"Ken" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... religious thought and practice in China point to a simple monotheism. There was a Divine Ruler of the universe, abiding on high, beyond the ken of man. This Power was not regarded as the Creator of the human race, but as a Supreme Being to whom wickedness was abhorrent and virtuous conduct a source of joy, and who dealt out rewards and punishments with unerring justice, claiming neither love nor reverence from ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... McNeil, ye ken Now waits for me to come; He canna mak his Crowdy, Till t'watter it goes home. I canna tak him watter, And that I ken full weel, And so I'm sure to catch it,— For he'll play ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... victim in his guarded prison. He thought of his instruments, those magic machines with the working of which Stella had been familiar in her life. He even poured petitions into them in the hope that these might be delivered far beyond the ken of man, only to learn that he was travelling a road which led to a wall impassable; the wall that, for the lack of a better name, we call Death, which bars the natural from ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... your head would come unglued at the neck. But the fear was merely transient. When you began to administer those—am I correct in saying?—half-scissor hooks to the body, why, then I felt like some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken; or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes he stared ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... incumbent on one pronouncing on the paramount problem, because the "sagittal ridge in the gorilla," as in the orang, relates to and signifies the dental character which differentiates all Quadrumana from all Bimana that have ever come under the ken of the biologist. And this ridge much more "strikingly suggests" the fierceness of the powerful brute-ape than the part referred to as "large bosses." Frontal prominences, more truly so termed, are even better developed in peaceful, timid, graminivorous ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... Early in March, Ken Purdy phoned the latest development in the investigation. He had just received a tip predicting a flurry of saucer publicity during March. It had come from ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... I as some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... "Hoot! mon! ye ken but little of raising an airmy in Ireland, if ye mak' a drum o' a whiskey keg," said the drover, winking to the listeners. "Noo, in the north, they ca' a gathering of the folk, and follow the pipes as graciously ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... fine gentlewoman,' replied Magsie. 'She gave me a whole sovereign. What I ken o' her, I ken weel, and I ken kind. Eh, but ye 'll hae to soople your backbone, Miss Hollyhock, and think a pickle less o' your dainty self. It 'll be guid for ye ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... general esteem which followed his death—it is not very necessary to enquire. One certainly sees fewer, indeed, positively few, references to it and to its contents now. But it was so bright a planet when it first came into ken; it exercised its influence so long and so largely; that even if it now glows fainter it is worth exploring, and the analysis of the composition of its light is ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the Basil[FN32] fail * Tho' the beetle's foot o'er the Basil crawl? And though spider and fly be its denizens * Shall disgrace attach to the royal hall? The cowrie,[FN33] I ken, shall have currency * But the pearl's clear drop, shall its ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... father and mother had been illiterate mountaineers, but did there not exist a time prior to this when their ancestors were people of refinement? This, she felt, must be surely so, because of her early love of refined things—truly refined, to a degree far beyond the ken of mountain life. Without substantiating records, she seemed to know that in early Colonial days her family of gentle blood had floated with the migratory tide across the Appalachian range. That was the origin of all mountaineers! What had held some there, instead of sending them on to the ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... indefinite: though he can foretell the kind of effect which will follow the given mechanical impulse, yet the quantity of effect—the height to which the stone will ascend, and the rapidity with which it will fall—is something utterly beyond his ken. The servant-girl has no need of chemistry to teach her, that, when the match is applied, the fire will burn and smoke ascend the chimney; but she is far from being able to predict the proportional weights ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... those they had each worn the day before, were at the place, best known to themselves—a quiet retreat enough, no doubt—at which they had been spending the twenty-four hours, to which they had fully meant to return that evening, from which they had so remarkably swum into Strether's ken, and the tacit repudiation of which had been thus the essence of her comedy. Strether saw how she had perceived in a flash that they couldn't quite look to going back there under his nose; though, honestly, as he gouged deeper into the ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... 'Men! 'Tis 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Outside the ken of philanthropists the proletariat had learned to say in many languages, that "the injury of one is the concern of all." Their watchwords were brotherhood, sacrifice, the subordination of individual and ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... I've been takin' him for. But see," opening the bag and whispering again, "your auld coat and hat! I found them in your puir auld room that you'll no come back to. You've been looking like another body so long that naebody will ken you when you're like yoursel' again. Come, now, off with these ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... the overseer's house (and at the great house, while we were there); and how then, silently and softly from their several cabins, the people stole away through the woods to a little hill beyond the cemetery, quite far out of hearing or ken of anybody; and there prayed, and sang too, and "praised God and shouted," as my informant told me; not neglecting all the while to keep a picket watch about their meeting-place, to give the alarm in case anybody should come. So under the soft moonlight skies and at depth of night, ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... signs that betray the turn in the tide of human existence. As befitted such a subject, the coloring of sorrow had been traced by a hand too delicate to leave the lines visible to every vulgar eye. Like the master-touches of art, her grief, as it was beyond the sympathies, so it lay beyond the ken of those whom excellence may fail to excite, or in whom absence can deaden affections. Still her feelings were true to all who had any claims on her love. The predominance of wasting grief over the more genial springs of her enjoyments, only went to prove how much greater is ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... to this question being beyond my ken, I kept a discreet silence. Giving him further instructions, I presently left my junior to complete the task of packing up the ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... a Bishop, he had maintained the honour of his gown by refusing, when the court was at Winchester, to let Eleanor Gwynn lodge in the house which he occupied there as a prebendary. [218] The King had sense enough to respect so manly a spirit. Of all the prelates he liked Ken the best. It was to no purpose, however, that the good Bishop now put forth all his eloquence. His solemn and pathetic exhortation awed and melted the bystanders to such a degree that some among them believed him to be filled with the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... storms to beat on; the lone agony Those silent, patient lips too well foretold. Yes, this is he who ruled a world of men As might some prophet of the elder day— Brooding above the tempest and the fray With deep-eyed thought and more than mortal ken. A power was his beyond the touch of art Or armed ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... the other have passed out of the ken of readers of poetry, but, on the whole, the Loves of the Angels has suffered the greater injustice. It is opined that there may be possibilities in a half-forgotten work of Byron, but it is taken for granted that nothing worthy of attention is to be found in Moore. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... "I ken I'm talking in my sleep," said the lad; "but can ye tell me what dell is this, and how I chanced ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... first the day began, The cock upon the village church Looks northward from his airy perch, As if beyond the ken of man To see the ships come sailing on, And pass the isle of Oleron, And pass the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... riches, long sought for, are never found. This blood-stained gold may lie hidden beneath the soil of Mariposa, but it is beyond human ken. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... bark"). In the second vignette, a principal priest (heb) of Osiris, dressed in the sacerdotal leopard's skin, offers incense to the lady Te-bok ("The servant-maid"); below is a row of kneeling figures, namely: two sons, Si-t-mau ("Son of the mother"), Amen-Ken ("Amon the warlike"), and four daughters, Meri-t-ma ("Loving justice"), Amen-Set ("Daughter of Amen"), Souten-mau ("Royal Mother"), and Hui-em-neter ("Food for god"). As there is no indication of relationship between the subjects of the two vignettes, it may be inferred that Te-Bok ...
— Egyptian Literature
... out-flown philosophy. Their instinct has shot beyond the ken of science. They were ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... augur drank," [Greek: einai gar paegaen en oiko katageio, kai ap autaes pinein ton prophaetaen.] How can we believe that Tacitus was ignorant of such an ordinary native ceremony, and one, too, that must have come repeatedly within his ken? ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... the lower space with backward step I fell, my ken discern'd the form one of one, Whose voice seem'd faint through long disuse of speech. When him in that great desert I espied, "Have mercy on me!" cried I out aloud, "Spirit! or living ...
— The Vision of Hell, Part 1, Illustrated by Gustave Dore - The Inferno • Dante Alighieri, Translated By The Rev. H. F. Cary
... end for so noble a vessel," was Lord Hastings' only comment as the cruiser disappeared from the world's ken. ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... tandems shall be driven, and no more athletic sports, Save fancy balls and dances, shall appear in "Field" reports: And instead of 'pots' and 'pewters' to promote the art of walking, We shall have a silver medal for proficiency in talking. Wranglers fair shall daily wrangle, who no Mathematics ken; Lady preachers fill the pulpit, lady critics wield the pen. O ye gallant, gallant heroes who the River's head have won, Little know ye what an era of confusion hath begun. I myself shall flee from Cambridge, sick at heart and sorely vexed, Ere I see my University disestablished ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... now threatened him with deprivation of liberty, and mutilation of person. A shudder crossed him as he thought of the Star-Chamber, and he turned his gaze elsewhere, trying to bring the whole glorious city within his ken. ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... say that characters of his type have become extinct, that Nozdrevs no longer exist. Alas! such as say this will be wrong; for many a day must pass before the Nozdrevs will have disappeared from our ken. Everywhere they are to be seen in our midst—the only difference between the new and the old being a difference of garments. Persons of superficial observation are apt to consider that a man clad in a different coat is quite a different person from ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... 