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More "Disbelieve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... compassion for all creatures is prescribed; and, lastly, the belief is directed to be entertained that acts have fruits, for the Vedas declare as such. He that does not believe that acts have fruits disbelieve the very Vedas which of course, is a ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... mean that," I denied warmly. "I do believe every word you have said. No one who knows you could disbelieve you for ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... reason to believe that these libels have been got up at your house, and by you, because that fact has been attested by persons who have been in your service, and who have seen them in progress; beyond this no one makes me believe or disbelieve anything." ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... oppressed nationality. It would be utterly absurd to tell the story of his father's vision, and say that he looked on the South African War as a skirmish preliminary to the Armageddon. Sitting opposite to this cynical man of the world and listening to his talk, Hyacinth came himself to disbelieve in principle. He felt that there must be some baser motive at the bottom of his desire to fight, only, for the life of him, he could not remember what it was. He could not even imagine a good reason—good in the estimation of ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... simply to disbelieve anything so preposterous as that all Wiltshire should be remarking on poor Marian's pride, or whether to explain it by her well-known shyness, when Clara made another sudden transition. "Do ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... it, and I dare say Bently and Rangely have their superstitions. There are probably ten thousand people in this good city of Boston—and for aught I know a hundred thousand—who believe, or, if you like, disbelieve, as I do." ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... deliver me from the torments of suspense, and trust my own fortitude to save me from despair.' 'Know then,' said OMAR, 'that thou art hated by ALMORAN, and that he loves ALMEIDA.' At this declaration, the astonishment of HAMET was equal to his concern; and he was in doubt whether to believe or disbelieve what he heard: but the moment he recollected the wisdom and integrity of OMAR, his doubts were at an end; and having recovered from his surprize, he was about to make such enquiries as might gratify ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... nothing of the sort had ever been thought of before, such proof would have falsified the affidavit. But so far from offering any such evidence, all the evidence adduced confirms the statement in the affidavit; and yet my learned friend still ventures to ask you to disbelieve what Lord Cochrane has sworn, although his oath is unopposed by any testimony, and supported by all the ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... impossible statements, he refused to keep them in bounds. When people recounted in his hearing the glorious history of Nayanjore with absurd exaggerations he would accept all they said with the utmost gravity, and never doubted, even in his dreams, that any one could disbelieve it. ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... patrician. It was the county town, and contained six thousand inhabitants, two hotels, and a court-house. It had also two or three business streets and half a dozen churches, all very much at odds with each other and each seriously inclined to disbelieve in the probable salvation of the rest. The "first families" (of which there were eight or ten, with numerous branches) attended the Episcopal Church, the second best the Presbyterian, while the inferior classes, who could scarcely be counted at all, ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... every step of this proceeding, that there is an inherent presumption of corruption in every act. We shall show the presumptions which preceded, we shall show the presumptions which accompanied the proof; and these, with the subsequent presumptions, will make it impossible to disbelieve them. Such a body of proof was never given upon any such occasion: and it is such proof as will prevail against the whole voice of corruption, that amazing, active, diligent, spreading voice, which has been ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... "I believe I'll go. I know most of this talk is wildly exaggerated, but I'm sensible enough to discount all that sort of thing and to disbelieve absurd stories. I shan't go with the slightest notion of finding the thing true, but will be satisfied if I do reasonably well. In fact, if I don't pick up more than a hatful of gold a day, I ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... cannot understand. You live in that country people only see in their dreams. You live in a country that we can only dream about. Maybe it is as hard for you to understand why we disbelieve as it is for us to believe. Oh! what have I said! You know everything! Give me time to undo what I have done. Give me a year—a month—a day—an hour! Give me this hour's end, that I may ...
— The Hour Glass • W.B.Yeats
... principles of the English Reformation." But the criticism which had been set afloat by the movement had discovered and realised, what defenders of the English Church had hitherto felt it an act of piety to disbelieve, when put before them by Romanists like Lingard, and radicals like Cobbett. that the Reformers had been accomplices in many indefensible acts, and had been inconsistent and untrustworthy theologians. Providentially, ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... men turned their thoughts to the dread Sea of Darkness. The less ignorant among them had begun to disbelieve the tales of dragons and fiery pits. The world was round, said wise men. Why then, if that were so, India could be reached by sailing west as well ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... see Hazel as Edward saw her somewhat detracted from my enjoyment of her history. That being said the rest is, thank goodness, praise. Miss WEBB is a careful and sincere workman, who, whether you believe or disbelieve in her characters, writes with such real compassion for suffering that she cannot fail to enlist your sympathy. Additionally her vein is original, and she only needs a little more experience to make a great ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... collecting to heap upon me. But I am alarmed at the effect it may have on, and the advantage the French government may be disposed to make of, the spirit which is at work to cherish a belief in them that the treaty is calculated to favor Great Britain at their expense. Whether they believe or disbelieve these tales, the effect it will have upon the nation will be nearly the same; for, whilst they are at war with that power, or so long as the animosity between the two nations exists, it will, no matter at whose ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... races not only believe in a life after death; they are even of opinion that they would never die at all if it were not for the maleficent arts of sorcerers who cut the vital thread prematurely short. In other words, they disbelieve in what we call a natural death; they think that all men are naturally immortal in this life, and that every death which takes place is in fact a violent death inflicted by the hand of a human enemy, though ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... destiny that burrows ahead, to which it transmits the last link of our chains. The one thrusts us back, the other urges us forward, with a like irresistible violence. But the violence of the past is perhaps more terrible and more alarming. One may disbelieve in destiny. It is a god whose onslaught many have never experienced. But no one would dream of denying the oppressiveness of the past. Sooner or later its effect must inevitably be felt. Those even who refuse to admit the intangible will credit the past, which their ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... word has a meaning, and suggests that meaning to the mind of any one who is listening to me. But suppose I ask him, Whether it is true: whether he believes it? He can give no answer. There is as yet nothing to believe, or to disbelieve. Now, however, let me make, of all possible assertions respecting the sun, the one which involves the least of reference to any object besides itself; let me say, "the sun exists." Here, at once, is something which a person can say he believes. But ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... of the Saint, who, in thus bowing to the crowd, was expressing his approbation of their proceedings. It was, in fact, a regular miracle. So alleged both padres and cura, and who was there to contradict them? It would have been a dangerous matter to have said nay. In San Ildefonso no man dared to disbelieve the word of the Church. The miracle worked well. The religious enthusiasm boiled up; and when Saint John was returned to his niche, and the little "cofre" placed in front of him, many a "peseta", "real," and "cuartillo," were dropped in, which would otherwise have been deposited ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... doctor of the Church, shows whence Donatello derived his prosy idea, though the St. Peter is treated in a less archaic manner. The St. Mark is much more successful: there is conviction as well as vigour and greater skill. Michael Angelo exclaimed that nobody could disbelieve the Gospel when preached by a saint whose countenance is honesty itself. The very drapery—il prudente costume e religioso—[31] was held to contribute to Michael Angelo's praise. The grave and kindly face, devout and holy,[32] together with a certain homeliness of attitude, ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... charges against the private character of Seneca, venomously retailed by a jealous Greekling like Dio Cassius, which do not rest on a tittle of evidence, and seem to be due to a mere spirit of envy and calumny. I shall not again allude to these scandals because I utterly disbelieve them. A man who in his "History" could, as Dio Cassius has done, put into the mouth of a Roman senator such insane falsehoods as he has pretended that Fufius Calenus uttered in full senate against Cicero, was evidently actuated by a spirit which disentitles his statements to my credence. Seneca was ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... burst into tears, and reproaches of her husband. I saw her, in 1857, at Marysville, and disbelieve the story. And the WINGDAM CHRONICLE, of the next week, under the head of "Touching Reunion," said: "One of those beautiful and touching incidents, peculiar to California life, occurred last week in our city. The wife of one of Wingdam's eminent ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... light, but magnetic attraction goes through it as sand went through the sieve. No good reasons can be given why the presence of a cat should not betray itself to certain organizations, at a distance, through the walls of a box in which the animal is shut up. We need not disbelieve the stories which allege such an occurrence as a fact and a not very ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... elsewhere" confirmatory of his view that the English were the descendants of the Ten Tribes. I promised to do so, swallowing even that comprehensive "elsewhere." It was none of my business to believe or disbelieve: I was paid to get up a case, and I got one up to the best of my ability. I imagine it was at least as good as most other cases in similar matters: at any rate, it pleased ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... training at an ordinary school,— and on the strength of that, although he had never before given a serious thought to religion, and certainly nothing worthy of the name of study, he held himself competent to judge and to disbelieve! ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... extended over several miles, without taking them beyond the bounds of Coton Manor. Durant began to disbelieve in the existence of a world beyond. Coton Manor had swallowed up the county; it seemed to have opened its gates and swallowed ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... rest, they're free to do Whate'er their fancy prompts them to, Provided they make nothing of it Towards rank or honor, power or profit; Which things we naturally expect, Belong to US, the Establisht sect, Who disbelieve (the Lord be thanked!) The aforesaid Chapter of the Blanket. The same mild views of Toleration Inspire, I find, this buttoned nation, Whose Papists (full as given to rogue, And only Sunnites with a brogue) Fare just as well, with all their fuss, As ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... have sown torpedoes in the open sea, those who have dropped bombs on Antwerp and Paris indiscriminately with the idea of killing whom they may strike, have taken to heart Bernhardi's doctrine that war is a glorious occupation. Can any one longer disbelieve the completely barbarous ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... only to give place to a worse. Was all this accident or fell design? Conscience had made a coward of me, and yet what reason had I to disbelieve the worst? We were pirouetting on the edge of an abyss; sooner or later the false step must come and the pit swallow us. I began to wish myself back in London, and I did get back to my room in our old house. My dancing ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... make, and easily feel when they grow boisterous. If there be anything in man that partakes of the divine nature it is his soul, which, beyond all dispute, guides and governs him, and yet we cannot see it. Let all this, therefore, teach you not to neglect or disbelieve the Deity, because He is invisible; learn to know His presence and power from the visible effects of it in the world around you; be persuaded of the universal care and providence of the all-surrounding Deity from ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... make some atonement, as near to restitution or reparation, as is possible, to those I have wronged or misled. And do ye outwardly, and from a point of false bravery, make as light as ye will of my resolution, as ye are none of ye of the class of abandoned and stupid sots who endeavour to disbelieve the future existence of which ye are afraid, I am sure you will justify me in your hearts, if not by your practices; and one day you will wish you had joined with me in the same resolution, and will confess there ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... mind be impossible for any man, whose intelligence had been trained by years of experience in this and other courts, and whose daily duty it is to discriminate as to the credibility of testimony, to disbelieve the history so circumstantially detailed in the box by Miss Smithers (Sensation). I watched her demeanour both under examination and cross-examination very closely indeed, and I am convinced that she was telling the absolute truth so far as she ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... to me, that scarce grieve thee— That entire death shall null my entire thought; And I feel torture, not that I believe thee, But that I cannot disbelieve thee not. Shall that of me that now contains the stars Be by the very contained stars survived? Thus were Fate all unjust. Yet what truth bars An all unjust Fate's truth from being believed? Conjecture cannot fit to the seen world A garment ...
— 35 Sonnets • Fernando Pessoa
... vacillating policy; knew him to be for compromise, for concessions; knew that he disbelieved in the terrible earnestness of the struggle, and always prophesied its very speedy end. The Senate confirmed Seward with open eyes. Perhaps at the start his imagination and his patriotism made him doubt and disbelieve in the enormity of treason—he could not realize that the traitors would go to the bitter end. Seemingly, Seward still hopes that one day or another they may return as forlorn sheep. Under the like impressions, he always ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... lightly enough, but with a purpose. For, absurd as may seem the fictions we have sported with, are they not types of many other far more serious ones which we cram down the throats of our rising generation, long after we ourselves have begun to disbelieve them? There is a conventional teaching which we decorously administer, and leave our pupils to disavow it when they can. History is still taught in our public and private schools, seasoned with all the exploded blunders of the past. Men grow up to full manhood with ideas of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... understand, than of doing what they were required to do—whence their crude and false utterances concerning a God of their own fancy—in whom it was a good man's duty, in the name of any possible God, to disbelieve; and just because she was true, authority had immense power over her. The very sweetness of their nature forbids such to doubt the ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... in the most glowing descriptions of the Elysian Fields. A popular artist once drew a picture of them: 'The Plains of Heaven' it was called, and the painter's name was Martin. If he was to do so now, the public (who are vulgar) would exclaim 'Betty Martin.' Not that they disbelieve in it, but that the attractions of the place are dying out, like ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... release my brother; and after much debate within myself, my sisterly remorse overcame my virtue, and I did yield to him. But the next morning betimes, Angelo, forfeiting his promise, sent a warrant for my poor brother's head!' The duke affected to disbelieve her story; and Angelo said that grief for her brother's death, who had suffered by the due course of the law, had disordered her senses. And now another suitor approached, which was Mariana; and Mariana said: 'Noble prince, as there ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... lifted in the air; but he was not sure. He was presently only too certain of something else—that the boat was moving away, not in the direction in which it had approached, but southwards. He tried, as long as he could, to disbelieve this; but there it went—away—away—and Oliver had to come down from his stone, put on his clothes again, and find ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... not found, and people were beginning to disbelieve in its existence, when suddenly indications appeared which showed that it was near at hand. Nuggets, some large, some small, began to be constantly discovered, and every day news was brought into Ballarat about the turning-up of a thirty-ounce or a twenty-ounce nugget in ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... interrupted by their separating to dress for dinner. It left Cecilia in much perplexity; she knew not what wholly to credit, or wholly to disbelieve; but her chief concern arose from the unfortunate change of countenance which Lady Honoria had been ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... intrigue of the antient is a piece of private history, the truth of which my beloved cares not to own, and indeed affects to disbelieve: as she does also some puisny gallantries of her foolish brother; which, by way of recrimination, I have hinted at, without naming my ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Can some amorous promise underlie this, as in the case of Mr. Pickwick's letter to Mrs. Bardell, about the warming-pan? 'This letter the King hath,' says Carey. Was it with Gowrie, not the Master, that the Queen was in love? She was very fond of Beatrix Ruthven, and would disbelieve in the guilt of her brothers; hence these tears and that anger of ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... gratitude. She had aided me substantially and effectually by a loan of five thousand pounds. Could I remember these things? Could I believe she loved me? Could I hear wisdom urge me to marry her, and disregard every dear advantage, disbelieve every flattering suggestion, disdain every well-weighed counsel, turn and leave her? Young, graceful, gracious—my benefactress, attached to me, enamoured of me. I used to say so to myself; dwell on the word; ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... at dawn before the world is astir. In the mean time"—he paused to return his sword to its scabbard—"in the meantime I must have the names and residence of these gentlemen. It is not for me to believe or disbelieve their story." ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... people and some members of the press in England to disbelieve the sincerity of the Khedive. He was accused of annexation under the pretext of suppressing the vast organization of the White Nile slave-trade. It was freely stated that an Englishman was placed in command because an Egyptian could not be relied upon to succeed, but that the greed of new territory ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... graces of character and not for mere dogma, the assertion may equally be made of many whose belief is far short of Deism. Though they may think the proof incomplete that the universe is a work of design, and though they assuredly disbelieve that it can have an Author and Governor who is absolute in power as well as perfect in goodness, they have that which constitutes the principal worth of all religions whatever, an ideal conception of a Perfect Being, to which they habitually refer as the guide of their conscience; and this ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... Sey—and I've learned a thing or two. One of them is this: It's not enough to suspect everybody; you must have no preconceptions. Divest yourself entirely of every fixed idea if you wish to cope with a rascal of this calibre. Don't jump at conclusions. We should disbelieve everything, as well as distrust everybody. That's the road to success; and I ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... growing meanwhile, as the soul does. And the ancient oak at the cross was rent, and many score of ash trees. But why should I tell all this? the people who have not seen it (as I have) will only make faces, and disbelieve; till such another frost comes; which perhaps may ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... cried, 'I can see you disbelieve my story and make light of the perils that surround me; but who are you to judge? My family share my apprehensions; they help me in secret; and you saw yourself by what an emissary, and in what a place, they have chosen to supply me with the funds for my escape. I admit that you ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... shame—when utterly disgraced, judge, Byron, what my feelings must be at Murray's shewing me some beautiful verses of yours. I do implore you for God sake not to publish them. Could I have seen you one moment, I would explain why. I have only time to add that, however those who surround you may make you disbelieve it, you will draw ruin on your own head and hers if at this moment you shew these. I know not from what quarter the report originates. You accused me, and falsely; but if you could hear all that is said at this moment, you would believe ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... not correspond to the record. No doubt God does speak through conscience; but what sent Abraham on his terrible journey was a command which he knew did not spring up within, but came to him from above. We may believe or disbelieve the possibility or the actuality of such direct and distinguishable commands from God, but we do not face the facts of this narrative unless we recognise that it asserts that God made His will known to Abraham, and that Abraham knew that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... thriving branch of national industry (Smuggler) The record of our race is essentially unwritten There are few inventions in morals They liked not such divine right nor such gentle-mindedness They had come to disbelieve in the mystery of kingcraft Thirty thousand masses should be said for his soul Thirty-three per cent. interest was paid (per month) Those who argue against a foregone conclusion Three or four hundred petty sovereigns ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... on his face like another opponent of the truth; or, may be, his very reason would have been shattered at the discovery that here before him was that very supernatural and divine Working in Whose existence he had been doing his best to persuade his fellow creatures to disbelieve. ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... Miss Heydinger declined to disbelieve in the spirits of the dead, and this led to controversy in the laboratory over Tea. For the girl students, being in a majority that year, had organised Tea between four o'clock and the advent of the extinguishing policeman at five. And the ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... them nor attempted to. The North-country character was an unsolved mystery to him, and that after ten years' study. "One-half o' what ye say they doot, and they let ye see it; t'ither half they disbelieve, and they tell ye so," he once said. And that explained his attitude toward them, and consequently theirs ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... was set up in Cambridge in 1639, with the statement that it "had come to stay." Books printed in those days were mostly sermons filled with the most comfortable assurance that the man who let loose his intellect and allowed it to disbelieve some very difficult things would be essentially——well, I hate to say right here in a book ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... objected, again, by some persons of no great logical accuracy of thought, that as there would not be any moral blame imputable to one who should seriously disbelieve, or doubt, the existence of Buonaparte, so neither is a rejection of the Scripture-histories to be considered ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... evil creature stained by God knoweth how many shameful crimes—you have her beneath your hand and let her come and go as she lists, to work such new harms as her cunning may suggest—either you disbelieve my statements, or ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... he felt very much disposed to disbelieve what Bill had told him, or rather, to fancy ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... gregarious—have changed with the modes and habits of their victims, but they are none the less vampires. Have I seen them? No! but my not having been thus fortunate, or rather unfortunate, does not make me so discourteous as to disbelieve those who tell me that they have seen a vampire—that peculiar, indefinably peculiar shape that, wriggling along the ground from one tombstone to another, crawls up and over the churchyard wall, and making for the nearest house, disappears through ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... false position. You look upon me as the crafty, scheming steward—one who is your pitiless jailer—and I have to bear it. But there is something which I can say—and I warn you, or rather I implore you, not to disbelieve me; I entreat you to let my words have some weight. I declare to you, then, by all that is most sacred among men, that this restraint which I ask you to undergo is out of no selfish desire, no avarice, no lack of honor for you, and—affection, but because of a plan which I have, the success ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... Hawthorne makes of this enginery of local gossip and traditional horror, in preparing the way for some catastrophe that is to come, or in overshooting the mark with some exaggerated rumor which, by pretending to disbelieve it, he causes to have just the right effect upon the reader's mind. Some of the old houses that stand endwise to the street, looking askant at the passer,—especially if he is a stranger in town,—might be veritable treasuries of this sort of material. ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... face, Forever beaming with a new-born grace, And dares with impious voice aloud proclaim He knows no Heaven but this—no God but Fame. Lord, in refusing to acknowledge Thee, Vain man denies his own reality; But tho' the boon of life he may receive From God, and still affect to disbelieve, What are his views at death's resounding knell? Just Heaven! Sure, man ne'er died an infidel. Stretched on the agonizing couch of pain, All human aid inefficacious, vain, Where shall his tortured spirit rest? Ah, where? The past, all gloom! the future, all despair! ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
... bare. descender descend, go down, sink. descolorido, -a colorless, pale. desconocer not know, be ignorant of, ignore. desconsuelo m. trouble, affliction. descorts adj. discourteous, ill-bred, impudent. descortesa f. discourtesy. descreer disbelieve, deny, discredit, disown. descubrir discover, reveal, expose, uncover, make known. descuidado, -a care-free. desde prep. from. desdn m. disdain, scorn, contempt. desdeo m. disdain, scorn. desdeoso, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... met Jimmy disbelieve this story. They argue that its premises are in disaccord with the known laws governing human nature, that its details do not square with the average of probability. People who have seen and conversed with Jimmy ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... the facts of the case," said Johnson, "and he does me the honour to disbelieve me. The lieutenant has gone off to the Ministry of War for instructions. Meanwhile, you are under arrest, and they won't let you quit this spot without authority. If you really mean that you must go ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... she had formerly made a good shot in respect of the Median business, replied in the hexameter rhythm that the issues of victory lay around a wooden wall. Now having this as a proof I will neither refuse to believe in oracles myself nor allow others to disbelieve them. For when the race had begun and the horses had been sent away by the sound of a trumpet, other men were taking part in the contest, and also Pheron the son of Trapezites a Corinthian: this is not the Pheron who, ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... and aesthetic culture. Protestants, as a rule, honestly believe that the reading of the Bible at the opening of school tends to waken and develop the moral aspirations of the child. Just as honestly and conscientiously do Catholics disbelieve in the efficacy of Bible reading, while they boldly condemn secular education as a principle. Father Muller, priest of the congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, in his work upon public school education, published three years ago ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... to Mrs. Inge's, yet you find me here, because I preferred a quiet evening at home to a noisy one elsewhere. How do you explain the contradiction if you disbelieve my words?" ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... my very thoughts, dear Therese," said Mesmer, tenderly. "You see into my mind, and its perceptions find birth upon your lips. Let doctors sneer, and learned skeptics disbelieve, but the day will come when all must acknowledge that magnetism is truth, and all human wisdom lies. Physicians, though, will be its deadliest enemies, for they are travellers, who, having strayed from the right path, go farther and farther from truth, because ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... have a sense of satisfaction, of security, never felt in a land that had no historic past. The knowledge that my individual life is but a span, a breath; that in a little while I too must wither and mingle like one of those fallen yellow leaves with the mould, does not grieve me. I know it and yet disbelieve it; for am I not here alive, where men have inhabited for thousands of years, feeling what I now feel—their oneness with everlasting nature and the undying human family? The very soil and wet ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... define and limit God in order to take hold of Him, to detach one's self and parts of the universe from God in some mysterious way in order to reduce life to a dramatic antagonism, is not faith, but infirmity. Excessive strenuous belief is not faith. By faith we disbelieve, and it is the drowning man, and not the strong swimmer, who clutches at the floating straw. It is in the nature of man, it is in the present purpose of things, that the real world of our experience and will should appear to us not only as a progressive ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... accept without bothering to assay for the few grains of gold in it. Washington Irving had just the playful kindness which sufficed best to deal with the accumulations of his age; if he does not forbid you to believe, he does not oblige you to disbelieve, and he has always a tolerant civility in his humor which comports best with the duty of taking leniently a history impossible to take altogether seriously. Till the Spaniards had put an end to the Moorish misrule, with its ruthless despotism and bloody civil brawls, the Moors ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... if you disbelieve me; this is what happened," Daly rejoined. "My friend—we'll call him the man—went to the office late in the evening and after some talk, covered Hulton with his pistol. The lad had had some trouble about his debts, because the old man would have fired him out of the business if he'd ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... occurring of the untruthful arts and tricks of the afflicted children, of their cunning evasions, and, in some instances, palpable falsehoods. Then, further, there was solid and substantial evidence before them that ought to have made them pause and consider, if not doubt and disbelieve. We find the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... were quieted. But again, when I spoke of the log book and said that the ship had been enclosed in the ice for thirteen years, even the lieutenant seemed to disbelieve me. ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... without a question, a hope, or, failing hope, a sense of rebellion; on the other, we have to recognise that we live in an age when multitudes have ceased to accept religious beliefs simply upon the authority of the Bible—when educated people generally have come quite definitely to disbelieve in the resurrection of the body, a final day of judgment, a localised {222} heaven and material hell—an age which must be one of manifold doubts ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... post when on sentry-duty about a camp at night in the face of the enemy. If guilty of what you charge any Prefect of the Praetorium deserves not otherwise than such a traitor. I have heard all this man has to say. I did not believe you this morning. I do not disbelieve you now. I do not believe this man, I believe he has been treacherous and that in his dexterous defence just now he lied. Watch me! I ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... she had never known her father to say anything that was not perfectly true, yet how could she disbelieve the ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... too, was proscribed by scholastic wisdom; the real Aristotle was only gradually shelled out from under mediaeval accretions. The natural philosopher, Conrad Summenhart[2] (1450-1501) was quite unable to disbelieve the foolish legend, that the appearance of a comet foretold four certain events—heat, wind, war, and the death of princes. At the same time, not being superstitious, he held aloof from the crazy science ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... destruction? Whence is it that there is so much apathy, lukewarmness, and indifference to a brother's eternal welfare. Is it not too often, perhaps, that there is a latent scepticism which induces us to disbelieve the solemn declaration of the Omnipotent—even when he swears by himself—that every jot and tittle of his threatenings shall be accomplished? Surely were it not for some such spirit, we should never rest satisfied with the feeble efforts we may have made to lead the sinner back to his ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... concluded, "am but a soldier of fortune, and can make terms for myself with either party." The blunt counsel pleased the Shah. "You are right, Najib," said Ahmad, "and the Nawab is misled by the impulses of youth. I disbelieve in the Mahratta penitence, and I am not going to throw you over whom I have all along regarded as the manager of this affair. Though in my position I must hear every one, yet I promise never to act ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... My lady, I disbelieved in equality at home because it was against nature, and for that same reason I as utterly disbelieve in it ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... be so, it did seem manifest to him, Dr. Grantly, that Mrs. Proudie absolutely believed the report which she promulgated so diligently. The wish might be father to the thought, no doubt; but that the thought was truly there, Dr. Grantly could not induce himself to disbelieve. His wife was less credulous, and to a certain degree comforted him; but that evening he received a letter which greatly confirmed the suspicions set on foot by Mrs. Proudie, and even shook his wife's faith in Lord Dumbello. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... in the same place, covered in the same manner as when you left it? And if you had put gold in it, you must have found it. You told me it contained olives, and I believed you. This is all I know of the matter: you may disbelieve me if you please; but ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... contend stoutly that I had fire issuing from my mouth, and that I was the devil or his imp. With this question unsettled I shouldn't be surprised if they made these parts another visit to solve their doubts, for the bushrangers who haven't seen me will only deride those who have, and disbelieve all ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... at the girl, who met him with equal indignation. She turned towards him from the shop counter; her breast heaved quickly. He observed her brow, and the sudden strength of her lips. It was intolerable that she should disbelieve him. ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... much more easy to disbelieve than to believe. This is obvious on the side of reason, but it is also true on that of spirit, for to disbelieve is in accordance with environment or custom, while to believe necessitates a spiritual use of the imagination. ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... identity with Barnard, and, consequently, of his power over Isora, there was, and there could be, no feeling short of certainty. But of what nature was that power? Had not Isora assured me that it was not love? Why should I disbelieve her? Nay, did she not love myself? had not her cheek blushed and her hand trembled when I addressed her? Were these signs the counterfeits of love? Were they not rather of that heart's dye which no skill can counterfeit? She ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "very likely. I am one who goes sniffing; I am no poet. I believe in a better future for the world; or, at all accounts, I do most potently disbelieve in the present. Rotten eggs is the burthen of my song. But indeed, your Highness, when I meet with any merit, I do not think that I am slow to recognise it. This is a day that I shall still recall with gratitude, for I have found a sovereign with some ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said the Provencal, quickly; "if we spoke to her, she would disbelieve us. She would no doubt appeal to Mainwaring, and Mainwaring would have no choice but to contradict us. Once put on his guard, he would control his very sadness. Lucretia, offended, might leave your house, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the town has been intentionally omitted. Various people saw numerous things in that house but a correct report never came. Once a friend of mine passed a night in that house. He told me what he had seen. Most wonderful! And I have no reason to disbelieve him. ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... was candid and amused. There was an underlying gravity beneath the smile, and for people who had believed in him as devoutly as his two listeners it was hard to disbelieve him now. ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... of the pleasures of sin; yet their happiness is complete. It would be my greatest happiness to be from this moment entirely like them. Every sin is something away from my greatest enjoyment ... The devil strives night and day to make me forget this or disbelieve it. He says, Why should you not enjoy this pleasure as much as Solomon or David? You may go to heaven also. I am persuaded that this is a lie,—that my true happiness is to go ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... Are you confident of the permanence and triumph of the things you prize? Then you trust in God, you live in the consciousness of his presence. The proof and measure of rationality in the world, and of God's power over it, is the extent of human satisfactions. In hell, good people would disbelieve in God, and it is impious of the trembling devils to believe in him there. The existence of any evil—and if evil is felt it exists, for experience is its locus—is a proof that some accident has intruded into God's works. If that loyalty to the good, which ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... spot. The Roman conquerors, they say, raised up a statue of Venus in this sacred place, intending to destroy all memory of it. I don't think the heathen was as criminal as the Christian is now. To deny and disbelieve, is not so bad as to make belief a ground to cheat upon. The liar Ananias perished for that; and yet out of these gates, where angels may have kept watch—out of the tomb of Christ—Christian priests issue ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... nor disbelieve!" she interrupted. "Remember that you had an opportunity of denying it which ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... elapsed before any other settler entered Hunger valley. They found her skeleton then in the weedy garden. The adobe stands tenantless in the new village of Martinez, and the people have so often heard that the ghosts of the Zamaconas haunt the place that they have begun to disbelieve it. ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... theories are very lamentable. If we would attain to knowledge of anything in God's true Creation, let us disbelieve them wholly! They are the product of an Age of Scepticism; they indicate the saddest spiritual paralysis, and mere death-life of the souls of men: more godless theory, I think, was never promulgated in this Earth. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... reason or another, Mr. Olney chose to disbelieve the stories from Cuba, and tried to throw discredit on General Lee, declaring that his action in the Ruiz matter had been hasty and unwarranted, and that things were not so bad in Cuba as he stated ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... regard to quantity than had that of the old Greeks or Romans, is a mere assumption, originating in a false idea of what quantity is; and, that Greek or Latin verse was less accentual than is ours, is another assumption, left proofless too, of what many authors disbelieve and contradict. Wells's definition of quantity is similar to mine, and perhaps unexceptionable; and yet his idea of the thing, as he gives us reason to think, was very different, and very erroneous. His examples imply, that, like Walker, he had "no conception of quantity ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... through Christ, then certainly Christianity is true for you. And if a Christian asserts that my belief is a false light and that presently I shall "come to Christ," I cannot disprove his assertion. I can but disbelieve it. I hesitate even to make ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... lying! It is impossible indeed for such to imagine that another, with what they would count strong reason for lying, would not lie. Gain is the crucial question for vile souls of any rank. She believed also, for they that lie doom themselves to believe lies as well as disbelieve truths, that Richard had got into the house in order to learn things that might serve in the establishing ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... pondered. Why not? It might help. Because he certainly began to need help. He had gone quite stale. Querida was right; he ought to lie fallow. No ground could yield eternally without rest. Querida was clever enough to know that; and he had been stupid enough to ignore it—even disbelieve it, contemptuous of precept and proverb and wise saw, buoyed above apprehension by consciousness and faith in his own ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... see that these two unattractive persons were really attracted by each other. A great and beautiful miracle had been performed; and the power which had performed it was that Love in which some profess to disbelieve. ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... that to disbelieve in a General Good is to empty life of what constitutes, for most thinking ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... to have received great pleasure in forming this Collection, I would by no means wish it to be imagined, that I am sceptical in my opinions, or entirely disbelieve and set my face against all apparitional record. No; I do believe that, for certain purposes, and on certain and all-wise occasions, such things are, and have been permitted by the Almighty; but by no means do I believe they ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... hard to disbelieve the evidence of their eyes but the boys by the exercise of common-sense solved a mystery which had long ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... out of the path when it came close to him. He often spoke, but could never get any reply. To avoid this unwelcome visitor he forsook the field, and went to school and returned from it through a lane, in which place, between the quarry pack and nursery, it always met him. Unable to disbelieve the evidence of his own senses, or to obtain credit with any of his family, he prevailed upon Mr Ruddle to ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... meditating an abolition of the Parliament, and a practical coronation of himself. The world had ceased to wonder at English democracy giving laws to their quondam rulers, and the democracy was beginning to be a little tired of itself, to disbelieve in its own irksome discipline, and to sigh for the flesh-pots of a modified Presbyterian monarchy. Cromwell, indeed, was at the height of his glory, his honours lie thick upon him, and now, if ever, he is the regal Cromwell that Victor Hugo has portrayed, the uncrowned King of England, ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... Russia," said the optimistic Mr. Tremayne. "If you come back in a few years' time and tell me that you've been appointed an admiral in the Russian Navy, or that you've married the Grand Duchess Irene Yaroslav, I shall not for one moment disbelieve you. At the same time, if you come back from Russia without your ears, the same having been cut off by your peasant neighbours to propitiate the ghost of a martyr who died six hundred years ago, I shall not be surprised either. ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... trial opened, and the charges if the indictment were made public, all sympathisers with the conspiracy affected to disbelieve its existence, and raised their eyes and hands to Heaven, in pious horror, and prayed that justice might be meted out to the accused, who were, they claimed, the best of citizens, the most devout Christians, the most zealous patriots, the most earnest advocates of law and order, ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... on my own door, it occurred to me that I should do well to make sure of not being surprised by Lucilla over the reading of Oscar's letter. The truth is that I shrank from reading it. In spite of my resolution to disbelieve the servant, the dread was now growing on me that the letter would confirm his statement, and would force it on me as the truth that Oscar had left us never to return. I retraced my steps, ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... rising anger. He is always on the look-out for disobedience, and he is ready to chastise the offender almost before he has had time to commit the offence. His pupils, brought up in an atmosphere of suspicion, and taught from their earliest days to disbelieve in and condemn themselves, can scarcely be blamed for living down to the evil reputation which they have unfortunately gained. To persuade a man that he is a miserable sinner is to go some way towards leading him into the path of sin. ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... frowned. "Yes, quite so," he continued. "You have suffered so much of late that you disbelieve in anything but unhappiness. You feel it must be interminable. It was all my fault. You fancy that you are alone, with a bitter hostile world arrayed against you. And since the world is your enemy, what do you care what the enemy thinks of you? Very natural too! That is what you feel. ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... Surry," he said, "that if people heard us talk in this way, they would call us libertines—immoral—any thing? There are two things that people will not disbelieve about me—that I am impure, and a drunkard! Do you know what a good man was heard to say of me the other day? 'Stuart would be one of the greatest soldiers in the army, if he did not drink so hard!'[1] And others add: 'if he were not a libertine.' Well, need I defend myself to you, from these ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... prevalent, since the Christian religion was solely sustained by the Jews of Palestine during the greater part of its first century, it is improbable that any descendants of the Jews of Palestine exist who disbelieve in Christ. After the fall of Jerusalem and the failure of Barchochebas, no doubt some portion of the Jews found refuge in the desert, returning to their original land after such long and strange vicissitudes. This natural movement would account for those Arabian tribes, of whose resistance to Mohammed ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... is truly wise or free or happy; that vice, however lavishly it surround itself with luxury and ease and power, is inherently wretched and foolish and slavish;—these are things which are worth saying and worth believing, things, indeed, which the world dare not and cannot permanently disbelieve, however difficult or even impossible it may be to mark men off into two classes, the good and the bad, however strange the irony of circumstance which so often shows the wicked who 'are not troubled as other men, neither are they ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... good and evil. 'I ought,' as Kant says, necessarily implies 'I can.' The feeling of moral responsibility is an essential part of healthy and developed human nature, and it inevitably presupposes free will. The best argument in its favour is that it is impossible really to disbelieve it. No human being can prevent himself from viewing certain acts with an indignation, shame, remorse, resentment, gratitude, enthusiasm, praise or blame, which would be perfectly unmeaning and irrational if these acts could ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... arrival at home my relations failed to see in me an ill-used lad (I was only sixteen), and seemed inclined to disbelieve my yarns; but this did not alter the facts, nor can I ever forget what I went through during that 'reign of terror,' as it might ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... was a sharp cry—not loud, but telling of unfathomed deeps of anguish, from the verge of which the listener drew back with a shudder. "I would have married him without a single glance at the past! Let him but say 'it is untrue—all that you fear and they declare,' and I would disbelieve this tale, instantly and utterly, though a thousand witnesses swore to the truth of it. Or, let him be all that they say, I would marry him to-night, if I had the right to do it. But I promised—and to promise with an Aylett is to fulfil—that I would be ruled by ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... the true glory of existence. To disbelieve is to give ourselves into the power of death, and just so far to ...
— Heart's-ease • Phillips Brooks
... surpassing him perhaps in intellectual curiosity and thoroughness, manifestly gives no evidence in his writings of the warmth of sympathy, the quickness of emotional response, the fire of passion which we find in the author of Shakespeare's plays. It is difficult to disbelieve that their imaginative participation in the height and breadth of human feeling was the creation of a man who united intellectual greatness with an emotional susceptibility of extraordinary range and delicacy, and with a sympathy, genial, wide, tolerant, but also heartfelt, deep, ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... good. I could not easily disbelieve it. The more we notice animals the more we shall be astonished at them, and interested in their history; the more we shall see in them evidences of the wisdom and the goodness of the Power ...
— True Stories about Cats and Dogs • Eliza Lee Follen
... disbelieve in religion. You must know I began to go to church every Saturday evening and on all festivals. I listened intently to all the services and the sermons, and I read all that I could find to read, and I asked questions of priests and ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... was aware, from the moment in which she received the letter, that she had wronged her daughter by her suspicions. It did not occur to her to disbelieve a word that was said in the letter, or an inference that was implied. She had been wrong, and rejoiced that it was so. But nevertheless there was that in the letter which annoyed and irritated her, though she could not explain to herself the cause of her annoyance. She had thrown all her heart into ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... begin, to a certain extent, to fail me. For several days I have had some threatening symptoms of ill-health; not very serious, perhaps, to a person surrounded with any of the comforts of civilisation, but much so to one in my position. Besides, despite my endeavours to disbelieve the dangers with which we are said to be menaced from lawless freebooters, it is difficult to disregard them so far as ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... certain system of work and follow it out by mathematical rule and plan, without one touch of imagination to help them to discover new channels of interest or historical information. As I told you before I began to speak, you are welcome to entirely disbelieve my story of the Great Pyramid,—but as I have begun it, you may as well hear it through." She paused a moment, then went on: "According to my information, the building of the Pyramids was commenced three hundred years before the Deluge, in the time of ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... Some who disbelieve in the resurrection of Christ assert that Jesus merely swooned, and that pitying hands took Him down from the cross, thinking that He had died. The cool air of the tomb in which He was placed revived Him, so that He came forth from the tomb as though He had really risen from ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... time Abe had tried to induce him to go to the Lord's house and begin to lead a new life; but sin had such a hold upon him that he only made light of everything good, and, in his ignorance and hardihood, professed to disbelieve ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... wished I wasn't, but life turned petty and disgusting to me. I resented everything. It is just as wonderful and radiant a star of hope to read that there is a sure way out of my tangle as if I had consumption and was promised a cure of that. I don't yet exactly believe it, but I don't disbelieve it. All I know is I want to read, read, read all the time. I was just thinking a minute ago that if we had the books here it would be perfect. This is the sort of place where it would be easiest to see that only the good is the real, and that the unsubstantiality of everything ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... vindictive," he said, more kindly,—"least of all toward you. But I cannot see how you should desire the friendship of one whom you regard as a mercenary hypocrite. When you can truthfully assure me that you disbelieve that charge, then, and not till then, will I forgive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... of their degraded condition, of the state of anarchy, of the bloodshed and immorality amid which they live. If these and other facts were known in England, though people might still wonder at the great change which has taken place in these islands, they would cease to disbelieve the statements which have been made by missionaries ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... it to present the facts of his life in the form of an historical novel. In that article it is justly observed that the onus rests with those who accuse Toussaint of hypocrisy to prove their allegation by facts. I would say the same of the other charge, of cruelty. Meanwhile, I disbelieve both charges, for these ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... Supremacy;—now, was I saying one single word in favour of the Supremacy of the Holy See, in favour of the foreign jurisdiction? No, I did not believe in it myself. Did Henry VIII. religiously hold Justification by faith only? did he disbelieve Purgatory? Was Elizabeth zealous for the marriage of the Clergy? or had she a conscience against the Mass? The Supremacy of the Pope was the essence of the "Popery" to which, at the time of the composition of the Articles, the Supreme Head or ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... the Drummer, "I can't exactly say I disbelieve his story, but—well, you see, about a month afterwards I was in Phoenix again, and one night I saw the Prospector and the lunatic taking a drink at a bar together. A little later the Prospector passed me without seeing me. He was walking arm in arm with ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... deduced from it, and capable of existing without it? we would answer, Yes: the little child is certain of its mother's existence before it is capable of knowing God, and the veriest Atheist is certain of his own existence and that of his fellow-men, even when he professes to doubt or to disbelieve the existence of God. It may be true that the essential nature and omniscient knowledge of God is the ultimate and eternal standard of truth and certainty, or, in the words of Fenelon, that "il n'y a qu'une seule verite, et qu'une seule maniere ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... something unfortunate in the air. They have few easy social graces, and they are inclined to abandon at once a situation if it is made difficult for them. If it needs an effort to make a guest happy they leave him alone and trust to a providence in whose powers, however, they entirely disbelieve. Bohun was led to his room, his bags being carried by old Sacha, the Markovitch's ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... it? we would answer, Yes: the little child is certain of its mother's existence before it is capable of knowing God, and the veriest Atheist is certain of his own existence and that of his fellow-men, even when he professes to doubt or to disbelieve the existence of God. It may be true that the essential nature and omniscient knowledge of God is the ultimate and eternal standard of truth and certainty, or, in the words of Fenelon, that "il n'y a qu'une seule verite, et qu'une seule maniere de bien juger, qui est, de juger ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... high authority for ghosts, that it is rank scepticism to disbelieve them. Job saw a ghost, which came for the express purpose of asking a question, and did ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... work of that vixen Feng!" old lady Chia laughed. "She has ever been up to tricks like a very imp, so be quick and disbelieve all her yarns!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... affair, Burr junior. I wanted to disbelieve in your guilt, I wanted to feel that there was no young gentleman in my establishment who could stoop to such a piece of base pilfering; but the truth is so circumstantially brought home through the despicable meanness of a boy of whose actions ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... Levin and Kitty was a brilliant occasion. A difficulty for Levin before the marriage was the necessity of attending confession. Like the majority of his fellows in society, he cherished no decided views on religion. He did not believe, nor did he positively disbelieve. But there could be no wedding without a certificate of confession. To the priest he frankly acknowledged his doubts, that doubt was his chief sin, that he was nearly always in doubt. But the gentle and kindly priest exhorted him to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... You don't mean it! It is simply that you scientists of Charcot's school do not believe in a life beyond the grave! As for me, no one could now make me disbelieve in a future life—no one in ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... not answer him, for, in truth, I only asked with a half hope that he might have some other interpretation of this portent than that of violent death, which seemed the plain meaning of it—that is, if he saw aught, and I had no reason to disbelieve him. I tried to think that his glance had met the sun for a moment before he looked on the king; but I could not think it, for in the hall was no chance thereof. And then he spoke again slowly, with his eyes still on ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... now interrupted by their separating to dress for dinner. It left Cecilia in much perplexity; she knew not what wholly to credit, or wholly to disbelieve; but her chief concern arose from the unfortunate change of countenance which Lady Honoria had been so quick ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... that, before getting to sleep again, Mark thought of what Aunt Chloe had said about the "ghoses"; but having been taught to disbelieve in such things, and always to seek for some natural explanation of whatever appeared supernatural or unreal, he made up his mind to wait and make the attempt to unravel this mystery by himself ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... him, but not in the esoteric explanations and profounder mysteries. I have chased Mystery for more years than I shall own, and, so far as I can see, whenever you open the door on her secret chamber, she shuts a door on the other side and is gone into a further holy of holies. I've come to disbelieve in those who tell me that they have caged her ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... gratified with some recitations and songs given us by Mr. Mathews and his son. They were not less pleased with Mrs. Mathews, whose manners and conversation are peculiarly fascinating, and whose good looks and youthfulness of appearance made them almost disbelieve that she could be the mother of ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... pick up incidental nuggets that happened to lie under his very footstep. Said one man to his friend: "I believe I'll go. I know most of this talk is wildly exaggerated, but I am sensible enough to discount all that sort of thing and to disbelieve absurd stories. I shan't go with the slightest notion of finding the thing true, but will be satisfied if I do reasonably well. In fact, if I don't pick up more than a hatful of gold a day I shall ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... day went on, Louisa began to disbelieve this theory about robbers. It was Marianne's theory for one thing; for another, she recollected that Archie must have taken his apples and gingerbread with him, and his spade. "Is it likely that thieves would ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... have been turned to stone. It didn't occur to him to disbelieve Slim at this point. Slim looked too genuinely the bearer of just such tidings. He ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov
... a prisoner in their hands, was the Lancers. They used to swear that the Lancers never spared a wounded man, but ran him through as they galloped past him. I was told this fifty times, and each time told my informant flatly that I declined to believe the assertion, and should continue to disbelieve it until I had undeniable proof, for it would take a good deal to convince me that a British soldier would strike a fallen foe even in the heat and stress of battle. One day they asked me to come and look at the dead body of one of their field cornets, whom they alleged to have ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... years elapsed before any other settler entered Hunger valley. They found her skeleton then in the weedy garden. The adobe stands tenantless in the new village of Martinez, and the people have so often heard that the ghosts of the Zamaconas haunt the place that they have begun to disbelieve it. ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... tools, and can be made to act, to see, to feel just as they are bidden, and are as helpless to resist that power as the snared bird to avoid the outstretched hand of the fowler. That this power is a power of evil, and comes from the devil himself, I may not disbelieve; for it has never been God's way of dealing with men to bind captive their wills and make them blind and helpless agents of the will of others. Could you read the words of this book, you would find many things therein as strange as any you have heard today. For myself, I have little ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... opinion: the unfortunate Chevalier La Riviere had, before his death, informed the Turkish general that large and powerful succours were expected daily from Sicily. Secretly disquieted by this news, which he had at the time affected to disbelieve, Mustafa now urged immediate action. His opinion was that, in the first instance, they had better attack the castle of St. Elmo. It was a small and insignificant fort which at best would only delay them some ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... hearts and depraved imaginations, who, forming a system of opinions to suit their own unhappy course of conduct, have rebelled against the holiest ordinances of human society, and hating that revealed religion which, with all their efforts and bravadoes, they are unable entirely to disbelieve, labour to make others as miserable as themselves, by infecting them with a moral virus that eats into the soul! The school which they have set up may properly be called the Satanic school; for, though their productions breathe the spirit of Belial ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... purse and took out her copy; Derues snatched it, and tore it up. "Now," he exclaimed, "you are paid; I owe you nothing now. If you like, I will declare it on oath in court, and no one will disbelieve my word." ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... increased, however, by the fact that I do also disbelieve in Imperialism in its popular sense, as a mode or theory of the patriotic sentiment of this country. But popular Imperialism in England has very little to do with the sort of Caesarean Imperialism I wish to sketch. I differ from the Colonial idealism of Rhodes' and Kipling; but I do ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... or seven weeks ago at Geneva," continued Lynde. "I recognized Miss Denham at once; but later I came to doubt and finally to disbelieve that I had ever seen her elsewhere. I refused to accept the testimony of my eyes and ears because—because so much of my happiness depended on my ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... well pleased that she is inquired after of herself, she replies to him, as he inquires, in these words: 'Whoever thou art, excuse me, {but} I have not turned my eyes on any side from this water, and, busily employed, I have been attending to my pursuit. And that thou mayst the less disbelieve {me}, may the God of the sea so aid this employment of mine, no man has been for some time standing on this shore, myself only excepted, nor has any woman been standing {here}.' Her master believed her, and, turning his feet {to go away}, he paced ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... present the facts of his life in the form of an historical novel. In that article it is justly observed that the onus rests with those who accuse Toussaint of hypocrisy to prove their allegation by facts. I would say the same of the other charge, of cruelty. Meanwhile, I disbelieve both charges, for these reasons ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... felt on this occasion were different from any thing that I had before experienced during a long sporting career. My senses were so absorbed by the wondrous and beautiful sight before me that I rode along like one entranced, and felt inclined to disbelieve that I was hunting living things of this world. The ground was firm and favorable for riding. At every stride I gained upon the giraffes, and after a short burst at a swinging gallop I was in the middle of them, and turned the finest ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... however, give a reason for the powerful smell of the male deer; and, after some hesitation, I have determined to set it down here, for the reader to accept or reject, as he thinks proper. I neither believe nor disbelieve it; for although I do not put great faith in gaucho natural history, my own observations have not infrequently confirmed statements of theirs, which a sceptical person would have regarded as wild indeed. ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... out again, pale, resolute, Prepared to die,—that is, alive at last. As we broke up that old faith of the world, Have we, next age, to break up this the new— Faith, in the thing, grown faith in the report— Whence need to bravely disbelieve report Through increased faith ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... rejoined. "But observe how pleasantly and happily Zenobia and Hollingsworth are walking together. I call it a delightful spectacle. It truly rejoices me that Hollingsworth has found so fit and affectionate a friend! So many people in the world mistrust him,—so many disbelieve and ridicule, while hardly any do him justice, or acknowledge him for the wonderful man he is,—that it is really a blessed thing for him to have won the sympathy of such a woman as Zenobia. Any man might be proud of that. Any man, even if he be as great as Hollingsworth, ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... her assignations in the garden, if they are with any one, it is with Gillian, and I see no harm in them, except that we might have been told—-only that would have robbed the entire story of its flavour, I suppose. Besides, I greatly disbelieve the entire story, so don't be worried about it! There—-as if we had not been doing our best to worry you! But come home, dearest old Lily. Gather your chicks under your wing, and when you cluck them together again, all will be well. I don't ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was on my own door, it occurred to me that I should do well to make sure of not being surprised by Lucilla over the reading of Oscar's letter. The truth is that I shrank from reading it. In spite of my resolution to disbelieve the servant, the dread was now growing on me that the letter would confirm his statement, and would force it on me as the truth that Oscar had left us never to return. I retraced my steps, and ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... scandal of the village, that such perfection could not be natural; but, since if all were true that was said upon the subject, the object of their criticism must have been as artificial as Mr Riprapton's left leg, and she must have been nothing more than an animated lay-figure, I began to disbelieve these assertions, the more especially as the lady herself was as easy under them as she was in every gesture and motion. Whenever she made her appearance, so did my old friend Mr R; he entertained a platonic attachment for her, and that the more strongly, as each ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... ain't going to say positively that I believe or disbelieve in ghosts, but all I tell you is what I saw. I can't explain it. I don't pretend I can, for I can't. If you can, well and good; I shall be glad, for it will stop tormenting me as it has done and always will otherwise. There hasn't been a day nor a night since it happened that I haven't ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... though 't is of a piece with the structure of things. And yet there is a sense in which health is catching. There is a contagion of confidence as well as of panic, and the surest way to escape epidemics is to disbelieve them. Radiant people radiate health. The mind is a big factor in things hygienic. 'T is a poor medicine that takes no account of the soul. We are not earthen receptacles for drugs, but breathing clay vivified by thoughts and passions. ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... to hunt up certain facts in Herodotus "and elsewhere" confirmatory of his view that the English were the descendants of the Ten Tribes. I promised to do so, swallowing even that comprehensive "elsewhere." It was none of my business to believe or disbelieve: I was paid to get up a case, and I got one up to the best of my ability. I imagine it was at least as good as most other cases in similar matters: at any rate, it pleased the old ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... no means bigoted; he had moreover, known those who were intimate with Raeburn, and consequently had heard enough of the truth about him to disbelieve the gross libels which were constantly being circulated by the unscrupulous among his opponents. Still, as on that November afternoon he watched Raeburn and his daughter down Southampton Row, he was conscious that for the first time he fully regarded the atheist as a fellow-man. The ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... Tillie too? Even if the old woman had been timid about staying in the house, she had made it clear to Peter that she was entirely unaware of the kind of danger that threatened her employer. Peter had believed her then. He saw no reason to disbelieve her now. She had known as little as Peter about the cause for McGuire's alarm. And here he had found her staring with the same unseeing eyes into the darkness, with the same symptoms of nervous shock as McGuire had shown. What enemy of McGuire's could frighten Aunt Tillie into prostration ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... the quality, whether in a monarchy or a republic; mayors and governors and generals and senators and ex-presidents are nothing to them. How well we know this, and how seldom it finds a distinct expression! Now I tell you truly, I believe in man as man, and I disbelieve in all distinctions except such as follow the natural lines of cleavage in a society which has crystallized according to its own true laws. But the essence of equality is to be able to say the truth; and there is nothing more curious ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... for Moloch?' does not correspond to the record. No doubt God does speak through conscience; but what sent Abraham on his terrible journey was a command which he knew did not spring up within, but came to him from above. We may believe or disbelieve the possibility or the actuality of such direct and distinguishable commands from God, but we do not face the facts of this narrative unless we recognise that it asserts that God made His will known to Abraham, and that Abraham knew that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... some people doubt or disbelieve that sin is the cause of all suffering. I have met such. They freely aver that this cannot be so, because the brute creation suffers, which they say is sinless. It is a well conceded fact that brutes are not accountable. ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... sentence in a newspaper can blast a man! Bereavement, Despair, Lost Love—they come like lightning in a single line. Hope turned sick at these few words, and down went his head and his hands, and he sat all of a heap, cold at heart. Then he began to disbelieve in everything, especially in honesty. For why? If he had only left Liverpool in debt and taken the rail, he would have reached Hull in ample time, and would have gone out to New Zealand in the new ship with money in ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... told him that she was an agent of the English police, and again and again, as she intended, he had disbelieved her. She was so incomparably his intellectual superior that she could make him believe or disbelieve precisely as she chose. She made him think that she had come to Brighton for companionship, and as a proof of her kindly forgiveness of a grave indiscretion. He believed; for never was Rust, even Rust, so idiotic as to suppose that she had succumbed before his charms and had ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... what he had seen and yet, having seen even these incredible things, he could not disbelieve the evidence of his own perceptions. Never in all his life had Tarzan's senses deceived him badly, and so, naturally, he had great faith in them. Each perception which ever had been transmitted to Tarzan's brain had been, with varying accuracy, a true perception. ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... true glory of existence. To disbelieve is to give ourselves into the power of death, and just so far to ...
— Heart's-ease • Phillips Brooks
... this time—?" stammered Ashton, even in his anger unable to disbelieve the engineer's quiet statement. He was disconcerted only for the moment. Again he flared hotly: "But if you didn't, old Leslie must have! It's ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... of the murder of the Saint to gratify a caprice of Herodias. In this Chapel is a marble chest, in which, they told us, were the ashes of St. John; and around it was wound a chain, which, they said, had confined him when he was in prison. We did not desire to disbelieve these statements, and yet we could not feel certain that they were correct —partly because we could have broken that chain, and so could St. John, and partly because we had seen St. John's ashes before, in another church. We could not bring ourselves to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... another, Mr. Olney chose to disbelieve the stories from Cuba, and tried to throw discredit on General Lee, declaring that his action in the Ruiz matter had been hasty and unwarranted, and that things were not so bad in Cuba as he ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... quickly, "I don't quite know what you mean. One who professes to be an infidel professes more or less intelligent disbelief in the Bible, yet you admit that you have never studied the book which you profess to disbelieve—much less, I suppose, have you studied the books which give us the ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... where, as in a patent case, some great issue depends on the question whether certain ideas had first been enunciated by the author of Genesis or the author of the Avesta; suppose him subjected to a cross-examination by a brow-beating lawyer, whose business it is to disbelieve and make others disbelieve every assertion that the witness makes, and we are afraid the learned Professor would break down completely. Now it may be said that this is not the spirit in which learned inquiries should ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... uncertain &c. adj.; put out, pose, puzzle, perplex, embarrass; confuse, confound; bewilder, bother, molder, addle the wits, throw off the scent, ambiguas in vulgus spargere voces[Lat]; keep in suspense. doubt &c. (disbelieve) 485; hang in the balance, tremble in the balance; depend. Adj. uncertain; casual; random &c. (aimless) 621; changeable &c. 149. doubtful, dubious; indecisive; unsettled, undecided, undetermined; in suspense, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... no reason to believe that anything I could say would be credited," was the cool reply. "You saw fit to disbelieve what I ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... not only believe in a life after death; they are even of opinion that they would never die at all if it were not for the maleficent arts of sorcerers who cut the vital thread prematurely short. In other words, they disbelieve in what we call a natural death; they think that all men are naturally immortal in this life, and that every death which takes place is in fact a violent death inflicted by the hand of a human enemy, though in many cases the foe is invisible and works his fell purpose ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... can longest disbelieve in the impossibility of this amatorial fusion; for it may be ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... was never national enough to be domestic; he was never a part of his past; hence when he tries to interpret tradition he comes a terrible cropper, as in this case. Bernard Shaw (I strongly suspect) began to disbelieve in Santa Claus at a discreditably early age. And by this time Santa Claus has avenged himself by taking away the key of all the prehistoric scriptures; so that a noble and honourable artist flounders about like any German ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... attraction goes through it as sand went through the sieve. No good reasons can be given why the presence of a cat should not betray itself to certain organizations, at a distance, through the walls of a box in which the animal is shut up. We need not disbelieve the stories which allege such an occurrence as a fact and a not ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... case all these things are miraculous and strange. How absurd to take these miracles for granted, and at the same time to disbelieve in the wonders of the Divine Age! Think again of the human body. Seeing with the eyes, hearing With the ears, speaking with the mouth, walking on the feet, and performing all manner of acts with the hands are strange things; so also the flight of birds and insects through the air, the blossoming ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... believed. There is an excitement and a pleasure in believing them. Reasonable hesitation at such a moment is dull and phlegmatic. If the accused one be near enough to ourselves to make the accusation a matter of personal pain, of course we disbelieve. But, if the distance be beyond this, we are almost ready to think that anything may be true of anybody. In this case nobody really loved Melmotte and everybody did believe. It was so probable that such a man should have done something horrible! It was only ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... him there displayed in all his admirable and unique worth as an intellectual and a moral man. We find him adorned with all the virtues which Heaven gave him at his birth; his real goodness, which neither injustice nor misfortune could alter; his generosity, which not only made him disbelieve in ingratitude, but actually incited him to render good for evil and obliged him to own that "he could not keep his resentments;" his gratitude for the little that is done for him; his sincerity; his openness of character; his greatness and disinterestedness. ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... will; but I know that I love what is right, and wish to do my duty;' and so they have been made perplexed and unhappy, one day fancying themselves worse than they really were, and the next fancying themselves better than they really were; and by both tempers of mind tempted to disbelieve God's Gospel, and throw away the thought of vital religion ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... seems to gather before the professor's eyes. His glasses seem in the way, he drops them, and now stands gazing at her as if disbelieving his senses. In fact he does disbelieve in them. ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... after his examination—after Aram had made himself thoroughly acquainted with all the circumstantial evidence which identified Clarke with Geoffrey Lester, a story that till then he had persuaded himself wholly to disbelieve) a change which, in the presence of Madeline or her father, he vainly attempted wholly to conceal, and to which, when alone, he surrendered himself with a gloomy abstraction—came over his mood, and dashed him from the lofty height of ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... doubtless recovered: a larger per centage has disappeared for ever. Hence naturally the jealousy of barbarous Orientals that we Europeans, in groping amongst pyramids, sphynxes, and tombs, are looking for buried treasures. The wretches are not so wide astray in what they believe as in what they disbelieve. The treasures do really exist which they fancy; but then also the other treasures in the glorious antiquities have that existence for our sense of beauty which to their brutality is inconceivable. In these circumstances, why should it surprise ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... debate within myself, my sisterly remorse overcame my virtue, and I did yield to him. But the next morning betimes, Angelo, forfeiting his promise, sent a warrant for my poor brother's head!' The duke affected to disbelieve her story; and Angelo said that grief for her brother's death, who had suffered by the due course of the law, had disordered her senses. And now another suitor approached, which was Mariana; and Mariana said: 'Noble prince, as there comes light from ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... lose their wives; and both disbelieve in reality, though they think proper to accept, the excuses they make on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... no doubt that the number of religious and Christian men who have relinquished all belief in the marvellous part of the Bible has largely increased within a few years. At the present time there is a strong tendency to disbelieve and deny all miracles as incredible and impossible. Renan, in his "Life of Jesus," says, "Miracles never happen except among people disposed to believe them. We banish miracles from history in the ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... It seemed curious that he should stand forth as the champion of the herd, and do all the roaring and stamping, while the other bulls remained mute, and followed with the rest of the herd, yet so it was; but there seemed no reason to disbelieve the unpleasant fact that the monarch's example would be imitated by his subjects. The herd had now drawn so near, and the young ladies had made such a comparatively slow retreat, that they were yet many yards distant from the boundary fence, and it was quite plain that they could not reach it ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... utterly disgraced, judge, Byron, what my feelings must be at Murray's shewing me some beautiful verses of yours. I do implore you for God sake not to publish them. Could I have seen you one moment, I would explain why. I have only time to add that, however those who surround you may make you disbelieve it, you will draw ruin on your own head and hers if at this moment you shew these. I know not from what quarter the report originates. You accused me, and falsely; but if you could hear all that is said at this moment, you would believe one, who, though your enemy, though for ever alienated ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Mrs. van Koopman told her anxious friends that she had received such assurances from Rhodes that she could not disbelieve him, and that the best thing which they could do would be to contradict all statements on the subject of a raid on the Transvaal that might come to their ears. This occurred on an after-Christmas evening of the ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... millions of the human race; and we may watch exactly the progress of that scheme, concerning which so many contradictory rumours were circulating in Europe. In the month of April a Walsingham could doubt, even in August an ingenuous comptroller could disbelieve, the reality of the great project, and the Pope himself, even while pledging himself to assistance, had been systematically deceived. He had supposed the whole scheme rendered futile by the exploit ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the flower of the flock, as to beauty, was Glo'ster, though some of us stoutly maintained that the whiteness of Handsome entitled her to the prize. Then there were about thirty sheep; but with them (in spite of frequent intercourse) we could only make out a general acquaintance—for we disbelieve altogether in the possibility of distinguishing one of the flock from the others. It must be the easiest thing in the world for a sheep to establish an alibi; and we are rather surprised that the impossibility of detection ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... that he had an excellent opportunity here of avowing himself, but there was the risk that Mr. Blinkhorn would disbelieve him, and, with the boys, he felt that the truth would do anything but increase his popularity. But dissembling fails sometimes outside the copy-books, and Mr. Bultitude's rather blundering attempt at it only landed him in ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... isn't credulity," said Lesley, with something between a smile and a sigh, "it is faith. And I can't altogether disbelieve ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... therefore the pains of hell. And the unjust shall have no protector. Verily GOD knoweth the secrets both of heaven and earth, for he knoweth the innermost parts of the breasts of men. It is he who hath made you to succeed in the earth. Whoever shall disbelieve, on him be his unbelief; and their unbelief shall only gain the unbelievers greater indignation in the sight of their LORD; and their unbelief shall only increase the perdition of the unbelievers. Say, what think ye of your deities which ye invoke besides GOD? Show me what part of the earth they ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... is no doubt that I did most thoroughly believe in Crowder. I had argued with myself against this belief to the utmost extent of my ability, and I had now given up the effort. If I should disbelieve him I would deprive myself of one of the most precious privileges of my existence, and I did not intend to do so until I found myself absolutely forced to admit that I was mistaken. Time would settle all this, and all that I had to do now was to listen, enjoy, and be thankful ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... commanded himself internally to Heaven; for, though a wise and strong-minded man, he was neither wiser nor more strong-minded than those of his age and education, with whom, to disbelieve witchcraft or spectres, was held an undeniable ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... that they would have immediately gone home, but that they staid that they might deliver up John into my power; and when they said this they took their oaths of it, and those such as are most tremendous amongst us, and such as I did not think fit to disbelieve. However, they desired me to lodge some where else, because the next day was the sabbath, and that it was not fit the city of Tiberias should be ...
— The Life of Flavius Josephus • Flavius Josephus
... had written a paper of her too just complaints against her husband, and written it in plain and very pungent English. Pepys, in an agony lest the world should come to see it, brutally seizes and destroys the tell-tale document; and then—you disbelieve your eyes—down goes the whole story with unsparing truth and in the cruellest detail. It seems he has no design but to appear respectable, and here he keeps a private book to prove he was not. You are at first faintly reminded of some of the vagaries of the morbid religious diarist; but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Retardations in the compound motion of several parts of the Earths surface; yet I am not at all inclined to admit this as a true Hypothesis, for divers Reasons, which if not demonstrative, are yet so consonant to the general Systeme of the World, as that we have no good ground to disbelieve them. For 1. The Earth being undeniably the greater Body of the two (whereof there is no doubt to be made) it cannot be thought probable, that this should be carried about by the Moon, lesser than it self: The contrary being seen, ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... rule we disbelieve all facts and theories for which we have no use. Clifford's cosmic emotions find no use for Christian feelings. Huxley belabors the bishops because there is no use for sacerdotalism in his scheme of life. Newman, ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... implicitly to believe in Catholic doctrine. Blougram's apology for himself amounts to this,—that he does not believe with absolute certainty any more than does Gigadibs; but, on the other hand, Gigadibs does not disbelieve with absolute certainty, so Blougram's state is one of belief shaken occasionally by doubt, while Gigadibs is one of unbelief ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... something, he did not know what, upon the ribbon which fastened the bunch of golden grain. It was—nay, it could have been nothing else—that very spider. The honoured work was not his, but his dead friend's. How the exchange had occurred he could not now understand, but to disbelieve that it had taken place would have ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... mental review, he became painfully aware of the fact that this was the first time in her life that she had ever heard real music. "Is it possible?" he asked. He tried to think of another time that would make him disbelieve the accuracy of ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... was not a little disturbed by this communication. Monstrous as was the plot which it purported to disclose, she could not disbelieve it when ascribed to the two men in question. Certain fearful remembrances of the past confirmed her suspicions, and even inspired her in her distress with ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... bread with an air of noble indifference. "Eh? Why, indeed? He used to say 'twas for being too frolicsome. He never done no wrong—not what you might call wrong: or so he maintained, an' 'twasn't for me to disbelieve 'en. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... "The Landed," "The Gifted"? What truth, what force in the aphorism:—"To predict the Future, to manage the Present, would not be so impossible, had not the Past been so sacrilegiously mishandled; effaced, and what is worse, defaced!"—"Of all Bibles, the frightfulest to disbelieve in is this 'Bible of Universal History'"—"The Leaders of Industry, if Industry is ever to be led, are virtually the Captains of the World." What new meaning that phrase has acquired in these fifty years! "Men of letters may become a 'chivalry,' an actual instead of a virtual ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... Travels, translated by H.M. Williams, London 1814 volume 1 pages 6 to 8.) Humboldt's testimony is interesting, inasmuch as, if it be reliable—and, as he was in close touch with leading French men of science, there is no reason to disbelieve him—the original intention was to make the voyage more extensive in scope, and different in the route followed, than was afterwards determined. "The first plan," he wrote, "was great, bold, and worthy of being executed by a more enlightened ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... truth and falsehood don't come laid out in black and white—Truth and Huntruth, as the wartime joke had it. Sometimes I thought Truth had vanished from the earth," he cried bitterly. "Like everything else, it was rationed by the governments. I taught myself to disbelieve half of what I read in the papers. I saw the world clawing itself to shreds in blind rage. I saw hardly any one brave enough to face the brutalizing absurdity as it really was, and describe it. I saw the glutton, the idler, ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... with those who were desirous of reuniting Christians[653]. The method he proposed was to distinguish fundamental points from such as were not, and leave men at liberty to believe or disbelieve the latter. He communicated his project to Casaubon, who highly approved it: but how shall men settle what articles are fundamental? This question is a source of endless disputes. Besides, they must be able to answer the Roman Catholic Divines, who, building on ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... they who have been cheated of the food, without which none can truly live, long for it with redoubled hunger. Of late he had been discovering this, for a craving, stronger than his own strong will, possessed him. He tried to disbelieve and silence it; attacked it with reason, starved it with neglect, and chilled it with contempt. But when he fancied it was dead, the longing rose again, and with a clamorous cry, undid his work. For the first time, this ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... pocket whence had already issued a letter-case, a telescope, a carpet twenty feet broad and ten in length, and a pavilion of the same extent, with all its appurtenances! Did I not assure thee that my own eyes had seen all this, thou wouldst certainly disbelieve it. ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... loved you if this ominous letter had not alarmed me; if I had not trembled at the thunderbolt which I imagined had destroyed all my happiness? I leave it to yourself to judge if such an accident would not have caused any other lover to commit the same error; if I could disbelieve, alas, a proof which seemed ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... He saw that were he to believe it, and to have believed it wrongly, the offence given would be ineffable. He should never dare to look his wife in the face again. It was at any rate infinitely safer for him to disbelieve it. He sat there mute, immovable, without a change of countenance, without even a frown on his brow, for a quarter of an hour; and at the end of that time he got up and shook himself. It was not true. Whatever might be the explanation, it could ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... have Joanna—this evil creature stained by God knoweth how many shameful crimes—you have her beneath your hand and let her come and go as she lists, to work such new harms as her cunning may suggest—either you disbelieve my statements, or you've run ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... of human history, as our soul wearies even to think of. Mr. Latham disdains any link of philosophy, or any classification, among his "ten thousand facts," as being a fault of the "German School" (whatever that may be) of Ethnology. It seems to him soundly "British" to disbelieve all the best conclusions of modern scholarship, and to urge his own fanciful or shallow theories. He treats all human superstitions and mythologies as if he were standing in the Strand and judging them by the ideas of modern London. His ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... of my sex. I was easily taught to regard religion not only as the safeguard of every virtue, but even as the test of a good understanding. The name of infidel was never mentioned but with abhorrence or contempt. None but a profligate, a sensualist, a ruffian, could disbelieve. Unbelief was a mere suggestion of the grand deceiver, to palliate or reconcile us to the unlimited indulgence of our appetites and the breach of every moral duty. Hence it was never steadfast or sincere. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... writer and teacher, is a peculiarly honorable and unimpeachable witness. What he affirms, as of his own knowledge, we have no right to disbelieve. Many of us have read the marvellous account given by him, of his sudden discovery that he possessed the power in regard to a few people—by no means in regard to all—of knowing, when he came near to them, not only their present thoughts, but much of what was ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... be more gentle. See now I am a great man in my own country. Although it suits me to pass here incognito as plain Senor d'Aguilar I am the Marquis of Morella, the nephew of Ferdinand the King, with some wealth and station, official and private. If you disbelieve me, I can prove it ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... throat much too big for them. He had greatly the look of a hen, proud of her maternal experiences, and silent from conceit of what she could say if she would. So much better would he have done as an underling than as a ruler—as a journeyman even, than a master, that to know him was almost to disbelieve in the good of what is generally called education. His learning seemed to have taken the wrong fermentation, and turned to folly instead of wisdom. But he did not do much harm, for he had a great respect for his respectability. Perhaps if he had been a craftsman, he might even have done more harm—making ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... nature is scarcely known. I am not one of those who look for perfection amongst the rural population of any country; perfection is not to be found amongst the children of the fall, be their abode where it may; but until the heart disbelieve the existence of a God, there is still hope for the possessor, however stained with crime he may be, for even Simon the Magician was converted. But when the heart is once steeled with infidelity, infidelity confirmed by carnal reasoning, an exuberance of the grace of God is required to melt ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... throughout the whole Christian world from the foundation of the Church to the present time. That such has been the fact is attested by the writings of the Holy Fathers, both Greek and Latin, by daily usage and by the uninterrupted practice of the Church. . . . To doubt it, therefore, is to disbelieve the Christian Church and to brand her as heretical, and with her the prophets, apostles, and Christ Himself, who, in establishing the Church said: 'Behold I am with you all days even to ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... plunging the insect into hot water; but we did not find that it could be restored when it had once entirely ceased, by this or any other means, as some French naturalists have affirmed; and as to its exploding a jar of hydrogen, as others have written, we disbelieve it, because the temperature of the insect is far too low. We think, then, for the present, that there are two distinct repositories, or two different sources, of light in the fire-fly; and that while one depends on the head, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... Salvation is attainable through Christ, then certainly Christianity is true for you. And if a Christian asserts that my belief is a false light and that presently I shall "come to Christ," I cannot disprove his assertion. I can but disbelieve it. I hesitate even to make ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... and burnt. If the corn crops failed, was not witchcraft the cause? for had not old Mother Maggs been heard to threaten Farmer Giles, and had not her black cat been seen running over his fields? Even good Bishop Jewel did not disbelieve in the power of the evil eye. In preaching before Queen Elizabeth he said: "It may please Your Grace to understand that witches and sorcerers are marvellously increased within Your Grace's realm. ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... another opponent of the truth; or, may be, his very reason would have been shattered at the discovery that here before him was that very supernatural and divine Working in Whose existence he had been doing his best to persuade his fellow creatures to disbelieve. ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... "They will not disbelieve me," she said, triumphant as the very devil over a branded soul all hot. "They will be sure you are mad, and ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
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