"Disbelieve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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 ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... 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 |
