"Comprehensible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... three keys were kept by La Ramee. When they reached the court, Grimaud seated himself negligently in one of the embrasures, his legs dangling outside the wall. The duke understood that the rope-ladder was to be fixed at that place. This, and other manoeuvres, comprehensible enough to M. de Beaufort, and carefully noted by him, had, of course, no intelligible ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... the reader by attempting to describe in detail my plan of operations, for it involved a mathematical problem of some complexity, only interesting to and comprehensible by a mathematician. Suffice it to say that what I had undertaken to do was to make three separate sets of observations from as many chosen points, consisting of carefully observed compass bearings, and angles taken with my pocket sextant; and the taking ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... find that they may be classed under three general heads: 1 deg.. Those which are understood by the Danish Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, and Professor Rafn, their Secretary; 2 deg.. Those which are comprehensible only by Mr Rafn; and 3. Those which neither the Society, Mr Rafn, nor anybody else can be said in any definite sense to understand, and which accordingly offer peculiar temptations to enucleating sagacity. These last are naturally deemed the most valuable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... most important contributions to philosophy made in Great Britain for many years. The present volume contains his Course of Lectures, forty-six in number, which he delivered as Professor of Metaphysics; and being intended for young students, they are, as compared with his other works, more comprehensible without being less comprehensive. The most conclusive proof of the excellence of these Lectures is to be found in their influence on the successive classes of students before whom they were pronounced. The universal testimony of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... great satisfaction to know that there is nothing further of greater importance to learn about the sexual activity of the child after the impulse of one erogenous zone has become comprehensible to us. The most pronounced differences are found in the action necessary for the gratification, which consists in sucking for the lip zone and which must be replaced by other muscular actions according to the situation and nature of ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... literary men were once asked to select the best reviews of a novel which had just appeared. One of the three statements which they rated highest said of the book that it "achieves the true purpose of a novel, which is to make comprehensible the philosophy of life of a whole community or race of men by showing us how that philosophy accords with the impulses and yearnings of typical individuals." Few phrases could be more foreign to Bible phrases than those. But there is valuable ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... science of matter in that it contemplates this energy under an aspect of responsive intelligence which does not fall within the scope of physical science, as such. The Science of Spirit and the Science of Matter are not opposed. They are complementaries, and neither is fully comprehensible without some knowledge of the other; and, being really but two portions of one whole, they insensibly shade off into each other in a border-land where no arbitrary line can be drawn between them. Science studied in a truly scientific spirit, following out ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... of the many new hands who flocked in with the spring, the line progressed slowly. This was quite comprehensible, and when I traveled over it afterward as a passenger I wondered how we had ever built it at all. Portions were hewn out of the solid rock, of a hardness that was often too much for our most carefully tempered drills; others ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... the French use the word moral for what we used to call morale, and therefore we ought to do the same; and (2) the French use morale to mean something different from what we mean by it. The case against moral is (1) that it is a new word, less comprehensible to ordinary people, even now, after its war-time currency, than the old morale; (2) that it badly needs to be dressed in italics owing to the occasional danger of confusion with the English word moral, and that such artificial precautions are never kept up; (3) that half of us do not know ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... Pegasi and Hippogriffs, and of flying chariots, from that of Phaeton downwards to Astolfo's,[3] were evidently intended by their authors as mythical; not so, however, with Bishop Wilkins;—he boldly avers, for several reasons which he keeps to himself, and for others not very comprehensible to us, which he details "seriously and on good grounds," "that it is possible to make a flying chariot, in which a man may sit, and give such a motion unto it, as shall convey him through the air; and this perhaps might be made large enough to ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... a new and less comprehensible emotion. At first Miss Loder had accepted the fact of her employer's marriage as one accepts any fixed tradition; and the subject rarely entered her thoughts ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... play of "St. George and the Dragon," over which I have burnt the midnight oil (you must colour the thing by lamplight because that is how it will be seen), still lacks most conspicuously, alas! two wings of the Sultan's Palace, and also some comprehensible and workable way of ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... not so much a possession of my memory as an inherent part of myself. It was ever present to my mind and ready to my hand, but I was loth to touch it from a feeling of what I imagined to be mere shyness but which in reality was a very comprehensible mistrust of myself. ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... however, is always more comprehensible and instructive than a general discussion. Let us therefore take the incidents and conditions which preceded our recent war with Spain. The facts, as seen by us, may, I apprehend, be fairly stated as follows: In the island of Cuba, a powerful military force,—government it scarcely ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... was odd yet comprehensible; for though his desire was unquestionably great, it was not particularly active, probably because he knew that he held her and that no aggressive effort was necessary. Secure in the feeling that she belonged ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... having ventured to bring the question of repeal before the house. He asked, what was meant by the watch-word of repeal of the union between Great Britain and Ireland. If those who used it meant a complete separation, or a species of Hibernian republic, their conduct was both comprehensible and consistent; but if, as they asserted, they only meant two separate independent legislatures, under the same monarch, the motion was inconsistent with the first principles of the science of government. After having shown ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... flank movement at Atlanta, he had given up that city. Even later—when General Hood published his report of the Atlanta campaign—he differs in essential points from General Johnston, and neither his theories nor their carrying out are made comprehensible ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... to grasp the total process of redistribution of matter and motion as to see simultaneously its several necessary results in their actual interdependence is scarcely possible. There is, however, a mode of rendering the process as a whole tolerably comprehensible. Though the genesis of the rearrangement of every evolving aggregate is in itself one, it presents to ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... first envisage his own plight in definite and comprehensible terms. Things happened to him so much of late, his own efforts had counted for so little, that he had become passive and planless. His last scheme had been to go round the coast of England as a Desert Dervish giving ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... had no prejudice against the conventional as such, and was never anxious to exhibit special "insight" of any kind. Yet I think his portrayal of Swift has seemed to most readers a clear presentation of a real and comprehensible character.[191] ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... short, every thing they see calls for observation, and affords an opportunity for the application of their geometrical knowledge. Let it not, then, be said that it is beyond their capacity, for it is the simplest and most comprehensible to them of all knowledge;—let it not be said that it is useless, since its application to the useful arts is great and indisputable; nor is it to be asserted that it is unpleasing to them, since it has been shewn to ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... when the German shall consent to clear his throat, the Frenchman his nose, the Spaniard his tonsils and the Englishman the tip of his tongue—when all shall become as little children and be mutually comprehensible. Commerce at present is doing more than the philosophers to that end. While the countrymen of Wilhelm von Humboldt and Max Mueller persist in burying their laboriously heaped treasures under a load of black-letter type ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... 'Zekiel to be surprised that all the dogs were chatting together in very comprehensible Dorsetshire English. To see them actually living, and moving about, was such an extraordinary thing that it swallowed up every other feeling, ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... nothing but the mediaeval and Teutonic form of tenets common to all the nations upon earth. The changeling superstition and the classic stories of children and adults beloved by gods of high and low degree are consistent with this belief, and inseparable from it. The motive is so far comprehensible: what is wanted is to know whether any special relations, such as are pointed at by the Greek epithet Drakos, were held to exist between the mysterious world and newly-born babes which would render the latter more obnoxious to attack than elder children ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... expression, as when {173} "The Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered" (Rom. 8: 26). But the idea which is really intelligible is the idea that is embodied in speech. For finite minds, at least, words are the measure of comprehensible thoughts. Evidently Jesus claims for his teaching not only inspiration, but verbal inspiration, when he says that his words are "spirit and life." And to this agrees the saying of Paul, in speaking of the inspiration ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... SAHTOF. That is quite comprehensible and correct; but if, as you are kind enough to inform us, the plunging of the medium into a trance produces perturbations of the spiritual ether, allow me to ask why (as is usually supposed to be the case in spiritualistic sances) these perturbations result ...
— Fruits of Culture • Leo Tolstoy
... clarinets and bassoons in the hour of her deep affliction and abasement, and by the flutes and hautboys when her soul has finally cast off all the trammels of earth—and Wolfram by the violoncello. The feelings of the two are so exquisitely portrayed by the orchestra, that the scene would be easily comprehensible if it were carried on—as indeed much of it is—without ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... expects an old person to be. Old persons ought to take up the position of audience. They ought, above all things, to give a rest to the minds of young people, who, goodness knows, have enough to worry them, by being easily comprehensible. With mother one knew exactly where one was; one knew everything that had happened to her and how she had felt about it, and there was no question of anything fresh ever happening to her. But from the deep, slow breaths this woman drew, from the warmth that seemed to radiate ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... hatred to the English, and a jealousy of their power in the Mediterranean; and in this so strange and senseless a manner, that we must join the extremes of imbecility and treachery in the same cabinet, in order to find it comprehensible. Though the very existence of Naples and Sicily, as a nation, depended wholly and exclusively on British support; though the royal family owed their personal safety to the British fleet; though not only their dominions and their rank, but the liberty ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... world, their true nature is in a manner so involved with obscurity, that unto many philosophers, and those no mean ones, they seemed altogether incomprehensible, and the Stoics themselves, though they judge them not altogether incomprehensible, yet scarce and not without much difficulty, comprehensible, so that all assent of ours is fallible, for who is he that is infallible in his conclusions? From the nature of things, pass now unto their subjects and matter: how temporary, how vile are they I such as may be in ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... not go out until nearly noon the next day. In terms comprehensible to any low-grade submoron, it was emphasized that all this meant was that slaves should henceforth be called freedmen, that they could have money just like Lords-Master, and that if they worked faithfully and obeyed ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... assembly,—entering which a wicked man does not become penetrated with fear (born of his wicked deeds). That man is the foremost of his species who having dived into and enquired after righteousness succeeds in acting according to the conclusions to which he arrives.[853] The acts of a wise man are not easily comprehensible. He that is wise, is never stupefied when afflictions come upon him. Even if he falls away from his position like Gautama in his old age, in consequence of the direct calamity, he does not suffer himself to be stupefied.[854] By any of these, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... rise to the cultivated and philanthropic feelings which accompanied the skepticism of their remote founders, they based their denial of moral accountability—as narrow and vulgar minds naturally do—on a predestination, which is as insulting to GOD as to man, since it is consistently comprehensible only by supposing HIM a slave to destiny. Among such vassals to a worse than earthly tyranny, the man who as 'a Scottish servant regarded not his own life or that of any other save his master,' would find doctrines congenial enough to his ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... had the knack of annoying him. In a year, working night and day, he could only make of all his rhymes, one single volume which never sold, I said to him: "Ah! you see," just in a reasoning spirit, to bring him to something more comprehensible, more remunerative, He got into a frightful rage, and afterwards sank into a state of gloomy depression which made me very unhappy. My friends advised me as well as they could: "You see, my dear, it is the ennui and bad temper of an unoccupied man. If he worked a little ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... popular rights with contempt. Of popular sovereignty he had no conception. His patriotism, like his ambition, was provincial. Yet his perceptions as to eternal necessity in all healthy governments taught him that comprehensible relations between the state and the population were needful to the very existence of a free commonwealth. The United Provinces, he maintained, were not a republic, but a league of seven provinces very loosely hung together, a mere provisional ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... space was to see the origin and growth of the human race; thence we were to derive our first and only accounts of primitive history; and such a locality was to lie before our imagination, no less simple and comprehensible than varied, and adapted to the most wonderful migrations and settlements. Here, between four designated rivers, a small, delightful spot was separated from the whole habitable earth, for youthful man. Here he was to unfold his first capacities, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... too strong and deep to be shaken by this temporary lapse into brutality which he had known all along was there although held miraculously in abeyance these many weeks. The man was a genius, with all the temperamental fluctuations of mood which are comprehensible and forgivable in a genius. Dick did not begrudge the other any relief he might find in his debauch of ill humor, was more than willing he should work it off on his humble self if it could do any good though he would be immensely relieved when the old ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... children. Characters of this kind no one ever delineated better than Dickens. That Leigh Hunt, the poet and essayist, who had sat for the portrait of Skimpole, was not altogether flattered by the likeness, is comprehensible enough; and in truth it is unfair, both to painter and model, that we should take such portraits too seriously. Landor, who sat for the thunderous and kindly Boythorn, had more reason to be satisfied. Besides these one may mention Joe, the outcast; ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... That evening the Nabob opened a shabby little portfolio, badly worn at the corners, in which for ten years past he had manoeuvred his millions, minuting his profits and his expenses in hieroglyphics comprehensible to himself alone. He calculated for a moment, then turned to ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... election. This explanation will perhaps be more comprehensible if the actual result of the polling in the Nyland division, so far as the first 25 candidates are concerned, is given in a ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... a very sketchy statement of the ground-work of "Fors," but to most readers nowadays as comprehensible as, at the time of its publication, it was incomprehensible. For when, long after "Fors" had been written, Ruskin found other writers advocating the same principles and calling themselves Socialists, he said that he ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... ill-feeling already excited by the submarine campaign. If the contention of certain naval authorities that the observance of the Declaration of London by our enemies would have brought us no important material advantage is correct, the issue of our Note of February 16th becomes even less comprehensible. Having admitted in this Note that the declaration of the barred zones was caused by the fact that all was not well with us, we could hardly expect England would fall in with the proposal made at our suggestion by Mr. Wilson, and thus allow us so easy a diplomatic triumph. The President, ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... family reasons caused me to move from Griesheim to this place, Keilhau.[114] Next came other pupils also, with Langethal's arrival in September. My household was growing fast, and yet I had no house of my own. In a way only comprehensible to Him Who knows the workings of the mind, I managed by November to get the school that I now occupy built as a frame-house, but without being in possession of the ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... personally or through his intermediate agents, one half of the annual amount of lumber felled for market, the sale of which was arranged with the neighboring forge owners by mutual agreement; the other half was disposed of by notarial act. This latter arrangement was clear and comprehensible; the price of sale and the amounts falling due were both clearly indicated in the deed. But it was quite different with the bargains made by the owner himself, which were often credited by notes payable at sight, mostly worded in confused ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... of him, people in Iping, on the whole, agreed in disliking him. His irritability, though it might have been comprehensible to an urban brain-worker, was an amazing thing to these quiet Sussex villagers. The frantic gesticulations they surprised now and then, the headlong pace after nightfall that swept him upon them round quiet corners, ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... science; for no object is comprehensible by us in all its properties at once. But if we forget the limitations of our abstract data, we are liable to make strange blunders by mistaking the character of the results: treating the results as simply true of actual things, instead of as true of actual ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... when the artists "had been brought under proper control." The "Lenin" had been painted a year and a half ago, when, as fading hoarding in the streets of Moscow still testify, revolutionary art was dominated by the Futurist movement. Every carriage is decorated with most striking but not very comprehensible pictures in the brightest colors, and the proletariat was called upon to enjoy what the pre-revolutionary artistic public had for the most part failed to understand. Its pictures are "art for art's ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... three parts drunk, and for some reason, not very comprehensible, he had chosen to resent the presence of this clean-limbed, clean-featured English lad. Possibly he recognized in him a type which for its very cleanness he abhorred. Possibly his sodden brain was stirred by an envy which the Colonials round him were powerless ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... ring in her voice, or the sheer seriousness of the position, he did not feel resentment as when he lost her to Fiorsen. Love! A passion such as had overtaken her mother and himself! And this young man? A decent fellow, a good rider—comprehensible! Ah, if the course had only been clear! He put his hand on her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... an alluring pastime, but one that must not divert us here. Our point of view reverses that of the philosophers. We are chiefly concerned, not with some vague saying of Anaxagoras, but with what he really knew regarding the phenomena of nature; with what he observed, and with the comprehensible deductions that he derived from his observations. In attempting to answer these inquiries, we are obliged, in part, to take our evidence at second-hand; but, fortunately, some fragments of writings of Anaxagoras have come down to us. We are ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... millions taken in by Vanderbilt in these transactions came from a host of other men who would have plundered him as quickly as he plundered them. They came from members of the Legislature who had grown rich on bribes for granting a continuous succession of special privileges, or to put it in a more comprehensible form, licenses to individuals and corporations to prey in a thousand and one forms upon the people. They came from bankers, railroad, land and factory owners, all of whom had assiduously bribed Congress, legislatures, common councils and administrative officials to give them special laws ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... us who cannot accept Mr. Wells's Invisible King as a God in any useful or even comprehensible sense of the term, there remains the question whether he is a useful figure of speech. Metaphors and personifications are often things of great potency, whether for good or evil. It might quite well happen that, if we wholly rejected Mr. Wells's gospel, on account of a mere squabble ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... its birth. On the contrary, it was childlike and rather crooked in many of its ways; but chastisement and criticism have brought it very far toward real manhood. Its early nurses were standing continually on the dark line separating the comprehensible from the incomprehensible, without any guides. They were out upon an unexplored sea in the mere twilight of the morning. They were opposed at every step by the combative tendencies of human nature, which are ever seeking too much for their own gratification to admit any strange, ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... in the sensation, yet with it a perfectly comprehensible alarm. And instinctively the thought stirred in him: "What should I—could I, do—if anything happened and he did ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... humanism and rationalism have brought antiquity into the field as an ally; and it is therefore quite comprehensible that the opponents of humanism should direct their attacks against antiquity also. Antiquity, however, has been misunderstood and falsified by humanism . it must rather be considered as a testimony against ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... in her mind, the parrot becoming sanctified through the neighbourhood of the Holy Ghost, and the latter becoming more lifelike in her eyes, and more comprehensible. In all probability the Father had never chosen as messenger a dove, as the latter has no voice, but rather one of Loulou's ancestors. And Felicite said her prayers in front of the coloured picture, though from time to time she ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... know so little! Time and space have yielded not an iota of their mystery to our most penetrant minds. And whether we delve baffled into the unknown smallness of the small, or whether we peer, blind and helpless, into the unknown largeness of the large, it is the same—infinity is comprehensible only to the Infinite One: the all-shaping Force directing and controlling the Universe and the unknowable Sphere. The more we know, the vaster the virgin fields of investigation open to us, and the more infinitesimal becomes our knowledge. But ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... heart, as well as the other glands of internal secretion stimulating the organism as a whole. Though the isolation in pure form of the substance or substances involved has never been scientifically achieved, their inference is entirely justified. It is indeed the only comprehensible mechanism conceivable that will fit all the known facts about the matter. And even though the assertions of Brown-Sequard were only the exaggerations of a semi-charlatan, it is certain that some day ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... through it, he sees an angel pointing somewhere towards a miraculous pair of spectacles!!! Yes, two polished pieces of crystal were the humble means by which the golden plates were to be rendered comprehensible. By the bye, the said spectacles are a heavy, ugly piece of workmanship of the last century; they are silver-mounted, and bear the maker's name, plainly engraved, ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... of repetition on crowds is comprehensible when the power is seen which it exercises on the most enlightened minds. This power is due to the fact that the repeated statement is embedded in the long run in those profound regions of our unconscious selves ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... his diagnosis. Training may have had something to do with it. She would not laugh, not she, but once or twice she raised her napkin to her face and coughed slightly. For the rest, she sat demurely, with her eyes on her plate, a model of propriety. Nick's sufferings became more comprehensible. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... one great obstacle to the reception of that spiritual- ity, through which the understanding of Mind-science 115:3 comes, is the inadequacy of material terms for metaphysical statements, and the consequent difficulty of so expressing metaphysical ideas as to make 115:6 them comprehensible to any reader, who has not person- ally demonstrated Christian Science as brought forth in my discovery. Job says: "The ear trieth words, as the 115:9 mouth tasteth meat." The great difficulty is to give the right impression, when translating ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... deliverance of superficial criticism than that which declares French poetry in general to be either nought—which is still a not uncommon notion—or at least not great enough to be worth the study which alone could make it comprehensible. There are many good people who dare to say this, yet live, audacious, and unconscious of their folly. We have, however, to consider Victor Hugo on a ground which no one ventures to dispute. The great romances—for which we should like to invent another name—which ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... them, especially those in Webster, are fitter for a child's scrap-book than for a volume intended to go into a student's library. Such adjuncts seem to us allowable only, if at all, somewhat as they were introduced by Blunt in his "Glossographia," to make terms of heraldry more easily comprehensible. They might be admitted to save trouble in describing geometrical figures, or in explaining certain of the more frequently occurring terms in architecture and mechanics, but beyond this they are childish. The publishers of Webster give us all the coats-of-arms of the States of the American Union, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... Prince Hal[1] so fine a representative of all that is careless and gay in prodigal youth, with its noble qualities but half in abeyance, and abounding spirit and humour and reckless fancy making its course of wild adventure comprehensible even to the gravest. Perhaps the licence of the Stewart blood carried the hapless northern prince into more dangerous adventures than the wild fun of Gadshill and Eastcheap. And Prince David's future had already been compromised by certain sordid treacheries about his ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... its disuse being from causes before mentioned. It, however, may be true in some cases that a tribe, having been for a long time in contact only with others the dialect of which was so nearly akin as to be comprehensible, or from any reason being separated from those of a strange speech, discontinued sign language for a time, and then upon migration or forced removal came into circumstances where it was useful, and revived it. It is asserted that some of the Muskoki and the Ponkas now in the ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... sea-shore, to the gigantic crater, which, at the Lord's command, vomits fire out of its throat which has been closed for thousands of years: they all spoke with one voice which is not heard by the haughty, being only manifest and comprehensible to the humble. These were the words of Him who created them, be it in six days or in six thousand years, "A thousand years are but as ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... that they may lie classed under three general heads; 1. Those which are understood by the Danish Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, and Professor Rafn, their Secretary; 2. Those which are comprehensible only by Mr. Rafn; and 3. Those which neither the Society, Mr. Rafn, nor anybody else can be said in any definite sense to understand, and which accordingly offer peculiar temptations to enucleating sagacity. These last are naturally deemed the most valuable by intelligent antiquaries, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Bielby was informed of his state, and came to see him; but Maitland talked so wildly about the Hit or Miss, about the man in the bearskin coat, and other unintelligible matters, that the hermit soon withdrew to the more comprehensible fragments of "Demetrius of Scepsis." He visited his old pupil daily, and behaved with real kindness; but the old implicit trust never revived with ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... successors of Moses transmitted to us ideas more clear, more sensible, more comprehensible of the Divinity? Has the Son of God made his Father perfectly known to us? Has the church, perpetually boasting of the light she diffuses among men, become more fixed and certain, to do away our uncertainty? Alas! in spite of all these supernatural succors, we know nothing ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... hurriedly. In not very carefully chosen phrasing the orchestra was to represent the ocean, and, as far as might be, the ship upon it. A forcible, pathetically yearning and aspiring theme was the only comprehensible idea amid the swirl of enveloping sound. When the whole had been repeated, there was a sudden jump to a different theme in extreme pianissimo, accompanied by the swelling vibrations of the first violins, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... appetible apprehensible audible cessible coercible compatible competible comprehensible compressible conceptible contemptible contractible controvertible convertible convincible corrigible corrosible corruptible credible decoctible deducible defeasible defensible descendible destructible digestible discernible ...
— Division of Words • Frederick W. Hamilton
... ascertain precisely what this power would be in any given instance, it only remains to find an expression for the spring power with which we have been hitherto dealing, that shall be more generally comprehensible. ...
— A Project for Flying - In Earnest at Last! • Robert Hardley
... personality is quite comprehensible: he is indignant at his mother's and his uncle's deeds, and wishes to revenge himself upon them, but is afraid his uncle may kill him as he had killed his father. Therefore he simulates insanity, desiring to bide his time and observe ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... the rank and file, was proof positive of something radically wrong, either in his disposition or his record. It was entirely comprehensible and fully in accordance with human nature and the merits of the case that a man should quit drinking when he quit the army, but that a man with the blot of an occasional spree on his escutcheon should enlist for any other cause than sheer desperation, ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... befits the artist asked to listen to a rival. Mr. Thornburgh sat pensive, one foot drooped over the other. He was very fond of the Leyburn girls, but music seemed to him, good man, one of the least comprehensible of human pleasures. As for Rose, she had at last arranged herself and her accompanist Agnes, after routing out from her music a couple of Fantasie-Stuecke, which she had wickedly chosen as presenting ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... are frequently amusing but rarely edifying, and this hatred of Bowring that possessed the soul of poor Borrow in his later years is of the same texture as the rest. We shall never know the facts, but the position is comprehensible enough. Let us turn to the extant correspondence[87] which, as far as we know, opened when Borrow paid what was probably his third visit to London ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... but I have never met an Englishman yet who hated Islam and its people as I have met Englishmen who hated some other faiths. Musalmani awadani, as the saying goes—where there are Mohammedans, there is a comprehensible civilisation. ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... being is unknown. Out of this mass there were evolved two orders of beings, namely, demons and gods. The demons had hideous forms, even as Berosus said, which were part animal, part bird, part reptile and part human. The gods had wholly human forms, and they represented the three layers of the comprehensible world, that is to say, heaven or the sky, the atmosphere, and the underworld. The atmosphere and the underworld together formed the earth as opposed to the sky or heaven. The texts say that the first two gods to be created were LAKHMU and LAKHAMU. Their ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum
... is perhaps to be sufficiently accounted for by Scott's double dislike, both as an independent person and a man of business, of giving a monopoly of his work to one publisher, and by his constant fancy for trying experiments on the public—a fancy itself not wholly, though partially, comprehensible. As a matter of fact, Old Mortality and the Black Dwarf were offered to and pretty eagerly accepted by Murray and Blackwood, on the terms of half profits and the inevitable batch of 'old stock.' The story of the unlucky quarrel with Blackwood in consequence ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... these—and that was the trouble—other things had vanished. That deep filling of his lungs with spring, for instance. And the longing that went with it. That was it—the longing. He longed for the longing—if that is comprehensible. He longed vaguely for a longing that had been his, and which was gone. He never saw, now, a land that was as a golden pool beneath a turquoise dome; nor a boy in the wild ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... felt boyishly jealous of her friendship with Emile. That was very natural. For this was their honeymoon. She considered it their honeymoon prolonged, delightfully prolonged, beyond any fashionable limit. Lucrezia's depression was easily comprehensible. The change in her husband she accounted for; but now here was ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... and politics are carefully avoided, and a pure morality, a simple theosophy, comprehensible to the meanest understanding, pervades these simple discourses. The consequence of this toleration and liberal spirit is that an union between the Lutheran and Calvinistic churches has ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... nothing, but embraced me and drew me back on the ottoman. She began to kiss me anew, and this silent language was so comprehensible, ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... preference of creditors in this direction, and of mysterious spiriting away of property in that; and as nobody on the face of the earth could be more incapable of explaining any single item in the heap of confusion than the debtor himself, nothing comprehensible could be made of his case. To question him in detail, and endeavour to reconcile his answers; to closet him with accountants and sharp practitioners, learned in the wiles of insolvency and bankruptcy; was only to put the case out at compound interest and incomprehensibility. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... daily business and not suspecting that they were made a show of. And these books are as English as a beefsteak. Have they ever been tried in America? It needs an English residence to make them thoroughly comprehensible; but still I should think that the human nature in them would give them ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... the means by which we were made competent witnesses. They are the bed-rock of evidence. We know facts and truths, both comprehensible and incomprehensible, by the same means. We are as competent to testify of that which we do not comprehend as we are to testify of the most ordinary fact. As competent to bear testimony to the fact of a sweeping tornado as to the fact of a gentle breeze. ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880
... just possible, Master Vasari, that Botticelli may have laid out his money at higher interest than you know of; meantime, he is advancing in life and thought, and becoming less and less comprehensible to his biographer. And at length, having got rid, somehow, of the money he received from the Pope; and finished the work he had to do, and uncovered it,—free in conscience, and empty in purse, he returned to Florence, where, "being a sophistical ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... named by a word which is singular only: as, perry, cider, coffee, flax, hemp, fennel, tallow, pitch, gold, sloth, pride, meekness, eloquence. But there are some things, which have in fact neither a comprehensible unity, nor any distinguishable plurality, and which may therefore be spoken of in either number; for the distinction of unity and plurality is, in such instances, merely verbal; and, whichever number we take, the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... awkward-seeming interruption. Its content was not comprehensible to Telzey at all, but in some unmistakable manner it was defined ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... some man of public research enlighten the public on the proceedings at the Mint? The whole system is as little comprehensible by the uninitiated as the philosopher's stone. The cost of the Mint is prodigious—the machinery is all that machinery can be; yet we have one of the ugliest coinages of any nation of Europe. A new issue of coin is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... an economic necessity was perfectly comprehensible to him, but it was difficult for him to conceive of anybody indulging in it simply as a matter of sentiment. That April afternoon was so far away now that it had ceased to exist even ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... statements it appears the project will cost 92,830 pounds; and the amount of revenue arising from such tonnage as is comprehensible, will amount annually to 7,322 pounds 12s. 6d. which is rather more than 8 per cent. per annum for the shareholders, independent of 39,090 tons more which the works will be able to perform, if required, and which from the low price of one penny per ...
— Report of the Knaresbrough Rail-way Committee • Knaresbrough Rail-way Committee
... Mythologies" (at least, as briefly set forth by you in Kuhn's Zeitung), yet I am deeply impressed with this apparent opportunity of bridging the seemingly impassable gulf between Etrurian Religion and the comparatively clear and comprehensible systems of the Pelasgo- Phoenician peoples. That Kad or Kab can refer either (as in Quatuor) to a four-footed animal (quadruped, "quad") or to a four- wheeled vehicle (esseda, Celtic cab) I cannot for a moment believe, though I understand that ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... unknown. If we denote anything incomprehensible by the symbol X, we can describe what X is to a certain extent by knowing what it is not. We can, gradually, gain a certain insight into what it is by comparing it to what IS comprehensible. ...
— Unthinkable • Roger Phillips Graham
... theater. Is there not here a human world created by us, unforeseen and unknown by Eternal destinies, comprehensible by our minds alone, a sensual and intellectual distraction, which has been invented solely by and for that discontented and restless ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... work—how soon the most objectionable American girl of the sort known as "fast," or even "loud," softens into a very charming creature who makes the admiration bestowed upon her by European men quite comprehensible. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... was foreign to his nature. There was no room in him for sham or artifice. Whatever happened, he must be real. He couldn't talk their talk just yet, though in time he would. Upon that he was resolved. But in the meantime, talk he must, and it must be his own talk, toned down, of course, so as to be comprehensible to them and so as not to shook them too much. And furthermore, he wouldn't claim, not even by tacit acceptance, to be familiar with anything that was unfamiliar. In pursuance of this decision, when the two brothers, talking university shop, had used "trig" ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... could compare Christ with Socrates, Plato and Seneca; fewer still those who could say with Franck, "Heretic is a title of honor, for truth is always called heresy." The names of Marcion and Pelagius, Epicurus and Mahomet, excited a passion of hatred hardly comprehensible to us. The {584} refutation of the Koran issued under Luther's auspices would have been ludicrous had ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... To render this adventure comprehensible, it is necessary to add here that Lord Dudley naturally found many women disposed to reproduce samples of such a delicious pattern. His second masterpiece of this kind was a young girl named Euphemie, born of a Spanish lady, reared ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... complicated transactions of our common lives,—are thus overruled by God's Providence; and, without restraint, are so controlled that they shall subserve to the ulterior purposes of His will,—after a fashion which altogether defies analysis. Beyond this inner circle of comprehensible causation,—external to the immediate sphere of cause and effect which courts our daily scrutiny,—there is an outer circle, which rounds our lives; and (as I said) overrules all we do; fashioning, by virtue of a supreme ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... familiarly acquainted with the developement of the elements of things, as where we are. What we have not yet mastered, we feel confidently persuaded that the investigators that come after us will reduce to rules not less obvious, familiar and comprehensible, than is to us the rising of the sun, or the progress of animal and vegetable life from the first bud and seed of existence to the last ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... of diminishing but of increasing the general liberty—so the Church, divinely safeguarded too in the process, takes the Revelation of Christ and by her dogma and her discipline popularizes it, so to speak, and makes it at once comprehensible and effective. ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... thirsty. He was evidently not sleeping very heavily, for he awoke at my first call and came to the side of my bunk; but I at once perceived that it was not the man I had before seen; this fellow's voice and manner were surly in the extreme, and as he bent over me he gruffly demanded, in a scarcely comprehensible French patois, what I wanted. I answered, in French, that I should like something to eat and drink; whereupon he produced, from a sort of cupboard in the darkest corner of the forecastle, a bowl and a large can of soup, together with a wooden tray of flinty biscuit and an old iron ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... Egalit, Pamela, Henrietta Circe, and several others, who appeared in various ways, as artists, gentlemen, domestics, and equals, on various occasions. The history of their way of life is extraordinary, and not very comprehensible, probably owing to the many necessary difficulties which the new ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... is partly on account of the traditions respecting this bit of family history that I am so often asked if I am a spiritualist. I am sometimes tempted to reply in grammar comprehensible to the writers of certain letters which I receive upon ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... converted into a huge chaotic mass of unintelligible technicality; and such was his skill and industry, that he was able, after the severe toil of two or three days, to present to the consideration of the young counsel the principal facts of the case, in a light equally simple and comprehensible. With the assistance of a solicitor so affectionate and indefatigable, Alan Fairford was enabled, then the day of trial arrived, to walk towards the court, attended by his anxious yet encouraging parent, with some degree of confidence that he ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... became comprehensible to Thor that his father might raise the rent and still not be an instrument of oppression. It was consoling to him to perceive this. It helped to allay certain uncomfortable suspicions that had risen in his mind since coming home, and which ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... wounded; the arrows of God, the darts of fire, have stricken me. We find in the American legends the descending dbris constantly alluded to as "stones, arrows, and spears"; I am poisoned with the foul exhalations of the comet; the terrors of God are arrayed against me. All this is comprehensible as a description of a great disaster of nature, but it is extravagant language to apply to a ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... he took her hand, a fat little round hand, with a golden circle upon one of the fingers, which denoted betrothal or marriage, and pressed it fondly. We could not understand their Finnish speech; but there is a language comprehensible to all, in every clime. That the pair were in love no one could for a moment doubt, and that they heeded nothing of those quaint old Finnish chants, distinctly audible from the opposite carriage, was evident, for they talked ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... in a strange content. The music filled their veins with intoxicating delight; it was of a kind that Lettice rejoiced in exceedingly, and that Alan loved without quite knowing why. The Tannhauser Overture, the Walkueren-Ritt, two of Schubert's loveliest songs, and the less exciting but more easily comprehensible productions of an earlier classical composer, were the chief items of the first part of the concert. Then came an interval, after which the rest of the afternoon would be devoted to the Choral Symphony. But ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... died away in the distance. Tom and Erica laughed, but the incident set Erica thinking. Here was a man who would not believe what he could not understand, who wanted "pipes and a meter," and for want of comprehensible outward signs ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... she threw off the shawl from her feet and the cushions that supported her shoulders, and got up and walked about the room, looking out upon the afternoon sunshine and the trees that were turning their shadows to the east. How she longed, with a fervour scarcely explainable, not at all comprehensible to most people, to leave the place, to open her wings in a ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Brahman dawns. Nothing however can be known about the nature of this indefinite except its character as indefinite. That all the phenomena of the world, the fixed order of events, the infinite variety of world-forms and names, all these are originated by this avidya, ajnana or maya is indeed hardly comprehensible. If it is indefinite nescience, how can all these well-defined forms of world-existence come out of it? It is said to exist only relatively, and to have only a temporary existence beside the permanent infinite reality. To take such a ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... to a dark cell. No wonder that many committed suicide. Dr. Vrbensk could tell how he used to get excited by the cry of the ill-treated prisoners. Even his nerves could not stand it. It is quite comprehensible, therefore, that Dr. Scheiner (the president of the 'Sokol' Union) in such an atmosphere was physically and mentally broken down in two months. Dr. Kramr and Dr. Rasn also had an opportunity of feeling the brutality of Polatchek and Teszinski. In the winter we ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... into restless death-ridden dreaming; and so it was many nights, until the dawn that they fronted a swift river, black from its snowy banks, saw the rising pine hills opposite and were swept possibly by mistake into the center of comprehensible action—a picture lifted from the ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... words hoarsely, but nothing was comprehensible but "quick!" and "run." He pointed seaward, though in the direction opposite to that which the party had taken that morning on their way round to Crater Bay, a journey which familiarity had ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... in a bar,—would be more comprehensible for the performers, if instead of indicating them by a particular series of gestures, they were treated as though the one was composed of three and two in a bar, and the other composed ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... methods by which Science has arrived at conclusions so strangely in harmony with the ancient thought of the East, may suggest the doubt whether those conclusions could ever be made clearly comprehensible to the mass of Western minds. Certainly it would seem that just as the real doctrines of Buddhism can be taught to the majority of believers through forms only, so the philosophy of science can be communicated to the masses through suggestion only,—suggestion of such facts, or arrangements of ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... was comprehensible, and the charioteer, assiduously obliging, fell to posture of ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... hand staring at her. She flew to him directly, with a broken entreaty that she might be taken to her father. Again they tried questioning her, but Richard, whether speaking English or Provencal, always succeeded in obtaining readier and more comprehensible replies than did the Princess. Whether she recognized him as her preserver, or whether his language had a familiar tone, she seemed exclusively attracted by him; and he it was who learnt that she lived at home—far off—on the Green ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from its educational possibilities one never ceases to marvel at the power of even a mimic stage to afford to the young a magic space in which life may be lived in efflorescence, where manners may be courtly and elaborate without exciting ridicule, where the sequence of events is impressive and comprehensible. Order and beauty of life is what the adolescent youth craves above all else as the younger child indefatigably demands his story. "Is this where the most beautiful princess in the world lives?" asks a little girl peering ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... the relation between God and man, between the visible creation and the unseen world. It was a theory of a material rather than a spiritual order: it reduced the things of the spirit into terms of the things of the flesh. It was crude, it was easily comprehensible, it was fitted to the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... system of education, to which through coming centuries men can only approximate, must present to the child the precise step in knowledge which he waits for, and upon which he is able to raise himself with that glow of pleasurable activity which God gives to exertion directed to a comprehensible end. The feeblest mind is capable of assimilating knowledge with a satisfaction the same in kind as that which rewarded the maturest labors of Humboldt or Newton. There are sequences of facts every one of which, imparted in its natural order, brings an immediate interest. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... taken in two ways. First, on the part of a form, and thus we have the negatively infinite, i.e. a form or act not limited by being received into matter or a subject; and this infinite of itself is most knowable on account of the perfection of the act, although it is not comprehensible by the finite power of the creature; for thus God is said to be infinite. And this infinite the soul of Christ knows, yet does not comprehend. Secondly, there is the infinite as regards matter, which is taken privatively, i.e. inasmuch as it has not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... a moment. Hard they were in line, fixed in expression, and opaque in color, these copies of famous masterpieces,—saints of either sex, ascensions, assumptions, martyrdoms, and what not,—and they were not quite comprehensible till Don Ippolito explained that he had made them from such prints of the subjects as he could get, and had colored them after his own fancy. All this, in a city whose art had been the glory of the world for nigh half a thousand years, struck Ferris as yet more comically pathetic than ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... the night was fine and warm. They had seen Hernani, and Regina had naturally found it hard to understand the story, even with Marcello's explanations; the more so as he himself had never seen the play before, and had come to the theatre quite sure that it must be easily comprehensible from the opera founded on it, which he had heard. Regina's arm was passed through his, and as they made their way through the crowd, under the not very brilliant lights in the portico, Marcello was doing his best to make the plot of the ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... difference of their objects. Now the object of the theological virtues is God Himself, Who is the last end of all, as surpassing the knowledge of our reason. On the other hand, the object of the intellectual and moral virtues is something comprehensible to human reason. Wherefore the theological virtues are specifically distinct from the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... the Italian atmosphere. (They preferred those about peasant life, because of the descriptions of scenery and the pleasanter sentiments, though in general they liked novels about people in society, whose motives and habits were more comprehensible, spoke severely of Dickens, who "had never drawn a gentleman," and considered Thackeray less at home in the great world than Bulwer—who, however, was beginning to be thought old-fashioned.) Mrs. and Miss Archer were both great ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... know what is being sung or done, the music is as clear as the day. Wagner knew this better than anyone, and, as I pointed out in commenting on the Dutchman, he brought his whole theatrical experience and training to help him to make the drama as simple and comprehensible as possible. When the Wagner battle was raging in the seventies and eighties, the sages pointed to the necessity of understanding the drama for the purpose of understanding the music as a defect of the Wagner music-drama, and a proof of Wagner's inferiority as a composer. ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... up to them). Yes, yes, 'tis comprehensible enough, Wherefore with your commission of to-day, You were not all too willing to remember Your ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... illumination, but not far enough to create political stability. We have seen before that they touch the artistic creative planes, in their descent, before they reach the more material planes. So her position is perfectly comprehensible. The old European manvantara was dying; elsewhere it was dead. Its forces, when they passed away through Ireland, were nearly exhausted; in no condition whatever to penetrate to the material plane and make political greatnesses and strengths. But they found in her very soil ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... the disposal of the other.... How many homes there are where the menfolk can get anything done willingly, and the mistress nothing whatever! The girls go out so early. They miss the rough and tumble of their homes. They have their own little ambitions, hardly comprehensible to anyone else. Whether or no they desire to be satisfactory, they do want their ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... condition, as given by her maid, although hideously unlike the beautiful object they were meant to call up to her father's mind, were sufficiently expressive and comprehensible. ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... for emigration or settlement within its own territories; and we have conditions which explained and emphasized German naval construction. Both German ambition and German naval construction were therefore easily comprehensible. ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... complete your good work?" broke out the man tied to the chair in harsh and foreign but sufficiently comprehensible French, "by ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... it a foregone conclusion, if I assert the superior likelihoods of the latter, and not of the former? Let us come then to a few of many reasons. First: it was by no means probable to be supposed anteriorly, that the God should be clearly comprehensible: yet he must be one: and oneness is the idea most easily apprehended of all possible ideas. The meanest of intellectual creatures could comprehend his Maker, and in so far top his heights, if God, being truly one in one view, were yet only one ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... she had resisted without the least effort. Still, he pursued, and he had once told her with smiling candour that if she did not mind the pursuit, he did not mind the chase. Only, he never urged it into the presence of Mrs. Falconer, of whom alone he stood in speechless, easily comprehensible awe. Perhaps to-night—as Amy had never seen him in ball-dress—she might begin to succumb; he had just placed her under obligation to him by an unexpected stroke of good fortune; and finally he had executed one neat stratagem at the expense of Mr. ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... specimens were spared for study, isolated on a peninsula of one of the continents, and turned over to Dival for observation and dissection. All I can say for the book is that it is probably accurate. Certainly it is neither interesting nor comprehensible. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... world toward these problematical occurrences is quite comprehensible. Throughout the nineteenth century the attention of scientists has been almost wholly directed toward the investigation of the forms and forces of matter, the phenomena and principles of the visible universe. In this ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... came up alone and manifested a desire for a little conversation. He, too, if not so mysterious as the captain, was not very comprehensible to Mr Powell's uninformed candour. He often favoured thus the second officer. His talk alluded somewhat enigmatically and often without visible connection to Mr Powell's friendliness towards himself and his daughter. "For I am well aware that we have no friends on ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... to me a comprehensible reason why I should not accept that scholarship? I don't understand your objection in the least. But anyway, it won't do the slightest good for you to object, for I've already accepted it and I am not going to ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... that any idea we may form of the astral life will be incomplete, and inadequate to give a true conception what it is really like. Perhaps the most comprehensible of the subplanes is that which reproduces the physical landscape in astral matter. There the average man will begin his conscious astral career. If we think of the world as we know it here and then imagine all that is material to have ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... the Loyalists, without distinction, largely responsible for British pre-Revolutionary policy, asserting that they misinformed the Government as to conditions and sentiment in America, partly through stupidity and partly through selfish interest. It was therefore perfectly comprehensible that the feeling should be bitter against them in the United States, especially as they had given efficient aid to the British during the war. In various States they were subjected to personal violence at the hands of indignant "patriots," many being ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... the Middle West to secure American work, he made a trip to Europe, visiting England, France, Holland, Sweden, Germany, Hungary, Austria and Italy. With the exception of England and Germany, the governments were sympathetic. The indifference of those two countries was at the time was not quite comprehensible. There might have been several explanations, including the threat of war. There were also those who said that England and Germany had entered into a secret alliance against this country for the purpose of minimizing the American influence in commerce, soon to be strengthened ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... and ecstasy—both elements which, in minds that are laden with all the influences of the East, produce a facile and dangerous excitement. On the other hand there survives in the Italian population the hatred against the Croatian supremacy, a hatred which is comprehensible but which in time must give place to other sentiments, rendering possible a fair coexistence of the two populations, whose aim should be common—the prosperity and development of Dalmatia, in the prosperity and for the prosperity, in the ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... comprehensible. The little Saint could not bring herself to decide whether to ride forth to battle on the day of our Lady's Feast or to fold her arms while fighting was going on around her. Her Voices intensified her indecision. They never instructed her what to do save when she knew herself. In ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... of Nature; it is full of studio combinations; and yet it is not a frankly decorative arrangement, as the portrait of the mother or Miss Alexander. When Hals painted his Burgomasters, he was careful to place them in definite and comprehensible surroundings. He never left us in doubt either as to the time or the place; and the same obligations of time and place, which Hals never shirked, seem to me to rest on the painter, if he elects to paint his sitter in any attitude except one ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore |
