"Ken" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this was the occasion on which my brother discovered a good many things in connection with the fair sex which had hitherto been beyond his ken; more especially that the mass of petticoats and clothes which envelop the female form were not, as he expressed it to me, "all solid woman," but that women were not in reality more substantially built ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... man does not resign from his regiment and within a year or two disappear like a ghost from the ken of every one of his brother officers. I read the letter again. Did the severance of connection mean the casting out of a black sheep from their midst? I came to the conclusion that it did. They had washed their hands of Captain ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... then, Bouse Mort and Ken, The bien Coves bings awast, On Chates to trine by Rome Coves dine For his long lib at last. Bing'd out bien Morts and toure, and toure, Bing out of the Rome vile bine, And toure the Cove that cloy'd your duds, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the weird sisters, when whispering amongst themselves, irreverently spoke of their sovereign by the name of Black John; upon such occasions the Fiend rushed on them like a schoolmaster who surprises his pupils in delict, and beat and buffeted them without mercy or discretion, saying, "I ken weel eneugh what you are saying of me." Then might be seen the various tempers of those whom he commanded. Alexander Elder, in Earlseat, often fell under his lord's displeasure for neglect of duty, and, being weak and simple, could never ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... "ye shall gang roun' to yere place again: these country gowks mauna ken the riddle without the labour." As a natural consequence, Sir Richard Hoghton's "great companie" would require a correspondingly great quantity of provisions; and the tradition in the locality is, that ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... of life in such a world as that? On the night side, where no sunshine ever penetrates, the temperature must be extremely low, hardly greater than the fearful cold of open space, unless modifying influences beyond our ken exist. It is certain that if life flourishes there, it must be in such forms as can endure continual darkness and excessive cold. Some heat would be carried around by atmospheric circulation from the sunward side, but not enough, it would ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... down from vulgar ken, Shall the pure gushing of her soul rejoice, And we stand silent, as to hear the voice Of waters falling to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... de worril goes; Some goes up en some goes down. You'll get ter de bottom all safe en soun'! I'll watch yo' 'strategy' wid int'rest, now en den, En—well, I'll try ter look, des as frightened as I ken!" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 11, 1892 • Various
... if she did not really know Heath very well. A great many things about him she knew. But how much of him was beyond her ken. She was not even sure how he regarded Charmian. Now she wished very much to ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... Cecil, when ye look at your aunt; she's no invalid, but she gi'es up her life for the sak' o' others. Did ye ken that these verra rooms are the anes she likes most, the anes she lived in till we came, and she gave them up that ye might enjoy the best she had ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... fearing lest, perhaps, she might have spoken too plainly. Coke's counter-stroke in alluding to her dread of the proposed marriage was hidden from her ken; Hozier, of course, was thinking of nothing else. For the moment, then, they were ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... dwarfed; the valley of the Hudson is only a wrinkle in the earth's surface. You discover with a feeling of surprise that the great thing is the earth itself, which stretches away on every hand so far beyond your ken. ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... can foretell the kind of effect which will follow the given mechanical impulse, yet the quantity of effect—the height to which the stone will ascend, and the rapidity with which it will fall—is something utterly beyond his ken. The servant-girl has no need of chemistry to teach her, that, when the match is applied, the fire will burn and smoke ascend the chimney; but she is far from being able to predict the proportional weights of oxygen and carbon which ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... dinna ken, sir, at a', at a'. There's a mistak' afloat somewhere. I never was in sic a fix afore. This is a queer ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... away beyond, in the solemn depths of the Kentucky wilderness, burned a camp-fire, whose faint smoke could be traced as it rose above the tree-tops. A careful study of the vapor led Deerfoot to suspect that it had served as a signal, but it was beyond his ken ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... think that I'm a blossom blighted; But this I ken, that should it not prove so, If I am not inexorably spited Of all that dignifies mankind below; By him I speak of, I was so excited, While reason's scale was poising to and fro, "To the better cause;" that him I have to bless For that which it is ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... this order, as I ken, Is called sect or section, Since its sectaries are men Divers in complexion; Therefore hic and haec and hoc Suit it in declension, Since so multiform a flock Here ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... an afternoon when the shining spiritual presences were making themselves visible—not with the gleaming suddenness with which they had appeared ten days before, but slowly, with vague wonders, as if finding it hard to bring themselves within mortal ken. Rounding the corner of the promenade at the end remote from the hotel, at a point from which he had the whole line of the bluff and the green depths of the valley and the slopes of the Gurten and the curtain of Alpine mist in one superb coup d'oeil, Chip saw a great ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... these is open to us; any conclusions we can draw about them may be legitimate and true. But to step outside their province and to deny the existence of any other region because we have no sense-organs for its appreciation, or because (like the ether) it is too uniformly omnipresent for our ken, is to wrest our advantages and privileges from their proper use and apply them to our own misdirection." . . . "I am one of those who think that the methods of science are not so limited in their scope as has been thought: that they ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... your article ("Some disputed Points in Music."—'Fortnightly Review,' July, 1876.) with much interest, except the latter part, which soared above my ken. I am greatly pleased that you uphold my views to a certain extent. Your criticism of the rasping noise made by insects being necessarily rhythmical is very good; but though not made intentionally, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... in the social sunshine. The following year, in the whirl of a gay New York winter, one would scarcely have recognised her as the same person. She had "made good," as boys say, and had used my stepping-stones to carry her far beyond my ken. In her widening interests, broader range, and increased worldly knowledge we became naturally better friends than ever and met on the common ground of those who led similar lives. What man would not value the intimacy of a young, beautiful, and clever woman? in ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... 8—"Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?" Job's friends professed to have discovered the reason for his affliction, for, forsooth, had they not found out the secrets of the divine wisdom unto perfection. No, such is beyond their human, finite ken. Isa. 40:28—"There is no searching of his understanding." Jacob's captive condition might lead him to lose trust and faith in God. But Jacob has not seen all God's plans—no man has. Job, 37:16—"The wondrous works of him which is perfect in knowledge." ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... joying in their joy, hearing the tale and sharing the pain of their grief, and in frequent interchange of honest, household sensibility—if we look about us on character, marking distinctly what we can see, and feeling the prompting of a hundred questions concerning what is out of our ken:—if we live thus, we shall be good readers and critics of books, ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... as daft as ever, Madge; but a haveral woman's tongue is nae scandal, and ye ken that the governor winna tak ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... tongue of flame mounting up to its source in the solar fire, or like a ray of the halo that rises up on the low horizon of the Libyan desert, when the dawn has crimsoned all the eastern heavens, might thus well be selected as the most suitable object to bring the invisible sun-god within the ken of human vision and the range of human worship. The poetical imagination may detect a significance even in the difference between the material used in the construction of the obelisk, and that used in the construction of the pyramid, though this may not have been designed by the makers. ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... Robespierre was the Chief of State. Of course she never saw them now, her small self would hardly dare address them! Sister Genevieve and the Doctor, who had told her about the Frochards' den, were no longer within her ken. ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... and annoyances may have apparently happened in consequence, the end has always been fortunate when I have been able to arrive at the result. The consequence of many of our acts, we must remember, is yet in the eternal future, unfathomed by mortal ken. To that time we must look forward for the reward of any of our acts which may be considered by our beneficent Father worthy of reward; and also to that time (we must not conceal from ourselves) for punishment for our misdeeds, unless our ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... Mr. Fiske that we have here "the most subtle conclusion now within the ken of the scientific speculator, reached without any disregard of the canons prescribed by the doctrine of relativity," I would like to point out to minds less clear-sighted than his, that this same "doctrine of relativity" effectually debars us from using this "conclusion" as an argument of ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... kerosene on the troubled waters, to hold out the olive branch to Baylor. Besides, I already have more holes in my head than nature intended, and am not particularly anxious to increase the assortment. Let what is hidden from public ken so remain until that great incubator of Christian charity, that ganglion of brotherly love, attempts to redeem its long-standing promise to land me in the penitentiary for criminal libel. It could serve no good ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... new each morning with mounting satisfaction. Richard, like other authors, found no literature so good to his palate as his own; and while his stories looked well enough when he wrote them, the types never failed in uncovering charms that had escaped his ken. These were complacent days for Richard the defective; ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... in that the events of the summer of 1915 had left me without heart or desire, the merest spectator of life, passive and, I cynically believed, indifferent. I was nothing to any one, nor was any one anything to me. The desire of my heart had slipped like a laughing ghost away from my ken—men of my slow warmth and cautious suspicion do not ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... to know," Bivens persisted. "Your silence on the subject makes me furious every time I think of it. How any human being outside of an insane asylum could be so foolish is beyond my ken." ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... men like that? I'm as much in love with him as he with me and I can behave myself decently and keep outwardly calm and observe the conventions of life. Why can't he be decent? How can it comfort a man in love to throw away a splendid career, abandon a great income and vanish from the ken of all who love him? What madness is this with which the gods afflict him? Oh, I could ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... and weak, who made himself perfect, and that even as his teacher has done, so, too, may he if he do but observe the everlasting laws of life which the Buddha has shown to the world. These laws are as immutable as Newton's laws, and come, like his, from beyond our ken. ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... of the night, and blind to the honest light of truth when I yielded to the counsel of ambition, that I had no time for courtship and marriage. In my stupid haste I would try to grope my way through subjects beyond a man's ken, rather than seek some such guide as yonder maiden, whose intuitions would be unerring when the light of reason failed. In theory, I held the doctrine that there was sex in mind as truly as in the material ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... transmitted, thus sustained, and thus imperishable, argues a transcendent in the basis of radical power. Broad and deep must those foundations have been laid, which could support an "arch of empire" rising to that giddy altitude—an altitude which sufficed to bring it within the ken of posterity to ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... They stood staring with dismay, until the treasure was sold to a dealer from the city for the incredible sum of eighty-seven dollars; and then they drove home, quite awe-stricken by this sudden intrusion from the world of luxury outside their ken. ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... before long. With much rumor of applause from contemporary mankind. Concerning which we are to give some indications, were it only dates in their order: though, as the affair turned out not to be completed, but had to be taken up again long after, and is an affair lying wide of British ken,—there need not, and indeed cannot, be much said of it just now. SECONDLY, there is eager Furthering of the Husbandries, the Commerces, Practical Arts,—especially at present, that of Foreign Commerce, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... the former is thought most likely, as no sooner does a beast of burden drop in the deserts exhausted on the sands, than vultures begin to make their way towards the carcase. Whence they come none can tell, and the only probable suggestion is that they hover at a height beyond the ken of human eye over a passing caravan, for they are first noticed as specks in the air above, moving slowly round in circles as they descend spirally ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... you, Elsie," Mrs. MacDougall said, gently, "for I ken you're punished enough, but it will do ye no harm to feel sore-hearted for all the sorrow you've ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... other is the mystery of Delhi. Popularly supposed to be the old boy's daughter, and his sole heiress, Miss Nadine," concluded the young aid-de-camp. "The old curmudgeon keeps her judiciously veiled from mortal ken. No man but General Willoughby has ever exchanged a word with her. The dear old boy—his memory does not go back beyond his last B. and S.—he can't even sketch her beauty in words. And she is as ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... nothing but refinement to distinguish her from her neighbours, to a closer one there was more than that. Her eyes, they said, had the far, intent, rapt gaze of a wild animal. They seemed to search minutely, reaching beyond our power of vision, to find there things beyond our human ken. But whereas the things which she looked at, invisible to us, caused her no dismay, those within our range, the most ordinary and commonplace, filled her with alarm. Her eyes, you may say, communed with the unseen, and her ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... is the maintenance of the individuality of which it is the foundation; and since it is pure spirit it has its continual existence in that plane of being where all things subsist in the universal here and the everlasting now, and consequently can, inform the lower mind of things removed from its ken either by distance or futurity. As the absence of the conditions of time and space must logically concentrate all things into a present focus, we can assign no limit to the subjective mind's power of perception, and therefore the question arises, why does it not keep the objective ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... Greece; who can link together the Old and the New, Earth and Heaven, and yield to the known worlds of thought and physical existence the mystery of the Unknown—of the Old World in its youth, and of Worlds beyond our ken!" ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... the background some other publishing enterprise that is producing constant revenue from year to year, mere fiction will accomplish little to make or save the publisher. The real sources of stability lie elsewhere, far beyond the ken of the superficial observer, and they are very commonly overlooked. In one instance, this mainstay is religious books; in another a cyclopaedia; in another medical books, or educational; in another a dictionary; in another a periodical; ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... country round about, and plain, homely and unromantic is the little house where Carlyle was born. The place is shown the visitor by a good old dame who takes one from room to room, giving a little lecture meanwhile in a mixture of Gaelic and English which was quite beyond my ken. Several relics of interest are shown, and although the house is almost precisely like all others in the vicinity, imagination throws round it all a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... the Great White Silence, as they call the long winter up here, is broken by the thunder of the ice rushing down to the sea, you, like the rest, will exchange the snow-fields for the gold-fields, and pass out of our ken. Now, I'm not usually prone to try my hand at prophecy; but I am tempted to say, even on our short acquaintance, that I am tolerably sure that, while we shall be willing enough to spare most of the new-comers to the Klondyke, we shall grudge to the gold-fields ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... declining, the archbishopric of Paris was now almost within my ken, which, together with other prospects of good benefices, made me resolve not to fling off the cassock but upon honourable terms and valuable considerations; but having nothing yet within my view that I could be sure of, I resolved to distinguish myself in my own profession ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... we keep their day, Theirs who have passed beyond the sight of men, O'er whom the autumn strews its gold again, And the grey sky bends to an earth as grey; But we who live are silent even as they While the world's heart marks one deep throb; and then, Touched by the gleam of suns beyond our ken, The Stone of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... Douglas said, "What recks the death of ane! "Last night I dream'd a dreary dream, "And I ken ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... had to reach secretly and rapidly positions which interposed decisively between the inferior and its line of communications and retreat. To do this secretly, a large circuit must be made; that is, a road must be taken far beyond the enemy's ken, therefore much longer than that he himself would traverse to pass the same decisive points {p.292} and thereby evade interception. The question is one of exterior and interior lines, and therefore of speed. Speed in a country without resources, and especially when opposed to an enemy ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... conceal'd from Nature's ken, Who like thee can declare? Or who like thee to erring men God's holy will can bear? Pride scorns thee for thy lowly mien,— But who like thee can rise Above this toilsome, sordid scene, Beyond ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... and seven miles broad, and he must drain it the next day, or else he would have him for his supper. Nicht Nought Nothing began early next morning and tried to lave the water with his pail, but the loch was never getting any less, and he did no ken what to do; but the giant's dochter called on all the fish in the sea to come and drink the water, and very soon they drank it dry. When the giant saw the work done he was in a rage, and said, 'I've a worse job for you to-morrow; there is a tree seven miles high, and no branch ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... "I dinna ken what the sleeve-drivers telt ye, cappen," answered Scotty, his brogue a little thicker from his emotions, "but I agree that ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... Hobhouse, Churchwdn's Acc'ts of Croscombe, Pilton, etc., Somerset Rec. Soc., iv (1890), 80, where he says: "The [Yatton] wardens attended these festivals at Ken, Kingston, Wrington, Congresbury, etc., with more or less regularity, making their contributions, commonly xijd. in the name of the parish and at the cost of the parish ..." Cf. Morebath Acc'ts (ed. Binney), 224: "It there was payd a trinite Sonday at the ...
— The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects • Sedley Lynch Ware
... to my astonished eyes such a wondrous spectacle as no mortal tongue, no pen of man, can describe—the wide prospect that the eagle, the denizen of the high Alps, sweeps with his far reaching ken every morning at the rising of the deep purple veil that overhung the horizon by night mountains farther off! mountains far away! and yet again in the blue distance—mountains still, blending with the grey mists of the morning in the ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... them year after year, I came to the conclusion that they must be placed in the category of those things which are beyond the ken of our philosophy. I might say that no one was allowed to approach sufficiently close to touch the "ghosts,"—if such they can be termed; and probably even if permission had been granted, the blacks would have been in too great a state of terror to ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... another cannily, "Jock here has the right of it. I wouldna swear tae the pawky carl, but I'd ken the een o' him full weel. An I had a peep in his een, sir. I'm thinkin' I'd ken their ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... richtly ken," answered the prostrate one, "whether it was a wedding' or a funeral, but whichever it was it ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... see some of them only a part at a time, and every now and then, as the company wandered on, he would be startled by some extraordinary limb or feature, undreamed of by him before, thrusting itself out of the darkness into the range of his ken. Probably there were some of his old acquaintances among them, although such had been the conditions of semi-darkness, in which alone he had ever seen any of them, that it was not like he would be able to identify ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... good, and a bitter hatred of Englishmen. Thea often thought that the nicest thing about Ray was his love for Mexico and the Mexicans, who had been kind to him when he drifted, a homeless boy, over the border. In Mexico, Ray was Senor Ken-ay-dy, and when he answered to that name he was somehow a different fellow. He spoke Spanish fluently, and the sunny warmth of that tongue kept him from being quite as hard as his chin, or as narrow as ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... proverbs with another. "Don't see why I shouldn't make money as well's other fellers. It's a free country, an' if a feller wants to try suthin' else 'sides fishin' uv it, what d'yer all want to be down on him fur? I don't want to slave all my days, when other folks ken live in big houses an' ride in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... ken whaur they've ta'en theirsel's," replied Angus. "All we ken is, we wull not lie in the hoose wi' 'em. Her leddyship wadna expect it, whateffer. We prefair t' ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer rul'd as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... to a tune of fifes and drums. Everywhere men were drilling. At more or less regular intervals one saw them marching down Montgomery street, brave in their new uniforms, running a gauntlet of bunting, flags and cheers. Then they passed from one's ken. Each fortnight the San Francisco papers published a column of ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... over from the mortgage, less what I paid Gadgem," he bridled. "If you have brought any more of Harry's bills hand them out. Why the devil you ask, Talbot, is beyond my ken, but I have no objection ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Morris, the poet and lover of harmony, should have selected this locality for a home is quite beyond the average ken. Certainly it mystified the fashionable literary world of London, with whom he never kept goose-step, but that still kept track of him—for fashion has a way of patronizing genius—and some of his old friends wrote him asking where Hammersmith ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... had risen over Lauvellen, and the white wings of a fair morning lay on the hamlet in the vale below. Sim stood long on the Raise, straining dim eyes into the south, where the diminishing figure of his friend was passing out of his ken. ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... who expects to see a Jungfrau float into his ken before he has lost sight of a Mte. Rosa; the architect who expects to find the railway time-table punctuated at hourly intervals by a venerable monument of his art; the connoisseur who hopes to visit a Pitti Palace or a Dresden Picture Gallery in every ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... Pa," assented Mrs. Mason. ("Go on with your meal, Professor, the meat'll be cold.") She was completely won by the travelling bookseller, and had given him the highest title of honour in her ken. "Why, I read that story when I was a girl, and I still remember it. That's better readin' for Dorothy than those funeral speeches, I reckon. I believe the Professor's right: we'd ought to have more books laying around. Seems kind of a shame, with a famous author at the next farm, ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... when put to it, but it seemed impossible that they could survive so fierce an inundation. Well, the wind ceased, the tide went out at last; and behold, the rails were in full cry, not a voice missing! How they had managed it was beyond my ken. ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... guard, and drill when they are off guard. Our wary Mobiles outside not only refuse to allow Prussians to pass, but such is their vigilance, they generally arrest officers of any regiment except their own who come within their ken. These worthy fellows will, I believe, fight with bravery. The working men, too, are engaged in heaping up barricades, and are ready to allow themselves to be killed and their landlords' houses to be blown up rather ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... mantle gray She flings across the brow of day To hide from mortal ken awhile The splendour of his kingly smile. But what magic beauties lie In her dark and shadowy eye, When the moon with glory crowned Checkers o'er the distant ground; Bathing now in floods of light, Now retreating from the sight, As the heavy vapoury cloud Flings athwart its ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... with half a sovereign, which he evidently thought liberal, and he departed gleefully. Shortly afterwards I learned that he had 'got a stretch' in connection with a 'job' at Camberwell; and he vanished from my ken. But I did not forget the sliding doors. No special use for them suggested itself, but their potentialities were so obvious that I resolved to keep a sharp eye on the second floor ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... of prognostication was being followed up beyond her ken, Tilly Ann sat bolt upright in her father's arms, looking round her with a proprietary air, and occasionally patting his cheek with a broad dimpled little palm. She was a tall, well-made child, plump and fair, with rosy cheeks and sturdy limbs ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... interrupt them. Miss Mannering is emotional in a conventional stage way, and she knows a few tricks. But the subtlety that comes from experience, the quality that nothing but a long and arduous apprenticeship can produce, are leagues beyond her ken. It is a pity, but the "be-stars-quickly" all suffer in this identical way and there is ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... about that," cried the girl, with a deeper blush, and a saucy toss of her head. "It is a fine country, but it's no' Scotland, ye ken, as my Aunt would say. My! but I'm ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... har 'gin tu rise on my hed an' I ax him ef dat was a fac'. He sed dat he was told so in Norfolk. It was gin out dar dat a mity putty gal had loss her sweethart, an' had dun gone crazy, an' had gone to de Lake ob de Dismal Swamp an' drown herself, an' dat she ken be seen ebery night by de lite ob some sort ob fli." "I tell you, boss," continued the old man, "when he tole me 'bout dat gal paddlin' dat bote on de Lake at nite, I diden' want to go any furder wid him, but he tole ...
— The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections - Vivid portrayal of Amusing Scenes • Robert Arnold
... said. "After all, you will be expected to act as the alter persona of Dionysus. That involves responsibilities almost beyond the ken ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... exclaimed Rebecca, "how ken you laugh so? I wouldn't hev the weight of sech a thing on my mind ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... more spirit than did Hazlitt through the length and breadth of eighteenth century romance, and the young poet's awe before the majesty of Homer was hardly greater than that of the future critic when a Milton or a Wordsworth swam into his ken. This hot and eager interest, deprived of its outlet in the form of direct emulation, sought a vent in communicating itself to others and in making converts to its faith. So intimately did Hazlitt feel the spell of a work of genius, that its life-blood was transfused into his own almost against ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... he understood his friend Pancha even as he did his friend Mark. That she could have complexities and reservations beyond his simple ken had never occurred to him. What he saw on the surface was what she was, and being so, the news he was bringing would be as a tonic ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... come by divers ways To keep this merry tryst, But few of us have kept within The Narrow Way, I wist; For we are those whose ampler wits And hearts have proved our curse— Foredoomed to ken the better things And ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... of the Nineteenth Century," edited by Professor Curtis Hidden Page) which was the textbook of that sophomore course. He was reading Keats. And his eyes were those of one who has seen a new planet swim into his ken. I don't know how many evenings we spent there together. Probably only a few. I don't recall just how we communed, or imparted to one another our juvenile speculations. But I plainly remember how he would sit beside his desk-lamp and ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... home meadow at Devizes, after such a journey as no mortal upon earth has ever yet taken and lived to tell the tale. I have seen the beauty and I have seen the horror of the heights—and greater beauty or greater horror than that is not within the ken of man. ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... multitude who toiled in Port Arthur harbour to raise the sunken ships which cumbered it, and to clear the entrance channel; but on the 10th of February the naval contingent rejoined its ships, and on the 14th the Japanese battle fleet disappeared from human ken, and for three whole months was no more seen, save by a few who were made clearly to understand the vital necessity to ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... hunting, and a great way off descries His huddling young left sole; at that, he checks His pinion, and with short uneasy sweeps Circles above his eyry, with loud screams Chiding his mate back to her nest; but she Lies dying, with the arrow in her side, In some far stony gorge out of his ken, A heap of fluttering feathers—never more Shall the lake glass her, flying over it; Never the black and dripping precipices Echo her stormy scream as she sails by— As that poor bird flies home, nor knows his loss, So Rustum knew not his own loss, but stood Over his dying son, and knew ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... flings Its silver foam afar— So stern and thick the Danaan kings And soldiers marched to war. Each leader gave his men the word, Each warrior deep in silence heard, So mute they marched, them couldst not ken They were a mass of speaking men; And as they strode in martial might Their flickering arms shot back ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... spat, "would you see me? Would you see the Eyes once seen by the witch-woman, who fell blasted out of human ken? Creature of clay, crumbling now in the sea of mortality, do you ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... said Crawford; "ye are an ass, my friend, and ken not the blessing Heaven has sent you in this braw callant.—And now tell me, Quentin, my man, hath the King any advice of this brave, Christian, and manly resolution of yours, for, poor man, he had need, in his strait, to ken what he has ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... one reason is, because you're no province soldiers at all, being in the direct pay and service of the King, like ourselves. And then you're a braw set of men, and ken this fighting in the woods a deal better than we do, and we know it. But the provincials are gawks from country towns, without discipline, and with no more knowledge of ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... of life, from first to last nought is free from destruction. But the incomparable seer dwelling in the world, thoroughly acquainted with the highest truth, whose wisdom grasps that which is beyond the world's ken, he it is who can save the worldly-dwellers. He it is who can provide lasting escape from the destructive power of impermanence. But, alas! through the wide world, all that lives is sunk ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... astonishment of his Oxford Street experiences may have returned to him, for he had evidently counted on Kemp's co-operation in his brutal dream of a terrorised world. At any rate he vanished from human ken about midday, and no living witness can tell what he did until about half-past two. It was a fortunate thing, perhaps, for humanity, but for him ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... convocation, which puts a stop at once to all further proceedings in the matter. These are the 'censores morum' of the University, and their business is to see that the undergraduate members, when no longer under the ken of the head or tutors of their own college, behave seemly when mixing with the townsmen and restrict themselves, as far as may be, to lawful or constitutional and harmless amusements. Their powers extend over a circumference of three miles round the walls of the city. The proctors are ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... other hand, who is the metaphysician in swearing, sometimes borders on equivocation. He decidedly goes farther than the Englisman, not because he has less honesty, but more prudence. He will assent to, or deny a proposition; for the Englishman's "I don't know," and the Scotchman's "I dinna ken," are two very distinct assertions when properly understood. The former stands out a monument of dulness, an insuperable barrier against inquiry, ingenuity, and fancy; but the latter frequently stretches itself so as to embrace ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... thunder Strange beaches flash into my ken; On jetties heaped head-high with plunder I dance and dice with sailor-men. Strange stars swarm down to burn above me, Strange shadows haunt, strange voices greet; Strange women lure and laugh and love me, And fling their bastards ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... case is [diverging] from that of Ken's. To say nothing of the last miserable century, which has given us to start from a much lower level and with much less to spare than a Churchman in the 17th century, questions of doctrine are now coming in; with him, it ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... these things, should affect such scepticism. It would have been more natural for them, on the other hand, to hail such proofs as those I am now laying before the public with the same satisfaction as an astronomer feels when a new star, whose elements he has calculated, swims within his ken. I myself was a thorough-going disbeliever only two years back. In the first place I had never witnessed any occult phenomena myself, nor did I find any one who had done so in that small ring of our countrymen for whom only I was taught to have any respect—the "educated classes." It was ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... herself—brought hope to Kitty's mind. She started up, pressing her hands to her brow and pushing back the disordered hair. Then she addressed the girl with eager, persuasive words. But the kitchen-maid only shook her head. "Dinna ye ken that I'm stane-deef?" she said, pointing to her ears with a grin. For a moment Kitty in despair desisted from her efforts. Then she thought of another argument. She produced her purse, and showed the girl some sovereigns, then led her to the door, intimating by signs that ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... I hear them talking there In an open boat, and the speech is fair. And the boy is learning the ways of men From the finest man in his youthful ken. Kings, to the youngster, cannot compare With the gentle father who's with him there. And the greatest mind of the human race Not for one minute ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... mawnds kennot rawse to Christiennity lawk hahrs ken, gavner: thet's ah it is. Weoll, ez haw was syin, if a hescort is wornted, there's maw friend and commawnder Kepn Brarsbahnd of the schooner Thenksgivin, an is crew, incloodin mawseolf, will see the lidy an Jadge Ellam through henny little excursion in reason. ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... four guests to dinner to-day: Peter Fraser, Ballantyne, John Blackwood, and Mr. Russel. Immense preparations are making in the establishment, "on account," Mr. Kennedy says, "of a' four yon chiels being chiels wha' ken a guid dinner." I enquired after poor Doctor Burt, not having the least idea ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... rest, Hilda,—proud names with glory on earth and shadows escaped from our ken, submissive to mercy in heaven. A vast chasm have my steps overleapt since we met, O Hilda—sweet Edith; a vast chasm, but a narrow grave." His voice faltered a moment, and again he renewed,— "Thou weepest, Edith; ah, how thy tears console me! Hilda, hear me! I love thy grandchild—loved ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... homes of living men! I have no relish for your pleasures— In the human face I nothing ken That with my spirit's yearning measures. I long for onward bliss to be, A day of joy, a brighter morrow; And from this bondage to be free, Farewell thou world of sin ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... hath pained Without the ken of parents both, Whose hearts responsive have remained To the impressions of our youth, The all-entrancing joys of love— Young ladies, if ye ever strove The mystic lines to tear away A lover's letter might convey, Or into bold hands anxiously Have e'er ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... occasion we must learn to be just an eye focussed upon being. But that does not at all exclude the possibility of future works, treating in due order of the problem of human destiny, and perhaps even in the work so far completed we may descry some attempts to bring this future within ken. ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... resources. Every successful physician and every leader of men knows the truth of these statements. What would have happened in the great war if Marshal Foch had not known that his men possessed powers far beyond their ken, and had not had sublime faith in the ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... be generous to drop out of her ken at once, leave the gift in her lap, and say nothing? Ah! but he was not capable of it. His act must have its price. Just one half hour with her—face to face. Then, shut the door—and, good-bye! What was there to fear? He could control ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... passing fair. Were our sons as brave as they are beautiful, we still might dance on Sion. Yet have I often thought that, could I pillow this moody brow upon some snowy bosom that were my own, and dwell in the wilderness, far from the sight and ken of man, and all the care and toil and wretchedness that groan and sweat and sigh about me, I might haply lose this deep sensation of overwhelming woe that broods upon by being. No matter! Life is but a dream, and mine ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... did not think it strange that the wife of a rich notary should wish to inspect a volume costing fifteen francs before deciding on the purchase. Your clever man never condescends to study the middle-class, who escape his ken by this want of attention; and while he is making game of them, they are ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... nothing that way but sea, because he saw no land: which proofe (vnder correction) giueth small assurance of a Nauigable sea by the Northeast, to goe round about the world, For that be iudged by the eye onely, seeing we in this our cleare aire doe account twentie miles a ken at Sea. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... in news values. In spite of fast trains and electric telegraphs human beings are clannish and local in their interests. They are interested mainly in things and persons that they know, and news from outside their ken must be of unusual significance to attract them. They like to read about things that they have seen and persons that they know, because they are slow to exert their imaginations enough to appreciate things that they do not know personally. Hence every ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... detritus, wherever the quantity of such material is sufficient to insure continuous moisture. In fruit, however, as will appear hereafter, slime-moulds may occur on objects of any and every sort. Their minuteness retires them from ordinary ken; but such is the extreme beauty of their microscopic structure, such the exceeding interest of their life-history, that for many years enthusiastic students have found the group one of peculiar fascination, in some respects, at least, ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... the dam in the winter-floods had here made a great hollow. There was besides another weir a very little way below which again dammed the water back; so that the depth was greater here than in almost any other part within the ken of the village boys. Indeed there were horrors afloat concerning its depth. I was but a poor swimmer, for swimming is a natural gift, and is not equally distributed to all. I might have done better, however, but for those stories of the awful gulf beneath me. I was struggling ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... gar polloi kai epetrimoi emata panta piptousin, pote ken tis anapneuseie ponoio; alla chre ton men katathaptemen, hos ke thanesi, nelea thymon echontas, ep' emati ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Totteridge; Isaac Watts lived for many years at Theobalds near Cheshunt; Philip Doddridge was at school at St. Albans. Fox, in his Journal, mentions visiting Hitchin, Baldock and other places. Tillotson was a curate at Cheshunt; Ken was born at Little Berkhampstead; Nathaniel Field, a man of prodigious learning, chaplain to James I., was born at Hemel Hempstead. William Penn, whom many considered a divine indeed, lived with his beautiful wife at Basing House, Rickmansworth; Godwin was an Independent minister at Ware. ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... of the company; second-sight was rather its precursor than its attendant; for, with intuitive penetration, they now discovered various good qualities in his ghost-ship, that had hitherto been beyond their ken; and those very personal properties, which before struck them dumb with terror, already called forth ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... truth, this is a thing the like of which no man has yet seen. Here am I, who know the manner of the life and of the death even of the ants that creep. Verily, I thought that no thing could escape my ken; yet here lies one of your disciples, than whom there lives no nobler thing, and I am at fault. From this day forth I will enter your sect, praying only that ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... arguments. A man with warm sympathies for the oppressed, he had been led probably by the case of Jane Wenham, with whom he had talked, to make a personal investigation of all cases that came at all within the ken of those living. Whoever shall write the final story of English witchcraft will find himself still dependent upon this ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... breathing valor came, But silent all, and all with faithful hearts 10 On succor mutual to the last, resolved. As when the south wind wraps the mountain top In mist the shepherd's dread, but to the thief Than night itself more welcome, and the eye Is bounded in its ken to a stone's cast, 15 Such from beneath their footsteps dun and dense Uprose the dust, for swift they cross the plain. When, host to host opposed, full nigh they stood, Then Alexander[3] in the Trojan van Advanced was seen, all beauteous as a God; 20 His leopard's skin, his ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep Roll in on the souls of men, But who will reveal to our waking ken The forms that swim and the shapes that creep Under the waters of sleep? And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in On the length and the breadth of the marvelous marshes ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... tireless putter-right of men, Our roaring ROOSEVELT, swims into our ken. With clash of cymbals and with roll of drums, Reduced in weight, from far Brazil he comes. What risks were his! The rapids caught his form, Upset his bark and tossed him in the storm. Clutching his trumpet in a fearless hand, The damp explorer struggled to the land; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... Ghizeh above the desert. Steadfast to the end, he upheld the waning fortunes of the Confederacy as did Hector those of Troy. Last scene of all, at his surrender, his greatness and dignity made of his adversary but a humble accessory; and if departed intelligences be permitted to take ken of the affairs of this world, the soul of Light Horse Harry rejoices that his own eulogy of Washington, "First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen," is now, by the united voice of the South, applied ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... it? It is treason for what I ken," said the king; "and a' your wyte, Steenie. Your dear dad and gossip might have been murdered, for ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... living heart whose beatings bound thee: The powerful and the wise had sought Thy coming, thou in light descending O'er the wide land which is thine own 2220 Like the Spring whose breath is blending All blasts of fragrance into one, Comest upon the paths of men!— Earth bares her general bosom to thy ken, And all her children here in glory meet 2225 To feed upon thy smiles, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... him all that the Ministers had taught them and the Wazirs also spoke with them; and Azadbakht said to them, "O folk, I would have it known to you that there is no doubt with me concerning this your speech proceeding from love and loyal counsel to me, and ye ken that, were I inclined to kill half these folk, I could do them die and this would not be hard to me; so how shall I not slay this youth and he in my power and in the hending of my hand? Indeed, his crime is manifest and he hath incurred death penalty; ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... crossed himself, and unto God his soul commended then, he was glad of the vision that had come into his ken The next day at morning they began anew to wend. Be it known their term of sufferance at the last has made an end. In the mountains of Miedes the Cid encamped that night, With the towers of Atienza where the Moors ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon
... other loads, The seasons range the country roads, But here in London streets I ken No such helpmates, only men; And these are not in plight to bear, If they would, another's care. They have enough as 'tis: I see In many an eye that measures me The mortal sickness of a mind Too unhappy to be kind. Undone ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... the Stoics regarded our universe as an island of being in an ocean of void, they did not admit the possibility that other such islands might exist beyond our ken. The spectacle of the starry heavens, which presented itself nightly to their gaze in all the brilliancy of a southern sky—that was all there was of being, beyond that lay nothingness. Democritus or the Epicureans might dream of other worlds, but the Stoics contended for ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... discreet obliteration of self. But Penelope left the valley in prosaic fashion, in a livery wagon, with a man as easy to find as his own bustling, pushing town; yet the dust-clouds which closed around them as they drove away shut them from my ken as the mountains had enclosed her father in their most secret hiding-places. It was the fault of Rufus Blight. He had blown beautiful bubbles to divert us in those last hours of his visit, and bubbles bursting silently into nothingness were not more fragile than his promises. ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... contests, and how she had sinned through the counsels of her much-sorrowing sister, and how with the sons of Phrixus she had fled afar from the tyrannous horrors of her father; but she shrank from telling of the murder of Apsyrtus. Yet she escaped not Circe's ken; nevertheless, in spite of all, she pitied the weeping ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... George; I ken it as weel as if we had a year auld acquentance; I ken it by thae sweet mouth and een, and by the look she gied me when you tauld her, Sir, I had been in the house near as lang's yoursel. An' look at her eenow. There's heaven's peace within, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... grow, And heath-bells bud in deep Glencoe. And copse on Cruchan Ben; But here, above, around, below, On mountain, or in glen, Nor tree, nor plant, nor shrub, nor flower, Nor aught of vegetative power, The wearied eye may ken; But all its rocks at random thrown, Black waves, bare ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... meane, sir: he that comands the family in chiefe, hath been honor'd with a sword and "rise Sir Richard" (who is but my father in lawe[226] to a[nd?] by a former wife): for Mr. Underwitt, whome to salute you humbled your Cloth a gold Dublet, I ken not the wight. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... souls to understand what various mischief Madame Marneffes may do in a family, and the means by which they reach poor virtuous wives apparently so far out of their ken. And then, if we only transfer, in fancy, such doings to the upper class of society about a throne, and if we consider what kings' mistresses must have cost them, we may estimate the debt owed ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... herself, she went out of the room, followed by John's wondering eyes. He sat quietly a moment, then went back to his book, feeling that woman's reasoning was far beyond his ken. ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... was overawed by her mistress' air of aloofness, the pale face rendered ethereally beautiful by the sufferings she had gone through. The eyes glowed large and magnetic, as if in presence of spiritual visions beyond mortal ken; the golden hair looked like a saintly halo above the white, ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and a last step into the air off his own greatly improved gallows drop, brought the career of Deacon William Brodie to an end. But still, by the mind's eye, he may be seen, a man harassed below a mountain of duplicity, slinking from a magistrate's supper-room to a thieves' ken, and pickeering among the closes by the flicker of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cudgel thy leesing out o' thee, I hope. Thou could'stna speak truth to save thy neck fro' the rope. Didst get any o' the crumbs at the dinner to-day? for I ken thou throw'd up thy greasy cap, and cried out 'Hurrah for the king.' Thy tongue would ever wag faster at a feast than thy fist ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... the one subject on which all women agree and all men disagree. Our author, however, is clearly of the same opinion as the Scotch lassie who, on her father warning her what a solemn thing it was to get married, answered, 'I ken that, father, but it's a great deal solemner to be single.' He may be regarded as the champion of the married life. Indeed, he has a most interesting chapter on marriage-made men, and though he dissents, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... I never saw a more beautiful countenance or one more subdued to settled quiet. "Ailie," said James, "this is Maister John, the young doctor; Rab's freend, ye ken. We often speak aboot you, doctor." She smiled, and made a movement, but said nothing; and prepared to come down, putting her plaid aside and rising. Had Solomon, in all his glory, been handing down the Queen of ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... prone flight Descending down, light sheer upon the coast Of outmost Night. The guard seraphic knows. That power ministrant, —— —— and with quick despatch Unfolds the Stygian doors, that jarring hoarse Slow on their adamantine hinges turn'd, And open'd to their ken the dread abyss, Unfathomably deep, mother of woes. Not mountains pil'd on mountains would close up Th' infernal entrance: they would but increase Its native ruggedness. No path leads down To those abhorred deeps. Close by the gate ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... must indeed be so. There are not two such ken-speckled men in the world. But if he crossed from the castle to the fort, it was not above the ground, for ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... first one door, and then the other, "that is, ef they ain' gone. I mighty 'feared they gone. I seen 'em goin' out the back way about a little while befo' you all come,—but I thought they might 'a' come back. Mister, ken y' all teck me 'long with you when you go?" she asked the officer, in a low voice. ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... followed the climax—after violent scenes, Bryan himself disappeared, as if to show that, the treasure being somewhere beyond his ken, or out of his reach, he had no further use for the wife. He might, no doubt, have resorted to poison, or to the knife, in order to revenge himself; or he might have so made life a burden to her—as is done sometimes, one is told, even ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... out it had no foreign aid, and a casual origin. In the south-west Turner commanded but seventy soldiers, scattered all about the country. On November 14 some of them mishandled an old man in the clachan of Dalry, on the Ken. A soldier was shot in revenge (Mackenzie speaks as if a conventicle was going on in the neighbourhood); people gathered in arms, with the Laird of Corsack, young Maxwell of Monreith, and M'Lennan; caught Turner, undressed, in Dumfries, and carried him with them as they ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... not make the best parents. Fancy and imagination seldom deign to stoop from their heights; always stoop unwillingly to the low level of common duties. Aloof from vulgar life, they pursue their rapid flight beyond the ken of mortals, and descend not to earth but when compelled by necessity. The prose of ordinary occurrences is beneath the dignity of poets. He who is connected with the author of the "Night Thoughts" only by veneration ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... They say his first wife, whom he married while he was still in business, was a niece of the Archbishop of Canterbury of the day, and his second wife, whom he married after he had retired to live on his earnings, was a half-sister of good Bishop Ken's; but I do not pretend to vouch for the truth of these statements. Now, about your father. I cannot do what you ask—I cannot in conscience. Will you ever forgive me, 'little May'—that is what your father and mother and your sisters call you sometimes to this day, ain't it? and it ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... Pleasant Trouble swung in on his crutch and grinned. Doctor Jim then heard the tongue-lashing of his life. The woman's volubility was like a mill-race, and her command of vitriolic epithets was beyond his ken. She recited what Juno had done, Doctor Jim was doing, the things Jerry had done and left ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... and relief fell: my cramped existence all at once spread out to a plain without bounds—my powers heard a call from heaven to rise, gather their full strength, spread their wings, and mount beyond ken. God had an errand for me; to bear which afar, to deliver it well, skill and strength, courage and eloquence, the best qualifications of soldier, statesman, and orator, were all needed: for these all centre in ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... not be necessary, Ken dear. No matter how changed you looked, what disguise you wore, I should ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... "I dinna ken but I wad," responded the emigrant, consulting his watch; and he went in and set to work. No matter how often he found a fit, he tried on another and another till he tried on about thirty. Then, again looking at his watch, he resumed his own garment ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... transpires that some of his horses were out that very night without his consent or ken. No one for a moment, to my knowledge, has connected Field with the loss of the money. Hay thought, however, it threw suspicion on him, and ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... regimen was, however, practised by Bishop Ken, of whom Hawkins (not Sir John) in his life of that venerable Prelate, p. 4, tells us: 'And that neither his study might be the aggressor on his hours of instruction, or what he judged his duty prevent his improvements; or both, his closet addresses to his GOD; he strictly accustomed ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... public indeed is curiously ready to accept whatever is said to be funny and comes from America as being in truth humorous even if largely unintelligible; but few Americans would give credit for the existence of humour in those parts of an English book outside their ken. Yet I think, if it were possible to get the opinion of an impartial jury on the subject, their verdict would be that the number of humorous writers of approximately the first or second class is ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... ken I'm listening?" impatiently retorted the other, with a fierce frown. "Gang your way, mon," he added, churlishly, as he ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... her brains, unwilling to admit that any human experience was beyond her ken, but no! not one single instance of the kind could she remember. She had felt lonely at times, silent and unsociable, but never shy! She shook ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... begging for God's sake, just like himself. Seeing Mr. Carew, he crossed the way, came up to him, and in the cant language, asked where he lay last night, what road he was going, and several other questions; then, whether he would brush into a boozing-ken and be his thrums; to this he consented, and away they went; where, in the course of their conversation, they asked each other various questions concerning the country, the charitable and uncharitable families, the moderate and severe justices, the good and queer corporations. ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... of the interior. Large rivers gave evidence of a defined system of drainage, the crests of snow-topped mountain ranges in the distance were proof of whence these rivers sprang. The native tribes were of higher intelligence, had a partial knowledge of what lay beyond their immediate ken, and could show articles of barter and commerce that they had ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... personality, which had settled itself in the house of life, and none of us has wide and deep enough knowledge to contradict Him. Might it not be better to accept His witness in this, as in other matters beyond our ken, as true, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... we pity him," cried the King. "And sae it is a hopeless suit, young sir?" he added to Richard. "Canna we throw in a good word for ye? Do we ken the lassie, and is she to ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... grew rife Which had come long ago on the pasture, when round me the sheep Fed in silence—above, the one eagle wheeled slow as in sleep; And I lay in my hollow and mused on the world that might lie 'Neath his ken, though I saw but the strip 'twixt the hill 140 and the sky; And I laughed—"Since my days are ordained to be passed with my flocks, Let me people at least, with my fancies, the plains and the rocks, Dream the life I am never to mix with, and image the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... and of humor. The world appreciates it, no doubt, but "cultured critics" are probably unaware of its singular value. The great American novel has escaped the eyes of those who watch to see this new planet swim into their ken. And will Mark Twain never write such another? One is enough for him to live by, and for our gratitude, but not ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... oak, And sweet the gush of sylvan streams, And good the great sun's gladding beams, The blush of life upon the field, The silent might that mountains wield. Still more I love to mix with men, Meeting the kindly human ken; To feel the force of faithful friends— The thirst ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... raised himself into a kneeling position, and, clutching hold of the man's arm, screamed, "I dinna ken, I dinna ken, Matthew; but take heed, mon, it does na touch me. It's me ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... a thickly-wooded region bordering the banks of the river, we emerged on an open country, the celebrated llanos of Venezuela, which extended far away beyond human ken. As the best part of the day was spent, we agreed that it would be folly to attempt pushing forward without a guide; so, as a hato, or cattle-farm, was seen in the distance, we resolved to ride towards it for the ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... magnificent view of Kashmir is no petty peep into a half-mile glen, but the full display of a valley sixty miles in breadth and upwards of a hundred miles in length, the whole of which lies beneath "the ken of the ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... than a most fragmentary resolution of the difficulty presented by the reality of evil—indeed, we have already expressed our belief that a full solution must in the nature of things lie beyond our ken. But if it should appear from the foregoing considerations that some aspects of our problem—such as the existence of sin and of pain—are not as irreconcilable with the goodness of God as may have seemed to be the case, ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer |
