"Unbelievable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and valor of these German-named Blue Devils had come to him, here and there and everywhere. Dorn remembered all he heard, and believed it, too, though some of the charges and some of the burdens attributed to these famed soldiers seemed unbelievable. His opportunity had now come. With the moving up to the front he would meet reality; and all within him, the keen, strange eagerness, the curiosity that perplexed, the unintelligible longing, the heat and burn of ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... Herbert Farr! The fulfilled vision of the learned scholar he had come so far to see capped with nicety the climax of this absurd adventure. What an utter fool, what an unbelievable idiot he had made of himself! For the moment he saw clear and all normal reactions proved inadequate. There was ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... their actual value," said Totten, frowning." A million pounds sterling is what their holdings really represented; according to the despatches they must have sold at a loss of nearly fifty thousand pounds. It is unbelievable that the house can be hard-pressed for money. There isn't a sounder concern in Europe ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the date of the production was set. It gave Bambi unbelievable pleasure to read the announcements on the billboards, and to stand in front of the three-sheets in ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... to endeavour to make everything out of something else, and to rummage out a store of old rubbish, as the first step towards manufacturing a new garment! The treasures which were to contribute towards Esther's trousseau consisted of a moth-eaten Paisley shawl, a checked silk skirt of unbelievable hideousness, a muslin scarf; yellow with age, a broken ivory fan, and a pair of mittens. A vision of Esther figuring as a bride in this old- world costume, rose before Peggy's quick-seeing eyes, the checked silk transforming her slim figure ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... publicly. She understood that he had tasted an earlier moment of success: a mention, a medal, something official and tangible; then the tide of publicity had somehow setthe other way, and left him stranded in a noble isolation. It was extraordinary and unbelievable that any one so naturally eminent and exceptional should have been subject to the same vulgar necessities that governed her own life, should have known povertyand obscurity and indifference. But she gathered that this had been the case, and felt that it formed the miraculous link ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... devoured him. I saw the last shred of him disappear down their maws. He was gone, disintegrated, entombed in the living bodies of his kind, and already entering into the processes of digestion. And yet, there, in the shade on the pin-rail, that unbelievable and monstrous ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... lost track of him for several years. Then I heard that he had married a dear friend of mine—Lady Dagmar Cooper, one of the greatest beauties and perhaps the sternest prude in England. She wrote me, soon after that unbelievable mating: "I have married Cecil Grimshaw. I know you won't approve; I do not altogether approve myself. He is not like the men I have known—not at all English. But he intrigues me; there is a sense of power behind his awfulness—you see I know that he is awful! I think I ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... housed it rose and rose against the skyline. It became huge. It became monstrous. It became unbelievable. But Joe could have wept when the car pulled up at an angular, three-story building built out from the Shed's base. From the air, this substantial building had looked like a mere chip. The car stopped. They got out. A sentry ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... of married tunes Curdled out of the air; How it is all sung delivering magic To your pent hamper'd souls! I tell you, kings, yours are but stammer'd songs To that enchantment fashion'd for him, That ceremony of life's powers, The loveliness of Vashti; That unbelievable worship made For King Ahasuerus. He to whom the loveliest she is given, Least is bound to ended things, Belongeth most on earth to Heaven; Hath the whitest wind of flame To burn his soul clean of the world, Clean ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... for strength to toil again, And that fierce frightened anguish of my love For the poor little spirit I had wronged With life that was no life. What had befallen Since yesterday? No need to stop and ask! Back there in the dark places of my mind Where I had thrust it, fearing to believe An unbelievable mercy, shone the news Told by the village neighbors coming home Last night from the great city, of a man Arisen, like the first evangelists, With power to heal the bodies of the sick, In testimony of his master Christ, Who heals the soul when it ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... every bit of physical endurance and energy, every fraction of stubborn will Shann could summon, for him to survive his first three months in those barracks—unbroken and still eager to be Survey. He could still wonder at the unbelievable chance which had rescued him from that merely because Training Center had needed another odd hand to clean cages and feed ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... amazement when Jack read aloud the letter from Captain Martin. It seemed almost unbelievable to some of the boys. Others who always made it a practice to glean all the baseball news in the city papers that came to certain Chester homes, may have known that such evil practices had been attempted occasionally, especially where unprincipled ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... who stood a little in front of the others, who seemed by his manner and bearing to consider himself their leader, was the terrible Girty, a man who left behind him an almost unbelievable record for cruelty and treachery to his own race. He was partly in Indian, partly in white dress, and when his glance fell upon Henry it was full of most inhuman mockery. The boy's wrath flamed up. He did not seek now to practice the Indian ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the almost unbelievable tragedy—that the people should not know what to do; that they should not have given more thought to making the structure of their ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... thoughts dwell upon it. That Sun—those Suns, were they indeed the great Central Suns, 'round which the whole universe, of the unknown heavens, revolves? Who shall say? And the bright globules, floating forever in the light of the Green Sun! And the Sea of Sleep on which they float! How unbelievable it all is. If it were not for Pepper, I should, even after the many extraordinary things that I have witnessed, be inclined to imagine that it was but a gigantic dream. Then, there is that dreadful, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... said Henry, as he and his comrade in the daring venture slid away among the bushes. Then the two went forward with unbelievable skill. Not even the ear of a warrior could have heard them fifteen feet away, and they never relaxed their caution, although they did not believe that the Indians were keeping very ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... could ride over the bridge without the fear of meeting him and with the feeling that the place was more than ever hers. It was gloriously empty of any claim but its own. To gallop across the fields, to ride more slowly on some height with nothing between her and great massy clouds of unbelievable whiteness, to feel herself relieved of an immense responsibility, was like finding the new world she had longed for. She wished sincerely that Francis would not come back; she wished that, riding one day, she might find Sales Hall blotted out, leaving no sign, no trace, ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... way that the adult wins the battle of religious education. In the deeper and more far-seeing