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 ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sure you understand? You tell me you are Lord of Stair, and I've no doubt of it, for truth shines from your eyes; but what do you ken of me? I who have no name, who was left by some gipsy folk at the inn door, and whose breeding—what I've of it—came from a Jacobite priest who teaches by the ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... father that he is heavily in debt, and, having borrowed money from his tailor, he will disappear from the parental ken, to turn up again, after a week, without his watch, his scarf-pin, or his studs. This freak will be accepted by his relatives as a convincing proof of his fitness for a financial career, and he will shortly be transferred to the City as Clerk to a firm of Stockbrokers. Here his versatile talents ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold; And ice, mast high, came floating by, As green as emerald. And through the drifts and snowy clifts Did send a dismal sheen: Nor shape of men, nor beasts we ken— The ice was all between— The ice was here, the ice was there— The ice was all around: It crack'd and growl'd, and roar'd and howl'd, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... the fowk had boards to kneel on, ye ken," Bell explained, "but the maist o' them prayed ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... a piece, and moved and worked with absolute ease, freedom, and certainty, within the limits nature had assigned him—and his field was a very large one. He saw and represented the whole panorama of life that came within his immediate ken with an unwavering consistency, from first to last; from a broadly humorous, though mostly sympathetic point of view that never changed—a very delightful point of view, if ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... evidence of a defined system of drainage, the crests of snow-topped mountain ranges in the distance were proof of whence these rivers sprang. The native tribes were of higher intelligence, had a partial knowledge of what lay beyond their immediate ken, and could show articles of barter and commerce that they had obtained ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... after me. Well, as I said before, P.C. Leach came on the stage. I happened to be the first soul he encountered. Says he to me: "Have you got a young man here called William Wright?" [I saw he did not "ken" me.] Says I to him: "I have not." Says he to me: "I want that lad, wherever he is; his father has sent me for him, and if he won't go home I have to take him to the lock-up." The last word rather frightened me; but ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... how can we trust? Only the Wise are just. The Good we use, The Wise we cannot choose. These there are none above; The Good they know and love, But are not known again By those of lesser ken. They do not charm us with their eyes, But they transfix with their advice; No partial sympathy they feel, With private woe or private weal, But with the universe joy and sigh, Whose ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... Fletcher Moulton recently said: "The advance in science takes the workers in science more and more beyond the ken of the ordinary public, and their work grows to be a little understood and much misunderstood; and I have felt that, as in many other cases, the need would come for interpreters between those who are ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... indeed, marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all men disagree. Our author, however, is clearly of the same opinion as the Scotch lassie who, on her father warning her what a solemn thing it was to get married, answered, 'I ken that, father, but it's a great deal solemner to be single.' He may be regarded as the champion of the married life. Indeed, he has a most interesting chapter on marriage-made men, and though he dissents, and we think rightly, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... and even the faint breath of long-forgotten kisses on her cheek. She remembered her mother—a pallid creature, who had slowly faded out of one of her father's vague speculations in a vaguer speculation of her own, beyond his ken—whose place she had promised to take at her father's side. The words, "Watch over him, Christie; he needs a woman's care," again echoed in her ears, as if borne on the night wind from the lonely grave in the lonelier cemetery by the distant sea. She had devoted ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... sell myself," replied the landlady, "I have had my reward"—the colour faded from her cheek as she spoke—"as all will have who go the same gait. But ye ken, Bobby, it was not for my ain sake, but that my poor mother might have a home in her auld age—and so she had, and sure that ought to make me content." The tears gathered in her eyes, and the Ranger loudly reproached himself for unkindness, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... a world-famous foreign correspondent, and Sandy Allen, of the redheaded Allen clan, join forces at a time when Ken is very much in need of help. They fall into the thick of a mystery as readily as a duck takes to water, and no sooner are they on the scent than the suspense begins to mount and every reader knows he is in for a ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... no such sight, and it grieved me. Moreover, two of the other three men whispered, and I thought one of them told of the like vision. And I think, too, that the dog saw it, as the innocent beasts will see things beyond our ken. ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... fear, there was no shame, For one upon whose dazzled eyes The whole world poured its vast surprise. The open heaven was far too near, His first day's light too sweet and clear, To let him waste his new-gained ken On ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... messenger birds named in Hawaiian stories are the plover, wandering tattler, and turnstone, all migratory from about April to August, and hence naturally fastened upon by the imagination as suitable messengers to lands beyond common ken. Gill (Myths and Songs, p. 35) says that formerly the gods spoke through small land birds, as in the story of ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... is sump'n gwine ter happen. See dese bosses yere; see ole Brune dar. He darsn't stay in de ken'l an' he darsn't stay out. Heah how oder dogs is howlin. Dey is sump'n gwine ter—O good ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... to the beam their sun-bright forms; And each thin form, still ling'ring on the sight, Trails, as it shoots, a line of silver light. High pois'd on buoyant wing, the thoughtful queen, In gaze attentive, views the varied scene, And soon her far-fetch'd ken discerns below The light laburnum lift her polish'd brow, Wave her green leafy ringlets o'er the glade, And seem to beckon to her friendly shade. Swift as the falcon's sweep, the monarch bends Her flight abrupt; the following host descends. Round the fine twig, like cluster'd grapes, they ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... did my mither ken The day she cradled me The land I was to travel in, Or the death ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... than I had given myself credit for possessing, I continued to survey the scene. I looked out again for my boat, thinking it possible that the current might drive her back to the rock, but she had been carried far beyond my ken. This made my heart sick. Knowing, however, that my life depended very much on my keeping up my courage, I endeavoured to muster all I possessed. I thought if I could climb up to the top of the rock and make a signal, it might be observed, should any boat when the storm was over come out from the ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... you the truth, the aforesaid irregularities are, to my thinking, most entertaining, and in fact very touching indeed. Here am I, quit of worldly affairs of every kind; for if superannuation does not mean that, what does it mean? The world then, being, as the saying is, beyond my ken, and being myself entirely removed from any accurate distinctions of space or time, these mistakes in road-measure do not seriously offend me. For in the infinite space of the heavens above (which in this contracted sphere of mine I desire to imitate so far ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... rooms, fitted and furnished more like a luxurious amateur tap-room than anything else within the ken of Silas Wegg. There were two wooden settles by the fire, one on either side of it, with a corresponding table before each. On one of these tables the eight volumes were ranged flat, in a row like a galvanic battery; on the other, certain ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... alongside! Ay; but how was it to be done in that wild sea? The aspect of the ocean had been awe-inspiring enough before this forlorn and dying barque had drifted within our ken; but now that she was there to serve as a scale by which to measure the height of the surges, and to bring home to us a realising sense of their tremendous and irresistible power by showing how fearfully and savagely they flung and battered about ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... light broke and relief fell: my cramped existence all at once spread out to a plain without bounds—my powers heard a call from heaven to rise, gather their full strength, spread their wings, and mount beyond ken. God had an errand for me; to bear which afar, to deliver it well, skill and strength, courage and eloquence, the best qualifications of soldier, statesman, and orator, were all needed: for these all centre in the ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... divinely was sufficient ground for thinking that a man could earn his way? And, if they were landed in two different places, how would the young man know just where to look for her? She almost paled at thought that, possibly, she might be whisked beyond his ken; but then there came the thought of his ability in an emergency, as evidenced by his flying leap down to her rescue, and, shyly smiling, she comforted herself with the reflection that that wondrous youth could make no failures. That he thought of her she could not doubt, ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... was a' blue and yellow, and, says he, 'John Laverlaw, what have ye been daein'? Ye're a bonny sicht for Christian een. How do ye think a face like yours will look between a pair o' wings in the next warld?' I ken I'm no bonny," added the explanatory Jock; "but ye canna expect a man to thole siccan language ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... do the salvaging. Not a bit of it! That unpleasant work is left to others, and the virtuous and respectable merely pay for it. Ken ye not, boy, 'twas ever the habit of people of means to patronize and coddle the lowly. If they couldn't do that, where would be the fun of being rich? Look in the Seattle papers. Who gets the advertising out of a charity ball if it isn't the rich? They ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... but it's a pity he doesna' bide there, for he's naething to be windy of when he comes out of it. Deacon now, bless ye, or archdeacon, and some sic botherment, and his daughter is to be married to yon slip of a curate with the rabbit mouth and the heather legs. Weel, she wasna for all markets, ye ken." ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... would suddenly emerge, rolling toward us, as if born of the shadows, some grim apparition, a wildly tossing figure, with gaunt, uplifted arms beating the air, to startle for an instant, then fade from our ken into the dimness below. Well I knew it was only driftwood, the gnarled trunk of uprooted tree made sport with by mad waves, yet more than once I shrank backward, my unstrung nerves tingling, as such shapeless, uncanny ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... freight." Meanwhile, thus to himself he spoke: "Oh, noble is the knotted oak, And sweet the gush of sylvan streams, And good the great sun's gladding beams, The blush of life upon the field, The silent might that mountains wield. Still more I love to mix with men, Meeting the kindly human ken; To feel the force of faithful friends— The thirst for smiles that ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... you,' said Liz the moment they were alone, and leaning forward to get a better look at Gladys, 'I wadna bide. Ye wad be faur better workin' for yersel'. If ye like, I'll speak for ye whaur I work, at Forsyth's Paper Mill in the Gorbals. I ken Maister George wad dae ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... of Saint-Graal had passed to her son, Edmond,—Andre's feu Monsieur le Comte. Edmond rarely lived there, and never asked his sister or her boy there; whence, twenty years ago, at the respective ages of thirteen and eleven, Paul and Helene had vanished from each other's ken. But Edmond never married, either; and when, last winter, he died, he left a will making Paul his heir. Of Helene's later history Paul knew as much as all the world knows, and no more—so much, that is, as one could gather ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... of an up-and-coming business man, with an assured social position and wealth—as our town measured wealth—in his own name she was now to pass entirely beyond their humble horizon and vanish out of their narrowed social ken. True enough, they kept right on living, all three of them, in the same town and indeed upon paralleling and adjacent streets; only the parents lived in their shabby little sealed-up coffin box of a house down at the poorer end of Yazoo Street; the ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... bearing upon true, effective, heart-moving oratory. Though his 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, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... whisper go out to her with an utterness of caution: "Don't say nothin', Sally.... Walk back inter ther woods ... outen sight of the house ... it's me ... it's yore brother, Ken." ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... gray 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 ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... individuality of which it is the foundation; and since it is pure spirit it has its continual existence in that plane of being where all things subsist in the universal here and the everlasting now, and consequently can, inform the lower mind of things removed from its ken either by distance or futurity. As the absence of the conditions of time and space must logically concentrate all things into a present focus, we can assign no limit to the subjective mind's power of perception, and therefore the ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... the Highlander, confidentially (and it had a pleasant homely sound to hear him speak like the farm-bailiff)—"I'm saying, I'm confined to barracks, ye ken; and I'll gi'e ye a hawpenny if ye'll get the bottle filled wi' whusky. Roun' yon corner ye'll see the ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... horse. "Well, he's a bonny man, but he's got a piece of the demon in him! So have I, I ken very well, and so, doubtless, has he who will be Glenfernie, and ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... Oh! we're no fou! "But plainly we can ken "Ye're fallin', fallin' fra the band "O' cantie ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... that murmurs to the soul, A strength which thunders in its mighty tide: There let me but my lonely footsteps guide, Or hasten to some far neglected glen, Wherein myself for ever I can hide, And rest a stranger to the ways of men, And find a refuge dear beyond all human ken. ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... intellectual virgins who knew nothing of life but what they had read—or written—in "Tendenz" novels, yet sadly rebuked him, more in sorrow than in anger, for this passage or that in his books, about things out of their ken altogether, etc. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Beyond the ken of a community to which the enforcement of the revenue laws had long been merely so much out of every man's pocket and dish, into the all-devouring treasury of Spain. At this date they had come under a kinder yoke, and to a treasury ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... has been pies. Our skill has not only brought us fame, but the city is in the throes of a pie epidemic. A few days ago when the old Prince of the Ken came to visit his Hiroshima home, the cooking-ladies, after a few days' consultation, decided that in no better way could royalty be welcomed than by sending him a lemon pie. They sent two creamy affairs elaborately decorated with meringued Fujis. They were the ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... right," returned Patty. "Father's coming home early, and Roger and Ken will be over, and ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... man from his world, leaving an imperishable monument for generations yet to come. The London he knew has passed beyond our ken; it is a buried city that will never be unearthed. But time has dealt more gently with Stratford and Shottery, Wilmcote and Snitterfield, and a large part of the surrounding country that made our national poet articulate. Much that he loved returns with the yearly pageant of the seasons, and ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... certainly not my fault for he had charmed me by the mere amenity of his detachment which, in this case, I cannot help thinking he had carried to excess. He went away from his rooms without leaving a trace. I wondered where he had gone to—but now I know. He vanished from my ken only to drift into this adventure that, unavoidable, waited for him in a world which he persisted in looking upon as a malevolent shadow spinning in the sunlight. Often in the course of years an expressed sentiment, the particular sense ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... against any one. The eye, he said, may be deceived; the ear may be; and all the senses. The devil himself may take the shape and likeness of a person or thing, when it is not that person or thing. The truth on the subject, he held, lay out of the range of mortal ken. ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... when White-winged Columbus swoops from Spain's palmed shore And, from dark depths, lifts at San Salvador, A continent, adrip with streams which, then, Become the fountain of the Psalmist's ken, Where Right the heart, from hoof to horn foam-hoar From craggy speed, slakes thirst, and, evermore, Comes Hope's whole clattering herd?—you ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... perished and the conquered chief Snatched from thy haughty hand? Whate'er the cause That urged thy grief, 'twas far removed from love. Was this forsooth the object of thy toil O'er lands and oceans, that without thy ken He should not perish? Nay! but well was reft From thine arbitrament his fate. What crime Did cruel Fortune spare, what depth of shame To Roman honour! since she suffered not, Perfidious traitor, while yet Magnus lived, That ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... of his Orbit and beyond his Ken, the same as Tatting or Biology. His conception of a keen and sporty game was Pin Pool or Jacks Only with ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... this upwelling of life her love expanded, and the society of Henri was the reward she allowed herself for the intensity of her past sufferings. In the shelter of that room they deemed themselves beyond the world's ken, and every hindrance in their path was forgotten. The child, to whom their love had proved a terror, alone remained a ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... however clung to his favourite whimsy with a tenacity which the general disapprobation only made more intense. His old friends, the stedfast adherents of indefeasible hereditary right, grew cold and reserved. He asked Sancroft's blessing, and got only a sharp word, and a black look. He asked Ken's blessing; and Ken, though not much in the habit of transgressing the rules of Christian charity and courtesy, murmured something about a little scribbler. Thus cast out by one faction, Bohun was not ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to drop out of her ken at once, leave the gift in her lap, and say nothing? Ah! but he was not capable of it. His act must have its price. Just one half hour with her—face to face. Then, shut the door—and, good-bye! What was there to fear? He could control ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... or larnin' uv any kind allowed. You better not be ketched wid a book in yore han's. Dat wus sumptin dey would git you fer. I ken read an' write a little but I learned since de surrender. My mother tole me 'bout dat bein' 'ginst de rules of de white folks. I 'members it while I wus only a little gal. When ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... comfort. Many a time I walked along praying, 'O God of Daniel shut their mouths,' and He did." If she happened to be travelling with bearers or paddlers, she would make them sing and keep them singing; "And, Etubom" (Sir, Chief, or White Man), she would say, when telling her experiences, "ye ken what like their singing is— it would frighten any decent respectable leopard." And yet in some things she was as timid as a child. When travelling in the Mission steam-launch she would bury her head in her hands and cry out in fear if the engine gave ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... declining years, least perhaps of all. For they are a part of the inheritance common to all the races that have sprung from the Asiatic ancestor, who, at periods the nearest of which is far beyond the ken of history, and at intervals of centuries, sent off descendants to find a resting-place in Europe; and it is one great object, if not the principal object, of the original collectors and the translator ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... ken, Dick Rennell had vanished utterly. Where his legs and feet should have been, there was only the rug, with the burn from the glass tube. He raised one arm and could not see ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... "Nay, that is beyond my ken; but go a little farther and thou wilt come to a cow-herd who ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... blithe, so bright, It hurries to my eager ken. As though but one short winter's night Had darkened o'er the world since then. It is the same clear dazzling scene;— Perhaps the grass is scarce as green; Perhaps the river's troubled voice ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... occurrence would arise in so short a period which could turn my eyes from the shades of Mount Vernon. But this seems to be the age of wonders. And it is reserved for intoxicated and lawless France (for purposes of Providence far beyond the reach of human ken) to slaughter her own citizens, and to disturb the repose of all the world besides. From a view of the past,—from the prospect of the present,—and of that which seems to be expected, it is not easy for me to decide satisfactorily on the part it might best become me to act. In case of actual ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... queen, on a' aneath your ken, For he wha seems the farthest BUT aft wins the farthest BEN, And whiles the doubie of the schule tak's lead of a' the rest: The birdie sure to sing is the gorbal ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... habitual acquiescence, are every now and then interfering, and almost always in the wrong place. The real causes which determine the prosperity or wretchedness, the improvement or deterioration of the Hindoos, are too far off to be within their ken. They have not the knowledge necessary for suspecting the existence of those causes, much less for judging of their operation. The most essential interests of the country may be well administered without obtaining any of their approbation, or mismanaged to almost any excess without attracting ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... ye homes of living men! I have no relish for your pleasures— In the human face I nothing ken That with my spirit's yearning measures. I long for onward bliss to be, A day of joy, a brighter morrow; And from this bondage to be free, Farewell thou world of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... glens, where I have often listened to their slow and plaintive strains borne upon the mountain breezes. "Are ye frae the braes of Gleneffar?" said an old Scotchwoman to me; "were ye at our kirk o' Sabbath last, ye would na' ken the difference." ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... Generals see only the religious side of the question.' They will be right. Without faith we should have been foolish indeed to have embarked on this war and to continue it for so many months. Indeed, it must be a matter of faith, for the future is hidden from us. What has been is within our ken, but what is before is beyond the knowledge of the ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... indispensable to her progress. She takes in 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 ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... 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
... gudeman, ye need 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 ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... mornin' early, Ken ye wha I chanced to see? But my lassie, gay and frisky, Peggie wi' the glancin' e'e. Phoebus, left the lap o' Thetis, Fast was lickin' up the dew, Whan, ayont a risin' hilloc, First my Peggie ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... 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
... 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 ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... We were still in the piazza, where Smoothpate was unquestionably present in the body, but the head was within the house, and altogether, as I can avouch, beyond the Don's ken. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... redeems and glorifies the material agency, while on the other hand the homeliness, and even animal quality, of the material thing, brings to man, with a poignancy and an appeal that are incalculable, the spiritual thing that, in its absolute essence, would be so far beyond his ken and his experience and his powers of assimilation that ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... without a struggle. The constitution, which had endured for five hundred years, and under which the insignificant town on the Tiber had risen to unprecedented greatness and glory, had sunk its roots into the soil to a depth beyond human ken, and no one could at all calculate to what extent the attempt to overthrow it would penetrate and convulse civil society. Several rivals had been outrun by Pompeius in the race towards the great goal, but had not been wholly set aside. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... sakes, that you had a premonitory warning," said Shelby, in all sincerity. "Such things are indeed beyond our ken. Did you get any ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... gloomy angle of the corridor, from whence as he watched them he saw their figures seem to glide along the lighted portion, the Comte yielding entirely to his leader's every motion, till they passed quickly out of the sentry's ken. ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... because the spirits from then unknown planets did not feel themselves called upon to communicate with the spirit of one who knew nothing of their home, for he received visitors from worlds in the starry heavens far beyond human ken. It would almost seem, though to the faithful Swedenborgian the thought will doubtless appear very wicked, that the system of Swedenborg gave no place to Uranus and Neptune, simply because he knew nothing about those ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... opening first one door, and then the other, "that is, ef they ain' gone. I mighty 'feared they gone. I seen 'em goin' out the back way about a little while befo' you all come,—but I thought they might 'a' come back. Mister, ken y' all teck me 'long with you when you go?" she asked the officer, in a low voice. "I ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... Tosh," continued Leeby; "an' there's nae doot 'at he's makkin for the minister's, for he has on his black coat. He'll be to row the minister's luggage to the post-cart. Ay, an' that's Davit Lunnan's barrow. I ken it by the shaft's bein' spliced wi' yarn. Davit broke ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... The Captain of that host Spake with strong voice: "We bear to men God's gift the uttermost, Whereof the oracle and sign Sibyl and sages may divine: A star shall blazon in their ken, Borne with us ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... thoughts awoke and crowded within her ken this thought appeared foolish, and still more so the strong influence it had left upon her will, for in the momentum of this influence she had risen without debating ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... of him. None knew how he fared. Not even a rumour reached the coast of success or failure. When he had crossed the mountains that divided the British protectorate from the lands that were to all intents independent, he vanished with his followers from human ken. The months passed, and there was nothing. It was a year now since he had arrived at Mombassa, then it was a year since the last letter had come from him. It was only possible to guess that behind those gaunt rocks fierce battles were fought, new lands explored, and the slavers beaten back foot ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... opportunity of studying his chief under different auspices. Dartrey, notwithstanding the fact that he was a miracle of punctuality and devotion to duty, both at the offices in Parliament Street and at the House, seemed to have the gift of fading absolutely out of sight from the ken of even his closest friends when the task of the day was accomplished. He excused himself always, courteously but finally, from accepting anything whatever in the way of social entertainment, he belonged to ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 great enough, if I bring you any light or joy; for I ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... you will at least ken who and what you are, wed or unwed, fish, flesh or good red herring, and cease to live nameless, like the Poticary's serving-woman," concluded ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 stroppin', ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... spent with his simple-minded hosts and friends; and, happiest of all, the hours in which he basked in the smiles and blushes of pretty Sarah Hoggins, carrying home her pails of milk, helping her to churn the butter, or telling to her wondering ears stories of the great world outside her ken, while the sunset steeped the orchard trees ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... my song; so, you see, the name of bad luck brings bad luck. Not that there is really such a thing as luck. Everything that occurs has a cause, an infinite line of causes. But a man's success or failure is due partly to causes outside of his control, often outside of his ken. As, for instance, a sudden change of weather may defeat a clever general, and thrust victory upon his incompetent adversary. Now when these outside causes are adverse, and prevail, we say a man has bad luck. When they favor, ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... 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
... wad I ken ye loved me, Sir, That have been sae lang away? And how wad I ken ye loved me, Sir? Ye never telled ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll
... concernt i' the matter o' the wark I may be at: first, my ain duty to the wark—that's me; syne him I'm working for—that's the minister; and syne him 'at sets me to the wark—ye ken wha that is: whilk o' the three wad ye hae me ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... dinna ken about that, father," said my mother, helping me to a plateful of fried sillocks. "If it's danger you're wantin' the laddie to seek, he's seen o'er many dangers already, I'm thinking. It's nearly drowned he was, only a week ago, in the ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... twa met, and they twa plat, And fain they wad be near; And a' the warld might ken right weel, ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... is a rake, frae England he's come; The Scots dinna ken his extraction ava; He keeps up his misses, his landlord he duns, That's fast drawen' the lands o' Gight awa'. O whare are ye ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... advantage, in the acquisition of property, in moral and mental development, in the cultivation of sturdy manhood and womanhood, yet, all these have come to us as a direct result of the labors of Lincoln, who, with the ken of a prophet and the vision of a seer, in those dark and turbulent days, wrought ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... grew rife Which had come long ago on the pasture, when round me the sheep Fed in silence—above, the one eagle wheeled slow as in sleep; And I lay in my hollow and mused on the world that might lie 'Neath his ken, though I saw but the strip 'twixt the hill 140 and the sky; And I laughed—"Since my days are ordained to be passed with my flocks, Let me people at least, with my fancies, the plains and the rocks, Dream the life I am never to mix with, and image the show ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... seen hereafter from heaven, will seem like an hour passed long ago, and dimly remembered;—that long, laborious, full of joys and sorrows as it is, it will then have dwindled down to a mere point, hardly visible to the far-reaching ken of the disembodied spirit. But the spirit itself soars onward. And thus death is neither an end nor a beginning. It is a transition not from one existence to another, but from one state of existence to another. No link is broken in ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... and she had waked to fare forth and capture, by hook or by crook, the most eligible parti who was ever likely to swim into her ken. Another morning in October, and all her waking horizon seemed filled by the knowledge that, at half-past four in the afternoon, she would meet and talk of cheroot factories with a man so little eligible that he trusted the crows to bring his raiment. In the wide world was there another person whose ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... that bottle of soothing syrup; I went to Sol Levi and easily procured delivery of the other five. Then I strolled peacefully to supper over at McCloud's hotel. Pathological knowledge of dope fiends was outside my ken—I could not guess how soon my man would need another dose of his "hop," but I was positively sure that another would be needed. Inquiry of McCloud elicited the fact that the ex-jockey had swallowed a hasty meal and had immediately ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... Blue Peter stretched his muscular limbs in pursuit. It was a wild ride along the grassy track, beside watery marshes and reedy pools that gleamed in the dim light of a new moon. The distant woods showed black against the sky. There was no light to mark a human habitation within ken. There was nothing but night and loneliness and the solemn beauty of an unpeopled waste. A forest pony stood here and there—pastern-deep in the sedges—and gazed at those two wild riders, grave and gay, like a ghost. A silvery snake glided across the track; a water-rat plunged, with a heavy ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... has another air from powerful Master Rollock, and Mess David Black of North Leith, and sic like. Alack-a-day, wha can ken, if it please your lordship, whether sic prayers as the Southrons read out of their auld blethering black mess-book there, may not be as powerful to invite fiends, as a right red-het prayer warm from the ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... 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
... seen Aun' Jinkey and spoken a few reassuring words as he passed with Scoville's attacking force. Since that time she had done a power of "projeckin'" over her corncob pipe, but events were now hurrying toward conclusions beyond her ken. It has already been observed that Aun' Jinkey was a neutral power. As yet, the weight of her decision had been cast neither for the North nor the South, while the question of freedom remained to be smoked over indefinitely. There was no indecision in her mind, however, in regard to her ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... often lurked in systems longer than anyone expected or planned, and a few have become widely known. Ken Thompson's 1983 Turing Award lecture to the ACM admitted the existence of a back door in early Unix versions that may have qualified as the most fiendishly clever security hack of all time. In this scheme, the C compiler contained ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... one had seen Billy since he had passed from the ken of the trussed deputy sheriff, and as Billy had no desire to be seen he slipped over the edge of the embankment into a dry ditch, where he squatted upon his haunches waiting for the train to depart. The stop out there in the dark night was one of those mysterious ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... dinna ken your uncle—the responsible Deacon—save by sight and repute, as ane that disna spend, an' isna verra sociable; yet he attends the Great Kirk, "comes forrit," does he not, to the Holy ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... matter of your brother's strange disappearance, Miss Talbot. I am not a professional detective, but my friends are good enough to believe that I am very successful in unravelling mysteries that are beyond the ken of Scotland Yard. I have heard something of the facts in this present affair. Will you trust me so far as to tell me all that is known ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy |
