"Inconceivable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and the Adirondack mountains of New York: but their representatives in Europe are, as far as is known only to be found in the north-west highlands of Scotland, and in the island of Lewis, which consists entirely of them. And it is to be remembered, as a proof of their inconceivable antiquity, that they have been upheaved and shifted long before the Cambrian rocks were laid down "unconformably" on ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... meeting for all men of acknowledged piety and reserve, and always studying when I was not in their company. When they compared my actual mode of living with the former one, they marvelled, and they could not sufficiently thank the eternal providence of God whose inconceivable ways they admired. They blessed the criminal actions which had compelled me to remain one year away from my native place. I crowned their delight by paying all my debts without asking any money from M. de Bragadin, who, not having given me anything for one year, had religiously put ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Then came the thought of the infinitude of our moods, of the hues and shades and endless kinds and varieties of feeling, especially in our dreams; and he said to himself "how rich God must be, since from him we come capable of such inconceivable differences of conscious life!" ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... plunge, gentlemen, and fortune favored me. I—" here his voice failed him again, but realizing the fact more quickly than before, he shook off his apathy, and facing the two men, who awaited his slow words with inconceivable excitement, continued with sudden concentration upon his subject, "I saw what I went to see—poor Georgian's body. I have satisfied the coroner of this fact. The little bag I tore from her side proves her identity ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... eyes that had seen us. The river-side bushes were certainly very thick; but the undergrowth behind was evidently penetrable. However, during the short lift I had seen no canoes anywhere in the reach—certainly not abreast of the steamer. But what made the idea of attack inconceivable to me was the nature of the noise—of the cries we had heard. They had not the fierce character boding of immediate hostile intention. Unexpected, wild, and violent as they had been, they had given me an irresistible impression of sorrow. The glimpse ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... realized, we shall adopt the language of the suffering apostle—"None of these things move me, neither do I count my life dear to myself, that I may finish my course with joy"—and share such blessed society—such inconceivable felicity and glory in my Father's house above, in which ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... would not join the marriage party; refused to eat with it or sit with it at all. Day after day, for six days, flatly refused; and after nightfall of the sixth, glided out with her foster-brother into the woods, into by-paths and inconceivable wanderings; and, in effect, got home to Denmark. Brother Svein was not for the moment there; probably enough gone to England again. But Thyri knew too well he would not allow her to stay here, or anywhere that he could help, except with the old ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... is inconceivable that even such an expedient as this, however successful at the outset, should permanently solve the problem, which resolves itself once more into individual competition. It is not imaginable that such an enormous plutocratic society as I have ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... king on the fertility of the soil by him, and by me on the feasibility of discovering the passage to China, [11] without the inconveniences of the ice of the north or the heats of the torrid zone, through which our sailors pass twice in going and twice in returning, with inconceivable hardships and risks, his Majesty directed Sieur de Monts to make a new outfit, and send men to continue what he had commenced. This he did. And, in view of the uncertainty of his commission, [12] he chose a new spot for his settlement, in order to deprive jealous persons of any such ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... eyes, concealed the negligence and fallacy of the details, Mr. Whitbread, on the contrary, with an unrelenting accuracy, laid open the minutiae of every transaction, and made evasion as impossible to others, as it was alien and inconceivable to himself. He was, perhaps, the only person, whom Sheridan had ever found proof against his powers of persuasion,—and this rigidity naturally mortified his pride full as much as it thwarted and ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... among any number of Americans who have been on European soil for any period of time, from twenty days to twenty years, those who are burdened with any such affection, any such longing, any such feeling, might be counted with ease. Indeed, if through some inconceivable arrangement of human affairs the Americans abroad were to be prevented from ever returning to their own country, I imagine the majority would bear the catastrophe with great equanimity, and, aside from the natural ties of family and pecuniary interests that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... he fled with incredible swiftness to the Table Mountain at the back of the town, whence this single miscreant, still animated by the effect of the opium, for two days resisted and defied every force that was sent against him. The alarm and terror into which the town was thrown were inconceivable; for two days none ventured from within their houses, either masters or slaves; for an order was issued (as the most likely means of destroying him, should he appear in the town) that whatever Malay was seen in the streets should be instantly killed by the soldiery. On the evening of the second ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... ever will be) is all to be read, though much of it appears addressed to children of tender age. It is pitched in the nursery-key, and might be supposed to emanate from an angry governess. It is, however, all suggestive, and much of it is delightfully just. There is an inconceivable want of form in it, though the author has spent his life in laying down the principles of form and scolding people for departing from them; but it throbs and flashes with the love of his subject—a love disconcerted and abjured, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... of his being, I begin now in my middle age to appreciate. No longer is he an instinctive savage but a creature of almost incredible variability and wonderful new possibilities. Marvels undreamt of, power still inconceivable, an empire beyond the uttermost stars; such is man's inheritance. But for the present, until we get a mastery of those vague and mighty intimations at once so perplexing and so reassuring, if we are ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... the wind and pressure the sea rose. It jumped, it leaped, it soared straight toward the clouds. Remember, from every point of the compass that inconceivable wind was blowing in toward the center of calm. The result was that the seas sprang up from every point of the compass. There was no wind to check them. They popped up like corks released from the bottom of a pail of water. There was no system to them, no stability. ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... speaks, indeed, of "laws in accordance with which the world took its origin;" but these laws must be as abstract as those of Mathematics, since they existed before matter itself; nay, more abstract, or, rather, more inconceivable still, since they existed, it would seem, even before Mind! Dr. Oken attempts to explain the production of the world from nothing by comparing it to the evolution of Arithmetical and Mathematical Science, out of the fundamental conception of zero! But, waiving this, we shall ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... hungry—almost famished, in fact. For days the weather had been very bitter, and all the feebler wild things which were his prey by inheritance, the born serfs to his family, had kept, for the most part, in their burrows and nests, and the Cat's long hunt had availed him nothing. But he waited with the inconceivable patience and persistency of his race; besides, he was certain. The Cat was a creature of absolute convictions, and his faith in his deductions never wavered. The rabbit had gone in there between those low-hung pine boughs. Now her little doorway had before it a shaggy curtain of snow, ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... Place he accosted in a feigned voice a maiden, the orphan daughter of a noble Polygon, whose affection in former days he had sought in vain; and by a series of deceptions—aided, on the one side, by a string of lucky accidents too long to relate, and, on the other, by an almost inconceivable fatuity and neglect of ordinary precautions on the part of the relations of the bride—he succeeded in consummating the marriage. The unhappy girl committed suicide on discovering the fraud to which she ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... objects, sensible truths, and useful knowledge. Let the vain chimeras which beset the people be dissipated, and very soon rational opinions will fill the minds of those who were believed fated to be always in error. To annihilate religious prejudices, it would be sufficient to show that what is inconceivable to man can not be of any use to him. Does it need, then, anything but simple common sense to perceive that a being most clearly irreconcilable with the notions of mankind, that a cause continually opposed to the effects attributed to him; that a being of whom not a word can be said without falling ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... brains, nor numbers, nor money—save ammunition. Does any pessimist intend to argue that we shall not get all the ammunition we need? It is inconceivable that we should not get it. When we have got it the end can be foretold like the answer to ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... seeing him? Were these two conditions in any way connected with each other? Was Helene really trying to avoid him? Had she received his letter? Did she really know? This last question gave him much comfort and he persistently dwelt on that phase of the situation. To believe that she knew; it was inconceivable to him. She would surely have written. "Did I address the letters properly? Did I put stamps on?" he asked himself. "There is a mistake somewhere," he concluded; "a mistake ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... is then, and I know how sad a story it must be for a parent's ear, but the fact is, that your unhappy boy has had the inconceivable rashness to quit my roof." And the Doctor paused to watch the ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... edges of the clouds near the sun often presented a fiery or burning appearance, while the opposite side of the heavens was distinguished by a deep purple about the horizon, gradually softening upward into a warm yet delicate rose-colour of inconceivable beauty. These phenomena have always impressed us the most forcibly about the time of the sun's permanent setting and that of his reappearance, especially the latter, and have invariably furnished a particular subject of conversation to us at those periods; but I do not ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... diligently imitated his master; but he, unhappily, pleased himself with blank verse, and supposed that the numbers of Milton, which impress the mind with veneration, combined as they are with subjects of inconceivable grandeur, could be sustained by images which, at most, can rise ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... must laugh or, at any rate, smile sometimes, I thought. This is where Punch comes from. It is the land of Dickens. It is, in short, Merry England. But, as I regarded the dingy, set faces from the railway's carriage window, it seemed inconceivable that their owners ever could have laughed, or screwed up the skin around their eyes to look out happily under sunny blue skies ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... they were not very well acquainted with his daily routine. Of course, if they had been merely after plunder they would at least have made some attempt to search for it. Besides, I can read in a man's eye when it is his own skin that he is frightened for. It is inconceivable that this fellow could have made two such vindictive enemies as these appear to be without knowing of it. I hold it, therefore, to be certain that he does know who these men are, and that for reasons of his own he suppresses it. It is just possible ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... double, easily seen in an opera-glass. All the stars of the Square are approaching us at an inconceivable speed. ...
— A Field Book of the Stars • William Tyler Olcott
... elevated with the most inconceivable rapidity to the level of my ideas. All my little passions were stifled by the enthusiasm of truth, liberty, and virtue; and, what is most astonishing, this effervescence continued in my mind upward of five years, to as great a ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... printed reports, to the persons who are concerned with the questions which they are going to argue. In some cases the students will get valuable interest and advice from the older men who have the active charge of the questions under discussion; and it is not inconceivable, that if some of the latter happen to be graduates of the college or school, they will even read the arguments and make helpful criticisms on them. The grateful interest of graduates is a source which has not been overdrawn for aid in the processes ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... and finally disappeared behind the intervening rampart, and then bowing her head between her hands, and sinking upon her knees, she reposed her forehead against the sill of the window, and awaited unshrinkingly, yet in a state of inconceivable agony, the consummation ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... almost inconceivable mass of a glacier, with its millions of millions of tons, suggest how much of the Mountain has already been whittled and planed away. But here we may do better than speculate. The original surface of the peak is clearly indicated by the tops of ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... mental defect, but may rather be said to be a sign of it, for it shows an intelligence unable to grasp the wider relations of life, and concentrated on the gratification of petty and immediate desires. Thus it happens that the cunning of criminals is frequently associated with almost inconceivable stupidity.[35] ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... common man, meanwhile, one thing remains inconceivable: that now when the Bastille is down, and French Liberty restored, grain should continue so dear. Our Rights of Man are voted, Feudalism and all Tyranny abolished; yet behold we stand in queue! Is it Aristocrat ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... written to M. de Montmorency, and, therefore, in his menaces he let fall some hints with relation to those letters to the disadvantage of Madame de Guemenee. She thereupon ridiculed him no longer, but went almost raving mad, and fell into such an inconceivable melancholy that you would not have known her, and retired to Couperai, where she would let nobody ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Sage assumes that the entire universe is filled with infinitely minute particles flying in right lines in every direction with inconceivable rapidity. Every mass of tangible matter in the universe is incessantly bombarded by these particles, but any two non-contiguous masses (whether separated by an infinitesimal space or by the limits of the universe) are ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... which he manages to keep afloat—the wind-raising conspiracies, in which he engages with heroes as unfortunate as himself—the means by which he contrives, during most days of the week, to get his portion of whisky-and-water: all these are mysteries to us inconceivable: but suffice it to say, that through all the storms of life Jack had floated somehow, and the lamp of his nose had never ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... implored her to listen to him. What was her father to her—he asked her plainly—when had he ever considered her, as she should be considered? Let her only trust herself to him. Never, never should she repent that she had done him such an inconceivable honour. Hang the diplomatic service! He had some money; with her own it would be enough. He would take her to Egypt or the Cape. That would ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 1665. On that occasion his total following was estimated to amount to 300,000 or 400,000 persons, and the journey from Delhi to Lahore occupied two months. The burden royal progresses on this scale must have imposed on the country is inconceivable. Jahangir died in his beloved Kashmir. He planted the road from Delhi to Lahore with trees, set up as milestones the kos minars, some of which are still standing, and built ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... epoch, her daughters have chiefly been engaged in a desperate and unavailing struggle to get rid of it. But the dirt of a poverty-stricken English street is a monstrosity unknown on our side of the Atlantic. It reigns supreme within its own limits, and is inconceivable everywhere beyond them. We enjoy the great advantage, that the brightness and dryness of our atmosphere keep everything clean that the sun shines upon, converting the larger portion of our impurities into transitory dust which the ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... appointed educational institution in New York. This good lady was bent upon our staying at the college, and hunted us from house to house until we took up our abode with her, and, I confess, I found her rather amusing at first, and I am sure she meant most kindly. But there was an inconceivable fidgetiness about her, and an incapacity to let people alone, or even listen to anything they said in answer to her questions, which poured as from a quick-firing gun, that became at last intolerable." Comment on this passage would ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... hate the reformed religion all my life for having carried off from us so worthy a person. Without this original sin, he would be the first after the king, and we should see him, in a short time, at the head of the armies. He gains new friends every day. He insinuates himself into all hearts with inconceivable skill. He is highly honored by the men, and no less beloved by the ladies. His face is very well formed, the nose neither too large nor too small. His eyes are very soft; his skin brown, but very ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... beyond her wont, and taking as her text the three words which have been used so often as the inspiring trumpet-calls of men,—the words God, Immortality, Duty,—pronounced, with terrible earnestness, how inconceivable was the first, how unbelievable the second, and yet how peremptory and absolute the third. Never, perhaps, had sterner accents affirmed the sovereignty of impersonal and unrecompensing law. I listened, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley
... those masses, are afterwards to be filled with a hard and solid substance; but without some other power, by which the water contained in those cavities and endless labyrinths of the strata, should be separated in proportion as it had performed its task, it is inconceivable how those masses, however changed from the state of their first subsidence, should be absolutely consolidated, without any visible or fluid water in ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... certain Mr. ——, a well-known grocer. "I believe our supplies (groceries) come from him," was her chilly reply. "But," I ventured, "he is now a wholesaler." "Indeed!" said madam; "I had not heard of it." The point, very inconceivable to you, perhaps, was that the grocer, whether wholesale or retail, was not readily accepted; yet the man in the wholesale business in drugs, books, wine, stores, fruit, or almost anything else, had the entree, if he was a gentleman. The druggist, the hardware man, the furniture dealer, the ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... especially considerate of women, if for no other reason, because their success in their profession would depend very largely on women." Certainly, if he had to decide to-night, he would rather return to Marion, Ohio, than join his staff. Such a retreat from the glories of Chicago would be inconceivable to old Hitchcock and to the girl. He reflected that he should not like to put ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... and nobody would take paper if he could help it. No one knew to-day what his notes would be worth to-morrow. "Never," says Duclos, in his Secret Memoirs of the Regency, "was seen a more capricious government-never was a more frantic tyranny exercised by hands less firm. It is inconceivable to those who were witnesses of the horrors of those times, and who look back upon them now as on a dream, that a sudden revolution did not break out—that Law and the Regent did not perish by a tragical death. They were both held in horror, but the people ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... already told her what he had been in the Isthmus for,—to paddle in miasmatic swamps with a view to the possibility of a canal in the remote, speculative future. He had given her a graphic and entertaining picture of the hideous and inconceivable life he had led there for six months, from which he had emerged the only member of a party of nineteen (whites, blacks, and yellows) who was not either dead by disease, by violence, or by misadventure, or ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... the period. Even when they come to be numerous, their object is seldom to amuse; they are didactic, and as a rule convey solemn warnings. The idea of a draughtsman of note setting himself deliberately to please a child would have been inconceivable not so many years ago. To be seen and not heard was the utmost demanded of the little ones even as late as the beginning of this century, when illustrated books designed especially for their instruction were ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... the manner in which a fire burns is quite unique and deserves featuring. It is inconceivable that John Jones's house could burn in any very unusual way—"with many explosions," "with a glare of flames that aroused the whole city," "with vast clouds of oily smoke"—but some fires do burn in some such a way and are interesting ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... vindicated by the examples of Shakspeare and Goethe, or even of Byron, who redeemed poor and melodramatic conceptions with a manly vigour of execution, an energy and completeness of purpose, that Dryden himself never surpassed, is to me utterly inconceivable." ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... they hilariously wasted their scanty store of Indian corn by making an image with the sheaves, and wreathing it with the painted garlands of autumn foliage. They crowned the King of Christmas and bent the knee to the Lord of Misrule! Such fantastic foolery is inconceivable in a Puritan community, and the Maypole which was its emblem was the most inconceivable of all. This "flower-decked abomination," ornamented with white birch bark, banners, and blossoms, was the center of the tipsy jollity of Merrymount. As Morton explains: "A goodly pine tree of eighty foote ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... fanciful imaginings of men of past time; for nowhere do we find in the records of thought even the hint of the possibility of things which we now regard as established fact. This pinch of salt projects from its surface bodies [i.e. electrons] possessing the inconceivable velocity of over 100,000 miles a second, a velocity sufficient to carry them, if unimpeded, five times around the earth in a second, and possessing with this velocity, masses a thousand times smaller than the smallest atom known to science. Furthermore, they are ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... instead of striking solidly on the trunk of the bush, it crashed futilely through a branch. Riley Sinclair drew closer to watch. It was excusable, perhaps, for a man to be unable to ride or to shoot or to face other men. But it was inconceivable that any living creature should be so clumsy with a ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... strength: He does not repel us from His Presence till we have prepared some offering to bring before Him, or have made some good progress in the way of life. No, He has begun His dealings with us with special, spontaneous acts of mercy. He has, by an inconceivable goodness, sent His Son to be our life. Far from asking any gift at our hands in the first instance, He has from our infancy taken us in charge, and freely given us "all things that pertain unto life and godliness." He has been urgent ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... predecessors, they are no less exempt from the obscenity and immoral effects of those authors. As bad writing is infinitely easier than good, the pens of our living dramatic writers in general teem with an inconceivable fertility—and the purlieus of London are beat over in every direction to hunt up game suitable to the genius of their weak-winged muse; in short, to find out new modifications of character, attractive not by its consonance to man's general nature, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... as that of which we all are thinking in these days is war between civilized men. One civilized man cannot improve another civilized man by killing him, although it is not inconceivable that a civilized man may do humanity a service by destroying human savages, for with the savages he ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... Cauchon had the inconceivable and apparently devil-driven curiosity to approach the martyr, hoping, perhaps, that in the first terror at seeing the fire springing up to her, Joan of Arc would let fall some words of reproach against her King or ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... experienced not the slightest difficulty, up to the present moment, in classifying them, neatly and logically; but there was no space in his mental files for a woman such as Lydia Orr was representing herself to be. It was inconceivable, on the face of it! All women demanded admiration, courtship, love. They always had; they always would. The literature of the ages attested it. He had been too precipitate—too hasty. He must give ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... He and his wife and friends must have heard the rumour, and their tongues were not tied. Whatever reasons counsel and judges had for reticence, the town had none. If Ralegh could have contradicted the discreditable tale, it is, as in the case of an earlier scandal, inconceivable that he should not. The explanation of his absolute silence, and the partial, not entire, silence of his adversaries, is that he was ashamed of his despair, and they were ashamed of having brought him to it. Cecil, after the trial, referred to the matter, after the fashion of Matthew and of Hallam, ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... dromedary. Such was not his purpose, however, for, having attained his greatest possible altitude, he partially sat down and elevated his right arm after the manner of a semaphore. This semaphore arm remained rigid for a second, threatening; then it vibrated with inconceivable rapidity, feinting. But it was the treacherous left that did the work. Seemingly this left gave Duke three lightning little pats upon the right ear; but the change in his voice indicated that these were no love-taps. He yelled "help!" and ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... order of position being Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, each of them being supposed to rotate on its axis as it revolved round the sun. According to Cicero, Nicetas suggested that, if it were admitted that the earth revolves on her axis, the difficulty presented by the inconceivable velocity of the ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... who committed the most atrocious actions, and such as no human creature would have imagined, was the most applauded and considered as the greatest man among them. I dare not write the horrible and inconceivable atrocities they committed on ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... knees, Lanyard bent over the body to search for symptoms of animation. He perceived them instantly. With inconceivable suddenness Dupont demonstrated that he was very much alive. An arm like the flexible limb of a tree wound itself affectionately round Lanyard's neck, clipped his head to Dupont's yearning bosom, ground his face into the flannel folds of a ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... mean to say," said Cutts, with singularly elaborate articulation—"You don't mean to say that you were such an inconceivable ass as to pay up your letter of allotment? Well—I never heard of such a piece of deliberate infatuation! Why, man, a blacksmith with half an eye must have seen that the game was utterly up a week before the calls were due. I don't think there is a single man out ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... self-hatred. A condition of absolute indifference is unthinkable. Such indifference could not last a moment without becoming either that faint hatred, which we call "boredom," or that faint love, which we call "interest." The contemplation of the universe with no emotional reaction of any kind is an inconceivable thing. An infant at its mother's breast displays love and malice. At one and the same moment it satisfies its thirst and beats upon the ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... As they inflicted inconceivable evils upon their enemies, there were not many leagues formed against them; for those who were most distant from danger were not willing to draw nearer to it. The consequence of this was, that they were rarely attacked; whilst, on the other hand, they constantly ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... right side, near the base of his flaring nostril. Many moles have hairs in them; Pierre's mole had not merely half a dozen hairs, but a whole crop. They grew thick and long; and, with a perversion of vanity almost inconceivable in a sane person, Pierre had twisted these hairs together, as a man twists a mustache, and had trained them to grow obliquely across his cheek bone. He was a big fellow, for a Frenchman, and, as he walked towards Cleggett with a mincing elasticity of gait, he smirked and caressed this whimsical ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... furniture of the vast chamber seemed to the eye of a stranger to offer an inextricable and wellnigh indescribable medley of objects in the utmost confusion. Quaint-looking bottles and jars of every conceivable and inconceivable form, and of many more than all the colors of the rainbow, were on all sorts of tables and brackets and shelves, containing the coloring-matters which, when let out from beneath the stoppers that held them down, were, like imprisoned genii in the Arabian Nights' ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... concentration—but even this can not account for the pianist's real attractiveness. If Mr. Frohman's "vitality" means the "vital spark," the "life element," it comes very close to a true definition of magnetism, for success without this precious Promethean force is inconceivable. It may be only a smouldering ember in the soul of a dying Chopin, but if it is there it is irresistible until it becomes extinct. Facial beauty and physical prowess all made way for the kind of magnetism that Socrates, George Sand, Julius Caesar, Henry VIII, Paganini, ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... elections for mayor the most inconceivable interest was excited, and in one case, that of 1828, between Messrs. Porter and Robinson, from 16,000 to 20,000 pounds, if not a larger sum, was said to have been expended in carrying the day. I recollect a worthy tobacconist, who kept a little shop ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... nerve-racking. Between the emptying of the moccasin, and the gathering up and re-shaking of the counters, Granger held his breath. It seemed to him that Eyelids was gambling with an invisible player, and that the stake which he stood to lose or win was his own life. It was inconceivable that any man should have sat playing all these hours at a game of hazard, risking nothing, having for ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... exclaims, "Pulpit! canst thou not make a pulpit by simply inverting the nearest tub?" yet, alas! he does not sufficiently reflect that it is still only a tub, that the most inspired utterance will come from it, inconceivable, misconceivable, to the million; questionable (not of ascertained significance) even to the few. Pity us therefore; and with your just shake of the head join a sympathetic, even a hopeful smile. Since I saw you I have been trying, am still ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... whatever was expected of the Messiah has been attributed to Jesus. "When not merely the particular nature and manner of an occurrence is critically suspicious, its external circumstances represented as miraculous and the like; but where likewise the essential substance and groundwork is either inconceivable in itself, or is in striking harmony with some Messianic idea of the Jews of that age, then not the particular alleged course and mode of the transaction only, but the entire occurrence must be regarded as unhistorical" (Strauss' "Life of Jesus," vol. i., p. 94). The ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... almost touched him, standing motionless where the shadows were deepest, and at that near contact a blind anger swept over him, against her—who held him in her power to eliminate, when she would—When? What was her cue? But, of course, she must have spoken already—it was inconceivable otherwise. Then why had the prince not acted at once, summarily? His excellency was not one to hesitate about drastic measures. Mr. Heatherbloom could not solve the riddle at all. He could only crouch back ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... course, that art really has a purpose with reference to which it can be judged as successful or unsuccessful. But I do not see how this can very well be denied. Art is one of the oldest of human activities, one might almost say institutions, and it is inconceivable that it should not have been directed by some intention, conscious or unconscious. To be sure, men have expressed this intention in varying, often in inconsistent ways, but the same is true of all other human activities and institutions. Few would deny, I suppose, that science and the state ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... there was born—or brought out from England as an infant—a little boy named Henry Kellsey, who as a child took a great fancy to the Amerindians who came to trade at Fort Nelson. As he played with them, and they returned his affection, he learnt their language, and—for some inconceivable reason—this gave great offence to the stupid governor of the fort (indeed, when Kellsey as a grown man, some years afterwards, compiled a vocabulary of the Kri language for the use of traders, the Hudson's Bay Company ordered it to ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... charming man, who, either through inconceivable stupidity, or through most criminal calculation, neglected to tell ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... as the poor child's mind seemed to be was inconceivable to the maiden, who had been bred up in the busy hum of men, where the constant resort of strange merchants, the daily interests of a self-governing municipality, and the numerous festivals, both secular and religious, were an unconscious education, even without that which had ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... University and those depending on it, made at this time, it is said, actually a third of the population of Paris. * * * One asks oneself with interest, what was the mental food to which this vast, turbulent multitude pressed with such inconceivable hunger. Theology was the great matter; and there is no doubt that this study was by no means always that barren and verbal trifling which an ill-informed modern contempt is fond of representing it. It is evident that around the study of theology ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... another poor poet should take his task and teach the world true religion and true joy. I shall be that poet, Madame, if I can despoil myself of reason and of conceit. For all moral beauty is achieved in this world through the inconceivable wisdom that comes from God ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... ever possessing each other in this life. However consumed they are with love they retain perfect mastery over themselves. This is so abundantly clear from the first moment when their love is revealed—when they drink the potion—that it is inconceivable for a misunderstanding to occur to any one who follows the text with any attention. Were the mistake confined to vulgar and careless people who make up the bulk of the audience, however deplorable, it would be intelligible, but from scholars and professional ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... that Trouble was reaching even then to pluck him by the sleeve. Mary Hope and her stern, Scotch integrity linked to the blackened Lorrigan name that might soon stand on the roster of the State's prison? It was impossible, inconceivable. He had been a hound to say to her what he ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... do they call it a wilderness?—I might have been, even now, you know it, Annie, his wife, his wife, his. But our hearts are cunningly made, many-stringed; and often much good music is left in them when we count them broken. That which makes the bitterness of this lot, the inconceivable, unutterable bitterness of it, even that I can bear now, calmly, and count it ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... in the Republican Party he believes in a high tariff—the higher the better. Prosperity without protection is inconceivable. During a Washington career of more than twenty years he has been constantly caricatured as the tool of the interests—the man upon whom they could rely to raise the tariff wall an inch or two for ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... not for the antique. Genius and science are of no avail; the position of Christ in baptism in the paintings of Verrocchio and Ghirlandajo is mean and servile; the movements of the "Thunderstricken" in Signorelli's lunettes is an inconceivable mixture of the brutish, the melodramatic, and the comic; the magnificently drawn youth at the door of the prison in Filippino's "Liberation of St. Peter" is gradually going to sleep and collapsing in a fashion which is ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... Protestant the idea of religion without morals is inconceivable; but in South America Romanism divorces morals and religion. It is quite possible to break every command of the Decalogue and yet be a devoted, faithful Romanist." [Footnote: Rev. J. H. La Fetra, in "Protestant ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... inconceivable," she remarked to her friend, "that the Duc de Sairmeuse should allow you to be reduced to such ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... the miracle of the Marne would be repeated. But it was: again, as in 1914, the tide turned at the Marne. The French and the American troops struck their sudden smashing blow on the exposed flank of the enemy and, with the almost inconceivable rapidity of a dream, the whole ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... say is inconceivable to me," he said, going up to her. "I grew up in a world in which every one without exception, men and women alike, ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... miracle for his gratification, no doubt He would have been acquitted and sent back loaded with gifts. But we cannot believe that such an expedient was even a temptation to Him. Never had He wrought a miracle for His own behoof, and it is inconceivable that He should have stooped to offer any justification of the estimate of Himself which this man had formed. Jesus was Herod's subject; but it was impossible for Him to look upon him with respect. How could He help feeling disdain for one who thought of Himself so ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... democracy,—that men are brothers and have equal rights, and that God clothes the soul with freedom,—is a truth taught by Christ, is a truth proclaimed by the Church; and the faith of Christians in this principle, in spite of hesitations and misgivings, of oppositions and obstacles and inconceivable difficulties, has finally given to it its modern vigor and beneficent power. The spirit of love and mercy, which is the spirit of Christ, breathes like a heavenly zephyr through the whole earth, and under ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... not lead along the lines of the constructive forces and the working out of a new world method, then the future of Europe and of the world is dark indeed. Surely it will lead to a new order—it is almost inconceivable that it will not. ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... that not like my uncle?" she remorselessly exclaimed; "and here, look, here is my milliner M., and here is Parson S., and here the image of that creature—bodily! After all, these monkeys are the real incroyables, and it is inconceivable why they are not admitted ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... glory there is at times upon the creatures, and that all their glory is the workmanship of God; O Lord, say I, what is God himself? He may well be called the God of glory, as well as the glorious Lord; for as all glory is from him, so in him is an inconceivable well-spring of glory, of glory to be communicated to them that come by Christ to him. Wherefore, let the glory, and love, and bliss, and eternal happiness that is in God allure thee to come to him ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... untouched, gave a howl that you might have heard a league off; advanced towards us as if he would attack us, and then turned and ran away with inconceivable celerity ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... trusted with what must for ever remain a dead secret, namely, that Sabina had spent the night in Malipieri's rooms; for that would be the plain fact to-morrow morning. What had happened to Sassi and Masin was a mystery, but it was inconceivable that either of them should have been free to act during the past eight or nine hours and should have made no effort to save the two persons to whom they were respectively devoted as to no one else ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... felt only a barely perceptible tremor, but the computer, knowing far better than she the inconceivable strength and mass of that enormous structure of solidly braced hardened steel, sprang into action. Leaping to the small dirigible look-out plate, he turned on the power ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... fete, which derives its name from the little mountain-flowers, an inconceivable transport and freedom; and yet no private brawl mingled among the cries of public rejoicing; a few lancers on horseback, ornamented with their shining cuirasses, maintained here and there order ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne
... him to Cairo before he awake, and afterwards leave it to you to carry him elsewhere when we have accomplished our design. The plan being thus concerted, the genius lifted Bedreddin gently, carried him with an inconceivable swiftness through the air, and set him down at the door of a public-house next to the bagnio, whence Hump-back was to come with the train of slaves that waited for him. Bedreddin awaked that very moment, and was mightily surprised to find ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... standpoint, and that here was a survival of those orgies to which our painted and skin-clad ancestors devoted themselves in spasms of religious frenzy, gazed at by the cave-bear and the mammoth. The uninstructed Amidon regarded them as inconceivable horse-play. While thus he mused, Stevens, who was still hoodwinked and being greatly belectured on the virtue of Faith and the duty of ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... then collected by zemindars, a few of whom were semi-independent nobles, and the rest mere farmers of revenue, who bid against one another at the periodical settlements. Tenant right apart, the conception of private property in the soil was inconceivable to the Indian mind. Every one knows that it was borrowed by English lawyers from the Roman codes, when commercialism destroyed the old feudal nexus. Lord Cornwallis's permanent Settlement of 1793 was a revolution as drastic in ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... at first as inconceivable to me as a crab's or a cockchafer's. That is where all the trouble came in. For that reason alone they fascinated me and aggrieved me. From the conditions of our acquaintance—we were colleagues—I had to study him with some thoroughness, observing him ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... the machinery. But when a system of locomotion, containing so many advantages, has so nearly been brought to perfection, in spite of the many difficulties presented by the common modes of making a road, it would be inconceivable blindness in the parties interested in the subject to overlook the certain mode of success offered to them, by merely laying down a portion of the road in wood. Who those parties are we have already pointed out. They are the inhabitants and owners of property in towns and neighbourhoods ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... stood looking down at the completed roadway, the Roadmaker suddenly remembered his own slight years and the inconceivable fraction of time he had laboured for so wide a result, and there swept up to him across the level way a new knowledge of his relationship to all the past—that he was but the servant of those who had preceded him and had but brought into the light ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... When the baron begged his sister in his wife's name to continue in charge of the household, the old maid kissed the baroness like a sister; she made a daughter of her, she adored her, overjoyed to be left in control of the household, which she managed rigorously on a system of almost inconceivable economy, which was never relaxed except for some great occasion, such as the lying-in of her sister, and her nourishment, and all that concerned Calyste, the worshipped son of the ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... Jaffery. But again, what could we do? Doria put her pistol at our heads and demanded Adrian's original manuscripts. She had every reason to believe in their existence. Wittekind had never seen them. Vandal and Goth and every kind of Barbarian that she considered Jaffery to be, it was inconceivable that he had deliberately destroyed them. It was equally inconceivable that he had sold the precious things for vulgar money. They remained therefore in his possession. Why did he lie? We could supply no satisfactory answer; and the more solutions we offered the ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... remains. On looking at the greater portion of the music by the execution of which Catalani raised herself to the highest pinnacle of fame, we are compelled to the conclusion, that in the singer lay the charm. The effects said to have been produced by Handel's operas are now inconceivable and unintelligible, so "mechanical and dull" do these works appear, "beyond mere simplicity and traits of melody." Handel, in one species of composition, wrote down to the singers of his time. Whoever examines ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... not named, are still more defective in their external credentials. There may be also a possibility that Aristotle was mistaken, or may have confused the master and his scholars in the case of a short writing; but this is inconceivable about a more important work, e.g. the Laws, especially when we remember that he was living at Athens, and a frequenter of the groves of the Academy, during the last twenty years of Plato's life. Nor must ...
— Alcibiades I • (may be spurious) Plato
... considers the actual situation in Michigan at that time, the program outlined by this act seems extraordinarily ambitious if not actually ridiculous. The hard and primitive life of those days is almost inconceivable now, and yet the change has come well within the lifetime of the oldest inhabitants of many thriving cities of the State. The secret lay in the extraordinary increase of the population. Settlers came in so rapidly that, where in 1834 there were but ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... manifestation and in no sense a release of a separate soul; so that the birth of a child is but a new manifestation in physical form of the one soul, and in no sense the apparition of an additional soul? It is difficult to think otherwise. The birth and death of souls are inconceivable; the immortality of a vast and varying number of individual souls is equally inconceivable. Immortality implies unity, not number. The mind can grasp the possibility of one soul, the manifestation of which is the universe ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... went back to bed I pursued these and other enchanting visions into dreamland. The next day I took Caspar Hauser into the garden for air and sunshine. His liveliness was something inconceivable by the human imagination. He chased himself frantically around the cage, regardless of my tender exhortations, until I began to fear that taming was a more tedious process than I had supposed. I set the cage upon the grass where the sun was hottest, withdrawing myself ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... the geologic upheaval and sinking of continents; yet man is morally as far removed from the savage as he is physically superior to the saurian. We do not see the corn grow or the world revolve; yet if motion be given as the primal essence, we must look for inconceivable results. Wisdom will take care of wisdom, and extend. Consider the growth of intellect in the history of your own parish for twenty years. See how old views have died out of New England and new ones come in. Every man is fortified in his opinions, yet no man ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... house of his enemy, sit in his chair, and endure an introduction to his family, was more than he bargained for. He commenced blinking hard in preparation for the horrible dose to which delay and the farmer's cordiality added inconceivable bitters. Farmer Blaize was quite at his ease; nowise in a hurry. He spoke of the weather and the harvest: of recent doings up at the Abbey: glanced over that year's cricketing; hoped that no future Feverel would lose a leg to the game. Richard saw and heard Arson in it all. He blinked harder ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... some perfection; so it comes to pass that, whenever imperfection is found in any particular, there must necessarily be a perfection in respect of that particular also. For were there no such perfection, it is utterly inconceivable how that so-called imperfection should come into existence. Nature does not make a beginning with things mutilated and imperfect; she starts with what is whole and perfect, and falls away later to these feeble and inferior productions. So if there is, as we showed before, a happiness of a ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... to question her more directly now, and with his ability to grasp at the significance of things he pointed out quickly the tremendous hazard of their position. There were many more dogs and other sledges at Blake's place, and it was utterly inconceivable that Blake and Captain Rydal would permit them to reach Fort Confidence without making every effort in their power to stop them. Once they succeeded in placing certain facts in the hands of the Mounted Police, ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... incomprehensible by us. Nevertheless, conceding to our mental infirmity the idea of a real existence of visible nature, we may consider it as offering a succession of impermanent forms, and as exhibiting an orderly series of transmutations, innumerable universes in periods of inconceivable time emerging one after another, and creations and extinctions of systems of worlds taking place ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... which could be equally, perhaps more advantageously, used; such, for instance, as sulphate of soda. Others have attributed its action to its power of fixing ammonia, but this explanation is certainly untenable, for the soil itself possesses this property very powerfully, and it is inconceivable that the addition of a few hundred weights of gypsum should have any effect in promoting this action. The experiments which have been made with gypsum leave no doubt as to its effect, more especially on leguminous plants, but they do not afford an explanation of its mode ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... monkeys' cocoa.* (* La tapa del coco de monos.) According to the report of several Indians, only the smaller rodentia, particularly the cavies (the acuri and the lapa), by the structure of their teeth, and the inconceivable perseverance with which they pursue their destructive operations, succeed in perforating the fruit of the juvia. As soon as the triangular nuts are spread on the ground, all the animals of the forest, the monkeys, the manaviris, the squirrels, the cavies, the parrots, and the macaws, hastily ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... put oneself into a situation in which self- realization appears to be made a most difficult and problematic goal. Nor does it seem inconceivable that one should do this for the sake of another's good. Hence, even if we restrict the meaning of the word "self- sacrifice" to the sacrifice of the "real" or moral self, the impossibility of self-sacrifice scarcely appears to have been proved; the impossibility of a conflict between ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... the while stood by, grave and black as night, and at last turning upon our charmer at the end of the story, pronounced, 'There is not one word of truth in all you have been saying!' Conceive it, in full salon! The French were in such amazement. 'Inconceivable!' as they might well say to me, as she walked off with her tragedy-queen air; 'Inconcevable—mais, vraiment inconcevable;' and 'Bien Anglaise,' they would have added, no doubt, if ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... and offer gifts, seeing that they were hateful to the Gods, who are not, like vile usurers, to be gained over by bribes. And it is foolish for us to boast that we are superior to the Lacedaemonians by reason of our much worship. The idea is inconceivable that the Gods have regard, not to the justice and purity of our souls, but to costly processions and sacrifices, which men may celebrate year after year, although they have committed innumerable crimes against the Gods or against their ...
— Alcibiades II • An Imitator of Plato
... part of the sweetness and music that was comprised in that simple and unsophisticated ejaculation; it decided in an instant, and beyond all possibility of doubt, who and what was the speaker. His joy was inconceivable, and he could scarce refrain from giving vent to it in a loud shout. Returning immediately, he communicated the joyful intelligence to his friends; and the whole party, with light hearts and rapid steps, advanced towards the beach. Just as they stepped from the shade and ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... dilemma in which Paulet and Drury would have been placed by complying with her wishes; since, if she avowed their act, she took it upon herself, "with her infinite dishonor;" if she disavowed it, they were ruined. It is absolutely inconceivable how a man who understood so well the perils which these persons had skilfully avoided, should have remained so blind to those which menaced himself; yet Davison, by his own account, still suffered the queen to go on devising new schemes for the taking off of Mary, without either ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Hun still possessed her; the victim of Prussian ferocity still lay across her knees. She dared not take the chance that friendly ears might hear her call for aid—dared not raise her voice in appeal lest she awaken something monstrous, unclean, inconceivable—the unseen thing which she could hear at intervals prowling there among dead leaves in ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... just,' remarked Mr. Wyvern, his voice sounding rather sepulchral after the outburst of youthful passion. 'Mrs. Waltham's point of view is not inconceivable. I, as you know, am not altogether a man of formulas, but I am not sure that my behaviour would greatly differ from hers in her position; I ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... said Sir Richmond. "I want mating because it is my nature to mate. I want fellowship because I am a social animal and I want it from another social animal. Not from any God—any inconceivable God. Who fades ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... and Gifted, and Susan, and everybody? and President Buchanan? and the Boston State-House? and Broadway?—O Lord, Lord, Lord! And the sun perceptibly smaller, according to the astronomers, and the earth cooled down a number of degrees, and inconceivable arts practised by men of a type yet undreamed of, and all the fighting creeds merged in ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... his violin. He had offered, fifty years ago in Vienna, the most brilliant promise of a most brilliant career, a promise which had come to naught because of his monstrous lack of ambition, and his endless yielding to circumstance, which had finally, by a series of inconceivable migrations, landed him in the German colony of La Chance, impecunious and obscure and invincibly convinced that he had everything worth having in life. "Of vat use?" he would say, even now, when asked to play in public—"de moosic ist all—and dat is eben so goodt here mit friends." ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... enough. We have enough of arguments; what we want is facts. We have enough of man's peradventures about a future life, enough of evidence more or less valid to show that it is 'probable,' or 'not inconceivable,' or 'more likely than not,' and so on and so on. What we want is that somebody shall cross the gulf and come back again, and so we get in the Resurrection of Christ the one fact on which men may safely rest their convictions of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... flame to flame, or from applauding the voluptuous fancy that raises and adorns the fairy fabric of thought, that nature has begun! Pleasure is "scattered in stray-gifts o'er the earth"—beauty streaks the "famous poet's page" in occasional lines of inconceivable brightness; and wherever this is the case, no splenetic censures or "jealous leer malign," no idle theories or cold indifference should hinder us from greeting it with rapture.—There are other ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... cannot refuse the implication which comes along with it: that only theoretically, only as it were by deference to others, did the attribute, in that particular apprehension of it, move him to admiration. I do not, of course, mean anything so inconceivable as that he questioned the loveliness of the "pure in heart"; I mean merely that he questioned the artificial value which has been set upon physical chastity—and that when departure from this was the circumstance through which he had to show the more essential purity, his instinctive scepticism ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... know that Mme. de Beauseant had taken refuge in Normandy, after a notoriety which women for the most part envy and condemn, especially when youth and beauty in some sort excuse the transgression. Any sort of celebrity bestows an inconceivable prestige. Apparently for women, as for families, the glory of the crime effaces the stain; and if such and such a noble house is proud of its tale of heads that have fallen on the scaffold, a young and pretty woman becomes more interesting for the dubious ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... had been educated at Bangor, then famous for the learning of its brethren. His works display an extensive acquaintance with Christian and Latin literature. Both the Greek and Hebrew languages may have been known to him, though this seems improbable and inconceivable.[1] In his Rule he provides for teaching in schools, copying manuscripts, and ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... almost inconceivable how long Fnglishmen have retained their barbarous practices. It is not more than a century since a trial for witchcraft took place in England, and hardly eighty since one occurred in Scotland. The crime of coining ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... great many cases, painless childbirth could be a possibility by a little attention to diet, exercise and other hygienic measures during the last few months of pregnancy. Knowing this, it seems inconceivable that any woman would neglect to so fully inform herself on these matters that both she and her child could have all benefit ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... activity have been regarded in their time as the greatest feats of the human mind, and in its receptive form it has been nursed into an imbecility to which the truth is repugnant, and the fact that the beautiful resides nowhere else is inconceivable. It has been flattered out of all sufferance in its toyings with the mere elements of character, and its attempts to present these in combinations foreign to experience are still praised by the poorer sort of critics as ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... here for a moment, to reflect upon the expressions of surprise which this minister has let fall relative to the excesses he relates. To him the departure of the troops from their ancient principles of loyalty and honor seems quite inconceivable. Surely those to whom he addresses himself know the causes of it but too well. They know the doctrines which they have preached, the decrees which they have passed, the practices which they have countenanced. The soldiers remember the sixth of October. They recollect ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... audacious an attempt at imposition? The man had not even made any effort to disguise himself further than to put on a different suit of clothes and get another horse; and why, in the name of all that was inconceivable, had he come back to Witton, instead of going to any other part of the earth's surface What could he expect here, except immediate detection, imprisonment, and ruin? Was he insane? He did not seem to be so; but that interpretation of his conduct was not only the most charitable one, but no ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... the Captain, "to send two unendurable and inconceivable bores to intercept me with rubbish about which I neither know nor care any more than the man in ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... obligation than was hers before:—to see to it that this War accomplishes the freedom, not only of Belgium and Russia and Poland and Serbia and Roumania, but of Ireland also, and of Hungary, and, if Germany so wills it, of Germany herself. It is inconceivable that we should fail; but, if we did fail, we should now have to answer to the soul and conscience of America as to our own conscience ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... advances! In a minute it will be upon us! Dost thou hear? dost thou hear?' The black point had approached with inconceivable rapidity, and had taken the form of an immense boat. A red light came from its sides and surrounded it with flame: tall phantoms stood motionless on the deck, and innumerable oars rose and fell in measure, striking ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... to conceive the inexpressible, inconceivable joys that are there! None but they who have tasted of them. Lord, help us to put such a value upon them here, that in order to prepare ourselves for them, we may be willing to forego the loss of all those deluding ...
— Miscellaneous Pieces • John Bunyan
... certain it is that [Hebrew: elmh] designates an unmarried person in the first years of youth; and if this be the case, un violated chastity is a matter of course in this context; for if the mother of the Saviour was to be an unmarried person, she could be a virgin only; and, in general, it is inconceivable that the Prophet should have brought forward a relation of impure love. In favour of "an unmarried person" is, in the first instance, the derivation. Being derived from [Hebrew: elM], "to grow up," "to become ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... best-edited, most influential and powerful journals in the West," commented Baker. "They possess an influence inconceivable to an Easterner." ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... correspond apparently to our present stewed (dried) prunes. It is inconceivable how this sauce can be white in color, but, as a condiment and if taken in small quantity, it has our ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... One plant produces seeds which are carried far and near—to the ocean and to the desert rocks, no less than to the soil in which they may take root and grow. Insects multiply at a rate which is simply inconceivable to our limited capacity for thinking in figures. Animals also produce more abundantly, and man has children in numbers which allow him to bury half his offspring yearly and yet increase the adult population from year to year. This means, of course, that whatever the inheritance ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... single and ultimate law of the universe which we have imagined would still remain unknown. Human knowledge will always have limits, and beyond those limits there will always be room for mystery and wonder. A complete and exhaustive explanation of the world is inconceivable, so long as human powers and capacities remain at all as ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... Evelyn?' It was an inconceivable thought to me, a boy. I looked at her, and seeing how pale, how incomprehensibly pale she was, my heart failed me, for nothing but mortal sickness could make such a change in any one in a week, in a day. ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... second time that evening Lydia Carr completely routed Dundee's carefully worked-up case against her. It was inconceivable, he told himself, that a mind cunning enough to have executed this murder would give itself away in such a fashion. If she had indeed pried among her mistress' papers and found the will and note, would she not, from the most primitive instinct of self-preservation, have ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... was ambition and an aim. Turn, last of all, to a piece which succeeded with London audiences better than Shakespeare, a burlesque of American origin, called "When Knighthood was in Flower." Here too I seemed to discern a lesson for the English stage. Even through the silly disguises of this inconceivable production, which pleased innocent London as it had pleased indifferent New York, one felt a certain lilt and go, a touch of nature among the fool's fabric of the melodrama, which set the action far above our steady practitioners ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... peace was not secure for a moment. The Kickapoos and Mascoutins would not leave their neighbors, the Illinois, at rest; the Saginaws made raids on the Miamis; and a general war seemed imminent. "The difficulty is inconceivable of keeping these western tribes quiet," writes ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... seceding States. Before secession, Mr. Davis thought war would result from it; and, after secession, he expressed the view that the war commenced would be an extensive one. What he may have thought at a later day than the early part of 1862, I do not know; but it is inconceivable that the 'interview' can be correct ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... his love of fairness and order. Even the applause in theatres is organised. A spectacle such as that witnessed at the funeral of Victor Hugo in 1885, the most solemn and impressive of modern times, is inconceivable in London. The whole population (except the Faubourg St. Germain and the clergy) from the poorest labourer to the heads of the State issued forth to file past the coffin of their darling poet, lifted up under the Arc de Triomphe, and by their multitudinous presence honoured his remains borne ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... that his headstrong son had said, but that he should repudiate in this unceremonious fashion what was a tacit understanding between the two families, and, what was more, run the risk of injuring the Ryder interests—that was inconceivable. Leaving his desk, he advanced into the centre of the room, and folding his ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... notions this seems inconceivable, but it proved to be absolutely true. I went in, expecting to be turned back ignominiously before I had crossed the hall, but there was positively no one there! The place was like a City of the Dead. ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... supposition. It was a wide gallery. The dim light could not show us both its walls at once. The fall of the waters which were carrying us away exceeded that of the swiftest rapids in American rivers. Its surface seemed composed of a sheaf of arrows hurled with inconceivable force; I cannot convey my impressions by a better comparison. The raft, occasionally seized by an eddy, spun round as it still flew along. When it approached the walls of the gallery I threw on them the light of the lantern, and I could judge somewhat of the velocity of our speed by noticing ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... said of his ancestry and family connections. Contempt for lowly beginnings, abhorrent as it is to any honest mind, would to Lincoln's mind have probably been inconceivable, but he lacked that interest in ancestry which is generally marked in his countrymen, and from talk of his nearer progenitors he seems to have shrunk with a positive sadness of which some causes will soon be apparent. Since his death it has been ascertained ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Broadway, at Twenty-third Street, and headed for South Ferry, "I tell you, Wally, the thing is growing vaster and more potent every moment. The longer I look at it, the huger its possibilities loom up! With air under our control, as a source of manufacturing alone, we can pull down perfectly inconceivable fortunes. We shan't have to send anywhere for our raw material. It will come to us; it's everywhere. No cost for ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England |