sense he has lost it. Religion has become, not a charming privilege, but a lesson, a lesson about unbelievable things, a meaningless task to be learnt by heart, a drudgery. It may be said that even if that is so, religious lessons merely share the inevitable fate of all subjects which become school tasks. But that is not ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... imperturbably, suspended in the chaos of which the Master interprets the meaning. Tinsley, bowed down with the laurels of both hemispheres, raises himself to yet nobler heights in his capacity of a devoted chef. It is almost unbelievable! And yet men write of the Master as cold, aloof, self-contained. Such characters do not elicit the joyous and unswerving devotion which Lavalle commanded throughout life. Truly, we have changed very little in the course of the ages! The secrets of earth and ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... have been taken for a Frenchman. But he made no attempt, then, to escape. No such thought was in his mind for the moment. His amazement gave way to horror. He wanted to see what was beyond the wooden wall where he knew the dead and wounded lay, piled deep among the logs and sharpened boughs. Unbelievable it was, but it was true. His own eyes had seen and his own ears had heard. He listened to the triumphant shouts of the French, and his ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... you may be sure, will proceed to depreciate the military work of Von Moltke, just as he tries to depreciate his diplomatic and parliamentary work. He has reached a pitch of infatuation unbelievable; and is becoming, as I have said before, more and more of a Nero every day. At the present moment he is instigating the construction of an arena at Schildorn where spectacles after the ancient manner will be given. These, according to William, are intended ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... little first, then shouted in a rousing chorus. Then they drank more, amid a perfect fracas of talk and laughter. Ivan Petrovitch and Athanase Georgevitch walked across and kissed the general. Rouletabille saw all around him great children who amused themselves with unbelievable naivete and who drank in a fashion more unbelievable still. Matrena Petrovna smoked cigarettes of yellow tobacco incessantly, rising almost continually to make a hurried round of the rooms, and after having prompted ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... year 1947 it seems almost unbelievable that the universal use by the public of Judicial Corporations should have been a matter of such recent economic growth. It is interesting to trace their development and the social causes from which ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... an instant as if in unbelievable view, and then "Francie, what on earth has got into you?" he broke out. "What deviltry, what poison?" It would have been strange and sad to an observer, the opposition of these young figures, so fresh, so candid, so meant for confidence, but now ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... But there, unbelievable as it was, Pete was lowering his revolver and the tenderfoot's hand was on his shoulder in a friendly, explanatory position. Pete seemed in a trance, without will-power over his trigger finger, and Pete was the last man in ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... CONQUER THE ALPS When the Italians were making their first mighty advance against Austria descriptions came through of the almost unbelievable natural obstacles they were conquering. Getting one of the monster guns into position in the mountains, as shown above, over the track that had to be built for every foot of its ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... they were engaged cutting the ice in order to clear the water. It was already spring tide, and the ice-cakes were drifting toward the sea, but with unbelievable slowness. After all, that's the work for you, he told himself as he turned away. He was conscious of that which lay beneath the surface, but he would ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... its worst, for Bryce decamped abroad last Monday without even arranging for a charwoman to clear up after him. I never saw such a disgraceful mess. It's unbelievable. He wasn't ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... reached the street floor, the door had, alas, closed on the suspected thieves. It came to him now how much wiser it would have been had he shouted from the balcony, instead of waiting to descend. If he had done that the men might have been stopped before they got away. But it was all so unbelievable that he hadn't the nerve to cry out. Had he been mistaken, a pretty sort of fool he would have appeared; besides, he had not thought of it. His bright ideas always ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... bright red braids over her extraordinary cloak; and her big eyes were child's eyes. What her figure was like, except that she was a tall, long-legged, upstanding young creature, no one could judge, not even an anatomist, because of that weird wrap. As a cloak it was a shocking production—a hideous, unbelievable contribution to cloakhood from the hands of a mantle-making vandal—but it caught the man's interest, because before his eyes danced the hunting tartan of the MacDonalds of Dhrum. Once that particular combination of green, blue, red, ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... It certainly was unbelievable that any reasoning creature should prefer confinement and disgrace to freedom, but the iron had burned deep into Denver's soul and his one desire now was revenge. He had been deprived of his property and branded a convict ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... snobbery on Cooper's part as well as on that of his elite hanky. Finally, the heroine-handkerchief's protracted failure to recognize her maker, when she has proved so sensitive to her surroundings in every other fashion, is simply unbelievable. Still, there is enough to reward today's reader, if only in the story's unique "point of view" and in the recognizable foibles of Henry Halfacre and his ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... through the bodies of the trunks; of troops of cavalry ridden on the prostrate trees. No one but has heard of the dancing-floor or the dinner-table cut from a single cross-section; and probably few but have seen some of the fibrous bark of unbelievable thickness. The Mariposa, Calaveras, and Santa Cruz groves have ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... originals of the Forsytes that one has been almost encouraged to believe in the typicality of an imagined species. Manners change and modes evolve, and "Timothy's on the Bayswater Road" becomes a nest of the unbelievable in all except essentials; we shall not look upon its like again, nor perhaps on such a one as James or Old Jolyon. And yet the figures of Insurance Societies and the utterances of Judges reassure us daily that our earthly paradise is still a rich preserve, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... lungs and the motherless boy, who had brought his little savings to the West in the hope of husbanding out his life in the dry, clear atmosphere, and saving his son from the white death that had already invaded their little family. With a cruelty almost unbelievable, Conward had talked this man into the purchase of property so far removed from the city as to possess no value except as farm land; and the little savings, which were to ward off sickness and death, or, if that could not be, minister ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... unbelievable dream!" sighed the old gentleman, as, with flushed face and dishevelled hair, he spread himself out in an easy chair, with Queen Pina on his knee and Brown-eyes at his feet. "Hush! all of ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... the forest. Night after night, by the light of candles, Charley sat in his tent studying his texts. He found them fascinating. Here in the forest, where every day he could see illustrated the truth of what he had read the night before, he learned, with unbelievable rapidity. Whenever he came to anything in his texts that he did not understand, he made a note of it. Sometimes at night he got Lew on the wireless and through him questioned the forester. He did not want to bother the ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... way to keep a secret is to publish it in a quite unbelievable form—and insist that it ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... the believers said, the highest enlightenment, he remembered his previous lives, he had reached the nirvana and never returned into the cycle, was never again submerged in the murky river of physical forms. Many wonderful and unbelievable things were reported of him, he had performed miracles, had overcome the devil, had spoken to the gods. But his enemies and disbelievers said, this Gotama was a vain seducer, he would spent his days in luxury, scorned the ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... at five-thirty every afternoon, and said good-bye to the mysterious Mr. Moonlight Quill and the lady clerk, Miss McCracken, and the lady stenographer, Miss Masters, he went home to the girl, Caroline. He did not eat supper with Caroline. It is unbelievable that Caroline would have considered eating off his bureau with the collar buttons dangerously near the cottage cheese, and the ends of Merlin's necktie just missing his glass of milk—he had never asked her to eat with him. He ate alone. He went into Braegdort's delicatessen on Sixth Avenue ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... stricken look, and their faces were nearly old. Mr. Starr cut the blessing short, and the dinner was eaten in silence. The twins tried to start the conversation. They talked of the weather with passionate devotion. They discussed their studies with an almost unbelievable enthusiasm. They even referred, with stiff smiles, to "papa's good joke," and then laughed their dreary "ha, ha, ha," until their father wanted to fall upon his ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... more closely, and commencing at the moment when the soldiers broke down the door, she told her brother the thrilling and almost unbelievable story of their adventure. Finally she reached the end. Warren had made no comments, but the stern and anxious expression of his face betrayed his ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... It was unbelievable. It was stunning. Presently Caradoc shouted out in the darkness for Malone, Mate Malone. The ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... to Toulon I shall have something to say to my comrades. I always thought priests were only half men, but my God! I have seen them fight. It is magnificent. A priest led us when we hesitated, I got my two wounds following him—a priest. Oh! it is truly unbelievable to think that I should follow a priest. He led us to triumph. He led me to something more. That day I knew religion was true. I saw something in his face. I saw it again when he fell wounded, and I was wounded but I could only think of him. Ah, ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... when I squared myself at the railroad desk and attacked the first big bunch of "flimsies," as the tissue copies of the waybills are called. It was almost unbelievable that my luck had turned so soon, and yet the fact seemed undeniable. I had a job to which I had been recommended by the one man in the city who knew my record. No questions had been asked, and the inference seemed to be that none were ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... vestibule and entered the gardens amid a painful calm on his part, and an audible weeping by his former fellows in arms who were lined up to do him honour. He embraced Hortense passionately, and saluted all the personages of his party with a sympathy and emotion unbelievable. With an eternal adieu and a rapid step down the garden walk to the driveway, he at last entered the carriage which was awaiting him and was driven rapidly away. Some days after the Allies pillaged and sacked Malmaison. Its chief glory may ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... few weeks later, "Jones is all right again now, but his illness has been a long hard pull. I haven't had an evening to myself since it began. But I'm paid, sir, now, more than paid for anything I've done,—the gratitude of those two people—it's unbelievable —you ought to see it. Why do you know that dear little woman is so worried for fear that my strength has been overtaxed that she wants me to take a complete rest and go on a long trip somewhere—suggested first that I should go south. 'My dear Mrs. Jones,' ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... 9, 2204.—An almost unbelievable event of the greatest significance not only to Alvarez, or the United States of the Western Hemisphere, but to the entire world, occurred in our Alvarez County yesterday. Visitors on the early morning tour through Alvarez Caverns, came upon an astonishing spectacle. Two ...
— Out of the Earth • George Edrich
... treasures captured in such ventures were immense, stupendous, unbelievable. For an example, one can hardly credit the truth of the "purchase" gained by Drake in the famous capture of the plate ship in the ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... double fact is found divine personality. But that aspect of His Person, that portion of the fact which feeds the imaginative and volitional life, is the glorious and saving unlikeness of God—His unthinkable and inexpressible glory; His utter comprehension and unbelievable compassion; His justice which knows no flaw and brooks no evasion and cannot be swerved; His power which may not be withstood and hence is a sure and certain tenderness; His hatred of sin, terrible ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... after day from dawn to dark and fought again and again a fierce outlaw tusker elephant that from sheer lust of slaughter had killed men, women, and children and carried on for years a career of crime unbelievable. ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... bringing deified men and women down to earth again. Such persons accept the records of Jimmu-Tenno's origin as essentially accurate in so far as they state what is human and reasonable, rejecting them only when they set forth what is supernatural, and, to them, unbelievable. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... forgetting her anxiety in this overwhelming almost unbelievable news. "There must be more of ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... powers, he jammed his brown-varnished straw hat firmly upon his ancient poll and went scrambling up his gravel walk as fast as two rheumatic underpinnings would take him, and on into his house like a man bearing incredible and unbelievable tidings. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... well the wondrous quickness of the jungle folk and their almost unbelievable powers of hearing. To them the sudden scraping of one blade of grass across another was as effectual a warning as her loudest cry, and Sabor knew that she could not make that mighty leap without ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... nothing broke that silence—minutes during all of which the Master remained calmly waiting, with grave confidence. Bohannan shuddered a little. His Celtic imagination was at work, again. Uncanny the attack seemed to him, unreal and ghostlike. So, perhaps, might strange, unbelievable creatures from some other planet attack and conquer the world, noiselessly, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... along; and then he seemed to quit talking. I looked up. The pistol was at my head; I knocked it away as he fired. It got my hand!" He stopped, began poking the gravel with his toe, and smiled again as one who has heard an old story and wants to be polite. To Henry and me, it was unbelievable. We sat down on the hoary, moss-covered curb of the ancient fountain regardless of our spanking new uniforms and cried: "Well, my Heavenly home!" He nodded, drew a deep breath and said, "That's ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... blackest of Negroes. He is stooped and wobbly from his eighty-five years and weighs about one hundred and thirty-five pounds. His speech is somewhat hindered by an unbelievable amount of tobacco rolled to one side of his mouth. He lives in the Negro quarters of Port Gibson. Like most ex-slaves he has the courtesy and the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... wholly believing it. There was some missing reason for the actions of this secret service agent, some motive which neither she nor Hugh Renwick had yet fathomed, which would explain her detention and his. It was unbelievable that—— ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... a wooden ship, her first son suckling at her breast. At the prow Simon Meyerburg again, his peasant cap pushed backward and his black eyes, with the seer's light in them, gleaming ahead for the first glimpse of the land of fulfilment. An unbelievable city sucking them immediately into its slums. Filth. A quick descent into squalor. A second son. A third. A fourth. A fifth. A girl child. Mouths too eager for black bread. Always the struggle and the sour smell of slums. Finally light. White ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... out of the sea, who did not know what ships were, yet who still dared to set sail with them? For we know that there were such dusky voyagers, that they crossed the sea more than once in the English fishing vessels, and that they brought back to their own people almost unbelievable tales of cities and palaces, or harbors crowded with shipping and of whole countrysides covered with green, tilled fields. With all these wonders, however, they could tell their comrades that these white beings were mere men like themselves, to be neither hated ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... Evading mathematics, science, and divinity, he read only the English and classic subjects —because they contained beauty—and drew, copying and creating, in every odd moment. The storm began to threaten, but it never broke; for in his second year in college the unbelievable, the miracle, happened—his father died. They said he had died of pneumonia, contracted while visiting the sick in the winter blizzards, and they praised him; but ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... ruling, won his three B's! How glad his beloved Dad, was, too. He had not expected this bewildering happiness. He had been so joyous, when his sort earned the track letter, but to have him leave old Bannister, with a B for three sports—it was almost unbelievable! And, as Dad had said—there had been no thought of Hicks when the Advisory Board made the rule, so Hicks had no reason to suppose it was done just to award him ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... much better spent for that which would benefit rather than curse. But the great evil that looms large in public view is the legacy of physical disease that falls upon self-indulgent men and their families. The presence of venereal disease in Europe is almost unbelievable; so great has it been in continental armies that governments have become alarmed as to its effects upon the health and morale of the troops. College men have been reckless in sowing wild oats, and have suffered serious physical consequences. Most pathetic is the suffering that ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... age, Cis had told him several astonishing things about this field of sky. What Barber considered a troublesome, meddlesome, wasteful school law was, at bottom, responsible for her knowing much that was true and considerable which Johnnie held was not. And one of her unbelievable statements (this from his standpoint) was to the effect that his sky patch was constantly changing,—yes, as frequently as every minute—because the earth was steadily moving. And she had added the horrifying declaration that this movement was in the nature of a spin, so that, at night, the whole ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... be, some six or seven months prior to the incidents about to be related, Mr. Fry himself wrought a tremendous and unbelievable change in the foregoing opinion. Almost in the wink of an eyelash he passed through a process of transmogrification that not only bewildered him but caused the entire community to sit up and take ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... they were attacking be taking them in the flank? The idea was almost unbelievable. And yet the fire ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... basis, as would have mining operations and perhaps even a trade to Cathay. Such was the general prospect to which so many adventurers had responded in 1609. To the modern student all this seems so unrealistic as to be almost unbelievable, but unless one grasps the reality of the original dream he cannot hope to comprehend the extent of ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven
... went to see his father's sister, the gifted and vivacious Aunt Emily. They were to live in the country—somewhere right in the country, with grass and trees up to the door, and birds singing everywhere, and a tutor. For he was not to go back to school. Unbelievable! He was never to go back to school, and the head-master had written saying that he regretted the step, but that possibly ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... the matter of caste rites and rumours of an actually maturing husband, had brought her very near the end of her tether. Again Thea was right. Her brave impulse of the heart had only been just in time. And hard upon that unbelievable good fortune followed the ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... illustrious scions of the great Juan was everything. That this lad, to whom had descended the undying memories of a long line of glorious defenders of kingly and papal power, should presume to shatter the sacred Rincon traditions, was unbelievable. It was none other than the work of Satan. The boy had fallen an innocent victim ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... founded a religious system of worship of himself, is wholly unbelievable in the light of a study of comparative religions and ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... project in Tennessee, the expediter located them, though it meant the stripping of valued men from jobs of lesser importance. I need give no further examples. Their powers were sweeping. Their expense accounts unlimited. Their successes unbelievable." Number One's eyes went back to the piles of food, as though he'd grown tired ...
— Expediter • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... been unbelievable for so long that these four had almost learned that everything is possible. Which, if you come to think of it, and no matter how absurdly you learn it, is a thing immeasurably worth realizing in this world of possibilities. It is one of ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... seize the burning coat, hurl it into the pooled gasoline in the gutter. Fire leaped twenty feet high; in its center the great Gel bucked and writhed. The ancient car shuddered as the frantic monster struck it. Black smoke boiled up; an unbelievable stench came to Brett's nostrils. He backed, coughing. Flames roared around the front of the car. Paint blistered and burned. A tire burst. In a final frenzy, the Gel whipped clear, lay, a great blackened shape of ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... himself to his work, vague fancies again assailed his mind. Who could she be? Assuredly no mere hussy. But why had she told him such an unbelievable tale? Thereupon he began to imagine other stories. Perhaps she had but lately arrived in Paris with a lover, who had abandoned her; perhaps she was some young woman of the middle classes led into bad company by a female friend, and not daring to go home to her relatives; or else there was ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... might sit in a gallery and be all by themselves and see all that was to be seen and yet be unmolested. And so they sat there and looked down upon the splendid spectacle, and were moved till the tears ran down their cheeks to see the unbelievable honors that were paid to their small darling, and how naively serene and unafraid she sat there with those ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... There is naught more precious in the world than I: I carry God in me, to give to men. And when has the sea been friendly unto man? Let it but guess my errand, it will call The dangers of the air to wreak upon me, Winds to juggle the puny boat and pinch The water into unbelievable creases. And shall my soul, and God in my soul, drown? Or venture drowning?—But no, no; I am safe. Smooth as believing souls over their deaths And over agonies shall slide henceforth To God, so shall ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... not the devil, who could this mysterious chauffeur be, driving with this unbelievable velocity, his no less mysterious machine? At least it was beyond doubt that this was the same machine which had already attracted so much attention. If the police believed that they had frightened it away, that it was never to be, ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... anyway. In fact, the very audacity of the man led me to blame myself for doubting him. He had not behaved just as a gentleman should, but on the other hand he had done nothing underhand. There was a damn-you look about him that made it unbelievable that he was a fraud. Soon after breakfast I set out on my tramp, and, going through Stilton and Huntingdon, made for Cambridge. All the way along I could not help thinking about my boon companion ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... his word, and with unbelievable suddenness. Thunder rolled; the breeze stiffened into a gale. Another drop fell upon his hat, and then another, and another. The young man came to an ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... life long (provided we remain humble) is the humorous discovery of the ordinariness of the extraordinary. Here was this disrupter of society, this man of the red flag—here he was with his mild spectacled eyes and his furry ears wagging as he walked. It was unbelievable!—and the sun shining on him quite as impartially as it ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... and beyond the call of duty, in which you single-handedly, and against unbelievable odds, attacked and destroyed an enemy cruiser while flying a Scout armed only with ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... she came to a full stop in the front hall. It was maddening; it was unbelievable; but that neglected half hour of work threatened to wreck her entire day. With every fiber of her being in revolt, she went into ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... endeavour to be present at the trial in order to watch the case. Mr. Kirschen dissuaded him from attending the trial on the ground that it would only serve to harm Miss Cavell rather than help her; that the judges would resent the presence of a representative of the American Legation. Although it seems unbelievable that any man of judicial mind would resent the presence of another bent solely on watching the course of justice, Mr. Kirschen's advice was confirmed by other Belgian lawyers who had defended prisoners before the German military courts and spoke with the ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... hard details of bare rock, and rounds the melancholy grassless mountain flanks, suspending icicles to every ledge and spangling the curved surfaces of snow with crystals. The landscape gains in purity, and, what sounds unbelievable, in tenderness. Nor does it lose in grandeur. Looking up the valley of the Morteratsch that morning, the glaciers were distinguishable in hues of green and sapphire through their veil of snow; and the highest peaks soared in a transparency of amethystine ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... in, singing and cheering. It was unbelievable what half a day's rest had done for them. Of course you must remember that we all firmly believed, except in our moments of deepest despondency, first, that we could have held the Germans at Mons and Le Cateau if the French had not "deserted" ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... last a long time. And, in some cases—of which I incline to think this is one—these forces may coalesce with certain non-human entities who thus continue their life indefinitely and increase their strength to an unbelievable degree. If the original personality was evil, the beings attracted to the left-over forces will also be evil. In this case, I think there has been an unusual and dreadful aggrandisement of the thoughts ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... uniformity of style; while the construction of most of the cathedrals ran through the centuries with various architecture in vogue at different periods. The interior, however, lacks interest, and the absence of stained glass gives an air of coldness. It seems almost unbelievable that the original stained windows were deliberately destroyed at the end of the Eighteenth Century by a so-called architect, James Wyatt, who had the restoration of the cathedral in charge. To his everlasting infamy, ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... traps, always disappeared again on his return down Big Squaw Creek. To pass the head-gate and the flume gave him an acute pang, while the high trestle which represented so much toil and sweat, hurt him like a stab. It seemed unbelievable that he could fail after all ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... glistened. The prospect of a fortnight in close proximity to Angela—it was magnificent, unbelievable! He ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... a taxicab—a real, live, magnificent, unthinkably expensive taxicab—stopped and chortled in front of the apartment house in which Mrs. McFarrell's flat was one of many. Heads flew out of windows, for the thing was unbelievable, and among other ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... fact that any one in creation should not know what an archaeologist was seemed unbelievable, but a fact it evidently was. So he explained and the explanation, under questioning, became lengthy. Primmie's exclamations, "My savin' soul" and "My Lord of Isrul" became more and more frequent. Mr. Bloomer interjected a remark here and there. At length ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... struggle ceased; instantly the huge figure on the bed became again his good-natured corporal. The mouth closed, the glassy jellies were once more seeing, intelligent human eyes. The face lost its swollen, brutish look and was again the face of a friend. It was almost unbelievable that anything so far gone could come back. He looked up wistfully at his Lieutenant as if to ask him something. His eyes filled with tears, and he turned his ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... followed smaller rocks, pebbles, and gravel, which would serve to drain the subsoil. Finally, on top of all this, and to a depth of eighteen inches or so, was laid the finest soil they could procure. The result was the best possible field for intensive cultivation. It seems absolutely unbelievable that such an immense amount of pains should have been taken for such relatively small results. The need must have been very great. In many cases the terraces are only a few feet wide, although hundreds of yards in length. Usually they follow the natural contours of the valley. Sometimes ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... Donna, so suddenly transported from the glaring drab lifeless desert to this great natural park, the first sight of the valley had been a glimpse into Paradise. She was awed by the sublimity of nature, and all that first day she hardly spoke, even to Bob. Such happiness was unbelievable. She was almost afraid to speak, lest she awaken and find herself back in San Pasqual. As for Bob, he had resolutely set himself to the task of forgetting the future—at least during their honeymoon. He forgot about the thirty-nine thousand ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... and unbelievable explanations were the fruit of Meilhan's efforts to cover the fact that the annuity was the price paid him by the Widow Lacoste for his part in the murder of her husband. It was to be remembered that M. Sabazan, whose ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... coming forward into the circle of the firelight, stared down at him incredulously. It was unbelievable! She had been giving him all the best that was in her—the work of her brain, the interpretation of her hands—baring her very heart to him during the last half-hour. And he had ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... of eggs some vagrant hen had laid in the grass-tussocks, the men going forth with the tailing-mob—and at intervals the scorching recollection of that hinted scandal concerning Colin and Mrs Hensor of which Maule had told her.... Horrible... unbelievable... and yet.... ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... dreaming over his almost unbelievable encounter with Miss Vernon—more concerned perhaps, be it said, about the fact that she had wept to part with him than about the recovery of his father's papers, when another traveller overtook him, this ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... quickening of the pulse. In the failure of the C.I.D. to trace the abode of the notorious Mrs. Sin he had suspected double-dealing. He counted it unbelievable that a figure so conspicuous in certain circles could evade official quest even for forty-eight hours. K Division's explanation, too, that there were no less than eighty Chinamen resident in and about Limehouse whose names either began or ended with Sin, he looked upon as ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... Well! the unbelievable faux pas which he had committed—thanks to chance and his own imbecility—had turned him from his search. He no longer had the heart to linger about Nice peering into strange ladies' faces. The Lord only knew what blunder he would make next if he continued ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... went on one of these expeditions but that she wished for Timothy. He would have loved it, she was sure; the rushing through the country on wings of a swiftness almost unbelievable, and feeling the heart of the big thing throbbing underneath her and responding to her slightest touch as quickly as if it had been a toy, instead of a monster that required a whole wide street in which ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... Sir HARRY JOHNSTON has made his book as it were a continuation of Dombey and Son. Many of his characters are either the creations of Boz or their children and he contrives to carry on the interweaving of their lives to an unbelievable extent—even when the fullest allowance has been made for the smallness of the world. Florence Dombey and Walter Gay, as Mr. and Mrs. Gay-Dombey, actually survive well into the present ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... by this, and a trifle hurt. He was beginning to speak, making the usual preliminary adjustment of his spectacles, when a movement near the door checked him. His hands remained at his glasses, as if aiding his sight to certify the unbelievable. ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... man, but such unbelievable heartlessness chilled him. Into his mind rushed a temptation suddenly to denounce the real slayer before them all. He checked that temptation. In the first place it would be impossible to convince five men who had already made up their minds, who had already acquitted Sinclair ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... fluttered out among them, but she let it lie; she knew so well what it would say! She knew all about her friend, of course; except poor old Nelson, who didn't, But she had never imagined that Ellie would dare to use her in this way. It was unbelievable... she had never pictured anything so vile.... The blood rushed to her face, and she sprang up angrily, half minded to tear the letters in bits and throw them all ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... friends; Axia and Amory new ones. But strange things are prepared even in the dead of night, and the unusual, which lurks least in the cafe, home of the prosaic and inevitable, was preparing to spoil for him the waning romance of Broadway. The way it took was so inexpressibly terrible, so unbelievable, that afterward he never thought of it as experience; but it was a scene from a misty tragedy, played far behind the veil, and that it ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... It would be almost unbelievable of any man but Leigh Hunt that he placidly remarks in reference to this impertinence that "he had not the pleasure of Lady Blessington's acquaintance," as if that did not make things ten times worse. He ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... take its course. The feeling in Quebec in support of the commutation was so intense and overwhelming that it was accepted as a matter of course that Riel would be reprieved; and the news of the contrary decision was to them, as Professor Skelton says, "unbelievable." The actual announcement of the hanging was a match to a powder magazine. That night there were mobs on the streets of Montreal and Sir John Macdonald was burned in effigy in Dominion square. On the following ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... leg to stand on. The anima, or spirit, being merely the product of certain elements combined in life, was wiped out when those elements dissolved their union in death. It was the flame of a candle blown out. Yet with what unbelievable persistence this doctrine had survived through history. Science had annihilated it again and again, but these people resolutely stopped their ears to science. They could not answer science with argument, so they had answered her with the axe and the stake; and they were ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... every sort and kind, in print, speech, and writing, will roll unceasingly over their civilized realms, involving an unbelievable waste in labor and time, and sapping the intelligence talk is supposed to upbuild. In a simian civilization, great halls will be erected for lectures, and great throngs will actually pay to go inside at night to hear some self-satisfied talk-maker chatter for hours. Almost any subject ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... It was unbelievable that a lumbering coach, with two fat horses, an old lady in a hoop skirt and a bow-legged coachman, could have disappeared from the face of the earth. Nevertheless, this seemed the case. Nobody knew where Cousin Ann had gone. Telephones were ringing into ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... tint and curve and line as distinctly as she could see him. Her cheeks never had much colour; now her whole face visibly darkened, from pallor to a dusky leaden grey, as she gazed. It was not an illusion then; not a miserable hallucination. The unbelievable, the inconceivable, had happened. He replaced the candles with trembling fingers ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... to realize the terrible cost, the unbelievable wastefulness of actual war, and the preparation for possible war. When we read that the armed peace of Europe the past thirty-seven years has cost $111,000,000,000, nearly as much as the aggregate value of all the resources of the United States, the richest nation ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... engine started, and nearer and nearer came the terrible curve. The train was now running at fifteen miles an hour, a speed almost unbelievable to the simple souls of that time. Round the curve it went in safety, increasing its velocity to eighteen miles an hour. The railroad officials who were Cooper's guests were frantic with enthusiasm. One man produced paper ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... without any cry sufficiently loud to reach the driver or attract the attention of any passer-by, had been strangled to death by a person who had disappeared as though from the face of the earth. The facts seemed almost unbelievable, and yet they were facts. The driver of the taxi knew only that three times during the course of his drive he had been caught in a block and had had to wait for a few seconds—once at the entrance to Trafalgar ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of the idea appealed to me. There was suddenly something fantastic, unbelievable, in the events ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... bird-woman," he quieted her. "I shall not kiss you. It is a long time since I have. I want to tell you about that affair. But first I want to tell you how proud I am—proud of myself. I am proud that I am a lover. At my age, a lover! It is unbelievable, and it is wonderful. And such a lover! Such a curious, unusual, and quite altogether remarkable lover. In fact, I have laughed all the books and all biology in the face. I am a monogamist. I love the woman, the one woman. After a dozen years ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... ten days: the better students moderately calm, the others cramming information into aching heads, drinking unbelievable quantities of coffee, sitting up, many of them, all night, attending seminars or tutoring sessions, working for long hours in the library, finally taking the examination, only to start a new nerve-racking grind in preparation ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... freezing cold. He called at a bleak two o'clock and as they shook hands he wondered confusedly whether he had ever kissed her; it was almost unbelievable—he seriously doubted if she ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... easier and fairer for the nation's poor. His advance, step by step, to higher seats in the government was met with constant opposition from the rich lords and magistrates. But there was in him an almost unbelievable power for overcoming all obstacles. He was keen to see what was the right thing to be done, then went straight after it, making a new way, if necessary,—breaking down all barriers by means of his own wonderfully skillful schemes. Thus his policy came to be known as one of ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... stifling interior straggled the unhappy inmates. They looked again upon the unbelievable: a smiling, dancing sea of blue under a canopy clean and spotless. It was unbelievable. Even the stouthearted Captain and the faithful mate, blear-eyed and haggard from loss of sleep, ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... little backward jerk and blinked the moisture from her eyes angrily. What was the matter with her? Surely she was the most ungrateful girl in the universe. If there was sorrow in the world for her then it must be of her own making. She had been shown almost unbelievable kindness, nothing had been omitted to make her happy. The contrast of her life only a few weeks ago and now was immeasurable. What more did she want? Was she so selfish that she could even think of the unhappiness that was over? Shame filled her, and she raised her eyes to the woman ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... three days were spent in Omaha, and, although my original itinerary contemplated my coming to Nebraska for the last ten days of the campaign, this was afterwards changed and I went back to Montana a second time, so my observations regarding Nebraska refer to Omaha alone. Here existed an almost unbelievable condition of opposition. The brewers had come openly into the field against us and the brewing interests are connected with many of the big financial ventures in that city. Bankers, merchants, tailors and other business men whose wives were in suffrage were brazenly warned ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... world. The Merchant, especially, had been taken aback. He had known the figures that expressed the planet's diameter, but from a distance of two light-seconds, he had stood at the visi-plate and muttered, "Unbelievable!" ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov
... her plans. The house in Virginia was being renovated. She would take him there as soon as he could be moved. When he was strong again he would start his newspaper. Holt and Lacey were as overjoyed at the prospect of being his assistant editors as at the almost unbelievable rescue ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... it was and we descended on it from the high, clear, windswept waste of the New Forest. I tell you it was amazing to arrive there from Waterbury. And it came into my head—for Teddy Ashburnham, you remember, had cabled to me to "come and have a talk" with him—that it was unbelievable that anything essentially calamitous could happen to that place and those people. I tell you it was the very spirit of peace. And Leonora, beautiful and smiling, with her coils of yellow hair, stood on the top doorstep, ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... always follows this phosphorescence of reform. "The 'Genius,'" coming after "The Titan," marks the high tide of his bad writing. There are passages in it so clumsy, so inept, so irritating that they seem almost unbelievable; nothing worse is to be found in the newspapers. Nor is there any compensatory deftness in structure, or solidity of design, to make up for this carelessness in detail. The well-made novel, of course, can be as hollow ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... coats and sweet chocolate that happened to be on hand as a substitute for breakfast, and made them run for a mile and a half, with shells exploding about them, through the streets to the nearest out-of-Scarborough railway station. My friend, after unbelievable difficulties, finally found her sister in a private house of a village near by, the girl in tears and pleading not to be sent to London; she had been told that her family's house was probably destroyed, as it ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... a sharp pang of disappointment. She had expected something quite different. The adjective "astonishing" seemed strangely cold and unlike Ronnie. She had thought he would say "wonderful," or "unbelievable," ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... persuasion. I have said enough to show that this attitude does not exclude the use of violence; but I feel sure that it limits it far more than it has ever been limited in Europe. Even in time of revolution the Chinese are peaceable and orderly to an extent unknown and almost unbelievable in the West. And the one thing the West is teaching them and priding itself on teaching them is the absurdity of this attitude. Well, one day it is the West that will repent because China has ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... shrewd appeals to Keith's pride. But by whatever it was, each day saw some stride forward, some new victory that Keith had won over his blindness, until by the end of the week the boy could move about the house and wait upon himself with a facility almost unbelievable when one remembered his listless helplessness ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... line of fire had buried itself in its tube that they became suddenly alive to the unbelievable fact that a locomotive was thundering down the yard on the Nadia's track. A rifle cracked; then another and a third; but the engine came on as if its driver ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... when the rumour got about that the Cosmopolitan had been obliged to ask Mr. Twist to take his entourage somewhere else. Was it possible the cute little girls, so well known by sight on Main Street going from shop to shop, were secretly scandalous? It seemed almost unbelievable, but luckily nothing ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... room to the far window and bug-eyed. One block away, at the end of Gorky Street, was Red Square. St. Basil's Cathedral at the far end, and unbelievable candy-cane construction of fanciful spirals, and every-colored turrets; the red marble mausoleum, Mecca of world Communism, housing the prophet Lenin and his two disciples; the long drab length of the GUM department store opposite. But it ...
— Combat • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... and there is none to tell us. That which is actually happening were unbelievable if we did not see it, from hour to hour, from day to day. Horror succeeding horror has in some sort blunted our sensibilities. Not only are our sympathies numbed by the immensity of the slaughter and the sorrow, but patriotism itself is ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... eyes across from her. The waiter looked on sardonically. At another table were two derelicts from one of the Garden side shows. A truculent and beady-eyed dwarf whose face hardly showed above the boards was brow-beating a cringing giant of unbelievable immensity. "You crabbed my act, you big stiff," shrilled the midget truculently—and his huge vis-a-vis fell into a volume of excuse ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... provided by his money which effected this marvel, although the certainty that Esteban was alive and safe put added force into her determination to live. Rosa found hope springing up in her breast, and one day she caught herself laughing. The marvel of it was unbelievable. O'Reilly was sitting beside her bed of leaves at the time; impulsively she pressed his hand to her lips, repeating a question she ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... "It's unbelievable, horrible. And in the face of this, do you mean to say that the boy would dare to keep up his apparent ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... whole transaction had been characterised by almost unbelievable rapidity. And that square opening of the window-port was hardly vacant when Lanyard sprang to his feet; the fugitive had barely time to find his own upon the outer deck before Lanyard leaped after him; the first thumps upon the panels of his door were still echoing when he ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... shy as to, suspicious of; doubting &c v.. doubtful &c (uncertain) 475; disputable; unworthy of, undeserving of belief &c 484; questionable; suspect, suspicious; open to suspicion, open to doubt; staggering, hard to believe, incredible, unbelievable, not to be believed, inconceivable; impossible &c 471. fallible &c (uncertain) 475; undemonstrable; controvertible &c (untrue) 495. Adv. cum grano salis [Lat.], with a grain of salt; with grains of allowance. Phr. fronti nulla fides [Lat.]; nimium ne crede colori [Lat.] [Vergil]; timeo ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... fundamentally resilient and resourceful. Children's springs of life and vitality are powerful. Their need to affirm themselves as persons is undeniable, and any experience of love that they have is reinforcing. Experiences of unlove are to them unbelievable and point, fundamentally and finally, to the necessity and believability of love. While our children are dependent upon us for their personal environment in which to grow up, they bring powers and resources to their growing up which are independent of us. They bring something ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... its dreariness, its lonely lakes reflecting a dull, grey sky, its desolate boglands, its solitary chapels, its wretched cabins perched on hillsides that are very wildernesses of rocks. But for cloud effects, for wonderful shadows, for fantastic and unbelievable sunsets, when the mountains are violet, the lakes silver with red flashes, the islets gold and crimson and purple, and the whole cloudy west in a flame, it is unsurpassed; only your standard of beauty must not be a velvet ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... believe the unbelievable and to understand the un- understandable. All of a sudden I understand the Germanic virtue of woman, and German philosophy, and I am no longer surprised that you of the North do not know how to love, haven't even an idea of ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... Out of our school population of six thousand we examined five thousand children, and found four thousand and ninety-five defective, testifying that 81 percent of the children were defective. This seems almost unbelievable, and yet it does not tell the whole story, for I could take you to school after school where there was 100 percent defectiveness, where we sent a notice to every parent in that school. Yet, as I said before, Renville County is a prosperous county, and we have every reason ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... a happy contrast to awakening in Lancaster Gate; and breakfast a little later was delightful, in a big sunny room, with interesting people coming and going all the time. Bob and Cecilia smiled at each other like two happy children. It was almost unbelievable that they were free; away from tryanny and coldness, with no more plotting and planning, and ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... affections, life itself behind us and gaze hourly into the eyes of Death, belief comes as simply and clearly as it did when we were children. Curious and extraordinary! The burden of our fears has slipped from our shoulders in our attempt to do something for others; the unbelievable and long coveted miracle has happened—at last to every soul who has grasped his chance of heroism quick-coming death ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... very loud today. It is spring and the warmth is highly favorable to fermentation. Some odors are unbelievable. ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... baser nature among the questionable attractions of the Inferno, she'd shot three hundred of her Precol credits on a formal black gown ... on what, yesterday, she would have considered a rather unbelievable gown. Even at an Ermetyne dinner she couldn't actually look dowdy in it. And then, accompanied by Gaya, who had turned out to be a very pleasant but not very communicative companion, she'd headed for a gambling room to make back the ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... Frank, heartily, for like all the rest of the crew, from the captain downwards, he was quite enthusiastic about the ship and her work. "Why, when you come to think of it, it's unbelievable. I sometimes half expect to waken up and find it is all a dream. Just fancy. We left England with a freight of 21,000 tons. The day is not long past when I thought a ship of 1000 tons a big one; what a mite that is to ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... beside an absorbed mechanician. He half turned in his seat and met the cool, steady gaze of the flapper; she smiled, but quickly checked herself to resume the stare; he was aware that Breede was at her side. And the fog closed in again. It was too unbelievable. ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... for future airships are unbelievable to one who has not followed their development carefully. Already there is planned in England a monster ship known as the "ten million," for the reason that it will have a gas capacity of ten million cubic feet, over four times that of the largest Zeppelin. ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... further word was spoken. Each was contemplating the ruthless purpose of a man who contemplated wiping out a tribe of savages to suit his own sordid ends. It was almost unbelievable. Yet a thousand rifles for a small trading post. It was the number which ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... that for nearly half a century had lain with the bones of its dead, alone with its terrible secret, alone until Donald MacDonald had found it again! He had not told Joanne the story of it, the appalling and almost unbelievable tragedy of it. He had meant to do so. But they had talked of other things. He had meant to tell her that it was not the gold itself that was luring him far to the north—that it was not the gold alone that was taking Donald MacDonald ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... resigned, saddened, compelled against his will to reveal the distressing truth. Further, he counted on Anstruther's quick temper as an active agent. Such a man would be the first to rebel against an assumption of pitying tolerance. He would bring bitter charges of conspiracy, of unbelievable compact to secure his ruin. All this must recoil on his own head when the facts were laid bare. Not even the hero of the island could prevail against the terrible indictment of the court-martial. Finally, at Singapore, three days distant, Colonel Costobell and his wife were ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy |
