"Ken" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken, Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... to myself! The phantoms all about here, in the college archways, and windows. They used to look friendly in the old days, particularly Addison, and Gibbon, and Johnson, and Dr. Browne, and Bishop Ken—" ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Ise gave her a Gown of Green on the Grass, But now Ise no longer must tarry here: Then saddle my Nag that's bonny and gay, For now it is time to gang hence away, Then open the Gates and let me go free, She's ken me no ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... divine. Innumerable mountains rise, and rise, Ambitious for the hallowing of thine eyes, And yet thy benediction passeth not One obscure hiding-place, one little spot Where pleasure may be sent; the nested wren Has thy fair face within its tranquil ken;" ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... time what they were going ter do with me. Then we stopped before the chief's lodge,—Tabba-ken, or the Big Eagle, he was called,—and they motioned for me to dismount. I hadn't hardly struck the ground, before I found what they were going to do with me; for would you believe it, every old squaw and pappoose in that village, that had strength enough, flew at me and commenced ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... man who was the embodiment of all that was nervous. He was alternately wringing his hands and rumpling his hair. Beside him was a middle-sized, middle-aged lady in a most amazing state of preservation, who evidently presided over the cosmetic mysteries beyond the male ken. She was so perfectly groomed that she looked as though her clothes were a mould into which she ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... non-living, and each of them only a higher development of principles already admitted and largely acted on in the other, then the method of procedure observable in the evolution of the organs whose history is within our ken should throw light upon the evolution of that whose history goes back into so dim a past that we can only know it by way of inference. In the absence of any show of reason to the contrary we should argue from the known to the unknown, and presume ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... "Morning, Ken," said he, briefly, sitting beside his young friend and taking the book in his own hand. The margins of the printed pages were fairly covered with drawings of every description. The far away trees were there and the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... bay experience thot con show; Far in may portace the tongue ay de nat know, Yet when ay see the great gilded letter, Ay ken it sea well, as nea man ken better. As far example: on the day of Chraist's nativity, Ay see a bab in a manger and two beasts standing by: The service whilk to Newyear's-day is assaign'd Bay the paicture of the circumcision ay faynd: The service, whilk on Twalfth-day ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... herself—brought hope to Kitty's mind. She started up, pressing her hands to her brow and pushing back the disordered hair. Then she addressed the girl with eager, persuasive words. But the kitchen-maid only shook her head. "Dinna ye ken that I'm stane-deef?" she said, pointing to her ears with a grin. For a moment Kitty in despair desisted from her efforts. Then she thought of another argument. She produced her purse, and showed the girl some sovereigns, then led her to the door, intimating by signs that she would ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... have one more thing to say and that is: I only wish your magazine was put out every two weeks instead of every four; or print more stories and raise the price to twenty five cents. I'm sure people will pay if they are as interested as I.—Ken F. Haley, 36 ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... poet and lover of harmony, should have selected this locality for a home is quite beyond the average ken. Certainly it mystified the fashionable literary world of London, with whom he never kept goose-step, but that still kept track of him—for fashion has a way of patronizing genius—and some of his old friends wrote him ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... of a shop over the way. She, on her part, was quite unconscious of his attention, and in this was less fortunate than those young women whose very plumes, like those of Juno's bird, are set with Argus eyes whenever possible admirers are within ken. ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... progress of which the unexpected never happens), as well as by similar collections of the same kind. And the special connexion of this device with a company of pilgrims might, as has been well remarked, have been suggested to Chaucer by an English book certainly within his ken, the "Vision concerning Piers Plowman," where in the "fair field full of folk" are assembled among others "pilgrims and palmers who went forth on their way" to St. James of Compostella and to saints ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... he lies without stirring, or moving a muscle, on his back, with eyes seemingly fixed upon the stars, like an ancient astrologer in the act of consulting them for the solution of some deep mystery hidden from mortal ken. Then, as if having just solved it, he gives a sudden ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... speli[n] wud b[i] s[o] gr[e]t az w[i] imajin; or that it wud b[i] [w]l on w[u]n seid. Beseidz, [u]nles h[i] kan sh[o] hou a reform ov speli[n] iz not [o]nli for the prezent tu b[i] avoided, b[u]t [w]ltugether tu b[i] renderd [u]nnesesari, ei konsider that the s[ue]ner it iz t[e]ken in hand the beter. It s[i]mz tu m[i] that the Archbishop luks on the introd[u]kshon ov f[o]netik speli[n] az a m[i]r krochet ov a fiu skolarz, or az an atempt on the part ov s[u]m haf-ediuk[e]ted personz, wishi[n] tu avoid the tr[u]bel ov lerni[n] hou tu spel ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... horse-herd answered, "Nay, that is beyond my ken; but go a little farther and thou wilt come to a cow-herd who mayhap can ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... "I ken that; I'm no sayin' a word against that; but first of all she goes and crops her hair—fine hair she had too, though an awfu-like colour—and not content with flying in the face of Providence that way, she must needs dress like a servant. And no a weiss-like servant, either, but one o' they besoms ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... address book, one says, "I wonder how it is I have not seen So-and-so for an age," and one feels that people we used to enjoy meeting, if they do not happen to move in the same orbit of metropolitan existence, are vanishing from our ken. They are being lost in the Limbo of long distances. An hour of Underground in very hot weather may give ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... world immeasurably. The addition of America to the map had spiritual effects which it is difficult to estimate in any proper terms. If the old world of the Mediterranean regions could be thought into a unity, it was more difficult to reduce to the One the new world which swam into men's ken. Still more burdened with fate for the future generations was the vast volume of commerce, necessarily conducted on a national basis, which the age of discoveries went to swell. Meanwhile, men had begun to think and to write in national languages. Already by the reign of Richard II the dialect ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... the story of the life of Alexander Gordon, of Earlstoun in Galloway. Earlstoun is a bonny place, sitting above the waterside of the Ken in the fair strath of the Glenkens, in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright. The grey tower stands ruinous and empty to-day, but once it was a pleasant dwelling, and dear to the hearts of those that had ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... denotes the hollow land, so Holborn, or Holeburn, implies the hollow bourne—the bourne or river in the hollow. This once forcible little stream descended four hundred feet in a journey of six miles, taking its rise in Ken Wood, the beautifully timbered estate of the Earls of Mansfield at Highgate. After passing through several ponds, skirting the existing Millfield Lane, it crossed the foot of West Hill and continued its course through what is now known as the Brookfield Stud Farm, till, somewhat to the ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... might be, gin I were a feckless laddie, like Rob Ainslee, or Tam o' the Glen; but I hae riches, ye ken. Ye'll never need to fash yoursel' wi' wark, but just sing like the ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... Bivens persisted. "Your silence on the subject makes me furious every time I think of it. How any human being outside of an insane asylum could be so foolish is beyond my ken." ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... article ("Some disputed Points in Music."—'Fortnightly Review,' July, 1876.) with much interest, except the latter part, which soared above my ken. I am greatly pleased that you uphold my views to a certain extent. Your criticism of the rasping noise made by insects being necessarily rhythmical is very good; but though not made intentionally, it may be pleasing ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... eloquent was the debate, Beside the council fire of those red men! With language burning as his sense of hate; With gesture just, with eye of keenest ken; With illustration simple, but profound, Drawn from the sky above him, or the ground Beneath his feet; and with unfalt'ring zeal, He spoke from a warm heart and made e'en ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... exact system of energizing should be found to present all the appearances of universality and of eternity, so that, e.g., the motion of the solar system in space is being determined by some causes beyond human ken, and that we are indebted to billions of cellular unions, each involving billions of separate causes, for our hereditary passage from an invertebrate ancestry,—that such things should be, would surely strike us as the most wonderful fact ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... he smiled and sate, With ink-horn at his knees and scroll and pen. And took the toll and register'd the freight, 'Mid noise of clattering cranes and strife of men: And all that moved and spoke was in his ken, With lines and hues like Nature's own design'd Deep in the magic mirror of ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... objects vanished completely from Georgie's ken, for his dark suspicions were confirmed, and there was Lucia in her "Hightum" hat and her "Hightum" gown making her gracious way across the green. She had distinctly been wearing one of the "Scrub" this morning at ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... fact there is almost nothing he couldn't have been if only Fate had but weaned him at the breast of opportunity instead of ordaining his life drama to be played out in lonely dignity in the drab but intensely political village of Oggsville, Ken. ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... and thus imperishable, argues a transcendent in the basis of radical power. Broad and deep must those foundations have been laid, which could support an "arch of empire" rising to that giddy altitude—an altitude which sufficed to bring it within the ken of posterity to ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... was born in Europe, but he was ours by adoption, and he might dispute with Fiske the title to first place in the American Pantheon of Science, were it not for the fact that the Law of Evolution was beyond his ken, being obscured by a marked, myopic, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... little by little it seemed to her in her pain that unseen hands were pushing her farther and farther from him, building a barrier between them—a tangible thing which she had only to stretch out her hands to feel, setting her outside his ken. ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... at one view the indefinitely great and the indefinitely little. The mutual revolutions of the stellar multitude during tracts of time which seem to lengthen out to eternity as the mind attempts to traverse them, she does not admit to be beyond her ken; nor is she indifferent to the constitution of the minutest atom of matter that thrills the ether into light. How she entered upon this vastly expanded inheritance, and how, so far, she has dealt with it, is attempted to be set forth in the ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... the worm. The matter of which our rudimental body is composed, is within the ken of the organs of that body; or, more distinctly, our rudimental organs are adapted to the matter of which is formed the rudimental body; but not to that of which the ultimate is composed. The ultimate body thus escapes our rudimental senses, and we perceive ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Kentucky wilderness, burned a camp-fire, whose faint smoke could be traced as it rose above the tree-tops. A careful study of the vapor led Deerfoot to suspect that it had served as a signal, but it was beyond his ken to determine its nature. ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... in the Land above— The Land beyond our ken; Yet we shall meet again, my love, Though none can ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... is a bamboo basket, Filled with choicest tea, I picked and dried it all myself It comes from Ken See ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... special respect has been shown to the tombs of worthies of bygone times, with the recent recollection also of what has been so well carried out by MR. MARKLAND in regard to the grave of Bishop Ken, shall we not make an effort to preserve from desecration and oblivion the resting-place of one so eminent as Leighton for his learning and piety, so worthy to be held in honoured remembrance for his high principles and his consistent conduct ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... Brahman with acts by representing it as the object of the action of knowing. For that it is not such is expressly declared in two passages, viz. 'It is different from the known and again above (i.e. different from) the unknown' (Ken. Up. I, 3); and 'How should he know him by whom he knows all this?' (B/ri/. Up. II, 4, 13.) In the same way Brahman is expressly declared not to be the object of the act of devout meditation, viz. in the second ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... unfallen still thy crest! Primeval dweller where the wild winds rest, Beyond the ken of mortal e'er to tell What power sustains thee in ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy
... should never shelter their old age. But Lisbeth went stolidly about the daily routine of her life; Kala's smiles were as bright and as frequent as ever; and Sigmund troubled himself not at all with matters beyond his ken. ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... bouts I bore From thee (my Lesbia!) or be enough or more? I say what mighty sum of Lybian-sands Confine Cyrene's Laserpitium-lands 'Twixt Oracle of Jove the Swelterer 5 And olden Battus' holy Sepulchre, Or stars innumerate through night-stillness ken The stolen Love-delights of mortal men, For that to kiss thee with unending kisses For mad Catullus enough and more be this, 10 Kisses nor curious wight shall count their tale, Nor to bewitch ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... mountain. Bless him, God! Pour everlasting bounties on his head! Make Croesus jealous of his treasury, Achilles of his arms, Endymion Of his fresh beauties,—though the coy one lay, Blushing beneath Diana's earliest kiss, On grassy Latmos; and may every good, Beyond man's sight, though in the ken of heaven, Round his fair fortune to a perfect end! O, you have dried the sorrow of my eyes; My heart is beating with a lighter pulse; The air is musical; the total earth Puts on new beauty, and within the arms Of girding ocean ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... grand Touches of Nature, and which lies still deeper from the Ken of common Observation, has been taken notice of in a Note upon The Tempest; where Prospero at once interrupts the Masque of Spirits, and starts into a sudden Passion and Disorder of Mind. As the latent Cause of his Emotion is there ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... to me earlier, but I remember him first as he swam vividly into my ken, with a volume of Macaulay's essays in his hand, one day. Less figuratively speaking, he came up into the printing-office to expose from the book the nefarious plagiarism of an editor in a neighboring city, who had adapted with the change of names and a word or two here and there, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... where Ben Billings' family have a summer home?" Sue inquired quite casually; but the remark brought a laugh. Ben Billings, despite his very ordinary name, and Sue's particular aversion to it, had sailed into her ken with meteor-like brilliancy. She had changed her opinion of him since the visit to Harvard, and was the object of considerable teasing. Such rhymes as the following had found their way to ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... schoolmaster suffers from this less than most professional men; but, even so, it is melancholy to reflect how the boys one has cared for, and tried to help, drift out of one's sight and ken. I have no touch of the feeling which they say was characteristic of Jowett—and indeed is amply evidenced by his correspondence—that once a man's tutor he was always his tutor, even though his pupil became grey-headed ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "Fine do I ken Rob McDonald, an' a guid mon he is. Hoo was it that ye couldna slaughter stacks o' moose wi' him to help ye? Did ye see ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... who thy gibes at love canst scarce repress, Beware! The angry god may strike again! I knew a youth who laughed at love's distress, And bore, when old, the worst that lovers ken. ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... instincts, of this good man have been beyond his thinking powers, that only shows him the providential agent to work out aims beyond his ken. A wave has been set in motion, which cannot stop till it casts up its freight upon the shore, and if Pius IX. does not suffer himself to be surrounded by dignitaries, and see the signs of the times through the eyes of others,—if he does not suffer the knowledge he had of general society ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... perfect hands that have bound me to the mast of your destiny. I cannot go back, I must go forward: now I must keep on loving you or be shipwrecked. I did not know that this was in me, this tide of love, this current of devotion. Destiny plays me beyond my ken, beyond my dreams. "O Cithoeron!" Turn from me now—or never, O my love! Loose me from the mast, and let the storm and wave wash me out into the sea of your forgetfulness now—or never!... But keep me, keep me, if your love is ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... when I was going to leave Milan. I feebly evaded the question by saying that I must first of all see all the sights of the place. "Hoots, man!" he retorted, "ye've seen all the sights, and ye're jist wasting your time and losing your holiday stopping here. I ken weel what it is ye're waiting for. Ye're short of money—that's it, isn't it?" I murmured something to the effect that I was expecting remittances which would, no doubt, reach me almost immediately. "Weel, I'm not going to let a young fellow like you lose your holiday," said my friend, in a very ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... powerful and the wise had sought Thy coming, thou in light descending O'er the wide land which is thine own 2220 Like the Spring whose breath is blending All blasts of fragrance into one, Comest upon the paths of men!— Earth bares her general bosom to thy ken, And all her children here in glory meet 2225 To feed upon thy smiles, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... can rival the sublime and beautiful images that crowd the creased and folded labyrinth of the human brain; as far beyond the ken and analysis of the biologist's microscope, as some remote nebulae shining in blue gulfs of interstellar space, that no telescopic Jense can ever discover, even as a faint blur of silvery mist upon the black velvet vault ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Savior of the Country; the prying lodger Robespierre was the Chief of State. Of course she never saw them now, her small self would hardly dare address them! Sister Genevieve and the Doctor, who had told her about the Frochards' den, were no longer within her ken. ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... through simplicity thought that there was nothing that way but sea, because he saw mine land, which proof (under correction) giveth small assurance of a navigable sea by the north-east to go round about the world, for that he judged by the eye only, seeing we in this clear air do account twenty miles a ken at sea. ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... wise lassock, Lizzie," she said, by way of introduction, "an' ah'm gaun to hae a bit private crack wi' ye. Ye're aunt's brocht ye up weel, an' ah ken ah'm takin' nae risk in confidin' in ye. Some o' the neeighbors 'll be sayin' ye're a' that prood, but ah've always stood up for the Gordons, an' said ye were nae mair prood than ye ocht to be. Noo, aboot this business. Ah wanted tae get yer help." The girlish manner had returned, ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... difficulty and consciousness become little more than a sound of going in the brain, a flitting to and fro of something barely recognisable as the desire to will or know at all—much less as the desire to know or will definitely this or that. Finally, they retreat beyond our ken into the repose—the inorganic ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... they threw Dice charged with fates beyond their ken, Yet to their instincts they were true, And had the genius to be men. Fine privilege of Freedom's host, Of humblest soldiers for the Right!— Age after age ye hold your post, Your graves send courage ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... thou not that Imlak is of the chiefs of the Jinn? But for my goodname, thou shouldst have seen what would have betided thee of humiliation and chastisement; yet on account of the festival none may speak. Indeed thou exceedest; dost thou not ken that her sister Wakhimah is doughtier[FN209] than any of the Jann? Learn to know thyself: hast thou no regard for thy life?" So Maymun was silent and Iblis turned to Tohfah and said to her, "Sing to the kings of the Jinns this day and to- night until the morrow, when the boy will ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... romances seemed but dross. The author who aspires to write fiction should cultivate the faculty of caring for all things that come to pass; he should train himself rigorously never to be bored; he should look upon all life that swims into his ken with curious and sympathetic eyes, remembering always that sympathy is a deeper faculty than curiosity: and because of the profound joy of his interest in life, he should endeavor humbly to earn that heritage of interest by developing a thorough understanding of its source. In this way, perhaps, ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... earlier centuries contemptuously styled the Dwarf-nation, and always despised as a mere imitator and brain-picker of Chinese wisdom, now swims definitively into the ken of the Manchu court. The Formosan imbroglio had been forgotten as soon as it was over, and the recent rapid progress of Japan on Western lines towards national strength had been ignored by all Manchu statesmen, each of whom lived in hope that the ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... then seem familiar so far north; nor yet the thin braided-leather bridle with its hair frontlet band and its mighty bit; nor again the great spurs with jingling rowel bells. This rider's mount and trappings spoke the far and new Southwest, just then coming into our national ken. ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... some of his horses were out that very night without his consent or ken. No one for a moment, to my knowledge, has connected Field with the loss of the money. Hay thought, however, it threw suspicion on him, ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... hither, they will take fright at thee and none will come near thee; for they will say, This man is possessed of an Ifrit and harm will betide whoso approacheth him. And such public report will be dishonouring both to thee and to me, because they ken I come from Cairo." Ma'aruf asked:—"How then shall I do?"; and Ali answered, "I will tell thee how thou shalt do, Inshallah! To-morrow I will give thee a thousand dinars and a she-mule to ride and a black slave, who shall walk before thee and guide thee to the gate of the merchants' ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... obsairved. Paint was McRimmon's. But you could get round his engines without riskin' your life, an', for all his blindness, I've seen him reject five flawed intermediates, one after the other, on a nod from me; an' his cattle-fittin's were guaranteed for North Atlantic winter weather. Ye ken what that means? McRimmon an' the Black Bird ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... there is a freedom from commonplace, and a power to hold the interest to the close, which is owing, not to a trivial ingenuity, but to the spell which her personages cast over the reader's mind as soon as they come within his ken.... The humor, which is a marked feature of Miss Wilkins's stories, is ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... mankind. Concerning which we are to give some indications, were it only dates in their order: though, as the affair turned out not to be completed, but had to be taken up again long after, and is an affair lying wide of British ken,—there need not, and indeed cannot, be much said of it just now. SECONDLY, there is eager Furthering of the Husbandries, the Commerces, Practical Arts,—especially at present, that of Foreign Commerce, and Shipping from the Port of Embden. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... grand life," nodded his superior's polished bald head. "Aye, there's guid reason for singing. Sing to yon codfish, y'ken." ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... next day, or else he would have him for his supper. Nicht Nought Nothing began early next morning and tried to lave the water with his pail, but the loch was never getting any less, and he did no ken what to do; but the giant's dochter called on all the fish in the sea to come and drink the water, and very soon they drank it dry. When the giant saw the work done he was in a rage, and said, 'I've a worse job for you to-morrow; there is a tree seven miles ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... all the friends of her kin and color dwelt. It was a hard matter to tear herself away from them all and follow Richard Trafford to dreary Culm Rock; but, with some tears and sighing, she had said to her people, "Yer don't know nuffin about it. Ye habn't got any 'Mas'r Dick;' so how ken ye? 'Tain't in dis yer old heart to let de chile go off sufferin' all by hisself, now! Bress de Lord, I'll stick to de poor boy, an' keep him frum jes' worryin' his life out." So here she was in her ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... hundred thousand of us dead; Don't think because yer feelin well you won't be sick no more— Sometimes the reddest pippin has a worm-hole to the core. Don't let a killin' habit grow upon you soft and still Because you think thet you ken throw it from you at your will— Now's ther time ter quit it when yer feelin' brave an' stout— You've lost ther chance to do it When ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... na be sae mim; every body kens, and I ken too, that ye're ettling at the magistracy. It's as plain as a pikestaff, gudeman, and I'll no let ye rest if ye dinna mak me a bailie's wife or a' ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... while some bards there be That sing of battles, and the trumpet's roar; Yet these, I ween, more powerful bards than me, Above my ken, on eagle pinions soar! Haply a scene of meaner view to scan, Beneath their laurelled praise my verse may give, To trace the features of unnoticed man; Deeds, else forgotten, in the verse may live! Her lore, mayhap, instructive sense may teach, From weeds of ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... venerable Scotch lady, from whom Sir Walter Scott derived many of the traditionary stories and anecdotes wrought up in his novels, taxed him one day with the authorship, which he, as usual, stoutly denied. "What!" exclaimed the old lady, "d'ye think I dinna ken my ain groats among ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... in this meeting with Mr. Harker, Lois realized the existence of a world beyond her ken—a world that had been Justin's. New as the visitor's words had been, they seemed to open to her a vision of herculean struggle: the way this man had looked—his wife had "wondered that he was still alive." And Justin—where ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... her by the arm and shouted in her ear. She might have been dead for all the impression that I could make. Her body was there on the velvet chair. Her organs were acting—her heart, her lungs. But her soul! It had slipped from beyond our ken. Whither had it gone? What power had dispossessed it? I was puzzled ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... astonishment of his Oxford Street experiences may have returned to him, for he had evidently counted on Kemp's co-operation in his brutal dream of a terrorised world. At any rate he vanished from human ken about midday, and no living witness can tell what he did until about half-past two. It was a fortunate thing, perhaps, for humanity, but for him it was ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... where were my good resolutions, and what had become of them? Why, they, under the effect of the wine and the magnetic influence of these three minds, had gone flying down the bay, and under a favorable gale were fast speeding seaward beyond the ken of mortal eye, not to be found by me again until years after, when, with the toils about me, I found myself in Newgate. Then the fugitives all came ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... necessary now is to laugh, hiss, and vociferously applaud. When men make up their minds to vilify the Bible, denounce the Constitution, and defame their country (although this is a free country), they should go down in some obscure cellar, remote from mortal ken, and, even there, whisper their hideous treason ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... alighted gently in my own home meadow at Devizes, after such a journey as no mortal upon earth has ever yet taken and lived to tell the tale. I have seen the beauty and I have seen the horror of the heights—and greater beauty or greater horror than that is not within the ken ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... less at home than in his ordinary style. Take, for instance, a passage from 'Rob Roy,' where our dear friend, the Bailie, Nicol Jarvie, is taken prisoner by Rob Roy's amiable wife, and appeals to her feelings of kinship. '"I dinna ken," said the undaunted Bailie, "if the kindred has ever been weel redd out to you yet, cousin—but it's kenned, and can be proved. My mother, Elspeth Macfarlane (otherwise Macgregor), was the wife of my father, Denison Nicol ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... for him makes mane, But nane sall ken where he is gane; O'er his white banes, when they are bare, The ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... names with glory on earth and shadows escaped from our ken, submissive to mercy in heaven. A vast chasm have my steps overleapt since we met, O Hilda—sweet Edith; a vast chasm, but a narrow grave." His voice faltered a moment, and again he renewed,— "Thou weepest, Edith; ah, how thy tears console me! Hilda, hear me! I love ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... information as to what intelligence regarding the movements of the enemy the two stern-looking men up on the wall were gathering into their brains through their glasses—intelligence far beyond the ken of the sentries, whose duty it was to keep strict watch upon the great circle which was ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... are able to trace the history of the solar system for some thousand million years or so; but for how much longer time must it not have a history—a history, and also a future—entirely beyond our ken? ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... boat into the ship and his comrades with him. Four, three, and two, they simultaneously strive to enter without delay. Full soon was the sail spread and the anchor of the barque weighed. Those on land, who were sore at heart for the lads whom they see departing, follow them with their eyes' ken as far as they can; and so that they may watch them the better and the further, they go off and climb together a high peak by the shore. Thence they watch their sorrow as far as they can see them. They gaze at ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... see the white cloud in the glint o' the sun? That's the brow and the eye o' my bairnie. Did ye ken the red bloom at the bend o' the crag? That's the rose in the cheek o' my bairnie. Did ye hear the gay lilt o' the lark by the burn? That's the voice of my bairnie, my dearie. Did ye smell the wild scent in the green o' the wood? That's the breath o' my ain, o' my bairnie. Sae I'll gang awa' ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a Dawn at last That brings no life-stir to your ken, A long, cold Dawn without a Day, And ye shall rede ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... power of a Divine ordination. These are the only real lines of controversy. The Christian thinker may decline controversy on such a subject altogether, acknowledging that the mystery of character is in its roots beyond our ken,—that we know not, and in the nature of the case cannot know, where the Human ends and the Divine begins. In such a case there is no room for argument. But we cannot with consistency step off one line on to the ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... the touch Obsequious (as whilom knights were wont,) To some enchanted castle is convey'd, Where gates impregnable, and coercive chains, In durance strict detain him, till, in form Of money, Pallas sets the captive free. Beware, ye debtors! when ye walk, beware, Be circumspect; oft with insidious ken The caitiff eyes your steps aloof, and oft Lies perdu in a nook or gloomy cave, Prompt to enchant some inadvertent wretch With his unhallowed touch. So, (poets sing) Grimalkin, to domestic vermin sworn An everlasting foe, with watchful ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... the white. The People of the Southern Ice, they trade with the whaler's crew; Their women have many ribbons, but their tents are torn and few. But the People of the Elder Ice, beyond the white man's ken— Their spears are made of the narwhal-horn, and they are the last of the ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... with human blood, and subjected to magical incantations—is the worst spell that one aboriginal can cast upon another. It means death or the direst misfortune. All that the afflicted one can do is to fly—to hide himself beyond the sorcerer's ken and the reach of pursuit. For this reason, Wombo and Oola had fled back to Moongarr. No outside black dared venture within range of McKeith's gun. Now Wombo and Oola besought Bridget to hide them from the vengeful furies. ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... impediment in his way, and he managed to have it understood that Mr. Kennedy's cousin should be summoned on the following morning. "Is anybody else coming?" Robert Kennedy asked, when the landlord was about to leave the room. "Naebody as I ken o', yet, laird," said Macpherson, "but likes they will." Nobody, however, did come, and the "laird" had spent the evening by ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... that she has bewitched him; do you ken I saw him trying to put his arms round her; do you ken they have a trysting- ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... (no, nor GOD helping her, ever will!) who, like the late Hugh James Rose, "when hearts were failing, bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our true Mother." Mean wilee, such names as George Herbert and Nicholas Farrar, Ken and Nelson, Leighton and Bishop Wilson, shine through the gloom like a constellation of quiet stars; to which the pilgrim lifts his weary eye, and feels that he is looking ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... morning as I tarried beyond the reasonable hour for my departure, her wrath broke out in a torrent. "If ye dinna ken the way hame, Mr. Quirk, I'll show it ye," she said as she joined Esther and me at the hitch-rack, where we had been loitering for an hour. "And I dinna care muckle whaur ye gang, so ye get oot o' ma sight, ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... decade education has been the question du jour here; not that we have studied it physiologically and psychologically and culture-logically, as you have been doing in England. Theologies are a little beyond our ken, and we leave it to the old country to discover, by a harmonious combination of deductive and inductive teachings, what education really is. Our educational crisis has been merely legislative and ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... beautiful phenomena in the entire realm of nature — a shimmer of silvery gauze stretched across the sky; but studied in the light of its revelations, it is the most stupendous object presented to human ken. Let us consider, first, its appearance to ordinary vision. Its apparent position in the sky shifts according to the season. On a serene, cloudless summer evening, in the absence of the moon, whose light obscures it, one sees the ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... houses which have vanished from the close is one in which Charles II. in vain requested Bishop Ken to allow Nell Gwynne to lodge; and one which was erected for her and not pulled down until this century. The cathedral precincts, however, still contain on the southern side several buildings well worthy of notice. A picturesque house yet standing is that which was known by the name ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... "Guess I ken take your word, boys; ye ain't the sort to lie to a pal. I'm real sorry." He paused and shifted his position. Then he went on with a slightly cunning look. "I 'lows you're like to take a run down to Edmonton one o' these days. A feller mostly likes to make things ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... in some secret cavern, Escape that monarch's pipoclastic ken? Has Shakespeare smoked it at the Mermaid Tavern, Quaffing a cup of sack with ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... to herself, she went out of the room, followed by John's wondering eyes. He sat quietly a moment, then went back to his book, feeling that woman's reasoning was far beyond his ken. ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... beyond mortal ken, Assisted by all the arts of men, A moment's time and the space is passed, And heaven's best gifts at ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... spoken language is to us as a sealed book, his is a mobility of countenance that will translate into, and expound by, a language shared by universal humanity, diverse mental emotions; and assure, to the grasp of universal human ken, the import of those emotions; that will express, in turn, fervor, pathos, humor; that, to find its completest purpose of unerringly revealing each passion, alternately, and for the nonce, swaying the human breast, will traverse, as it were, and ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... dark secret in my Camille's life. If the little head held pictures beyond the ken of us simple women, the angels painted them of a certainty. Moreover, it is that I willingly recount this grief to the wise friend that may ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... country for the sake of man. My parents, and I thank them, cross'd the seas, And made me native of fair Nature's world, With room to grow and thrive in. I have thriven; And feel my mind unshackled, free, expanding, Grasping, with ken unbounded, mighty thoughts, At which, if chance my mother had, good dame, In Scotia, our revered parent soil, Given me to see the day, I should have shrunk Affrighted. Now, I see in this new world A resting spot for man, if he can stand ...
— Andre • William Dunlap
... suddenly into the room. "We hae been tauld this missy is a suspectit thieving body," their leader cried. "Esther Jane Ogle, ye maun gae with us i' the law's name. Ou ay, lass, ye ken weel eneugh wha robbit auld Sir Aleexander McRae, sae dinna ye say naething tae your ain preejudice, lest ye hae tae account for ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... of scenery who expects to see a Jungfrau float into his ken before he has lost sight of a Mte. Rosa; the architect who expects to find the railway time-table punctuated at hourly intervals by a venerable monument of his art; the connoisseur who hopes to visit ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... a good rider, a capital cook, and a generally "jolly fellow." His cheery laugh rings through the cabin from the early morning, and is contagious, and when the rafters ring at night with such songs as "D'ye ken John Peel?" "Auld Lang Syne," and "John Brown," what would the chorus be without poor "Griff's" voice? What would Estes Park be without him, indeed? When he went to Denver lately we missed him as we should have missed the sunshine, and perhaps more. In the early morning, when ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... a mutual friend, completed Kenneth's feeling of ease and confidence, and he was soon talking unrestrainedly about the Latimers—what splendid people they were. How Jim's father was trying to save his (Ken's) father from having a very valuable patent stolen by a ring of rascals in New York City. And how Mr. Latimer's brother who was a large financier on Wall Street, was financing the lawsuit, and the stock-company that was formed on the ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... to whom, of mind or hand belongs Some craft that doth uplift the thought of men Above the mold, and bring to human ken The joys of radiance, air and clear bird-songs; So that the brow, o'er moist with sullen toil, May catch a breeze from far-off Paradise; So that the soul may, for a moment, rise Up from the stoop and cramp of daily moil— May own his gift Divine! as ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... sooner came within his ken than the noble hound, uttering a furious yell (the Nubian at the same time slipping his leash), leapt upon the noble charger, and seizing the marquis by the throat, pulled ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Cathedral. For suggestions as to this, and for numerous improvements and corrections in detail he is particularly indebted to Miss Beatrix F. Cresswell, whose published works "Exeter Churches," "Notes on the Churches of the Deanery of Ken," and "Edwardian Inventories for the City and County of Exeter" have made her an authority on the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... of the unknown. Lapped about with the armor-plate of civilization, the modern citizen muses relishingly, like a child beguiling himself with ogre tales, upon the terrors which lie just beyond his ken. To his mind, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... eh?" blurted in old Bill. "But he's a-goin' to marry her. But I'll tell you both right here, she'll never set foot in my house, ner I in her'n. Sam ken keep her, but what on, I don't know. He gits right out of this here farm the day he marries her, and he don't come ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... beyond her ken, forgot them sufficiently to laugh grimly. "It is farther away than you seem to think, fraeulein; but the real difficulty is the ice. Unless you cross some of the crevasses in the early morning, before the sun has had time to undo the work accomplished by the night's ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... baloo, my dear, Does wee lammy ken that its daddy's no here? Ye're rocking full sweetly on mammy's warm knee, But daddy's a-rocking ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... deportation and the guillotine. Being now hors de combat myself, I resign to others these cares. A long attack of rheumatism has greatly enfeebled me, and warns me, that they will not very long be within my ken. But you may have to meet the trial, and in the focus of its fury. God send you a safe deliverance, a happy issue out of all afflictions, personal and public, with long life, long health, and friends as sincerely attached, as ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... reach, It smites their strength, and bellowing flings Its silver foam afar— So stern and thick the Danaan kings And soldiers marched to war. Each leader gave his men the word, Each warrior deep in silence heard, So mute they marched, them couldst not ken They were a mass of speaking men; And as they strode in martial might Their flickering arms shot back ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... and in his "Northern Family," which is a branch of his "Insular Group," he includes such distinct linguistic stocks as "all the Indian tribes in the Russian territory," the Queen Charlotte Islanders, Koloshes, Ugalentzes, Atnas, Kolchans, Kenes, Tun Ghaase, Haidahs, and Chimmesyans. His Nootka-Columbian family is scarcely less incongruous, and it is evident that the classification indicated is only to a comparatively slight ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... undivided credit of having sent to the right-about the Invincible Armada? Nay, it is only the very oldest American families that can disclaim all complicity in having, as Lord Auchinleck put it, "garred kings ken that they had a lith in their necks." Of course I do not mean that the American schoolboy should be taken in detail through British history down to the seventeenth century before, so to speak, he crosses the Atlantic. But I do suggest that he would be none ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... a hit, and blossomed as girls do in the social sunshine. The following year, in the whirl of a gay New York winter, one would scarcely have recognised her as the same person. She had "made good," as boys say, and had used my stepping-stones to carry her far beyond my ken. In her widening interests, broader range, and increased worldly knowledge we became naturally better friends than ever and met on the common ground of those who led similar lives. What man would not value the intimacy of a young, beautiful, and clever woman? ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... common order of things, and who were indisposed to persecute them. Men must live; and what were a few sheep? Of some such it might be said, that though they were above the arts by which the Brownbies lived, they were not very scrupulous themselves; and it perhaps served them to have within their ken neighbours whose morality was lower even than their own. But to such a one as Harry Heathcote the Brownbies were utterly abominable. He was for the law and justice at any cost. To his thinking, the Colonial Government was ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... Hazlitt through the length and breadth of eighteenth century romance, and the young poet's awe before the majesty of Homer was hardly greater than that of the future critic when a Milton or a Wordsworth swam into his ken. This hot and eager interest, deprived of its outlet in the form of direct emulation, sought a vent in communicating itself to others and in making converts to its faith. So intimately did Hazlitt feel the spell of a work of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... will be cultivated, and all truly womanly virtues fostered in the innermost penetralia even, of that temple where all wisdom, and all art, and all science, are taught; whose patron deity was prophetically made by a mythology, wise beyond its own ken, not a man, not a god—but a goddess, ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... Silence, as they call the long winter up here, is broken by the thunder of the ice rushing down to the sea, you, like the rest, will exchange the snow-fields for the gold-fields, and pass out of our ken. Now, I'm not usually prone to try my hand at prophecy; but I am tempted to say, even on our short acquaintance, that I am tolerably sure that, while we shall be willing enough to spare most of the new-comers to the Klondyke, we shall grudge to the gold-fields the men who built this camp and ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... far yonder, I surmise An ampler world than clips my ken, 10 Where the great stars of happier skies Commingle nobler ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... at about the hour of ten on a stuffy autumn night, in the crowded bar of that Wapping public-house, these two made a compact; and of its outcome and of the next appearance of Cohen, the Jewish-American cracksman, within the ken of man, I shall now proceed ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... Reason, but beyond your ken. There lives a light that none can view Whose thoughts are brutish:—seen by few, The few have therefore light divine Their visions are God's legions!—sign, I give you; for we stand alone, And you are frozen to the bone. Your palsied hands refuse their swords. A sharper edge is in my words, A deadlier ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and greet her with his song, As lightly from his grassy couch up rose Our Saviour, and found all was but a dream; Fasting he went to sleep, and fasting waked. Up to a hill anon his steps he reared, From whose high top to ken the prospect round, If cottage were in view, sheepcote, or herd; But cottage, herd, or sheepcote, none he saw; Only in a bottom saw a pleasant grove, With chant of tuneful birds resounding loud; Thither he bent his way; determined there To rest at noon, and entered soon the shade High roofed, ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... "You're just one of those keen-eyed men of the lawyer class, but I ken nothing about her, except ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... wish you please, ma'am, take en run yo' kyards en see sump'n n'er 'bout Lucindy; kaze ef she sick, I'm gwine dar. Dey ken take en take me up en gimme a ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris |
