"Conviction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... think that they are competent to account for them, but I think that they account for many things which otherwise remain wholly unaccountable and inexplicable, and I may say incomprehensible. For a full exposition of the grounds on which this conviction is based, I must refer you to Mr. Darwin's work; all that I can do now is to illustrate what I have said by two or three ...
— A Critical Examination Of The Position Of Mr. Darwin's Work, "On The Origin Of Species," In Relation To The Complete Theory Of The Causes Of The Phenomena Of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... other and at the judge: they had no reason to give! The fact was, their conviction of the prisoners' guilt had been very much shaken by the cross-examination of the chief witness for the prosecution, and this recommendation was a compromise which conscience made with doubt. I have known ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... her daughter to flight. The Welshman administered some oil, which, after two hours of suspense, and with the help of an opiate, saved the life of Lavengro. During this companionship Borrow found that Williams suffered excruciating spiritual terrors from the conviction that he had committed the sin against the ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... Chevalier de Savoie, brother of the Comte de Soissons, and of the famous Prince Eugene, who died very young, very suddenly, very debauched; and full of benefices. The talk became religious. She listened some time, and then, with a profound look of conviction, said: "For my part, I am persuaded that God will think twice about damning a man of such high birth as that!" This caused a burst of laughter, but nothing could make her change her opinion. Her vanity was cruelly punished. She used to affect to apologise for having married the Marechal de la ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... woman suffragist in Germany differs from the American suffragist in that she is always a member of a political party. She is a silent member to be sure, but she adheres to her party, because, through tradition or conviction, she believes in its policies. Usually the suffragist is a member of the Social Democratic Party, allied to the International Socialist Party. She is a suffragist because she is a Socialist, because woman suffrage, and, indeed, the full equalization of the laws ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... and Destruction. When any person is convicted of any violation of subsection (a), the court in its judgment of conviction shall, in addition to the penalty therein prescribed, order the forfeiture and destruction or other disposition of all infringing copies or phonorecords and all implements, devices, or equipment used in the manufacture of such ...
— Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code, Circular 92 • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... that the awful silence and sense of personal failure were dispelled by their "bright particular star," as the letters of the day from Morristown and the vicinity cleped our hero. But with Miss Schuyler he had no further word that night, and he retired with the conviction that there were times when there was no satisfaction whatever in ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... instinct and education in bird song correspond with the conviction expressed by Dr. W. H. Hudson on page 257 of his interesting book entitled "The Naturalist in La Plata," fourth edition, 1903: "It is true that Daines Barrington's notion that young song birds learn to sing only by imitating the adults, still holds ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... enough," he said one delightful summer morning; "with all my soul I now long to see her. And it is not an impossible thing I desire. In short, there is some way to compass it." Then a sudden, invincible persuasion of success came to him; he believed in his own good fortune; he had a conviction that the very stars connived with a true lover to work his will. And under this enthusiasm he galloped into town, took his horse to a stable, and then walked towards ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... The conviction itself was expressed in the tone of one who by its very assertion protests against a rising doubt and tries ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... thought it remote possibility. This minute I think it's extremely probable. Before I open this envelope I am going to tell you what I believe it contains. I have not the slightest evidence except personal conviction, but I believe that the paper inside this envelope is written by my father's hand and I believe it tells me that he was not Eileen's father and that I am not her sister. If it does not say this, then there is nothing in race and blood ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... and Nicholas out for a night's camping in the two rowboats last week. They enjoyed themselves heartily, as usual, each sleeping rolled up in his blanket, and all getting up at an unearthly hour. Also, as usual, they displayed a touching and firm conviction that my cooking is unequalled. It was of a simple character, consisting of frying beefsteak first and then potatoes in bacon fat, over the camp fire; but they certainly ate in a way that showed their words were not uttered in a spirit ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... characteristic that this aspect should be put first, for Roosevelt always insisted upon doing justice to the other side before he demanded justice for his own. But he then proceeded to set forth the other side with equal vigor: There is a widespread conviction in the minds of the American people that the great corporations are in certain of their features and tendencies hurtful to the general welfare. It is true that real and grave evils have arisen, one of the chief of them being overcapitalization, with its many baleful consequences. This state ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... thoughts to obtaining his purpose by the use of violence; and to this he was instigated, as well by the greatness of his debts, as by resentment (419) at Galba's conduct towards him. For he did not conceal his conviction, "that he could not stand his ground unless he became emperor, and that it signified nothing whether he fell by the hands of his enemies in the field, or of his creditors in the Forum." He had a few days before squeezed ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... crochet, and similar compliments. Now, however, in a certain animated conversation between Lawrence and Emma, the designing seaman thought he saw the budding of his deep-laid plans, and fondly hoped ere long to behold the bud developed into the flower of matrimony. Under this conviction he secretly hugged himself, but in the salon, that evening, he opened his arms and released himself on beholding the apparently fickle Lawrence deeply engaged in converse with the Count Horetzki, to whose pretty daughter, however, he addressed ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... am I in love with M. Swan? Because I can't help it for one thing, and because for another thing she can do more to develop the hidden worth and unsuspected powers of A. W., Jr., than any other woman in the world. She may never feel that it's her mission, but she can't shake my conviction that way; and I shall stay undeveloped to prove that I was right. Well, now, what you want, my friend, is development, and you can't get it where you've been going. She hain't got it on hand. And what you want to do is not ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... raised its pitch to a high, almost intolerable keening note. The ring of pseudo-searchlights seemed in an ominous sort of way to spring into life. The impression must have been entirely imaginary; actually the projectors didn't move in the slightest, didn't even vibrate. Yet the conviction persisted in the minds of both Jim and Dennis that some black, invisible force was pouring down those conduits, to be sifted, diffused, and hurled through the lead lenses at the ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... must be some methods by which the speaker can move upon that particularly susceptible attitude of the hearer. How to do this honestly and fairly is our problem—to do it dishonestly and trickily, to use suggestion to bring about conviction and action without a basis of right and truth and in a bad cause, is to assume the terrible responsibility that must fall on the champion of error. Jesus scorned not to use suggestion so that he might ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... had been paid to find, and, what was worse, had even terminated the interview myself. When I realized everything, I could have kicked myself for my stupidity. Why should I have suspected him, however? The very boldness of his scheme carried conviction with it! Certainly, Mr. Gideon Hayle was a foeman worthy of my steel, and I began to realize that, with such a man to deal with, the enterprise I had taken in hand was likely to prove a bigger affair than I had ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... captain of the guard, was answerable for the emperor's safety; secondly, that his anxiety to profit by the emperor's murder was a sure sign that he had participated in that act; and, thirdly, that the assent of the soldiery to the open and public act of Dioclesian, implies a conviction on their part of Aper's guilt. Here let us pause, having now arrived at the fourth and last group of the Csars, to notice the changes which had been wrought by time, co-operating with political events, in the very nature and constitution of the ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... her was that Charles did not seem to notice her anguish. His conviction that he was making her happy seemed to her an imbecile insult, and his sureness on this point ingratitude. For whose sake, then was she virtuous? Was it not for him, the obstacle to all felicity, the cause of all misery, and, as it were, the sharp clasp of that complex strap ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... the motives which impelled certain public characters are therein interpreted aright—both in regard to these and other points there may be room for doubt, but at least the general forces of the period are placed before us in such a way as to drive home the conviction that, be the historical inaccuracies of detail what they may in the eyes of this or that specialist, the picture as a whole is one which, while it rivets our attention as lovers of romance, does no injury ...
— A Guide to the Best Historical Novels and Tales • Jonathan Nield
... "which saved his life." [4] When we consider all the circumstances of the case—the wound to the popular vanity— the disappointment of excited expectation—the unaccountable conduct of Miltiades himself—and then see his punishment, after a conviction which entailed death, only in the ordinary assessment of a pecuniary fine [5], we cannot but allow that the Athenian people (even while vindicating the majesty of law, which in all civilized communities must judge offences without respect to persons) were not in this instance forgetful of the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... objects into stars. His former somewhat hesitating belief in the existence of phosphorescent matter, "disseminated through extensive regions of space in the manner of a cloud or fog,"[120] was changed into a conviction that no valid distinction could be established between the faintest wisp of cosmical vapour just discernible in a powerful telescope, and the most brilliant and obvious cluster. He admitted, however, an immense range of possible variety in the size and mode of aggregation of the stellar constituents ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... of that almost supernatural force, glorious patriotism? No, not even this, for while we "know no man after the flesh," we recognize our brother in all the families of the earth, and our General infused into the breasts of his followers the sacred conviction that the ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... what had happened to Mary, and of the probability of her marriage; however, she had been so sorely tried by the loss of her brother, that it was imperative to turn her thoughts from it, as much as possible, to other prospects. This conviction decided me to tell her father everything, and it was a great relief to hear that he shared my views entirely. Although I had learned long since how little he considered his own comfort in comparison with that ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... and quite believed his account of the meeting with Jentham. The bishop's simple way of relating the episode would have convinced any liberal-minded man of his innocence and rectitude. His accents, and looks, and candour, all carried conviction. ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... which pervades it was not of Lyly's invention; he inherited it from his predecessors Guevara and Castiglione, and he employed it because he knew that it was expected of him. That he moralized not so much from conviction as from convention (to use a euphuism), is, I think, sufficiently proved by the fact that in the second part of his novel, where he is addressing a new public, the pulpit strain is much less frequent, while in his plays it entirely disappears. ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... conversation, a hundred promises, and five hundred friends [he] hath failed of preferment, and upon a very weighty reason. He lay under the suspicion of having written a libel, or lampoon against a great m[inister][8]. It is true that great m[inister] was demonstratively convinced, and publicly owned his conviction, that Mr. Gay was not the author; but having lain under the suspicion, it seemed very just, that he should suffer the punishment; because in this most reformed age, the virtues of a great m[inister] are no more to be suspected, than the chastity ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... rack out, as we are doing. When men went witch-burning they may have seen witches everywhere—because their minds were fixed on witchcraft. But they did not see things to burn everywhere, because their minds were unfixed. While tying some very unpopular witch to the stake, with the firm conviction that she was a spiritual tyranny and pestilence, they did not say to each other, "A little burning is what my Aunt Susan wants, to cure her of back-biting," or "Some of these faggots would do your Cousin James good, and teach him to play with ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... rejecting all and every revelation of God, especially any extraordinary one through certain men. This, however, is not the case with many persons called Naturalists both by themselves and others. Supernaturalism consists in general in the conviction that God has revealed himself supernaturally and immediately. What is revealed might perhaps be discovered by natural methods, but either not at all or very late by those to whom it is revealed. It may also be something which man could never have known by natural methods; and then arises ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... The conviction that no trickery was possible to him at Paris brought him to the ground. He wandered from cell to chapel, from chapel to woods, awaiting the dinner hour with impatience, in order to be able to speak to someone, for in his disorder a new need arose. For more ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... was a thought, which bore the ascendancy over this in Delme's mind. It was a thought which rose involuntarily,—one for which he could not then account, and cannot now. For some seconds, it swayed his every emotion. He felt the conviction—deep, undefinable—that there was indeed a soul, to "shame the ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... should he attack it at all, in his own way. Not the least of this lady's high merits for him was that he could absolutely rest on her word. She was the only woman he had known, even at Woollett, as to whom his conviction was positive that to lie was beyond her art. Sarah Pocock, for instance, her own daughter, though with social ideals, as they said, in some respects different—Sarah who WAS, in her way, aesthetic, had never refused ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... argues great insensibility of soul, or great command; great insensibility, I think: for I cannot imagine such command of temper possible to any, but a woman who feels indifference for the offender. Yet, even now that I have steeled myself with this conviction, I am scarcely bold enough to hazard the chance of giving her pain. Absurd weakness! It has been clearly proved to my understanding, that my irresolution, my scruples of conscience, my combats between love and esteem, are more likely to betray the real state of my mind than any decision that ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... which the Baron did not at once conceal, Valerie assumed a reserve which brought the old man to despair. She made him wring the proofs from her one by one. When conviction, led on by vanity, had at last entered his mind, she enlarged on Monsieur ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... battling against certain definite abuses, and certain specified errors, scarcely discovered at first, nor indeed for long afterwards, that they were in reality contending also for principles which would affect for the future the whole groundwork of religious conviction. They were not yet in a position to see that henceforward authority could take only a secondary place, and that they were installing in its room either reason or a more subtle spiritual faculty superior ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... endeavoured to follow with unswerving fidelity the line of duty. My course has been an even one, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, though my route has been tortuous enough. All the hardship, hunger, and toil were met with the full conviction that I was right in persevering to make a complete work of the exploration of the sources of the Nile. Mine has been a calm, hopeful endeavour to do the work that has been given me to do, whether I succeed or whether I fail. The prospect of death in pursuing what I knew to be right did not make ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... would live to see her son leading the armies of the empire, ruling in the cabinets of state or worshipped in the circles of the great and learned, Heaven itself could not build up a greater joy in the limited horizon of her hopes; but an awful conviction crept over her that some misfortune would tear from her the object of her love like the fruit torn from the stem, like the young branch from the oak. In dreams she saw him struggling in the torrent which bore him away, or dragged to the hills at the feet of a wild horse. ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... cause men to forget the commandments. The way cars and cabs of out-going freight trains were crowded with old Burlington men starting out to find work on other roads. They had been losing heart for some time, and now the shame and disgrace caused by the conviction of the dynamiters made them long to be away; to have a place in the world where they might be allowed to win an honest living, and forget the long struggle of which they had grown weary. Unlike the Philosopher, they were ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... Dr. Scarlett-Synge experienced uniform kindness, and brought away with her a deep conviction of the self-sacrificing patriotism of the German people. "Moreover," she said, "I was able to express my views to them, and they were always listened to with tolerance ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... Scotch seaboard county." The famous, or infamous, Cevallos article—an ungenerous and pusillanimous attack on the Spanish patriots, which practically founded the Quarterly Review, by finally disgusting all Tories and many Whigs with the Edinburgh—was, it seems, prompted merely by the conviction that the Spanish cause was hopeless, and that maintaining it, or assisting it, must lead to mere useless bloodshed. He felt profoundly the crime of Napoleon's rule; but he thought Napoleon unconquerable, and so did his best to prevent him being conquered. He was sure that the multitude ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... prototypes. On this point the opinion of the count of Beauvoir is entitled to consideration, as that of an impartial as well as intelligent observer. He had expected, he tells us, in visiting the country, to find it preparing for its speedy emancipation; but he left it with the conviction that, far from desiring a severance of the connection, the colonists would regard it as a blow to their material interests—the one event, in fact, capable of arresting their unparalleled progress. It can only occur as the result of a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... sighed; others dived head first inside lower bunks—swift, and turning round instantly upon themselves, like animals going into lairs. The grating of a knife scraping burnt clay was heard. Knowles grinned no more. Davis said, in a tone of ardent conviction: "Then our skipper's looney." Archie muttered: "My faith! we haven't heard the last of it yet!" Four bells were struck.—"Half our watch below gone!" cried Knowles in alarm, then reflected. "Well, two hours' sleep is something towards a rest," he observed, consolingly. ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... generally a mere compilation of receipts, by those who have no practical knowledge of the subject, and are consequently unable to judge of their correctness, or to give the necessary directions for putting the ingredients together in the right manner. A conviction that a good practical Cook Book was much needed, induced the writer to exert herself to supply the deficiency. She does not pretend to infallibility, but having taken a great deal of pains to have each receipt as correct and nice as possible, she trusts that they will ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... as a quarrel with Pinzon, whose townsmen and relations formed a large proportion of the crews, might cause a mutiny which would be fatal to the undertaking; but he did not fail to note in his diary his conviction of Pinzon's bad faith. The fact was, that Pinzon had heard from the natives of a certain island, whence all the gold was said to come, and he had wished to anticipate Columbus in the discovery of this El Dorado, and to secure the profits for himself. He had not found this home of the gold, but had ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... doctor, realizing how lacking in conviction his comparison might seem to a Madigan, "well, these twins were the exception: they ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... wouldn't wear them," murmured Mrs. Clara, whisking a little pair of corsets out of sight with guilty haste. "I only brought them to try, for Rose is growing stout, and will have no figure if it is not attended to soon," she added, with an air of calm conviction that roused the Doctor still more, for this was one of ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... head, and for a moment or two watched in silence the sponging of our Major's scalp. "I've known this here ship in the variousest kinds o' weathers," he announced at length, with quiet conviction, "but they was fool's-play one and all compared with ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... agony of the Doge formed a contrast so frightful with the heartless and cruel insensibility of the son, that the sight chilled their blood. The sentiment was only the more common, from the silent but general conviction, that the unfeeling criminal must be permitted to escape. There was, indeed, no precedent for leading the child of a prince to the block, unless it were for an offence which touched the preservation of the father's interests. ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... made a gentle motion with his tail, as though he would have said, "I've seen neither Rocky Mountains nor grizzly bars, and know nothin' about 'em, but I'm open to conviction." ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... does!" exclaimed the Little Lover, with sudden conviction, and the struggle was ended. It had only been a question of Her liking or not liking. That decided, there was no further hesitation. He held up the licorice-stick and traced a wavery little line round it with his finger-nail. The line was ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... fool!" he stated with conviction. "I meandered out to take a look around for her, and I didn't like the looks of that little dab of a saddle Conrad had put on Pat. You didn't see ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... to communion. The imperial aim was a common faith to unite the empire. The crushing out of the Arians and of the Paulicians and suchlike heretics, and more particularly the systematic destruction by the orthodox of all heretical writings, had about it none of that quality of honest conviction which comes to those who have a real knowledge of God; it was a bawling down of dissensions that, left to work themselves out, would have spoilt good business; it was the fist of Nicolas of Myra over again, except that after the days of Ambrose the sword ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... conviction that Blake would help her when he heard her story, still did not lose her caution. Rydal had given her another twenty-four hours, and that was all. In those twenty-four hours she must fight out their salvation, her own and ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... is well worth the attention it demands, and if the conviction at last slowly dawns upon the reader that it contains a purpose, it is one which has been produced by the inevitable law of reaction, ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... that she had not utterly cast him off. He would be punished, but not forever, and he divined that his probation would end with her return. He had a firm conviction that her sense of obligation was like his own, that repentance and good conduct would restore him to her, and he longed for an opportunity to tell her how it had happened, how much less guilty he was than she might suppose. If he had been weak with ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... in Legislation.—It is the conviction that the right to be well-born is a valid one, that has given rise to the science of eugenics. As a science it was first discussed by Francis Gallon, and it has interested writers, investigators, ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... whatever that he had committed the crime; and for his own part he stoutly denied it. But Antoine de Chaulieu entertained no doubt of his guilt, and his speech was certainly well calculated to carry that conviction into the bosom of others. It was of the highest importance to his own reputation that he should procure a verdict, and he confidently assured the afflicted and enraged family of the victim that their vengeance should be satisfied. Under these circumstances could anything ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... of his old friend, Sir William Baker, from the India Council early that autumn, Lord Salisbury at once selected him for the vacant seat. Nothing would ever have made him a party-man, but he always followed Lord Salisbury with conviction, and worked under him with ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... captain road on to Hurlston. He met several of the Nancy's crew. The cutter had not returned, and Ned Brown again expressed his conviction that if the lugger was to be caught, it would not be till after a long chase. Knowing that the ladies of Downside would be anxious to hear any news he could give, he proceeded thither. The Miss Pembertons welcomed him cordially. May was on the point ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... to death;—I contend that for the reasons I have stated alone, a judge, and especially a criminal judge, is a bad witness for the punishment but an excellent witness against it, inasmuch as in the latter case his conviction of its inutility has been so strong and paramount as utterly to beat down and conquer these adverse incidents. I have no scruple in stating this position, because, for anything I know, the majority of excellent judges now on the bench may have overcome them, and may be opposed to the ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... aunt saw that something was amiss, and watched her, without attempt at concealment, which added greatly to Letty's discomfort. But the only thing her keenness discovered was, that the girl was forwardly eager to please Godfrey, and the conviction began to grow that she was indulging the impudent presumption of being in love with her peerless cousin. Then maternal indignation misled her into the folly of dropping hints that should put Godfrey on his guard: men were so easily taken in by designing girls! She did not ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... have led to the firm conviction that much of the time lost in music study could be saved if the elementary training of the pupil were made more comprehensive and more secure. It is by no means an economy of time to hurry over the foundation work of the pupil. It is also by no means an economy of money to place the beginner ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... successfully with the assurance that to her, as to himself, the Mystics were in reality nothing but the products of a neurotic age—mere hysterical dabblers in the truths of the universe. She was too delicately feminine, he told himself with growing conviction, too intelligent and self-controlled, to be more than temporarily attracted to any such exotic creed. She might toy with it for a while, but the day must inevitably dawn when common-sense and the need of surer things would send ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... conviction of College the council flew at higher game in the person of the Earl of Shaftesbury. He was arrested at his house in Aldersgate Street on the 2nd July, but it was not until November that a bill of high treason was preferred against him at the Old Bailey. The nomination of juries practically ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... the god, for they represented him in pictures as having a bull's head. We know that a man does not turn into a bull, or a bull into a man, the line of demarcation is clearly drawn; but the rustic has no such conviction even to-day. That crone, his aged aunt, may any day come in at the window in the shape of a black cat; why should she not? It is not, then, that a god 'takes upon him the form of a bull,' or is 'incarnate in a bull,' but that the real ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... room, seized her hat and snatched her thickest veil. Then she fled to the loneliest walk among the pines. Her veil was a rarity that rendered her an object of curiosity to everybody she passed on the way. But she hurried on, somewhat comforted by the conviction that no one could mark her reddened eyelids. In truth she had good need of comfort, for Berta Abbott herself had said that she was peculiar. And ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... half of Brig and Cargo, the Enemy having had possession of her 22 days. As she is a Vessell of Value, hope You'l do Your Endeavours to Recover Our Just dues and Apply to the Owners who are, as we are Credibly Informed, Messrs. Lee and Tyler of Boston, both Under the State of Conviction Since the Gospell of Whitefield and Tennant [h]as been propagated in New England,[92] So that we are in hopes they will Readily Give a Just Acct. of her Cargo and her true Value and Render to Caesar the things that are Caesars, which is the ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... rather wild. Yet I came to this conviction quite coolly and deliberately. It was a conviction. Assuming it to be true, the odds against me grew shorter directly; for I had the portrait of the man I wanted drawn by myself the day after I had seen him in my dream. And the original of that portrait ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Ernestine, you know you don't," said Bea, in a tone of calm conviction, and beginning to feel that the duties of elder sister imposed a warmer defense of this abused one, upon her. "I want to tell you how I feel, though it may be nothing as you all do. I really believe Olive thinks we do not want her, because, for so long ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... and the other by "A. Carleton Heathcroft of London." Miss Rutledge we had not seen at all. Our table steward informed us that the lady was "hindisposed" and confined to her room. She was an actress, he added. Hephzy, whose New England training had imbued her with the conviction that all people connected with the stage must be highly undesirable as acquaintances, was quite satisfied. "Of course I'm sorry she isn't well," she confided to me "but I'm awfully glad she won't be at our table. I shouldn't ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sure of it," he replied, and the conviction in his tone astonished the professional detective, whilst it carried a message of hope to the others. Even Sir Hubert, for some reason which he could not explain, suddenly experienced a strong sense of confidence in this reserved, distinguished-looking ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... have great erudition, great common sense and justice, and great enthusiasm and vigour as well. It is obviously a disadvantage to have a historian who suppresses vital facts because they do not fit in with a preconceived view of characters. But still I find it hard to resist the conviction that, from the educational point of view, stimulus is more important than exactness. It is more important that a boy should take a side, should admire and abhor, than that he should have very good reasons for doing so. For ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... seem so easy to follow to its source a light that overpowered the moon, and almost matched the sun. It was observable that each smiled scornfully at the madness of every other in anticipating better fortune than the past, yet nourished a scarcely hidden conviction that he would himself be the favored one. As if to allay their too sanguine hopes, they recurred to the Indian traditions that a spirit kept watch about the gem, and bewildered those who sought ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Randal suspected, and suspected, and suspected, he knew not exactly what, but that the devil was not so kind to him there as that father of lies ought to have been to a son so dutiful. Yet, with all these discouragements, there was in Randal Leslie so dogged and determined a conviction of his own success, there was so great a tenacity of purpose under obstacles, and so vigilant an eye upon all chances that could be turned to his favour, that he never once abandoned hope, nor did more than change the details in his main schemes. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... palace, seeing the superior luxury to which you are accustomed." A fearful cut, but only a straw to the fate which followed, the investigations into the affairs of Superintendent Foucquet. His arrest and his conviction followed and then the eighteen dreary years of imprisonment terminating only with the superintendent's life. Madame de Sevigne saw him in the beginning, wept for her hero, but after a while she, too, fell away from ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... always conveyed by a Ministerial Secretary, directly under the Prime Minister and only one more step down from the Emperor, in the present instance Jurgen, Prince Trevannion. To make sure that the announcement carried conviction, the presumedly glad tidings were accompanied by the Imperial Space Navy, at present represented by Commodore Vann Shatrak and a seven ship battle-line unit, and two thousand ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... great wonder, and I cannot resist the conviction that many of my auditors believe that I have "drawn a long bow" in my descriptions. I am perfectly free to acknowledge that this does not surprise me. It seems a most natural thing for them to do so; for, in the midst of my narrations, I find myself almost as ready to doubt ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... your tongue; it is only preparatory to the end. "Conviction astonishes and torments—destiny prescribes and falsifies— attraction drives us away—humiliation supports our energies. Thus do we recede into the present, and shudder at the Elysium ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... of Aggie, in spite of Charlie Sands, who protested violently that he distinctly remembered being born in the evening, because he had yelled all the ensuing night and no one had had a wink of sleep—in spite of all this, Tish remained firm in her conviction that 7 A. M. on Registration Day, when the precincts opened, would find him too old ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... paved, and the population as healthy and as well conducted; and in each such case you will find it very hard to convince the individual at the time, and you will find that in a very short space the individual has succeeded in entirely escaping from the disagreeable conviction. You may possibly find, if you endeavor to instil such belief into minds of but moderate cultivation, that your arguments will be met less by force of reason than by roaring of voice and excitement of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... search of "documents" Mrs. Amyot's success was hardly of a kind to make her more interesting, and my curiosity flagged with the growing conviction that the "suffering" entailed on her by public speaking was at most a retrospective pang. I was sure that she had reached the point of measuring and enjoying her effects, of deliberately manipulating her public; and there must indeed have been a certain exhilaration in attaining results so considerable ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... simplicity that is in Christ. Yet he sincerely abhorred the thought of persecution for conscience sake; of the absurdity and iniquity of which, in all its kinds and degrees, he had as deep and rational a conviction as any man. Indeed the generosity of his heroic heart could hardly bear to think that those glorious truths which he so cordially loved, and which he assuredly believed to be capable of such fair support both from reason and the word ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... me that there would be no use in my surrendering, for I would not prove true, and anyhow that it was only a matter of excitement and not of firm conviction. I fully realize that I have no power in myself, and that the first moment I look away from Christ I shall fall. I am resting on the promise that He is able to keep me from falling and to present me faultless before the presence of His ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright
... torn open by a chance word, by a fragment of print, by a sentence from a letter; and there we have to sit with pale face and shuddering heart, to bleed in silence and dissemble it. Then, too, there is that constant dismal feeling which the Greeks called [Greek: upoulos]: the horrible conviction, the grim memory lurking deep down, perhaps almost out of sight, thrust away by circumstance and action, but always ready to rise noiselessly up and draw you ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... quite remarkable. And it is impossible to visit the forest or the sequestered dell, where the notes of the feathered tribes are heard to the greatest advantage, without being impressed with the conviction that there is design in the arrangement of this ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... lessons and by contributing to the press. In this my wife first made a show of assisting me, but I was not long in discovering that her intelligence was superficial and shallow, and that the audacity of expression, which I had believed to be originality of conviction, was simply shamelessness, and a desire for notoriety. She had a facility in writing sentimental poetry, which had been efficacious in her matrimonial confidences, but which editors of magazines and newspapers found to be shallow and insincere. To my astonishment, she remained ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... men who hunt trouble in the mountain desert generally find all that they may desire, but for the time being everyone held back, wolfishly, waiting for another to take the first step toward Donnegan. Indeed, there was an unspoken conviction that the man who took the first step would probably not live to take another. In the meantime both men and women gave Donnegan the lion's share of their attention. There was only one who was clever enough to conceal it, and that ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... the guests who were left, filed out in the best order: Miss Abbey standing at the half door of the bar, to hold a ceremony of review and dismissal. All wished Miss Abbey good-night and Miss Abbey wished good-night to all, except Riderhood. The sapient pot-boy, looking on officially, then had the conviction borne in upon his soul, that the man was evermore outcast and excommunicate from ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... less was it fetichism, an adoration of sensuous objects, for these were recognized as effects. It teaches us that the idea of God neither arose from the phenomenal world nor was sunk in it, as is the shallow theory of the day, but is as Kant long ago defined it, a conviction of a highest and first principle which ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... the conclusion that we are all slaves to the world and to circumstances; and as, with his peculiar belief, he could look on our sacred volume with the eye of a philosopher, felt impressed with the conviction that the history of Babel's tower is but an allegory, which says to the pride ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... injury. Why should, therefore, these tigers among men, who are ever truthful, give thee wicked advice, especially when thou hast never injured them? Endued with wisdom these foremost of men, O king, will never give thee counsels that are crooked. O scion of Kuru's rate, this is my firm conviction that these two, acquainted with all rules of morality, will never, tempted by wealth, utter anything betraying a spirit of partisanship. What they have said, O Bharata, I regard highly beneficial to thee. Without doubt, O monarch, the Pandavas are thy sons as much as Duryodhana ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... as to his good conscience, Chester was a fearless man. A week ago he would have laughed to scorn the notion that the dead ever revisit the earth, as so many of us believe they do, but the four nights he had spent at the Pension Malfait, had shaken his conviction that "dead men ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... he, indeed, was sorely disinclined to join at all in the "festive occasion," objecting to me repeatedly that it was a "shame and a pity to waste such a fine day for work in doing nothing"; and so, with rather a doleful conviction that my hospitality was as little acceptable to my neighbors as my teaching, I bade my guests farewell, and never repeated the experiment of a 4th of July Celebration dinner at ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... at him. He was not satisfied, though he had given the range-rider such a whaling as few men could stand up and take. For the conviction was sifting home to him that he had not beaten the man at all. His pile-driver blows had hammered down his body, but the spirit of him shone dauntless out of the gay, ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... interview with the newly arrived astronomer, Isaac Hakkabut slunk back again to his tartan. A change had come over his ideas; he could no longer resist the conviction that he was indeed millions and millions of miles away from the earth, where he had carried on so varied and remunerative a traffic. It might be imagined that this realization of his true position would have led him to a better mind, and that, in some degree ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... to Jason Philip's face, he thought he perceived in it the restlessness of an evil conscience. It seemed to him that this man was not acting from conviction but from an antecedent determination. It seemed to him further that he was faced, not merely by this one man and his rage and its accidental causes, but by a whole world in arms that was pledged ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... enough of them to fill any theatre—who sincerely admire Mr. FECHTER; but it is impossible to resist the conviction that their admiration is only a dutiful acquiescence in the judgment of Mr. DICKENS. With the utmost desire to do no injustice to a genial gentleman, who conscientiously strives to carry out his theories of what acting should be, the undersigned is forced to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... the peace between the extremes of hostile opinion and conviction represented in the brotherhood. Daniel d'Arthez came of a good family in Picardy. His belief in the Monarchy was quite as strong as Michel Chrestien's faith in European Federation. Fulgence Ridal scoffed at Leon Giraud's philosophical doctrines, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... With fervor and heartfelt conviction, Edward cried, "One has only to love a single creature with all one's heart, and the whole ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... victories, may have seemed to Argistis one of those unimportant occurrences which constantly take place in the career of the strongest nations; the disaster of Rusas proved to him that, in attempting to wipe out his first repulse, he had only made matters worse, and the conviction was borne in upon his princes that they were not in a position to contest the possession of Western Asia with the Assyrians. They therefore renounced, more from instinct than as the result of deliberation, the project of enlarging their borders to the south, and if they subsequently reappeared ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... charity you are capable of finding something excellent even in his work," the other replied. "But let us be frank: The only thing he sometimes succeeded in doing was to flatter the crude instincts of the mob. True earnestness or conviction ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... think that his own love had waned. Nothing could more effectually cure her, and believing that she might be happy with Richard if she did not love another, he determined to measure every word and act so as to impress her with the conviction that though she was dear to him as a sister and friend, he had struggled with his affection for her and overcome it. It would be a living death to do this, he knew—to act so contrary to what he felt, but it was meet that he ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... her, she said little soft words to him in privacy. Then he would partly relent, would kiss her and bid her be a good girl, and would quickly hurry away from her. She could understand that he suffered as well as herself, and she perhaps got some consolation from the conviction. At last, on the following Saturday she watched her opportunity and brought to him when he was alone in his office a letter which she had written to Larry Twentyman. "Papa," she said, "would you read that?" He took and read the ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... transcribe, Lest you should take them for a bribe, Resolved to mortify your pride, I'll here expose your weaker side. Your spirits kindle to a flame, Moved by the lightest touch of blame; And when a friend in kindness tries To show you where your error lies, Conviction does but more incense; Perverseness is your whole defence; Truth, judgment, wit, give place to spite, Regardless both of wrong and right; Your virtues all suspended wait, Till time has open'd reason's ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... enlisted men. The character of the army requires that this should be eradicated as soon as possible. Enthusiastic patriotism might make men willing to bear with it for a time, or while the war seemed a temporary affair. But since the conviction has settled down upon the popular mind that we are in for a long and tedious struggle, and that a great army of American citizens must be kept on foot during the whole of it, overshadowing all peaceful pursuits, and remoulding the whole character of our people, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... that had settled upon it. The face of the other robber was fallen upon his breast. In the midst Jesus looked upward, dead but triumphant! Long and steadfastly I gazed upon him. The events of the day crowded fast upon my mind and my conviction deepened that this was no impostor, no fanatic, no common man. My conscience was sore smitten; my heart was inexpressibly touched by the memory of the things which I had seen; and, with scarcely an intention, ...
— The Centurion's Story • David James Burrell
... the Reverend Mr. Nelson came to Merton, on the pressing invitation of his ever duteous son. The meeting was truly affecting; and terminated, as it ought, in a thorough conviction, that his lordship had been most shamefully slandered. Indeed, on an entire eclaircissement, it became manifest that the grossest part of the slander which had been cruelly levelled against our hero was so self-evidently ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... Dick required no rocking when, after a refreshing wash, he stretched his long limbs in his hammock. His sleep was dreamless. He awoke at sundown strong in the conviction that he ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... possess depth you must commune with the Silences. No more do you find men and women coming for fifty miles, in wagons, to hear speakers discuss political issues; no more do you find campmeetings where the preacher strikes conviction home until thousands are on their knees crying to God ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... is thus expressed: "Jehovah Zebaoth, the God of Israel, is God for Israel," i.e.. He fulfils to Israel what He promised (Jarchi). The prayer for the establishment of David's house is expressed in the form of confidence, in the conviction based upon the word of God, that such is according ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... that they had not thought fit to bring his horse, for he felt that, mounted, he would have had a much better chance of escape than on foot; and this conviction was greatly strengthened when, as the day wore on toward evening and the stiff ascents which they were frequently obliged to negotiate began to tell upon him, he observed how the Indians, with their short, quick step, covered ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... did briefly and his tone and manner carried conviction. The farmer became extremely indignant at the intended fraud, and promised to have nothing to ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... abandon union. By standing aloof, no unions are formed, and sorrow is cast off, for sorrow in the world is born of separation.[55] Only he who understands the distinction between body and self, and not another, becomes freed from the erroneous conviction. He that knows the other (viz., self) attains to the highest understanding and becomes freed from error.[56] As regards creatures. they appear from an invisible state, and once more disappear into invisibleness. I do not know him. He also does not know me. As regards myself, renunciation is not ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of the Plea, p. 6: "Suppose some Episcopal ministers having arrived at the conviction that some of their church canons were wrong," "would it be regarded as anything else than a most astounding presumption, for such men to dare to change the character of the church canons and denounce some of them as errors, and at the same time to maintain that they themselves are the ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... the difficulty of making the ideal such a dominant part of our being that it shall consistently direct our activities under every circumstance. One of the essential conditions of human progress is the conviction that such ideals are vital to the highest attainments and that these should be the aim of all our strivings. Unfortunately such a standard of life is far from being realized. Policy rules largely in the world ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... ('Laughter, heavenly maid,' Honor, Glory, Sorrow, and so on, with prominent capital letters), a sort of a pseudo-classical substitute for emotion. 5. They were still more fully confirmed than the men of the Restoration in the conviction that the ancients had attained the highest possible perfection in literature, and some of them made absolute submission of judgment to the ancients, especially to the Latin poets and the Greek, Latin, and also the seventeenth ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... in an honest vaguely devotional kind of way, and did not like to hear her beliefs spoken of as mere aftergrowths, but it was at least something new and hopeful to hear Dead Mortimer speak with such energy and conviction on any subject. ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... their motive or conviction, I will give them the credit of being plucky, and must say that they fought bravely, though with a ferocity that was more than savage, to the bitter end, their last rally on the break of the poop being ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... or a spoon betwixt us both, yet she had two books which her father left her when he died: "The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven," and "The Practice of Piety." In these I sometimes read with her, and in them found some things that were pleasing to me, but met with no conviction. Yet through these books I fell in very eagerly with the religion of the times, to wit, to go to church twice a day, though yet retaining my wicked life. But one day, as I was standing at a neighbour's shop-window, cursing after my wonted manner, the woman of the house protested that she was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... in a most handsome and able manner for me when I was at Brussels, and prevented by distance from looking after my own interests; therefore, I will let her manage still, and take the consequences. Disinterested and energetic she certainly is, and if she be not quite so tractable or open to conviction as I could wish, I must remember perfection is not the lot of humanity. And as long as we can regard those we love, and to whom we are closely allied, with profound and very unshaken esteem, it is a ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... has not come," they said, "and he will not come now." This last was not spoken as a boast, but as a faith, a conviction. ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... of the Armagnacs, and to convict her was to render a service to the English, who were the masters. This was a point to be taken into consideration; but there was something else which ought also to be borne in mind by thoughtful folk: such a conviction would at the same time offend the French, who were in a fair way to become the masters once more in the place of the English. These matters were very perplexing to the doctors; but the second consideration had less weight with them than the first; ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... in connection with us two, that even at such a moment I could not have heard without betraying the concern it would give me. She did not speak, however, though her look was too eloquent to be mistaken. I ascribed the forbearance to the conviction that it would be too late, Lucy's affections belonging to Andrew Drewett. At that instant I had a bitter remembrance of Neb's words of "I sometime wish, Masser Mile, you and I nebber had see salt water." But that was not the moment to permit such feelings to get the mastery; and Grace, herself, ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... God had delegated on earth His divine right of life and death, these feelings made her regard as an august and worshipful and holy being the son whom till yesterday she had thought of as little more than a child. To her simple mind the conviction of the continuity of justice through all the changes of the Revolution was as strong as was that of the legislators of the Convention regarding the continuity of the State under varying systems of ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... nothing of all that the opinion of ages has agreed to regard as excellent and venerable, which would not be exposed to destruction at the hands of rationalistic criticism. This was Burke's most fundamental and unswerving conviction from the first piece that he wrote down to the last, and down to the last ...
— Burke • John Morley
... of civilization must turn from this analysis of function with the conviction that whatever the advantages of civilization as opposed to earlier phases of human association, the pattern of civilization in action is workable only to a very limited extent. Civilization is not an example of perpetual ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... with a man at all," retorted Miss Pringle, with unshakable conviction. "I think they're horrid; but of course it would be utterly impossible if ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... our conviction that Arabella has been fortunate in her husband. To be sure, she is fretful, discontented, peevish, irritable, cross; but that is her normal condition. At times Hiram has treated her with severity, but never cruelty. He has borne quietly ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... cries) have reach'd my ears? Doubt we his presence, when he now appears! Then hear conviction: Ere the fatal day That forced Ulysses o'er the watery way, A boar, fierce rushing in the sylvan war, Plough'd half his thigh; I saw, I saw the scar, And wild with transport had reveal'd the wound; But ere I spoke, he rose, and check'd the sound. Then, daughter, haste away! and ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... Wordsworth's poetry is, in my judgment, the most important done in verse, in our language, during the present century, so Emerson's Essays are, I think, the most important work done in prose.... But by his conviction that in the life of the spirit is happiness, and by his hope that this life of the spirit will come more and more to be sanely understood, and to prevail, and to work for happiness,—by this conviction and hope Emerson was great, and he will surely prove in ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of use. But the novelty had faded, the visits grew fewer and shorter, the very telephone messages languished; and as she sat brooding alone, in the few unoccupied half-hours that the omniscient System left her, a slow, sure conviction dropped like an acid on the clouded surface of her mind: she was alone. She was no longer a part of life as it was ordinarily lived. She and the others who shared that rich, tended seclusion were apart from the usages and responsibilities of the World that was counterfeited ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... of the white-haired man who had waited by the window, cringing at the slightest sound on the old, vine-clad veranda, nothing of the letter which he had found in the dusty safe. Nothing was asked regarding that; nothing could be gained by telling it. In the heart of Robert Fairchild was the conviction that somehow, some way, his father was innocent, and in his brain was a determination to fight for that innocence as long as it was humanly possible. But gossip told ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... curiosity concerning the widow's interview with Mr. Cobb, but beyond asking if she had seen the latter, he did not question. Thankful appreciated his reticence; the average dweller in Wellmouth—Winnie S., for instance—would have started in on a vigorous cross-examination. Her conviction that Captain Bangs was much above ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... all," she replied, so frankly that his conviction was a bit unsettled. "I tried to powder away the dark rings under my eyes, but I am afraid I have failed. ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... consideration more pleasing than this can be presented to the human mind? If national pride is ever justifiable or excusable it is when it springs, not from power or riches, grandeur or glory, but from conviction of national innocence, information, ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... to his practices, thus initiated in his resources, thus aware of his gigantic ideas of his own destiny, how could I for a moment suppose he would re-visit France without a consciousness of success, founded upon some secret conviction that it was infallible, through measures previously arranged ? I can only conclude that my understanding, such as it is, was utterly tired out by a long harass of perpetual alarm and sleepless apprehension. Unmoved, therefore, I remained in the general apparent ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... into practical execution. If all this could not be done, I would support the plan of the Secretary, as all admit that delay or inaction is death. If my words be too bold or earnest, let them be attributed to my profound conviction that the American Union is in extreme peril, and that its downfall involves the final catastrophe of our country and of our race. Let no man talk of a separation of the Union in any contingency. Let none speak now of peace or compromise ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... at the Republican party, was thus by no means wanting in essential truth, and that when the slaveholders were vanquished in the election of Mr. Lincoln, their appeal from the ballot to the bullet was the logical result of their insane devotion to slavery, and their conviction that nothing could save it but the dismemberment of the Republic. They forgot that the Rebellion was simply an advanced stage of slaveholding rapacity, and that instead of tempting us to cower before it and surrender our principles, it furnished an overwhelming argument for ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... and brutish, and hardening the dust of dead movements into what it is pleased to call "tradition," pelt with that word the thing which above all others is to dull brutes disquieting—I mean passionate conviction—the artist, finding himself assailed in the name of tradition, will probably reply, "Damn the tradition." He will protest. And, for an artist, to become a protestant is even ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... holy bible, and continual prayer, Bear up their fortitude—and talk of heav'n, And tell them, that sweet soul, who dies in battle, Shall walk, with spirits of the just. These words Add wings to native rage, and hurry them Impetuous to war. Nor yet in arms Unpractised. The day of LEXINGTON A sad conviction gave our soldiery, That these AMERICANS, were not that herd, And rout ungovern'd, which ...
— The Battle of Bunkers-Hill • Hugh Henry Brackenridge
... shrewd guess as to Gomez's fate, and Roger could picture to himself the fellow's disappointment and anger. For, having failed to find the papers, in search of which he had returned to the sand-bank, he would almost certainly arrive at the conviction that the unknown people on the island, who had evaded his keen eye in so mysterious a manner, had come into possession of them. To have been so near the recovery of his cherished papers, and yet to have missed them! ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... things the spirit and mind of the utterer must be regarded, and that it sorted not with the years, virtues, learning, and position of the said most learned Doctor to suppose that he had spoken such words and sealed the same with a kiss, save under the firm impression, thought, and conviction that he was offering his hand in marriage; which said impression, thought, and conviction were fully and reasonably declared and evident in his actions, ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... warmth of the fire. And it is singularly suggestive that in English literature the two things have died together. The very people who would blame Dickens for his sentimental hospitality are the very people who would also blame him for his narrow political conviction. The very people who would mock him for his narrow radicalism are those who would mock him for his broad fireside. Real conviction and real charity are much nearer than people suppose. Dickens was capable of loving all men; but he refused ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... consequence of a stone of the ridge having given way as he walked upright along it."[201] In all these cases, the accident or misfortune which befalls the individual is represented as the punishment connected with the neglect or transgression of a "natural law," just as remorse, shame, conviction, and condemnation may be the punishment for a moral offence. In other words, a child who ignorantly drinks laudanum is punished with death, in the same sense, and for the same reason, that the murderer is punished with death for shedding the blood of a fellow-creature; ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... wanted—a slowly rising scale of gratifications of the normal appetites—and he had a strong conviction that the materials, if not the inspiration of happiness, could ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... to avert or postpone the grave political change which was impending were of no avail. In the long six years' agitation popular intelligence had ripened to conviction and determination. Every voter substantially understood the several phases of the great slavery issue, its abstract morality, its economic influence on society, the intrigue of the Administration and the Senate to make Kansas a slave-State, the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... wife." These few tender words, and her husband's brightened looks, sufficed—Hester had no cares. She forgot even the fever, in seeing Edward look as gay as usual again, and in feeling that she was everything to that feeling, that conviction, for which she had sighed in vain, for long after her marriage. She had then fancied that his profession, his family, his own thoughts, were as important to him as herself. She now knew that she was supreme; and this ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... Mr. Whistler my conviction that, with the single exception of religion, more nonsense was talked on the subject of art than on any other topic in the world, that great authority refused to allow religion any such precedence. Certainly during the season when, for the middle-class Londoner, art "happens," the claims ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... These two words form the complement of each other and together give the key to an efficient Christian life. The discovery and full conviction of our utter helplessness is the constant condition of spiritual supply. The aim of the Old Testament, therefore, is ever to show man's failure; that of the New, to reveal Christ's sufficiency. He has all things for us, ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... her admiration. Her idea of the Trust had changed, likewise, for it seemed to be a fair and dignified competitor. She had seen no signs of that conscienceless, grasping policy usually imputed to big business. In regard to Gordon alone, her first conviction had remained unchanged. He was, in truth, as evil as he ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... Jefferson would use his influence with the Virginians and other Southern anti-assumptionists in Congress, he and Robert Morris would engage to persuade obstinate Northerners to concede the Capital city to the South. Hamilton made no sacrifice of conviction in offering this proposition. There was no reason why the Government should not sit as conveniently on the banks of the Potomac as elsewhere, and if he did not carry the Union through this new crisis, no one else would. All his great schemes ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... that assisted them, inculcate Republican beliefs on his countrymen, and prove to them above all this proposition: "That it is lawful, and hath been held so through all ages, for any who have the power, to call to account a Tyrant, or wicked King, and, after due conviction, to depose and put him to death, if the ordinary Magistrate have neglected or denied to do it!" The pamphlet was not to come out in time to bear practically on the deed which it justified; but, while the King ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... would not mean the same thing to them both. This common danger brought their differences in aim, in view, in character, and in position, into absolute prominence in the private vision of each. There was no bond of conviction, of common idea; they were merely two adventurers pursuing each his own adventure, involved in the same imminence of deadly peril. Therefore they had nothing to say to each other. But this peril, this only incontrovertible truth in which they shared, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... of 1860, on a lecturing tour, he visited some of the Southern States, and while there closely observed the sentiment of the people on the subject of slavery, with the result that he expressed the conviction that nothing short of war could settle the matter. In the summer of 1860 he became principal of the public schools of Hennepin, Illinois. These he organised, graded, and taught with a vigour which was characteristic, ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... instinctive belief, a proleptic anticipation, that such knowledge can be attained. There must unquestionably be some mental initiative which is the motive and guide to all philosophical inquiry. We must have some well-grounded conviction, some a priori belief, some pre-cognition "ad intentionem ejus quod quaeritur,"[564] which determines the direction of our thinking. The mind does not go to work aimlessly; it asks a specific question; ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... was, of course, my business to prove that he was a despicable knave and a drivelling idiot. This I was engaged in doing at a public meeting in the town-hall. The Philippics of Demosthenes were milk and water in comparison with my denunciations—when just at the critical moment—as I was carrying conviction into the breasts of the stolid Britons who were listening to me, the gas flickered and went out. Three candles were brought in. I recommenced my thunder; but it was of no use. The candles utterly destroyed its effect, and two days afterwards the squire became an M.P., and still is a silent ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... subconsciously by a vague remembrance of certain thoughts and feelings, perhaps of a deep religious or spiritual nature, which suddenly came to him upon realizing the beauty of the scene and which overpowered the first sensuous pleasure—perhaps some such feeling as of the conviction of immortality, that Thoreau experienced and tells about in Walden. "I penetrated to those meadows ... when the wild river and the woods were bathed in so pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead IF they had been slumbering in their graves as some suppose. There needs no stronger proof ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... belief that the motion would eventually prevail. That expression of confidence was not an ebullition of vanity, or a presumptuous calculation, intended to accelerate the event it affected to foretell. It was not a vain boast, or an idle assumption, but was the result of a deep conviction of the injustice done President Jackson, and a thorough reliance upon the justice of the American people. I felt that the President had been wronged; and my heart told me that this wrong would be redressed! ...
— Thomas Hart Benton's Remarks to the Senate on the Expunging Resolution • Thomas Hart Benton
... marry," the Cardinal repeated, with conviction. "You are a young woman—you are twenty-eight years old. You will, marry. It is only right that you should marry. You have not the vocation for a religious. Therefore you must marry. But it will be a great loss to the house ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland |
