"Incomprehensible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that neither I nor the regiment of Hussars of Conflans were at Moscow. We were left behind on the lines of communication at Borodino. How the Emperor could have advanced without us is incomprehensible to me, and, indeed, it was only then that I understood that his judgment was weakening and that he was no longer the man that he had been. However, a soldier has to obey orders, and so I remained at this village, which was poisoned ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... father would not, therefore, press him to adopt a course of life for which he was unsuited, and encouraged him in the study of medicine, for which he early manifested a partiality. At the age of twenty-five he proceeded to the Continent; and being fond of the abstruse, the marvellous, and the incomprehensible, he became an ardent disciple of the school of Paracelsus, whom he looked upon as the regenerator, not only of medicine, but of philosophy. He remained six years in Italy, France, and Germany; storing his ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Janet—now show her that we are good friends, Keith! And, for goodness' sake, don't say that you mean to give up your shooting this year, or she will wonder what I have made of you. Give up your shooting! Why, a woman would as soon give up her right of being incomprehensible and whimsical and capricious—her right of teasing people, as I very much fear I have been teasing you, Keith. But it will be all set right ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... paper was followed by others on the mathematical theory of electricity; and in 1845 he gave the first mathematical development of Faraday's notion, that electric induction takes place through an intervening medium, or 'dielectric,' and not by some incomprehensible 'action at a distance.' He also devised an hypothesis of electrical images, which became a powerful agent in solving problems of electrostatics, or the science which deals with the forces ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... all is clear, I see the link in the chain; everything is explained, and I now understand why Arne Saknussemm, put out of court, forced to hide his magnificent discoveries, was compelled to conceal beneath the veil of an incomprehensible cryptograph, the secret—" ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... locality is small. Added to this condition is a very noticeable disinclination on the part of everybody toward over-exertion at the behest of others; coupled with a responsiveness to holidays that is incomprehensible to Americans who believe in making time into money. While the excessive proportion of holidays in the Russian calendar is deprecated by the more far-sighted and educated among the Russians, there is no hesitation ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... follow from Mr. Spencer's view—already explained—as to how the higher warrant, by which we know the Indestructibility of Matter to be an axiom, a self-evident truth, originated. In his chapter upon "Ultimate Scientific Ideas" he says that Space and Time are "wholly incomprehensible," and that "Matter ... in its ultimate nature, is as absolutely incomprehensible as Space and Time." He affirms, as pointed out, that no experimental verification is possible without assuming what we set out to prove. If the chemical balance cannot demonstrate ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... human body is the bicycle. And our individual and incomprehensible self is the rider thereof. And seeing that the universe is another bicycle riding full tilt, we are bound to suppose a rider for that also. But we needn't say what sort of rider. When I see a cockroach scuttling across the floor and turning up its tail I stand affronted, ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... the sense, at least, of being ignorant as to where he was, or how far from the nearest human habitation: but he was acquainted with forest-life, knew the signs and symptoms of the wilderness, and could track his way through pathless wastes in a manner that was utterly incomprehensible to his companions, and could not be explained by himself. Moreover, he was a shrewd fellow, as well as bold, and possessed a strong sense of humour, which he did not fail at times to gratify at the ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... his manner was scarcely that of a lover, but there most assuredly was a probability that it might alter and become more warm and less friendly and platonic. As to Mollie herself, she was growing a trifle incomprehensible; she paid more attention to her lovely hair than she had been in the habit of doing, and was even known to mend her gloves; she began to be more conscious of the dignity of her seventeen years. She complained less petulantly of the attentions of Phil's friends, and accepted them with a better ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to allow people in most cases unfit for adeptship to choose a life of celibacy and asceticism, or in other words, to pursue adeptship. This prohibition had an esoteric meaning before it became the prohibition, incomprehensible in its dead-letter sense: for it is not India alone whose sons accorded divine honours to the Wise Ones, but all nations regarded their adepts and initiates as divine.— ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... the most perfect health." "I have during these periods," he himself relates, "undertaken actions which I had to recognize as mine, merely because they could have been carried out by no one else. Thus one day it was incomprehensible to me why I had on no shirt when I awoke, and it remained so in spite of my utmost efforts to recollect myself, until the shirt was found in another room rolled together under a press. In my twenty-ninth year I was awakened from a night wandering by the question, What ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... for high compliments from you and Charlotte on this very sage instance of my unfathomable, incomprehensible wisdom. Talking of Charlotte, I must tell her that I have, to the best of my power, paid her a poetic compliment, now completed. The air is admirable: true old Highland. It was the tune of a Gaelic song, which an Inverness lady sung me when I was there; and ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Inexplicable, incomprehensible Being! I know that the imaginings Of my soul are unable Even to sketch thy shadow! But, if it be our duty to praise thee, Then it is impossible for weak mortals Otherwise to render thee homage Than, simply, to lift their hearts ...
— The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems • Alexander Pushkin and other authors
... elderly women there ever got in her way. Frenchmen never ran after elderly women. She could not conceive of any young Frenchman doing what Craven had done if offered the choice between a girl of twenty-two and a woman of sixty. Englishmen really were incomprehensible. Was it worth while to bother about them? Probably not. But she was by nature combative as well as vain, and Craven's behaviour had certainly given him a greater value in her estimation. If he had done the ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... "It's the most incomprehensible thing in the world! I have heard of ghosts—and, talking about ghosts, that child was in a tremor, last night, again—I'm sure he was. Brave little heart! he goes up to bed in the dark on purpose to break himself of the fear. I went ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... in panic terror of that ego which tenanted the shell of functioning, sensitive stuff called Michael Lanyard: he was afraid of the strange, silent, incomprehensible Self lurking occult in him, that masked mysterious Self which in its inscrutable whim could make him fine or make him base, that Self impalpable and elusive as any shadow yet invincibly strong, his master ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... of long-suffering SPEAKER breaks down at last. JEMMY LOWTHER did it. On Appropriation Bill moved incomprehensible Amendment, in unintelligble speech; SPEAKER came down on him "like cartload of bricks," as JOHN BURNS put it. JAMES only temporarily subdued; will probably ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 1, 1893 • Various
... as that. Gaston had sworn it, but it was incomprehensible. However, it led the new-born imagination to expand and wander, and when Joyce was at peace, and the sun shone, she went to that picture ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... the idea of quitting such a fascinating life was quite incomprehensible to him. What gorging dinner-party could compare with the thrill of feasting at midnight on crackers and cheese, deviled ham, boned chicken, mince pie and root beer, by the light of a solitary candle, with the cracks of the doors and windows smothered with rugs and blankets, ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... of the Sword in the lagoon was due to chance the situation remains unchanged, and no power, not even England, will think of seeking for the Sword inside the cavern. If, on the other hand, as the result of an incomprehensible revelation, it has been learned that Back Cup is become the retreat of Ker Karraje, if the expedition of the Sword was a first effort against the island, another of a different kind—either a bombardment from a distance, or an attack by a landing ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... all our sensuous knowledge. We do believe, the veriest skeptic believes in something behind that curtain of mystery; nor can he withhold his faith because it attaches to that which is unseen and incomprehensible, without, as has already been shown, cutting every nerve that binds us to practical life, and smothering every suggestion that speaks from outward nature. If he do not believe in a God, then, or in Christ, or in immortality, let him not sneer at others because they walk by faith and not by ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... if you understand this amazing succession of incidents? To me, it is entirely incomprehensible. If you can explain it, I ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... of baskets and other articles occupying one side of the big room, dug out a heavy table with marble top, which was lying overturned there, and proudly placed it upright before me to be admired. That this piece of furniture had been brought so great a distance over the kihams was almost incomprehensible. ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... published the said newspaper, called the "Bee-hive," which contained articles literary, archaeological, and medical, written in the family. The advertisements paid expenses. The subscriptions, two hundred in all, made the profits. Every now and then melancholy verses, totally incomprehensible in La Brie, appeared, addressed, "TO HER!!!" with three exclamation marks. The clan Julliard was thus united to the other clans, and the salon of Madame Tiphaine became, naturally, the first in the town. The few aristocrats who lived in Provins were, of course, apart, and formed a single ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... the place of worship. The minister ascended the pulpit, and the singers took their places in the choir. It was communion Sunday, and the table within the altar was spread for the holy feast. All these strange and incomprehensible proceedings filled the mind of ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society
... and had talked about sundry matters of business. He constantly perceived, however, that he could not impose upon Sir Arthur; but the idea that he could know all the mazes of the law, and yet prefer the straight road, was incomprehensible. ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... calm in appearance, but a tempest was in his brain and freezing cold in his heart. What he had just seen and comprehended seemed to him incomprehensible. ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... walk over to the lake," the girl suggested gently, as if anxious to humor some incomprehensible child. "There is a lovely ravine we can explore, all cool and shady, and ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the tangled green, left there after the field had been abandoned, to drop slowly to pieces in the wind and rain. The grotesque figure, with its outstretched arms and hat set at a rakish angle, looked familiar for some incomprehensible reason. As Oliver clung to the wall, squinted through the leaves, and wondered why that should be, the mystery was suddenly solved. The door of the house opened with a squeak of rusty hinges and somebody came out on the step. ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... she keeps account of all His tenants. In sum, so great is her grace in the heavens as gives her glory above the earth, and so infinite are her excellencies in all the course of her action; and so glorious are the notes of her incomprehensible nature, that I will thus only conclude, far short of her commendation:—She is God's love, and His angels' light, His servants' ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... of "the one time and space," in the pluralistic truth of the innumerable company of living souls and the dualistic truth of the contradictory nature of all existence; so we have three further ultimate aspects of reality, in the incomprehensible "something" which holds all souls together; in the incomprehensible "something" out of which all souls create the universe; and in the incomprehensible "something" which forms the substratum both of the ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... my children, of my attachment to the family of Mediana. You can judge, then, of the grief which this news has given me—news the more incomprehensible, since one neither knows by whom, or for what reason such a crime should be committed. Alas, my children! I lose a powerful protector in the Countess de Mediana; and in me the heart of the old and faithful ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... under the Constitution of 1865, refused to ratify the proposed 14th Amendment on December 20, 1866. This legislature was composed of Democrats, all of the master class, conservative and radical, and in view of this it is incomprehensible to me how intelligent Negroes could have thought of tendering the leadership to any men of the master class. The conditions were such that men of the master class could not have accepted the leadership had they so desired after repudiating ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... watch a man who has the Incomprehensible in his grasp, does not know what to do with it, and sits playing with a toy called God." —Letter to ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... quickly dealt, and the fateful, to Chester the incomprehensible, words were quickly uttered. Chester saw that Sylvia, unknowing of the fact, had won—that five louis were added to her original stake. The fair-haired Frenchman in evening dress by whom Mrs. Bailey had been sitting looked round; not seeing her, he himself swept up the ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... two nights ago when she stole softly into this room and saw him kneeling here beside the couch, clasping this wooden symbol between his fingers—intertwined in a gesture of passionate prayer. She had been puzzled because his actions of the day before had seemed incomprehensible to her: his attitude to my lord Hortensius Martius, an enemy whose life he saved at risk of his own, his loyalty to ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... what was the matter. So as Lars' wife could tell her nothing, she had to go for information out in the parish, where she obtained it, and of course was instantly of her husband's opinion, thinking Lars incomprehensible, not to say bad. But when she let her husband perceive this, she felt that, notwithstanding what had occurred, no friendship was broken between them; on the contrary, that he liked ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... his hat to leave. I followed him out to the door, and shook hands with him cordially. The burden felt lighter on my shoulders already. For four long years that mystery had haunted me day and night, as a thing impenetrable, incomprehensible, not even to be inquired about. The mere sense that I might now begin to ask what it meant seemed to make it immediately less awful ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... her for several minutes. It was true, then, that the old days had passed away. Isobel, the child whom we had known and loved so well, had disappeared. It was Isobel the incomprehensible who was taking her place. What might the change not mean ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... as this be fixed on things above? Can such a man reflect that he hath the ineffable honour to be employed in the immediate service of his great Creator? or can he please himself with the heart-warming hope that his ways are acceptable in the sight of that glorious, that incomprehensible Being?" ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... far more than what we call a memory, for all that has happened in the past and all that will happen in the future is happening now before His eyes just as are the events of what we call the present time. Utterly incredible, wildly incomprehensible, of course, to our limited understanding; yet ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... (ad Diognetum, c. vii.) says that the omnipotent, all-creating, and invisible God has fixed truth and the holy, incomprehensible Logos in men's hearts; and this Logos is the architect and creator of the Universe. In the first Apology (c. xxxii.), he says that the seed ([Greek: sperma]) from God is the Logos, which dwells in those who believe in God. So it appears that according to Justinus the Logos is ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... is an inebriated United States official, who flings his spectacles overboard, and sings a flippant and absurd song about his grandmother's spotted calf, with his ri-fol-lol-tiddery-i-do. After which he crumbles, in an incomprehensible manner, into the bottom of ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... quiet village. Joan felt a slight cold sinking sensation at her heart. But this was only a magnificent threat of Jim's. He could not do such a thing. She would never let him, even if he could. But after the incomprehensible manner of woman, she did ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... pleasure to be devoid of heart. Behind her action there must have been some strange, illogical, feminine motive, for there was a deliberation in every move—one of those motives which are quite beyond the masculine comprehension. One notices that when a woman takes action in this incomprehensible way her lady friends are never surprised; they seem to have some subtle sympathy with her. It is only the men who look puzzled, as if the ground beneath their feet were unstable. Therefore there must be some influence at work, ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... announcement of a thorough knowledge had led me to expect. I felt interested at being about to hear from the lips of an intelligent Greek, quite remote from the influence of European opinions, what might seem to him the most astonishing and incomprehensible of all those results which have followed from the action of our political institutions. The anomaly, the only anomaly which had been detected by the vice-consular wisdom, consisted in the fact that Rothschild (the late money-monger) had never been the ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... which I should afford him) to fill his vases with fresh, bright, and delicious summer flowers, in lieu of the very mummies of their race by which they were occupied. My work was in progress when Millington returned, but, oh! good heavens! the rage, the profane, diabolical, incomprehensible rage into which he burst! I shall never forget. Away went my beautiful, my fragrant flowers, into the court, and seizing upon the remnant of the mummies, as yet untouched by my sacrilegious fingers, he tossed them into a drawer, double locked it, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... sharpness was directed not to Miss Polly, but to herself—to her own incomprehensible childishness. The man interested her; already she had thought of him daily since she first came to the house; already she had begun to wonder about him, and she realized that she should wonder still more because of what Miss Polly had told her. When he had approached her in the yard, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... Mystery is at bottom only the theological terminus technicus for religious allegory. All religions have their mysteries. In reality, a mystery is a palpably absurd dogma which conceals in itself a lofty truth, which by itself would be absolutely incomprehensible to the ordinary intelligence of the raw masses. The masses accept it in this disguise on trust and faith, without allowing themselves to be led astray by its absurdity, which is palpable to them; and thereby they participate in the kernel of the matter so far as they ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... My child, tell me without fear how this necklace fell into your hands; conceal nothing of the matter from me. Then I told him plainly all that had passed, and declared I had chosen rather to pass for a thief, than to reveal that tragical adventure. Good God! said the governor, thy judgments are incomprehensible, and we ought to submit to them without murmuring. I receive, with an entire submission, the stroke thou hast been pleased to inflict upon me. Then directing his discourse to me, My child, said he, having now heard the cause of your disgrace, for which I am much concerned, I will give you an account ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... and to treat him as all other persons of his household, His Eminence sent His Holiness as soon as possible packing for Rome. Though I am neither a cardinal nor a prophet, should you and I live twenty years longer, and the other Continental Sovereigns not alter their present incomprehensible conduct, I can, without any risk, predict that we shall see Rome salute the second Charlemagne an Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, if before that time death does not put a period to his ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... from the galling associations of straightened means—free to enjoy the luxury and refined comfort to which she had been accustomed, and for which her soul yearned with a fierce longing that would be incomprehensible to folk of a simpler mind. Everybody has his or her ideal Heaven, if only one could fathom it. Some would choose a sublimated intellectual leisure, made happy by the best literature of all the planets; some a model state (with themselves ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... prevalent among these people, of flattening the head, we have already spoken. It is one of those instances of human caprice, like the crippling of the feet of females in China, which are quite incomprehensible. This custom prevails principally among the tribes on the sea-coast, and about the lower parts of the rivers. How far it extends along the coast we are not able to ascertain. Some of the tribes, both north and south of the Columbia, practice it; but they all speak the Chinook ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... through the whole system of matter. The will is the working and living principle in the world of Reason, as motion is the working and living principle in the world of the senses. I stand in the centre of two opposite worlds, a visible in which the deed, and an invisible, altogether incomprehensible, in which the will, decides. I am one of the original forces for both these worlds. My will is that which embraces both. This will is in and of itself a constituent portion of the supersensuous world. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... by showing them the truth that they can know their best interests and the real motives which will lead them to happiness. Long enough have the instructors of the people fixed their eyes on heaven; let them at last bring them back to the earth. Tired of an incomprehensible theology, of ridiculous fables, of impenetrable mysteries, of puerile ceremonies, let the human mind occupy itself with natural things, intelligible objects, sensible truths, and useful knowledge. Let the vain chimeras which beset the people be dissipated, and very ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... young creature on board the Catamaran,—even on that frail embarkation, which at any moment might be scattered to the winds, or whelmed under the black billows of the sea,—the sailor-boy no longer felt pain while gazing in her face, but only that sweet incomprehensible pleasure. ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... synagogue; a subaltern and a sovereign; a traitor and a tyrant; a Christian and an infidel; he was, through all his vicissitudes, the same stern, impatient, inflexible original; the same mysterious, incomprehensible self; the man without a ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... kinds; impetuous messages asking him when he would return; letters apologising for her selfishness—he had better remain with Mount Rorke until his consent had been obtained; resolutions and irresolutions, ardours, lassitudes, forgetfulness followed fast in strange and incomprehensible contradiction. And Frank was asked daily to perform some small task. There was always something; and Frank undertook all he was asked to do, for he loved to be as much as possible in that circle of life in which his ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... Horng's mind envelope him. A torrent of thoughts, memories, pictures and concepts poured over him in a jumble; the sensory sensations of the alien came to him sharply, and memories that were strange, ideas that were incomprehensible, all in a sudden rush upon his mind. He fought down the fear that had leapt in him, gritted his teeth and waited for the ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... 1. (pejorative) An exercise in tuning (see {tune}) in which incredible amounts of time and effort go to produce little noticeable improvement, often with the result that the code has become incomprehensible. 2. Aimless small modification to a program, esp. for some pointless goal. 3. Approx. syn. for {bit bashing}; esp. used for the act of frobbing the device control register of a peripheral in an attempt to get it back ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... clear enough, certainly, that the former state of the Terranovans, their incomprehensible society and language and customs, simply had no practical importance. He was changing all that. When he was through, they would be what he had made them, no ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... of Spain. Supposed to be an Aztec epithet, cac-chopina, that is, "prickly shoes," applied to the Spanish conquerors from their wearing spurs, which to the Indians were strange and incomprehensible appendages. ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... experienced a like sorrow can fully understand their grief as they entered their now lonely home, where a short time since they had been so happy. But the ways of Providence are, to our feeble vision, often dark and incomprehensible, and the only way by which we can reconcile ourselves to many trials which we are called to endure is by remembering that there is a "need be" for every sorrow which falls to our lot, in the journey of life. Emma was an only child and had been the idol of her father's heart, and no marvel if ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... may speak of God in two ways. First, with regard to His essence; and thus, since He is incomprehensible and ineffable, He is above all praise. In this respect we owe Him reverence and the honor of latria; wherefore Ps. 64:2 is rendered by Jerome in his Psalter [*Translated from the Hebrew]: "Praise to Thee is speechless, O God," as regards the first, and as to the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... exercise, and a power of endurance utterly at variance with all other exhibitions of his strength; and he very soon acquired a degree of skill which made him an object of envy to all the cavalry-officers stationed in the neighborhood. So inconsistent and incomprehensible was ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... precaution. When she did see him at last, lying on a sofa in a dressing-gown, and with his head and face as we have described, his appearance did not call to her remembrance the faintest resemblance to the confused, wild, and altogether incomprehensible youth, who had tumbled her over in the streets of London, and almost run her ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... materialism; a system which could not but be patronized by the philosopher, if only it actually performed what it promises. But how any affection from without can metamorphose itself into perception or will, the materialist has hitherto left, not only as incomprehensible as he found it, but has aggravated it into a comprehensible absurdity. For, grant that an object from without could act upon the conscious self, as on a consubstantial object; yet such an affection could only engender something homogeneous ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... trying to read since his return, and copies of "The Egoist" and some of Swinburne's poetry lay on the table; but the first had seemed incomprehensible to him and the second indecent, and he had abandoned them; but he had made one discovery, thanks to Bethel, Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass"—it seemed to him the greatest book that he had ever read, ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... aspirations; it tells of the eclipse as well as of the dawn and meridian of faith. In fact, it is Tennyson's own religious life which is the life of uncounted numbers in these latter times. Before the supreme sad experience, the sudden, and to him incomprehensible, death of Arthur Hallam, the poet had agnostic leanings. He did then veritably fail and "falter" before the questions of life and death which beset him. His long years of comparative poverty, "the eternal want of pence," his failure ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... dips became fast and frequent. Two flags were placed in the water at the distance of 100 yards from the diving board; on this slender platform fourteen shivering specimens of humanity ranged themselves, and at the word of the starter plunged into the water with that downward plunge so incomprehensible to the uninitiated. A short, sharp struggle followed, the competitors swimming with the sidelong movement and obstreperous puffing which likens the swimmer so closely to the traditional grampus. Eventually one of the group is seen heading the others, ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... by my friend's words. We had only been a few hours in Devonshire, and that he should give up an investigation which he had begun so brilliantly was quite incomprehensible to me. Not a word more could I draw from him until we were back at the trainer's house. The Colonel and the Inspector were ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... An incomprehensible anomaly, this queen of the Llotta; a strange mixture of cruelty and tenderness, of cold hatred and the longing for love. A dual personality hers, susceptible to the deepest emotion or to utter lack of feeling as the mood ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... religious sentiment from the course of history, to place it by itself."[70] He recognized that all religion is, fundamentally, man's effort to put himself into harmonious relation with, and to discover an interpretation of, the forces of the universe. The more incomprehensible those forces, the greater man's need of an explanation of them. He could not fail to see that the religion of a people always bears a marked relation to their mental development and their special environment. He knew that at various stages ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... disgusted and indignant; but his indignation was neutralized by his astonishment at this incomprehensible brutality. He had no resource but to apply to some private house and state his predicament. As that luckless saddle had excited the derision of the girl, and drawn down on him the contumely of the tavern-keeper, he looked around for some safe ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... difficulty that has always been haunting me, and I shall never be able to give it up till a better one supplies its place,—and that I think hardly possible. You have now fairly beaten Spencer on his own ground, for he really offered no solution of the difficulties of the problem. The incomprehensible minuteness and vast numbers of the physiological germs or atoms (which themselves must be compounded of numbers of Spencer's physiological units) is the only difficulty; but that is only on a par with the difficulties in all conceptions of matter, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... asking 'why,'" said the great doctor slowly, "you might as well ask, 'why not.' They're incomprehensible. For thirty years I've studied ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... at that time it seemed to me that life was an incomprehensible enigma; that the creator had placed us on this earth, and left us entirely in the dark as to His purpose in so doing. We seemed to be cast upon the ocean of time, and left to drift aimlessly about, with no exact knowledge of what was required of us or how to attain ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... of an Orthodox divine. He kept this one ready in his memory of brass, to confound all who accused him of irreligion:—"Do we want to contemplate His power? We see it in the immensity of the creation. Do we want to contemplate His wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate His mercy? We see it in His not withholding His abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not written books, but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... calling for any pronouncement pertaining to the differences between England and France; for it is my determination yet to write a book on the comparative characteristics of the two people. I hold a theory that the English people are utterly incomprehensible to the rest of humanity, and this will be duly set out ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... men made perfect;" in respect whereof, the Psalmist saith of God, "He humbleth Himself to behold the things that are in heaven." It is a condescension for that infinitely glorious being, who dwells in Himself, and is abundantly satisfied in the beholding of His own incomprehensible excellencies, to vouchsafe to look out of Himself, and behold the things that are in heaven; the best of those glorious inhabitants that stand round about His throne; who therefore, conscious of that infinite distance wherein they stand, make their addresses with the greatest self-abasements, ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... between us was locked on both sides. My old patron had said nothing to me on the subject, but I had found the door bolted and the key removed. I never was the man to intrude upon another's privacy, and respected the Vicomte's somewhat incomprehensible humour at this time. ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... rapid punctuation of revolver fire. As they came into full view of the middle portion of the street, they saw it occupied by the entire population of Heart's Desire, all apparently gone mad with some incomprehensible emotion. ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... comfortably domiciled in a new log house, and were beginning to feel at home. The children were put to school; at least it was what passed for a school in those days: a place where tender young humanity devoted itself for eight or ten hours a day to learning incomprehensible rubbish by heart out of books and reciting it by rote, like parrots; so that a finished education consisted simply of a permanent headache and the ability to read without stopping to spell the words or take breath. Hawkins bought out the village store for a song and proceeded to reap the profits, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... enthusiasm for liberty, and the radical political theories which were its most formal expression, were all the more incomprehensible to the average Briton inasmuch as they were the result of a conflict of interests in America quite as much as of English legislation. "The decree has gone forth," said John Adams, "that a more equal liberty than has prevailed in other parts ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... his face in the green turf and burst into a convulsive passion of tears, such tears as come once or twice, perhaps, in the lives of most men, when they are passing through the awful years of adjustment to the incomprehensible and apparently chaotic experiences ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... at first incomprehensible to many of them. It was a ship tossing in a stormy sea; but some of those present had been down to the mouth of the river, and these explained to the others the nature of the phenomenon. In all there were twenty slides, all of which were provided with movable figures; the last two ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... visualised dimly through that dust and the grammatical difficulties, the spectacle of the chorus chanting grotesquely, helping out protagonist and antagonist, masked and buskined, with the telling of incomprehensible parricides, of inexplicable incest, of gods faded beyond symbolism, of that Relentless Law we did not believe in for a moment, that no modern western European can believe in. We thought of the characters in the unconvincing wigs and costumes of our school performance. No Gilbert Murray ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... of McGurk stretched out and his arm stiffened but it seemed as though all the muscles of his back had grown stiff. He could not bend. It was strange. It was both ludicrous and incomprehensible. Perhaps he had grown stiff with ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... other of Shakespeare's heroines, the poet has also given a completer characterization, in which every charm of the highest type of woman is delineated. The one trait which a too censorious audience might criticize, that meekness in unbearable affliction which makes Chaucer's patient Griselda almost incomprehensible to modern readers, is in Imogen completely redeemed by her resolution in the face of danger, and by a certain {202} imperiousness which well becomes ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... group his metaphorical beauties, or dainties of Webster, Walker, &c., but rushes them out in torrents—rattles them down in cataracts and avalanches—bewildering, astounding, and incomprehensible. He hits you upon the left lug of your knowledge box with a metaphor so unwieldy and original, that your breath is soon gone—and before it is recovered, he gives you another rhapsody on t'other side, and as you try to steady yourself, bim ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... time will suffer his description, I'll give it you. He is one, the author calls him Carlo Buffone, an impudent common jester, a violent railer, and an incomprehensible epicure; one whose company is desired of all men, but beloved of none; he will sooner lose his soul than a jest, and profane even the most holy things, to excite laughter: no honourable or reverend personage whatsoever can ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... words; yet, as there is a divinity in the theology of the Church, which those who feel cannot communicate, so is there also in the wonderful creation of sublimity and beauty of which I am speaking. To many men the very names which the Science employs are utterly incomprehensible. To speak of an idea or a subject seems to be fanciful or trifling, to speak of the views which it opens upon us to be childish extravagance; yet is it possible that that inexhaustible evolution and disposition of notes, so rich yet so simple, so intricate ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... of vast thickness, by which the earth's crust, through countless ages, has been formed, unquestionably constitutes a most extraordinary phenomenon of physical creation, but hardly so marvellous and incomprehensible as the beginning, progress, and end of the divers orders of marine and terrestrial beings that filled each world of life. It is to geologists, to PLAYFAIR, HUTTON, LYELL, BUCKLAND, SEDGWICK, OWEN, and other great names, native and foreign, ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... German Empire, in its present desires of colonial extension, may be willing to absorb Holland, for the sake of her still extensive colonial possessions. Improbable as this may seem, it is scarcely more incomprehensible than the recent mysterious movements upon the European chess-board, attributed by common rumor to the dominating influence of the Emperor of Germany, which we puzzled Americans for months past have sought ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... were to us a never-ending source of amusement and interest, as we watched them working in their various ways and listened to their strange and incomprehensible gibberish. An old Hindoo one day raffled off a richly-embroidered silk pillow at a shilling a chance, and this, with my usual good luck I won and turned over to Mrs. ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... really confounded. She had heard Abel in old days speak of Gabriel Bennet as a spooney—a saint in the milk—a goodsey, boodsey, booby—a sort of youth who would turn pale and be snuffed out by one of her glances. She found him incomprehensible. She owed him the first positive emotion of human interest she had known ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... will always possess a certain charm for two classes of people: habitual vagabonds who beg and are freely accused of stealing, and the literary, artistic, antiquarian, or scientific vagabonds who take to tramping by fits and starts. The latter class, being quite incomprehensible to the rustic mind in Guyenne, are regarded by it with almost as ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... rich collections which Requien had left by will to the town of Avignon. In spite of the meagreness of his salary, he asked for nothing more; and, what is more, by an inconsequence which is by no means incomprehensible, he avoided everything that might have resulted in a more profitable position elsewhere, and evaded all proposals of further promotion. Twice, at Poitiers and Marseilles, he refused a post as assistant professor, not regarding ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... table, handed him the timetable, a diabolical labyrinth of incomprehensible figures and words specially compiled by railroad managers to puzzle and befog the traveling public. But Brockton, from long practice, seemed familiar ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... tragedy, attained to perfection only in Athens, and here it was exhibited only at a few festivals of a single god, Dionysus, while epic rhapsodies and lyric odes were recited on various occasions. All this is incomprehensible, if we suppose dramatic poetry to have originated in causes independent of the peculiar circumstances of time and place. If a love of imitation and a delight in disguising the real person under a mask were the basis upon which this style of poetry was raised, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Ruskinian doctrine, of which I made myself the apostle. On that study I spent such hours of the day as the light served, for three months, and then the coming of autumn stopped me. Any difficulty in literal rendering of a subject was incomprehensible to me, and in fact in that kind of work there is little difference, for it is but copying, and requires only a correct eye and infinite patience, both of which I had; and it was a puzzle to me rather than a compliment when the veteran Durand said to me of one of my studies, that ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... only that the Panama route is feasible, but that in the Nicaragua route we may encounter some unpleasant surprises, and that it is far more difficult to forecast the result with any certainty as regards this latter route. As for Colombia's attitude, it is incomprehensible upon any theory of desire to see the canal built upon the basis of mutual advantage alike to those building it and to Colombia herself. All we desire to do is to take up the work begun by the French Government and to finish it. Obviously it is Colombia's ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... led him to the consideration of the most subtle arguments raised against it. He was indeed the defender and champion of faith, having no sympathy for a mind which would lose itself in seeking the solution of the incomprehensible mysteries of religion. So he has ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... the surface of the water, being nearly round, then it slowly left the stream and rose till it was wholly in the air, and, notwithstanding the sunlight, it emitted a faint glow. "Ah!" exclaimed Bearwarden, "here we have one of our Jack-o'-lanterns. Let us see what it is going to do." "It is incomprehensible to me," said Cortlandt, "how it maintains itself; for it has neither wings nor visible means of support, yet, as it was able to immerse itself in the stream, thereby displacing a volume of liquid equivalent to its ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... done something more than has been accomplished by my predecessors, or contemporaries, with the significant language under consideration. I have written a purely flash song; of which the great and peculiar merit consists in its being utterly incomprehensible to the uninformed understanding, while its meaning must be perfectly clear and perspicuous to the practised patterer of Romany, or Pedler's French. I have, moreover, been the first to introduce and naturalize ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... the West. She fairly palpitated with joy and babbled away with the freedom of a sunny brook in the shadow of a grim forest. From the man's standpoint, he was not unkind; unrestraint was to him an incomprehensible factor in a young girl's make-up; and whatever was to follow, the first characters he meant her to learn ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... either telling or writing; and if they were fictions, revelation could not make them true; and whether true or not, we are neither the better nor the wiser for knowing them. When we contemplate the immensity of that Being, who directs and governs the incomprehensible WHOLE, of which the utmost ken of human sight can discover but a part, we ought to feel shame at calling such paltry stories the word ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... in a certain sense, he is so; and it is his greatest charm. But incomprehensible!—no. The essence of all artistic poetry is in the perfect blending of matter and form, so that the meaning creeps in upon us, but with a certain vagueness, a certain indefiniteness, which reaches us more in the shade of a dreamy consciousness than through ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... incomprehensible, yet true. Not a single article of feminine apparel was contained in the suit-case. Not only that, but every garment therein which bore an identification mark was the property of Roland Warren, the man whose body leered at them from the floor ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... know all that can be known by the dead concerning that which the living fear, hope, or forget; to plunge him into the pleasure or pain which there awaits him; to punish or reward him in a manner and in a degree incalculable and incomprehensible by us; to disrobe him at once from all that intertexture of good and evil with which Nature seems to have clothed every form of individual existence, is to inflict on ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... is given by Mr. du Chaillu for such an apparently incomprehensible form of expression as, for example, 1-3, for 7. Some peculiar finger pantomime may accompany the counting, which, were it known, would enlighten us on the Mbousha's method of arriving at so anomalous a scale. Mere ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant |
