"Conjectural" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Chinese with that of any primitive race. The myths, if any, of their place of origin may have faded and been forgotten in their slow migration eastward. We cannot say that when they came from the West (which they probably did) they brought their myths with them, for in spite of certain conjectural derivations from Babylon we do not find them possessed of any which we can identify as imported by them at that time. But research seems to have gone at least as far as this—namely, that while we ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... old black-letter copy; with some conjectural emendations.' At the suggestion of my friend, the Rev. Mr. Hunt, I have restored the original readings, as in truer consonancy with the vainglorious, insolent, and swaggering ballad spirit. As for the hero, Peregrine Bertie, ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... of satisfaction was distinctly dominant as she took leave of her hostess. St. Michael's gossip, or rather the manner in which it had been received, had given her a clue to the real state of affairs, which, however slender and conjectural, at least pointed in the desired direction. At first she had been horribly afraid lest she should be listening to a definite announcement which would have been the death-blow to her hopes, but as the recitation went on without any of those assured little minor details ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... follows the chronological arrangement of the collection in the British Museum. Numbers that are obelised ({DAGGER}) are plates of doubtful authenticity; starred numbers (*) refer to plates not represented in the British Museum. Conjectural dates are cited within brackets. Except for Nos. 144 (frontispiece), 139 and 164 (on same plate as No. 40), and 196 (on same plate as No. 175), the etchings reproduced (entirely from the British Museum collection) are given in the order of this catalogue, so that plate numbers have been dispensed ...
— Rembrandt, With a Complete List of His Etchings • Arthur Mayger Hind
... the practice which suggests itself to me and that must be owned to be purely conjectural, is that within the Sotadic Zone there is a blending of the masculine and feminine temperaments, a crasis which elsewhere occurs only sporadically. Hence the male feminisme whereby the man becomes ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... the more or less conjectural, prehistoric period of Horncastle's existence in Chapter I, and with the Manor and its ownership in Chapter II, we now proceed to give an account of the town's institutions, its buildings, and so forth. Among these the Parish ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... the reality of which M. Comte in France and Mr. Buckle in England have been the foremost champions, would bear the same relation to political events as Optics and Astronomy do to the phenomena of light and of the solar and sidereal systems. It would deal less with the conjectural and probable than with the predicable and positive. 'In the moral as in the physical world,' say its leading advocates, 'are invariable rule, inevitable sequence, undeviating regularity,' constituting ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... and I would suggest whether it does not seem easy to avoid all questions of that kind. If the statue is injured, leave it so, but provide a perfect copy of the statue in its restored form; offer, if you like, prizes to sculptors for conjectural restorations, and choose the most beautiful, but do not touch ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... his curiosity instantly arose to fever pitch. "In reference to that Daily News revolution," he wrote from Geneva on the 26th, "I have been walking and wondering all day through a perfect Miss Burney's Vauxhall of conjectural dark walks. Heaven send you enlighten me fully on Wednesday, or number three will suffer!" Two days later he resumed, as he was beginning his journey back to Lausanne. "I am in a great state of excitement ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... was not the game to be unearthed by a loud, numerous, sweeping hunt; traps, pitfalls, secret and unwearied following of his many trails, were what was needed. So much time had elapsed that the beginning must be a conjectural beating of the bushes, and to this end several small companies were organized, and the country between the Octorara and the Delaware ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... Forester to be of the same way of thinking with Mr. Random; and that he saw him close behind him, at the moment the stones were thrown that broke the windows. It appeared that Mr. Random was at that time active in encouraging the mob. To oppose the angry confectioner's conjectural evidence, the lad who threw the stone, and who was now produced, declared that Forester held back his arm, and said, "My good lad, don't break this man's windows: go home quietly; here's a shilling for you." The person who ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... to some extent will necessarily exist at different ports, but that is altogether insignificant when compared with the conflicts in valuation which are likely to arise from the differences of opinion among the numerous appraisers of merchandise. In many instances the estimates of value must be conjectural, and thus as many different rates of value may be established as there are appraisers. These differences in valuation may also be increased by the inclination which, without the slightest imputation on their ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... shoulder gently patting it. To Michael the world, life, the whole spirit of things had suddenly grown sinister, of the quality of nightmare. It was true that all the ground of this ominous depression which had darkened round him, was conjectural and speculative, that diplomacy, backed by the horror of war which surely all civilised nations and responsible govermnents must share, had, so far from saying its last, not yet said its first word; that the wits of all the Cabinets of Europe ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... the temple of Fame, and the road to fortune, may be contemplated with some chance of enjoyment and success. Unwilling to speak of himself, lest he should incur the charge of vanity or egotism, he modestly trusts to the partial pen of friendship, or the conjectural pen of the commentator, to do justice to events which no quill could relate so well as his own, and which, if impartially and sensibly written, must advance him in the estimation of society, and convince the world ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... anthropologist with their utmost stretch of liberality are unable to give more than from twenty to one hundred thousand years for all our human evolution. Hence we put it to them as a fair question: at what point during their own conjectural lakh of years do they fix the root-germ of the ancestral line of the "old Greeks and Romans?" Who were they? What is known or even "conjectured" about their territorial habitat after the division of the Aryan nations? And where ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... Johnston-Lavis. As in the earthquake of 1881, they bound respectively the areas of complete destruction, partial destruction and slight damage to buildings, the course of the outer line being to a great extent conjectural owing to the small extent of land traversed by it. The first isoseismal is about 2-1/2 miles long, 1-1/2 miles broad, and 3 square miles in area; the second about 4 miles long, 3-1/2 miles broad, and 11 square miles in area; and the third about ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... our bond Had best be loosed for ever: but think or not, By Heaven that hears I tell you the clean truth, As clean as blood of babes, as white as milk: O Merlin, may this earth, if ever I, If these unwitty wandering wits of mine, Even in the jumbled rubbish of a dream, Have tript on such conjectural treachery— May this hard earth cleave to the Nadir hell Down, down, and close again, and nip me flat, If I be such a traitress. Yield my boon, Till which I scarce can yield you all I am; And grant my re-reiterated wish, ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... favorite subject of literary ingenuity was "conjectural history," as it was then called: upon grounds of probability, a fictitious sketch was made of the possible origin of things existing. If this kind of speculation were now applied to banking, the natural and first idea would be that large systems of deposit banking ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... for outward advantage. They taught the art of disputation, and sought systematic methods of proof. They thus prepared the way for a more perfect philosophy than that taught by the Ionians, the Pythagoreans, or the Eleatics, since they showed the vagueness of such inquiries, conjectural rather than scientific. They had no doctrines in common. They were the barristers of their age, paid to make the "worse appear the better reason;" yet not teachers of immorality any more than the lawyers of our day,—men of talents, the intellectual leaders of society. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... numerous emendations are purely conjectural; the least unsatisfactory being Cornill's: The houses ... shall be torn down against which the Chaldeans are coming to fight with mounds and sword and to fill with the corpses of men whom I have ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... of such a venture, only conjectural to us at this distance, he knew well; but in him there was nothing that shrank from danger, though he did not court it after the rash manner of many of his compeers. Neither reckless nor riotous, Boone was never found among those who opposed violence ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... complaisant, and not at all more satisfactory; he states merely as a supposition their inquiry concerning matters of which he positively knew that they had called for an explanation. He knew it, because he presumed to censure them for doing so. To the hypothesis of a further inquiry he gives a conjectural answer of such a kind as probably, in an account of a doubtful transaction, and to a superior, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to the numerals 6 to 9 are entirely conjectural. They obviously mean 1, 2, 3, 4, taken a second time, and as the meanings I have given are often found in primitive systems, they have, at a venture, been ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... It was intended that Jasper should urge on the search after Edwin, and the pursuit of the murderer, thus endeavoring to divert suspicion from himself, the real murderer. As to anything further, it would be purely conjectural." ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... meant; they gave us the new idea that MSS. are not everything, unless their real value has been discovered first by finding the place which they occupy in the pedigree of the MSS. of every author. They also taught us that there are mistakes in MSS. which are inevitable, and may safely be left to conjectural emendation; that MSS. of modern date may be and often are more valuable than more ancient MSS., for the simple reason that they were copied from a still more ancient MS., and that often a badly written and hardly legible MS. proves more helpful than others written ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... I was like Mrs. Cluppins. The voices were loud, and forced themselves upon my ear. But as you all spoke at once, I have no idea what anybody said. My question was conjectural—purely conjectural. Is anybody going to marry ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... are conjectural. Richard Eden (Decades of the Newe Worlde, f. 255) says Sebastian told him that when four years old he was taken by his father to Venice, and returned to England "after certeyne yeares; wherby he was thought to have bin born in Venice"; Stow (Annals, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... extensive trade, which, from its peculiar character, more easily overcomes the difficulties of transportation than any that can be substituted in its place, is about to be put in jeopardy for the conjectural benefits of this measure. When I say this trade is about to be put in jeopardy, I do not speak unadvisedly. I am perfectly convinced that, if this bill passes, it will have the effect of inducing the people of the South, partly from the feeling and partly from the necessity growing out of ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... trembling hope, and she wanted to wander on in that visionary future without interruption. She walked briskly in the brisk air, the color rose in her cheeks, and her straw bonnet (which our contemporaries might look at with conjectural curiosity as at an obsolete form of basket) fell a little backward. She would perhaps be hardly characterized enough if it were omitted that she wore her brown hair flatly braided and coiled behind so as to expose the outline of her head in a daring manner at a time when public feeling required the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... tradition, on the west borders, but much mangled by reciters; so that some conjectural emendations have been absolutely necessary to render it intelligible. In particular, the Eden has been substituted for the Eske, p. 193, the latter ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... such that it will be supported if the Constitution, laws, or treaties are given one construction, or defeated if given another. Second, a genuine and present controversy as distinguished from a possible or conjectural one must exist with reference to the federal right. Third, the controversy must be disclosed upon the face of the complaint unaided ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... receiving any, which may appear the most extraordinary. These principles we have found to be sufficiently convincing, even with regard to our most certain reasonings from causation: But I shall venture to affirm, that with regard to these conjectural or probable reasonings they still acquire a new ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... canonicals. Had he lived to quarrel with the Rev. John Cumming, he would in all probability have drawn him as a puppy in gown and band; and no one who knows aught of the painter can doubt that he would have strikingly preserved the likeness. As for ourselves, we merely indulge in a piece of conjectural criticism. The other parts of the article are cast very much into the ordinary type of that side of the controversy to which it belongs: there is rather more than the usual amount of misrepresentation, inconsistency, and abuse, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... every action of his life. This is one of the merits of Mr. Gosse's book; he has collected his documents, and he has given them to us as they are, guiding us adroitly along the course of the life which they illustrate, but not allowing himself to dogmatise on what must still remain conjectural. And he has given us a series of reproductions of portraits, of the highest importance in the study of one who is not merely a difficult poet, but a very ambiguous human being. They begin with the eager, attractive, somewhat homely youth of ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Dielontes].] An excellent conjectural emendation of Holtzmann for the old reading [Greek: dielthontes]. Kuehner.—The stratagem of Tissaphernes was similar to that by which Themistocles expedited the departure of Xerxes ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... into one quarter, and commenced blowing with a steadiness that they had not experienced before that night. Paul suspected this change, though he had no certain means of knowing it; for as soon as the wind baffled, his course had got to be conjectural again. As the breeze freshened, the speed of the boat necessarily augmented, though she was kept always on a wind; and after half an hour's progress, the gentlemen became once more uneasy as to ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... while they remain at Naples." Within a week the conviction of his own importance led him to write to Lady Hamilton, evidently for transmission to the Queen, an opinion, or rather an urgent expression of advice, that Naples should at once begin war. It is only conjectural to say that this opinion, which rested on no adequate knowledge of the strength of the Neapolitan Kingdom, was elicited by the Queen through Lady Hamilton; but the inference derives support from the words, "I have read with admiration the queen's dignified ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... strangely found himself, he had fits of impulse to leap out and take the next train back. But, back where? He had the assurance of his colored friend and brother that forward was New York. Backward was the void conjectural. Slowly the dawn whitened at the window. He raised the curtain and saw the rocks and fences and snow of a winter's landscape—saw them with a shock which, lying prone as he was, gave him the sensation of staggering. It was true, then: the thing he had still suspected as a ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... line or two is missing here, though there is no break in the manuscript. I have translated in brackets Grein's conjectural emendation, as supplying ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... that conjectural solution of his perplexities when a voice was heard singing, or rather modulated to that kind of chant between recitative and song, which is so pleasingly effective where the intonations are pure and musical. They were so in this instance, and Kenelm's ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... head of Venus, in the fifth conversation, the story of Cupid and Psyche was told with fitting beauty, by Margaret; and many fine conjectural interpretations suggested from all parts of the room. The ninth conversation turned on the distinctive qualities of poetry, discriminating it from the other fine arts. Rhythm and Imagery, it was agreed, were distinctive. An episode to dancing, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... whole course of the great river above London there are but three examples of fortification, or at any rate of fortification directly dependent upon the river. Of these the first, at Lechlade, is conjectural; the second, at Windsor, came quite late in history, and the only one which seems to have been a primeval ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc |
