a potent force for evil has been so strangely overruled as to become a reinforcement of the garrison ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "who might be benefited by this touching reflection, if represented in the same strong lights from the pulpit. And I think, Mr. Dean, you should give us a sermon upon this subject, for the sake of both sexes, one for caution, the other for conviction." ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... It means that the more intelligent and progressive American workingmen are coming to believe that the American political and economic organization does not sufficiently secure the material improvement of the wage-earner. This conviction may be to a large extent erroneous. Certain it is that the wages of unorganized farm laborers have been increasing as rapidly during the past thirty years as have the wages of the organized mechanics. But whether erroneous or not, it is widespread and deep-rooted; and whatever danger it possesses ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... Warsaw, I was for some time seduced by the dead languages, and dreamed that some day I would travel throughout the world, and in flaming words persuade mankind to revive one of these languages for the common use. Subsequently, I do not now remember how, the conviction came to me that that was an impossibility, and I began, indistinctly, to dream of a new and artificial language. I often made attempts, inventing a profusion of declensions and conjugations, but the language of man, ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 5 • Various
... priest paused, for he saw several policemen and keepers approach the cafe and prowl round it. Having lost scent of the man they were hunting, they had retraced their steps with the conviction no doubt that he had sought refuge in the chalet. And in order that he might not again escape them, they now took every precaution, exerted all their skill in surrounding the place before venturing ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... intention, a violence calling up the hot blood as a blow across the mouth might have called it. Maggie knew as she turned away from him that she didn't want his pain; what she wanted was her own simple certainty—not the red mark of conviction flaming there in his beauty. If she could have gone on with bandaged eyes she would have liked that best; if it were a question of saying what she now, apparently, should have to, and of taking from him what he would say, any blindness that might wrap it ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... Poe's character was made by his necessity. He was a liar and an egotist; a man who had to beg for bread at the hands of his publishers and critics could be nothing but a liar, and had he not had the insane egotism and conviction of genius, he would have broken down and written the drivelling trash that his countrymen delighted to read. Poe lied to his publishers sometimes, there is no doubt of that, but there were two to whom he ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... announced charges and with all guaranties of defense stipulated by treaty was insisted upon by us. After an elaborate correspondence and repeated and earnest representations on our part Mr. Santos was, after an alleged trial and conviction, eventually included in a general decree of amnesty and pardoned by the Ecuadorian Executive and released, leaving the question of his American citizenship denied by the Ecuadorian Government, but insisted ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... heard, so far, of the disclosure of Cain's sin through the voice of Abel's blood, of his conviction by Adam his father, and of the decision rendered with reference to the two brothers, namely, that the one should be canonized, or declared a saint—the first fruits, as it were, of the blessed seed; but that the other, the first-born, ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... Mistress Jean intended? He was so confused, looked so guilty as well as astray, and answered so far from any point in Jean's mind, that she at last became altogether bewildered also, out of which chaos of common void gradually dawned on her mind the conviction that she had been wasting both thanks and material recognition of service, where she was under no obligation. Her first feeling thereupon was, not unnaturally however unreasonably, one of resentment—as if Donal, in not doing her the kindness her fancy ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... would take his pipe out of his mouth as though about to make a remark, but invariably put it in again without uttering a syllable. Then his friends would go away, shaking their heads and sighing, after pausing to impart to Mrs. Wainwright their conviction that her ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... this deliberate avoidance of more profound issues is not hard to find. An astonishing number of satires of this period contain a large proportion of lines devoted to describing how wonderful everything is. The widespread conviction that whatever is, in the England of the late eighteenth century, is right, may have resulted from the influence of An Essay on Man. Or the Essay may have been popular because it expressed ideas already in general acceptance. But whatever the explanation is, the catch-phrases ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence, and, therefore, all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience, and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love ...
— Civil Government of Virginia • William F. Fox
... had to do with a blue-eyed Indian or painted Tory, I examined the unconscious reader thoroughly. And, after a little while, a strange apprehension settled into absolute conviction as I looked. So certain was I that every gathered muscle relaxed; I drew a deep, noiseless breath of relief, smiling to myself, and stepped coolly forward, letting the secret door swing to behind ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... mankind to go for nothing? For if there be one point on which human beings have been, and are still, agreed, it is this—that each of them is, to his joy or his sorrow, an I; a separate person. And, I should have said, this conviction becomes stronger and stronger in each of them, the more human they become, civilized, and worthy of the respect and affection of ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... is obvious to the victim of alcoholic or nicotine poisoning that he would be infinitely better in health could he abjure alcohol or tobacco; he does not need to be philosophised or theologised into this conviction; he knows it better than his teachers. His necessity is a superadded force to the will within his soul which has lost the power of action. And so with the will of the sick person, who knows very well that if he could rid himself of dejection and heaviness his health would come back to him ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... man of the church was found, upon closer acquaintance, to be the subject of a profound conviction that he was the individual predestinated to superintend our farming interests. He was so well persuaded of this high calling that none of us dreamed of questioning it, and he was forthwith installed in the coveted office. At his suggestion ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... King, more than all other men. They have the impudence to avow this, though they acknowledge our trade important to them. But they think, we cannot prevent our countrymen from bringing that into their laps. A conviction of this determines them to make no terms of commerce with us. They say, they will pocket our carrying trade as well as their own. Our overtures of commercial arrangements have been treated with a derision, which shows their ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... just the kiss you were thinking of—no more was when I got it—but, Robert, my son and fellow soldier, it's my recorded conviction that the most enviable member of the regiment this day of our Lord is your twin trooper friend Rawdon. I saw him off on his wedding tour, and he didn't have ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... especially as years increase and the judgment is partly made wiser by experience, and partly also more acute in observation. This being so, nothing can secure us from falling away altogether from our ideas of duty, or maintain in the soul a well- grounded respect for its law, but the clear conviction that although there should never have been actions which really sprang from such pure sources, yet whether this or that takes place is not at all the question; but that reason of itself, independent on all experience, ordains what ought to ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... the crime with which she was charged, Anstice never doubted. Since the catastrophe which had altered his whole outlook on life, he had been inclined to be cynical regarding the good faith of mankind in general; but Mrs. Carstairs' manner had carried conviction by its very lack of emphasis. She had not protested her innocence—indeed, he could barely remember in what words she had given him to understand that she was not guilty of the loathsome deed; yet her very quietness, the very indifference of her manner as she told her story carried ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... puffing away—all the remains of their piety! When they had come to the end of their cigars they parted, each speeding homeward. Titmouse, on reaching his lodgings, sank into profound depression. He felt an awful conviction that his visit to the cigar-shop had entirely spoiled the effect of his previous attendance at the church; and that, if so disposed, (and it served him right,) he might now sit and whistle for his ten thousand a-year. Thoughts ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... the occasional clumps of fine trees, particularly the graceful Arbold de Peru (shinum molle, the Peruvian pepper-tree), its bending branches loaded with bunches of coral-coloured berries, the old orchards with their blossoming fruit-trees, the conviction that everything necessary for the use of man can be produced with scarcely any labour, all contributes to render the landscape one which it is impossible to ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... heard with a free hand, but "'twas pretty Fanny's way," and no one got angry over her silly twaddle. One of the fair author's predictions concerning the fate of our polity yet awaits fulfillment. "It is my conviction," said she, "that America will be a monarchy before I am a skeleton." Fifty years have passed since these words were written, and the prophetess has developed into a portly matron, anything but a skeleton, and very unlike the slender Miss ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... servility. But the cattleman carried away with him a conviction that the man had yielded too easily, that his restless brain would go on planning destruction for ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... business of his brother's was a matter of interest to Mr. Sheldon at this particular period. He had meditated the meaning of George's triumphant smile in the secluded calm of his own office; and the longer he had meditated, the more deeply rooted had become his conviction that his brother was engaged in some very deep and very profitable scheme, the nature of which it was his bounden duty ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... yesterday a letter addressed by Dr Abercrombie,[118] the eminent physician in Edinburgh, to Sir George Sinclair,[119] declaring his conviction that the Secession of Ministers from their Livings would take place to a very great extent—would comprise very many of the Ministers most distinguished for learning and professional character, and would meet with very general ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... namely, that we do apply to the Legislature for an Act of Parliament in ordinary, to associate us into a corporate body, and give us a personi standi in judicio, with full power to prosecute and bring to conviction all encroachers upon our exclusive privilege, in the manner therein to be made and provided. In a letter from the ingenious Mr. Dousterswivel ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... I would fool around with a 'previous conviction' against me? The next is a lifer, and I've got to use the knife or a barker, if I run up against trouble, for I'll never wear the Queen's jewelry again! I've sworn it!" The man's eyes were gleaming now like burning coals, "I'll do the grand, and then, ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... by God's grace, my poor words have touched your consciences at all, I beseech you, do not trifle with the budding conviction! Do not seek to have the wound skinned over. Take care that you do not let it all pass in idle sorrow or impotent regret. If you do, you will be hardened, and the worse for it, and come nearer ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to bring the king to trial. By placards posted in the streets, by inflammatory speeches in the Convention, in public gatherings, and in the clubs, by false assertions and slanders of every conceivable nature, they had roused the ignorant populace to the full conviction that the king was the author of every calamity now impending. The storm of the Revolution had swept desolation through all the walks of peaceful industry. Starvation, gaunt and terrible, began to stare the population of Paris directly in the face. The ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... books, and where he could enjoy privacy. The writer, who was at a public school both when all the boys lived in one great school-room in which privacy was impossible and after the separate studies were introduced, would wish to record his earnest conviction of the advantage of the present plan of separate studies,—of the vital influence it has on the formation of character, no less than of habits of study in the young. He can well remember how every better ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... was wholly unfit to prepare her own work for publication, because, among many other reasons, she was too thoroughly in earnest to know what to leave out. Every leaf and line was sacred, for all had been written under so deep a conviction of truth as to assume, in her eyes, the aspect of inspiration. A practised book-maker, with entire control of her materials, would have shaped out a duodecimo volume full of eloquent and ingenious dissertation,—criticisms which quite take the color and pungency out ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... country, the hills and valleys, the forest and the blue loom of the mountains, so much that appealed to the eye, and yet the horizon, looking so peaceful in the distance, was barbed with spears. Jackson was there! The sergeant's theory had become conviction with them. Distance had been nothing to him. He was at hand with a great force, and Lee with another army might fall at any time upon their flank, while McClellan was isolated and left useless, ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... gold and studded with precious stones. Perhaps you will think, as we did, that such things are but tinsel before Him whom they are supposed to honor. Such dazzling paraphernalia may attract the ignorant or the thoughtless—may make followers, but not converts. Conviction is not the child of ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... time he was filled with a fever of impatience to know whether there would be a letter from Africa or not. Antonino generally appeared about four o'clock, but the letters were in the village long before then, and this afternoon Maurice felt that he could not wait for the boy's coming. He had a conviction that there was a letter, a decisive letter from Hermione, fixing at last the date of her arrival with Artois. He must have it in his hands at the first possible moment. If he went himself to the post he would know the truth at least an hour and a half sooner than if he waited in the house ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... conviction that Royal dared not betray her had been flooding Harriet's heart with exquisite reassurance during this past half hour. She was safe; her life at Crownlands took on a new and wonderful beauty with that knowledge. And ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... time longer, for she was not at all satisfied to have the matter treated so quietly. She tried to impress upon Mr Hawthorne that it was his duty to make a thorough inquiry amongst his people, for she felt certain, she said with an air of conviction which made Ambrose tremble, that her money ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... containing beer and raised it to his lips, but at the first taste he spat the stuff from his mouth and tossed the primitive tankard aside. He was quite sure that even Dango would draw the line at such filthy tasting drink as that, and his contempt for man increased with the conviction. ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... not understand this rapid change from poetry to prose. How could it be otherwise, when he was but five-and-twenty, and engaged for the first time? Threescore years and ten is all too short a time to learn what woman really is, and every student leaves this world with the conviction that of the thousand sides which the female of man presents to the male of woman, not one reveals the being he desires to know. There is always a deep below a deep; a veil behind a veil, a sphere ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... all right to-day," Fremont laughed. "The last explanation is more foolish than the first. You knew very well that the payment of the reward would follow conviction, and you know ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... both, perhaps, some vindictive wish, which appeared to have been gratified nearly as soon as uttered, or some one of those curious coincidences which no individual's life is without, led to an impression which time, habit, and general recognition would gradually deepen into full conviction, that each really possessed the powers which witchcraft was believed to confer. Whether it be with witches as it is said to be with a much maligned branch of a certain profession, that it needs two of its members in a district to make its exercise profitable, ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... conviction in the minds of present day sociologists, that the fertility of the unfit is menacing the stability of the whole social superstructure, is forcing many to advocate more drastic measures for the salvation of the race. Weinhold ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... discussing these particulars, the last airplanes were landing, one after another, and Guynemer's companions offered their reasons for hoping, or rather believing; but none seemed convinced by his own arguments. Their inner conviction must be that their young chief is dead; and besides, what is death, what is life, to devoting ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... convey the truth without the desire to give pleasure; you cannot make the pleasure worth while without the truth. But this is the place to insist that the truth which you desire to convey must find its way to the conviction of the child through the story and not through any moral or preface or particular statement which you may make. The moral or lesson must be clear to you but carefully held in reserve to direct the matter and ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... all adventurers, though it might seem so easy to follow to its source a light that overpowered the moon, and almost matched the sun. It was observable that each smiled scornfully at the madness of every other in anticipating better fortune than the past, yet nourished a scarcely hidden conviction that he would himself be the favored one. As if to allay their too sanguine hopes, they recurred to the Indian traditions that a spirit kept watch about the gem, and bewildered those who sought it either by removing it from peak to peak of the higher ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... course list it when they learn of it; but foolishly, because while the philosophy, the cosmology, the metaphysics may be advanced (so advanced as to be called hasty and apt to run into the theological barrages), the religion, the mysticism, the "conviction of sin," the vision of the invisibles, the perception of the imponderables, are positive, vivid, sincere, passionate in phrasing and in intention. Sincere as Mr. WELLS is always sincere; sincere rather than stable, patient, learned and so forth. I rather wonder ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 6, 1917 • Various
... skin with joy," said Captain Barber, with conviction. "Mrs. Banks, the pleasure you've given me this day is more than I ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... down the priest with all the terrors of the law. He launched into harrowing details of hell. The damned, he said—on the authority of a little book which he had read not a week before, and which, to add conviction to conviction, he had fully intended to bring along with him in his pocket—were to occupy the same attitude through all eternity in the midst of dismal tortures. And as he thus expatiated, he grew in nobility of aspect ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... repeated, with conviction. "You are a young woman—you are twenty-eight years old. You will, marry. It is only right that you should marry. You have not the vocation for a religious. Therefore you must marry. But it will be a great loss to the house ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... theory of the arithmetical rhythm of time, contains much of the same fascination that attaches to the tales of Poe. Simply told, yet dramatic and powerful in its unique conception, it has a convincing ring that is most impressive. The reader can not evade a haunting conviction that this wonderful experiment must in reality have taken place. Delightful to read, difficult to forget, the book must ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... candles, and went back to bed. Next morning he went to the sheriff, and told him there 'was murder in it'. The sheriff said, 'it might be so,' but, even if so, the crime was not recent, as the house for thirty years had stood empty. The step was taken up, and a dead body was found, 'and bones, to the conviction of all'. The doctor then preached on these unusual events, and an old man of eighty fell a-weeping, confessing that, as a mason lad, he had killed a companion, and buried him in that spot, while the house was being built. Consequently the house, though a new one, ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... Trenchard; he had distinguished himself on a difficult committee, on which he had guided a perplexed minister, who was chairman, through many intricacies. Mr. Trenchard watched the operations of Mr. Vigo, with a calm, cold scrutiny, and ventured one day to impart his conviction to Endymion that there were breakers ahead. "Vigo is exhausting the floating capital of the country," he said, and he offered to give him all the necessary details, if he would call the attention ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... Price was ill. We went to the door. It was locked, and an application of a spare key proved that the other key had been left in the lock inside. We knocked loudly, and called. There was no reply. Clayton's conviction that 'something had happened' worked on my nerves frightfully, and in the end the vicar and I forced open the door ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... the great glass chandelier clicked and blazed up, and a murmur of conversation arose. The footlights were lowered and the orchestra left their places and disappeared underneath the stage, leaving the audience with the conviction that they had gone out after beer. All over the house one heard the shrill voices of boys crying out, "Op'ra books—books for the op'ra—words and music ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... How far is it to Babylon? Babylon I am firmly convinced is just round the corner: if one could be only certain which corner. This conviction is the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... every instance they were outvoted by immense majorities. In these debates Mr. Canning was the great champion of the ministry; and his eloquence was such that he bore away the palm from every competitor, and carried conviction to every unprejudiced and candid mind. It has been well remarked, "A capital part of the case reduced itself simply to this:—if we did not make sure of the Danish fleet, Buonaparte was sure to get it, a little sooner or later. The justification adopted by our government may be explained ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Francis Baring, on first introducing the bill, July 5, 1839, declared his conviction that the loss of revenue at the outset would be "very considerable indeed." He said the committee had considered that "two pence postage could be introduced without any loss to the revenue," but he differed from them, and found "the whole of the authorities conclusively bearing ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt
... And gently as she spoke the words, it came to me with a sudden rush of conviction that I had ceased fagging for ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... now that she would be an heiress, there would be no want of pretenders to her hand; and he would lose her and his property at the same time. It was true that the intendant had declared that he would renounce the property if the true heir appeared, but that was easy to say upon the conviction that no heir would appear; and even if he did renounce it, the Parliament would receive it again rather than it should fall into the hands of a Beverley. "Oh that I had never left the cottage!" thought Edward. "I might ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... Maude's feeling. Strange perhaps to say, the suggestion of the old dowager, like instilled poison, was making its way into her very veins. Her thoughts had been busy with the matter ever since. One positive conviction lay in her heart—that Dr. Ashton, now reading the first lesson before her, for he was taking the whole of the service that evening, could not, under any circumstance, be guilty of a false assertion or subterfuge. One solution of the difficulty presented itself to her—that her mother, in her ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... with the utmost conviction. With you off our hands, we can act freely. We must deliver an attack to-night. God in Heaven, you cannot think that we would expose you to the perils of a ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... Indies. Both were Calvinists. Sagard writes that Guillaume was polite, liberal, and of good understanding. This testimony seems somewhat exaggerated, as we have many proofs of his niggardliness. His nephew Emery was frank, liberal and open to conviction, and was always kindly disposed towards the Jesuits. Guillaume de Caen was the commodore of the fleet equipped by his associates. His greatest fault appears to have been that he neglected Champlain and the colony, and for that reason he should share the responsibility of not having ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... the people as a whole. As great a change was passing over the spiritual sympathies of men. A sterner Protestantism was invigorating and ennobling life by its morality, its seriousness, its intense conviction of God. But it was at the same time hardening and narrowing it. The Bible was superseding Plutarch. The "obstinate questionings" which haunted the finer souls of the Renascence were being stereotyped into the theological formulas of the Puritan. ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... shared in common the belief that constitutions could be made at will, that the commonwealth was something plastic, capable of taking the complexion and the form impressed upon it by speculative politicians. So firmly rooted was this conviction, and so highly self-conscious had the statesmen of Italy become, partly by the experience of their shifting history, and partly by their study of antiquity, that the idea of the State as something ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... applauded with special emphasis the words in which the President expressed his firm conviction that all efforts to disunite the Allies ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of Heaven," said he, not unctuously or hypocritically, but in his grave tone of conviction, "is not adequately represented ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... was speaking I had a thought white-hot from some forge-fire of inspiration—a thought to tip an arrow of conviction and set it quivering in the mark. I would not stop to measure it; to look aside at her or any other lest one brief glance apart should send the arrow wavering from its course. So I looked the colonel boldly in the eye and drew the ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde |
