"Disbelieve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Well for the King," said the man, "but I am sorry for your Lordship." And like Wolfe, Dundee answered, "It is the less matter for me, seeing the day goes well for my master." As his officers returned from the pursuit they found him on the field, and it is said, though one would be glad to disbelieve it, stripped by the very men whom he had led to victory. By his side was found a bundle of papers. Among them was a letter from Melfort, bidding him be sure that both he and James would feel themselves bound by no promise of toleration circumstances had induced them to make. ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... Gerald's rivalry, at least of his identity with Barnard, and, consequently, of his power over Isora, there was, and there could be, no feeling short of certainty. But of what nature was that power? Had not Isora assured me that it was not love? Why should I disbelieve her? Nay, did she not love myself? had not her cheek blushed and her hand trembled when I addressed her? Were these signs the counterfeits of love? Were they not rather of that heart's dye which no skill can counterfeit? She had declared that she could not, ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... told her fiercely. "It was deadly earnest. I would have given all I had to be able to disbelieve ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... from the monkey is an ingenious joke which will not bear the test of examination, and the Scriptural account may still be accepted. I firmly believe in man as an original creation just as much as I disbelieve in any development of the Flying Lemur (Galeopithecus) from the Bat, or that the habits of an animal would in time materially alter its anatomy, as in the case of the abnormal length of the hind toe and nail of the Jacana. It is not that the ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... crooked cocked hat: 'Don't you think that an officer of my experience and observation would be able to distinguish the explosion of a shell from that of a ground blast?' 'No shell exploded, General,' said the Colonel, 'within the limits of my regiment.' 'The d——l it didn't—would you have me disbelieve my own ears? Now, I have issued orders enough about permitting these unexploded shells to lie about, and I purpose holding the Colonels responsible for all damage. Suppose that explosion was heard at corps head-quarters, as it doubtless was, and the inquiry is made from what quarter the rebels ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... and adding to the list of the primitive deities, appears far more evident in the ceremonies and usages than the personal creations of the faith. We may be reasonably skeptical as to what Herodotus heard of the origin of rites or gods from Egyptian priests; but there is no reason to disbelieve the testimony of his experience, when he asserts, that the forms and solemnities of one worship closely resemble those of another; the imitation of a foreign ceremony is perfectly compatible with the aboriginal invention of a national ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... vient de loin,"—these proverbs date from the seventeenth century. It was not expected of such adventurous gentlemen that they should tell the simple truth, any more than we expect veracity from sportsmen. We listen without surprise and disbelieve without a smile. Some exaggeration, too, was pardonable to help out the verse; but "nobis ubi defuit orbis" goes beyond a reasonable license. The mountain Metavara is in Lat. 68 deg. 30'; the North Cape in 71 deg. 10'. There were still one hundred and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... be rude enough to disbelieve her, and, as will be seen, her supernatural powers had limits; but it was odd, though fortunate, that they should have broken down exactly at this important juncture. Who made those rebellious candles take him to that chamber and couch, unknown ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... against the humdrum past. That's another point, Mr. Elliot. Impress on your class that many Greeks and most Romans were frightfully stupid, and if they disbelieve you, read Ctesiphon with them, or Valerius Flaccus. Whatever is ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... unknown shore; as nearly as possible that was fifteen degrees; the length of the narrow strait by which they had made their way across that land to regain the open sea was about three miles and a half; thence onward to the island, which they had been assured, on evidence that they could not disbelieve, to be upon the site of Gibraltar, was four degrees; while from Gibraltar to Gourbi Island was seven degrees or but little more. What was it altogether? Was it not less than thirty degrees? In that latitude, the degree of longitude represents eight and forty miles. What, then, did it all amount ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... moment in a court of justice where, as in a patent case, some great issue depends on the question whether certain ideas had first been enunciated by the author of Genesis or the author of the Avesta; suppose him subjected to a cross-examination by a brow-beating lawyer, whose business it is to disbelieve and make others disbelieve every assertion that the witness makes, and we are afraid the learned Professor would break down completely. Now it may be said that this is not the spirit in which learned inquiries should be conducted, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... awkward situation by protesting that she was not tired but hungry, and suggested that Dr Alder should continue his instructive conversation at supper. Mollified by this dexterous evasion, which he saw no reason to disbelieve, the dean politely escorted his companion to the regions of champagne and chicken, both of which aided the lady to sustain further doses of dry-as-dust facts dug out of a monastic past by the persevering ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... thing or two. One of them is this: It's not enough to suspect everybody; you must have no preconceptions. Divest yourself entirely of every fixed idea if you wish to cope with a rascal of this calibre. Don't jump at conclusions. We should disbelieve everything, as well as distrust everybody. That's the road to success; and I mean to ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... than you, my dear, and I should know better. I may as well confess that I hoped it would be Mr. Stocks, but I can't disbelieve my own eyes. The child becomes wretched ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... also took care to tell Lizzy that it would be no pleasure to me, and that if it was at dinner, I hoped I should not sit next to him. I said these things to her oftener than I should naturally have done, because I saw that in her wish to disbelieve them she really did so, and I wished to make her understand me, in case either Papa or Mama or the boys should be speaking of it before her. You will say, why did I not speak more to Mama herself?—partly because I was afraid of bringing forward the ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... behold myriads of immortal creatures fast hastening to these regions of destruction? Whence is it that there is so much apathy, lukewarmness, and indifference to a brother's eternal welfare. Is it not too often, perhaps, that there is a latent scepticism which induces us to disbelieve the solemn declaration of the Omnipotent—even when he swears by himself—that every jot and tittle of his threatenings shall be accomplished? Surely were it not for some such spirit, we should never rest satisfied with the feeble efforts we may have made to lead the sinner back to his offended ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... bread with an air of noble indifference. "Eh? Why, indeed? He used to say 'twas for being too frolicsome. He never done no wrong—not what you might call wrong: or so he maintained, an' 'twasn't for me to disbelieve ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Philip's father—not on other grounds—it would be unreasonable, it would be wrong, for us to entertain the idea of marriage; and I have given up thinking of him as a lover. I am telling you the truth, and you have no right to disbelieve me; I have kept my word to you, and you have never detected me in a falsehood. I should not only not encourage, I should carefully avoid, any intercourse with Philip on any other footing than of quiet friendship. You may think that I am unable ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... My lady, I disbelieved in equality at home because it was against nature, and for that same reason I as utterly disbelieve ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... that the Lady Grisell should go with him, representing that all the changes of fortune in the convulsed kingdom of England were sure to be quickly known there, and that she was as near the centre of action in Flanders as in Durham, besides that she would be out of reach of any enemies who might disbelieve the hare transformation. ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... doctrine in this volume, which will be more unpopular with its readers, than this. Not a few will, I fear, utterly disbelieve it. They look at the exterior appearance of some young friend, a little older than themselves, who has been lifted into business and gone on a year or two, and all appears fair and encouraging. They ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... than the prisoner; but if the jury were satisfied with the evidence for the prosecution and believed it, that character ought not to avail her. If, however, upon taking all the circumstances of the case into consideration, the jury should see any reason to disbelieve the witnesses for the prosecution, or which led them to doubt of the prisoner's guilt, they should recollect the very excellent character which had been given her, and in that case it ought to bear great weight with them towards an acquittal. He also alluded to the conduct of the accused ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... moment Red might have been turned to stone. It didn't occur to him to disbelieve Slim at this point. Slim looked too genuinely the bearer of just such tidings. He ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov
... implicitly to believe in Catholic doctrine. Blougram's apology for himself amounts to this,—that he does not believe with absolute certainty any more than does Gigadibs; but, on the other hand, Gigadibs does not disbelieve with absolute certainty, so Blougram's state is one of belief shaken occasionally by doubt, while Gigadibs is one of unbelief shaken by ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... believed in (and acted on), then, and perhaps not till then, will be the time for the great unappreciated. They will go quietly to sleep, to waken a hundred years hence, and learn how posterity likes their pictures and poems. They may not always be satisfied with the results, but no artist will disbelieve in the favourable verdict of posterity till the supposed Australian method is applied to men as well ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... mysteries. I have chased Mystery for more years than I shall own, and, so far as I can see, whenever you open the door on her secret chamber, she shuts a door on the other side and is gone into a further holy of holies. I've come to disbelieve in those who tell me that they have caged ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... the antient is a piece of private history, the truth of which my beloved cares not to own, and indeed affects to disbelieve: as she does also some puisny gallantries of her foolish brother; which, by way of recrimination, I have hinted at, without naming my informant ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... a devoted couple, and the only cloud on their happiness was caused by Conky's expectations from a mysterious and eccentric uncle. For a long time I was inclined to disbelieve in his existence, as he never "materialised." But I was converted from my scepticism, some three years ago, when, on meeting Conky, I was informed that Uncle Joseph had invited himself on a short visit. My friend betrayed a certain agitation. "You know," he said, "it is twenty years since ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... however, give a reason for the powerful smell of the male deer; and, after some hesitation, I have determined to set it down here, for the reader to accept or reject, as he thinks proper. I neither believe nor disbelieve it; for although I do not put great faith in gaucho natural history, my own observations have not infrequently confirmed statements of theirs, which a sceptical person would have regarded as wild ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... made void, or some such expression, as indeed it is employed in other places of Scripture, where it is translated 'disannulled,' 'made void,' and the like. And if we take that meaning, there emerge from this great word of the Master's two thoughts, that to disbelieve God's word is to thwart God's purpose, and that to thwart His purpose is to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Murray's shewing me some beautiful verses of yours. I do implore you for God sake not to publish them. Could I have seen you one moment, I would explain why. I have only time to add that, however those who surround you may make you disbelieve it, you will draw ruin on your own head and hers if at this moment you shew these. I know not from what quarter the report originates. You accused me, and falsely; but if you could hear all that is said at this moment, you would believe one, who, though your enemy, though for ever alienated ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... But, (as I have elsewhere shewn,) it were base treason to speak of conscience as Essayists and Reviewers speak of it. With them, it is indeed impossible to argue. They must first withdraw from the cause which they have betrayed; cease to profess the teaching which they disbelieve; resign their commission in a Church to whose Doctrine and Discipline they openly proclaim themselves to be opposed. I will not argue with them, while they presume to write B.D. and D.D. after their names,—hold Chaplaincies,—preside over Schools ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... the world. I did not find myself able to discredit her realistic and vivid description of the visits of Joseph Bonaparte to his wilderness domain in a six-horse chariot, followed by numerous retainers. Neither did I find myself able to disbelieve in the accuracy of her picturesque description of Joseph Bonaparte's Venetian gondola floating upon the waters of Northern New York, or her account of his dinner-service of "golden plate" spread out by the road-side on one memorable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... why he shouldn't.... Why should he disbelieve more than...? All I mean is, I don't know." The speaker ended abruptly; but then that may have been because they were at the church door. Possibly as a protest against having carried chat almost into the precinct, Mrs. Nightingale's preliminary burial of her face in her hands lasted ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... had taken his captives into Atlantis with him. It was impossible to disbelieve Tode's statement that he had been offered the supreme power in the city. Tode's egotism would have compelled him to blurt out that fact. Besides, Tode had certainly ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... nor disbelieve in that and many more modern discoveries of the same kind; I do not think it right to reject them or to give blind credence. Not a day passes but some discovery excites our wonder and admiration, and points out to us how little we do know. The great fault is, that when people ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... houses where nature is scarcely known. I am not one of those who look for perfection amongst the rural population of any country; perfection is not to be found amongst the children of the fall, be their abode where it may; but until the heart disbelieve the existence of a God, there is still hope for the possessor, however stained with crime he may be, for even Simon the Magician was converted. But when the heart is once steeled with infidelity, infidelity confirmed by carnal reasoning, an exuberance of the ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... could be once brought to sneer at the book, there was an end of submission to the master. Parley had not penetration enough to see his drift. "As to the book, Mr. Flatterwell," said he, "I do not know whether it be true or false; I rather neglect than disbelieve it. I am forced, indeed, to hear it read once a week; but I never look into it myself, if I can help it." "Excellent," said Flatterwell to himself; "that is just the same thing. This is safe ground for me. For whether a man does not believe in the book, or does not attend to it, it comes pretty ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... believe, if showers fall in April, that we shall have flowers in May; that if the sun shines, grain will ripen; and I believe in much natural philosophy to the same effect, which, if the stars swear to me, I will say the stars speak the truth. And in like manner, I will not disbelieve that which I see wished for and expected on earth, solely because the astrologers have read it in ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... in a land that had no historic past. The knowledge that my individual life is but a span, a breath; that in a little while I too must wither and mingle like one of those fallen yellow leaves with the mould, does not grieve me. I know it and yet disbelieve it; for am I not here alive, where men have inhabited for thousands of years, feeling what I now feel—their oneness with everlasting nature and the undying human family? The very soil and wet carpet of moss on which their feet were ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... may be no question of belief or disbelief. The picture of Falstaff or of Lafayette, a horse or a centaur, arises equally, and is put together, let us suppose, by simple association. But as soon as I think about either I believe or disbelieve, and equally whether I judge the object to be a thought or to be a 'real fact,' whether I say that I could have seen Lafayette, or that I could not have seen Falstaff. It is not a question between reality or unreality, but between two classes of reality. A dream is a real dream, just as a man is ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... I always believing that at last we were getting ready in earnest. You will wonder, perhaps, how it is I have allowed myself to be deceived for so long. It was because I believed in him during the first three years, and during the second three I had already lost so much time that I dared not disbelieve in him. It was always: 'Just six months more, Cleo, dear, and then we shall astonish the world.' And then the vision of that vast theatre was too fascinating for me to abandon. His excuses were always plausible. Now he had made some terribly ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... and see who it is, and tell them that your mother and I have gone out. If any one is shameless enough to disbelieve a young girl— it must be a ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... of heaped corpses. Cromwell was meditating an abolition of the Parliament, and a practical coronation of himself. The world had ceased to wonder at English democracy giving laws to their quondam rulers, and the democracy was beginning to be a little tired of itself, to disbelieve in its own irksome discipline, and to sigh for the flesh-pots of a modified Presbyterian monarchy. Cromwell, indeed, was at the height of his glory, his honours lie thick upon him, and now, if ever, he is the regal Cromwell that ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... not only believe in a life after death; they are even of opinion that they would never die at all if it were not for the maleficent arts of sorcerers who cut the vital thread prematurely short. In other words, they disbelieve in what we call a natural death; they think that all men are naturally immortal in this life, and that every death which takes place is in fact a violent death inflicted by the hand of a human enemy, though in many cases the foe is invisible and works ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... observe: Your doubt means that you disbelieve Jesus; therefore you are an "Infidel" instead of an "Agnostic." To which the agnostic may reply: No; for two reasons: first, because your evidence that Jesus said what you say he said is worth very little; and secondly, because a man may be an agnostic, in the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... only do I disbelieve in the need for compensation, but I believe that the seeking for rewards and punishments out of this life leads men to a ruinous ignorance of the fact that their inevitable ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... believe that these libels have been got up at your house, and by you, because that fact has been attested by persons who have been in your service, and who have seen them in progress; beyond this no one makes me believe or disbelieve anything." ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... first, then, if we can lay down any conditions which such a better governing body would satisfy. Afterwards it will be open to us to believe or disbelieve in its attainment. Imagination is the essence of creation. If we can imagine a better government we are half-way to ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... disbelieve this story. They argue that its premises are in disaccord with the known laws governing human nature, that its details do not square with the average of probability. People who have seen and conversed with Jimmy accept ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... I sent you last week, relating to an intended disposition in consequence of Lord Holland's resignation. The court confidently deny the whole plan, and ascribe it to the fertility of Charles Townshend's brain. However, as they have their Charles Townshends too, I do not totally disbelieve it. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... Januarius. I have no doubt a good many Romanists would be glad to be quit of him. He is part of the price they have to pay in order that their title to the possession of other miracles may be quieted. If you can convince the convert that he can disbelieve Januarius of Naples without losing his grip of Paul of Tarsus, you will be well employed; but if you begin with merry gibes, and end with contemptuously demanding that he should have done with such nonsense and fling the rubbish overboard, he will ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... or seven weeks ago at Geneva," continued Lynde. "I recognized Miss Denham at once; but later I came to doubt and finally to disbelieve that I had ever seen her elsewhere. I refused to accept the testimony of my eyes and ears because—because so much of my happiness depended on my ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... act in their favor. Instead of rejoicing that heaven had, as it were, providentially preserved this city from plunder and destruction, by delivering so great a part of the enemy into our hands with so little effusion of blood, they stubbornly affected to disbelieve it till within an hour, nay, half an hour, of the prisoners arriving; and the Quakers put forth a testimony, dated the 20th of December, signed "John Pemberton," declaring their attachment to the British government.* These men are continually harping ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... was candid and amused. There was an underlying gravity beneath the smile, and for people who had believed in him as devoutly as his two listeners it was hard to disbelieve him now. ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... which represent all that the most recent explorations have been able to gather. In these well-ordered collections you would find as satisfactory an exhibition of results as you could ask for. [Applause.] You need not fear, however, that, because we believe in science, we have learned any more to disbelieve in the living God. As we stand in the midst of one of the halls of our splendid museum, and see arrayed before us all the forms of vertebrate life, from man down to the lowest type, and see how one and ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... should enter? I only wish to declare to her, and to you, an innocence I have no means of proving, but which you cannot disbelieve if I swear it, here and now, by your sister Carmel's sacred disfigurement. Such depravity could not exist, as such a vow from the lips guilty of the crime you charge me with. Look at me, Arthur. I considered ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... capable of existing without it? we would answer, Yes: the little child is certain of its mother's existence before it is capable of knowing God, and the veriest Atheist is certain of his own existence and that of his fellow-men, even when he professes to doubt or to disbelieve the existence of God. It may be true that the essential nature and omniscient knowledge of God is the ultimate and eternal standard of truth and certainty, or, in the words of Fenelon, that "il n'y a qu'une seule verite, et qu'une seule maniere de bien juger, qui est, ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... the Chymists Doctrine out of their Dark and Smoakie Laboratories, and both brought it into the open light, and shewn the weakness of their Proofs, that have hitherto been wont to be brought for it, either Judicious Men shall henceforth be allowed calmly and after due information to disbelieve it, or those abler Chymists, that are zealous for the reputation of it, will be oblig'd to speak plainer then hitherto has been done, and maintain it by better Experiments and Arguments then Those Carneades hath examin'd: so That he hopes, the Curious will one Way or other Derive either ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... claim to be fully equipped for the understanding of all mysteries. My difficulty is that while there are two explanations of a thing—a transcendental one and a material one—I hanker after the material one. But it isn't because I want to disbelieve the transcendental one. It is because I want to believe it so much, that I feel that I must exclude all possibility of ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... a beautiful butter-cracker last Christmas, and a lovely gingersnap, and a delicious rind of cheese, and—and—lots of things? I should be very ungrateful if I did not believe in Santa Claus, and I certainly shall not disbelieve in him at the very moment when I am expecting him to arrive with a ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... having appeared at different points in the colony before the arrival of the Topaze frigate, the ship accused by contagionists par metier, of having introduced the disease; so that, contrary to what Dr. Macmichael supposes, those who disbelieve the communicability of cholera, have no necessity whatever in this case for pleading a coinsidency between the breaking out of the disease, and the arrival of the frigate; indeed, his friend Dr. ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... suffer the natural consequences of his vices, he feels it to be but a poor consolation, that others are now reaping the benefit of his sin. Is it surprising that such a work induced thousands to disbelieve in the holy providence of God, and prepared multitudes to 'do evil that good might come?'" (Christian Spectator, vol. ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... earliest opportunity to inform these gentlemen composing a majority of the committee that we have in the United States no "religious system;" that this is a secular government. That it has no religious creed; that it does not believe nor disbelieve in a future state of reward and punishment; that it neither affirms nor denies the existence of a "living God;" and that the only god, so far as this government is concerned; is the legally expressed will of a majority of the people. Under our flag the Chinese have the same right to ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... himself, authoritatively adopted. What a picture have we now before us! Destroy man's belief in, and reverence for, God and Christ, as they do; lead him to ridicule the atonement, the only remedy for sin; make him disbelieve the Bible; take away from his mind all distinction between right and wrong, and assure him that he is accountable to no one but himself; and how better could one prepare the way to turn men into demons. All this the spirits, by their teaching, seek to do. And can any one fail to foresee ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... and a pleasure in believing them. Reasonable hesitation at such a moment is dull and phlegmatic. If the accused one be near enough to ourselves to make the accusation a matter of personal pain, of course we disbelieve. But, if the distance be beyond this, we are almost ready to think that anything may be true of anybody. In this case nobody really loved Melmotte and everybody did believe. It was so probable that such a man should have done ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... and fought against unbelief. I asked the Christians around me for help. Unsophisticated fool! I might as well have announced that I was a harlot. My respectability vanished in one slap. Some said it was impossible to disbelieve in the existence of a God: I was only doing it for notoriety, and they washed their hands ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... have been historically identical? It is hard to disbelieve it. Yet the nations were bitter enemies. Their languages 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 ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... abhor every other dependence the things you count good in me I reckon but filthy rags. At the same time, I know that ever since that day, forty years ago, I have lived in his service, and tried to live to his glory. And now, Sir, shall I disbelieve his promise? do you think he would be pleased if ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... mother who only lived two weeks, and Pietro and Violante gone! Only his saint to guard him—that was why she chose the new one; he would not be tired of guarding namesakes. . . . After all, she hopes her boy will come to disbelieve her history, as herself almost does. It is ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... to regain his lost dominion over the world; therefore it shall come to pass that the Lord will suffer him to become a mock and derision to all mankind, and for the first time since the world was made men will doubt his existence and disbelieve his power, and his name will be a scorn and idle word to the very children, and the old wives by their spinning-wheels. Then will be manifested some new attribute of divinity, of which as yet thou, nor I, nor any creature, may have an opportunity ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... the Provencal, quickly; "if we spoke to her, she would disbelieve us. She would no doubt appeal to Mainwaring, and Mainwaring would have no choice but to contradict us. Once put on his guard, he would control his very sadness. Lucretia, offended, might leave your house, and certainly ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that you believe with your generation. Your saints lived in an age of faith, when it was practically impossible to disbelieve what to ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... she, "I ain't going to say positively that I believe or disbelieve in ghosts, but all I tell you is what I saw. I can't explain it. I don't pretend I can, for I can't. If you can, well and good; I shall be glad, for it will stop tormenting me as it has done and always will otherwise. ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... new understanding.' Both at this interview, and in the evening at Mr. Thrale's, where he and Mr. Peter Garrick and I met again, he was vehement on the subject of the Ossian controversy; observing, 'We do not know that there are any ancient Erse manuscripts; and we have no other reason to disbelieve that there are men with three heads, but that we do not know that there are any such men.' He also was outrageous, upon his supposition that my countrymen 'loved Scotland better than truth[911],' saying, 'All of them,—nay not all,—but droves of them, would come up, and attest ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... dream," said Godfrey, "but for all that it isn't real. Still it is odd that everything important seems to happen to us within a few feet of that lady's dust, and I can't quite disbelieve in spirits and their power of impressing themselves upon us; I wish I could. The strange thing is that you should put ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... doubtless recovered: a larger per centage has disappeared for ever. Hence naturally the jealousy of barbarous Orientals that we Europeans, in groping amongst pyramids, sphynxes, and tombs, are looking for buried treasures. The wretches are not so wide astray in what they believe as in what they disbelieve. The treasures do really exist which they fancy; but then also the other treasures in the glorious antiquities have that existence for our sense of beauty which to their brutality is inconceivable. In these circumstances, why should it ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Michelangelo, under the canopy of Urban VIII., under the high altar of Clement VIII.? After considering the case from its various aspects, and weighing all the circumstances which have attended each of the barbaric invasions, I cannot see any reason why we should disbelieve the popular opinion. The tombs of S. Peter and S. Paul have been exposed but once to imminent danger, and that happened in 846, when the Saracens took possession of their respective churches and plundered them ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... unbelief followed each other, like the flow and recoil of the waves. One moment they were on the crest of the billows, and saw land ahead; the next they were down in the trough, and saw only the melancholy surge. The very fact that Peter was believed, might make them disbelieve the travellers; for how could Jesus have been in Jerusalem and Emmaus at so nearly the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... frowned. "Yes, quite so," he continued. "You have suffered so much of late that you disbelieve in anything but unhappiness. You feel it must be interminable. It was all my fault. You fancy that you are alone, with a bitter hostile world arrayed against you. And since the world is your enemy, what do you care what the enemy thinks ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... disbelieve me: the truth has pierced your heart, but you wish to deny it. Think, however, of the danger to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... philosophy. Perhaps, however, this influence led to lack of faith in his own work, to his loss of an ideal, which Zola thinks the real secret of his sudden change from novelist to journalist. Voltaire taught him to scoff and disbelieve, to demand "a quoi bon?" and that took the heart out of him. He was rather fond of exposing abuses, a habit that appears in those witty letters to the Gaulois which in 1878 obliged him to suspend that journal. His was a positive mind, interested ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... back, and commanded himself internally to Heaven; for, though a wise and strong-minded man, he was neither wiser nor more strong-minded than those of his age and education, with whom, to disbelieve witchcraft or spectres, was held ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... he felt very much disposed to disbelieve what Bill had told him, or rather, to fancy that Bill ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... Often it had seemed strange to him that so faithful and devoted a couple of retainers as Bart and Deborah Junk should favor his wooing of Sylvia and keep it from their master, seeing that they knew nothing about him. But from the woman's story—which he saw no reason to disbelieve—the two had not rested until they had been convinced of his respectability and of the truth of his story. Thus they had permitted the wooing to continue, and Paul privately applauded them for their tact in so making sure of him without committing themselves to open speech. "All ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... made a statement of God as the only Mind of the universe, the Great Reality beside whom there is absolutely nothing in existence; but as we look around at the scenes of suffering and poverty and ignorance, we are mightily tempted to disbelieve such ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... you are unbearable. Politics has made you laugh at everything, and political men have made you disbelieve everything. But when you have the honor of associating with ordinary men, and the pleasure of leaving politics for a moment, try to find your affectionate heart, which you leave with your stick when you go ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... so-called Eastern mysticism, you will come away, as has many a visitor before you, with an impression sufficient to last through an ordinary lifetime." Further on he says "If you do not come away convinced that you have been witness of a spectacle which makes you disbelieve the evidence of your own eyes and your most matter-of-fact judgment, then you are a man of stone." All of which proves nothing more than that Mr. Reid was inclined to make positive statements about subjects in which he ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... apart, and also that they could heal the sick and work that which would now appear to us miraculous. All this was considered facts but two or three centuries back, as no reader of old books (mostly Persian) is unacquainted with, or will disbelieve a priori unless his mind is irretrievably biassed by modern secular education. The story about the Mobed and Emperor Akbar and of the latter's conversion, is a well-known ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... Senator Morgan, Thurlow Weed, and a certain Whiting, a new star on the politician's horizon, have been the attorneys of the two contracting powers. I cannot yet detect any signs of such an alliance, and disbelieve the story. A short time will be necessary to see its fruits. Until I see I wait!... But were it true? Who will be taken in? I am sure it will not be Seward. Is Stanton dragged ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... dreadful moment, perhaps the only one who did not disbelieve it was Clerk Gum. Other people said there must be some mistake: it could not be. Kind old Lord Hartledon came down in his carriage to the clerk's house—he was too ill to walk—and sat with the clerk and the weeping mother, and said he was sure it could not be so bad as was ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... monastery he fully believed in miracles, but, to my thinking, miracles are never a stumbling-block to the realist. It is not miracles that dispose realists to belief. The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact. Even if he admits it, he admits it as a fact of nature till then unrecognized by him. ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... not an answer. Do you believe me, or disbelieve me? Am I a liar and perjurer, or not? In one ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... For, absurd as may seem the fictions we have sported with, are they not types of many other far more serious ones which we cram down the throats of our rising generation, long after we ourselves have begun to disbelieve them? There is a conventional teaching which we decorously administer, and leave our pupils to disavow it when they can. History is still taught in our public and private schools, seasoned with all the exploded blunders of the past. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "I nearly learned to disbelieve in religion. You must know I began to go to church every Saturday evening and on all festivals. I listened intently to all the services and the sermons, and I read all that I could find to read, and I asked questions of priests and of educated people—all with the idea of solving this mystery ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... disbelieve her story; and Angelo said that grief for her brother's death, who had suffered by the due course of the ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... them in him. Remember, I was reading up on Hitler, coming in from Marduk? I will tell them all a big lie. Such a big lie that nobody will dare to disbelieve it." ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... February, that nothing of the sort had ever been thought of before, such proof would have falsified the affidavit. But so far from offering any such evidence, all the evidence adduced confirms the statement in the affidavit; and yet my learned friend still ventures to ask you to disbelieve what Lord Cochrane has sworn, although his oath is unopposed by any testimony, and supported by all the testimony given ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... she gave a slight shudder. "Englishmen are generally more sceptical on these points than we are; and disbelieve supernatural appearances, which we are accustomed to think are not unfrequent. I could tell you many stories, which, in my native island, were believed by our enemies the Turks, as well as by ourselves: but if you would like it, I will ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... harassing him must out—"lop-sided and—a leper!" He spoke with despair and conviction, eyes fastened on Cho[u]bei, and such a frightened look that even Cho[u]bei had pity. One foot in the room he turned back. "That is not so—absolutely." Iemon could not disbelieve the earnest testimony. Said Cho[u]bei—"The wounds of smallpox were no trivial ones. In healing the scars were such in places as form over burns. Hence the shining surface. Positively there is no leprous taint in Tamiya." He was gratified by the sigh which came from Iemon, sign of the ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... that thus lead mankind to believe the marvellously false, and to disbelieve the marvellously true, may be easily gathered. Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder's welcome. We all pay an involuntary homage to antiquity ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... came gradually to see, shortly afterwards (1836-1839) that the Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the Sacred Books of the Hindoos; the miracles by which Christianity is supported, the discrepancies between the accounts in the different Gospels, gradually led him to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. "Thus," he writes ("Life and Letters", Vol. 1. page 309.), "disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress." But Darwin was too modest to presume to go ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... been told, as their services were required, both of whom have been examined before you—the servant girl and Mr. Frederick Brown. The former has sworn that she mentioned it to no one, and there is no reason to disbelieve her. The latter proved himself not so trustworthy. It seems that with that foolish flippancy which distinguishes him he told his friend's secret to other friends of his as a good joke. But you must remember that Mr. Brown's friends were not the prisoner's ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... Stuarts had any other object in his impolitic manoeuvres, than an impracticable scheme to blend the two churches, there is now authority to disbelieve. He certainly was guilty of the offence of sending an envoy openly to Rome, who, by the bye, was received by the Pope with great discourtesy; and her Majesty Queen Victoria, whose Protestantism cannot be doubted, for it is one of her chief titles to our homage, has ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... believer, the enthusiast, is more fortunate than he; he, Sylvester Blougram, is what he is, and all that he can do is to make the most of the nature allotted to him. That there has been a divine revelation he cannot absolutely believe; but neither can he absolutely disbelieve. Unbelief is sterile; belief is fruitful, certainly for this world, probably for the next, and he elects to believe. Having chosen to believe, he cannot be too pronounced and decisive in his faith; he will never ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... recognized us. We were going to see you through, whether you knew us or not; before this we should have set you on the road from which you had strayed. I thought you must know us by sight, but when you denied it I saw no reason to disbelieve you. It only dawned on me by degrees that you were lying, though Howie here was sure ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... it. I never saw anything of the sort. I neither believe nor disbelieve. But you know queer things do happen at times—things you can't account for. At least, people who you know wouldn't lie say so. Of course, they may be mistaken. And I don't think that everybody can see spirits either, provided they are to be seen. It requires people of a certain ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of evergreens, and grass paths leading into beautiful unexpected places, where one suddenly came upon deep, clear pools where water plants grew and slow carp had dreamed centuries away. The gardens caused Emily to disbelieve in the existence of Mortimer Street, but the house at times caused her to disbelieve in herself. The picture gallery especially had this effect upon her. The men and women, once as alive as her everyday self, now gazing down at her from their picture frames sometimes made her heart ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "I've often heard it said that one is sometimes to disbelieve their own eyes; an' only that I known the thing couldn't happen, I would swear on the althar that I ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... we know or have received. There is no doubt of the authenticity of the "Bombay Gazette," the original of which is received. But it seems very odd how the news should first reach Bombay through the Nizam's Durbar. On the whole, however, I see no sufficient ground to disbelieve it; and, if true, it is as good as the most sanguine wishes ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... holy baptism. In it we were made members of Christ, children of God, inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. God's love is above us and around us, like a warm, bright, life-giving sun. We may shut our eyes to it, but it is there still. We may disbelieve our baptism covenant, but it is true still. We are children of God; and nothing that we can do, no sin, no unfaithfulness of ours, can make us anything else. We can no more become not God's children, than a child can become not his own father's son. But ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... the last of his coffee. "We've talked about it," he admitted. "Although I must say the hypothesis Bart has come up with would never have occurred to me. I'm still not sure I credit it, but" ... he shrugged ... "I can't say that I disbelieve it, either." ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... inhabitants of this coast will scarcely be required, we have still stronger to give. One of us asked if they had any human bones with the flesh remaining upon them; and upon their answering us that all had been eaten, we affected to disbelieve that the bones were human, and said that they were the bones of a dog; upon which one of the Indians, with some eagerness, took hold of his own forearm, and thrusting it towards us, said that the bone which Mr. Banks held in his hand had belonged to that part ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... spirit which enabled him to take a conspicuous part in building up the great fabric of the British Empire. But he was also—as all who were taking part in the ceremony believed in their hearts—a 'man of the world' and 'a man of pleasure.' Do we, then, disbelieve in our own creed, or are we engaged in a solemn mockery? Palmerston had not obeyed the conditions under which alone, as every preacher will tell us, heaven can be hoped for. Patriotism, good nature, and so forth are, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... I would write to papa to take us away," she thought "Why did I say that? What good would it do? It wouldn't make anybody disbelieve this hateful story. They'd only think I wanted to get away because I was found out. And papa would be so worried and disappointed. It has cost him a great deal to get us ready and send us here, and he wants us to stay a year. If we went ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... dignified by the name of study,—that stiff, steady, persistent, uncompromising application of the mind, by virtue of which alone the Pons Asinorum can be crossed, and the Forty-Seventh Problem of Euclid—which I entirely disbelieve—mastered. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... to disbelieve it all, but at the end of the account, as he had written it in his book, he had ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... Esmeralda's hand. Just when they are putting him in bear's skin his parents appear on the scene with the marriage contract. To their great dismay he refuses to sign it and when pressed, runs away.—Meanwhile Mary has heard of her lover's fickleness, which she would fain disbelieve, but alas Kezul shows her the document by which Hans renounces her. Nevertheless she refuses to wed any other man than the one her heart has chosen. Wenzel approaching again and recognizing in Mary the bride he had renounced, is now quite sorry to ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... and Hollingsworth are walking together. I call it a delightful spectacle. It truly rejoices me that Hollingsworth has found so fit and affectionate a friend! So many people in the world mistrust him,—so many disbelieve and ridicule, while hardly any do him justice, or acknowledge him for the wonderful man he is,—that it is really a blessed thing for him to have won the sympathy of such a woman as Zenobia. Any man might be proud of that. Any man, even if he be as great as Hollingsworth, might love so magnificent ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... torpedoes in the open sea, those who have dropped bombs on Antwerp and Paris indiscriminately with the idea of killing whom they may strike, have taken to heart Bernhardi's doctrine that war is a glorious occupation. Can any one longer disbelieve the completely barbarous ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... "You can hardly disbelieve this, sir, as I have just heard the story from Sergeant Malcolm. There were six in the house, and five have been carried out dead. One has been taken to Cong, and he is as good as dead. Their names are Kelly. An old man ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope |
