"Inconceivable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hard at me, and I thought there were tears in his rude eyes; then catching up the club with as much ease as I this staff, he sped with inconceivable rapidity, despite his wound, towards the precipice on the right, and disappeared amidst the thick brambles that clothed the gorge. In a few moments three of my companions approached. They found me exhausted, and panting rather with excitement than fatigue. Their quick ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... legitimate source of income for himself professionally. The ball was at his feet: should it be rolled on, or fastidiously turned aside by reason of certain fantastic notions as to its derogating, in some inconceivable way, from the dignity of authorship? That was the alternative in regard to which Dickens had to decide, and upon which he at once, as became him, decided manfully. The ball was rolled on, and, as it rolled, grew in bulk like ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... you're right. I have a sort of vague memory of someone asking how I was—and I gave what I took to be a truthful answer. I remember it seemed quite inconceivable that I could be alive. In fact I still don't understand it. Neither Yardo nor Miss Laydon could tell me. How did you get me out of ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... by the law of supply and demand, the rewards of each worker are regulated in theory even more perfectly in accordance with our ideas of liberty than they could be on the basis of actual benefit conferred. For it is inconceivable that people would submit to pay for what was beneficial to them instead of what they desired. A man who prefers to purchase wines instead of books with his surplus money would think it a great injustice ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... under his eyes, he sees what he is doing. He is sure of his reserves, he possesses them, he keeps them back, he utilizes them when he wishes, he always has them by him. "But for ourselves," cried I, "we are in an undefined and inconceivable position. We are stepping at a venture upon unknown risks. Who is against us? We hardly know. Who is with us? We are ignorant. How many soldiers? How many guns? How many cartridges? Nothing! but the darkness. Perhaps the entire people, perhaps no one. Keep ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... waiting in a corner of the court-yard. The duke, unwell since the previous evening, had felt worse after leaving the breakfast-table, and in all haste had sent for the man of the pearls in order to question him on his singular condition. Pain nowhere, sleep and appetite as usual; only an inconceivable lassitude, and a sense of terrible chill which nothing could dissipate. Thus at that moment, notwithstanding the brilliant spring sunshine which flooded his chamber and almost extinguished the fire flaming in the grate, the duke was shivering beneath his furs, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... beginning to understand, at last, that he really intended to make her a declaration of love. It was unheard of, almost inconceivable. But there he was at her feet, looking very handsome in the moonlight, his face turned up to hers with an unmistakable look of devotion in its rather grave lines. His voice, too, had a new sound in it. Indifferent as he might be by daylight ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... its object. When it is not the reason for marriage, it can hardly fail to grow from the conjugal relation between one man and one woman, if the mutual duties belonging to that relation be held sacred. It is inconceivable that a mother should not love her child, inevitably cast upon her protection from the first moment of his being; the father who extends a father's care over his children finds in that care a constant source of love; and the children, waking into ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... her more directly now, and with his ability to grasp at the significance of things he pointed out quickly the tremendous hazard of their position. There were many more dogs and other sledges at Blake's place, and it was utterly inconceivable that Blake and Captain Rydal would permit them to reach Fort Confidence without making every effort in their power to stop them. Once they succeeded in placing certain facts in the hands of the Mounted Police, both Rydal and Blake ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... Buckley! "and with such a noble young fellow as Stockbridge ready to cut off his head for her! It is perfectly inconceivable." ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... dropping his lower lip like a child, "this young pup says he has put us both out of action. Inconceivable—eh? My first command of one of the class. Eh? What shall we do with him? What ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... instinctively in a powerful effort to return to the surface. Then, in a moment, he lost all consciousness of his dreadful situation and found himself once more back among the scenes of his childhood, a multitude of trivial and long-forgotten incidents recurring to his memory with inconceivable rapidity. He was a dying man; the agony of drowning was over, and he had entered upon that curious phase of retrospection that most drowning people experience, and that so pleasantly ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... press Sir W. Hamilton into the service of Pantheism and Positivism together, by adopting the negative portion only of his philosophy—in which, in common with many other writers, he declares the absolute to be inconceivable by the mere intellect,—and rejecting the positive portions, in which he most emphatically maintains that the belief in a personal God is imperatively demanded by the facts of our moral and emotional consciousness. ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... dancing-master was extremely pleased with me, and encouraged me by many compliments; nay, he even went so far as to teach me a sailor's hornpipe, which I danced in public as a pas seul when the school gave a theatrical entertainment on the approach of the Christmas holidays. All this is simply inconceivable now, for there is nothing which bores me so thoroughly as a ball, and I would at any time travel fifty miles ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... had given his life so gloriously, however futilely, in an attempt to defend Gahan's sire from the daggers of the assassins. Tasor an under-padwar in the guard of O-Tar, Jeddak of Manator! It was inconceivable—and yet it was he; there could be no doubt of it. "Tasor," Gahan repeated aloud. "But it is no Manatorian name." The statement was half interrogatory, for Gahan's curiosity was aroused. He would ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 1828, his friend Richardson having written that in the Tales of a Grandfather "You have paid a debt which you owed to the manes of the Covenanters for the flattering picture which you drew of Claverhouse in Old Mortality. His character is inconceivable to me: the atrocity of his murder of those peasants, as undauntedly devoted to their own good cause as himself to his, his personal (almost hangman-like) superintendence of their executions, are wholly irreconcilable with ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... a language inconceivable. Instead of summarizing all our experiences of a thing by one word, its name, we should have to recall by appropriate adjectives the various sensations we had received from it; the objects we think of would be disintegrated, or, rather, would never have been unified. For "sun," they would ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... to distinguish motion from immobility, and come to rest with the softness of doves settling on the shoulders of a young girl?" ... If the fault is not the engine-driver's, then are the brakes to blame? Inconceivable!... All American engine-drivers are alike; and I never slept a full hour in any American "sleeper," what with stops, starts, hootings, tollings, whizzings round sharp corners, listening to the passage of freight-trains, and ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... knowledge. Let the vain chimeras which beset the people be dissipated, and very soon rational opinions will fill the minds of those who were believed fated to be always in error. To annihilate religious prejudices, it would be sufficient to show that what is inconceivable to man can not be of any use to him. Does it need, then, anything but simple common sense to perceive that a being most clearly irreconcilable with the notions of mankind, that a cause continually opposed to the effects ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... a condition is almost inconceivable, is it not? and in this enlightened age? But it exists, and is only harmful when its victims are stubborn and rebellious. To be cheerful and pay promptly is the only sensible way out of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... a vast joy! This was His answer, this was His help. After years and years of wrestling and struggling, in one moment of time He had let me find Him, He had poured His Paradise into my soul! Never was such inconceivable joy—never was such gladness! My griefs and pains and woes were wiped away—totally effaced as though ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... to dungeon, the last alway surpassing in monstrous ghastliness, until finally we came within view of an enormous entrance hall, most unsightly of all that I had previously seen. It was very spacious and terribly steep, running in the direction of a gloomy red corner, full of the most inconceivable abominations and horrors: it was the royal court. At the upper end of the king's accursed hall, amidst thousands of other dread sights, by the light my companion shed, I could see in the darkness two feet of prodigious size, and so enormous as to overcast the whole infernal firmament. ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... excelled in discovering figures of antiquity and even such, inconceivable though it may seem, as lived before the earth had assumed the shape with which we are familiar. So it was really no trouble at all for him to find ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... that I was not surprised in the least; that I thought nothing of the kind; that anarchists in general were simply inconceivable to me mentally, morally, logically, sentimentally, and even physically. X received this declaration with his ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... Nevians' own formulae, screens of prodigious power to which the energies of the amphibians clung and at which they clawed and tore in baffled, wildly coruscant displays of power unthinkable. For minutes the furious conflict raged, while the inconceivable energy being dissipated by those straining screens hurled itself in terribly destructive bolts of lightning upon the ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... hardly gained it when the mass came forward in a cloud of dust, and with a noise almost inconceivable, scrambling and rolling to and fro as they passed on in a close-wedged body. Many were wounded and tottering, and as they were left behind, the Caffres, naked, with their assaguays in their hands, leaping forward and ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... its pagan associations, was used as a stable, a store-house, and, purified by proper ceremonials, it even became a Christian church. The Amphitheatre has had a still stranger destiny. To a mediaeval Viscount, it was naturally inconceivable as a place of amusement, and as naturally, he saw in its walls a stronghold where he could live as securely as ever lord in castle. As a fortress which successfully defied Charles Martel, it was a place of no mean strength, and in 1100 it had become ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... arranged in a row, as is the custom, I would tremble with pleasure; I blushed and lowered my eyes as if in the presence of the girls themselves. With this vivacity of feeling and a voluptuousness of ideas inconceivable at the age of 10 I still fled, with an involuntary impulse of modesty, from the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... mist. It seemingly evolved form and became active. It seemingly evolved its universe, and its earth as its lower stratum. It made its firmament, and it gradually filled its seas with moving things that manifested its idea of life. Slowly, throughout inconceivable eons of time, it unrolled and evolved, until at last, through untold generations of stupid, sluggish, often revolting animal forms, it began to evolve a type of mind, a crude representation of the mind that is God, and manifesting ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... lay him flatly against the desk, which represents his world—Flatland, we mathematicians call it. Mr. Flatlander can't see into our world. He can see only along the flat plane of his own world. To see us, for instance, he would have to look up, which is the third dimension, a direction inconceivable to him. Now, Doctor, are you beginning to understand why we can ...
— The 4-D Doodler • Graph Waldeyer
... Medland: this was, to Lady Eynesford's mind, axiomatic, and, in the safe privacy of her family circle (for Miss Scaife counted as one of the family, and Captain Heseltine and Mr. Flemyng did not count at all), she went so far as to declare that, let the Governor do as he would (in the inconceivable case of his being so foolish as to do anything of the kind), she at least would not receive Mr. Medland. Having launched this hypothetical thunderbolt, she asked Alicia Derosne to give her another cup ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... other hand, the idea that he might have been murdered by Hurst was not inconceivable. The thing was physically possible. If Bellingham had really been in the study when Hurst came home, the murder could have been committed—by appropriate means—and the body temporarily concealed in the cupboard ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... hanging high over all. Nowhere, of its kind, could you see a grander prospect on a bright summer day, with the set of the air going southward,—southward, and so draping with the city-smoke not you but the city. Here for hours would Coleridge talk, concerning all conceivable or inconceivable things; and liked nothing better than to have an intelligent, or failing that, even a silent and patient human listener. He distinguished himself to all that ever heard him as at least the most surprising talker extant in this world,—and to some ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... morality in himself in giving up the possibility of loving her. Ever since Stacy had first seen her he had fancied that Stacy liked her,—indeed, Kitty fancied it, too,—and it seemed almost providential now that he should know how to assist his old partner to happiness. For it was inconceivable that Stacy should not be able to rescue this woman from her shameful bonds, or that she should not consent to it through his (Barker's) arguments and entreaties. To a "champion of dames" this seemed only right and proper. In his unfailing optimism he translated Stacy's laugh ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... possessions,—education, intelligence, and freedom; for only whilst so sustained can the institutions of democracy exist; these once failing to advance hand-in-hand with population, the whole fabric will, with inconceivable rapidity, be resolved into a rude anarchy for some bold mind to re-form ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... over him. Escaping from the influences of personality, his imagination wrought back through eras of geologic time, held him in a vision of the infinitely remote, shrivelled into insignificance all but the one fact of inconceivable duration. Often as he had lost himself in such reveries, never yet had he passed so wholly under the dominion of that awe which attends a sudden triumph of the pure intellect. When at length he rose, it was with wide, blank eyes, and limbs partly ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... annelid the mouth is on the second segment; here it is on the fourth. It has evidently travelled backward. That the mouth of an animal can migrate seems at first impossible, but if we had time to examine the embryology of annelids and insects, it would no longer appear inconceivable or improbable. And its backward migration brought it among the legs which were grasping and chewing the food. And in vertebrates the mouth has changed its position, though not in exactly the same way. Our present ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... an important thought, that death, judged of by corporeal analogies, certainly implies discerption or dissolution of parts; but pain and pleasure do not; nay, they seem inconceivable except under the idea of concentration. Therefore the influence of the body on the soul will not prove the common destiny of both. I feel myself not the slave of nature (nature used here as the 'mundus sensibilis') in the sense in which animals ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... dauntless, and warlike spirit of Eteocles which is designed and drawn with inconceivable power, is beautifully characterized in his reply to ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... innumerable and intimate bonds of friendship and interest which would thus have to be broken merely because of an insignificant jog in a boundary remote from both the nations made war between the United States and Great Britain seem absolutely inconceivable, until people realized that neither country could yield without an admission of defeat both galling to national pride and involving fundamental principles of conduct and policy ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... the reedy margin of a pretty large lake—where wild-fowl innumerable made the air vocal with their cries by day, and frogs, in numbers inconceivable, chirped and croaked a lullaby to men who slept, and a symphony to beasts that howled and growled and prowled at night in bush and ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... amused, too, at the importance of his own position in the military outpost, through the arrival of the strangers. That this grave political enthusiast and civilian should be on familiar terms with a young Englishwoman of rank was at first inconceivable to the officers. And that he had never alluded to it before seemed to them ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... the Projector, I can't agree that such a Time is necessary; for being above the Attraction of the Earth, which is the only laborious Part of our Passage, we may go with an inconceivable Swiftness, especially when we come within the Attraction of the Moon, which will certainly be encreas'd by the Weight of Provisions, which we shall by way of Precaution carry with us, and which will be no Burthen after ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... defect, but may rather be said to be a sign of it, for it shows an intelligence unable to grasp the wider relations of life, and concentrated on the gratification of petty and immediate desires. Thus it happens that the cunning of criminals is frequently associated with almost inconceivable stupidity.[35] ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... passes his life in instrument-knowledges is a specialist. They may be invaluable as instruments to something beyond, for those who have the gift thus to employ them; and they may be disciplines in themselves wherein it is useful for every one to have some schooling. But it is inconceivable that the generality of men should pass all their mental life with Greek accents or with formal logic. My friend Professor Sylvester,[127] who is one of the first mathematicians in the world, holds transcendental doctrines as to the virtue of mathematics, but those doctrines are not for common ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... afterwards to be filled with a hard and solid substance; but without some other power, by which the water contained in those cavities and endless labyrinths of the strata, should be separated in proportion as it had performed its task, it is inconceivable how those masses, however changed from the state of their first subsidence, should be absolutely consolidated, without any visible or fluid water ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... think it was Swain who was following them; he picked up the blood-stained handkerchief, which Swain had dropped perhaps when he fled from the arbour, and placed it beside the body; and in some way inconceivable to me he pressed the prints of Swain's fingers on the dead man's robe. Now, to do that, he must have known that Swain was injured—the blood-stained handkerchief would tell him that; but he must also have known that it was his right hand that ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... be true—and the future may demonstrate it—that this war was planned by Germany at least as far back as the Moroccan crisis, then the Kaiser's responsibility for the commencement of the quarrel cannot be doubted. It is inconceivable that the German Foreign Office could pursue for three years the policy of precipitating a European war without the knowledge and consent ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... and other unwelcome guests, and even the somewhat unwieldy bulk of an elephant, had seemingly been brought down, before their eyes, upon a cable fastened by some mysterious agency far aloft; for I suppose it behooved to be made fast in some inconceivable region of the upper air. But that a similar demonstration could have been made in a sober New England town, at noonday, could scarcely fail to "put me from my faith." It impressed me, however, as at least an extraordinary relation, coming from such a source; and happening ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... choking with an emotion she could not understand because it resembled embarrassment, a state of mind inconceivable ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... death with a resignation which is inconceivable," says the author of his Memoires; "never did man speak more boldly than he about it; it seemed as if he were recounting another's perils when he described his own to his servants and his guards, who were the only ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... said, "were more truly beautiful, but none produced so much effect. I was in a drawing-room where I charmed and captivated all eyes. Madame Recamier entered. The brilliancy of her eyes, which were not, however, very large, the inconceivable whiteness of her shoulders, crushed and eclipsed everybody. She was resplendent. At the end of a moment, however, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... being inconsistent with religion, the greatest happiness principle is in the highest degree agreeable to it. For what can be more reasonable than that God should will the happiness of all his creatures? and in working out their happiness we may be said to be 'working together with him.' Nor is it inconceivable that a new enthusiasm of the future, far stronger than any old religion, may be ...
— Philebus • Plato
... affords a better basis for deduction than an empirical correlation ascertained only by accumulated observations. Premising that by rational correlation is not meant one in which we can trace, or think we can trace, a design, but one of which the negation is inconceivable (and this is the species of correlation which Cuvier's principle implies); then we hold that our knowledge of the correlation is of a more certain kind than where it is simply inductive. We think that Professor ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... that his was the Northern Power which would waste Judah and which she should serve for seventy years (verses 1, 9, 11, as also the similar reference in verse 12), all of which are inserted in the Hebrew text but not without a sign of their being later intrusions upon it.(334) And indeed it is inconceivable that the Greek translator could have omitted the four references to Nebuchadrezzar (including that in verse 12) had he found them in the Hebrew text from which he worked. Probably, therefore, Jeremiah did not include them in the first ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... Steve—which he was too delicate and kind-hearted to repel—or that she had in some way excited his pity, and he had married her in order to protect and care for her, and she held it as a grudge against her. That a man like Steve could be attracted by such a girl as Nannie was inconceivable to Constance, although Randolph regarded the ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... also with deep tenderness, he tries to cover her with the shreds of her torn dress, and the double sensation of the cloth and the nude body are as keen as a sword and as inconceivable as madness. And now he cries for help, now he presses the sweet and supple body to his breast. His unconscious abandonment unchains the savageness of his passion. He whispers in a low voice, 'I love you, I love you.' And throwing himself violently ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... which French people are fond of attaching to harmless trifles is inconceivable. One evening, in the earlier part of our stay in Paris, a cousin of Miss St. Clair's, who was in the same hotel with Mr. Denham, called on us, and when he was taking leave she held out an unsealed note: "Will you give this to Fred? Don't ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... apologetically. "Only the whole affair seems so very inconceivable—I mean that the men, having once got rid of the evidence of their crime, would hardly return to the spot and ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... so unwilling to supply us as at present. By military authority, we collect a kind of casual subsistence that can scarcely be called our daily bread. The fatigue of campaigning in this country is almost inconceivable. I have slept, when I have had time to sleep, in my clothes. I seldom divest myself of my sword, boots or coat; my horse is constantly saddled, and we eat when provisions are to be got, and we have nothing else to do. The dangers of the field ...
— A sketch of the life and services of Otho Holland Williams • Osmond Tiffany
... picture of the woman who owned it, and the ploughed forehead of her, above the nose-glasses, when the "grace-notes" were proudly given birth. "Rescue the Perishing" was the startlingly appropriate selection, rendered with inconceivable lingering upon each syllable: "Roos-cyoo the Poor-oosh-oong!" At unexpected intervals two male voices, evidently belonging to men who had contracted the habit of holding tin in their mouths, joined the lady in a thorough search for ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... quaking before this revelation of an inconceivable wickedness, yet steadily resolved to probe it to the very depths. "What did you hope to gain by this deliberate plan of destruction? The girl's ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... unwieldy disproportioned abdomina, and their heads, too heavy for their necks to support, we could not but wonder when we reflected that these shiftless beings in a little more than a fortnight would be able to dash through the air almost with the inconceivable swiftness of a meteor, and perhaps in their emigration must traverse vast continents and oceans as distant as the equator. So soon does Nature advance small birds to their [Greek text], or state of perfection, while the progressive ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... satisfactory to have discovered the occasion of the inconceivable licentiousness which was thus sanctioned by the legislator,—this overturning of the principles of society, and this public ridicule of its laws, its customs, and its feelings. We are told, these festivals, dedicated ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... things were true and important, it is inconceivable that the Church Fathers, the very founders of Christianity, should have been all at sea in regard to them, should have held divergent opinions, and should have been discussing these questions one way and the other for ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... the universe which we have imagined would still remain unknown. Human knowledge will always have limits, and beyond those limits there will always be room for mystery and wonder. A complete and exhaustive explanation of the world is inconceivable, so long as human powers and capacities remain at all ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... reply in Italian, raising his shoulders. Some ill-dressed, loafing stragglers on the wharf drew near Sylvia with an indolent curiosity. She turned to them and asked, "Do any of you speak English?" although it was manifestly inconceivable that any of those typical Neapolitans should. One of them stepped forward, running his hand through greasy black curls. "I kin, lady," he said with a fluent, vulgar New York ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... execution the laws of the land be of any service to the nation, which few, I think, will deny, the benefits of the whipping-post must be very apparent, as being a necessary instrument to such an execution. Indeed, the service it does to a country is inconceivable. I, myself, know a man who had proceeded to lay his hand upon a silver spoon with a design to make it his own, but on looking round, and seeing the whipping-post in his way, he desisted from the theft. Whether he suspected that the post would impeach him or not, I will not pretend to determine; ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... reciprocally, and therefore that, because something exists in the latter, something else must exist in the former, which could not be understood from its own existence alone? For this is the very essence of community—which is inconceivable as a property of things which are perfectly isolated. Hence, Leibnitz, in attributing to the substances of the world—as cogitated by the understanding alone—a community, required the mediating aid of a divinity; ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... natives of Africa, who believe in witchcraft. He was not only considered invulnerable, but that he could make others so by his charms; and that he could and certainly would provide all his followers with arms.... His influence amongst the Africans was inconceivable. Monday was firm, resolute, discreet, and intelligent."[2] He was also daring and active, a harness-maker in the prime of life, and he could read and write with facility; but he was also the only man of prominence in the conspiracy whose courage ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... It must be understood that John Shanks, or Stumps, among other eccentricities, practised sprawling in his sleep, spreading himself abroad in inconceivable attitudes, shooting out an arm here, or a leg there, to the alarm or indignation of bedfellows, insomuch that, when known, bedfellows refused to remain ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... was seventeen, you will remember—with ninety pounds in my pocket. It seemed illimitable wealth at the time. Two pounds was the most I had ever possessed before. I could not imagine its ever coming to an end. In dollars it seemed an inconceivable amount of money. I put up at the Waldorf. I remember, I took a cab there. I gave the ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... power, place, favor, profit, or pleasure, can cause to swerve from the strict rule of right, is the perfection of man's moral nature. In this sense, the poet was right when he pronounced "an honest man's the noblest work of God." It is almost inconceivable what an erect and independent spirit this high endowment communicates to the man, and what a moral intrepidity and vivifying energy it imparts to his character.... Erected on such a basis, and built up of such materials, fame is enduring. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... winter was, of course, one long night. It was so silent and empty, and an oppressive, solemn stillness reigned during the calm night. Sometimes the aurora blazed in a mysterious crown in the sky, at other times so dark, and the stars glittered with inconceivable brilliance. The weather, however, was seldom calm. Usually the wind howled round the bare rocks lashed by millions of storms since the earliest times, and snow swished outside and built up ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... conditions, keep the house quiet generally. At any rate, we can take such care as may be of the smaller young ones, help them up-stairs, or at least keep them from tumbling down again—we bigger babies that have crawled or been pushed a few steps up the awful stairway of the Inconceivable Ascending-Spiral.' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... observed that the opening of the haunted cavern was encircled by a ring of metal. Then all else vanished and left him gazing into the barrel of his rifle as before. But whereas before it had seemed nearer, it now seemed an inconceivable distance away, and all the more sinister for that. He cried out and, startled by something in his own voice—the note of fear—lied to himself in denial: "If I don't sing out I may stay here ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... in rivalry one with another, run to their ships, but uselessly: for the Northmen, indeed, hearing that yonder was he whom it was still their wont to call Charles the Hammer, feared lest all their fleet should be taken or destroyed in the port, and they avoided, by a flight of inconceivable rapidity, not only the glaives, but even the eyes of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... his public life asunder it is sufficient to say here that those nearest him never believed in the truth of the charges brought, finding it almost inconceivable that they should have been made; while the letters and records in my hands bear testimony to that great outer circle of friends, known and unknown, who have expressed by spoken or by written word, in public and in private, their share in that absolute belief in him which was ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... abundance"—it brought a whole district, previously barren, into cultivation, and it set an example, which the best of the later monarchs followed, of a mode whereby the productiveness of the country might be increased to an almost inconceivable extent. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... work well, made a great thought in steel and cement. And then the business men and bureaucrats had made the great thought a curse. There was in the Subway all the romance which story-telling youth goes seeking: trains crammed with an inconceivable complexity of people—marquises of the Holy Roman Empire, Jewish factory hands, speculators from Wyoming, Iowa dairymen, quarreling Italian lovers, with their dramatic tales, their flux of every human emotion, under the city mask. But however striking ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... saw before at Milan last year; the other, the Barbieri di Seviglia by Rossini, which afforded to my ears the most delightful musical feast they ever enjoyed. The cavatina Una voce poco fa gave me inconceivable delight. The Ballo was of a very splendid description and from a subject taken from the Oriental history entitled Macbet Sultan of Delhi. How the Mogul Sultan came to have the name of Macbet I know ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... repast before them? What better than stewed fowls and squirrels, boiled rice, Indian hoe cake and yams smoking hot from the ashes, squashes, pumpkin pies and apple dumpling, and all this followed by a course of fruit, peaches and apples, musk and water-melons, all of a flavor and size inconceivable by any but the inhabitants of the sunny climes which brought them to maturity. Her ladyship could not help making the contrast with a service of fruit upon an extra occasion in her home circle, which cost several golden guineas, and yet was not to be compared ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... "But it is inconceivable that Anna could have left Lacville without telling me—or, for the matter of that, ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... prodigious, colossal, Cyclopean, Brobdingnagian, Bunyanesque, Herculean, Gargantuan; infinite &c. 105. large as life; plump as a dumpling, plump as a partridge; fat as a pig, fat as a quail, fat as butter, fat as brawn, fat as bacon. immeasurable, unfathomable, unplumbed; inconceivable, unimaginable, unheard-of. of cosmic proportions; of epic proportions, the mother of all, teh granddaddy ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... any one school than a year, and he learned at school very little that he needed most to know. In the course of his desultory schooling he picked up some Latin, a little Greek, a good deal of French, and an inconceivable medley of odds and ends of knowledge, which his wonderful memory enabled him to use sometimes with ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... cloud-shadows, upon sea and hills, the lights of Lerici, the great fanali at the entrance of the gulf, and Francesco's upturned handsome face. Then all again was whirled in mist and foam; one breaker smote the sea wall in a surge of froth, another plunged upon its heels; with inconceivable swiftness came rain; lightning deluged the expanse of surf, and showed the windy trees bent landward by the squall. It was long past midnight now, and the storm was on us for ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... all the buildings seem to have crumbled in upon themselves, or to have fallen outward into the streets. What an inconceivable tangle of detritus ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... Mrs. Hopkins, and Gifted, and Susan, and everybody? and President Buchanan? and the Boston State-House? and Broadway?—O Lord, Lord, Lord! And the sun perceptibly smaller, according to the astronomers, and the earth cooled down a number of degrees, and inconceivable arts practised by men of a type yet undreamed of, and all the fighting creeds ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... too stunned to speak for a moment. The arrangement seemed a hideous joke: a refinement of cruelty inconceivable. It was expecting him to tell Atlas that he was old and to take the weight of the ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... time I found myself in Enmore Park once more. In my aching head the one thought was throbbing that there really was truth in this man's story, that it was of tremendous consequence, and that it would work up into inconceivable copy for the Gazette when I could obtain permission to use it. A taxicab was waiting at the end of the road, so I sprang into it and drove down to the office. McArdle was at his ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... geological existence. In these groups there is abundant evidence of variation—none of what is ordinarily understood as progression; and, if the known geological record is to be regarded as even any considerable fragment of the whole, it is inconceivable that any theory of a necessarily progressive development can stand, for the numerous orders and families cited afford no trace of ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... speak forcefully, even persuasively. But your argument is based upon a proposition that is scientifically fallacious. An atom of gunpowder can disintegrate itself, 'lift itself by its own boot-straps!' Why not the earth? Have we as yet begun to solve all the mysteries of nature? Is it inconceivable that there should be an undiscovered explosive capable of disrupting the globe? We have earthquakes. Is it beyond imagination that the forces which produce ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... the "pipsy" husband. Isabella, in the same play, says "keeping begins to be as ridiculous as matrimony.... The insolence and expense of their mistresses has almost tired out all but the old and doting part of mankind." It is not inconceivable that in a freakish or embittered moment this singular woman threw herself with malicious joy into an attack ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... the first book of the Iliad, I met Dr. Young in the street, and upon our falling into that subject, the doctor expressed a great deal of surprise at Tickell's having had such a translation so long by him. He said that it was inconceivable to him, and that there must be some mistake in the matter; that each used to communicate to the other whatever verses they wrote, even to the least things; that Tickell could not have been busied in so long a work there without his knowing something of the ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... revered under the title Cipivishta,[49] of unknown significance, but meaning literally 'bald.' Like Savitar he has three spaces, two called earthly, and one, the highest, known only to himself. His greatness is inconceivable, and he is especially praised with Indra, the two being looked upon as masters of the world.[50] His highest place is the realm of the departed spirits.[51] The hymns to him appear to be late (thus I. 155. 6, where, as the year, he ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... admiration of a hundred generations of men. The prosecution was in the position all the time of one who declared that a man who praised a nude picture must necessarily be immoral. Such a contention would be inconceivable in any other civilised country. Even the Judge was on much the same intellectual level. It would not be fair, he admitted, to condemn a poet or dramatic writer by his works and he ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Y. Z., who had the education of two interesting orphans to negotiate for, and who was naturally desirous of doing it as economically as possible; and at night she was at home, writing modest, business-like epistles to every letter in the alphabet in every conceivable or inconceivable ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... forlornly round the bar, gives Messrs. Weevle and Guppy good morning, assures them of the satisfaction with which he sees them uninjured, and accompanies Mrs. Snagsby from the Sol's Arms. Before night his doubt whether he may not be responsible for some inconceivable part in the catastrophe which is the talk of the whole neighbourhood is almost resolved into certainty by Mrs. Snagsby's pertinacity in that fixed gaze. His mental sufferings are so great that he entertains wandering ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... employed in such refutation seems to Mr Mill unsound. But Sir W. Hamilton goes further, and affirms that we have no faculties capable of apprehending the Infinite and the Absolute—that both of them are inconceivable to us, and by consequence unknowable. Herein Mr Mill is opposed to him, and controverts his ...
— Review of the Work of Mr John Stuart Mill Entitled, 'Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy.' • George Grote
... being essentially and self-evidently inconceivable by man, all attempts of Brahmin, Christian, or any other theologians to explain his existence and his methods of creation can be recognized by the scientific mind only as hypotheses unsusceptible of verification, and, therefore, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... opposed than these two impulsions; one having for its object change, the other immutability, and yet it is these two notions that exhaust the notion of humanity, and a third FUNDAMENTAL IMPULSION, holding a medium between them, is quite inconceivable. How then shall we re- establish the unity of human nature, a unity that appears completely destroyed by this ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... have killed tons of birds between Cape Walker and Cape York, principally little auks (Alca alle);—they actually blackened the edge of the floe for miles. I had seen, on the coast of Peru, near the great Guano mines, what I thought was an inconceivable number of birds congregated together; but they were as nothing compared with the myriads that we disturbed in our passage, and their stupid tameness would have enabled us to kill ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... was alarmed when she detected this predisposition, Rodolphe wished for things as a poet imagines, as a mathematician calculates, as a painter sketches, as a musician creates melodies. Tender-hearted, like his mother, he dashed with inconceivable violence and impetus of thought after the object of his desires; he annihilated time. While dreaming of the fulfilment of his schemes, he always overlooked the means of attainment. "When my son has children," said his other, "he will want them born ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... in his most rationalized vision of the New Time, he can't help betraying his old-fashioned prejudice in favour of the "dolly" view of women. His hero says, "I prayed that night, let me confess it, to an image I had set up in my heart, an image that still serves with me as a symbol for things inconceivable, to a Master Artificer, the unseen captain of all who go about the building of the world, the making of mankind——"' Vida's finger skipped, lifting to fall on the heroine's name. '"Nettie... She never came into the temple of that worshipping ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... relief it must be confessed, that they were approaching the lateral moraine. Already the sky was overcast. The glacier had taken to itself a cold grayness that was disconcerting. The heavy mist fell on them with inconceivable rapidity. Shining peaks and towering precipices of naked rock were swept out of sight each instant. The weather had changed with a magical speed. The mist advanced with the rush of an express train, and a strong wind sprang up as though it had burst ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... and you take his word for it without checking the sum, he will naturally deduce that four times five is fourteen, and so on ad libitum. This is the way that weird geometry proceeds: it sets before beginners certain strange assumptions, and insists on their granting the existence of inconceivable things, such as points having no parts, lines without breadth, and so on, builds on these rotten foundations a superstructure equally rotten, and pretends to go on to a demonstration which is true, though it starts ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... history; and that one no flag to boast of. Densely ignorant of the sex, his nincompoopish idealizations, at other times preposterous, would now be annoying. He would probably presume on Clara's inconceivable lapse of dignity to read his master a lecture: he was quite equal to a philippic upon woman's rights. This man had not been afraid to say that he talked common sense to women. He was an example of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the fluid to the bisected nerves—when, with a movement of exceeding life-likeness, the Mummy first drew up its right knee so as to bring it nearly in contact with the abdomen, and then, straightening the limb with inconceivable force, bestowed a kick upon Doctor Ponnonner, which had the effect of discharging that gentleman, like an arrow from a catapult, through a window into ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of the line of strategic deployment, which in 1870 could still be carried out without serious difficulties or drawbacks, could nowadays, in view of the high tension induced by modern conditions, only be executed with extraordinary difficulty, whilst lateral displacement of such numbers is quite inconceivable. For even if the railway organization would suffice for the execution of such a design, the many other preparations in the zone of concentration can neither be ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... through them of the whole earth; those courtiers covered with gold and scarlet, uncertain of the morrow, but mightier meanwhile than kings,—all this together seemed a species of hellish kingdom of wrong and evil. In his simple heart he marvelled that God could give such inconceivable almightiness to Satan, that He could yield the earth to him to knead, overturn, and trample it, to squeeze blood and tears from it, to twist it like a whirlwind, to storm it like a tempest, to consume it like a flame. And his Apostle-heart was ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... working himself into that state of mind which these redskin warriors endeavour to assume when they are captured and taken to the stake and the torture, there to prove their title to the name of brave by enduring the most inconceivable agonies with stoical indifference, or there to bring discredit on their tribe, infamy on their name, and joy to their enemies, by breaking down under the infliction of tortures at the bare mention ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... been given an introduction to America, through Mr. Emil Paur, by Theodor Leschetizky, couched in the most glowing terms, and is called by him "an artist of the very first rank and of inconceivable versatility." ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... sides a great crowd gathered, with almost inconceivable rapidity. We pushed our way through, and gained a side street in safety. Monsieur Bardow arrested the attention of a four-wheeled cab galloping towards the scene of the disaster, and motioned us to enter. We all crowded in, and Monsieur ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... inconceivable that the universe is a blunder. This is one of the fundamental ideas of Epictetus. The inference is, that man has only to define his true end and pursue it, which is the right action of the will, or as we should say, right character. Pursuing this, ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... ... I am very sorry that the Portuguese news are still so very unfavourable; I trust that, in time, things will come right. The Portuguese are, as you say, a most inconceivable set ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... you, Cousin Godfrey!" faltered Letty, trembling, and not knowing what she said. She was very frightened, but hardly knew why, for the idea of Godfrey in love with her was all but inconceivable. Nevertheless, its approach was terrible. Like a fascinated bird she could not take her eyes off his face. Her knees began to fail her; it was all she could do to stand. But Godfrey was full of himself, and had not the most shadowy suspicion of how she felt. He took her emotion ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... silence and in sincerity its words of judgment with its words of hope, its sternness with its encouragement, its denunciations with its promises, its requirements, with its offers, its absolute intolerance of sin with its inconceivable and divine long-suffering towards sinners.' But preaching like this would have frightened away poor Pliable. He would not have understood it, and what he did understand of it he would have hated ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... good breeding; they were neither shy nor affectedly open; and she seemed capable of being young, attractive, and at a ball without wanting to fix the attention of every man near her, and without exaggerated feelings of ecstatic delight or inconceivable vexation on every little trifling occurrence. Catherine, interested at once by her appearance and her relationship to Mr. Tilney, was desirous of being acquainted with her, and readily talked therefore whenever she could think of anything to say, and had ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... patiently, he thought, to all that his headstrong son had said, but that he should repudiate in this unceremonious fashion what was a tacit understanding between the two families, and, what was more, run the risk of injuring the Ryder interests—that was inconceivable. Leaving his desk, he advanced into the centre of the room, and ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... who was untouched, gave a howl that you might have heard a league off; advanced towards us as if he would attack us, and then turned and ran away with inconceivable celerity ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... UNIVERSE, which included the Earth and all the orbs of the firmament known as the Starry Heavens, was created out of Chaos, and hung, as if suspended by a golden chain, from the Empyrean above; and although its magnitude and dimensions were inconceivable, yet, according to the Ptolemaic theory, it was enclosed by the tenth ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... then include about 175,000,000 individuals. The adhesion of Italy to the vast union would not be inconceivable, and then the combination of the United States of Europe, founded on a voluntary commercial union, would ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... recollection of what was called at the time "The Cornish Horror," though a most imperfect account of the matter reached the London press. Now, after thirteen years, I will give the true details of this inconceivable affair to ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle
... circumstance, property, acquaintances, and wives, which seem to move along with them in their passage through a world composed of thousands of other Forsytes with their habitats. Without a habitat a Forsyte is inconceivable—he would be like a novel without a plot, which is well-known to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of course, that art really has a purpose with reference to which it can be judged as successful or unsuccessful. But I do not see how this can very well be denied. Art is one of the oldest of human activities, one might almost say institutions, and it is inconceivable that it should not have been directed by some intention, conscious or unconscious. To be sure, men have expressed this intention in varying, often in inconsistent ways, but the same is true of all other human activities and institutions. Few would deny, I suppose, that science ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... Easterns on the bolder and more practical minds of the Western Latins, and gives a sketch of Bernard and his Abbey of Clairvaux, which brings pleasantly enough before us the ways and works of a long-dead world, which was all but inconceivable to us till Mr, Carlyle disinterred it in his picture of Abbot Sampson, the hero ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Mr. Wordsley had glimpsed a ragged aperture filled with the purest light. It seemed inconceivable to him—attracted as he had always been by radiance—that this should ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... brief but comprehensive sentence, "In the beginning was the Word." Eternity has no beginning, as it has no end: the clock of Time is futile there: it might as well attempt to go in vacuo. Nevertheless, in respect to finite intelligences like ourselves, seeing that eternity is an idea totally inconceivable, it is wise, nay it is only possible, to be presented to the mind piecemeal. Even our deepest mathematicians do not scruple to speak of points "infinitely remote;" as if in that phrase there existed ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... difficulty involved in the supposition that so stupendous a fabric as the celestial sphere should spin in the way supposed. Such movements required that many of the stars should travel with almost inconceivable velocity. Copernicus also saw that the daily rising and setting of the heavenly bodies could be accounted for either by the supposition that the celestial sphere moved round and that the earth remained at rest, or by the supposition ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... of your sufferings would be well kept. He had carefully chosen the house in which you were to die of hunger and misery. The two Chevassats were bound to be his devoted accomplices, even unto death. This is what gave him the amazing boldness, the inconceivable brutality, to watch your slow agony; no doubt he became quite impatient at your delaying suicide ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... maze of written words. I did not decipher it all; I did not decipher the half. I did not need to. A spirit of divination was given me in that awful hour which enabled me to grasp its full meaning from the few sentences I did pick out. And that meaning! It was horrible, inconceivable. Murder was taught; but murder from a distance, and by an act too simple to awake revulsion. Were the wraiths of my two ancestors who had played with the spring hidden in the depths of this old closet, drawn up in mockery beside me during the hour when I stood spellbound in the ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... futile; since "Business is business," after all, and the practical limitations imposed on an unprofitable boycott by the moral necessity to buy cheap and sell dear that rests on all businessmen would surreptitiously mitigate it to the point of negligibility. It is inconceivable—or it would be inconceivable in the absence of imbecile politicians and self-seeking businessmen—that measures looking to the trade isolation of any one of these countries could be entertained as a point ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... Freeman, and I'll come and try if I can have a peep from your ladder." Then Blair saw a thing which always seems more impressive than anything else that can be witnessed at sea—except, perhaps, a snowstorm. A mysterious portent came rolling onward; afar off it looked like a pale grey wall of inconceivable height, but as it drew nearer, the wall resolved itself into a wild array of columns, and eddies, and whirlpools, and great full-bosomed clouds, that rolled and swam and rose and fell with maddening complexity. ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... ever written at all, it is difficult to imagine; but how it is, that, when written, they find publishers, is inconceivable. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... infinitely greater blessings even than they were seeking. The reflex action of the working of the spirit of freedom on these shores of the new hemisphere upon the welfare of the countless millions of the Old World, has been of a value incalculable and inconceivable to the minds against whose mistaken policy ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... opened the door to the prince with a hideous grin on his hollow cheek; and Philip hastened up the stairs, and entering the chamber we have before described, beheld, to his inconceivable consternation and dismay, the form of Beatriz clasped in the arms of Calderon, her head leaning on his bosom; while his voice half choked with passionate sobs called upon her in ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... logical and persuasive language, demonstrates how contrary to reason it would be to imagine that the entire heavens should revolve round the Earth to bring about a result which could be more easily attained by imparting motion to the Earth herself. The inconceivable velocity with which it would be necessary for the celestial orbs to travel in order to accomplish their daily revolution is described by him as opposed to all reason, and entailing upon them a journey which it would be impossible for material bodies to perform. None the less ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... "That to me is inconceivable. When we die we fall into an eternal sleep. Moreover, I can see no creed that does not add the fear of future torments ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... removed my doubts by so simple a step as that of becoming an atheist, I should have done it, no matter what scandal or punishment had followed. I studied the subject thoroughly, and found that for one doubt removed, another was raised, only to reach at last a result more inconceivable than that reached by the church, and infinitely more hopeless besides. What do you gain by getting rid of one incomprehensible only to put a greater one in its place, and throw away your only hope besides? The atheists offer no sort of bargain ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... are two heavens... Both made of love,—one, inconceivable Ev'n by the other, so divine it is; The other, far on this side of the ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Sunday to Saturday! For such a man she had left him, Godfrey Wardour! a man who would have lifted her to the height of her nature! whereas the fool Helmer would sink her to the depth of his own merest nothingness! The thing was inconceivable! yet it was! He knew it; they were all the same! Never woman worthy of true man! The poorest show would take them captive, would draw ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... should be especially considerate of women, if for no other reason, because their success in their profession would depend very largely on women." Certainly, if he had to decide to-night, he would rather return to Marion, Ohio, than join his staff. Such a retreat from the glories of Chicago would be inconceivable to old Hitchcock and to the girl. He reflected that he should not like to put himself away from ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... I know how sad a story it must be for a parent's ear, but the fact is, that your unhappy boy has had the inconceivable rashness to quit my roof." And the Doctor paused to watch ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... a reply, Mrs. Mivers had recourse to her usual tactics. Umbrella and husband went right between two of the feminine obstructives; and to the inconceivable astonishment and horror of the assailant, husband and umbrella instantly vanished. The three small furies had pounced upon both. They were torn from their natural owner; they were hurried away; the stream behind, long ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... truth, it is evident that we claim to know what is truth; just as, if we talk of the hind leg of a dog, we claim to know what is a dog. Unfortunately, the philosopher who talks about aspects of truth generally also asks, "What is truth?" Frequently even he denies the existence of truth, or says it is inconceivable by the human intelligence. How, then, can he recognize its aspects? I should not like to be an artist who brought an architectural sketch to a builder, saying, "This is the south aspect of Sea-View Cottage. Sea-View ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... this was the black man's mission; but ere his work was done he was converted into a machine to undo all his work. Inconceivable calamity has followed, and to him is fixed a decade which will soon run ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... daughters have chiefly been engaged in a desperate and unavailing struggle to get rid of it. But the dirt of a poverty-stricken English street is a monstrosity unknown on our side of the Atlantic. It reigns supreme within its own limits, and is inconceivable everywhere beyond them. We enjoy the great advantage, that the brightness and dryness of our atmosphere keep everything clean that the sun shines upon, converting the larger portion of our impurities into transitory ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... such questions there was always ready this one answer: that such a failure on God's part is inconceivable, and must therefore be put among the impossibilities. There are, however, conditions necessary on man's part: the suppliant soul must come to God in the right spirit and attitude. For the sake of such readers as might need further guidance as to the proper and acceptable manner ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... gently, "you accomplished the impossible. Ralph, here, is planning to attempt the preposterous. Does it occur to you that Mr. Bordman is nagging himself to achieve the inconceivable? It is inconceivable, even to him, but he's trying to ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... doors are locked on the inside and the only possible means of entrance, therefore, would have been by the hall door. Directly in front of that, between it and your father, sat Mr. Maitland and myself. You see by my chair that I was less than two feet from the door. It is inconceivable that, in that half-light, anyone could have used that entrance and escaped observation. Do you not see how untenable your idea is? Had your father been stabbed he would have bled, but I am as certain ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... furniture of the vast chamber seemed to the eye of a stranger to offer an inextricable and wellnigh indescribable medley of objects in the utmost confusion. Quaint-looking bottles and jars of every conceivable and inconceivable form, and of many more than all the colors of the rainbow, were on all sorts of tables and brackets and shelves, containing the coloring-matters which, when let out from beneath the stoppers that held them down, were, like imprisoned genii in the Arabian ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... Exposition of a Fallacy in Locke's use of the Argument against the possibility of Matter thinking on grounds of its being inconceivable that ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... have induced the Greeks and the Roumanians to change their attitude? However, the proposal was vetoed by Serbia's great Allies, who thought that their diplomacy might work upon the Bulgars. Many worthy people said that it would be quite inconceivable for the Bulgarian army to oppose the Russian, seeing that this would be terrible ingratitude. But they forgot that if the Russians had been, not for purely altruistic motives, the kind patrons of the Bulgars, they had recently—when the Tzar Nicholas and the Tzarina came to the Constanza ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... diamond plume. Then the wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms that glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold—the tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... missiles were operational at the beginning of 1953. Today many types give our armed forces unprecedented effectiveness. The explosive power of our weapons systems for all purposes is almost inconceivable. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower |
