"Conjectural" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... query (no. 10. p. 155.) respecting the meaning of the words "Reheting" and "Rehetour," used by our early English writers, has not hitherto been answered, I beg to send him a conjectural explanation, which, if not conclusive, is ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 18. Saturday, March 2, 1850 • Various
... one in the neighborhood knew it until long afterward—and then only in a conjectural way by piecing together fragments of rumors that floated about—young Oliver Hampden really prevented the duel. He told his father that he loved Lucy Drayton. There was a fierce outbreak on ...
— The Christmas Peace - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... receiving any, which may appear the most extraordinary. These principles we have found to be sufficiently convincing, even with regard to our most certain reasonings from causation: But I shall venture to affirm, that with regard to these conjectural or probable reasonings they still acquire ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... passingly, as one glances at a stranger on the road, who comes one knows not whence, to vanish away one knows not whither; but inquiringly, as when a first interview shows us the outward seeming of one known by hearsay—one whom our mind has dwelt on curiously, making conjectural images at random, and wondering which was nearest to the truth. And to neither of those who saw this meeting, for all they felt interest to note what each would think of the other, did the thought come of ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... opportunity of being correctly impressed, by means of a yearly tour through many counties of the State. He has also been particular in making inquiries of our most distinguished legal and political characters, and from some has derived conjectural estimates which were truly alarming. A few have been of the opinion, that on an average one murder a year may be charged to the account of every county in the state, making the frightful aggregate of 850 human lives sacrificed to revenge, or the victims of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Some corrections are conjectural. Numbers were only changed when there was a discrepancy between a catalog entry and ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... In what degree of faithfulness Terence copied Menander, whether, as he states of the passage in the Adelphi taken from Diphilus, verbum de verbo in the lovelier scenes—the description of the last words of the dying Andrian, and of her funeral, for instance—remains conjectural. For us Terence shares with his master the praise of an amenity that is like Elysian speech, equable and ever gracious; like the face of the Andrian's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and especially the most truth-telling, of all possible "lives." No letters indeed are likely to increase the literary repute of the author of the Confessions and of the Caesars; but they may very well clear up and fill in the hitherto rather fragmentary and conjectural notion of his character, and they may, on the other hand, confirm that idea of both which, however false it may seem to his children, and others who were united to him by ties of affection, has commended itself to careful students ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... be avoided. For instance, in dealing with culverin (p. 38), I connect Fr. couleuvre, adder, with Lat. col[)u]ber, a snake. Every Romance philologist knows that it must represent Vulgar Lat. *colobra; but this form, which, being conjectural, is marked with an asterisk, had better be ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... Commissioners asked me in that respect; and I would suggest whether it does not seem easy to avoid all questions of that kind. If the statue is injured, leave it so, but provide a perfect copy of the statue in its restored form; offer, if you like, prizes to sculptors for conjectural restorations, and choose the most beautiful, but do not ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the forest," says Gilgamesh, if the conjectural restoration of the line in question (l. 126) is correct. Enkidu replies by again drawing a lurid picture of what will happen "When we go (together) to the forest......." This speech of Enkidu is continued on the reverse. In reply Gilgamesh emphasizes his ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... with elaborate languages, myths, and well-established artificial customs, which it probably took hundreds of thousands of years to accumulate. Man in "a state of nature" is only a presupposition, but a presupposition which is forced upon us by compelling evidence, conjectural and ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... was only a little more. The coast of the island then turned north close to that of Spain, and was joined to the island of Cadiz or Gadiz, or Caliz, as it is now called. I affirm this for two reasons, one by authority and the other by conjectural demonstration. The authority is that Plato in his Critias, telling how Neptune distributed the sovereignty of the island among his ten sons, said that the second son was called in the mother tongue "Gadirum," which in Greek we ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... Newton induced many of his less gifted contemporaries to pursue inquiries into the arcana and profound mysteries of science; but where rational inferences and deductions failed, they too frequently had recourse to mere unsupported theory and conjectural speculation. ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... intended to become incorporated in the mass of merchandise for sale in a neutral country it is an unwarranted and inquisitorial proceeding to detain shipments for examination as to whether those goods are ultimately destined for the enemy's country or use. Whatever may be the conjectural conclusions to be drawn from trade statistics, which, when stated by value, are of uncertain evidence as to quantity, the United States maintains the right to sell goods into the general stock of a neutral country, and denounces as illegal and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... of under a root or in a cranny of rock he repeated their many-syllabled names. Curious to know what these names literally meant and whence derived, the writer made inquiry, sometimes hazarding a conjectural etymology. To his astonishment and dismay he found this "scientist," whom he had looked up to, entirely ignorant of the meaning of the terms he employed. They were just arbitrary terms to him. The little hopping and crawling creatures might as well have been numbered, ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... with the use of the empirical precepts in practical instruction. So far as the written record goes we have no means of answering this question. Neither Tosi nor Mancini mentions the old precepts in any way. The answer can therefore be only conjectural. We may at once dismiss the idea that the old masters used the precepts in the currently accepted manner as rules for the mechanical management of the voice. This application of the empirical precepts followed upon the ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... collated; Mr. Edwards, moreover, deserved well of all Raleigh students by editing for the first time, in 1868, the correspondence of Raleigh. I hope that I do not seem to disparage Mr. Edwards's book when I say that in his arrangement and conjectural dating of undated documents I am very frequently in disaccord with him. The present Life contains various small data which are now for the first time published, and more than one fact of considerable importance ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... example, there is supposed to have existed a consecutive scheme, larger than anything of the kind carried out even in France in the eighteenth century, though the evidence, it should be noted, is largely conjectural. As presented by sanguine and enthusiastic restorers the scheme was magnificent. Next the port, and facing it on one side, was the Arsenal, a regular building opening on to a court surrounded by a colonnade, which again opened on to the great 'Place', a square enclosure some ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... this conjectural history of the settlement had anything to do with the cheerful mid-winter holiday developments of the community need not be argued at length. An argument would render the truth flat and insipid if it should prove to be in accord with poetic ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... had driven Sam, and the landlord of the Three Goblets, that there was not more than time for the return exactly as described at the inquest; and though the horse was swift and powerful, and might probably have been driven at drunken speed, this was too entirely conjectural for anything to be founded on it. Nor had the cheque by Bilson on ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the crime, however, were largely conjectural, although they were pretty strongly suggested by the details of the struggle itself. I was thus enabled to supply the missing portions with more or less plausibility. Here, then, is the way I reconstructed the night's occurrences in this house—the fatal ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... power of running quickly on the ground, by the aid of their hind legs alone, so as to compete with birds or other ground animals; and for such a change a bat seems singularly ill-fitted. These conjectural remarks have been made merely to show that a transition of structure, with each step beneficial, is a highly complex affair; and that there is nothing strange in a transition not having ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... appear, are nevertheless intended for rattlers. It may have been that the figures were so well understood that the addition of rattles in the drawings was quite unnecessary. This, however, is quite conjectural. The species of rattlesnake is probably Crotalus basiliscus or C. terrificus of southern Mexico and adjacent regions, not C. horridus or adamanteus as supposed by Stempell since these two species are confined to the United States. Among the figures shown on Pl. 9, ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... said all he could say; and, further, Steevens supposes that Edgar speaks these words aside; as if he had been quite weary of Tom o' Bedlam's part, and could not keep it up any longer. The reasons of all this conjectural criticism are a curious illustration of perverse ingenuity. Aubrey's manuscript note has shown us that the Bedlam's horn was also a drinking-horn, and Edgar closes his speech in the perfection of the assumed character, and not as ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... unlearned, and, as it were, throw a bridge between those two great divisions of the public. Literary Miscellanies are classed among philological studies. The studies of philology formerly consisted rather of the labours of arid grammarians and conjectural critics, than of that more elegant philosophy which has, within our own time, been introduced into literature, and which, by its graces and investigation, augment the beauties of original genius. This ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... nervously, "I begin to fear that perhaps after all I am unworthy. Now about those Articles of Religion: I may perhaps have given some of them a conjectural and commentating assent. Possibly I have presumed ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... legal documents, a story so significant and so eloquent to the intelligent, should formerly have been dismissed without notice of any kind, and even now, after the discovery of 1836, with nothing beyond a slight conjectural insinuation. For our parts, we should have been the last amongst the biographers to unearth any forgotten scandal, or, after so vast a lapse of time, and when the grave had shut out all but charitable thoughts, to point any moral censures at a simple case of natural frailty, youthful precipitancy ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... to the Council of Ten. See "Calendar of State Papers &c. in Venice," 1520- 6. Edited by Rawdon Brown. No. 697, London, 1869. Purchas, III. p. 809.] It is evident that the representation of the western sea, upon the map given to the king, was merely conjectural of its existence in connection with the supposed strait, laid down upon the map, according to Hakluyt. This explanation will serve also to account most readily for the partial knowledge which the letter exhibits, in regard to the customs and characteristics of the Indians of Cape Breton, ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... certain knowledge, conjectural opinions, such as the writer has here educed, are not unprofitable; rather the reverse. To form them, the writer and the reader place themselves perforce nearly in Cervera's actual position, and pass through their own minds the grist of unsolved difficulties which confronted ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... would be sprung, that he would be caught in its jaws or, to change the metaphor, that he would be like the wheat between the upper and the nether millstone. Still he did not think so, and he did not go into the undertaking blindly. As he had said, in his own case, "War was not a conjectural art," and he had most carefully counted the cost, estimated the probabilities. In short, he looked well before he leaped—yet a man may look well and leap wrong ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... earnestly to introduce, in the place of fanciful and conjectural systems—careful, patient investigation: the principle of the procurement of well-known facts, in order that, by severe induction, philosophy might attain to general laws, and to a classification of the sciences. The fault of the ages before him had been hasty, careless, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... treasury in his own name, money which he has in other places declared to be their property, was to avoid ostentation, and that lending the money was the least liable to reflection; yet, when he has stated these and other conjectural motives for his own conduct, he declares he will not affirm, though he is firmly persuaded, that those were his sentiments on the occasion. That of one thing only the said Warren Hastings declares he is certain, viz., "that it ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... form some estimate, from what occurs within our reach, of the effects produced in these deposits by the vast number of organized beings that must people them, the deposits of vegetable matter, and the exuviae, of animals. Such discussion would, however, be in a considerable degree purely conjectural, and we therefore shall not enter into it. It is sufficient to say, that formations analogous to those which the elevation of the continents has exposed to our view, must be now taking place in the bed of the ocean, whence they may be in their turn ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... ll. 221-224a. The text here is corrupt and scholars differ widely in their conjectural emendations and interpretations. Since none of their versions is satisfactory or convincing, I venture upon an independent reading. Hebeleac, of course, is the Scriptural Havilah (Gen. 2.11); Fison is obviously Pison, and Geon, 230b ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... text was handwritten, probably by a professional copyist. All line-endings were regularized by added dashes of variable length; some "real" dashes are therefore conjectural. Instead of typographic variants such as italics or boldface, some words are distinguished by underlining or smaller writing. Abbreviations such as "Mr." were written with superscripts as M^r.; they have been simplified ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... period to the time in which Milton lived. The discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo had raised it to a position of lofty eminence, though the law of gravitation, which accounts for the form and permanency of the planetary orbits, still remained undiscovered. Theories formerly obscure or conjectural were either rejected or elucidated with accuracy and precision, and the solar system, having the Sun as its centre, with his attendant family of planets and their satellites revolving in majestic orbits around him, presented an impressive spectacle of order, ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... of such a venture, only conjectural to us at this distance, he knew well; but in him there was nothing that shrank from danger, though he did not court it after the rash manner of many of his compeers. Neither reckless nor riotous, Boone was never found ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... hands of those who had proven incapable of doing any good and were furthermore even losing their capacity for active evil. Their method of working through an artificially picked Pre-Parliament and a conjectural Constituent Assembly, had to be opposed by our political method of mobilizing the forces around the Soviets, through the All-Russian Congress of Soviets and through insurrection. This could be done only by means of an open break, before the eyes of the entire people, with the body created ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... on the supplementary Wife), are all I know of him; and he is somewhat tragic to me there, turning ivory in this extremely anarchic world. What the passages between him and Friedrich Wilhelm were, on this occasion, shall remain conjectural to all creatures. Friedrich Wilhelm said, this Sunday evening at Darmstadt to his own Prince: "Still here, then? I thought you would have been in Paris by this time!"—To which the Prince, with artificial firmness, ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... [2] The dates are conjectural. Richard Eden (Decades of the Newe Worlde, f. 255) says Sebastian told him that when four years old he was taken by his father to Venice, and returned to England "after certeyne yeares; wherby he was thought to have bin born in Venice"; Stow ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... question, even against the efforts of the Federal Government? Did the Southern leaders prefer the election of a Republican, their open opponent, to Douglas, their friend and half-ally? To such questions as these there can be little more than a conjectural answer. It would be most interesting to know the true thoughts and purposes of the leading delegates. We shall see a little later the interpretation given by one of their defenders. But the strong presumption is that their action was the fruit less of a policy ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... numerous emendations are purely conjectural; the least unsatisfactory being Cornill's: The houses ... shall be torn down against which the Chaldeans are coming to fight with mounds and sword and to fill with the corpses of men whom I have ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... arrived at that conjectural solution of his perplexities when a voice was heard singing, or rather modulated to that kind of chant between recitative and song, which is so pleasingly effective where the intonations are pure and musical. They were so in this instance, and Kenelm's ear caught every ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it please your worship, grand nephew to the renowned Lewis Theobald, one of those numerous broth-spoiling commentators, who have smothered poor Shakspeare in the onion sauce of conjectural criticism. My great uncle was, with reverence be it spoken, a great blockhead; but that was no fault of his, he being a younger brother, and the family genius being vested in my grandfather, with remainder to his sons in tail male. From my earliest childhood I have looked upon ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... points must be carefully kept in mind; the first is the distinction between theory and conjecture on the one hand, and well ascertained facts on the other. We shall have much to do with theory, and with conjectural interpretations of observed facts. These can never stand on the same footing as the facts themselves, but can only be regarded as invested with greater or less probability. If it is found that ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... fortune, may be contemplated with some chance of enjoyment and success. Unwilling to speak of himself, lest he should incur the charge of vanity or egotism, he modestly trusts to the partial pen of friendship, or the conjectural pen of the commentator, to do justice to events which no quill could relate so well as his own, and which, if impartially and sensibly written, must advance him in the estimation of society, and convince the ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... was, the master-fact in Watts-Dunton's life. 'Algernon' was as an adopted child, 'Gabriel' as a long-lost only brother. As he was to the outer world of his own day, so too to posterity Rossetti, the man, is conjectural and mysterious. We know that he was in his prime the most inspiring and splendid of companions. But we know this only by faith. The evidence is as vague as it is emphatic. Of the style and substance of ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... that it is 'an integral, inseparable part of the narrative.' Sometimes it is possible 'with more or less probability to detect the naked fact which may lie beneath the imaginative or marvellous language in which it is recorded; but even in these cases the solution can be hardly more than conjectural.' In other cases 'the supernatural so entirely predominates and is so of the intimate essence of the transaction that the facts and the interpretation must be accepted together or rejected together.' In such ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... in this work, was a distinguished English antiquary, born in the year 1715, and deceased in 1804. His most celebrated work is "A New System of Ancient Mythology," which appeared in 1773-76. Although objectionable on account of its too conjectural character, it contains a fund of details on the subject of symbolism, and may be consulted with advantage ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... cost, the estimates of the majority are very much more indefinite and conjectural than the more carefully prepared estimates of the minority of the Board of Consulting Engineers. Upon this point the majority of the ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden
... collected his documents, and he has given them to us as they are, guiding us adroitly along the course of the life which they illustrate, but not allowing himself to dogmatise on what must still remain conjectural. And he has given us a series of reproductions of portraits, of the highest importance in the study of one who is not merely a difficult poet, but a very ambiguous human being. They begin with the eager, attractive, somewhat homely youth of eighteen, grasping the hilt of his sword so ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... volunteers offered, in fact, than could be profitably employed. Sandy Flash was not the game to be unearthed by a loud, numerous, sweeping hunt; traps, pitfalls, secret and unwearied following of his many trails, were what was needed. So much time had elapsed that the beginning must be a conjectural beating of the bushes, and to this end several small companies were organized, and the country between the Octorara and the Delaware very ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... to final corruption, some change would have been discerned in so long a time. To this it is answered, that the little change as yet perceived, doth rather prove their newness, and that they have not continued so long; than that they will continue forever as they are. And if conjectural arguments may receive answer by conjectures; it then seemeth that some alteration may be found. For either Aristotle, Pliny, Strabo, Beda, Aquinas, and others, were grossly mistaken; or else those parts of the world lying within the burnt zone, were not in elder times habitable, by reason of ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... which must be such that it will be supported if the Constitution, laws, or treaties are given one construction, or defeated if given another. Second, a genuine and present controversy as distinguished from a possible or conjectural one must exist with reference to the federal right. Third, the controversy must be disclosed upon the face of the complaint ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... energetic exploration that the late Professor Marsh devoted to searching for dinosaurs in the Jurassic and Cretaceous formations of the West, he did not obtain any skeletons of carnivorous kinds anywhere near as complete as these, and their anatomy was in many respects unknown or conjectural. By comparison of the three Allosaurus skeletons with one another and with other specimens of carnivorous dinosaurs of smaller size in this and other museums, particularly in the National Museum and the Kansas University Museum, we have been able to reconstruct the missing parts of the ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... hears I tell you the clean truth, As clean as blood of babes, as white as milk: O Merlin, may this earth, if ever I, If these unwitty wandering wits of mine, Even in the jumbled rubbish of a dream, Have tript on such conjectural treachery— May this hard earth cleave to the Nadir hell Down, down, and close again, and nip me flat, If I be such a traitress. Yield my boon, Till which I scarce can yield you all I am; And grant my re-reiterated wish, The great proof of your love: because I think, However wise, ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... order of time), there have been discriminated a large number of periods, differing from one another in mineral and in organic remains; and that the proportion of the carboniferous era to the whole series is small, whether we regard the thickness of its deposits or its conjectural chronology. It in only of this carboniferous era, the latest of this series, that the author's remarks could be true; and even of this, if taken for the entire surface of the earth, it could not be truly asserted that 'the evidence is so complete as to be patent to ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... general features of a reflective experience. They are (i) perplexity, confusion, doubt, due to the fact that one is implicated in an incomplete situation whose full character is not yet determined; (ii) a conjectural anticipation—a tentative interpretation of the given elements, attributing to them a tendency to effect certain consequences; (iii) a careful survey (examination, inspection, exploration, analysis) of all attainable consideration which will define and clarify the problem in hand; (iv) a consequent ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... sea. We have just as little knowledge of the heart as the lungs, we find a hollow fibrinous tank receiving and discharging blood; we are not prepared to say whether the corpuscle is formed in the heart or not; all else is conjectural and speculative on the subject the corpuscle. We see channels leading to and from it, to and from all parts of the body, muscles and glands. We know it moves when we are alive, we know it is ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... individuals are content to keep in hand the money they are usually anxious to loan, and those engaged in legitimate business are surprised to find that the securities they offer for loans, though heretofore satisfactory, are no longer accepted. Values supposed to be fixed are fast becoming conjectural, and loss and failure have invaded every branch ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... is conjectural, but cannot be far from the truth, as Mr. McElvaine, the sub-agent, states that but 8 or ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... a hill of gentle slope, green as grass; and it is backed close against a steep mountain-side, of which the tree-trunks are conjectural, for I never saw any, the trees resembling rather one continuous leafy tree-top, run out high and far over the extent ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... opposing Mr. Collier's folio, he did not hesitate to insinuate broadly that he believed it to be an imposition. But as he based his suspicion solely upon the very numerous coincidences between the marginal readings in that volume and the conjectural readings of the editors and critics of the last century,—coincidences which, however, affect the character of a very large proportion of the noticeable changes in the folio,—he failed to accomplish his conservative purpose at the expense of Mr. Collier's reputation. But although this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... plainest case without employing a phraseology of which every word is a theory; the simplest narrative of the most illiterate observer involves more or less of hypothesis;'—yet both by the observer himself and by most of those who listen to him, each of these conjectural assumptions is treated as respectfully as if it were an established axiom. We are supposed to deny the possibility of a circumstance, when in truth we only deny the evidence alleged for it. We allow the excellence of reasoning from certain data to captivate ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 1: On Popular Culture • John Morley
... condemned, and in the end it was deemed advisable to bring Dreyfus back to France and accord him a new trial. This trial, which lasted from August 7 to September 7, 1899, indicated that he had been convicted on the most flimsy and uncertain evidence, largely conjectural in character, while there was strong evidence in his favor. Yet the judges of the court-martial seemed biased against him, and by a vote of three judges to two, he was again found guilty - "of treason, with extenuating circumstances," as ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... indignation upon the priests who are the subjects of the following. These considerations necessarily determine the thought which we are to expect, namely, this—"for the people do just as their priests." This meaning is obtained by the conjectural reading W(MY KKMRYW instead of W(MKKMRYB. Comp. ver. 9. The remaining YKH must be deleted. The ordinary view of ver. 4 is hardly worth refuting. The )L YWKH, it is said, is spoken from the people's point of view. ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... as the first creation, and farr exceed the greatest beings in their numerous Genealogies. But on the other side, if it should be found that these, or any other animate body, have no immediate similar Parent, I have in another place set down a conjectural Hypothesis whereby those Phaenomena may likely enough be solv'd, wherein the infinite wisdom and providence of the Creator is no less ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... Ormersfield, till the last unfortunate wheal failed when the rope broke, and there were no funds to buy a new one. No wonder Lord Ormersfield trembled when he heard his son launch out into those easily-ascending conjectural calculations, freely working sums in his head, so exactly like the old Earl, his grandfather, that she could have laughed, but for sympathy with the father, and anxiety to see how the son would take the damp so vexatiously ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said Nigel, thrusting in his conjectural emendation, with infinite difficulty, betwixt two clauses ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... historian and the anthropologist with their utmost stretch of liberality are unable to give more than from twenty to one hundred thousand years for all our human evolution. Hence we put it to them as a fair question: at what point during their own conjectural lakh of years do they fix the root-germ of the ancestral line of the "old Greeks and Romans?" Who were they? What is known or even "conjectured" about their territorial habitat after the division of the Aryan nations? And where were the ancestors of the Semitic and Turanian races? It is not enough ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... to print the text of the poem as it appears in the manuscript, with a literal translation in parallel columns, placing all conjectural emendations at the foot of each page; but, on comparing the text with the version in this juxta-position, so numerous and so enormous and puerile did the blunders of the copyist appear, and, consequently, so great the discrepance ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... all, or thirty-eight if we add Mr. Bullen's conjectural discovery, Sir John Barneveldt, are attributed to Massinger; but of these many have perished, Massinger having somehow been specially obnoxious to the ravages of Warburton's cook. Eighteen survive; ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... government and frontiersmen. If we can venture to centralize his invective, we should lay it specially on the heads of the class the Indians term "squaw-men"—the whites who have Indian wives and are established among the lodges. Of these he gives us a conjectural census—a hundred agencies and reservations and ten squaw-men to each. From this thousand are drawn all the interpreters; and not a solitary interpreter, Colonel Dodge insists, can be relied upon. They are, every man ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... traversed from east to west—from the base of the Rocky Mountains to the Bay of San Francisco—by a great river called the Buena Ventura: which may be translated, the Good Chance. Governor McLaughlin believed in the existence of this river, and made out a conjectural manuscript map to show its place and course. Fremont believed in it, and his plan was to reach it before the dead of winter, and then hybernate upon it. As a great river he knew that it must have some ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... the cone; in this case, the surface to which the printing-ink adhered would diminish or enlarge, and in this altered state the impression might be retransferred to paper. It must be admitted, that this conjectural explanation is liable to very considerable difficulties; for, although the converse operation of taking an impression from a liquid surface has a parallel in the art of marbling paper, the possibility of transferring the ink from ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... of the Vendean and Chouan movements, of which Burke here complains, has never been fully explained. The poltroonery of the Bourbon princes, and the factions of the emigrants, throw a certain but not a complete light on it; and though conjectural explanations are obvious enough, there is little positive evidence to ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... having seen, on the breast of the unhappy minister, a SCARLET LETTER—the very semblance of that worn by Hester Prynne—imprinted in the flesh. As regarded its origin, there were various explanations, all of which must necessarily have been conjectural. Some affirmed that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on the very day when Hester Prynne first wore her ignominious badge, had begun a course of penance,—which he afterwards, in so many futile methods, followed ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... parapet; but Hooker's whole corps fought in open ground, and lost about fifteen hundred men. He reported four hundred rebel dead left on the ground, and that the rebel wounded would number four thousand; but this was conjectural, for most of them got back within their own lines. We had, however, met successfully a bold sally, had repelled it handsomely, and were also put on our guard; and the event illustrated the future tactics of our enemy. This sally came from the Peach-Tree line, which General ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... ourselves in the infinite void of the conjectural world, our business is with what is likely to be affected, for the better or the worse, by the wisdom or weakness of our plans. In all speculations upon men and human affairs, it is of no small moment to distinguish ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... happened. He is certain that it happened, and calls on the reader to be certain too, (though not a trace of it exists in any record whatever,) because it would solve the phenomena so neatly. Just read over again, if you have forgotten it, the conjectural restoration of the Inscription in page 126 of the second volume; and then, on your honour as a scholar and a man of sense, tell me whether in Bentley's edition of Milton there is anything which approaches to the ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... stock of all descriptions, which they drive over the mountains and sell for cash. This extensive trade, which, from its peculiar character, more easily overcomes the difficulties of transportation than any that can be substituted in its place, is about to be put in jeopardy for the conjectural benefits of this measure. When I say this trade is about to be put in jeopardy, I do not speak unadvisedly. I am perfectly convinced that, if this bill passes, it will have the effect of inducing the people of the South, partly from the feeling and partly from the necessity growing out of it, to ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... supply his place. It was intended that Jasper should urge on the search after Edwin, and the pursuit of the murderer, thus endeavoring to divert suspicion from himself, the real murderer. As to anything further, it would be purely conjectural." ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... with it; it is pretended that it can act and feel without the assistance of this body; that deprived of this body and robbed of its senses, this soul will be able to live, to enjoy, to suffer, be sensitive of enjoyment or of rigorous torments. Upon such a tissue of conjectural absurdities the wonderful opinion of the immortality ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... sometimes publicly given from this bench, but so abstruse in its nature and so quaint in its expression, that the House never comprehended it, and the unfortunate minister who had to answer, even with twenty-four hours' study, was obliged to commence his reply by a conjectural interpretation of the query formally addressed to him. But though they were silent in the House, their views were otherwise powerfully represented. The weekly journal devoted to their principles was ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... dates are, of course, conjectural; but those given are accepted by high authorities. Paul was about forty-four at ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... reads "aforesaidel" corrospondent and agreeing with spelling as in original Sidenote: A petiment in corrupt English. reading "petiment" conjectural Sidenote: Anaglipts are cunning carues and grauers. reading conjectural: beginning of each line is missing naglipts / e cunning / arues and / rauers effected by many seuerall workmen text reads "wookmen" Bagistanus must giue place text reads "geue" although the Obelisk of Iupiter ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... strangely found himself, he had fits of impulse to leap out and take the next train back. But, back where? He had the assurance of his colored friend and brother that forward was New York. Backward was the void conjectural. Slowly the dawn whitened at the window. He raised the curtain and saw the rocks and fences and snow of a winter's landscape—saw them with a shock which, lying prone as he was, gave him the sensation of staggering. It was true, then: the ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick |
