"Incredible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the vote, not merely as an expression of want of confidence politically, but as a vote of censure morally and politically. Yet in this grave emergency the house adjourned, in order to observe the anniversary of "King Charles the Martyr!" Incredible as this may appear, while the country was in the most imminent peril, such was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... diabolical intentions, when a sudden noise of the trampling of horses and the distant voices of men, forced them to fly. Fear, the companion of villainous actions, made them abandon their prey, and make off with incredible swiftness, so that the wretched Princess soon lost sight of them; but her irremediable misfortune, too present to her mind, to vanish with the authors of it, disordered her senses so cruelly, that abhorring herself, and believing she could no longer ...
— The Princess of Ponthieu - (in) The New-York Weekly Magazine or Miscellaneous Repository • Unknown
... should know of the drama of their airy life if we had eyes only for this brief scene! Their finest qualities come out in the patient cares that protect the young in the nest, in the varied struggles for existence through the changing year, and in the incredible heroisms of the annual ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... place last March. I have asked all my ocean-going friends to note whether these little birds are not the gulls par excellence of the sea; and so far all I have heard from them confirms this. It seems almost incredible; but my son, a sailor, who met that hurricane of the 26th of January, writes to me to say that out in the Bay of Biscay on the morning after the gale, 'though it was blowing like blazes, I observed some little gulls of Jacky's species, and they followed us half way across ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... finished their training at court, return to live on their estates, and never suspect that they have, at the end of twenty years, grown rusty. Men of this type fail in tact with imperturbable coolness, talk folly wittily, distrust good with extreme shrewdness, and take incredible pains ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... heroes and brigands, the Baron Nathan Cahorn now lived; or Baron Satan as he was formerly called on the Bourse, where he had acquired a fortune with incredible rapidity. The lords of Malaquis, absolutely ruined, had been obliged to sell the ancient castle at a great sacrifice. It contained an admirable collection of furniture, pictures, wood carvings, and faience. The Baron lived there alone, attended ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... Lady Agatha, eagerly. "Yes, let us dine! It may sound incredible to you, Mr. Cleggett, that the daughter of an English peer and the widow of a baronet should confess that, except for your tea, she has scarcely eaten for ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... peace, war, or alliance, ought to be negotiated, save with the consent of the people. His course in Holland and Zealand had proved, he said, his willingness always to consult the wishes of his countrymen. As for the matter of religion it was almost incredible that there should be any who doubted the zeal which he bore the religion for which he had suffered so much. "I desire," he continued, fervently, "that men should compare that which has been done by my accusers during ten years past with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... for the poor woman who a second time had fallen under the spell of an unscrupulous man. Cecil's explanation had fallen on deaf ears, for Claire could accept no excuses for a man who borrowed from a woman to ensure comfort and luxury for himself. An officer in the King's army! The thing seemed incredible; so incredible that, for the first time, a rising of suspicion mingled with her dislike. Mentally, she rehearsed the facts of Major Carew's history as narrated by himself, and found herself doubting every one. The beautiful ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... activity over which they had no control. Scientific management has undertaken to gather up whatever bits of initiative the machine had not already taken over and to hand back to the workers at the bench directions for them to follow with a blind ability to accept instruction. It is incredible to factory managers that workers object to being taught "right" ways of doing things. Their objection is not to being taught, but to being told that some one way is right without having had the ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... has proven this otherwise incredible fact, John vouchsafes the admonition notwithstanding: "Marvel not, brethren, if the world hateth you." If we are not to wonder at this, is there anything in the world to incite wonder? I should truly think the hearing of ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... had anticipated, Recha was a prey to the liveliest fears at the protracted absence of her husband. It seemed incredible to her that the busy Governor should have kept him so long. With Mendel, ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... bank are moored a heterogeneous assortment of shanty boats of an incredible and comic slouchiness. Some are nothing but rafts made of water-soaked logs, bearing tiny shacks knocked together out of driftwood and old patches of tin and canvas, but the larger ones have barges, or the hulks of old launches, as ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... also we have this word RIGHT, which, like the others, we all understand, most of us understand differently, and none can express succinctly otherwise. Yet even on the straitest view, we can make some steps towards comprehension of our own superior thoughts. For it is an incredible and most bewildering fact that a man, through life, is on variable terms with himself; he is aware of tiffs and reconciliations; the intimacy is at times almost suspended, at times it is renewed again with joy. As we said before, his inner self or soul appears to him by successive ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reason of this new line of conduct. Some palliate the guilt of the king; that an ambiguous expression of his, during a lucky throw of dice, having been mistaken by the Fidenatians, as if it seemed to be an order for their execution, had been the cause of the ambassadors' death. An incredible tale; that his thoughts should not have been drawn away from the game on the arrival of the Fidenatians, his new allies, when consulting him on a murder tending to violate the law of nations; and that the act was not afterwards viewed by him with horror. ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... who fought the climate, hunger, and the enemy on the battle-field which has shed so much undying glory on the American arms. They are the men who have accomplished unheard-of feats of endurance and performed incredible feats of valor on the same ground—not for Cuba, but at the call of duty. They are citizens. They are brave soldiers who have done their full ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... the robbers. They had spread themselves over the whole land; from the forests of Bakony to Transylvania, from the Carpathians to the Danube, no place was free from these desperate marauders. They committed incredible deeds of boldness. On one occasion seven or eight robbers attacked a caravan of thirty waggons in the neighbourhood of Szegedin, the cavalcade being on its way to the fair in that town. The traders were without ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... instance to such a use. And then Vasari, who saw the picture in Venice, and correctly characterises it, would surely have noticed such an extraordinary peculiarity as the abnormal shape necessitated by the two doors. It is incredible that Titian, if so unpalatable a task had indeed been originally imposed upon him, should not have designed his canvas otherwise. The hole for the right door coming in the midst of the monumental steps is just possible, though ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... terrified by a series of crimes unexampled, it is said, in Western history. The deeds of Bonnot and his confederates were so reckless, daring, and openly defiant, their escapes so miraculous, and the audacity of their assaults so incredible, that the people of Paris were put in a state bordering on frenzy. Just before the previous Christmas, in broad daylight, on a busy street, the band fell upon a bank messenger. They shot him and took from his wallet $25,000. ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... and joy at this incredible good fortune, seized the doctor's hand, and in wild and incoherent language ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... the wind, the snow storm, the danger of being lost; and then all at once this splendid, brightly lighted room, the sounds of the piano, the lovely girls, the curly-headed children, the gay, happy laughter—such a transformation seemed to him like a fairy tale, and it seemed incredible that such transitions were possible at the distance of some two miles in the course of one hour. And dreary thoughts prevented him from enjoying himself, and he kept thinking this was not life here, but bits of life fragments, that ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... reply I should have made. Her question, coming so close upon the heels of Dorinda's hints, upset me completely. Was it written upon my face, for everyone to see? Did I look the incredible idiot that I knew myself to be? For I did know it. In spite of my determination not to admit it even in my innermost thoughts, I knew. I was in love with Mabel Colton—madly, insanely, hopelessly in love with her, and should ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... later came news that seemed at first incredible, but which was speedily confirmed. Decianus had received the queen, had scoffed at her complaints, and when, fired with indignation, she had used threats, he had ordered his soldiers to strip and scourge her, and the sentence ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... Sssuri's arm went back, his spear sang through the air. And the snake-devil, with an incredible twist of its neck, caught the haft of the weapon between its teeth, crunching the iron-hard substance into powder. But with that move it exposed its throat, and the arrow from Dalgard's bow was buried head-deep in the ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... to inspect the Djam's garden, a large rambling piece of ground about fifty acres in extent, enclosed by high walls of solid masonry. Never was I more surprised than upon entering the lofty iron gates guarded by a sowar in neat white uniform. It seemed incredible that such fertility and abundance could exist in this dry, arid land. The cool fragrant gardens, with their shady grass walks, forest trees, and palms, springing up, as it were, out of the scorched, stony desert, reminded one of a bunch of sweet-smelling flowers in a fever ward, and ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... kitchens, through a wash-house littered with damp linen and filled with steam from a copper in the corner, and emerged upon a well-court foetid with sink-water and decaying scraps of vegetables. They had met no one on their way, and it crossed Tilda's mind—but the thought was incredible—that Sarah Huggins served this vast barracks single-handed. A flight of stone steps led up from this area to the railed coping twenty feet aloft, where the ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... joy. Dick out for a duck! What incredible good fortune! He began to frame in his mind epigrammatic sentences for use in the scene which would so shortly take place between Miss Dolly Burn and himself. The next man came in and played flukily but successfully through the rest of ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... after a pause, she resumed: "Ah, yes! You may be sure there is a great deal of good motive power in women, but most of it is lost for want of knowledge and means to apply it. It works like the sails of a windmill not attached to the machinery, which whirl round and round with incredible velocity and every evidence of strength, but serve no better purpose than to show ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... cried for magnifies to see! - We cannot quench our one corrupting glance: The vision of the rumour will not flee. Doth the Boy own such Mother?—shoot his dart To bring her, countless as the crested deeps, Her subjects of the uncorrected heart? False is that vision, shrieks the devotee; Incredible, we echo; and anew Like a far growling lightning-cloud it leaps. Low humourist this leader seems; perchance Pitched from his University career, Adept at classic fooling. Yet of mould Human those Gods were: deathless too: On high they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of May, strive as we would, and never was a more gallant fight made, all our allies were crushed or had deserted us, and the siege of the city began. It began by land and by water, for with incredible resource Cortes caused thirteen brigantines of war to be constructed in Tlascala, and conveyed in pieces for twenty leagues across the mountains to his camp, whence they were floated into the lake through ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... officer, whose past career had been a truly heroic one, was loudly relating in his deep voice, strange and amusing tales of his travels by sea and land, Colonel Mulder often interrupted him, and at every somewhat incredible story, smilingly told a similar, but perfectly impossible adventure of his own. Captain Van Duivenvoorde soothingly interposed, when Van der Laen, who was conscious of never deviating far from the truth, angrily repelled the old man's jesting insinuations. Captain Cromwell, a grave man with a round ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... narrow alley, and that alley is always full of Muencheners going in. Follow the crowd, and one comes presently to a row of booths set up by radish sellers—ancient dames of incredible diameter, gnarled old peasants in tapestry waistcoats and country boots; veterans, one half ventures, of the Napoleonic wars, even of the wars of Frederick the Great. A ten-pfennig piece buys a noble ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... bathed in sweat—our garments were soaked through, and as we took off our wind clothes showers of ice fell on the floor. The accumulation was almost incredible and shows the whole trouble of sledging in cold weather. It would have been very uncomfortable to have camped in the open under such conditions, and assuredly a winter and spring party cannot afford to get so hot if they wish to retain any ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... age—either in morality, criticism, or good breeding—he has boldly assured them that they were altogether in the wrong; and commanded them, with an authority which perfectly well became him, to surrender themselves to his arguments for virtue and good sense. It is incredible to conceive the effect his writings have had on the town; how many thousand follies they have either quite banished, or given a very great check to! how much countenance they have added to virtue and religion! how many people they have rendered ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... sandal-bearer. Nevertheless, some generally credible records do not hesitate to represent Hideyoshi as taking a prominent part in the great battle against the Imagawa, and as openly advising Nobunaga with regard to the strategy best adapted to the situation. It is incredible that a private soldier, and a mere youth of twenty-two at that, should have risen in such a short time to occupy a place of equality with the great generals of Nobunaga's army. But that Hideyoshi contributed more or less to the result of the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... never does jolt the life out of him, notwithstanding his great weight; nor does it interfere in any way with his speed of action, which is like lightning, the instant he touches the ground. Like the coon, who can fall from an incredible distance without hurting himself, Mooween comes down perfectly limp, falling on himself like a great cushion; but the moment he strikes, all his muscles seem to contract at once, and he bounds off like a rubber ball into the densest bit of ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... dazzled, perplexed,—so entirely new, strange, incredible was all this to me; but I expressed to the little Frenchman, in what terms I could command, my profound sense of his ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Hortense was in no way worthy of him. But being confronted thus suddenly with the necessity of supplying his egotism with all its nourishment, he found himself unequal to the task. Behind every consoling thought stalked that totally incredible "No." He tortured his brain for possible reasons for Hortense's deflection, but could find none. Detail by detail he reviewed their acquaintance from the first time he had bowed over her fingers, in ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... Majesty—but it is incredible that such unprecedented crimes should occur in the very bosom of the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... white is white; and it is because people will persist in calling black white that the ignorant are left in their ignorance, and unable to discern right from wrong," he used to observe, when speaking on the subject. It seemed almost incredible, however, that the smugglers, bad as they might be, would maliciously injure a young boy and a little child, even though they might suppose, as they probably did, that they were the children of the man who had offended them. Still, ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... third to the tenth century there were incredible changes among the European nations. Gone were the gleaming cities of the South and the worship of art and science and the exquisite refinements of the life of scholarly leisure. Gone were the flourishing manufactures since the warrior ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... nothing. I know I am no longer the same reckless girl, who, with the very best intention, sent you wandering through the wide world; and I thank God that it proved to be for your good, although the whole now appears quite incredible to me. My thoughts have moved so long within the narrow circle of these mountains that they have lost their youthful elasticity, and can no ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... consideration as a play, because it is not a play at all. It marks the culmination and completeness of that victory of Bernard Shaw over the British public, or rather over their official representatives, of which I have spoken. Shaw had fought a long fight with business men, those incredible people, who assured him that it was useless to have wit without murders, and that a good joke, which is the most popular thing everywhere else, was quite unsalable in the theatrical world. In spite of this he had conquered by his wit and his good dialogue; ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... everything that anybody could want and nobody could get at it, at least not Peter, nor anybody he knew at Siegel Brothers. And at the lodging house they seemed never to have heard of the undiminished heaps of splendour that lay piled behind plate glass and polished counters. It was extraordinary, incredible, that he wasn't to have the ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... It was incredible how rich the world was in bewitching creatures, and the world of Copenhagen especially. If you walked down Crown Princess Street, at a window on the ground floor you saw a dark girl with a Grecian-shaped head and two brown eyes, exquisitely set, beneath a high and noble forehead. She united ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... are taking place in this world of ours! It seems almost incredible, in these days of mighty steamships going almost everywhere on our great waters, to think that there are hundreds of people still living who distinctly remember when the annual trips of a great governor were made ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... Institute meeting Anna received almost one thousand dollars, an incredible amount for a simple speech to her unmercenary spirit, but one which was to be duplicated many times before her ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... what have the masses of our people to show for it? A better, a higher, and a MORE EXPENSIVE standard of living—that is all. That this prosperity which is our national boast will last forever is incredible. Sooner or later will come one of the times when Nature frowns and sends her floods, her droughts, and her epidemics of disease. Is the American people prepared by its long-sustained prosperity to bridge over that ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... objective existence—was a constant source of anxiety to me. Some idea of the danger which attends this process may be gathered from the risks incidental to a much more difficult operation which I once attempted, and succeeded, after incredible effort, in accomplishing; this was the passage of my fifth principle, or ego-spirit, into the ineffable ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... argument, the case of what is called falling in love. The sincere realist, the man who believes in a certain finality in physical science, says, "You may, if you like, describe this thing as a divine and sacred and incredible vision; that is your sentimental theory about it. But what it is, is an animal and sexual instinct designed for certain natural purposes." The man on the other side, the idealist, replies, with quite equal confidence, that this is the very ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... was near. He said he had brought about a dozen women in the waggon, and they had gone up the hill. Impatiently she demanded of him how long it was since they had started to walk, and heard it was about a quarter of an hour. She went on once more, with what seemed to Alec incredible speed. But this time he gave way to no further indecision. Where she had darted under the trees he ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... mistake a gentleman exercising himself in the open air on a nineteenth-century afternoon would, under ordinary circumstances, imply incredible ignorance either of men or statues. But the circumstances in Miss Carew's case were not ordinary; for the man was clad in a jersey and knee-breeches of white material, and his bare arms shone like those of a gladiator. ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... his eyes blacked and his little body scandalously maltreated because he had been made nervous by continuous bullying, and did not steer so well as he might have done had he been left alone. It is almost incredible, but it is true, some of these rascals would at times have men hung up by their thumbs in the mizen rigging for having committed what would be considered ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... its ratification, but that those who claimed to be ardent suffragists would work to defeat State submission after they found the sentiment for ratification amounted to almost nothing in both Houses seems incredible. The fact remains, however, that while the actual defeat of the State amendment was due primarily to personal animosity on the part of Senator Leopold of Plaquemine parish, when he realized what he had done he ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... we must tell you a tale of the man in the moon; which, if it seem ridiculous for the method, or superfluous for the matter, or for the means incredible, for three faults we can make but one excuse,—it is a tale of the man ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... and Sisters wear out their lives to save these people. We teach them with incredible pains the fundamental rules of civilization; we teach them how to save their souls alive." The Boy had jumped up and laid his hand on the door-knob. "You come. You teach them ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... in which he lost some of his strongest fortresses, and Silesia was opened to his enemies. At one time he had only six days' provisions: the world marvelled how he held out. Then England deserted him. He made incredible exertions to avert his doom: everlasting marches, incessant perils; no comforts or luxuries as a king, only sorrows, privations, sufferings; enduring more labors than his soldiers; with restless anxieties and blasted hopes. In his despair and humiliation it is said he ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... Look here—suppose yourself an inquiring speculator—ahem! I assure you, sir, that the prospects of this mine are most brilliant, and the discoveries that have been made in it since we commenced operations are incredible—absolutely incredible, sir. Some of the lodes (that's the word, isn't it?) are immensely rich, and upwards of a hundred feet thick, while the part that runs under the sea, or is to run under the sea, at a depth of three thousand fathoms, is probably as rich in copper ore as ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the rocks, has played in shaping our landscapes, and in preparing the earth for the abode of man. The changes in the surface of the land in one's lifetime, or even in the historic period, are so slight that the tales the geologists tell us are incredible. ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... heels of an animal which, to me, had been a stranger even in its captive state, and which, thus to meet free on its native plains, has fallen to the lot of but few of the votaries of the chase; sailing before me with incredible velocity, his long swan-like neck, keeping time to the eccentric motion of his stilt-like legs—his ample black tail curled above his back, and whisking in ludicrous concert with the rocking of his disproportioned frame—he glided gallantly along 'like some tall ship upon the ocean's ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... evinced the utmost ignorance as to the position of the German armies and the resources of the army of Chalons, advised, or rather ordered, an immediate forward movement, regardless of all considerations, in spite of everything, with a heat and fury that seemed incredible. ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... Lieutenant E.H. JONES would have been a sad muddler if he had not made his story intriguing; but, anyhow, he happens to be a sound craftsman with a considerable sense of style and construction. And he has a convincing way of handling his facts that compels belief in the most incredible of stories. Lieutenant JONES was a prisoner in the hands of the Turks at Zozgad, and to amuse himself and his fellow-prisoners he raised a "spook" which in time gained such a reputation that it had the Turkish officials almost hopelessly at its mercy. From being merely a joke ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... sublime piece of folly; and when the New Zealander of distant ages shall have moralized sufficiently among the ruins of London Bridge, he will bethink himself that somewhere thereabout was the marvellous Tunnel, the very existence of which will seem to him as incredible as that of the hanging-gardens of Babylon. But the Thames will long ago have broken through the massive arch, and choked up the corridors with mud and sand and with the large stones of the structure itself, intermixed with skeletons of drowned people, the rusty iron-work of sunken vessels, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... and factories of the United States were wiped out of existence, the cost of this war would more than replace them. If all the personal and real property of half our nation were destroyed, or if an earthquake of incredible dimensions should shake down every house from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the waste would be less than that involved in this war. And an elemental catastrophe leaves behind it no costly legacy of hate; even the financial troubles are not ended with the treaty of peace. The credit ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... the camel slither across the desert at that animal's almost incredible speed; then turned, sat down on the edge of her litter, took out her bejewelled Louis XV snuff-box, rasped a match on the sole of her crimson shoe, and lit a Three Castles with her eyes on the track left by the ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... 2oz. glove is an evasion by which they dodge the law, and make it difficult for the police to interfere. They contend for a sum of money. It seems dreadful and almost incredible—does it not?—to think that such scenes can be enacted within a few miles of our peaceful home. But you will realise, Mr. Montgomery, that while there are such influences for us to counteract, it is very necessary that we should live ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with strange and alien eyes. A veil of doubt and mistrust came over their faces, like a fog creeping up from the marshes to hide the hills. They glanced at each other with looks of wonder and pity, as those who have listened to incredible sayings, the story of a wild vision, or the proposal of an ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... day after day, for months and years, they live a strange, incredible life in their public harems, outcast by society, accursed by the family, victims of the social temperament, cloacas for the excess of the city's sensuality, the guardians of the honour of the family—four hundred ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... help this contemptuous Treatment, as she had nothing she wanted at Home, by reason of her Laziness, though all Materials in abundance were at hand. 'Tis incredible to relate, but, at the Time I am speaking of, certain Fact, on her whole Estate there was not one to be found could make a Buckle for her Shoe, or a Pin to her Sleeve; a Pot, a Spit, or any Utensil to cook her Victuals, might as well be found among the Tartars as with her. She took ...
— The True Life of Betty Ireland • Anonymous
... rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter of course—and in truth it was something very like it in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigor; Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple sauce; Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves, and, mounting guard ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... number possible. A little eagerly, while men began to mutter in their excitement, Rios snatched up cup and die and threw. Once already he had counted ten thousand as good as won; now he made the same mistake. For the incredible happened and he, too, showed a deuce, making a ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... they all run eagerly to the place where the meal is now being prepared for them. She watches her opportunity, and gradually steals up the cliff; when near the top, she is overtaken, and brought back. Dear old lady, what incredible exertions had she made; we had watched her scrambling up spots we knew she almost fainted to look at. But that was nothing to her dauntless courage and energy. When they were all safe at their meal, Gatty ran from the upper opening to the top of the cliff, from whence they had taken her back, ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... do come to me sometimes, don't you?" she said, with her embroidered handkerchief at her lips. "What is this I hear about the carriage and horses? Sold them! It is incredible. I will not believe it unless you tell ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... erection, Bladud was too busy to indulge in gloomy thoughts, but as soon as it was finished and he had lain down to rest under its shade, the terrible, almost incredible, nature of his position rushed upon him in full force. The opening of the hut had been so arranged as to present a view of the wide-spreading valley, and he gazed upon scenes of surpassing loveliness, in which all the sights that met the eye breathed of beauty and repose, while the sounds that ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... in Infernal Evocations. 1, Invincible obstinacy; 2, a conscience at once hardened to crime and most subject to remorse and fear; 3, affected or natural ignorance; 4, blind faith in all that is incredible, 5, a completely false idea of God. (ELIPHAS LEVI: Op. ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... where the distance from the shoulder to the extremity of the head was no less than three feet ten inches. The head has a striking resemblance to that of a serpent. They can exist without food for an almost incredible length of time, instances having been known where they have been thrown into the hold of a vessel and lain two years without nourishment of any kind—being as fat, and, in every respect, in as good order at the expiration of the time as when ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... wrote to the priest of Venier, to Messire Guillaume Cerisay de la Gueriniere, bailiff of the Loudenois, and to Messire Louis Chauvet, civil lieutenant, begging them to visit the Ursuline convent, in order to examine two nuns who were possessed by evil spirits, and to verify the strange and almost incredible manifestations of this possession. Being thus formally appealed to, the two magistrates could not avoid compliance with the request. It must be confessed that they were not free from curiosity, and felt far from sorry at being able to get to the bottom of the mystery of which ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Saints as Edward the Confessor and Wilfrid of York; and yet they are not too favourably disposed towards our insular Saints, since they plainly express their opinion that our pious simplicity has filled their Acts with incredible legends and miracles, more suited to excite laughter than ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... away at night with the firm resolution that nothing short of an invitation to Buckingham Palace, or some similar incredible disaster, should make me drag it into the light again. For the truth is that the war has given the top-hat a knock-out blow. It had been tottering on our brows for some time. There was a very hot summer a few years ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... whole of the day between the Treasury chambers, a meeting of Convocation, and his club. And when he did get home it was soon manifest to his wife that he was not laden with good news. "It is almost incredible," he said, standing with his back to ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... and I took in the corridors and on the stairs seemed to make such an incredible noise in the quiet house, that I felt like a runaway elephant eloping with a hippopotamus, but either it wasn't as bad as I thought, or everyone was lying charmed in a magic sleep, for we got out through ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... with supreme indifference, incredible, offensive, exasperating, like ingratitude ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... furnished a very gloomy report on the progress of the new religion. "If the Spaniards do come hither," he wrote, "I know no part of the kingdom that will hold for the queen, and the cities themselves will revolt with the first. For it is incredible to see how our nation and religion is maligned, and the awful obedience that all the kingdom stands in unto the Romish priests, whose excommunications are of greater terror unto them than any earthly horror whatsoever. Until of late, although the townsmen have ever ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... his long arms shot out; he collared Newman and, with a trip of the foot, flung him on the floor. Ben Murch, coming next, landed on top of Newman. Alfred Batchelder, Ephraim Darnley, Absum Glinds, Melzar Tibbetts and my cousin, Halstead, followed Ben, till with incredible suddenness nine of the boys, all almost men-grown, were piled in a squirming heap on ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... he thought, the more he recalled the past few years, the more extraordinary, the more incredible was it that he should have made such a difference between them. And an agonizing pang of unspeakable anguish piercing his bosom made his heart beat like a fluttering rag. Its springs seemed broken, and the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... picked up a local guide book and was pointing out objects of interest as they wended their way along the street. Archie's wits had never been so taxed as since he had fired a pistol, more or less with intent to kill, in the house of Putney Congdon, but it was incredible that the Governor could know aught of that matter. The Governor, however, was manifesting the greatest interest in Cornford history, halting citizens to propound inquiries as to landmarks, and pausing before the town hall to make elaborate ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... approximation. The plain everyday sort of cleanness promptly resolves itself into a sort of neck and neck race with dirt and disorder, a neck and neck race with the soap-bar habitually running second. Sometimes it seems hopeless. For it's incredible what can happen to an active-bodied boy of two or three years in one brief but crowded afternoon. It's equally amazing what can happen to a respectably furnished room after a healthy and high-spirited young Turk has been turned loose in it for ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... pikemen from the archers and horsemen; before his time, these troops were all mixed up haphazard together." I have interpreted his evidence in the sense which seems most in harmony with what we know of Assyrian military tactics. It seems incredible that the Medic armies can have fought pell-mell, as Herodotus declares, seeing that for two hundred years past the Medes had been frequently engaged against such well-drilled troops as those of Assyria: if the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the grand coup, which, if successful, would at once gratify his deep longing for revenge and place him, as he fondly hoped, at the very summit of his ambition—the equal of the proudest noble, the lauded servant of a grateful prince. It seems almost incredible that he should have persevered in his design after the very lenient decision of his judges, who acquitted him of all save the most trifling of the charges against him, and decreed that he should merely receive a reprimand ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... brother's eyes were fixed upon her, and she turned away in horror. It was so terrible, so loathsome, that her heart seemed frozen. Every man looked at her just like that, and she liked it, but for her brother to do so was incredible, impossible. Recovering ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... in the month of November, when waters are red and swollen, one stands by Selkirk cauld, the fish may be seen in numbers almost incredible. By scores at a time you may see them, great and small, hurl themselves into the air over the great wave which boils at the cauld-foot. And the bigger fish, landing—if one may use the term—far beyond the first upheaval ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... knew of him I liked much. He was frank, genial, and pleasant. He had strongly marked features, with a brown complexion, and his clothes, when I saw him, were all brown. He seemed to believe in everything which was to others utterly incredible. He said one day to me, "Why don't you give up your fiddle- faddle of geology and zoology, and turn to the occult sciences!" The historian, then Lord Mahon, seemed shocked at such a speech to me, and his ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... rageth to the harm of the good, restrained from executing their malice." "They are restrained," quoth she, "as shall be proved in convenient place. But yet if this liberty which they seem to have be taken away, their punishment also is in great part released. For (which perhaps to some may seem incredible) evil men must necessarily be more unhappy when they have brought to pass their purposes than if they could not obtain what they desire. For if it be a miserable thing to desire that which is evil, it is more miserable to be able to perform ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... quite incredible that the dependent and affectionate man opposite her was the one who had filled her with fear and resentment such a short time ago. She found herself actually laughing aloud once at the absurdity of it all. ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... he exclaimed, when they had put the usual question to him. 'Now, what an extraordinary thing that you should come along and ask me that question. What an astounding and incredible thing that you should actually use the word "singed" in connexion with the word "possum". Though mind you, the word I had in my mind was not "singed", but "burning". And not "possum", but "feathers". Now, I'll tell you why. Only this morning, as ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... the expense of the police. On the whole, the checkmate of the police seems surely impending. They will soon have the buildings full, as the students are getting more and more in earnest, and the most incredible part of it is that the police are surprised. They really thought the arrests would frighten the others from going on. So everybody is getting an education. This morning one of our friends here is going to take us up to the University to see the military encampment, and I hope ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... she felt his powerful frame quiver. Whatever had thus changed him, gave her another glimpse of his complex personality. It seemed to her incredible that with one whispered exclamation this man could change from cold indifference to a fire and force so strong as ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... Scheldt did not appear nearly so definite at the time as it appears now. No mention being made of the matter in the 1839 settlement, many Belgian authorities considered that the stream was placed under a regime of co-sovereignty, and it seemed then incredible that the Dutch should stop ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... on by lawyers who imbrued their hands in our misery. Froebel would run out at the back door and escape amongst the hills whenever dunning creditors appeared. Middendorff, and he alone, generally succeeded in quieting them, a feat which might seem incredible to all but those who have known the fascination of Middendorff's address. Sometimes quite moving scenes occurred, full of forbearance, trustfulness, and noble sentiment, on the part of workmen who ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... walk of incredible beauty, three hundred and eighty paces in length, set round on every side with supporters of wood, which sustain a balcony, from whence the nobility and persons of distinction can take the pleasure of seeing hunting and hawking in a lawn of sufficient space; for ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... the school. The children, however, with all these disadvantages, were perfectly at home in each one of them. There appeared to be no exhausting of their resources; and the ease, and copiousness, and fluency of their language, were remarked by all present, as extraordinary, and by some as almost incredible. Many who were present, could scarcely believe that the children spoke extemporaneously. All these phenomena were simply the effects of the principle of which we are here speaking, regularly brought into operation, in ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... the colonists to the utmost exertions of which they were capable. The Indians soon discerned the object for which they searched with so much avidity, and amused them with tales of rich mines in countries they had not yet explored. Seduced by this information, they encountered incredible hardships, and, in this vain search wasted that time which ought to have been employed in providing the means of future subsistence. Mutual suspicion and disgust between them and the natives ripened into open hostility; and, the provisions brought from England being ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... It seemed incredible that such an experience could trigger so strong a reaction. Yet Fenwick was aware that Baker's attitude toward Ellerbee and his device was not merely one aspect of Baker's character. His attitude in ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... so oblivious of his past life that he did not believe the tales and tragedies he had composed were his own, and he might, indeed, have been taken for a grown-up child if he had also forgotten his native tongue. But if this seems incredible, what shall we say of children? The man of mature years believes the nature of children to be so different from his own, that it would be impossible to persuade him he had ever been a child, if he did not conjecture regarding himself from what he sees of others. But ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... put it in its owner's pocket unseen, when he collared him, and, had it not been for the testimony of a young woman who, coming behind, had seen the whole, would have handed him over to the police. After all, he remained in doubt, the thing seemed so incredible. He did give him a penny, however, which Gibbie at once spent upon ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... there they were joined by many of their countrymen, who poured in from the north and east, notwithstanding their oaths, and that they had given hostages for their good conduct to the king of Wessex. Incredible as it may now seem, the invaders were allowed for a whole year to retain possession of the land thus acquired, without any attempt being made to dislodge them. The chroniclers of the time, however, tell us that this delay was occasioned by the necessity of providing against ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... fugitive, superficial race? was our literature threatened with the artistic degeneration,—running all to art and not at all to power? were our communities invaded by a dry rot of culture? were we fast becoming a delicate, indoor, genteel race? were our women sinking deeper and deeper into the "incredible sloughs of fashion and all kinds of dyspeptic depletion,"—the antidote for all these ills is in Walt Whitman. In him nature shows great fullness and fertility, and an immense friendliness. He supplements and corrects most of the special deficiencies and weaknesses toward which the ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... scarce for making new impressions upon the grey matter enclosed in the bony case of their thoughtless pates. The first difficulty to be met with is the incredible poverty of their language which impedes the communication and development of ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... from his chair and stood, glancing at her with what he hoped was a casual attention. Tenney came back and, when she had thrown off the blanket, took it from her hand and dropped it on a chair. He was all trembling eagerness. That act, the relieving her of the blanket, was incredible to Raven. The man had wanted to kill her (or, at the least, to kill his child), and he was humbly inducting her into the comforts of her home. She had not looked toward Raven. With a decorum finer, he thought, than his own, she would not play the game of ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... standing by himself, till they should be ready for him. In that very moment, this poor wretch seeing himself a little at liberty, and unbound, nature inspired him with hopes of life, and he started away from them, and ran with incredible swiftness along the sands, directly towards me, I mean towards that part of the coast where my habitation was. I was dreadfully frightened, I must acknowledge, when I perceived him run my way, and especially when, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... herself the pain that it gave her to relinquish such a position. She had accommodated herself to greatness so naturally that it seemed incredible that she was to sink back into a life of obscurity. Frankly, she did not ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... of the Ukraine. Their first establishment consisted of a strict republic of warriors; no female was admitted into their strongholds on the islands of the Dnieper. By degrees they relaxed; and began with keeping their families in villages in the vicinity, where they spread with incredible rapidity. Then a line of separation was drawn between the inhabitants of the settlements, and the Zaporogueans in the castles; none of these latter were allowed to marry. Thus their youth were always ready for the enemy; and the distinction was only dropped in ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... Revolution one of the most appalling uprisings in the history of the world took place in France. The kings and nobility ground the people into the very dust until they were goaded into revolt, which overturned the throne and was marked by atrocities that shocked the world. Incredible as it may seem, there were a million people put to death during the awful days of ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... a man between thirty-eight and forty years of age, big-bodied, rapidly acquiring that rotund shape which is thought becoming to bishops, about six feet high though stooping a little, prodigiously active, walking with incredible rapidity, having large limbs, large feet, large though well-shaped and very white hands; in short, a huge fellow physically, as big of heart as of body, and, in the affectionate thought of those who knew him best, as big of intellect as ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... he at length bethought him of his watch. But its testimony seemed incredible: surely the hour could not be five in the afternoon!—surely he could not have slept so close upon a full round of ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... a fortnight later, Lulu descended the stairs dressed for her incredible trip to the city, she wore the white waist which she had often thought they would "use" for her if she died. And really, the waist looked as if it had been planned for the purpose, and its wide, upstanding plaited lace at throat and wrist made ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... was a stretch of common turf on which the tracks of the fated car were plowed plainly enough; but the brink of it was broken as with rocky teeth; broken boulders of all shapes and sizes lay near the edge; it was almost incredible that any one could have deliberately driven into such a death ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... having a lifetime dream suddenly fulfilled to be sitting this way in pleasant converse with her, watching the lights and shadows of expression flit across her sensitive face, and knowing that the light in her eyes was for him. It seemed incredible, but she evidently enjoyed talking to him. Afterwards he thought about it as if their souls had been calling to one another across infinite space, things that neither of them could quite hear, and now ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... defense opened his case. They were asked to believe that the defendant in the present action was Paul Drayton, in the teeth of the fact that Paul Drayton was at that moment a convict in a convict prison. The incredible statement was made that a newly married husband had placed his young wife in a convent on the night of their marriage, and that when they should have rejoined each other an interchange had been made, the husband going to prison ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... throat. Huldah stood near the window winding the old clock. In her right hand was a "Farmer's Almanac." How well he knew the yellow cover! and how like to the Huldah of seventeen was the Huldah of thirty-six! It was incredible that the pangs of disappointed love could make so little inroad on a woman's charms. Rosy cheeks, plump figure, clear eyes, with a little more snap in them than was necessary for connubial comfort, but not a whit too much for beauty; brown hair curling round her ears and temples—what an ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... her mission gives her strength to travel over the rough roadbed with incredible speed. Her eyes are upon the station, which momentarily becomes more and more indistinct; she knows that if the train starts up the grade she can see the headlight. Her lips move in an articulate prayer that she may not see the ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... found friends," she said slowly. She wanted to believe that judge Slocum Price was somehow better than he looked, which should have been easy, since it was incredible that ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... upon her shoulders, and her features working with the most violent agitation; soon after they both fell forward on the straw, as if unable to endure in any other attitude the burning eloquence of a tall grim figure in black, who, standing erect in the centre, was uttering with incredible vehemence an oration that seemed to hover between praying and preaching; his arms hung stiff and immoveable by his side, and he looked like an ill-constructed machine, set in action by a movement so violent, as to threaten its own destruction, so jerkingly, ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... washed off with weak ACETIC ACID (see) in the morning. Easily digested food should be taken, and all so-called stimulants strictly avoided. We should endeavour to secure the soothing of the spinal system of nerves. This is done in a degree that is incredible to those who have not actually witnessed it by a persevering use of the cold treatment of the back. The best time is early in the morning, after the patient has had a good night's sleep. For a whole hour spinal treatment should then be used. We have no faith in any royal road to success in such ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... devil's children have the devil's luck. I cannot to this moment learn, beyond vague conjecture, where the French fleet have gone to; and having gone a round of 600 leagues, at this season of the year, with an expedition incredible, here I am, as ignorant of the situation of the enemy as I was twenty-seven days ago. Every moment I have to regret the frigates having left me; had one-half of them been with me, I could not have wanted ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... characteristic—namely, Wagner did not, even at the age of twenty, trust to inspiration alone, as with his hot and impulsive nature we might have expected, but also to unremitting work. For the remaining fifty years of his life the labours of each day were almost incredible. ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... said Mr. Grey,—"or Mr. Merton; or Mr. Greenwood can do so, if he has permission from Mr. Scarborough. I would rather tell no one. It is to me incredible." With that he got up ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... is, of course, immediately evident. Usually these swellings are slow in forming, so that the size of the enlargement depends entirely upon its age. We may thus meet with growths of this description, varying in weight from 4 or 5 pounds to the almost incredible size of 33-1/2 pounds. In the majority of cases a discharging sore is to be found upon it—in some cases several. Explored, these sores reveal their true nature. Their lip-like openings, and the ready manner in which they may be searched by ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... surrounded by troopers. For a time they were both silent. Barney was wondering if he had accidentally tumbled into the private grounds of Lutha's largest madhouse, or if, in reality, these people mistook him for the young king—it seemed incredible. ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... (Count), convict who escapes from prison, and finds immense treasure, with which he does incredible things. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... wisdom, partly of the fervour of an imagination exceedingly high-wrought and enthusiastic. His own gorgeous vanity intoxicated him: and, if it be an historical truth that the kings of the ancient world, blinded by their own power, had moments in which they believed themselves more than men, it is not incredible that sages, elevated even above kings, should conceive a frenzy as weak, or, it may be, as sublime: and imagine that they did not claim in vain the awful dignity with which the faith of the multitude invested their ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Augustus Caesar, and is known chiefly for the parallel that has been drawn by ancient and modern writers between his supposed miracles and those of the Saviour. His doings as described by Philostratus are extraordinary and incredible, and he was put forward by the Eclectics in opposition to the unique powers claimed by Christ and believed in by His followers. Apollonius is said to have studied the philosophy of the Platonic, Sceptic, Epicurean, Peripatetic and Pythagorean schools, and to have adopted that of Pythagoras. ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... narrative by the names and characters of these respectable guides; and in the contemplation of a minute or remote object, I am not ashamed to borrow the aid of the strongest glasses: 1. The Dogmata Theologica of Petavius are a work of incredible labor and compass; the volumes which relate solely to the Incarnation (two folios, vth and vith, of 837 pages) are divided into xvi. books—the first of history, the remainder of controversy and doctrine. The ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... since the ill-starred affair of Nogent and the almost incredible discovery he had made that Lady Beltham was still alive, Fandor had not seen Juve. He had been to the Surete a number of times, ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... exactly the artist's eye, and cannot easily admire a scene in which he is not physically comfortable. But he has rich and heart-warm descriptions of the Alhambra, the Escorial, and the ruins of Poblet near Tarragona, where an order of patrician monks lived in incredible luxury until a time within present memory, when they were scattered by a tumult and their sculptured home crushed into dry and haggard ruin. This book cannot compare with his Walks in Rome, which was the careful record of a familiar and a resident; but it is the result of a very ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... well-known character among the bushmen of New South Wales, and although the profession did not recognise him, and denounced him as an empiric, his skill was undoubted. Bushmen had great faith in him, and would often ride incredible distances in order to bring him to the bedside of a sick friend. He drank fearfully, but was seldom incapable of treating a patient; he would, however, sometimes be found in an obstinate mood and refuse to travel to the side ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... continued night and day with incredible zeal and toil, were sufficiently completed; and disguise, no longer possible, was no longer useful. Themistocles demanded the audience he had hitherto deferred, and boldly avowed that Athens was now so far fortified as to protect its citizens. "In ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... (Ep. CXLVII, 13, ad Paulin.; de videndo Deum): "It is not incredible that this sublime revelation" (namely, that they should see God in His essence) "was vouchsafed certain saints, without their departing this life so completely as to leave nothing but a corpse for burial." Therefore it was not necessary for Paul's soul, when in rapture, to be ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... themselves have invented, and which have been long rankling in their hearts, to the prejudice of the Jewish community. Our brethren are accused of being accomplices in murder, in order to make their Passover cakes with the blood of the murdered men—a thing in itself incredible, as being forbidden in our holy religion. This report has, however, found credence with the governing Pashas of Damascus and Rhodes, and they have oppressed and incarcerated not only several old men and Rabbins, but even a number ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... reason! My reason ought to have sprung up voluntary in your own heart. It is an incredible thing if you are not already familiar ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... the slightest idea of making a meal of him. This portion of the headman's story I cannot possibly believe, although he swears to it. The elephant may, perhaps, have cracked her head and torn his victim to pieces in the manner described, but the actual 'eating' is incredible. ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... to conceal amusement, and there was good-humoured disdain in the setting of her lips. With audacity so incredible that it all but made her laugh, Dymes, not heeding her inquiry, jerked out the personal application of his abstract remarks. Yes, it was a proposal of marriage—marriage on the new plan, without cares ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... saints are not exempt in this life; but, viewed as they now were in their closer contrast with the sanctity of God, they assumed a more serious aspect than ever before. Her habitual horror of the very slightest faults was intensified; her ordinary almost incredible care to avoid them, increased. Inflamed with a holy zeal for the vindication of the rights of Divine justice, as well with an insatiable ardour for the triumph of God's pure love in her soul, she humbly bowed beneath the hand that ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... his chair white and dumb. Incredible, extraordinary, and utterly unlooked for as was this revelation, he felt ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... the Four Dragons of East Asia, South Korea has achieved an incredible record of growth. Three decades ago its GDP per capita was comparable with levels in the poorer countries of Africa and Asia. Today its GDP per capita is seven times India's, 13 times North Korea's, and already near the lesser economies of the European ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... were new people, spending their money in new and incredible ways. Here was a man who had bought a chapel and turned it into a theatre, and hired professional actors, and persuaded his friends to come and see him act Shakespeare. Here was a woman who costumed herself after figures in famous paintings, with arrangements of roses and cherry leaves, and wreaths ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... plunged into the river, the most of them to drown before reaching the other side. The steamer Warrior reappeared, and the sharpshooters fired at the swimmers, some of them women with babies on their backs. The incidents of the merciless slaughter are too harrowing for recital, and would be incredible if not thoroughly authenticated. It is difficult to understand the ferocity with which Black Hawk's band was pursued and destroyed. Probably the belief that he was still in the British service had much to do with it; also his first success at Stillman's Run, and the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... frozen air for perhaps a week. Any vigorous man in the prime of life who has been shooting all day in the sharp, crisp air of the Arctic will be surprised at his gastronomic capabilities; and personal knowledge of some almost incredible instances amongst civilized men might be related, were it not for fear of being accused of transcending the ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... transactions of the money market. It is true that we are judging after the event. But before the event materials sufficient for the forming of a sound judgment were within the reach of all who cared to use them. It seems incredible that men of sense, who had only a vague and general notion of Paterson's scheme, should have staked every thing on the success of that scheme. It seems more incredible still that men to whom the details of that scheme had been confided should not have looked into any of the common books of history ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... little remembrances. With how much pleasure do I look forward to the time when I may kiss her hand in my own house! We are in a state of supreme content with our new home: it really seems to me as incredible that myriads of people have been living in their own homes heretofore as to the young couple with a first baby it seems impossible that a great many other couples have had similar prodigies. It is simply too delightful. Good ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... she wuz black as the Founder of Evil himself, tall and thin with a mighty head of wool white as snow, which she covered with a yellow turban about her work. She had abnormal powers of falsehood, not for profit or to make trouble, but jest simple lying for lie's sake. The most incredible stories she would string off, and nothing pleased Billy more than to git her to goin', as he ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... matter is hardly disposed of as easily as indicated by the author. Other engineers draw different conclusions from the tests cited by the author, and from some to which he does not refer. To the writer it appears that here is a problem still awaiting solution on a really satisfactory basis. It seems incredible that the author would use plain concrete in columns, yet that seems to be the inference. The tests seem to indicate that there is much merit in both hooping and longitudinal reinforcement, if properly ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... hatched by those well-omened fowls? and was not the dower now coming to use? Hohenfels paired off with the notary, and discussed with that parchment person the music of Mozart, and, what would have been absurd and incredible in any Anglo-Saxon country, the scribe ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... much caution, that one of them having conveyed a young fox under his garment, suffered the creature to tear out his bowels with his teeth and claws, choosing rather to die than to be detected. Nor does this appear incredible, if we consider what their young men can endure to this day; for we have seen many of them expire under the lash at the ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... are, has attempted and accomplished a good deal more than this. He has in some cases produced two identical texts written in different hands, both preserving unimpaired the archaic character of the letters. This implies either the employment of two scribes or else an almost incredible skill in the single scribe employed, and in either case it doubles the probability of detection. If, moreover, the supposed fabricator is also himself the scribe, it is evident that he is not only a very ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... Fanshawe, Mr. Secretary Nicholas, the famous Dr. Harvey, arm-in-arm with my lord Falkland (whose boots were splash'd with mud, he having ridden over from his house at Great Tew), and many such, all mix'd in this incredible tag-rag. Mistress Fanshawe, as I remember, was playing on a lute, which she carried always slung about her shoulders: and close beside her, a fellow impudently puffing his specific against the morbus campestris, which already had begun to ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... absurdly incredible, Wannie, but do you know I believe this ice of ours gains in coldness as the warm weather comes on! I do, indeed, and you may mention the fact ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... so brave that if a naval battle ever did come his way, he would demolish the foe in an instant; father, with a warm strong hand clasping ours on high days and holidays, taking us on great expeditions where we see life at its best and taste incredible joys. ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Cantacuzene began to speak to Quinet in the most Wallachian words in the world, with incredible assurance and volubility, so much so that the gendarme, convinced that he had to deal with all Wallachia in person, and seeing the train ready to start, returned the passport to Quinet, saying to him, "There! be off with you!"—a ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... speedy little ship shot ahead of the fleet toward the gigantic mass of asteroids, planetoids, and millions of lesser space bodies, whirling and churning among themselves at an incredible rate of speed. Hardly had they left the fleet when Roger's voice crackled over the ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... were in separate compartments. The barbarians were not only literally in the saddle, but on the front bench in the House of commons, with nobody to correct their incredible ignorance of modern thought and political science but upstarts from the counting-house, who had spent their lives furnishing their pockets instead of their minds. Both, however, were practised in dealing with money and ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... reeking with arsenic, and giving it off when dry, and when handled, in the form of dust? Painted on the skin while wet is bad enough; but what shall we say to those—well, we will not use harsh terms—who calmly tell you that they always use dry arsenic. Incredible as the statement may appear to the scientist, yet it is true that I have seen a man plunge his hand in the most matter-of-fact way into a box containing dry arsenic, and coolly proceed to dust it on a skin. What is the consequence of this to the user of wet or dry arsenical ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... expansion. The full tale of the rise and climax of industrial establishments; how they subverted the functions of government to their own ends; stole inventions right and left and drove inventors to poverty and to the grave; defrauded the community of incredible amounts by evading taxation; oppressed their workers to a degree that in future times will read like the acts of a class outsavaging the savage; bribed without intermission; slaughtered legions of men, women and children in the pursuit of profit; exploited the peoples ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... one of Aunt Margaret's peculiarities that she insisted upon reading aloud the letters which she received from old-lady friends, and the incredible dulness of the epistles made them a trial to the patience of her lively young niece. She stifled a yawn as Bridgie straightened the sheets of foreign note-paper, and cleared ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey |
