"Intelligible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and so does everybody; but the crowd profits by us in the end. When they understand my music, it will be an education to them; and the whole aim of mankind is to render life intelligible.' ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... temperance woman I would follow her advice, whereupon she led me behind the house, pointed to a rugged path, which with a considerable ascent seemed to lead towards the north, and after giving certain directions, not very intelligible, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... twelve hours in a packing-house, came out to smoke, after his supper. He had not washed himself. His bloody shirt stuck to his skin—he was haggard, pale; and we dropped naturally into conversation. In language intelligible to him I asked him what life meant ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... Baldy's head and pull him up, then he ventured to lift a hind foot over his line. Old Baldy straightened out his leg and sent Frank sprawling into the dirt. Twice again Frank patiently tried to hold a hind leg, with the same result; and then he lifted a forefoot. Baldy uttered a very intelligible snort, bit through Wallace's glove, yanked Jim off his feet, and scared me so that I let go his forelock. Then he broke the rope which held him to the tree. There was a plunge, a scattering of men, though Jim still valiantly held on to Baldy's head, and a thrashing ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... enough to show that there is something wrong with the formula as applied to trains like those in question. What that something is, we think, has been made clear by what precedes; since it is impossible in any sense to add together motions which are unlike, it will be seen that in order to obtain an intelligible result in cases like these, the equation must be of the form n'/(m' - a) ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... by giving more detailed information regarding the persons, places, and circumstances that appear in the news columns. News must be published as fast as it develops, with only enough explanatory material to make it intelligible. The special article, written with the perspective afforded by an interval of a few days or weeks, fills in the bare outlines of the hurried news sketch with the life and color ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... ever inflame into fervor of declamation his quiet, argumentative style. But he had humor; he spoke simple, clear, strong English; he used no unnecessary words. He always made his meaning plain and intelligible, and he had an admirable faculty for illustrating every argument by something drawn from reading or from observation or from experience. He was, in fact, the very perfection of a common-sense talker, a man fit to deal with men by fair, straightforward argument, to expose complicated ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... to the first of these it is enough that the scheme should be intelligible and feasible in itself, that what is good in it should be adapted to the nature of things, in this case, for example, that the proposed method of education should be suitable to man and ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... no means meant to supersede that made by Captain Cook, who had better opportunities than I had and was in every respect properly provided for surveying. The intention of mine is chiefly to render this narrative more intelligible, and to show in what manner the coast appeared to me from an open boat. I have little doubt but that the opening which I named the Bay of Islands is Endeavour Straits; and that our track was to the northward of Prince of Wales' Isles. Perhaps, by those who shall hereafter ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... experience, as it may be called, I have enjoyed this evening, to an exquisite degree, at the funeral of the king; but, although the whole succession of incidents is indelibly imprinted on my recollection, I am still so much affected by the emotion excited, as to be incapable of conveying to you any intelligible description of what I saw. It was indeed a scene witnessed through the medium of the feelings, and the effect partakes of the nature ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... to be exacted for everything in life," said Lowell automatically, though he was too much astonished at the girl's remark to tell whether his reply had been intelligible. Was it possible the "squaw professor" had been misjudged all these years, and was living a life of sacrifice in order that this girl might have every opportunity? Lowell had not recovered from the astounding idea before they reached Talpers's place. He ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... sought with such grace and earnestness, was blushingly granted; not indeed, in express words, but with a silence equally intelligible ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... money are asked for. The interests of the nation would doubtless be better served by avoiding all such indirect modes of aiding particular objects. In a government like ours more especially should all public acts be, as far as practicable, simple, undisguised, and intelligible, that they may become fit subjects for the approbation to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... Nature, we should vainly attempt to force them upon her: if the laws of Nature did not exist in our reason, we should not be able to comprehend them.[1] There is a saying reported of Zoroaster, and, coming from the deeps of fifty centuries, still authentic and intelligible, that "the congruities of material forms to the laws of the soul are divine allurements." Ever welcome is the perception of this truth,—as the sublime audacity of Paracelsus, that "those who would understand the course ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... happened in the year 1000; but there is no exact chronology in these things, but a continual uncertain guessing after such; so that one eye in History as regards them is as if put out;—neither indeed have I yet had the luck to find any decipherable and intelligible map of Norway: so that the other eye of History is much blinded withal, and her path through those wild regions and epochs is an extremely dim and chaotic one. An evil that much demands remedying, and especially wants some first attempt at remedying, ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... you!" Had not the Lord Jesus designed by these words to show what an overthrow will one day be made among professors, he needed not to have you'd it at this rate, as in the text, and afterwards, he has done; the sentence had run intelligible enough without it; I say, without his saying, "I say unto you." But the truth is, the professor is in danger; the preacher and the hearer, the workers of miracles, and workers of wonders, may all be in danger of damning, notwithstanding all their attainments. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... mile or two, sullenly exhausted. Then it turns to a dull sage green, and hurries more swiftly, smooth and ominous. As the walls of the ravine close in, trouble stirs, and the waters boil and eddy. These are the lower rapids, a sight more terrifying than the Falls, because less intelligible. Close in its bands of rock the river surges tumultuously forward, writhing and leaping as if inspired by a demon. It is pressed by the straits into a visibly convex form. Great planes of water slide past. Sometimes it is thrown up into a pinnacle ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... went down to the last turn of the wide stairs. How many times had she not sat there, in white frocks, her hair hanging down as now, twisting the tassels of little programmes covered with hieroglyphics only intelligible to herself, talking spasmodically to spasmodic boys with budding 'tails,' while Chinese lanterns let fall their rose and orange light on them and all the other little couples as exquisitely devoid of ease. Ah! it was worth those hours of torture to sit there together now, comforting each ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... called rosaceous; and my first point will be to make sure of my pupils having a clear idea of the central and unquestionable forms of thistle, grass, or rose, and assigning to them pure Latin, and pretty English, names,—classical, if possible; and at least intelligible and decorous. ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... blushing. With Europeans the whole body tingles slightly when the face blushes intensely; and with the races of men who habitually go nearly naked, the blushes extend over a much larger surface than with us. These facts are, to a certain extent, intelligible, as the self-attention of primeval man, as well as of the existing races which still go naked, will not have been so exclusively confined to their faces, as is the case with the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... a musician finds in following the involutions of a fugue, are of the same type of satisfaction as the liking of children for cumulative stories. Complexity and mass, arrived at by stages perfectly intelligible in themselves, mounting steadily from a starting-point of simplicity; then the same complexity and mass resolving itself as it were miraculously back into simplicity, this is an intellectual joy. It does not ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... all this mischief from my seat in the ark, but was in such a convulsion of laughter that I could not utter an intelligible word. And now Sphinx, deprived of her postillion, went on in a zigzag direction, and gambolled away after a most dreadful manner. And thus had everything gone to wreck, had I not given instant orders to Gog and Magog to sally ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... elsewhere by Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, Mr. Barnum Brown, and the writer. There has been a considerable demand for these articles which are now mostly out of print. In reprinting it seemed best to combine and supplement them so as to make a consecutive and intelligible account of the Dinosaur collections in the Museum. The original notices are quoted verbatim; for the remainder of the text the present writer is responsible. Professor S.W. Williston of Chicago University has kindly contributed a chapter—all too brief—describing the ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... an artistic intuition any more than the origin of any other primary function of our nature. But if as I believe civilization is mainly founded on those kinds of unselfish human interests which we call knowledge and morality it is easily intelligible that we should have a parallel interest which we call art closely akin and lending powerful support to the other two. It is intelligible too that moral goodness, intellectual power, high vitality, and strength should be approved by the intuition." This reduces, or rather ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... subject I shall treat of is curious, and partakes of the nature of spiritualism. I hardly know by what other word to describe it, therefore I will give particulars, so as to make the matter intelligible to the reader, and call ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... the Prince was at home. Lord Grey addresses his letter to the Prince, and not to the King; though the King, as well as the Prince, had commissioned him to put down the rising disturbances in his neighbourhood.[95] Some, perhaps, may think this intelligible on the ground that Lord Grey wrote to Henry as Prince of Wales, and therefore more immediately (p. 086) intrusted with the preservation of its peace. But his suggestion to the Prince to take the advice ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... steal over my face as I began talking, in the most inflated and long-winded French, such rubbish as even now, after dozens of years, it shames me to recall. It must have been the effect of the music, which, while exciting my nervous sensibility, drowned (as I supposed) the less intelligible portion of my utterances. Anyhow, I went on speaking of the exalted company present, and of the futility of men and women, until I had got myself into such a tangle that I was forced to stop short in the middle of a word of a sentence ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... Miss "Limpy," blushing very red, was surprised by Rosa in a very motherly attitude by the patient's cot. The two girls melted in a delirious hug, mingled with spasmodic smacks of the lips and a soft, gurgling crescendo of exclamation, not very intelligible to Jones and Linda, who discreetly remained near the ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... Rankine is a painstaking and conscientious teacher, and takes great care to impart to his students a correct and intelligible knowledge of their studies. He is no sciolist himself, and he does not believe in merely superficial attainments in his pupils. As to his social qualities, it is well known to his more intimate friends ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... after muttering the first words of the rubric. A little carven image of an acolyte—a weird boy who seemed to move by springs, whose hair had all the semblance of painted wood, and whose complexion was white and red like a clown's—did not make matters more intelligible ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... pleasure was accompanied by the yet greater pleasure of seeing himself understood, and in such a manner by Stjernhoek as made himself more clear to himself. In this moment he seemed, now for the first time, to comprehend in a perfectly intelligible manner his own talents, and what he wished to do, and what he was able to do. The fountain of life swelled forth ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... emotional element than exists in the historical art of earlier centuries. In a word, nineteenth-century art is sympathetic, and has found inspiration in all countries and classes and has so treated its subjects as to be intelligible to all, from the favored children for whom Kate Greenaway, Walter Crane, and many others have spent their delightful talents, to men and women of all varieties of individual tastes and of all degrees of ability to comprehend and ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... surroundings has within his power a means of adapting the story to the attainments of the pupil that even the best writer of children's stories can hardly command. A situation in a story can frequently be made intelligible by reference to the pupil's own experience. Moreover, in telling the story, the teacher's gestures, facial expression, and tone of voice are likely to be more spontaneous and natural than would be the case in reading, and this gives immense assistance in interpreting aright ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... in this portrait of Theodoric, several minute circumstances, and technical phrases, which could be tolerable, or indeed intelligible, to those only who, like the contemporaries of Sidonius, had frequented the markets where naked slaves were exposed to male, (Dubos, Hist. Critique, tom. i. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... account of what took place in the five stations in that island of Leite. Before we pass on to the rest, it will be fitting to explain, as far as we can, their usages in marriage and divorce—as well to make more intelligible what we have already related as to have a better understanding of a topic which in the course of our remaining narrative ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... quiet; though enthusiastic, is cautious; though ardent, is sceptical; though flushed with success, is trained to the discipline of disappointment. Its object is to interrogate nature. It stands at the shrine and awaits the response of the oracle. It would fain interpret and make intelligible the wondrous hieroglyphics of this universe, and specially the mystic characters traced by the long-revolving ages upon the stony tablets of this planet Earth. It has in the first instance no creed to support, no dogmas ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... and very difficult even to realise any section of it, topographically, owing to the complication of the actions involved. But in the Battle of the Ourcq, the distances are comparatively small, the actions comparatively simple and intelligible, while all the circumstances of the particular struggle are so dramatic, and the stakes at issue so vast, that every incident is, as it were, writ large, and the memory absorbs them ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... theories and so I broke with it. Without it I was able to live quite contentedly for ten years . . . everything in my life was evenly distributed, and there was no room for religion. Then came a time when everything grew intelligible; there were no more secrets in life, but life ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... I supply the words,—'Why then should I not protect' in order to make the meaning intelligible. The first line of 21 is grammatically connected with 20. To avoid an ugly construction ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... from whom it is principally taken. To make this Apostle contradict himself, they dare not. And they must therefore conclude, either that no person has rightly understood it, and that it has been hitherto kept in mystery; or, if it be intelligible to the human understanding, it must be explained by comparing it with other texts of the same Apostle, as well as with those of others, and always in connexion with the general doctrines of Christianity, and the character and attributes ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... quite across the face, and so effectually stops up both the nostrils that they are forced to keep their mouths wide open for breath, and snuffle so when they attempt to speak, that they are scarcely intelligible even to each other. Our seamen, with some humour, called it their spritsail-yard; and indeed it had so ludicrous an appearance, that till we were used to it, we found it difficult to refrain from laughter.[91] Beside this ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... devastating war, commonly known as the Peloponnesian War, which lasted for twenty-seven years, and finally broke up the Athenian Empire. The cause of that war was the envy and hatred excited in the other states of Greece by the power and greatness of Athens; and in order to make our story intelligible we must indicate briefly the steps by which she rose to that dangerous eminence, and drew upon herself the armed hostility of half the ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... are glimpses of an unsettled hurry in her nature, which put me out. Yet she is usually most tranquil, too dejected and thoughtful indeed sometimes. In time, I doubt not, I shall make her uniformly sedate and decorous, without being unaccountably pensive. I ever disapprove what is not intelligible." ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... invaded bounds of astonished Science into the Elementary Ologies. And all this being done, Matilda Darrell was exactly the same creature that she was before. In all that related to character, to inclinations, to heart, even that consummate teacher could give no intelligible answer, when Mrs. Lyndsay in her softest accents (and no accents ever were softer) sighed: "Poor dear Matilda! can you make her out, Miss Fossett?" Miss Fossett could not make her out. But, after ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... philosophers, and suggested a mode of escaping the contradiction by an altered rendering of the facts. The case is very peculiar. The received and self-contradictory view is exceedingly simple and intelligible in its statement; it is well adapted, not merely for all the commoner purposes of life, but even for most scientific purposes. The supposition of an independent material world, and an independent mental world, created apart, and coming into mutual contact—the ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... well as those who had been previously examined before the coroner, as otherwise, to the number in the whole of about eighty. We further proceeded to a minute examination of the prisons, for the purpose of clearing up some points which, upon the evidence alone, were scarcely intelligible; obtaining from the prisoners, and from the officers of the depot, all the necessary assistance and explanation; and premising, that we have been from necessity compelled to draw many of our conclusions from statements and evidence highly contradictory, ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... consoled meanwhile by a Conversion Loan of thirteen millions out of Sea-revenue; to which add a grant-in-aid of fifteen millions to the emigrants, and the remark of Hogarth's Chancellor about this time becomes intelligible: "Your Lordship's Majesty's expenditure is exceeding revenue by 50 per cent"; so that Beech's was soon realizing considerably in bonds over Europe, and Hogarth temporarily poor—had stubbornly refused any Parliament-grant ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... In intelligible and vulgar language, that means: "I do not know where is the true nor the false; I am ignorant of what constitutes general good or evil; I give myself no trouble about it. The only law which I consent to recognize, is the immediate effect of each ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... dedicated to the worship of Bacchus, to-day like a narrow river-gorge at flood time jammed with tree-trunks—some of them, let us say, water-logged—and all grinding together with an intolerable noise like a battle. If you happened to be passing the windows, certain more or less intelligible sounds might separate themselves ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... rejection of Semper's splendid design for the theatre by the civil-list led his thoughts anew to the wide German fatherland, and he at once returned to the Meistersingers, in the hope that by this more intelligible work the public would finally turn to him, and that then the great German people would assist in the erection of a festival-building for a national art-work and thus realize his grand ideal. We know to-day that he succeeded in uniting them ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... the Spaniard was as destitute of English as Master William Bascomb was of Spanish; but there is a language of intonation and gesture as well as of words, and doubtless that of the Englishman was intelligible enough, for the Spaniard, by way of reply, grasped his sword by the point and offered it to the sturdy Devonshire seaman who confronted him, and who accepted it with a very fair imitation of the bow with which the Spaniard had ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... policy has been so uniform and intelligible as to constitute a rule of Executive conduct which leaves little to my discretion, unless, indeed, I were willing to run counter to the lights of experience and the known opinions of my constituents. We sedulously cultivate the friendship of all nations ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... and within an hour of his young master's departure Smerdyakov was taken with an epileptic fit. But that's perfectly intelligible. Here I must mention that Smerdyakov, oppressed by terror and despair of a sort, had felt during those last few days that one of the fits from which he had suffered before at moments of strain, might be coming upon him again. The day and hour of such an attack cannot, of course, be foreseen, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... five characteristics together is meant that when these are properly attended to by a speaker or writer, only then can his sentence be said to be complete and intelligible. In Nyaya philosophy, the five requisites are Pratijna, Hetu, Udaharana, Upanaya, and Nigamana. In the Mimansa philosophy, the five requisites have been named differently. Vishaya, Samsaya, Purvapaksha, Uttara, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Brandon did not give himself time to re-read this letter, in order to make it more intelligible, before he wrote to one of his professional compeers, requesting him to fill his place during his unavoidable absence, on the melancholy occasion of his brother's expected death; and having so done, he immediately set off for Warlock. Inexplicable ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and, enlightened by the comparison, was not slow to acknowledge the inferiority of Judaism. He said to himself, that a religion made for a single people, to the exclusion of all others,—which only offered a barbarous justice for rule of conduct,—which neither rendered the present intelligible nor satisfactory, and left the future uncertain,—could not be that of noble souls and lofty intellects; and that he could not be the God of truth who had dictated, in the midst of thunder, his vacillating will, and had called to the performance of his ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said, nodding his head. "So you are the man who took this woman to the Merrimac. And then to your home, and Louis d'Epernay followed you there, and, naturally, you killed him. Well, it is intelligible. You were not acting for Carson after all, but were infatuated with this woman. Well—but——" He wheeled and turned to Jacqueline. "I will marry ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... bill that Koloman was suspected of forging for one of his own in order to give his wife the opportunity of acknowledging the signature as her own and putting a stop to all further legal proceedings. All this was set forth with far greater elaboration than it is here, but was nevertheless perfectly intelligible. The original bill was appended to the letter and the letter was posted. Henrietta was bound ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... lover of Moore and Byron, and some of their songs which were translated needed no explanation to render them intelligible to him. Wolfe's marvellous poem on the death of Sir John Moore made a deep impression on him, and was a special favorite. Goethe and Heine he liked greatly, especially Goethe's song of Mignon, "Knowst thou the Land," and Heine's Fisher's Song (which Schubert has ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... returned to the parlor, where Bobby unfolded his plan for the future. To make his story intelligible, he was obliged to tell them all ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... the middle ages was always copied by hand, it will readily be understood that these neumae were not uniform either in shape or size, and that each writer made use of certain peculiarities of writing, which, although perfectly intelligible to himself, could not readily be interpreted by others (cf. writing shorthand). Here then we observe the greatest weakness of the neume system—its lack of uniformity and its consequent inability accurately to express musical ideas ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... itself, much stronger than its adversary, and so reinforced by militia as to treble his numbers. On the report that General Washington was moving into winter quarters, the legislature of that state addressed a remonstrance to congress on the subject, manifesting, in very intelligible terms, their dissatisfaction with the Commander-in-chief. About the same time, a new board of war was created, of which General Gates was appointed the President; and General Mifflin, who was supposed to be of the party unfriendly to Washington, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... has by Beethoven been freed from the influence of Fashion and changing Taste, and raised to an ever-valid, purely human type. Beethoven's music will be understood to all time, while that of his predecessors will, for the most part, only remain intelligible to us through the medium of reflection ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... of the base of these two immense towers into a compartment of the aisle, so similar to all the rest that its real nature has never been hitherto suspected, is highly ingenious. It is only when once detected that the anomalies above mentioned are at all intelligible." ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... their praise. And scarcely was there a sermon preached from the patrician part of the bench, in which the dean did not fashion some periods, blot out some uncouth phrases, render some obscure sentiments intelligible, and was the certain person, when the work was printed, to correct ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... statement,—know your fact; hug your fact. For the essential thing is heat, and heat comes of sincerity. Speak what you know and believe; and are personally in it; and are answerable for every word. Eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... discussed the subject in the Introduction, where we gave an outline of the Aristotelian philosophy. The principle peculiar to Gabirol is that not merely the material objects of the sublunar world, but that the intelligible or spiritual substances also are composed of matter and form.[97] Whenever two things have something in common and something in which they differ, that which they have in common is the matter, that in which they differ is the ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... a certain cessation of intelligible sound occasioned by the close application of Lizzie's palm to Ralph's lips. She did not, dare, however, to make any ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... back in Missouri would have smiled thus to hear the scion of his house. But the marchioness, confident in her mastery of English, thought it was the veriest jargon. What was the boy trying to say? His next words grew fairly intelligible. "We are now headed for Valles. Well, we've decided not ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... after the notice given, about three o'clock in the afternoon, came flying to the chief a ragged little urchin of the village, too breathless almost to make intelligible his news—that there were men at Mistress Conal's who would not go out of her house, and she and her old black cat were ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... make the constitution? This question seems intelligible, yet on closer examination reveals itself as meaningless, for it presupposes the existence of no constitution, but only a mere mass of atomic individuals. How a mass of individuals is to come by a constitution, whether by its own efforts or ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... knowledge of mechanical engineering. The latter must necessarily remain in my hands, because I found that the "off-hand" sketches which I introduced in my letters as explanatory of mechanical designs and suggestions were much more intelligible than any amount of ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... a mere erratic comet— sans substance, or unformed nebulae hanging like a splotch of semi-luminous vapor in a great void. Year by year the voice of Carlyle rings clearer and clearer from the "Eternal Silence." And as we listen with rapt attention to the music of the spheres becoming audible, intelligible to our dull ear—the Waterloo and Lisbon earthquakes, the Revolutions and the Warring Religions, all the glory and shame, the wild loves and bitter hatreds of humanity—even Birth and Death—but minor notes in the Grand Symphony, the Harmony of Infinitude, the little man who ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... together in the main room of the Roussillon cabin—you could scarcely find them separated during those happy days—and Alice was singing to the soft tinkle of a guitar, a Creole ditty with a merry smack in its scarcely intelligible nonsense. She knew nothing about music beyond what M. Roussillon, a jack of all trades, had been able to teach her,—a few simple chords to accompany her songs, picked up at hap-hazard. But her voice, like her face and form, irradiated witchery. It was sweet, firm, deep, with something haunting ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... Lord Shelburne is a man of insatiable ambition, and who pursues the ends of that ambition by ways the most complex and insidious. The creed of lord North, whatever it may be, upon general political questions, is consistent and intelligible. For my own part, I do not believe him to be ambitious. It is not possible, with his indolent and easy temper, that he should be very susceptible to so restless a passion. In the heroical sense of that word, he sits ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... abroad—on the one hand, Edinburgh and Ashestiel, the traditions of the Scottish border and the Highlands, the humours of Edinburgh lawyers and Glasgow citizens, country lairds, farmers and ploughmen, the Presbyterian eloquence of the Covenanters and their descendants, the dialect hardly intelligible out of its own region, and not always clear even to natives of Scotland; on the other hand, the competition for Scott's novels in all the markets of Europe, as to which I take leave to quote the ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... been increased by many tones, in some cases almost an octave, and these singers are successful artists and sound vocalists; while others have sought to add but two or three tones to their range, and in vain. This is quite intelligible. As a rule, those of the former class have fallen into the hands of very good teachers, while yet young, have had excellent health and well-formed vocal organs, and been patient and attentive students. The acquisition has been gradual, and never forced. We have before said that if a ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... to keep us from freezing to death," Roswell then gave a brief but very clear and intelligible account of what had happened, and of the manner in which he had caused the hulk of the deacon's Sea Lion to be raised upon by the materials furnished by the Sea Lion of the Vineyard. The narrative brought Mary Pratt back to the side of the bed, and caused her calm eyes to become ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... important one, too, her prophecies, which have so strangely become facts, are sufficient proof, even had you not seen my ring on her finger. Perhaps, incredible as it may appear, she is the chief. If so—But I do not make myself intelligible," she continued, meeting my eyes. "I will be more explicit. One peculiar feature of this organization is the complete ignorance which we all have concerning our fellow-members. We can reveal nothing, ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... gestures and signs that the inhabitants of that country were cannibals. It was not, however, entirely clear whether they meant cannibals or savage beasts. They were much vexed to perceive that the Spaniards did not understand them, and that they possessed no means of making themselves intelligible to one another. At three o'clock in the afternoon the men who had been sent on shore returned, bringing several strings of pearls, and the Admiral, who could not prolong his stay, because of his cargo of provisions, raised ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... of delivery is also necessary when a new train of thought is introduced, for pitch, tone, quality, time, and force should all be changed in conformity with the changes of sentiment. No definite rules can be laid down in relation to the proper management of the voice in transition which would be intelligible without the living teacher to exemplify them. Constant practice must be persevered in to enable the pupil to make the necessary transitions with ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... He portaged from this stream or creek across a narrow strip of prairie, only a mile wide, to the Wisconsin River, a tributary of the Mississippi. The statement over which I have pondered, walking along that river, that he might have reached the "great water" in three more days, is intelligible only in this interpretation ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... of God moved upon the face of the Waters." Here if by the Spirit of God be meant God himself, then is Motion attributed to God, and consequently Place, which are intelligible only of Bodies, and not of substances incorporeall; and so the place is above our understanding, that can conceive nothing moved that changes not place, or that has not dimension; and whatsoever has dimension, is Body. But the meaning of those words is best understood by ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... the country. Enesco's is, perhaps, the better of the two. If you require any specialites the waiter will be sure to know what to advise; one dish, called Brochettes de Filet, may be recommended. The waiters at Enesco's and Jordachi's are intelligible in German and Roumanian; at the Continental, and especially at Capsa's, they are ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... of Damian, besides, if it could be termed such, was spoken in terms too contradictory to be intelligible. In one moment he professed his regret for the laurels which he had hoped to gather in Palestine, and implored his uncle not to alter his purpose, but permit him to attend his banner thither; and in the next sentence, he professed ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... Cassiodorus to envelop his meaning in a cloud of words from which the Quaestor of Anastasius perhaps found it as hard to extract a definite meaning then, as a perplexed translator finds it hard to render it into intelligible English now. It is certainly difficult to acquit Cassiodorus of the charge of a deficient sense of humour, when we find him putting into the mouth of his master, who had so often marched up and down through Thrace, ravaging and ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... the word of interpretation seems superfluous. Mr. Warner wrote out of a clear, as well as a full mind, and lucidity of style was part of that harmonious charm of sincerity and urbanity which made him one of the most intelligible and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... upon that truth, we live to learn. For fable is Love's world, his home, his birth-place; Delightedly dwells he 'mong fays and talismans, 120 And spirits; and delightedly believes Divinities, being himself divine. The intelligible forms of ancient poets, The fair humanities of old religion, The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty, 125 That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain, Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... which I follow here is that of Mr. Telang, in "The Sacred Books of the East," which is, on the whole, both exact and more intelligible than most ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... a good deal of the writings of these "up-to-date" critics in the effort to find something like an intelligible argument or a definite statement of belief. I have found nothing but the continually repeated assumption that these new movements, in all their varieties, are "living" and "vital." I can find no grounds ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... entirely died, several false alarms had thrilled him with happiness. One was a cablegram from Gibraltar in which the only words that were intelligible were "congratulate" and "engagement." This lifted him into an ecstasy of joy and excitement, until, on having the cable company repeat the message, he learned it was a request from Miss Kirkland to congratulate two mutual friends who ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... vortex, whose centrifugal force is bearing the whole body of the ether outwards, thus rarefying the central parts, and thus giving rise to the polar influx, from which arises the radial stream. This may be made more intelligible, by reflecting that the polar current is comparatively dense ether, and that the length of the axis of the vortex prevents this influx current coming in sufficient quantities to restore an equilibrium in the density of the medium. Yet, what does come down the poles, is distributed rapidly along ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... but he struggled like the madman the doctor supposed him to be, trying in vain to speak. The detective's arm, however, tightly wound about his throat, effectually prevented his cries from becoming intelligible. ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... the reader to set the text right. But if not difficult for the reader, it should certainly not have been so for the editor, who should have done what Broome was said to have done for Pope in his Homer,—"gone before and swept the way." An edition of an English author ought to be intelligible to English readers, and, if the editor do not make it so, he wrongs the old poet, for two centuries lapt in lead, to whose works he undertakes to play the gentleman-usher. A play written in our own tongue ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... I could perceive the almost colourless lustre of his eyes beneath his thick locks of yellow hair. When he had taken his fill of me, he lifted his head again and cried out to me a few words of what certainly might be English, but was neither intelligible nor reassuring. ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... laboured during the war. The greatest of these, at all events during the early days, was the total misconception of the international situation of which H.M. Government had been guilty—or had apparently been guilty—during the years immediately preceding the outbreak of hostilities. No intelligible and satisfactory explanation of this has ever been put forward. Their conduct in this connection had been the conduct of fools, or of knaves, or of liars. They had been acting as fools if they had failed to interpret ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... living were very intelligible; but the answers of the dead were not so easily understood; the priests, therefore, and the magicians made it their business to explain them. They retired into deep caves, where the darkness and silence resembled the state of death, and there fasted, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... maladies, and it is very near the close; this is the second visit to-day, in his urgent need. But, blessed be God, grace, once absent, has found its way through the terrible obstacle of pain, and his scarcely articulate utterance—intelligible to his visitor only because now so familiar—speaks of the joy and rest of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the sufferer's longing for the salvation of another soul, a soul very ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... have given what seems to me the most probable interpretation, and such a one as to any person who has ever witnessed a wrestling-match, will, I presume, appear intelligible.]—TR. ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... earl of Warwick: but why so courageous a prince, if secure of Warwick's fidelity, should have granted a general pardon to men who had been guilty of such violent and personal outrages against him, is not intelligible; nor why that nobleman, if unfaithful, should have endeavored to appease a rebellion of which he was able to make such advantages. But it appears, that after this insurrection, there was an interval of peace, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... thought are carried on. At times when resting if I fall into an abstracted state—not of set purpose—I find myself in the midst of a stream of thought appearing, for the moment, perfectly natural, familiar and intelligible, as if I knew the beginning and end of the matter. But only for a moment will consciousness remain at this lower level. There is a sudden return to the normal plane, the passage fades from memory and I wonder what ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... burden, and sat me down to read. As I turned over page after page the interest became absorbing; but how familiar it seemed; how my mind leapt forward to presage the conclusions, how natural it was, how coherent, how subtle, and yet how intelligible. I was dazzled, blinded by the light in which disjointed facts were seen as parts of a mighty whole, and all my puzzles, riddles, problems, seemed to disappear. The effect was partially illusory in one sense, in that they all had to be slowly unravelled later, the brain gradually assimilating ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... for the belief that the curvature of a tendril when touched is due to rapid growth, seems to be that tendrils lose their sensitiveness and power of movement after they have grown to their full length; but this fact is intelligible, if we bear in mind that all the functions of a tendril are adapted to drag up the terminal growing shoot towards the light. Of what use would it be, if an old and full-grown tendril, arising from the lower part of a shoot, were to retain its power of clasping a support? ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... energy, and topped with its massive head. In voice and gesture and manner, Douglas was incomparably the superior, as he was, too, in the ready command of a language never, indeed, ornate or imaginative, and sometimes of the quality of political commonplace, but always forcible and always intelligible to his audience. Lincoln had the sense of words, the imagination, the intensity of feeling, which go to the making of great literature; but for his masterpieces he always needed time. His voice was high and strained, his gestures ungraceful, his manner painful, save in the recital of those ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... it, and she could not reason about it at all. She only answered in a troubled sort of way that she thought every body, somehow or other, might in time find enough to do—to be happy in doing—and she was trying to put her meaning into more connected and intelligible form, when, greatly to her ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... as good as his word. In a species of French, that I'd venture to say would be perfectly intelligible in Mullingar, he contrived to explain to the maire that I was neither a runaway nor a swindler, but a very old friend of his, and consequently sans reproche. The official was now as profuse of his civilities as he had before ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... in company with Gay, her aunt, the maid, and an armful of flowers, the attendant told them her father was dead. He had had a bad turn in the early morning—no pain—just drifted off. Well, the only intelligible things he had said were—should he repeat them now? Well, the two words he had said over and over ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... of which the other is the goal. The process which began when He rose from the dead, whatever view we may take of the condition of His earthly life during the forty days of parenthesis, could have no rational and intelligible ending, except the Ascension. Thus we should think of it not only as the end of a sweet friendship, but as the end of the gracious manifestation of the earthly life, the counterpart of the Incarnation and descent to earth, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... School in New York. A quadrille has been announced. Master Barnes goes up to Miss Claire and bowing somewhat stiffly, mumbles some not altogether intelligible wards. Miss Claire, sliding down from her chair, says "Thank you," with perfect composure and a conventional smile, as, taking his arm, they choose ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch
... striking one another's breast in turn, to clinch arguments. Three others, with their heads in a bunch, spoke all together with a confidential air, and at the top of their voices. It was a stormy chaos of speech where intelligible fragments tossing, struck the ear. One could hear:—"In the last ship"—"Who cares? Try it on ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... whole, is his "Chelsea Pensioners." We do not quite understand the brew of study fermenting an accumulation of knowledge, and imagination exalting it. "An accumulation of knowledge impregnated his mind, fermented by study, and exalted by imagination;" this is very ambitious, but not very intelligible. He speaks of Wilkie attracting the attention of admirers and detractors. It is very absurd to consider criticism that is not always favourable, detraction. The following passage is well put. "We constantly hear the ignorant advising a student to study ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... the fair Marian. She was married. Married— and to some odd sort of man, of whom the Indian appeared to speak slightingly. His name I could make out to be Steevens, or Steebins, or something of the sort—not very intelligible by the Indian's mode of pronouncing it—and, furthermore, that he had ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... application of what follows. Now, the Psalmist's theme was the vanity of all care and labour, unless the Lord both provide for and watch over His people; for so He will give His beloved sleep—that happy, confiding repose which the solicitude of the worldly cannot procure. This is, surely, intelligible enough and even if [Hebrew: KN] may be translated for (which Noldius, in his Concordantia Particularum, affirms that it here may, adducing however but one dubious instance of its being so used elsewhere, viz. Jeremiah xiv. 10.), or if the various reading, [Hebrew: KY], be accepted, which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... newspaper silently to Arnold. It was plain to any one who knew Anne Silvester's story that those were the words which had found their fatal way to her in her place of rest. The inference that followed seemed to be hardly less clear. But one intelligible object, in the opinion of Sir Patrick, could be at the end of her journey to the north. The deserted woman had rallied the last relics of her old energy—and had devoted herself to the desperate purpose of stopping the ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... displayed by the general acceptance of the notion that women are reluctant to enter into marriage—that they have to be persuaded to it by eloquence and pertinacity, and even by a sort of intimidation. The truth is that, in a world almost divested of intelligible idealism, and hence dominated by a senseless worship of the practical, marriage offers the best career that the average woman can reasonably aspire to, and, in the case of very many women, the only one that actually offers a livelihood. What is esteemed ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... Lamb that "jokes came in with the candles" is in point, but the most remarkable example of conveying detailed information without the use of sounds, hands, or arms, is given by the late President T.H. Gallaudet, the distinguished instructor of deaf-mutes, which, to be intelligible, requires ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... anything else that would deceive the Naval authorities. During which time, you dug up the entire Point, dragged the waters immediately adjoining—and then departed, very strangely choosing for it a time of storm and change of weather. My language is intelligible, thus far?" ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... conditions which determines [10] a common character in every product of that age, in business and art, in fashion and speculation, in religion and manners, in men's very faces; that nothing man has projected from himself is really intelligible except at its own date, and from its proper point of view in the never-resting "secular process"; the solidarity of philosophy, of the intellectual life, with common or general history; that what it behoves the student of philosophic systems to cultivate is the "historic sense": by force of ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... belongs his Almansor, a dramatic poem which has suffered the most contradictory criticism. In my opinion, it has usually been misunderstood. Almansor is intelligible only if regarded from a Jewish point of view, and then it is seen to be the hymn of vengeance sung by Judaism oppressed. Substitute the names of a converted Berlin banker and his wife for "Aly" and "Suleima," Berlin under Frederick William III. for "Saragossa," the Berlin Thiergarten ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... were intelligible to Osseo, but his companions thought them some far-off sounds of music, or birds singing in the woods. Very soon the lodge began to shake and tremble, and they felt it rising into the air. It was too late to run out, for they were ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... does not exist a British Empire, it is necessary to invent one. Since there does not exist an Irish government, in any modern and intelligible sense of the word, it is necessary to invent one. The common creative mould out of which both must be struck is the principle ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... remained to him now of the classifications and phraseology which he had gone to the trouble of memorizing, in that far-off time, but he still looked at buildings with a kind of professional consciousness. Hadlow House said intelligible things to him, and he was pleased with himself for understanding them. It was not new in any part, apparently, but there was nothing pretentious in its antiquity. It had never been a castle, or a fortified residence. ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... London; but as she did not expect ever to return, this took more time than the quickness of her decay could well allow. The hasty approach of her dissolution affected her extremely on the account of her little niece, and she often expressed her concern in terms intelligible to her who was the occasion of it, who gathered from the expressions which fell from her aunt, that the motive for the journey was to find out some of Miss Mancel's relations, to whom she might deliver her before death had put a period to her own life; and where she might safely ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... in this place appealed to him all the more potently because of the sort of tragic innocence which seemed to characterize Don Ippolito's expression. He longed intensely to sketch the picture then and there, but he had strength to rebuke the fancy as something that could not make itself intelligible without the help of such accessories as he despised, and he victoriously followed the priest into his larger workshop, where his inventions, complete and incomplete, were stored, and where he had been seated when his visitor arrived. The ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... now and the strange man answered briefly. Again the engineer half seemed to comprehend the meaning, though no word was intelligible. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... of Man to the Globe," were hardly such as we should have expected from a scholar who had but a limited acquaintance with physical and physiological science. They were probably chosen as of a popular character, easily treated in such a way as to be intelligible and entertaining, and thus answering the purpose of introducing him pleasantly to the new career he was contemplating. These lectures are not included in his published works, nor were they ever published, so far as I know. He gave three lectures during the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... inhabitants. A land is fully comprehended only when studied in the light of its influence upon its people, and a people cannot be understood apart from the field of its activities. More than this, human activities are fully intelligible only in relation to the various geographic conditions which have stimulated them in different parts of the world. The principles of the evolution of navigation, of agriculture, of trade, as also the theory of population, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Second Corps have marched before day and united with the first onset, Lee's left must inevitably have been crushed long before the Confederate divisions of McLaws, Walker, and A. P. Hill could have reached the field. It is this failure to carry out any intelligible plan which the historian must regard as the unpardonable military fault on the National side. To account for the hours between daybreak and eight o'clock on that morning, is the most serious responsibility of the National commander. [Footnote: A distinguished officer (understood ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... made various efforts to procure a visit from some English merchant. This was no easy undertaking for one in my deplorable condition. I was too weak to articulate my words distinctly, and these words were rendered, by my foreign accent, scarcely intelligible. The likelihood of my speedy death made the people about me more indifferent to my wants ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... had given her any intelligible warning of its appearance. Silently and suddenly, the head had taken its place above her. No supernatural change had passed over the room, or was perceptible in it now. The dumbly-tortured figure in the chair; the broad window opposite the foot of ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... little things at home;" and he stops and heaves a great big sigh and swallows down a half-tumbler of cold something and water. We know what the honest fellow means well enough. He is saying to himself, "God bless my girls and their mother!" but, being a Briton, is too manly to speak out in a more intelligible way. Perhaps it is as well for him to be quiet, and not chatter and gesticulate like those Frenchmen a few yards from him, who are chirping over a ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Europe, and I think that the Edinburgh Review ought at least to have given a luminous abstract of it. The very circumstance that Niebuhr's own arrangement and style are obscure, and that his translators have need of translators to make them intelligible to the multitude, rendered it more desirable that a clear and neat statement of the points in controversy should be laid before the public. But it is useless to talk of what cannot be mended. The best editors cannot always have good writers, and the best writers cannot ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... evidence of life. And as Sin Sin Wa disentangled yard upon yard of rope from the bundle on the floor by the bed where Rita Irvin lay in her long troubled sleep, he crooned a queer song. It was in the Ho-Nan dialect and intelligible ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... and no doubt he and other friends of FitzGerald thought that the affairs of the partnership of FitzGerald and Fletcher were not carried on with such precision as was desirable. Possibly they were right. But then, Posh couldn't be precise. I have failed to get any intelligible account out of Posh as to that rum-flip orgy. All he could do was to chuckle. The question of loyalty raised in the letter is a nice one. But Posh and his kind would only answer it in one way. They would regard it as treachery to their order to betray each ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... in a chafing dish, and put it at her feet; she then took a reed pen, some ink from a small bottle, and a pair of scissors, and wrote down several characters on a paper, singing, or rather chanting, words which were not intelligible to her young companion. Amine then threw frankincense and coriander seed into the chafing dish, which threw out a strong aromatic smoke; and desiring Pedro to sit down by her on a small stool, she took the boy's right hand ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... there. But he had worked on, buying and selling shares in mines, owning a quarter of an eighth there, and half a tenth here, and then advancing till he was the possessor of many complete shares in many various adventures which were quite intelligible to him, though to the ordinary stay-at-home Englishman they seem to be so full of peril as not to be worth possessing. As in other mines, the profit is shared monthly, and the system has the advantage of thus possessing twelve quarter-days in the year. ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... by asserting that the religion of the state was justified not only by expediency but much more by the fact that it was after all only the presentation of the truths of Stoicism in a form which was intelligible to the lower classes. Had this group of Scipio and his associates made an effort to emphasise these particular doctrines of Stoicism in relation to religion, the downfall of the state religion, which occurred in the ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter |
