"Disbelief" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... excitement and various rumors which have at length rendered a public statement necessary, are also sufficient to show that something extraordinary must have taken place. On the other hand there is no strong point for disbelief. The circumstances are, as the Post says, 'wonderful;' but so are all circumstances that come to our knowledge for the first time—and in Mesmerism every thing is new. An objection may be made that the article ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... appeared in a London periodical. It stated that the conduct of Wilmot excluded the respectable inhabitants of Hobart from his society, and made it impossible for ladies to enter his house. This was instantly rebutted by Sir John Pedder and other official persons, who declared their entire disbelief in these charges. ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... later the factor from Lac Bain stood at the edge of the chasm. His voice had called out in a hoarse bellow—a wild cry of disbelief and horror that had formed the Willow's name as she disappeared. He looked down, clutching his huge red hands and staring in ghastly suspense at the boiling water and black rocks far below. There was nothing there now—no sign of her, no last flash of her ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... impressions of scenes and people, and he was inclined to emphasize certain features. Isopel Berners he wished it to be known was a queenly creature, and he described her as taller than himself (he was 6 feet 2 inches without his shoes). Exaggeration is colour, not form. A disbelief in his having encountered the convict son of the old apple-woman near Salisbury does not imply that the old woman herself is a fiction. Borrow insisted upon Norfolk as his county, "where the people eat the best dumplings in the ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... postponement of immediate action to "ulterior objects," or to Jefferson's reliance upon raw citizen soldiery, a mob ready disorganized to the enemy's hands when he saw fit to lay on. From Jomini also I imbibed a fixed disbelief in the thoughtlessly accepted maxim that the statesman and general occupy unrelated fields. For this misconception I substituted a tenet of my own, that war is simply a violent political movement; and from an expression of his, "The sterile glory of fighting ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... pianist and teacher of the Czarina, appealed to her, and thus the ball was set rolling that ended in the clemency of the Czar. To Henselt, then, Russian literature is indebted for the "greater Dostoievsky." Why he was ever sent to Siberia is still a mystery. He had avowed his disbelief in the teachings of the Petrachevsky group, and only frequented their meetings because "advanced" European literature was read aloud. Dostoievsky was never a nihilist, and in his open letter to some St. Petersburg students ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... inclination of Burgoyne, or other military gentlemen who have courted the buskin and sock! On the contrary, so foreign was the occupation to his leaning, that often a whimsical light in his eye betrayed his disinclination and modest disbelief in his own fitness for the task. "He said the way I laid out an act reminded him of planning a campaign, with the outriders and skirmishers before; the cavalry arrayed for swift service, and the infantry marching steadily on, carrying with them the main plot, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... which reason vainly expresses its disbelief, as long as the eye of faith can discern physical proofs of its truth in the deep furrow which, crossing the mountain in detached portions, terminates abruptly in the lake; for it seems that when the two ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... of your disbelief," he cried. "I forbid you to lead into your own lost state the souls for ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... who, with his virtuous dame, lies buried beneath this tombstone. His is the knightly figure that kneels above; and if Sir Walter Scott ever saw this tomb, he must have had an even greater than common disbelief in laudatory epitaphs, to venture on depicting Anthony Forster in such hues as blacken him in the romance. For my part, I read the inscription in full faith, and believe the poor deceased gentleman to be a much-wronged ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... to the end 'All is vanity.' He himself used to say the interest of life to a thinking man was exhausted at thirty, or thirty-five. After that there remained nothing but disappointment of earlier visions and hopes. Sometimes there was something almost fearful in the gloom, and utter disbelief, and defiance of ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... at the raw-boned lady, imagined himself telling the raw- boned lady the simple, unvarnished truth, and the raw-boned lady's utter disbelief of every word of it. An ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... doubles-ententes, of knaves and dupes, of men who sold their daughters, and women who cheated their husbands. But the cynicism of Wycherly was no greater than that of the men about him; and in mere love of what was vile, in contempt of virtue and disbelief in purity or honesty, the king himself stood ahead of any of ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... opinion, timid and enslaved, respected this imperious and, apparently, well-authenticated error. Those who saw through the delusion kept their opinion to themselves, knowing how useless it was to declare their disbelief to a people filled with ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... from the consciousness of his own scepticism, and that he had bent his pride so far down as to put his apostasy out to hire.(44) The paper left behind him, called Thoughts on Religion, is merely a set of excuses for not professing disbelief. He says of his sermons that he preached pamphlets: they have scarce a Christian characteristic; they might be preached from the steps of a synagogue, or the floor of a mosque, or the box of a coffee-house almost. There is little or no cant—he is too great and too proud for that; and, in so far ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... grow. She gazed and stared, injury, disbelief, pain, in her mobile expression. "Why, Frances, I didn't have a thing to do with it, not a thing! Mother and I protested against this military invasion of our house, but protests were useless. The country is under martial law, Doctor ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... emotional attitude towards what is held to be Reality is such as would naturally be associated with the belief that Reality is good. What is, in all cases, ethically characteristic of mysticism is absence of indignation or protest, acceptance with joy, disbelief in the ultimate truth of the division into two hostile camps, the good and the bad. This attitude is a direct outcome of the nature of the mystical experience: with its sense of unity is associated a feeling of infinite peace. ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... accustomed to state his aim to himself with the definite neatness in which it appears when reduced to literary statement. Pedant as he was, he was yet enough of a politician to see the practical urgency of restoring material order, whatever spiritual belief or disbelief might accompany it. The prospect of a rallying point for material order was incessantly changing; and Robespierre turned to different quarters in search of it almost from week to week. He was only able to exert a certain limited authority over his colleagues in the government, by virtue of his ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... be alive; and perchance some Athenian, as he reclined on his ivory couch at dinner, after the sermon on Mars Hill, may have disposed of the matter very summarily, and passed on to criticisms on Samian wine and marble vases. Yet in spite of their disbelief, this story of Christ has outlived them, their age and nation, and is to this hour as fresh in human hearts as if it were just published. This "one Jesus which was dead, and whom Paul affirmed to be alive," is nominally, at least, the object ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "It matters not that all the educated ministry to-day well know, and would not for a moment deny, their disbelief in the doctrine of eternal torment, if cross-questioned. Nevertheless, many of them hate us and oppose us, because we show the people the true interpretations of God's Word, and lift before the eyes ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... the rim of the ledge and looked at him; warily, as he looked at it. With the wariness was something like question, and almost disbelief. ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... of mind displayed in the literature of the reign of Louis XIV is its first expression.(501) But thoughts ferment long in society before they fully express themselves in form: they first exist as suggestions; then they become doubts; lastly, they pass into disbelief. It was not until the time of the regency,(502) which ensued after the death of Louis, that the literature became impressed ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... point, small moustaches curled upward showing thin pale lips, and giving his mouth a disagreeable curve also upwards, a sort of set smile that was really a sardonic sneer, conveying distrust and disbelief in all around. His eyes were so deep set as to be almost lost in their recesses behind his sandy eyelashes, and he kept them screwed up close, with the intent watchful gaze of an animal about to make a spring. His whole aspect, his ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... in fact, 390 millions of millions of millions of tons), with a velocity of some 300 miles per second, would warm our sun considerably. But there is no risk of this happening in Mercury's case—though the unseen and much more shifty Vulcan (in which planet I beg to express here my utter disbelief) might, perchance, work ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... laudable curiosity, which might easily be directed to the most important ends; and I believe, that a well-conducted Christian mission to this quarter would not fail of producing the happiest effect. Old Keskarrah alone used boldly to express his disbelief of a Supreme Deity, and state that he could not credit the existence of a Being, whose power was said to extend every where, but whom he had not yet seen, although he was now an old man. The aged sceptic is ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... in silencing her doubts, she scarcely knew what to say to him. Hitherto, in all her dealings with Mark, she had felt uncertain (to say the least) about his regard. Now, if Bridget were to be credited, there remained no room for disbelief. Mark loved her! In spite of that compromising situation which she had witnessed, he ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... possible solutions, (4) development by reasoning of the bearings of the most promising suggestion, (5) further observation or experiment leading to its acceptance or rejection, that is a conclusion either of belief or disbelief. ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... opposition. It was evident that no plan which entailed parting from their new acquisition would for a moment be entertained. "Besides," said Tom Ryder, "them fellows at Red Dog would swap it, and ring in somebody else on us." A disbelief in the honesty of other camps prevailed at Roaring ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... attitude of the spiritual critics—i. e., those professing faith in Christ—to my book. And their attitude could not have been different. They are bound to take up this attitude by the contradictory position in which they find themselves between belief in the divinity of their Master and disbelief in his clearest utterances, and they want to escape from this contradiction. So that one cannot expect from them free discussion of the very essence of the question—that is, of the change in men's life which must result from applying Christ's ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... a little murmur of consternation, even of disbelief. Fenn himself was speechless. Julian ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... parcels of fibrine, albumen, and phosphates, that keep us on the minority side of the house. In point of fact, it is one of the many results of Spiritualism to make the permanent destiny of the race a matter of common reflection and discourse, and a vehicle for the prevailing disbelief of the Middle-Age doctrines on the subject. I cannot help thinking, when I remember how many conversations my friend and myself have sported, that it would be very extraordinary, if there were no mention of that class of subjects ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... to discuss here the system of optimism which Lord Bolingbroke held in common with Lord Shaftesbury and Pope; for that system is consistent both with a belief and with a disbelief of Christianity, and we are at present concerned with Lord Bolingbroke's views only in so far as they are connected with religion. From the extracts given above, it will be seen how far in this system Deism had drifted away ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... must add, implicated Mr. Hoopdriver. It indicated an entire disbelief in his social standing. At a blow, it shattered all the gorgeous imaginative fabric his mind had been rejoicing in. All that foolish happiness vanished like a dream. And there was nothing to show for it, as there is nothing to show for any spiteful remark that ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... lengths to which scepticism can go in an argumentative mind. Nourished on Lucretius, imbued with the doctrines of Epicurus and Gassendi, he often provoked Monsieur de La Rochecoupee by the display of a cold disbelief in fairies. ...
— The Story Of The Duchess Of Cicogne And Of Monsieur De Boulingrin - 1920 • Anatole France
... of the creation of the world in time, which was denied by most pagan thinkers and affirmed by most Christian divines, belongs to philosophy rather than to religion. The disbelief in the pre-existence of the soul, a doctrine which for Greek thought stands or falls with the belief in survival after death, is more important, and may be partly attributable to Jewish influence. But pre-existence does not seem to have been believed by the ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... his self-certainty, and the ideal drawn in it as his own personal end." Thus the school which has shown the greatest animus against Mysticism unconsciously approaches very near to the atheism of Feuerbach. Indeed, what worse atheism can there be, than such disbelief in the rationality of our highest thoughts as is expressed in this sentence: "Metaphysics is an impassioned endeavour to obtain recognition for thoughts, the contents of which have no other title ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... no longer, although he had been so obstinate in his disbelief. The affair of the previous night had produced a powerful effect on his mind; and he was exceedingly unwilling to allow himself again to be beguiled into a belief in any danger that was not real. Had the ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... a faint color in his cheeks. And the girl flushed more deeply; her eyes were still bright, but they no longer sharpened to such a penetrating point. She was believing at least a little part of what he said, and her disbelief only heightened her joy in what was real ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... am satisfied; but it seems she either knows or suspects something, and we must be more than ever on our guard. What I wish to say to you now, is, that this lady, either for willfulness or out of disbelief, affects to discredit my statement concerning Hadley's death, and I wish you to accompany me to the cave to-morrow, and confirm my statements. You need not implicate yourselves, but give the facts as ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... man had been all winter meditating a surprise; and his crew were in unusual excitement, peering out at the weather, consulting almanacs, prophesying (to outsiders) a late season, and winking to each other a cheerful disbelief of their own auguries. The fact is, they were intending to slip off before the rest, and perhaps have half their fare of fish caught before the fleet got along. No plan could have succeeded better—up to a certain point. Captain Elijah got off to sea full twelve days earlier than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... conventions, never quite a good woman, never quite anything else, a fond and loyal if a foolish and selfish mother, some day noisily informing her admirers that she actually had a boy in college, and enjoying their flattering disbelief. And so would disappear the last of the handsome fortune that poor Clarence's father had bequeathed to him, and Clarence's grandson must fight his way with no better start than his grandfather had had financially, and with an infinitely less useful brain and less reliable ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... death without a tremor, without a thought of the awful beyond. And though the application of the term infidel to such a man would not fail to arouse his fiercest indignation, his indifference to the events and the fate of the great hereafter can arise from nothing else than an utter disbelief in the teachings of Holy Writ, in the truths of Christianity. Such men are but types of a class, and that class a very ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... connection I was told a funny story. When Dr. (now Sir J.) Fayrer, who lately published his Thanatophidia, a book on the venomous snakes of India, a work well known throughout Europe, he categorically stated in it his disbelief in the wondrous snake-charmers of India. However, about a fortnight or so after the book appeared amongst the Anglo-Indians, a cobra bit his own cook. A buni, who happened to pass by, readily offered to ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... these events, more momentous for him than for others. He was forced to yield to evidence. A strong wall, as it were, crumbled within him; for his life had rested on two bases,—indifference in matters of religion and a firm disbelief in magnetism. When it was proved to him that the senses—faculties purely physical, organs, the effects of which could be explained—attained to some of the attributes of the infinite, magnetism upset, or at least it ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... physical forces, or our disbelief in their ability to give rise to life, is like a survival in us of the Calvinistic creed of our fathers. The world of inert matter is dead in trespasses and sin and must be born again before it can enter the kingdom of the organic. We must supplement ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... his ankles in five inches of water. His eyes stared ahead in disbelief. His brain was numbed. Only his eyes were alive, staring, wide in horror. Finally his brain pieced together the image that his vision sent to it. Pieced it together but made no comprehension ...
— The Day of the Dog • Anderson Horne
... machine, grinding down humanity by mere law of necessity, or if they would have it that there was supernatural power, it could only be malevolent; and then Primrose, so strong in faith as to venture what I should have shrunk from as dangerous presumption, dared him to go on in his disbelief, if his brother were ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... never ought to judge by appearances." "Yes," said he, "but come away, and I will show you something more." Whereupon he transported me up to where stood the churches of the city of Perdition, for every body in it had an appearance of faith, even in the age of Disbelief. First we went to the temple of Heathenism, where I could see some adoring the form of a man, others that of the sun, others that of the moon, and an innumerable quantity of similar other gods, even down to leek and garlick, and a great goddess termed Delusion, ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... later Dr. Winters shook his head in disbelief as he turned off the light box and removed the X-ray photograph. "It's impossible to believe that these were taken of your wife, but they corroborate the evidence of the other medical records. They show a perfectly ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones
... her and at me, fearfully at first, then with a strange look in her eyes, between awe and disbelief and a ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... Sayn, heir to the title and estate of the late Henry III. was a gloomy, pious man, very different indeed from his turbulent predecessor. Naturally he was much perturbed by the conduct of the wooden statue. At first he affected disbelief in the phenomena despite the assurances of the monks, and later on the simple brethren deeply regretted they had made any mention of the manifestations. The new Count himself took up the task of watching, and paced all ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... "the law should take its course." No one credited this declaration for an instant, and most persons felt that the Crown officials were indulging in an indecent piece of mockery. Amidst this universal incredulity, however—this disdainful and indignant disbelief—the prisoners' solicitor, Mr. Roberts, vigilant and untiring to the last, took the necessary steps to pray arrest of execution pending decision of the serious law points raised on the trial. Some of the most eminent counsel in England certified solemnly that these points were of the gravest nature, ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... mean a Disbelief of a Supreme Being, and consequently of a future State, under whatsoever Titles it shelters it self, may likewise very reasonably deprive a Man of this Chearfulness of Temper. There is something so particularly ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... argument, where truth is the object of inquiry. Therefore when I am asked, whether there is a God or no God, I do not mince the matter, but I boldly answer there is none, and give my reason for my disbelief; for I adopt my friend's answer by the publication ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner
... was just on the point of throwing the rock, when she dropped it unheeded to the ground and stared. "Why, you—you—why—the idea!" She turned slowly white. Certain things must filter to the understanding through amazement and disbelief; it took Val a minute or two to grasp the significance of what she saw. By the time she did grasp it, her knees were beading weakly beneath the weight of her body. She put out a groping hand and caught at the corner ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... why? Man has created them that he may indicate his own spiritual state when he has fallen out with the established order. Really they are phases of the development of the hero, who is reaching out through disbelief, denial, defiance, toward a restoration. He is negative to the Greek consciousness, and this negation takes shape by mind, yet has to be put down by mind. The whole process he projects out of himself into two lines of movement: the first is the row of preternatural ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... mind rendered so sensitively susceptible of its influences, paralyzed the whole moral constitution of the devoted creature, and realized the poetical creation of despair. I felt inclined to soften the sternness of her grief, by quickening her disbelief of the raving thoughts of a fever-maniac; but I paused as I thought of the probable necessity of her suspicion for her future safety from the schemes of a murderer, whose evil desires might be resuscitated by the return of health. I could do nothing more at that time for the dreadful condition ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... enjoy the confidence of the electorate. We have for Dr. Oliphant personally nothing but the warmest admiration. We do not venture for one moment to impugn his sincerity. We do not hesitate to affirm most solemnly our disbelief that he is actuated by any but the highest motives in lending his name to persecutions that recall the spirit of the Star Chamber. But in these days when the rapid and relentless march of Scientific Knowledge is devastating the plain of Theological Speculation we owe it to our readers ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... I have sufficiently recovered to retract my disbelief in kitchen soap, and—and in your skill," she added, with ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... supposing that your having read the words of a divine book must give you the right to despise every religion but your own. I assure you, strange as it may seem, our scorn of Greek tradition depends, not on our belief, but our disbelief, of our own traditions. We have, as yet, no sufficient clue to the meaning of either; but you will always find that, in proportion to the earnestness of our own faith, its tendency to accept a spiritual ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... short, ideas by which they could live better, that is to say, more vigorously and more joyously, than by "modern ideas"? There is DISTRUST of these modern ideas in this mode of looking at things, a disbelief in all that has been constructed yesterday and today; there is perhaps some slight admixture of satiety and scorn, which can no longer endure the BRIC-A-BRAC of ideas of the most varied origin, such ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Christ as the natural result of the moral development of our race, like Bacon, Shakespeare, or Baxter. They looked on miracles as impossible, and regarded all the Bible accounts of supernatural events as fables. They were Deists. One I found who declared his disbelief in a future life. There was a gradual incline from the almost Christian doctrine of Carpenter and Channing, down to the principles of ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... much violence, as I afterwards learned, the master of the house informed him that he knew something of the nun, and mentioned that she charged the priests of the Seminary with crimes of an awful character; in reply to which the carpenter expressed the greatest disbelief. ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... we know that he had no share at all—I cannot believe that his friends would have let by far the brightest jewel in his crown rest unreclaimed in the then less popular treasure-house of Shakespeare. Belief or disbelief of this kind is however but a sandy soil for conjecture to build upon. Whether or not his friends would have reclaimed for him the credit of this scene, had they known it (as they must have known it) to be his due, ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... from a lifeless manufacture) would be originated and perfected in any other way, or that this is not the fitting way? If it means that it was not, if he so misuses words that by the Creator he intends an unintelligent power, undirected force, or necessity, then he has put his case so as to invite disbelief in it. For then blind forces have produced not only manifest adaptions of means to specific ends—which is absurd enough—but better adjusted and more perfect instruments or machines than intellect (that is, human intellect) can contrive and human skill execute—which ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... arguments for the existence of Solid things derivable from Analogy. Yet—I take shame to be forced to confess it—my brother has not yet grasped the nature of Three Dimensions, and frankly avows his disbelief in ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... accumulation of these invasions of local authority, added to a real disbelief in the king's ability, that led to a formation of a league among the nobles, designed to check the centralisation policy of the monarch, a League of Public Weal to form a bulwark against the tyrannical encroachments of ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... that Shakespeare will have to vacate his pedestal this side of the year 2209. Disbelief in him cannot come swiftly, disbelief in a healthy and deeply-loved tar baby has never been known to disintegrate swiftly; it is a very slow process. It took several thousand years to convince our fine race—including every splendid intellect in it—that there is no such thing as a witch; it has ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of either; and her father was too prudent not to recognize the near and prospective advantages of such a mediator. Accustomed to her parents' extravagant denunciations, and her uncle's more repressed but practical contempt of them, the unfortunate girl early developed a cynical disbelief in the virtues of kinship in the abstract, and a philosophical resignation to its effects upon her personally. Believing that her father and uncle fairly represented the fraternal principle, she was quite prepared for ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... a curt laugh, which might have been intended to deprecate the possession of any opinion on a vintage, or to express his disbelief that Dormer Colville desired to ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... would say, because the British public is dead against realism. It must not either show any strong contempt for religion; a little mild contempt, of course, goes down and is fashionable, but I must not express it forcibly. He must not either evince a disbelief in immortality—at least that's dangerous ground. Some publishers will accept it and some won't.—Better leave it out. Ah—hum—what shall Tomkins say? I have it! A retrospect of his past life! And yet—No, stay! that won't do. Something that sounds like something ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... "Your disbelief could no more abolish Him than can your fear create Him," replied Sir Oliver. "But your mood being what it is, were it not ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... although he might delay his return at the sound of the woman's grief, he would rather she did not touch him first. If any one thinks this founded on too human a notion of the Saviour, I would only reply that I suspect a great part of our irreligion springs from our disbelief in the humanity of God. There lie endless undiscovered treasures of grace. After he had once ascended to the Father, he not only appeared to his disciples again and again, but their hands handled the word of life, and he ate in their presence. He had been to his Father, and had returned ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... members of the flock. They were gathered into the fold on Sunday, and had the genuine J. B. on their wool, but there was a cross in them. There was nothing which could be urged against them. No word of heresy ever escaped them, no symptom of disbelief was ever seen and yet Mr. Broad often desired exceedingly that they were different, was never at ease with them, and in his heart of hearts bitterly hated them. After all that can be said by way of explanation, there was much in this concealed animosity of Mr. Broad ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... field of uncertainty, and any one supposition is then just as good as another. If a person were to tell me that men would ultimately have eyes and hands behind them as well as before them, I should admit the usefulness of the addition, but should give as a reason for my disbelief of it, that I saw no indications whatever in the past from which I could infer the smallest probability of such a change. If this be not allowed a valid objection, all conjectures are alike, and all equally philosophical. I own it appears to me ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... yet reminded them of our previous meeting. One evening, however, the talk turned upon clairvoyance, and Mrs. La Force was expressing the utmost disbelief in it. I borrowed her ring, and holding it to my forehead, I pretended to be ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... and drove them indoors. There were a few people dining at the same hour, but none near enough to overhear them. Alike in the garden and the dining-room, Adele Tace kept up the same note of ridicule and disbelief. She had been carefully tutored for her work. She was able to cite the stock cases of exposure—"les freres Davenport," as she called them, Eusapia Palladino and Dr. Slade. She knew the precautions which had been taken to prevent trickery and where those precautions had ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... Shakespeare that touches the heart more nearly. The loves of Cosette and Marius are very pure and pleasant, and we cannot refuse our affection to Gavroche, although we may make a mental reservation of our profound disbelief in his existence. Take it for all in all, there are few books in the world that can be compared with it. There is as much calm and serenity as Hugo has ever attained to; the melodramatic coarsenesses that disfigured "Notre Dame" are no longer ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The general belief has always been that the soul survived the man's death.[81] There are, however, exceptions; the continued existence of the soul was not an absolutely established article in the savage creed. According to the reports of travelers, it would seem that among some tribes there was disbelief or doubt on this point. A West African native expressed his belief in the form of the general proposition, "The dead must die"; that is, apparently, the dead man must submit to the universal law ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... the watch to have some order given him for the morning which had been forgotten; and on his return to the foc's'le Jem was all attention for him to proceed with his promised yarn about the real pirates of whom he had spoken, the worthy seaman continuing to express a strong disbelief in their entity. ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... would say, trying to express scornful disbelief when, in truth, he was awed and doubtful. Always he would glance involuntarily back along the path behind him. Then her low birdlike laughter would rise and ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... to me to be tolerably evenly balanced. I then thought that it was at all events taking the safest part to conclude that there was a soul. It would be a terrible thing, after having passed one's life in the disbelief of the existence of a soul, to wake up after death a soul, and to find one's self a lost soul. Yes, methought I would come to the conclusion that one has a soul. Choosing the safe side, however, appeared to me playing rather a ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... me.' He laughed oddly, a tremulous little crow of a laugh, at the same time stroking his head, as if to deprecate disbelief. 'You never heard of the sale of the Christopherson library? To be sure, you were too young; it was in 1860. I have often come across books with my name in them on the stalls—often. I had happened ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... responses, mingled with numerous "Ho's!" of astonishment, and a few other sounds that seemed to indicate disbelief in Okematan's veracity. ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... paper of unfair treatment in a review of her pamphlet exhibiting emancipation as the object of the North. Under the caption, "Mrs. Beecher Stowe's Wounded Feelings," the Saturday Review avowed disbelief in the existence of a "Holy War" in America. "The North does not proclaim abolition and never pretended to fight for anti-slavery. The North has not hoisted for its oriflamme the Sacred Symbol of Justice to the Negro; its cri de guerre ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... before the strong, the wicked prosperous, the just oppressed, and the innocent given as a prey to the guilty; and his conclusion is that deism is no more defensible than Christianity. His pessimistic estimate of the actual world drives him to a disbelief in a personal God. ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... was thick with anger at the crassness of things, "I'll consider the advisability of sending in my own papers. Dash it!" He said something quite different, but his friends may read this record, and they would repudiate an exact version with scorn and disbelief. "Are we going to admit ourselves beaten by a half-bred hound like Hilton Fenley? Not if I know it, or I know you. We've got the noose 'round his neck, and you and I will pull it tight if we ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... that it would be a satisfaction to me to be able to declare its falsity as a fact, from your authority. I did indeed at once declare my utter unbelief; but then this has only the weight of my opinion; though an opinion resting I think on no insufficient grounds. I did not profess to rest my disbelief on our long, intimate, and confidential friendship, which would make it your right and your duty—if I did any thing to offend you or any thing you might think materially wrong—to remonstrate with me;—but on your general character; ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... indiscriminate attack on the moral character of Calvinists. Many of them are to be classed with the holiest of men; not because they are Calvinists, but because their erroneous notions are rendered innoxious, by the prevalence of a sincere piety, and by a secret and practical disbelief of the principles which, in speculation or imagination, they ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... father received his sons with open arms. He had heard from his brother-in-law that the youths were qualified to support themselves, and when informed that they wished to make a public experiment of their science, he exerted himself, despite his disbelief in it, ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... nothing more than has been laid before the reader, up to this time, disbelief in the miracles of which it gives so precise and full a record might well be regarded as hyper-scepticism. It might fairly be said, Here you have a man, whose high character, acute intelligence, and large instruction are certified by eminent contemporaries; a man who stood high in the confidence ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... his body, made a fair mark, still covered with his shirt. As he thus stood in a side view to me, but fronting his companion, who, presently unmasking his battery, produced an engine that certainly deserved to be put to a better use, and very fit to confirm me in my disbelief of the possibility of things; being pushed to odious extremities, which I had built on the disproportion of parts; but this disbelief I was now cured of, as by my consent all young men should likewise be, that their innocence ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... a more respectable position began to be accused. On the 19th of July five more persons were executed, and five more experienced the same fate on the 19th of August. Among the latter was Mr. George Borroughs, a minister of the gospel, whose principal crime appears to have been a disbelief in witchcraft itself. His fate excited considerable sympathy, which, however, was checked by Cotton Mather, who was present at the place of execution on horseback, and addressed the crowd, assuring them that Borroughs was an impostor. Many people, however, had now become ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... creep insidiously into our lives. We should crown the man who has achieved distinction and advise him as to pitfalls. "No sadder proof," Carlisle has said, "can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men." There is no royal road to a lasting eminence but the toilsome pathway of diligence, self-denial and high moral rectitude; surely not by turning sharp corners to follow that "will-o'-the wisp" transient ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... confided to Jane her sturdy disbelief concerning Maizie's loss. As in the case of Marian, she attributed it as a silly determination to attract undue attention. Jane frowned reflectively at Judith's supposition, but ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... velocity of 2250 kilometres per second (Principles of Chemistry, Eng. ed., 1905, vol. ii. p. 526). On the other hand, the well-known physicist Dr A.H. Bucherer, speaking at the Naturforscherversammlung, held at Stuttgart in 1906, declared his disbelief in the existence of the ether, which he thought could not be reconciled at once with the Maxwellian ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... the last century. By opposing it, even Voltaire incurred the reputation of bigotry, and Hume probably had to listen to a good deal of it on that memorable occasion when, dining with Baron D'Holbach, and intimating to his host his disbelief in the existence of atheists, he was informed by way of reply that he was actually at table with seventeen members of the sect.[36] That in England, too, it was a good deal talked at about the same and a somewhat later period, may be inferred from the fact ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... evidence, and capacity to increase the productiveness of lands in sound condition, in such an eminent degree, that any farmer who has the power to obtain it, evinces great folly and perverse obstinacy, if he continue to cultivate his land without applying it; either for want of faith, or pretended disbelief in its efficacy; or because he thinks the price fixed upon it by the Peruvian Government, "unjustifiably high;" or because although he has no doubt it will answer in the moist climate of England, ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... of no use. Even disbelief will not alter the almanac, as you'll find when the day of doom ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... the experience of others that the first terrible silence would be a hard thing to endure until the strangeness wore off. At first they huddled like two children, driving their thoughts far into unanswering space in desperate disbelief that such utter silence could be. Repelled by space, they turned to each other and found more complete union than they had thought possible. From the depth of their union they found the strength and growth and maturity to adapt, to endure, and to survive. The ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... proceeding from the act of their own Government without violating constitutional principles or disappointing the hopes of a suffering and injured people." The secrecy, the known antagonism to the Administration, the knowledge of New England's early disbelief in the cohesive power of the Union, and the convention's demands and resolutions, combined to give a bad and traitorous reputation to the Hartford Convention that has ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... to whom the keeping of the instrument is entrusted. These juggleries being very ancient (from the fathers of our fathers, say the Indians), we must not be surprised that some unbelievers are already to be found; but they express their disbelief of the mysteries of the botuto only in whispers. Women are not permitted to see this marvellous instrument; and are excluded from all the ceremonies of this worship. If a woman have the misfortune to ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... strata of that period are altered by its heat, and are traversed by dykes from the mass. That these strata have also probably undergone an immense depression, that they are now inclined at high angles and form regular or complicated anticlinal lines. To complete the climax and seal your disbelief, these same sedimentary strata and lavas are traversed by VERY NUMEROUS, true metallic veins of iron, copper, arsenic, silver and gold, and these can be traced to the underlying granite. A gold mine has ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... great toe, which had been severely bitten by a vampire in the night. And here let me say, that the popular disbelief of vampire stories is only owing to English ignorance, and disinclination to believe any of the many quaint things which John Bull has not seen, because he does not care to see them. If he comes to those parts, he must be careful not to leave his feet or hands out ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... the last four months came pelting. Anthony fairly opened his heart. At first, listening to the bare truth told with the confident naivete of disbelief, Valerie felt as though she were cheating the blind. After a little, this sense of shabbiness was suddenly supplanted by a perfect torment of apprehension lest Anthony should detect her hypocrisy. Presently, before her breathless interest ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... creature with a valuable fur imported from Hudson's Bay and Canada in prodigious numbers.—"My eye and Betty Martin," is a common expression implying disbelief; a corruption of ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... to regard the news with mild disbelief, but he soon realized that something must have happened very nearly as the young chief ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... Malone has sent him without sufficient warrant to the desk of some seneschal of a county court: but these are obscurities that require other lights than conjecture and assertion, which, by proving nothing, only establish disbelief."—p. 226. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... when the insanity, which had hitherto been more confined to the better classes, burst forth among the common people. Were we to dwell minutely on this period, we should start from the picture with horror: we might, perhaps, console ourselves with a disbelief of its truth; but the drug, though bitter in the mouth, we must sometimes digest. To observe the extent to which the populace can proceed, disfranchised of law and religion, will always ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and struggles with doubt had ended—where so many are apt to end, when the world is sunny and success weaves its silken meshes for the disport of self—in a quiet disbelief that angered him no longer, because he had given over all fight with it. But the great dome, flaming with its letters, AEdificabo meam Ecclesiam, shining there for ages, kindled the fight anew. And strange as it may seem, and perplexing as it was to the Doctor (when he received Reuben's story ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... see how readily the disbelief died out of the other's face. It was almost magical. It was as though his previous expression had been nothing but acting and his fresh attitude ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... well-nigh every sentence evoked laughter. El Demonio's heroic reputation had preceded him, therefore his unsmiling effort to ridicule himself struck the audience as a new and excruciatingly funny phase of his eccentricity. Encountering this blank wall of disbelief, Branch waxed more earnest, more convincing; in melancholy detail he described his arrant timidity, his cringing fear of pain, his abhorrence of blood and steel. His elongated face was genuinely solemn, his voice trembled, his brow grew ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... really interested in the subject and observed that he was a very temperate man who did not seem to be romancing, I told him something of my experiences with /Taduki/, to which he listened with a kind of rapt but suppressed excitement. When I affected disbelief in the whole business, he differed from me almost rudely, asking why I rejected phenomena simply because I was too dense to understand them. I answered perhaps because such phenomena were inconvenient and upset one's ideas. To this he replied that ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... pretensions, gives to his scepticism the colour of a belief in those very influences.[173] There is here, clearly, no pro-religious thesis. The whole drift of the play shows that Shakspere shares the disbelief in stellar control, though he puts the expression of the disbelief in the mouth of a villain; though he makes the honest Kent, on the other hand, declare that "it is the stars ... that govern our conditions;"[174] and though he had previously ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... doles out grudgingly even to me." His allusions to Minna are always full of tender solicitude, though it is evident that she wears upon him. His temper, peculiarly violent at the slightest opposition, must have been a serious problem under her open disbelief in his genius and his creeds; and yet he thought he could not ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... question of belief or disbelief. That's the law, and you take it or refuse it as you please. I try to obey, but I can't, and then my work turns bad on my hands. Under any circumstances, remember, four-fifths of everybody's work must be bad. But the remnant is worth the ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... in a world sense undistinguished. On this position Chesterton lays great stress. It was this, he thinks, that made him an optimist. It was the same position that made Browning an optimist. It is the disbelief in the Divine image in Man that makes the cynic ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... were passing the Indian village I presented a little tobacco to the headmen as an expression of regard, while they gave us a few smoked salmon, after putting many questions concerning my exploration of their bay and bluntly declaring their disbelief in the ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... Walter Gray came home to find his daughter's grand lover stretching his long figure on the grass at her feet, while the smaller Grays, their shyness quite departed, rolled and tumbled over him as confident as puppies. To be sure Walter Gray, with his disbelief in distinctions of rank as otherwise than accidental, was not unduly elated by the fine company in which he found himself. He looked hard and long at Robin Drummond as hand met hand. Then a bright look of reassurance came over his face. He could trust even Mary to ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... least one good judge has remarked to me that it is not a good style. It is, above all things, direct and clear; and it is characteristic of himself in its simplicity, bordering on naivete, and in its absence of pretence. He had the strongest disbelief in the common idea that a classical scholar must write good English; indeed, he thought that the contrary was the case. In writing, he sometimes showed the same tendency to strong expressions as he did in conversation. Thus in the 'Origin,' page ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... a little feeling of qualmishness, which even his boasted disbelief in ghosts did not save him from, Mr. Henderson was about to spring upon the thing ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... lines, then Bacon, unlike his advocates, was prepared to recognise the possible existence of such a thing as genius. Incredulity on this head could only arise in an age and in peoples where mediocrity is almost universal. It is a democratic form of disbelief. ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... long been used to Labour meetings, but was then brought face to face with hopeless difficulties, heartbreaking to the organizer, because of a rooted disbelief among the workers in the possibility of improvement. There is a stage in which there is hope—hope for the improvement of wages and of conditions, possibly to be won by combined effort. There is a stage, familiar in the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... wilful unreason, or in disbelief of his promise, she looked at this parting as though it might be final. Without him she could see no charm ahead. And yet.... Tough, leathery heart—indestructible spinner she knew herself to be—no sooner should the dew fall ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... certainly probed deep this time into the feminine nature. With every desire and instinct to disbelieve the facts, the deeper his inquiries went, the stronger the evidence rolled up: there was no gainsaying it; no sense in a further disbelief of it. ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... but when the machine was completed they issued a statement to the press to the effect that they were ready for the voyage to the moon, and that, when they returned, a reckoning with the world was to be made for its disbelief and total lack of sympathy. Again the press subjected Oradel to a series of scathing denunciations, and the scientific publications refused to take cognizance of his claims in any way, shape ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... degree versed in the adjustment of the probabilities, accorded the homely verisimilitude of their worldly-wise representations the meed of a simple and respectful credulity. The mountaineers were ignorant indeed in their sort, but far too sophisticated to entertain aught but the most contemptuous disbelief in her pretensions of special foresight and mysterious endowment. They did not fear her discrimination, and told their story, through an interpreter, with a glib disregard of any uncanny perspicacity on her part. She was one of the many Indians of the reservation who speak no English. ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... whom there come no modern poems or prose tales worth editing instead; half-pagan, mediaeval priest lore, believed in by men and women who have not been given anything to believe instead; easy-going, all-permitting fifteenth century scepticism, not yet replaced by the scientific and socialistic disbelief which is puritanic and iconoclastic; sly and savage habits of vengeance still doing service among the lower classes instead of the orderly chicanery of modern justice;—these are the things, and a hundred others besides, concrete and spiritual, things too magnificent, too sordid, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... general conformed to some of the principles laid down by Christ, certain of their doctrines were completely at variance with those of Christ and of primitive Christians, in particular their custom of praying to the rising sun and their disbelief in the resurrection of the body.[100] St. Paul denounces asceticism, the cardinal doctrine of the Essenes, in unmeasured terms, warning the brethren that "in the latter times some shall depart from the ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... about was a thing too real and too fearful in its character to admit of any lightness of speech; and the girl did not even twit her mother with the many sovereign remedies purchased as antidotes against infection, though her own disbelief in these had brought down many laments from Lady Vavasour but ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... to his safety to have a partner, or rather tool. A man of education, talent, and courage was indispensable, and Crauford had resolved that Glendower should be that man. With the supreme confidence in his own powers which long success had given him; with a sovereign contempt for, or rather disbelief in, human integrity; and with a thorough conviction that the bribe to him was the bribe with all, and that none would on any account be poor if they had the offer to be rich,—Crauford did not bestow a moment's ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
