"Credible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an odd sound in history, and appear hardly credible, that in several petty republics of single towns, which make up the States General, it should be formally debated, whether the Queen of Great Britain, who preserved the commonwealth at the charge of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... fertile soil; but in consequence of the cumbrous machinery of slave labor, which is slow for every thing, (except exhausting the soil,) they have always been less prosperous than the free States. It is said, I know not with how much truth, but it is certainly very credible, that a great proportion of their plantations are deeply mortgaged in New-York and Philadelphia. It is likewise said that the expenses of the planters are generally one or two years in advance of their income. ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... thousand heads,' etc. These things Papias, who was a hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp, an ancient worthy, witnesseth in writing in the fourth of his books, for there are five books composed by him. And he added, saying, 'But these things are credible to them that believe.' And when Judas the traitor did not believe, and asked, 'How shall such growths be accomplished by the Lord?' he relates that the Lord said, 'They shall see, who shall ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... to ascertained methods of proof, are apt to look on a man who vows that if a thing has been declared true by some authority whom he respects, then that constitutes proof to him, as either the victim of a preposterous and barely credible infatuation, or else as a flat impostor. Yet De Maistre was no ignorant monk. He had no selfish or official interest in taking away the keys of knowledge, entering not in himself, and them that would enter in hindering. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... The appeal of setting being visual, the element was employed to illustrate the action and to make the characters clearly evident to the eye. By rendering a story more concrete, a definite setting rendered it more credible. This the eighteenth-century novelists discerned; but only with the rise of the romantic movement was the element applied ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... superior in number and discipline; provided with artillery, and all the munitions of war, and within reach of constant supplies and reinforcements. Beside the French that had come from Venango, he had received credible accounts of another party ascending the Ohio; and of six hundred Chippewas and Ottawas marching down Scioto Creek to join the hostile camp. Still, notwithstanding the accumulating danger, it would ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... at a time when a large part of all traveling was done on horseback. As General Grant became famous at a comparatively early age, a large crop of stories of his early feats in the subjection and use of horses was cultivated by persons who knew him as a boy. Many of these, doubtless, are entirely credible; few of them are so extraordinary that they might not be true of any clever boy who loved horses and studied their disposition ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... chiefly thei builded to that purpose. Whereby thei not onely made their Souldiours so experte, that thei obtained with a fewe, in faightyng againste a greate houge multitude of enemies, soche marveilous victories, as in many credible Histories are mencioned, but also by the same meanes, their unarmed and rascalle people that followed their Campes, gotte soche understandyng in the feates of warre, that thei in the daie of battaile, beeyng lefte destitute ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... all possessions which had been seized by force should be restored to their rightful owners, and that all castles which had been erected since the death of Henry I should be destroyed, and the number of these was noted at the time as 1115, though a more credible statement gives the number as 375. The treaty between the two which had no doubt preceded these ceremonies in the council contained other provisions. Stephen promised to regard Henry as a son—possibly he formally adopted him—and to rule England by his advice. ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... bereaved; to confirm the old-world traditions regarding bygone spirit intervention and revelation, and supplement our hopes and intuitions with proof palpable. Present day experiences of inspiration and spirit manifestation make credible and acceptable many things in ancient records which must otherwise have been discarded as superstitious and false. Spiritualism redeems the so-called 'supernatural' and 'miraculous' occurrences of the Bible, by explaining them and proving ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... more, The plants and trees,[2] with smiling features, Are turn'd by me to talking creatures. Who says, that this is not enchanting? 'Ah,' says the critics, 'hear what vaunting! From one whose work, all told, no more is Than half-a-dozen baby stories.'[3] Would you a theme more credible, my censors, In graver tone, and style which now and then soars? Then list! For ten long years the men of Troy, By means that only heroes can employ, Had held the allied hosts of Greece at bay,— Their minings, batterings, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... attempted this explanation of the phenomena, they should have proved the existence of such a fluid, or at least brought forward such circumstances, as rendered its existence credible. But supposing we grant them the hypothesis, it will, in my opinion, not avail much; for it is not easy to conceive how the motion of a subtile fluid, or the vibration of a nerve, can ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... vain fantasy That raised me from the earth with pride? Should I to-morrow verily Be Bridegroom, and Honoria Bride? Should I, in simple fact, henceforth Live unconditionally lord Of her whose smile for brightest worth Seem'd all too bountiful reward? Incredible life's promise seem'd, Or, credible, for life too great; Love his own deity blasphemed, And doff'd at last his heavenly state. What law, if man could mount so high, To further insolence set bars, And kept the chaste moon in the sky, And bade him ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... ships, is a heady yong man, & violente, and set against you ther, & y^e company hear; ploting with M^r. Weston their owne ends, which tend to your & our undooing in respecte of our estates ther, and prevention of our good ends. For by credible testimoney we are informed his purpose is to come to your colonie, pretending he comes for and from y^e adventurers, and will seeke to gett what you have in readynes [77] into his ships, as if they came from y^e company, & possessing all, will be so much profite to him selfe. And further ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... your son has not gone northwards with a sham Scotch heiress, or your daughter been married at Charicombe, by private license, to a pinchbeck Irish peer. For all these things—however painful the admission—were, according to the most credible chroniclers, the by-no-means infrequent accompaniment or sequel of an unguarded sojourn at the old jigging, card-playing, scandal-loving, pleasure-seeking city in the loop of ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... admit that this was extraordinary and hardly credible, yet it happened exactly as I have set it down, and, furthermore, I enjoyed the experience. For three hours the thing and I conversed, and not once during that time did my hair stop pulling away at my scalp, or the repugnance cease to run in great rolling waves up and down my back. ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... office of praetor, not only gave his opinion in the Senate, and was ready to assist his friends, but wrote a Greek history, and had a considerable acquaintance with literature. Diodorus the Stoic was blind, and lived many years at my house. He, indeed, which is scarcely credible, besides applying himself more than usual to philosophy, and playing on the flute, agreeably to the custom of the Pythagoreans, and having books read to him night and day, in all which he did not want eyes, contrived to teach geometry, which, one would think, could hardly be done ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... at the house of one of my friends. To please me, the family asked Delisle to operate before me, to which he immediately consented. I offered him some iron nails, which he changed into silver in the chimney-place before six or seven credible witnesses. I took the nails thus transmuted, and sent them by my almoner to Irabert, the jeweller of Aix, who, having subjected them to the necessary trial, returned them to me, saying they were very good silver. Still, however, I was not quite satisfied. M. de Pontchartrain ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... with honour than stabbing in the dark. I believe Ireland is the only country in Europe, I am sure it is the only part of the British dominions, where associations among men of fortune are necessary for apprehending ravishers. It is scarcely credible how many young women have even of late years been ravished, and carried off in order (as they generally have fortunes) to gain to appearance a voluntary marriage. These actions, it is true, are ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... "black death" was given to the disease in the more northern parts of Europe—from the dark spots on the skin above mentioned—while in Italy it was called la mortalega grande ("the great mortality"). From Italy came almost the only credible accounts of the manner of living, and of the ruin caused among the people in their more private life, during the pestilence; and the subjoined account of what was seen in Florence is of special interest as being from no less an ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... himself that the incredible was credible, the impossible possible—that it was done! done! done! and that he loved a woman in an hour because, in an hour, he had read her innocence as one reads through crystal, and his eyes were opened for the first time upon loveliness unspoiled, sweetness untainted, ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... authority of an ancient map, is put forward for the noted Portugese navigator Magalhaens, when in the service of the Emperor Charles V. of Spain; but there is little appertaining to the arguments advanced on behalf of this belief to render it credible. ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... with him for his own and his madness' sake, and is less uneasy because of the presence of his mother. To account satisfactorily for Hamlet's speeches to her, is not easy. The freer custom of the age, freer to an extent hardly credible in this, will not satisfy the lovers of Hamlet, although it must have some weight. The necessity for talking madly, because he is in the presence of his uncle, and perhaps, to that end, for uttering whatever comes to him, without pause ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... query that a person of sensibility would be slow to propose; but that in an educated community an individual could be found to answer it in these words,—"Because it smell odious," quasi, it's melodious,—is not credible, but too true. I can show ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... surprising. Yet the wonder is not so much that Plato should have entertained ideas of morality which to our own age are revolting, but that he should have contradicted himself to an extent which is hardly credible, falling in an instant from the heaven of idealism into the crudest animalism. Rejoicing in the newly found gift of reflection, he appears to have thought out a subject about which he had better have followed the enlightened feeling of his own age. The general sentiment of Hellas was ...
— The Republic • Plato
... manifestly absurd, and yet he invested it with a certain plausibility. Even Cassowary, as Hood described him, seemed a wholly credible person, and the bills Hood had drawn from his pocket bore all the marks of ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... Praxiteles. He appears to have worked exclusively in bronze; at least we hear of no work in marble from his hands. He must have had a long life. Pliny credits him with fifteen hundred statues, but this is scarcely credible. His subjects suggest that his genius was of a very different bent from that of Praxiteles. No statue of Aphrodite or indeed of any goddess (except the Muses) is ascribed to him; on the other hand, he made ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... my arrival in China, it would have seemed hardly credible to me that I should ever succeed in taking my place among the small number of Europeans who are acquainted with that remarkable country, not from books alone, but from actual observation; I never believed that I should really behold the Chinese, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... are apt to engender new conditions in savage as well as civilised life. It is scarcely credible what an amount of hitherto latent vanity was evoked by that mirror in the cabin, and that too in the most unlikely characters. Mangivik, for instance, spent much of his time the first few days in admiring his grey locks in the glass. And old Uleeta, although one of the plainest ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... some burdened hawker, bumping past, his swinging baskets filled with a pennyworth of trifles. But still the silence daunted Rudolph in this astounding vision, this masque of unreal life, of lost daylight, of annihilated direction, of placid turmoil and multifarious identity, made credible only by ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... of a good cause. "This is no good argument, my friends; this is a deceivable argument: he went to his death boldly—ergo, he standeth in a just quarrel. The Anabaptists that were burnt here in divers towns in England (as I heard of credible men—I saw them not myself), went to their death intrepide, as you will say; without any fear in the world—cheerfully: well, let them go. There was in the old times another kind of poisoned heretics that were called Donatists; and these heretics ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... Theology abounded in pious frauds. Monks and minstrels vied with each other in the invention of lying legends to adorn the lives of heroes and saints. All classes of the community shared in the general delusion, and the supernatural seemed more credible than the natural. In tracing the progress of learning, in England, I propose, during the remainder of the present paper to discuss one inconsiderable yet important element of modern civilization, which is often entirely overlooked. I refer to ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... cannot change, and a love that many waters cannot quench. Either would cross all the continents and oceans of the world to-day to find the other; but as they remember how they met for the first time it seems too queer to be credible. And they lie back in their ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... had been! Even now, when the truth had been spread out before his eyes, he had taken it for pure fiction. Yet every seeming absurdity in Elsie's account became credible the moment he considered the facts he knew, ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... uncle, recovered all that warlike country of Spain, so famous for its men and arms, that seminary of the enemy's force, that instructress of Hannibal, from the Pyrenean mountains—the account is scarcely credible—to the Pillars of Hercules and the ocean, whether with greater speed or good fortune is difficult to decide; how great was his speed, four years bear witness; how remarkable his good fortune, even one city proves, for it was taken on the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... neither coherent nor credible. On the other hand, the tradition of an English family avers that a Devonshire gentleman was asked by an important personage in France to succour an unnamed lady who was being smuggled over in a sailing boat to our south-west coast. ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... as a whole, and realises how little as a whole it takes account of those deep occult truths into touch with which it has come, how little it realises how mighty the possibility that these supreme acts of sacrifice have opened before every one of us, it seems almost too sad to be credible, too pathetic to be expressed; one realises how sometimes Their hearts must be wrung, as the heart of the Christ was wrung when He stood and looked over Jerusalem, and knew that the people to whose race He belonged were driving further and further away their possibilities, and were ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... very hard; the rains hindering me many days, nay, sometimes weeks together: but I thought I should never be perfectly secure till this wall was finished; and it is scarce credible what inexpressible labour every thing was done with, especially the bringing piles out of the woods, and driving them into the ground; for I made them much bigger than I ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... Sikhs it is impossible to calculate; according to themselves it was much less than that of the English; and this is credible when the strength of their position is considered, and the losses to which the unaccountable flight of Pope's brigade exposed the British light. The English loss, according to the official returns, was three thousand men in killed and wounded, nearly one-third ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... moreover contradicted by inference, in the Moniteur itself. It says, "Mr. Flinders not knowing of, but suspecting the war, ventured to come to the Isle of France; where having learned its declaration, he doubted whether the passport would serve him." Now it is not credible, that with such a suspicion, and being aware, consequently, of the great importance of the passport, I should wait until arriving at the island before seeking to know its particular contents; but going to Mauritius under the belief ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... visited Campanella in his prison, and exerted himself for his liberation. Campanella dedicated his Atheismus Triumphatus to Scioppius, calling him 'the dawn-star of our age.' Schoppe was also the first credible authority to warn Sarpi of the imminent peril he ran from Roman hired assassins, as I hope to relate in my chapter upon Sarpi's life. This man's letter to his friend is the single trustworthy document which we possess regarding the last hours ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... as he was exchanged, Mosby made all haste for Lee's headquarters to report what he had discovered. Lee, remembering Mosby as the man who had scouted ahead of Stuart's Ride Around MacClellan, knew that he had a hot bit of information from a credible source. A dispatch rider was started off at once for Jackson, and Jackson struck Pope at Cedar Mountain before he could be re-enforced. Mosby returned to Stuart's headquarters, losing no time in promoting a pair of ...
— Rebel Raider • H. Beam Piper
... of duty. They are simply poor feeble creatures incapable of resisting masculine proposals. With good psychological training they would often become better women, active, devoted and full of life. It seems hardly credible, but it is true, that one sometimes finds in this category women who are highly gifted. It is then said that they are wanting in moral sense, but this is not always correct. In other respects they may ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... are totally unlike. These same similarities present themselves over such wide areas and between nations so remote and of such different culture, that the theory of a parallelism of development is after all the more credible explanation. ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... resolution to extricate myself from the bewitching influence which had surrounded me, I arose, and went straightway to the parlor. Could it be that a flash of pleasure beamed on Miss Tarlingford's face? or was I a deluded gosling? The latter suggestion seemed the more credible, so ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... freezing perspiration. From this I was never free; and at length, from finding one general ablution sufficient for one day, I was thrown upon the irritating necessity of repeating it more frequently than would seem credible, if stated. At this time, I used always hot water; and a thought occurred to me very seriously that it would be best to live constantly, and, perhaps, to sleep in a bath. What caused me to renounce this plan, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... thinks that California is a suitable place of settlement for him, then I do say, with great emphasis, that he should not settle upon anything in California until he has been to Merced, and proved for himself that the statements are credible. After he has been to Merced, I have little doubt that he will be convinced that that place presents an opening which would ...
— A start in life • C. F. Dowsett
... Pallasian doctrine, variability, or the appearance of new characters, is due to some mysterious effect from the crossing of two species, neither of which possess the characters in question. In some few instances it is credible, though for several reasons not probable, that well-marked races have been formed by crossing; for instance, a barb might perhaps have been formed by a cross between a long-beaked carrier, having large eye-wattles, and some short-beaked pigeon. That many races ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... finished the work in Rouen and Paris, at home, at his cafe, in the gardens of the Tuilleries, even on a stone in the Boulevard du Temple. While in Vienna he made an orchestral transcription of the famous Rakoczy march (in one night, he says, though this is scarcely credible, since the time would hardly suffice to write down the notes alone). The march made an extraordinary stir at the concert in Pesth when he produced it, and this led him to incorporate it, with an introduction, into his Legend—a proceeding which he justified ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... singularly untouched by the influence of women. Mostly his life had been spent in the unpeopled forest, away from women of all kinds; and such creatures as had admired him in Seattle's underworld had never got close to him. He had had many dreams; but some way it had never been credible to him that he should ever know womanhood as a source of comradeship and happiness. Love and marriage had always seemed infinitely apart from his ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... grip of iron! And tanned—my, how you're tanned! You did it, Jack, you did it! It hardly seems credible, when I think of the last time I ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... and opposition of the testimony, or by the consideration of the nature of the facts themselves. When the facts partake of the marvelous there are two opposite experiences with regard to them, and that which is most credible is to be preferred. Now the uniform experience of men is against miracles. We should not, therefore, believe any testimony concerning a miracle, unless the falsehood of that testimony should be more miraculous than the miracle it is designed to establish. Besides, ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... much admired. Thereafter he was commissioned to write a biography of the poet, of which he completed 2 vols., but in so singular a fashion that the material with which he had been entrusted was withdrawn. The work, which is probably unique in the annals of biography, while giving a vivid and credible picture of S. externally, shows no true appreciation of him as a poet, and reflects with at least equal prominence the humorously eccentric personality of the author, which renders it entertaining in no common degree. Other works of H. were ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... keep it secret." By these hints he intimated that the enemy was circumvented in order to raise the courage of his men, damped by the superiority of the enemy's force; and, from their not having fortified the post where they lay, the insinuation of a stratagem formed against them seemed the more credible. After refreshing themselves, they consigned themselves to rest, and being roused without noise, about the fourth watch, took arms. Axes are distributed among the servants following the army, to tear down the rampart ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... them is German. And well may the German Government distrust those signs of popular discontent in a starving population: already the people have awoke to the fact that the German paper money does not represent its face-value, and, despite assurances to the contrary, it is at a discount scarcely credible. Three German L1 notes are held even in Constantinople to be the equivalent of a gold L1, while in the provinces upwards of five are asked for, and given, in exchange for one gold pound. It is in ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... is a waterless desert," said the priest, "I know, for I see it, I have sunk in its sands and felt heat in it. That there are countries in which water turns to stone, and steam into white down, I know also, for credible ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... our land into such a state of cultivation as to grow our own consumption. We have already shown how slowly and partially the price of corn affects the price of labour and some of the other expenses of cultivation. Is it credible then that if by the freedom of importation the prices of corn were equalized, and reduced to about forty five or fifty shillings a quarter, it could answer to us to go on improving our agriculture with our increasing ...
— Observations on the Effects of the Corn Laws, and of a Rise or Fall in the Price of Corn on the Agriculture and General Wealth of the Country • Thomas Malthus
... perished in attempting to escape through the woods towards the inhabited country. The British state their own loss at thirty-five killed, among whom was one field officer, and one hundred and forty-four wounded, including two majors, and five inferior officers. It is scarcely credible, notwithstanding the difference in arms, that in a well contested action, the disparity in the killed could have been so considerable. It is the less probable, as the pursuit was ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... the stranger; "and yet who knows? That inscription certainly is Hebrew. At least, it is neither English nor German. When one has studied psychic phenomena as long as I have, he comes to a point where he is very chary of saying what is not credible. Do I not, time and again, materialize the dead, calling from the winds, the waters, and the earth the dispersed particles of the corporeal frame to reclothe for a little time the spiritual essence? Could not the great Solomon do as much? Is it not possible that that great moral ensamplar, guide, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... spirit, family, credible, visible, charity, unity, sanity, humanity, ruin, promise, divide, divisible, dissolve, languid, negative, similar, abominable, imitate, ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... at Ghent in 1410. There is every reason to believe that all these dates are incorrect; that Hubert was born after 1366, and that the date of his migration to Ghent must be placed later in the century. It is credible that both the brothers were court painters to Philip of Charolois, heir apparent to the throne of Burgundy, who lived with his wife Michelle de France at Ghent between 1418 and 1421. In the service of the prince, painters were ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... church that adhered to it, and he thought England was capable of no constitution but Episcopacy; to which he told me he did not doubt but Cromwell would have turned." Wilkins probably liked to think this after he himself had turned; but it is hardly credible in the form in which Burnet has expressed it. Yet Cromwell, in that temper of conservatism, or desire of a settled order in all things, which more and more grew upon him after he had assumed the Protectorate, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... accept the chronology of its custodians,—which there is no reason to question,—it carries back the authentic history of Northern America to a date anterior by fifty years to the arrival of Columbus. Further than this, the plain and credible tradition of the Iroquois, confirmed by much other evidence, links them with the still earlier Alligewi, or "Moundbuilders," as conquerors with the conquered. Thus the annals of this portion of the continent need no longer begin with the landing ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... harbour as far as Bom Fim, and it is intended to take her up still higher. I am glad of the opportunity of seeing more of this beautiful bay, and shall endeavour to land on the Ilha do Medo, or the point of Itaparica, where the first adventurers from Europe underwent hardship that appear hardly credible in our modern days. We also wish to examine the harbour within the funil or passage between the two islands, and into which the river or creek of Nazareth, which supplies Bahia with great part of the mandioc flour consumed ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... caught "a heavy load of the faver." The Irish are particularly apprehensive of contagious maladies. The moment it had been discovered that Jemmy was infected, his schoolfellows avoided him with a feeling of terror scarcely credible, and the inhuman master was delighted at any circumstance, however calamitous, that might afford him a pretext for driving the friendless youth out ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... point where the child was too old to require any assistance. If the facts applied only to cases of early death, the supposed objection might be weighty, but the correlation exists from one end of the age-scale to the other. It is not credible that a child is going to be deprived of any necessary maternal care when its mother dies at the age of 69; the child herself was probably married long before the death of the mother. Nor is it credible ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... implicit faith so easily. You are an extraordinary young man. You may possibly be honest. Such a one as you, with your education and address, may possibly have passed all your life in a hovel; but it is scarcely credible, let me tell you. I believe most of the facts respecting my nephew, because my knowledge of him before his flight would enable me to detect your falsehood; but there must be other proofs besides an innocent brow and a voluble tongue, to make me give ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... of March, 1732, is a curious, and, of course, credible account of a particular case of vampyrism, which is stated to have occurred at Madreyga, in Hungary. It appears, that upon an examination of the commander-in-chief and magistrates of the place, they positively and unanimously affirmed, that, about five years before, a certain ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... supplicatory than mandatory against the removal of his bones to the adjacent charnel-house.[20] His name, often written with a hyphen, indicates that he came of English fighting stock. When the Sonnets were written he was in the full tide of success. It is not credible that such a man at thirty or thirty-five, of buoyant and abounding life, could have so bewailed ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... word, a body quite different from a human body, which we know cannot pass through walls, or appear or disappear at pleasure. What then could their hands or eyes inform them of in this case? Besides, is it credible that God should raise a body imperfectly, with the very wounds in it of which it died? Or, if the wounds were such as destroyed the body before, how could a natural body subsist ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock
... talk, which would have been indecent in one of Mr. Darwin's equals, proceeds from a writer whose want of intelligence, or of conscience, or of both, is so great, that, by way of an objection to Mr. Darwin's views, he can ask, 'Is it credible that all favourable varieties of turnips are tending to become men'; who is so ignorant of palaeontology that he can talk of the 'flowers and fruits' of the plants of the carboniferous epoch; of comparative anatomy, that he ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... victim to swift vagaries of thought and conflicting emotions. She was riding away with a freebooter, a road-agent, to be held for ransom. The fact was scarcely credible. She could not shake the dread of nameless peril. She tried not to recall Roberts's words, yet they haunted her. If she had not been so handsome, he had said! Joan knew she possessed good looks, but they had never caused her any particular concern. That Kells ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... was but a seeming, had no existence but in pretence. The other, the wicked side, was the real one, was the actual woman. I had never known her. What I had known was but an assumption; it had no being. Was this credible? Could a bad woman so delude one with an angelic pretence, so conceal her wicked self? If so, to what depths of vileness might she not be capable of descending? Was it, then, not that I had lost my beloved, but that she had never existed? At thought of it, I felt a ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... continued to fraudulently recruit victims for work as dancers in cabarets and nightclubs on short-term "artiste" visas, for work in pubs and bars on employment visas, or for illegal work on tourist or student visas; there were credible reports of female domestic workers from India, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines forced to work excessively long hours and denied proper compensation tier rating: Tier 2 Watch List - Cyprus does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... of the occurrences just before and after leaving London that scepticism has been expressed. Borrow's story, however, is so circumstantial that we should at least be able to discover whether this part of his history is credible and consistent. ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... "Sir! is this credible? I will be sworn I never saw one; and verily do believe that scarcely one in a hundred years doth venture ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... thriftlessness, and folly of these highly paid operatives, is scarcely credible. Exceptions are frequently taken to calling the working classes "the lower orders;" but "the lower orders" they always will be, so long as they indicate such sensual indulgence and improvidence. In cases such as these, improvidence is not only a great sin, and a feeder of sin, but it is a great ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... accident. With my sister Jane's death (though otherwise, as I have said, less sorrowful than perplexing) there was, however, connected an incident which made a most fearful impression upon myself, deepening my tendencies to thoughtfulness and abstraction beyond what would seem credible for my years. If there was one thing in this world from which, more than from any other, nature had forced me to revolt, it was brutality and violence. Now, a whisper arose in the family that a female servant, who by accident was drawn off from her proper duties ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... an obligatory scene of this class may be found in the third act of Othello. The poet is bound to show us the process by which Iago instils his poison into Othello's mind. He has backed himself, so to speak, to make this process credible to us; and, by a masterpiece of dexterity and daring, he wins his wager. Had he omitted this scene—had he shown us Othello at one moment full of serene confidence, and at his next appearance already convinced of Desdemona's guilt—he would have omitted the pivot and turning—point ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... been printed which asserted that any described sign is used by "all Indians," for the reason that such statement is not admissible evidence unless the authority had personally examined all Indians. If any credible person had affirmatively stated that a certain identical, or substantially identical, sign had been found by him, actually used by Abnaki, Absaroka, Arikara, Assiniboins, etc., going through the whole list of tribes, ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... the things related by Homer, there remains nothing of Moses in our estimation, but an imposter. As to the ancient historians, from Herodotus to Tacitus, we credit them as far as they relate things probable and credible, and no further: for if we do, we must believe the two miracles which Tacitus relates were performed by Vespasian, that of curing a lame man, and a blind man, in just the same manner as the same things are told of Jesus Christ by his historians. We must also ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... further consideration, as a monstrous and unwarranted assumption. The supposition that all these types were rapidly differentiated out of Lacertilia, in the time represented by the passage from the Palaeozoic to the Mesozoic formation, appears to me to be hardly more credible, to say nothing of the indications of the existence of Dinosaurian forms in the Permian rocks which ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... transcript of "the truth as it is in Nature" came as a surprise and to me at least as a rebuke. How, under the rigid necessity of incorporating in its system much that seemed nearly unintelligible, and much that was barely credible, Theology has succeeded so perfectly in adhering through good report and ill to what in the main are truly the lines of Nature, awakens a new admiration for those who constructed and kept this faith. But however nobly it has held its ground, Theology must feel to-day that ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... now perfectly definite. I proposed to make my way into the house, secrete myself upstairs, watch my opportunity, and when everything was quiet, rummage out a wig, mask, spectacles, and costume, and go into the world, perhaps a grotesque but still a credible figure. And incidentally of course I could rob the house ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... tin cups, and we held in our hands pieces of the corn-pone and slices of fried pork, congratulating each other on the unexpected luxury of our supper. Hunger and fatigue were so good a sauce that it seemed really a luxury, and we banished care with an ease which now seems hardly credible. The supper ended, sleep was not long a-wooing, though my rest was more broken than that of the others, for frequent dispatches came from headquarters which I had to answer, and orders had to be sent to the troops to continue ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... no longer, and deferred the matter to another time. Afterwards, when he came before the people to proclaim Dolabella, Antony cried out that the auspices were unfavorable, so that at last Caesar, much to Dolabella's vexation, yielded and gave it up. And it is credible that Caesar was about as much disgusted with the one as the other. When someone was accusing them both to him, "It is not," said he, "these well fed, long-haired men that I fear, but the pale and the hungry looking;" meaning Brutus and Cassius, by whose conspiracy ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... are Arabs, speak the Arab language, and have preserved up to the present day all the characteristics of their race. A roving Bedouin of the Yemen and a Beni Amer are so much alike that it seems hardly credible that the Beni Amers possess no record of their advent on the African coast, or of the causes that induced them to leave the land of their ancestors. Their long, black, silky hair has not acquired the woolly texture of that of the sons of Ham, ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... that of the rukh, and yet that addendum may be regarded as indicating the transition from the utterly incredible to the admixture of truth with fiction in bird-lore. For, whilst the rukh possessed some characteristics which are utterly fabulous, others are credible enough. We are told, for example, that it resembled an eagle, that it was carnivorous, that it possessed remarkable powers of flight, and that it visited islands which lay to the south of Zanzibar, within the influence of an ...
— Essays on early ornithology and kindred subjects • James R. McClymont
... occupied by a Germanic population at all. Its area is less than that of the county of Rutland, and by no means likely to have supplied such a population as that of the Angles of England. The fact of its being a desert at the time of Beda is credible; since it formed a sort of March or Debatable Ground between the Saxons and Slavonians of Holstein, and the ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... credible and even fitting that the mighty, rushing, lighted Express, which seldom stopped at Old Trail Town, should that night come thundering across the marsh, and slow down at the drawbridge for her sake and the little boy's. Several coaches' length from ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... and the first move in the tangle we sought to unravel was to lay hands on them, violently if necessary, and through them recover the stolen money. Only by having that in our possession—so MacRae argued—could we hope to gain credible hearing, and when that was accomplished whatever part Lessard had played would develop ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... also, in each natural whole the simultaneous or successive parts are connected together; a knowledge of their mutual ties is important, and, in the spiritual order of things, one accomplishes this, as in the material order, through scientific distrust, through critical examination, by credible experimentation ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... "Be it known to you that if I knew I had written or preached anything against the law and holy Mother Church, I would humbly recant; may God be my witness to this; but I always desired that they should show me doctrines better and more credible than those I have written and taught. If such be shown me, ...
— John Hus - A brief story of the life of a martyr • William Dallmann
... its operations to a very narrow sphere around us, but those of sight extend far beyond; this sense is therefore liable to be mistaken. With a single glance a man takes in half his own horizon, and in these myriad impressions, and judgments resulting from them, how is it credible that there should be no mistakes? Sight, therefore, is the most defective of all our senses, precisely because it is most far-reaching, and because its operations, by far preceding all others, are too immediate and too vast to ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... bookseller." "The Voyages which go under your name Mr. Rivington (whom I consulted on the matter) tells me are only nominally your's, or, at least, were chiefly collected by understrappers. Mr. Rivington also gives me such an account of the shortness of time in which you wrote the History, as is hardly credible." A list of Smollett's genuine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... Giraldus Cambrensis, which shall by and by be given, it would seem that a priest named Elidorus lived among the Fairies in their home in the bowels of the earth, and this would be in the early part of the twelfth century. The question arises, is the priest's tale credible, or did he merely relate a story of himself which had been ascribed to some one else in the traditions of the people? If his tale is true, then, there lived even in that late period a remnant of the aborigines of the country, who had their homes in caves. The Myddvai ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... narrative of the Adelantado's brother-in-law was published. That Ribaut, a man whose good sense and courage were both reputed high, should have submitted himself and his men to Menendez without positive assurance of safety, is scarcely credible; nor is it lack of charity to believe that a bigot so savage in heart and so perverted in conscience would act on the maxim, current among certain casuists of the day, that faith ought not to ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... skirting the eastern shore of Lake Chinchaycocha—than he made a practice of indulging in an hour or two's fishing whenever the opportunity offered. It was this practice that led to an occurrence which was destined to culminate in an adventure so startling and extraordinary as to be scarcely credible in these ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... scorched rocks and caverns, in many places eaten in; and the earth reduced to ashes, and drops of pitch distilling from the rocks and hot streams, offensive afar off, and habitations overthrown; which render credible some reports among the inhabitants, that there were formerly thirteen cities on that spot, the principal of which was Sodom, so extensive, as to be sixty furlongs in circumference, but that by earthquakes, and by an eruption of fire, and by hot and bituminous ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... touch, a conciliatory chord in Southern breasts, and might lead to pacification. That even pro-slavery Northerners should urgently advocate a proposition at once so cruel and so disgraceful is hardly credible. Yet it was reiterated strenuously, and again and again Mr. Lincoln had to repeat his decisive and indignant repudiation of it. In the message to Congress, December, 1863, he said that to abandon the freedmen now would be "a cruel and astounding breach of faith.... ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... atmosphere and earth, and would exhibit themselves, on their re-organization, more hurtful than at first. Perhaps others expect that some of those unembodied spirits, with which mythology and priestcraft have in all ages deluded the vulgar,—though no credible evidence or natural probability was ever adduced of the existence or appearance of any such spirits,—would without bodies appear to their visual organs, and torment or injure them!—Yes—monstrous and absurd though it be—such are the prevalent weaknesses created ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... to you, and, by my faith, to me it was hardly credible. Certain, however, is it that Guiberto on his return by sunrise found Amadeo in ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... was nothing left for his own expedition to accomplish; but the two explorers generously gave him information which enabled him, after separating from them, to achieve the discovery of Albert Nyanza, of whose existence credible assurance had already been given to Speke and Grant. Baker first sighted the lake on the 14th of March 1864. After some time spent in the exploration of the neighbourhood, during which Baker demonstrated that the Nile flowed through the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... all men," and proclaimed it three times over, that if any man or men on board of the ship would come and give evidence that I had done anything that I deserved death for, I should have it, provided they were credible persons. But no man came, neither a mouth opened against me then. So he cried again, "Silence all men, and hear me speak." Then he proclaimed that the Quaker was as free a man as any on board of the ship was. So ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... it seems scarcely credible that there should follow from one fact p infinitely many others, namely PPp, PPPPp, etc. And it is no less remarkable that the infinite number of propositions of logic (mathematics) follow from half a dozen 'primitive propositions'. But ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... we have been speaking about, for such 'extravagant and erring spirit' does not haunt the living from love, but the dead from suffering. In this life, however, few of us come really near to each other in the genuine simplicity of love, and that may be the reason why the credible stories of love meeting love across the strange difference are so few. It is a wonderful touch, I always think, in the play of Hamlet, that, while the prince gazes on the spirit of his father, noting every expression and gesture—even his dress, as he passes through ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... it was plain that miracles were "incredible," and "impossible," per se; but he was immediately contradicted by a second, who said that he really could not see any thing incredible or impossible about them; that all that was wanting to make them credible was sufficient evidence, which perhaps had in no ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... the reiteration of my already expressed opinion, I can merely add that I conceive the whole charge to be a base and odious calumny, unsupported by any credible testimony; a mere renewal of those disgusting persecutions which disgraced the annals of the dark ages, and one which would not for one moment be tolerated in the present day among a ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... For example, she is standing one night at her window, looking out on the Maeler lake. 'I wrapped my mantilla shiveringly around me, stepped back from the window, shut it, and said with a slight sigh: In Venice the moonlight nights were very different.' Really this would be hardly credible, did any other than a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... of admirable poetry in dialogue. Beddoes' genius was essentially lyrical: he had imagination, the gift of style, the mastery of rhythm, a strange choiceness and curiosity of phrase. But of really dramatic power he had nothing. He could neither conceive a coherent plot, nor develop a credible situation. He had no grasp on human nature, he had no conception of what character might be in men and women, he had no faculty of expressing emotion convincingly. Constantly you find the most beautiful poetry where it is absolutely inappropriate, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... nettles of despair, he took the final step. His ruin became definitive. His evil goddess saw to it that an opportunity should present itself. (How simple all this reads! As I read it over it does not seem credible. Think of a man who has reached the height of his ambition, has dwelt there serenely, and then falls in this silly, inexcusable fashion! Well, that is human nature, the human part of it. Only here and there do ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... It appears quite credible, therefore, that a "fluid" of some sort does exist, and that its liberation, under certain peculiar conditions, should produce odd physical phenomena; and this conviction has been rendered almost a certainty by the ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... the long siege really ends. It is hardly credible yet. For 118 days we have been cut off from the world. All that time we have been more or less under fire, sometimes under terrible fire. What it will be to mix with the great world again and live each day in comparative security we can ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... addition to the information now required in the application of a citizen of the United States that he owes allegiance to the United States and that he does not acknowledge allegiance to any other government and must submit an affidavit from at least two credible witnesses having good means of the knowledge in substantiation of his statements of birth and residence and loyalty. The same fee shall be collected by diplomatic and consular officers of the United States for issuing passports to residents of the Insular Possessions as is now required ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... and then with perfect fearlessness actually flew down into its gaping mouth. I then recollected an account I had read of a bird on the Nile of that description, which is known by the name of siksak—the trochilus. It is stated by two or three credible witnesses that it performs the part of tooth-picker to the monster. Whether it was so occupied or not we could not tell, but presently the crocodile appeared to rouse itself up and to crawl towards the water, into which he plunged, ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... spiritualist medium with whom Browning came in contact. These Memoirs constitute a more thorough and artistic self-revelation than any monologue that Browning ever wrote. The ghosts, the raps, the flying hands, the phantom voices are infinitely the most respectable and infinitely the most credible part of the narrative. But the bragging, the sentimentalism, the moral and intellectual foppery of the composition is everywhere, culminating perhaps in the disgusting passage in which Home describes Mrs. Browning ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... on his iron hills, Rotting on some wild shore with ribs of wreck, Or like an old-world mammoth bulked in ice, Not to be molten out.' And roughly spake My father, 'Tut, you know them not, the girls. Boy, when I hear you prate I almost think That idiot legend credible. Look you, Sir! Man is the hunter; woman is his game: The sleek and shining creatures of the chase, We hunt them for the beauty of their skins; They love us for it, and we ride them down. Wheedling and siding with them! Out! for shame! Boy, there's no rose that's half so dear to ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... that if we would make any unlawful use of the Jail, he would oppose it; and also mentions that there have many unfair means been used for signing the Association, and uniting the people; for he was informed by credible gentlemen in New-York, that they were obliged to unite, otherwise they could not live there. And that he was also informed, by good authority, that likewise two-thirds of the Canajoharie and German Flatts people have been forced to sign; and, ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... explosion. The next morning, at a distance of about a couple of miles from the camp, a huge hole was discovered in the ground,—as if blasting operations, on an enormous scale, had recently been carried on. In the hole itself, and round about it, were found fragments of what seemed bodies; credible witnesses have assured me that they were bodies neither of men nor women, but of creatures of some monstrous growth. I prefer to believe, since no scientific examination of the remains took place, that these witnesses ignorantly, ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... kissed mine hand,' faltered Alice, but it was quite credible that not a word had passed. The marriage was a business contract between the houses of Wark and Raby, and a grand speculation for Sir Richard Nevil, that was all; but gentle Alice had no reluctance beyond mere maidenly ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spoke as follows: "My dear little boy, I am not striking you for any wrong that you have done, but only to make you remember that that lizard which you see in the fire is a salamander, a creature which has never been seen before by any one of whom we have credible information." So saying, he kissed me and gave me ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... much the same as if they had been really pledged to the licensed broker. The good woman hid them away carefully in the back drawers of the dresser, sending up as much money for the poor little trinkets as she thought it at all credible that any man in his senses could possibly advance—if she had given altogether too much, she thought it probable that even the unsuspicious Le Bretons would detect the kindly deception—at the time remarking to John that 'if ever them pore dear young creechurs was ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... you read this, conceal the following lines from him, even were he your father. It is a stain on the stuff of which my character is made—that Napoleon Bonaparte, for the sake of a human being's destruction, should have been deeply moved and compelled to retire to his bed, is a thing barely credible, though it is true, and I cannot confess it ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... evil spirits, than evil men: evil unembodied spirits, than evil embodied spirits. And as to storms, we know there are such things; and it is no worse that evil spirits raise them, than that they rise.' CROSBIE. 'But it is not credible, that witches should have effected what they are said in stories to have done.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, I am not defending their credibility. I am only saying, that your arguments are not good, and will not overturn the belief of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... born a few years (at the most twenty) after the death of Justin; and we have seen how the author of "Supernatural Religion" evidently considers the works of Justin to be anterior to the Fourth Gospel. Is it credible, or oven conceivable, that a man of Origen's intellect, learning, and research should write twenty or thirty books of commentaries on a false Gospel which was forged ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... son hath ordained for thee, that thy soul may bless me. Isaac said to him: Who art thou? To whom he answered, I am thy first begotten son Esau. Isaac then was greatly abashed and astonied, and marvelled more than can be thought credible. And then he was in a trance, as the master of histories saith, in which he had knowledge that God would that Jacob should have the blessing. And said to Esau: Who then was he that right now a little tofore thy coming brought to me venison? And I have eaten of all that he ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... A very credible and interesting biography of Mark Twain might be compiled from his own works; and Roughing it is full of autobiography of a coloured sort, though in the main correct. His joy in the prospect of that trip, the exciting details of the long journey, are all narrated with ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... step in a criminal prosecution, is to obtain a warrant for the apprehension of the accused party. In ordinary cases, a warrant is granted by any justice of the peace upon information, on the oath of some credible witness, of facts from which it appears that a crime has been committed, and that the person against whom the warrant is sought to be obtained, is probably the guilty party, and is a document under the hand and seal of the justice, directed generally to the constable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... the case of ordinary heliotropic movements, it is hardly credible that they result directly from the action of the light, without any special adaptation. We may illustrate what we mean by the hygroscopic movements of plants: if the tissues on one side of an organ permit of rapid evaporation, they will dry quickly and contract, causing the part to bend to ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... does this happen that reapers and others often stand round the last patch of corn armed with sticks or guns, with which they kill the animals as they dart out of their last refuge among the stalks. Now, primitive man, to whom magical changes of shape seem perfectly credible, finds it most natural that the spirit of the corn, driven from his home in the ripe grain, should make his escape in the form of the animal which is seen to rush out of the last patch of corn as it falls under the scythe of the reaper. Thus the identification of the corn-spirit with an animal ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Were they written for the stage? Decayed as was the taste for tragedy, tragedies may occasionally have been acted.[206] But there are considerations which suggest doubt as to whether the plays of Seneca were written with any such purpose. Even under Nero it is scarcely credible that the introduction of the mangled fragments of Hippolytus upon the stage would be possible or palatable.[207] Medea kills her children coram populo, and, not content with killing them, flings their ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... disordered condition of the brain, making them subjective semblances instead of objective realities. But one is continually being puzzled and perplexed with evidence contradicting this hypothesis, which, upon any other subject a priori credible to the reason and judgment, would be received as satisfactory and decisive without a moment's hesitation. In truth, with all the light which science is able to shed upon it, and all the resolute shutting of the eyes at points which no elucidating theory is available ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... the night before, two of whom were mortally wounded. There were two men, scarcely retaining the appearance of human beings, who had been fearfully burned and injured by the explosion of an infernal machine. All trace of human features had departed; it seemed hardly credible that such blackened, distorted, and mangled frames could contain human souls. There were others who had received musket-shot wounds during the election, and numbers of broken heads, and wounds from knives. It was sad to know that so much of the suffering to be seen ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... poetry. For the choral songs are, and ever must have been, the most difficult part of the tragedy; there occur in them the most involved verbal compounds, the newest expressions, the boldest images, the most recondite allusions. Is it credible that the poets would, one and all, have been thus prodigal of the stores of art and genius, if they had known that in the representation the whole must have been lost to the audience,—at a time too, when the means of after publication were so difficult, and expensive, and the copies of their ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... been written, by friend or foe, with good or ill intent, as about him, who subsequently carried out the astounding feat of climbing to the throne of France as Napoleon III. And it seems certain that he has been given credit for knowing much of which he must have been ignorant to an extent hardly credible, even now, in face ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... Jesuits, parting with them, it is said, on good terms, and with a reputation of excellent acquirements and unimpeachable morals. This last is very credible. The cravings of a deep ambition, the hunger of an insatiable intellect, the intense longing for action and achievement subdued in him all other passions; and in his faults, the love of pleasure had no part. ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... of a canoe, and other casualties happening near hostile Indians. The slave has been known, at the imminent risque of his life, to carry his disabled master through trackless woods with labour and fidelity scarce credible; and the master has been equally tender on similar occasions of the humble friend who stuck closer than a brother; who was baptized with the same baptism, nurtured under the same roof, and often rocked in the same cradle with himself. These gifts of domestics to the younger members of the family, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... with the open purpose of attacking it on the next day, should have lain down almost at the feet of the desperate foe, and have gone quietly to sleep. Only the recorded word of the general in command makes this fact credible. He also says, to be sure, that the soldiers "would have been called in two minutes more;" but he admits that they had not been called when the red army made the attack, without waiting till the white army woke of its own accord to begin fighting at leisure by daylight, ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... incredible in the apocalypse of the wreck and other marvels of clairvoyance, than in that singular adaptation of another person's senses, which is a common phenomenon of the simple forms of mesmerism. If it is credible that a person in a mesmeric sleep can taste the sourness of the vinegar on another person's palate, I am ready to go the whole length of the transmigration of senses. But after all, except from hearing so much, I am as ignorant ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... have been another motive, although it be hardly credible, both for publishing this work, and threatening a second part: It is not soon conceived how far the sense of a man's vanity will transport him. This man must have somewhere heard, that dangerous enemies have been often bribed to silence with money or ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... opened, whether to the families exiled from the suburbs, or in supplement to the hospitals. The amount of relief they afforded unostentatiously, out of means that shared the general failure of accustomed resource, when the famine commenced, would be scarcely credible if stated. Admirable, too, were the fortitude and resignation of the genuine Parisian bourgeoisie,—the thrifty tradesfolk and small rentiers,—that class in which, to judge of its timidity when opposed to a mob, courage is not the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not so frequent here, their estates are; and the pleasure of West Suffolk is much of it supported by the wealth of High Suffolk, for the richness of the lands and application of the people to all kinds of improvement is scarce credible; also the farmers are so very considerable and their farms and dairies so large that it is very frequent for a farmer to have 1,000 pounds stock upon ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... the Peanut. This, however, was soon found to be impracticable. The more we studied the few data at hand, the more were we convinced of their utter unreliability. The fact is, so far as the writer is aware, there are no credible data of this crop existing. No authoritative and systematic attempt to gather and compile the statistics of the Peanut has ever been made, and until this is done we shall never know its full extent and value. The "estimates"—mere guesses—of certain mercantile houses and newspapers, ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones
... kind of accident I have fallen considerably into American History in these days; and am even looking out for American Geography to help me. Jared Sparks, Marshall, &c. are hickory and buckskin; but I do catch a credible trait of human life from them here and there; Michelet's genial champagne froth,—alas, I could find no fact in it that would stand handling; and so have broken down in the middle of La France, and run over ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... submarine still lying at her wharf the whole weak fabric of my concoction would have tumbled about our heads; but evidently he decided the message must be genuine, nor indeed was there any good reason to doubt it since it would scarce have seemed credible to him that two slaves would voluntarily have given themselves into custody in any such manner as this. It was the very boldness of the ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... as to a possible alteration in British neutral policy was increasing. July 11, Adams reported that he had learned "from a credible source" that the British Cabinet might soon "take new ground[903]." This despatch if it reached Seward previous to the Cabinet of July 22, presumably added strength to his conviction of the inadvisability of now issuing the proclamation. In that Cabinet, Seward in fact went much ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... is never qualified, in itself, to guarantee the reality of what it represents. No doubt the popular writer leads us to believe that the matter really is as he describes it, but does not require anything more firm; for, though he may make the truth of a proposition credible to our feelings, he does not make it absolutely certain. Now, feeling may always teach us what is, but not what must be. The philosophical writer raises this belief to a conviction, for he proves by undeniable reasons that the matter ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... distrust him utterly. He knew his wife was with child, but he had left her not long ago in perfect health; and Henchard's treachery was more credible than his story. He had in his time heard bitter ironies from Henchard's lips, and there might be ironies now. He quickened the horse's pace, and had soon risen into the high country lying between there and Mellstock, Henchard's spasmodic run after him lending yet more substance ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... English Milord, and Arowhena a Russian Countess; that all the others had been drowned, and that the despatches which we had carried were lost. I came afterwards to learn that this story would not have been credible, had not the captain been for some weeks at sea, for I found that when we were picked up, the Germans had already long been masters of Paris. As it was, the captain settled the whole story for me, and I ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... be not unreasonably asked by those who have learned to regard whatever is found in B or [Symbol: Aleph] as oracular,—'But is it credible that on a point like this such authorities as [Symbol: Aleph]ABCD should all be ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... credible enough in old times, when the earth was held to be all but the whole universe, that God should descend on earth, and take on Him human nature, to save human beings. Is it credible now? This little corner of the systems and the ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... their impudence. Gabriel recounts among other reasons why both parts are not given that a distinction should be made between laymen and presbyters. And it is credible that the chief reason why the prohibition of the one part is defended is this, namely, that the dignity of the order may be the more highly exalted by a religious rite. To say nothing more severe, this is a human design; and whither ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... make that central figure an Italian. First of all the thing is perfectly credible: Italians were swarming into the Occidental Province at the time, as anybody who will read further can see; and secondly, there was no one who could stand so well by the side of Giorgio Viola the Garibaldino, the Idealist of the old, humanitarian ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... state, of which we have no further credible antiquarian proofs, undoubtedly once existed, judging from all that we have learned concerning the several grades of civilization of wild peoples still living, or known to have lived within historic times. Man did not, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... greate aboundance of perles, which as they declared unto us they tooke oute of oysters, whereof there is taken ever alonge the rivers side and amongest the reedes and in the marishes, in so marvelous aboundance as it is scante credible. And wee have perceaved that there be as many and as greate perles found there as in any contrie in the worlde. (M223) In the seaventh leafe it followeth thus: The scituation is under 30. degrees, a good clymate, healthfull, and of goodd temperature, marvelous pleasaunte, the people goodd ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... in a log camp at the carry, and had little fear that his supplies would be molested. It was hardly credible, either, that a man with as extensive property interests as Colonel Ward possessed would dare to destroy wantonly the goods of a railroad company in the strong position of the Poquette road. However, Parker resolved to ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... attaching perhaps undue importance to the fact that some kind of fittings have been removed from the doors? They may have been removed by the late occupier, and the call to the police depot may have been made with the idea of securing a witness, and a credible one, to the presence of the crate here on the night ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... of the Pharisees, we have already shown[3] that it is not consistent, while the authority of the popes of Rome stands in need of more credible evidence; the latter, indeed, I reject simply on this ground, for if the popes could point out to us the meaning of Scripture as surely as did the high priests of the Jews, I should not be deterred by the fact that there have been heretic and impious ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... story Mr. Lodge gives us to understand he found in the pages of that very credulous writer Dr. Von Holst, although I have not looked into his volumes to see whether he makes the charge, I have only to say that I never heard of such an occurrence before, and that it would require the oath of a very credible witness to the fact to make me believe it." I may add that I have taken the trouble not only to look into Dr. Von Holst's volumes but to examine the whole matter thoroughly. The proof is absolute ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... offend his enemies? Or, if it be to be thought a natural proneness, there is against that a much more potent inclination inbred, which about this time of a man's life solicits most—the desire of house and family of his own; to which nothing is esteemed more helpful than the early entering into credible employment, and nothing more hindering than this affected solitariness. And though this were enough, yet there is to this another act, if not of pure, yet of refined nature, no less available to ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... recalled as those already recited, but so atrocious and devoid of motive, that it was a matter of grave doubt whether the facts should be given. It seemed too deplorable that such an occurrence could be recorded as the act of human beings; furthermore, would it be credible? It has been intimated that the present endeavor is to give a complete history of events as they occurred: no material item suppressed, nothing imaginary included; therefore the remaining details ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... credible, and the old monkish chronicler who was responsible for the Registrum Primum and its rugged Latin, may have had authentic proof of the truth of his assertion. The manuscript dates from the thirteenth century, and no considerable period, historically considered, had then passed ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... finest of their kind—in clubs, on ships, in railway trains; but no time at all in any place remotely resembling the house in which he now waited, a stranger in every sense of the word, more strange to the everyday, fine type of home known to the American of good birth and breeding than may seem credible as it ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... we need to recur no further back than a few months, when undoubtedly the Accounts and Letters carried by Mr. Rob[in]son would have been attended with very unhappy if not fatal effects, had not this Town been so attentive as to have Contradicted those false accounts by the depositions of many credible persons under Oath. But it cannot be supposed that a Community will be so Attentive but upon the most Alarming Events: In general Individuals are following their private concerns, while it is to be feared the restless Adversaries are forming the most dangerous Plans for the Ruin ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... legend were not one which I heard on my grandmother's knee, and which had established its place among things credible before my childish judgment could analyze its probability, I question whether I should have the face to ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... drinke without feare as I accustomed to do, it was a signe that I was whole, and in mine Assie wits, where contrary if I did flie and abhorre the tast of the water, it was evident proofe of my madness, which thing he said that he had read in ancient and credible books, whereupon they tooke a bason of cleere water, and presented it before me: but I as soone as I perceived the wholesome water of my life, ran incontinently, thrusting my head into the bason, drank as though I had beene greatly athirst; then they stroked me with their hands, ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... literally tried by his peers, and that scenes disgraceful to public justice were enacted in the retiring room. It required all the authority of the court to repress antipathies so openly avowed. The rancour excited by this question is scarcely credible: a gentleman addressed the judge from the box before he was sworn, and asked if he was expected to deliver a verdict with twice convicted felons? Appearances of partiality and corruption were quoted ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... festival the prostrations of the worshippers were so violent that three-fourths of them perished, not improbably an exaggerated memory of orgiastic rites.[808] Dr. Joyce thinks that these notices are as incredible as the mythic tales in the Dindsenchas. Yet the tales were doubtless quite credible to the pagan Irish, and the ritual notices are certainly founded on fact. Dr. Joyce admits the existence of foundation sacrifices in Ireland, and it is difficult to understand why human victims may not have been offered on other ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch |
