"Disbelief" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were procured from America were of inferior workmanship and had many faults. He patiently went to work to improve and perfect them. 'There would probably not have been any big British flying boats', says one who worked with him, 'but for the vision, persistence, and energy, in the face of disbelief and discouragement, of Colonel J. C. Porte, C.M.G., who designed and built at Felixstowe Air Station the experimental machine of each type of British flying boat successfully used in the service. His boats were very large, the types used in the war weighing from four and a half to six and ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... Where would be the fun of such an adventure if you had it alone? And besides, Oliver had discovered that it was not at all difficult to scare himself with the things he had merely imagined. There were times when Dorcas Jane's frank disbelief was a great comfort to him. Still, he wasn't the sort of boy to be scared before anything has really happened, so when Dorcas Jane suggested that they didn't know what the animals might do to any one who went among them uninvited, ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... these hope-inspiring words, there was genuine eagerness in the tone of Douglas Dale's voice, there was brightness in his frank eyes. No wonder Lydia held the story her brother had told her in scornful disbelief; no wonder she felt all the glow of the fulfilment of long-deferred hope. What would have been her sensations had she known that Douglas Dale's only actuating motive in the proposed friendly alliance, was to secure a female friend for his adored Paulina, ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... planned imposture in which Lazarus acted as a confederate. Between the rejection of the stories as wholly fabulous and the acceptance of them as the evangelists themselves meant them to be accepted, there will be many shades of belief and disbelief, of sympathy and derision. It is not a question of being a Christian or not. A Mahometan Arab will accept literally and without question parts of the narrative which an English Archbishop has to reject or explain away; and many Theosophists and lovers of the wisdom of India, ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... from the character of the man, I knew to be exaggerations and perversions of the truth, if not entirely false—things derogatory to him, and flattering to them—especially to Miss Murray—which I burned to contradict, or, at least, to show my doubts about, but dared not; lest, in expressing my disbelief, I should display my interest too. Other things I heard, which I felt or feared were indeed too true: but I must still conceal my anxiety respecting him, my indignation against them, beneath a careless aspect; others, again, mere ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... with cynical disbelief. He was far too wise and far too cunning to be bewitched by it. In his heart he pitied the men about him, who laughed wildly, and shouted, and climbed recklessly to the rails and ratlines. He had been deceived too often not to know that it was ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... you admit such an idea, and still more of proclaiming it. I pledge you my word that I do not consider the king is in danger; I have seen many cures equally extraordinary with his." I shook my head in token of disbelief. I had uttered what I firmly supposed the truth, and the sight of my evil genius in the person of the prophet who had awaited my return to Versailles, turned the encouraging words of Bordeu into a cold, ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... was one of my strangest experiences with Master. He healed the rebellious veterinary surgeon in spite of his disbelief, and extended the man's natural term on earth by six months, just because of my earnest supplication. Sri Yukteswar was boundless in his kindness when confronted by the ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... were passing the Indian village I presented a little tobacco to the headmen as an expression of regard, while they gave us a few smoked salmon, after putting many questions concerning my exploration of their bay and bluntly declaring their disbelief ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... hitherto may seem so strange as to excite doubt in the minds of those who do not know me, but it was the fact which I am now about to relate which caused my own brother-in-law to insult me by disbelief. I can but relate the occurrence in the simplest words, and trust to chance and time to prove their truth. In the centre of this main street there was a large building, formed in the same primitive way as the others, ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and his utterance was thick with anger at the crassness of things, "I'll consider the advisability of sending in my own papers. Dash it!" He said something quite different, but his friends may read this record, and they would repudiate an exact version with scorn and disbelief. "Are we going to admit ourselves beaten by a half-bred hound like Hilton Fenley? Not if I know it, or I know you. We've got the noose 'round his neck, and you and I will pull it tight if we ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... under a ban, which shows itself in all sorts of little ways—in business, in society, everywhere. My mother, poor thing, hears it in her shop from her customers, and it always takes the same annoying form: regret about modern disbelief, and free-thinking, and so on; and I am certain that most people regard it as a stroke of wonderful good luck, that I was prevented in good time from corrupting—yes, no less than corrupting—our noble workpeople. So I ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... bewildered, amazement, disbelief, and anger flowing in quick waves across her face. The three men held their breaths. Moreland, Senior, took a step toward her; Mr. Farnam's mouth dropped a little open as he waited, panic-stricken, for ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... wranglings and struggles with doubt had ended—where so many are apt to end, when the world is sunny and success weaves its silken meshes for the disport of self—in a quiet disbelief that angered him no longer, because he had given over all fight with it. But the great dome, flaming with its letters, AEdificabo meam Ecclesiam, shining there for ages, kindled the fight anew. And strange as it may seem, and perplexing as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... None knew him, for he was old, savory with antipodal spices, outlandishly garbed; and even his countenance had become like those Oriental faces amid which he had found unheard-of griefs and joys. In Venice, his birthplace, instead of a greeting that might ease his nostalgia, he encountered disbelief in his identity, and ridicule of his tales. He could not make them credulous of that delicious Cambulac where he had dwelt like a god: his tidings of unearthly felicities—free to all who would make that journey—fell upon brutish ears. The very ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... always best," answered Orsino, beginning to suspect that something very tortuous was coming. His disbelief in phrases of the kind, though originally ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... but with their intrinsic credibility. There has arisen in a certain class of minds an apparent perception of the impossibility of suspensions of physical law. This is one peculiarity of the time; another is a disposition to maintain the disbelief of miracles upon a religious basis, and in a connection with a declared belief in ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... a million times less than that of hydrogen, and a velocity of 2250 kilometres per second (Principles of Chemistry, Eng. ed., 1905, vol. ii. p. 526). On the other hand, the well-known physicist Dr A.H. Bucherer, speaking at the Naturforscherversammlung, held at Stuttgart in 1906, declared his disbelief in the existence of the ether, which he thought could not be reconciled at once with the Maxwellian theory and the ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... quarrel was conducted on the part of Venice with an irreproachable dignity and diplomacy that raised it to the height of a negotiation of State, and it formed no part of the policy of the Republic to tolerate any disbelief in her own loyalty; the Venetians should stand before the world as faithful sons of the Church, bearing ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... bulk of Elizabeth's subjects from opposition to her religious system was a disbelief in its permanence. Englishmen had seen English religion changed too often to believe that it would change no more. When the Commissioners forced a Protestant ritual on St. John's College at Oxford, its founder, Sir Thomas White, simply took away its vestments and crucifixes, ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... acknowledged him to be an expert), drew his arm-chair close to the genial blaze, and sat alternately sipping his brew and conning for the thousandth time the annotated pamphlet in which he had demonstrated exhaustively, redundantly, irrefutably, beyond possibility of disbelief or doubt, that with the morrow the world's great age must be renewed and ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "shock modern views of the Universe" (p. 157) must thus think of the Deity. And so Atheism acquires a new meaning. "It is," we read, "a disbelief in the existence of God—that is, a disbelief in any regularity in the Universe to which a man must conform himself under penalties" (p. 27); a definition which surely is a little hard upon the libres-penseurs, as taking the bread out of their mouths. I remember hearing, not long ago, in ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... ungrateful, but I can tell you no more. And as for you, Shirley," she turned with set eyes to the novelist, "you know what we were to each other. It is all ended now. Even if you had expressed no disbelief in me when you heard I had disappeared, it would be just the same. I hold no hard feelings against you, whatever my father may say. It is simply good-by. I shall not remain here much longer. Do not let this make you unhappy any longer ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... and Horace looked white with the very thought. As usual George pretended to make light of the whole matter, though some of them fancied much of his disbelief was assumed, for George had ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... certain, that men who profess to have no religion, are full as zealous to bring over proselytes as any Papist or fanatic can be. And therefore, if those who are in station high enough to be of influence or example to others; if those (I say) openly profess a contempt or disbelief of religion, they will be sure to make all their dependents of their own principles; and what security can the public expect from such persons, whenever their interests, or their lusts, come into competition with their duty? It is very possible for a man who hath the appearance of religion, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... and afterward, the English were as firm believers in the Church of England's Thirty-nine Articles as they seemed to be at the beginning of this century. The whole of the last century was for all Europe, with the exception of the two peninsulas of Italy and Spain, a period of avowed disbelief. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... two. Caesar came forward to oppose them. Caesar aspired to be Pontifex Maximus—Pope of Rome—he who of all men living was the least given to illusion; he who was the most frank in his confession of entire disbelief in the legends which, though few credited them any more, yet almost all thought it decent to pretend to credit. Among the phenomena of the time this was surely the most singular. Yet Caesar had been a priest from his boyhood, and why ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... Mima@msa will show that the later Mima@msa writers agreed with the Nyaya-Vais'e@sika doctrines in most of their views regarding substance, qualities, etc. Some of the main points in which Mima@msa differs from Nyaya-Vais'e@sika are (1) self-validity of the Vedas, (2) the eternality of the Vedas, (3) disbelief in any creator or god, (4) eternality of sound (s'abda), (5) (according to Kumarila) direct perception of self in the notion of the ego. Of these the first and the second points do not form any subject of discussion in the Vais'e@sika. ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... evidence is entirely dependant on attention;—and attention is a voluntary intellectual state over which we have a direct and absolute control. As it is, therefore, by prolonged and continued attention that evidence produces belief, a man may incur the deepest guilt by his disbelief of truths which he has failed to examine with the care which is due to them. This exercise is entirely under the control of the will; but the will to exercise it respecting moral truth is closely connected ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... that this is not the fitting way? If it means that it was not, if he so misuses words that by the Creator he intends an unintelligent power, undirected force, or necessity, then he has put his case so as to invite disbelief in it. For then blind forces have produced not only manifest adaptions of means to specific ends—which is absurd enough—but better adjusted and more perfect instruments or machines than intellect (that is, human intellect) ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... toward his bride. There was disbelief, hope, despair, in his face, which had grown older by years with the ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... web and woof of our summer. But through it ran the patterns of fantastic delight such as the West alone can offer a man's utter disbelief in them. Some of these patterns stand out in memory ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... hesitate to start on a journey on a Friday. I often do things which would not be done by superstitious persons in China. But to meet a man calling himself "Coffin" or "Death" was too much for me, and with all my disbelief in superstition I could not help showing some repugnance to ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... that their religious opinions were really Socinian, and when he wrote the article on Geneva he stated this. He stated it in such a way as to make their heterodox opinions a credit to Genevese pastors, because he associated disbelief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, in mysteries of faith, and in eternal punishment, with a practical life of admirable simplicity, purity, and tolerance. Each line of this eulogy on the Socinian preachers of Geneva, veiled a burning and contemptuous reproach ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... present occasion Johnson defended luxury, and said that he had learnt much from Mandeville—a shrewd cynic, in whom Johnson's hatred for humbug is exaggerated into a general disbelief in real as well as sham nobleness of sentiment. As the conversation proceeded, Johnson expressed his habitual horror of death, and caused Miss Seward's ridicule by talking seriously of ghosts and the importance of the question of their reality; and then followed an explosion, ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... you?' asked Norah, with the sharp tones of alarm and incredulity. 'I don't know you'; trying, by futile words of disbelief, to do away with ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... allusions to Minna are always full of tender solicitude, though it is evident that she wears upon him. His temper, peculiarly violent at the slightest opposition, must have been a serious problem under her open disbelief in his genius and his creeds; and yet he thought he could ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... went slowly along the beautiful paths of spirit-land, conversing as they went. The hazel eyes of the brown-haired stranger opened in wide astonishment at what her sisters told her. Sometimes she asked questions, sometimes she shook her head in disbelief. She had been a "worldly" woman, she told them, never thinking that there would be any life other than the one she was living while on the earth; and so she had shaped her daily conduct by that narrow standard. Her earth-life had ended sadly, and existence had been bitter ever since, "Restless ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... any one could read so fast as he read when he did condescend for a few moments to give his attention to a few consecutive pages. "Was it a pose?" I thought, yet he was certainly an adept in handling the books. I was puzzled, yet I was still sceptical—the habit of experience was towards disbelief—a boy of seven and a half could not possibly have the mental equipment ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... took her to where Olaf was, and when she stood near him she looked at him in disbelief, taking him to be but a workman. But when the king laid down his hammer and stood up at his full height and uncovered his head, she saw that he was no ordinary man. Her eyes went to his bare arm, where there still remained the mark ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... had certainly probed deep this time into the feminine nature. With every desire and instinct to disbelieve the facts, the deeper his inquiries went, the stronger the evidence rolled up: there was no gainsaying it; no sense in a further disbelief of it. ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... this time is positively piteous, and he looks earnestly around, as though longing for some one to support his disbelief. ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... not see any other way out of the difficulty,' observed Rex, leaning back in his chair and looking at the stove. 'You may do this, however. You may think what you please of me, provided you do not express your disbelief. I am the most pacific of men, and I have a strong dislike to fighting at my age. Moreover, you asked me the question which led to all this. Even if I answer it, am I bound to explain the reasons for my reply? I believe the code of honour does not require that, and if there is ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... of those to whom knowledge comes as a bitter aftermath. When his regiment had received orders to move from the Rock, and he had informed Inez of his departure, she had turned aside, just as Zahara had done; scornfully and in silence. Because of his disbelief in her he had guarded his heart against this beautiful Spanish girl who (as he realized too late) had brought him the only real happiness he had ever known. Often she had told him of her brother, Miguel, who would kill her—would kill them both—if he so much as suspected their meetings; ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... back, and then another, and people began to filter, in slow embarrassment, towards the door. Lindsay came with Hilda's cloak. "You won't mind my coming with you," he said, "I should like to hear the details." Beryl Stace made as if to embrace her, pouring out abusive disbelief, but Hilda waved her away with a gesture almost of irritation. Some of the others said a perfunctory word or two, and went away with lingering backward looks. In a quarter of an hour, Mr. Lindsay's brougham ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... misunderstand me," said Frowenfeld in quick response. "I have no stronger disbelief than my disbelief in insurrection. I believe that to every desirable end there are two roads, the way of strife and the way of peace. I can imagine a man in your place, going about among his people, stirring up their minds to a noble discontent, laying out his means, sparingly ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... of a body of men whose duty it is to believe in the supernatural, to perform daily miracles, and to keep alive that mythopoeic faculty which is so essential for the imagination. But in the English Church a man succeeds, not through his capacity for belief, but through his capacity for disbelief. Ours is the only Church where the sceptic stands at the altar, and where St. Thomas is regarded as the ideal apostle. Many a worthy clergyman, who passes his life in admirable works of kindly charity, lives and dies unnoticed and unknown; but it ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... to the genuineness of your story has turned up," said Gortsby, holding out the cake of soap; "it must have slid out of your overcoat pocket when you sat down on the seat. I saw it on the ground after you left. You must excuse my disbelief, but appearances were really rather against you, and now, as I appealed to the testimony of the soap I think I ought to abide by its verdict. If the loan of a sovereign is ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... "that one never ought to judge by appearances." "Yes," said he, "but come away, and I will show you something more." Whereupon he transported me up to where stood the churches of the city of Perdition, for every body in it had an appearance of faith, even in the age of Disbelief. First we went to the temple of Heathenism, where I could see some adoring the form of a man, others that of the sun, others that of the moon, and an innumerable quantity of similar other gods, even down ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... supporter of John Sherman's policy at any period of its crucial test. We did not believe that his gigantic experiment could be brought to a successful conclusion. The absurd currency theories which were from time to time set up in antagonism to his policy never impressed us; our disbelief was based upon our fear that the commercial and industrial wreckage, consequent upon an increase of forty per cent. in the purchasing power of money within three years, would be infinitely greater than it turned out to be, and, so being, would overwhelm ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... the injury which he inflicts upon his natural reason prepares him to fall again with but little struggle. For a period of several weeks I was almost daily assaulted with strong, bitter tendencies to doubt and disbelief; and it called for the whole power of my mind to free ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... to British conditions. Because other countries wisely abstained from relying on that which they did not possess, or had only imperfectly and with elaborate art created, the mistress of the seas was led to proclaim her disbelief in the very force that had made and kept her dominion, and urged to defend herself with fortifications by advisers who, like Charles II and the Duke of York two centuries before, were 'not ashamed of it.' It was long before the ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... the disbelief in the sense of all public institutions, which he shared with him, and often expressed, was distasteful to him now from ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... what it was that his man had to say, Messer Folco frowned sternly, and expressed a disbelief so emphatic and so angry that there was nothing for the poor servitor to do but to call Maleotti himself, who, with great seeming reluctance and with many protestations of regret, that must have made him seem like a particularly ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... who knew the Chevalier's courage, exchanged glances of surprise and disbelief. As for the ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... Birnie, I'm sure. What didn't go to Crater stayed in camp—or was gone on some other trip. No, I'm sure!" He jerked away with sudden indignation at Bud's disbelief. "Say! Do you think I'm bad enough to let my sister get into trouble with the Catrockers? I know they never got ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... commend the value of intellectual and of all kinds of higher enjoyments on account of their greater durability. Why, then, should we shrink from admitting that the value of character really is increased when it is regarded as surviving bodily death? Disbelief in Immortality would, I believe, in the long run and for the vast majority of men, carry with it an enormous enhancement of the value of the carnal and sensual over the spiritual ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... result of all murderous acts, insolence, insanity, arrogance, pride, patience, policy, impolicy, powerlessness and power, respect, disrespect, decay and stability, humility, charity, fitness of time and unfitness of time, falsehood, wisdom, truth, belief, disbelief, impotence, trade, profit, loss, success, defeat, fierceness, mildness, death, acquisition and non-acquisition, agreement and disagreement, that which should be done and that which should not be done, strength and weakness, malice and goodwill, righteousness and unrighteousness, shame and shamelessness, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... experience. I think it depends on ourselves as to what we make of it. Thought is a great power by which we mould ourselves and others; and we have no right to subvert that power to base uses, or to poison it by distrust of good, or disbelief in the Supreme Guidance. You would be a thousand times better as a man, Zouche, and far greater as a poet, if you could ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... Great Britain's misfortunes and failure may be summarized as follows:—Misconception by the home government of the temper and reserve strength of her colonists, a population mainly of good English blood and instincts; disbelief at the outset in the probability of a protracted struggle covering the immense territory in America; consequent failure to despatch sufficient forces to the field; the safe and Fabian generalship of Washington; and finally, the French alliance ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... which—supported, in his case, by the current philosophy of the day, as well as by that of the circle in which he had spent most of his life, the group that surrounded the Princesse des Laumes, in which one's intelligence was understood to increase with the strength of one's disbelief in everything, and nothing real and incontestable was to be discovered, except the individual tastes of each of its members—is no longer that of youth, but a positive, almost a medical philosophy, the philosophy of men who, instead of ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... clearly, however, did he recognize the attitude his father would take to such a course; for his father, while refraining from scoffing at beliefs cherished by his wife and friends, made no secret of his own disbelief in them. ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... takes us fairly by the throat; there is nothing in Shakespeare that touches the heart more nearly. The loves of Cosette and Marius are very pure and pleasant, and we cannot refuse our affection to Gavroche, although we may make a mental reservation of our profound disbelief in his existence. Take it for all in all, there are few books in the world that can be compared with it. There is as much calm and serenity as Hugo has ever attained to; the melodramatic coarsenesses that disfigured "Notre ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Hamburgh, and originated in the following manner:—During a period when war prevailed on the Continent, so many false reports and lying bulletins were fabricated at Hamburgh, that at length, when any one would signify his disbelief of a statement, he would say, 'You had that from Hamburgh;' and thus, 'That is Hamburgh,' or Humbug, became a common expression ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... later, he said to Davison: "When I follow my own head, I am, in general, much more correct in my judgment, than following the opinion of others. I resisted the opinion of General Brereton's information till it would have been the height of presumption to have carried my disbelief further. I could not, in the face of generals and admirals, go N.W., when it was apparently clear that the enemy had gone south." His purpose had been not to anchor, but to pick up such ships-of-the-line as he found there,—two seventy-fours,[101] as it turned out,—and ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... each proclaiming the owner's hopes or desires or disbelief to ears that were not listening, quite submerged Applehead's remarks upon the subject of his wellknown prowess when he was "shurf." The Happy Family were sprawled in unwonted luxury on the shady side of an outcropping of rock from under which ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... them together there were two atheists, had a real significance, but not that which was intended by the sharp-tongued ecclesiastic who first uttered it. Undoubtedly there is a strong tendency in the pursuits of the medical profession to produce disbelief in that figment of tradition and diseased human imagination which has been installed in the seat of divinity by the priesthood of cruel and ignorant ages. It is impossible, or at least very difficult, for a physician who has seen the perpetual efforts of Nature—whose ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... horse, that I felt the full truth of my instinctive fears. Chu Chu would not permit any one to approach her mistress's side. My mounted presence revived in her all her old blind astonishment and disbelief in my existence; she would start suddenly, face about, and back away from me in utter amazement as if I had been only recently created, or with an affected modesty as if I had been just guilty of some grave indecorum towards her sex which she really could not stand. The frequency ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... would have been shed. If the Advice had even recommended, in the most moderate terms, its absolute exclusion from every stage of the proceedings, they would have come to an end. But it assumes its introduction, and only suggests "disbelief" of it, in avoiding to act upon it, in ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... of any person who had seen Miss Williams and the children in the course of their journeyings in America, he resented the disbelief implied in such a question, and strong was his manly indignation when one of the gentlemen present expressed his opinion that the story was a lie from beginning to end. This rude estimate of Holmes' veracity was, however, in some degree confirmed when a cipher advertisement published ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... little the "literator judaeus," but Faraday or Clerk-Maxwell would have expressed the same opinion with only the change of a word: "If the twelfth century had once tasted true science, how quick they would have dropped Avicenna and Averroes!" Science admits that Bernard's disbelief in scholasticism was well founded, whatever it may think of his reasons. The only point that remains is personal: Which is the more ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... relationship are only mysterious and strange to those who do not understand; the Hottentot stands in wonder and amazement at the X-ray machine, but the skilled operator turns on its power in spite of this ignorance and disbelief, and it works whether he believes it or not. Just so the skillful operator in Cosmic Therapeutics can generate, control and direct the power of the Cosmic consciousness which he understands, and it brings its results whether the skeptical mind ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... about the town, when he took Lizzie Greystock,—of all the women whom he could find in the world,—to be the purest, the truest, and the noblest. It has been said of Sir Florian that he did not believe in virtue. He freely expressed disbelief in the virtue of women around him,—in the virtue of women of all ranks. But he believed in his mother and sisters as though they were heaven-born; and he was one who could believe in his wife as though she were the queen of heaven. He did ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... spirit continued in her now. It was as if some disillusion had frozen upon her, a hard disbelief. Part of her had gone cold, apathetic. She was too young, too baffled to understand, or even to know that she suffered much. And she was too deeply hurt ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... unlike. In the country we are tempted to throw stones at strange hats! But to the Scotch preacher every man in one way seems transparent to the soul. He sees the man himself, not his professions any more than his clothes. And I never knew anyone who had such an abiding disbelief in the wickedness of the human soul. Weakness he sees and comforts; wickedness he ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... has generally arisen from scepticism, deficiency in taste, or disbelief in the injurious consequences of the practice. Some consider that levity is likely to bring any subject it touches into contempt, or is only fitly used in connection with light subjects; while others regard it as merely a source of harmless pleasure, and can even laugh at a joke against themselves. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... showed disbelief. And von Schlichten grumbled unhappily to himself, without knowing why, until they finally went out to the big Audience Hall to meet ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... yet reminded them of our previous meeting. One evening, however, the talk turned upon clairvoyance, and Mrs. La Force was expressing the utmost disbelief in it. I borrowed her ring, and holding it to my forehead, I pretended to ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... picked up and tried to put together. She then threw herself on the bed, and for the first time in her life was overcome with hysterical tears. She dared not confess to herself what she wanted. She would have liked to cast herself at his feet; but notwithstanding her disbelief in form and ceremony, she could not do it. She cursed the check which had held her so straitly while she was talking with him, and cursed him that he dealt with her so lightly. The continued sobbing at last took the heat out of her, and she rose from ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... Lightfoot has been writing cannot be my work, but is simply a work of his own imagination. That work cannot possibly have contained, for instance, the chapter on "Anthropomorphic Divinity," [36:2] in which, on the contrary, I studiously commit myself to very decided disbelief in such a "Personal God" as he means. In no way inconsistent with that chapter are my concluding remarks, contrasting with the spasmodic Jewish Divinity a Supreme Being manifested in the operation of invariable laws—whose very invariability is the guarantee of beneficence and security. If ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... or to the ignoble or common people, however pure their conduct or exemplary their virtue. In later times we find that Pindar extends his rewards to good men in general; but Euripides is sometimes skeptical, and Iphigenia without hesitation expresses her disbelief of ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 11, November, 1880 • Various
... among the men. Not that they were in the habit of killing reputations to give themselves bonnes fortunes, as Frenchmen might have done under similar circumstances; their defamatory gossip was more about men than about women, and seemed to arise partly from a general disbelief in virtue, and partly from inability to maintain an interesting conversation on other than personal topics. And though much of this evil speaking was evidently prompted by personal enmities, much also of it seemed to originate in no hostile feeling at all; and it was this that ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... silent books, which, in their silence, say More to the mind than thunder to the ear: And yet men listened not, nor listen; but Walk darkling to their doom: which, though so nigh, Shakes them no more in their dim disbelief, 280 Than their last cries shall shake the Almighty purpose, Or deaf obedient Ocean, which fulfils it. No sign yet hangs its banner in the air; The clouds are few, and of their wonted texture; The Sun will rise upon the Earth's last ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... citizen, which burned in the breast of Knox. But as to spiritual matters and the Church universal, the only feelings which we can imagine Major, on his return from abroad, to have impressed upon the younger man from Haddington are a despair of reform, and a disbelief in revolution. ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... raw-boned lady, imagined himself telling the raw- boned lady the simple, unvarnished truth, and the raw-boned lady's utter disbelief of every word of it. An ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... daughter's grand lover stretching his long figure on the grass at her feet, while the smaller Grays, their shyness quite departed, rolled and tumbled over him as confident as puppies. To be sure Walter Gray, with his disbelief in distinctions of rank as otherwise than accidental, was not unduly elated by the fine company in which he found himself. He looked hard and long at Robin Drummond as hand met hand. Then a bright look of reassurance came over his face. He could trust even ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... answered by recording such opinions, or by collecting the history of all the cases they could find in which no evidence of the influence of contagion existed, I believe they are in error. Suppose a few writers of authority can be found to profess a disbelief in contagion,—and they are very few compared with those who think differently,—is it quite clear that they formed their opinions on a view of all the facts, or is it not apparent that they relied mostly on their own solitary experience? Still further, of those whose names are quoted, ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... the "Clara" theory. CASTOR omits (1). VENDREDI gets (1) right, but in (2) makes the same mistake as BO-PEEP. I notice in your solution a marvellous proportion-sum:—"300 miles: 2 hours :: one mile: 24 seconds." May I venture to advise your acquiring, as soon as possible, an utter disbelief in the possibility of a ratio existing between miles and hours? Do not be disheartened by your two friends' sarcastic remarks on your "roundabout ways." Their short method, of adding 12 and 8, has the slight disadvantage ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... said—"I have wronged you and I apologise. But you can hardly wonder at my disbelief, considering your appearance, which is that of a much younger man than your actual years should ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... trivial ceremonies through policy, in order the better to subject the minds of the people to themselves, and to reconcile them to their own purposes, by the assistance of superstition: but by their contempt for auguries, and their inward conviction of their falsity, they were led into a disbelief of the Divine Providence, and to despise religion itself; conceiving it inseparable from the numerous absurdities of this kind, which rendered it ridiculous, and consequently ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... me, a mere man, that he has sinned, but against thyself—against thy purity and holiness and affection. Oh, my God, thou who didst come in the likeness of sinful man to seek and save that which was lost, stretch out the arms of thy salvation now to this child and save him from himself, from his own disbelief, his hatred of me, or of what I have said. Thou art all-merciful and all-loving. We leave all souls of men in the protecting, enfolding embrace of thy boundless compassion and ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... feeble remarks which, because of the speaker's indifference and his disbelief in his client, fell without effect. The prosecuting attorney took but ten minutes to sum up the case, telling the jury that they knew their duty too well for him to attempt to instruct them. "But," said he, "I will add one ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... cry of his wife after her lost child, disbelief in himself got within the lines of his defense; he could do no more, and began to loathe that conscious self which had hitherto been ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... exquisite smile of disbelief, which dissipated the dark cloud that his fear of some plot on the old woman's part had brought to this suspicious mortal's brow. Madame Crochard was amazed at nothing, approved of everything, followed her daughter and Monsieur Roger into the park, where the two ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... doubles-ententes, of knaves and dupes, of men who sold their daughters, and women who cheated their husbands. But the cynicism of Wycherly was no greater than that of the men about him; and in mere love of what was vile, in contempt of virtue and disbelief in purity or honesty, the king himself stood ahead ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... some parcels of fibrine, albumen, and phosphates, that keep us on the minority side of the house. In point of fact, it is one of the many results of Spiritualism to make the permanent destiny of the race a matter of common reflection and discourse, and a vehicle for the prevailing disbelief of the Middle-Age doctrines on the subject. I cannot help thinking, when I remember how many conversations my friend and myself have sported, that it would be very extraordinary, if there were no mention of that class of subjects which involves all that we have and all that we hope, not merely ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the true literary sense cares for these one way or another, or is more disturbed by them than if they were Wilkins and Jones. Just as Coleridge observed that to enjoy some kinds of poetry you must suspend disbelief, so, with mere literary fashions, you must suspend disagreement. We should not call By-ends By-ends now: and whether we should do better or worse nobody, as Plato says, knows but the Deity. But the best of us would be hard put to it to make By-ends ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... had felt unrest and known the lack of settled purpose, so now, after having seen all things apparently set in order before him for progressive accomplishment, he had fallen back once more into that state of disbelief, of that hopeless and desperate awakening properly reserved only for old age, when the individual realizes that what he does is of itself of no consequence, and that what he is or is not stops no single star an atom in its flight, no blade ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... was valuable; my policy might have suffered considerably by my disbelief. I have learnt a lesson and wish to profit by it. Can you tell me ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... Doodles would rejoice together in privacy without any third confederate. Triumviri might be very well; Archie also had heard of triumviri; but two were company, and three were none. Thus he consoled himself when his pigheaded brother expressed his disbelief ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... an Immortal, came to see me once, but only to speak of the necessity for the immediate simplification of houses. It was odd to observe how, once a man became infected, his former interests and anxieties fell away from him like an old garment. In Harley Street an attitude of stubborn disbelief continued amongst those still mortal. There is something magnificent in that adamantine spirit which refuses to recognize the new, even though it moves with ever-increasing distinctness before the very eyes of the deniers. I was not surprised. I was familiar ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... Coolie's great toe, which had been severely bitten by a vampire in the night. And here let me say, that the popular disbelief of vampire stories is only owing to English ignorance, and disinclination to believe any of the many quaint things which John Bull has not seen, because he does not care to see them. If he comes to those parts, he must be careful not to ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... how it had hurt me to find that this fight seemed so sordid and the motives of all engaged only mercenary and selfish. But once did he interrupt me, and then by an exclamation which I mistook for an exclamation of disbelief, and which I challenged quickly. "But it is true, sir," I said. "I joined the revolutionists for just that reason—because they were fighting for their liberty and because they had been wronged and were the under- dogs ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... a gallant once, need that condemn his words to disbelief forever?" he asked. . . "May not even the most confirmed trifler have, ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... of nothing to forgive except your old disbelief in Gretchen, and deceiving me about sending the carriage the night Jerrie came; but if there is anything else, no matter what it is, I do forgive ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... His utter disbelief in Christian's testimony regarding the footprints was based upon positive scepticism. His reason refused to bend in accepting the possibility of the supernatural materialised. That a living beast could ever be other than palpably bestial—pawed, toothed, shagged, ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... climbers—for here aspiration of any sort is a dangerous crime. The Crane's song reveals the fact that pious men are here, in the Blocksberg, united with devils; introducing the same cynical and desperate disbelief in goodness which Nathaniel Hawthorne has told in similar fashion in his tale of Young Goodman Brown; and the most horrible touch of all is introduced when Faust in disgust leaves the revel, because out of the mouth of the witch with whom ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... have so much felt the mere physical want. With less reason has it been urged by other critics, that the sudden relenting of the tyrant is contrary to his character. The tyrant here has no individual character at all. He is the mere personation of disbelief in truth and love—which the spectacle of sublime self-abnegation at once converts. In this idea lies the deep philosophical truth, which redeems all the defects of the piece—for poetry, in its highest form, is ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... their neighbours had a longer time to live stood underneath the east window on that eve, and anxiously listened for the dreaded revelation. It is related of a tailor, who was reckoned a wit, and affected disbelief in the Spirit story, that he announced his intention to prove the thing a myth, and so, one Nos G'lan Geua', Shon Robert, as he was called, proceeded to the church just before midnight, and, to his horror, he ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... low regard for the motives of most seekers of wealth; he went further, and fell into much disbelief of poor men's needs. For instance, he looked upon a man's inability to find employment, or upon a poor fellow's run of bad luck, as upon the placarded woes ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... exclaimed, but she put such surprise and grief and disbelief into the four syllables that I wanted the earth to swallow ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... gathered together and after introductions to her class (there were six or seven devout believers), Seraphine explained that it was difficult to obtain psychic manifestations in the presence of active disbelief, and she begged us to maintain an attitude of friendly open-mindedness. I am afraid I did not do ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... was perverse in his agnosticism; he was stubborn in disbelief. It was on his nerves; on his conscience; ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... those could be passed through in peace. She was a wife—I would never let her know that all my heart was hers. This I determined. But man is weak, and the very atmosphere of France dried up the springs of every honest impulse. Everywhere was scoffing, raillery and disbelief. Honor, friendship and virtue were regarded as the vain chimeras of a fool. Why should not I enjoy life while ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... an hour after, Henry, too, departed, saying to Mary as he went out, "You musn't fail to be at Mrs. Russell's, for I shall only go for the sake of seeing you.—Truth, upon my honor, what little I have," he continued, as Mary's eyes flashed forth her entire disbelief of what he said. "I am in earnest now, if ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... like!" he cried; "it's no work of mine, you know; it's simply an order which I'm executing just as a mason builds a wall. There's no religious art left, it has been killed by stupidity and disbelief. Ah! if social or human art could only revive, how glorious to be one of the first to ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... that Shakespeare will have to vacate his pedestal this side of the year 2209. Disbelief in him cannot come swiftly, disbelief in a healthy and deeply-loved tar baby has never been known to disintegrate swiftly, it is a very slow process. It took several thousand years to convince our fine race—including ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... Jack Windsor's saucy blue eyes twinkled merrily as he returned to his companions, and incontinently leaped on the back of his wild-eyed colt. After these three worthies came a shearer named Jackson; he belonged to quite a different class; he could shear very well if he pleased, but had a rooted disbelief that honesty was the best policy, and a fixed determination to shear as many sheep as he could get the manager to pass. By dint of close watching, constant reprimand, and occasional "raddling" (marking ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... man. My mother was an Englishwoman and an ardent Catholic. She and my father were devoted to each other in spite of the difference in their views. Perhaps the chief effect my father's lack of belief had upon my mother was to make her own belief more steadfast, more ardent. I think disbelief acts often as a fan to the faith of women, makes the flame burn more brightly than it did before. My mother tried to believe for herself and for my father too, and I could almost think that she ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... chest felled me to the ground, where I lay helpless, speechless. With reeling senses I heard Elizabeth cry out that it was her own child, and call upon her husband to save it. Richard Nutter paused, but re-assured by a laugh of disbelief from his ruffianly follower, he told Elizabeth the pitiful excuse would not avail to save the brat. And then I saw a weapon gleam—there was a feeble piteous cry—a cry that might have moved a demon—but it did not move him. With wicked words and blood-imbrued hands he cast the body ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... general belief has always been that the soul survived the man's death.[81] There are, however, exceptions; the continued existence of the soul was not an absolutely established article in the savage creed. According to the reports of travelers, it would seem that among some tribes there was disbelief or doubt on this point. A West African native expressed his belief in the form of the general proposition, "The dead must die"; that is, apparently, the dead man must submit to the universal law to which the living are subject.[82] In another African community some ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy |
