"Incredible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cellar to garret, but there was no trace of him. It is, as I have said, a labyrinth of an old house, especially the original wing, which is now practically uninhabited; but we ransacked every room and cellar without discovering the least sign of the missing man. It was incredible to me that he could have gone away leaving all his property behind him, and yet where could he be? I called in the local police, but without success. Rain had fallen on the night before and we examined the lawn and the paths ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... These facts may seem incredible to those who have never received visitations from the other world; but we know that we saw and felt the forms of our spirit friends on that occasion, as surely as we know that we ever saw them when they were with us daily in the ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... the almost incredible claim of Aunt Sarah Gudger, ex-slave living in Asheville, that she was born on Sept. 15, 1816, discloses some factual ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... about the house, and again one night Drysdale passed out to the creek and acted as before. This time, however, he had his clothes on, and as he passed Green at arms length, it seemed almost incredible that he should have failed to see him. Green took particular pains to identify the exact spot where Drysdale had searched in the water, and he marked it carefully by placing a stone on each side of the bank ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... woman have had in visiting them, but a desire to excite our astonishment and raise our curiosity? We might have been induced to pardon her pilgrimage to the Holy Land, though it was sufficiently hazardous for a solitary woman, because it was prompted, perhaps, by her religious feelings,—and incredible things, as we all know, are frequently accomplished under such an impulse. But, for the present expedition, what reasonable motive can possibly ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... how long the incredible vision lasted; the woods roared with the infernal pandemonium, echoed and re-echoed from mountain to mountain; the tree-tops fairly stormed spray, driving it in sheets through the leaves; and the shores of the lake spouted surf long after the last vast, silvery ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... the encampment towards the clearing. Directed by the sound, Captain de Haldimar bent his eyes upon the thin skirt of wood that lay immediately before him, and at intervals could see the towering form of that vast warrior bounding, with incredible speed, up the sloping ground that led from the town towards the forest. A ravine lay before him; but this he cleared, with a prodigious effort, at a single leap; and then, continuing his way up the slope, amid the low guttural acclamations ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... vigorous, very decided, perhaps very terrible. An indefinite great effort danced, in misty magnificence, before the vision of his mind. His whole being was to be changed, his life was to be revolutionised. Such an alteration was to take place that even she could not doubt the immense yet incredible result. Then despair whispered its cold-blooded taunts, and her last hopeless words echoed in his ear. But he was too agitated to be calmly miserable, and, in the poignancy of his feelings, he even meditated death. One thing, however, ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... when I first went out into those squalid streets and saw everywhere the evidences of poverty, dirt, and ignorance—and the sweet, clean country not two miles away—the thought of my own home among the hills (with Harriet there in the doorway) came upon me with incredible longing. ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... he lie dispersed amid great riches: Such gold, such arrogance, so many bold hearts! All the sunken armadas pressed to powder By weight of incredible seas! That mingled wrack No livening sun shall visit till the crust Of earth be riven, or this rolling planet Reel on its axis; till the moon-chained tides, Unloosed, deliver up that white Atlantis Whose naked peaks shall bleach above the slaked Thirst of Sahara, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... game to the last ounce. More than that, he had something left for the final quarter, though his rider had not expected to draw upon that reserve so soon. The Ghost spurted, for a time maintaining his advantage. Then, annihilating incredible distances with his long, awkward strides and gathering increased momentum with every one, Elisha drew alongside. Again the Ghost was called on and responded, but the best he had left and all he had left, ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... was on fire, and smoke and flames met them at every turn; for the conflagration spread with incredible speed. An inconceivable confusion succeeded: one sought for another; one called on another; mother and children, ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... with guns and Maxims, and for a good nine miles of our retreat we were under their fire. Notwithstanding the fact that during the whole of this time we were also harassed by small-arm fire, we lost—incredible as it may appear—not more than one killed and one wounded, and a few horses besides. The positions which we had abandoned the British now occupied, hemming in General Cronje so closely that he had not the slightest chance ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... telescope, and the image on its screen was more incredible than the voices and the existence of the fleet itself. The scope focused first on a bulging, monster, antiquated freighter of a design that had not been built for a hundred years. The second view was of a passenger liner with the elaborate ornamentation that in past ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... stop to conjecture. But that she is a member of our organization, and an important one, too, her prophecies, which have so strangely become facts, are sufficient proof, even had you not seen my ring on her finger. Perhaps, incredible as it may appear, she is the chief. If so—But I do not make myself intelligible," she continued, meeting my eyes. "I will be more explicit. One peculiar feature of this organization is the complete ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... beside the aide-de-camp on duty and drove into the suburb. "Moscow deserted!" he said to himself. "What an incredible event!" ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... door parted before the sudden appearing of these, the Spanish captain, perceiving, as he supposed, a way of escape opened to him, darted across the street with incredible swiftness toward an alleyway upon the other side. Upon this, seeing his prey like to get away from him, Captain Morgan snatched a pistol out of his sling, and resting it for an instant across his arm, fired at the flying Spaniard, and that with so true an aim that, ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... in pieces. But busy as they were in strife among themselves, the exiles were still more busy in fanning the discontent at home. Books, pamphlets, broadsides, were written and sent for distribution to England. The violence of their language was incredible. No sooner had Bonner issued his injunctions than Bale denounced him in a fierce reply as "a beastly belly-god and damnable dung-hill." With a spirit worthy of the "bloody bitesheeps" whom he attacked, the ex-Bishop of Ossory ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... sally was made by a strong body of natives, who "ran furiously on the ranks of the besiegers and fought with almost incredible ferocity, and many of them died, like wild beasts, gnawing with their teeth the bayonets ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... contains an exhortation to philosophy, and is called 'Hortensius.' But this book altered my affections and turned my prayers to Thyself, O Lord, and made me have other purposes and desires. Every vain hope at once became worthless to me, and I longed with an incredible burning desire for an immortality of wisdom, and began now to arise that I might return to Thee. For not to sharpen my tongue did I employ that book: nor did it infuse into me its ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... which are exciting the admiration of the world in the Crystal Palace, Mr. Mayhew's disclosures afford a pregnant commentary on the moral effects of the present intensely competitive system of labor and commerce. His revelations are startling, at times almost incredible, but always instructive. His facts are arranged, no doubt, with a view to effect, but they are sustained by ample evidence, and are more impressive, from being free from theory or speculation. They are fruitful of suggestion to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... require the utmost effort of your powers of faith in perfectly well authenticated history to believe an almost incredible fact, but which certainly took place in England, under the reformed church in 1665. It is, however, true, that a number of eminently pious, loyal, sober, industrious citizens were immured, by the forms of law, within the walls ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the salmon, for it looked like a last season's picture-hat, very much the worse for wear. It lit on the ripples with a splash, and floated down stream in a dishevelled state till it reached the edge of the sunken rock. Bang! The salmon rose to that incredible fly with a rush, and went tearing across ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... and stereotyped pages in place, and all adjustments carefully attended to, the almost thinking machine starts at the pressman's touch, and with well nigh incredible speed prints, places sheet within sheet, pastes the parts together, cuts, folds and counts out the completed papers with an accuracy and constancy beyond the power of human ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... children; did they ever concur in that match? Did not they to the end endeavour to defeat and overturn it? I hope Mr. Hume will not call bishop Morton, the duke of Buckingham, and Margaret countess of Richmond, chiefs of the Yorkists. 2 The story told constantly by Perkin of his escape is utterly incredible, that those who were sent to murder his brother, took pity on him and granted him his liberty.—Answer. We do not know but from Henry's narrative and the Lancastrian historians that Perkin gave this account.(48) I am not authorized to believe he did, because I find no authority ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... omissions of Americans are wellnigh incredible. Take the matter of postage to France. The head of a great French concern made this statement to me in sober earnestness: "Won't you be good enough to beg American manufacturers to put their office boys through a course of instruction ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... a religion. Hatred without reason, without common sense, and absolutely without foundation. No room is left for any other faculty. Intelligence and morality have abdicated. Nicolai quotes a number of almost incredible examples from the Germany of 1914 and 1915, and equally striking instances could be given in the case of every belligerent nation. There was no resistance to these suggestions. In the collective aberration, all differences of class, education, intellectual or ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... which irritates a reader; it is also the stupidity of Tresham. That also is most unnatural. He believes that the girl whom he has loved and honoured all his life, whose purity was as a star to him, will accept Mertoun while she was sinning with another! He should have felt that this was incredible, and immediately understood, as Guendolen does, that her lover and Mertoun were the same. Dulness and blindness so improbable are unfitting in a drama, nor does the passion of his overwhelming pride excuse him. The central situation is a protracted irritation. Browning was ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... the business. That and pedestrianism are the only means available, with untold patience and perseverance to worm out the true story. People will not show the way, or will direct you wrongly. Their ignorance, that is, their assumed ignorance, is wonderful, incredible. They are all sthrangers in those parts. They never knew a family of that name, never heard of any moonlighting, swear that the amusement is unknown thereabouts, assert that the whole thing is a fabrication of the police. All the people round are decent, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... drawing-room. In 1846 and 1847, his letters are instinct with the passion of the confirmed collector, who has no thought beyond his bric-a-brac. His excitement is intense because Madame Hanska has discovered that a tea service in his possession is real Watteau, and because he has had the "incredible good fortune" to find a milk jug and a sugar basin to match it exactly. When we remember that the man who thus expresses his delight was in the act of writing "Les Parents Pauvres," and of evoking scenes of touching pathos and gloomy horror, we are once more amazed ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... everything into a practical jest. And, what is more, if ever that man enters the state jurisdiction I'll bring the law to bear and make an example of him that will forever deter other miscreants from such enterprises. That man Gollop has done me an incredible amount of damage!" ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... jet to the height of eighteen feet. Steam is generated in the short arm and presses down the water, causing an overflow until the steam bubble turns the angle, when it forces out the column in the long arm with incredible violence." ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... spread around through the county of Fred's having shot an apple from the fingers of another man, it seemed so incredible that scores of people came to the cowboys to inquire as to the truth of ...
— Fred Fearnot's New Ranch - and How He and Terry Managed It • Hal Standish
... not surprising that a man carried away with excitement or prejudice should make assumptions that he does not even try to substantiate, but that anyone should assume the truth of the very conclusion that he has set out to establish seems incredible. Such a form of begging the question, however, does frequently occur. Sometimes the fallacy is so hidden in a mass of illustration and rhetorical embellishment that at first it is not apparent; but stripped of its verbal finery, it stands out very ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... before, at the other end of North Africa, in Kairouan, one of the other great Sanctuaries of Islam, where the sect of the Aissaouas celebrate their sanguinary rites in the Zaouia[A] of their confraternity. Yet it seemed incredible that if the Aissaouas of Moulay Idriss were performing their ceremonies that day the chief of police should be placidly leading us through the streets in the very direction from which the chant was coming. ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... the carriage might survive,- they do in remote neighborhoods, I suppose—but the dress is quite delightfully incredible. It is a work of art," the duke went on. She had seemed too good to be true. Her clothes, however, had certainly not been dug out of a ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... After incredible labor we succeeded, at length, in getting the long-boat over the side without material accident, and into this we crowded the whole of the crew and most of the passengers. This party made off immediately, and, after undergoing much suffering, finally arrived, in safety, at ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... to sound the temper of the people whom he had prepared before, and to try whether they were tame enough to bear his humor, and would quietly give way to his innovations. On the other hand, Marius's party took courage, and it was incredible how numerous they were suddenly seen to be, and what a multitude of them appeared and came shouting into the capitol. Many, when they saw Marius's likeness, cried for joy, and Caesar was highly extolled as the one man, in the place of all others, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Florenc Spenser, the daughter of Edmond'—it has been conjectured that the poet was married before 1587. This conjecture seems entirely unacceptable. There is nothing to justify the theory that the Edmund Spenser of the register was the poet. It is simply incredible that Spenser, one who, as has been said, poured out all his soul in his poems, should have wooed and won some fair lady to his wife, without ever a poetical allusion to his courtship and his triumph. It is not at all likely, as far as one can judge from their titles, that any one of his lost ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... excrescences and redundancies of barbarism. He went as far as the porte-cochere, took counsel afresh of his usual optimism, sharpened even, somehow, just here, by the very air he tasted, and then came back smiling to Charlotte. "It is incredible to you that when a man is still as much in love as Amerigo his most natural impulse should be to feel what his wife feels, to believe what she believes, to want what she wants?—in the absence, that is, of special ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... General Bonaparte would have laughed at the madman, who, in the year 1795, should have thus spoken to him—and yet a mere decade of years was to suffice for the realization of all these prophecies, and to turn the incredible into a reality. ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... bears, you simp! I've just unearthed the most colossal conspiracy of the century! Curtis, things are happening in these woods that are incredible, abominable, horrible——" ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... innocent as Vida's, of accurate or ordered knowledge of the past, even here the chord could vibrate to a strange new sense of possible significance in this scene '——after all.' It would be queer, it would be horrible, it was fortunately incredible, but what if, 'after all,' she were ignorantly assisting at a scene that was to play its part in the greatest revolution the world had seen? Some such mental playing with possibilities seemed to lurk ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... sentiment cheaper, falser, more tawdry? Who applauds a man for not turning his old mother out of doors at the impertinent request of a meddling nobody? Look at the stormy small capitals of this oatmeal hero, who is supposed to electrify us by the mere fact of his not being an incredible ass and scoundrel! Does any sober person think for a moment that a man of genius could have made this revolting blunder? It is beyond comparison the densest bit of stupidity in dealing with the emotions ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... King's regimental furnishings, all and sundry, were 'ACCORDIRT, and without visitation,'—but on second thoughts, the Austrian Officials are of opinion there must really be visitation, must be inspection. 'May not some of them belong to Polish Majesty?' In which sad process of inspection there was incredible waste, Schmettau protesting; and above half of the new uniforms were lost to us. Our 80 pontoons, which were expressly bargained for, are brazenly denied us: '20 of them are Saxon,' cry the Austrians: 'who knows if they are not almost all Saxon,'—upon my honor! At ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... whole party were assembled at the table, my husband being at the foot of it, and Alma (incredible as it may seem) in the place of the hostess at ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... that after the dramatic representations were finished, they were turned round, with all the spectators in them, so as to make one circular theatre, in the centre of which gladiators fought; but the story is incredible, and must have arisen from the false translation of amfitheatron by "double theatre.'' It is uncertain whether Caesar, in 46 B.C., constructed a temporary amphitheatre of wood for his shows of wild beasts; at any ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... local or state elections afford so many opportunities of betting, just as the minor horse-races do in England; while the great quadrennial, the Presidential election, is the "Derby day" of America. The enormous sums that change hands upon such occasions, and the enormous number of them, would be incredible. A statistic of these bets, could such be given, and their amount, would surprise even the most "enlightened citizen" of the States themselves. Foreigners cannot understand the intense excitement which is felt during an election time throughout the United ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... rains. Its height is 760 feet, and its crater nearly as deep, but its cone is rapidly diminishing. Some years ago, when the enormous quantity of thirty-six inches of rain fell in one week, the degradation of both exterior and interior was something incredible, and the same process is being carried on slowly or rapidly at all times. The Punchbowl, immediately behind Honolulu, is a crater of the same kind, but of yet more brilliant colouring: so red is it indeed, that one might suppose that its fires ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... at his father's feet. A reconciliation was reported. But next day Peter arraigned his son before a council, and struck him out of the succession in favour of Catherine's infant son Peter. Alexis was then subjected to a series of incredible interrogations as to what he would or would not have done under circumstances which had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... incredible that one can stand it, but we see them starting every few days for distant ports. My farthest journey has been to Providence; but, land alive! you don't know where that is, and it's no great distance. Will you not come and have a ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... lamp down with him. For a moment he lay where he had fallen, too dazed and befuddled to rise, but presently he clambered up, his eyes wide and terrified, for his rising was Phoenix-like—mantled in flame. With incredible swiftness the flimsy coverings of his bed had burst into a crimson glare and even his clothing ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... up to that had merely rested, along the surface, and felt the whole gigantic sphere quicken and live and respond. It was incredible! So light a touch on so vast a mass! Yet did it quiver under the finger-tip caress in rhythmic vibrations that became whisperings and rustlings and mutterings of sound—but of sound so different; so elusively thin that it was shimmeringly sibilant; so mellow that it ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... Of course, it was incredible! No one believed his eyes. A treasure-chest unearthed after more than two hundred ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... manifest distrust which Inez showed toward them seemed to fill their hearts with the most atrocious feelings, and neither of them would have hesitated to fling her overboard, had the opportunity been given. Incredible as it may seem, it is the fact that they would have preferred to do so, being restrained by the simple question of policy. They saw that Pomp had grown very fond of her, and any such action on their part might alienate ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... labor closed, sitting out life's decline, Day by day did I look in my memory, As one who gazes in an enchantress' crystal globe, And I saw the figures of the past As if in a pageant glassed by a shining dream, Move through the incredible sphere of time. And I saw a man arise from the soil like a fabled giant And throw himself over a deathless destiny, Master of great armies, head of the republic, Bringing together into a dithyramb of recreative song The epic hopes of a people; ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... those who dispensed justice were in advance of the clergy, of the scholars, physicians, and scientists of their time. Had the Master of Trinity, or the physician of Norwich, or the discoverer of the air pump been the justices of the peace for England, it is not incredible that superstition would have flourished for another generation. Was it because the men of the law possessed more of the matter-of-factness supposed to be a heritage of every Englishman? Was it because their special training gave them a saner outlook? No doubt both elements help ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... sententiously. "Come along now. Stick to the trail. We've got to land the other one." For five or six minutes they moved forward. Barnes, following instructions, trod heavily and without any attempt at caution. His companion, on the other hand, moved with incredible stealthiness. A listener would have said that but one man walked ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... is impossible to conceive of the play wedded to any other music, and it is difficult, indeed, after knowing the work in its lyric form, to think of it apart from its tonal commentary. For Debussy has caught and re-uttered, with almost incredible similitude, the precise poetic accent of the dramatist. He has found poignant and absolute analogies for its veiled and obsessing loveliness, its ineffable sadness, the strange and fate-burdened atmosphere in which it is steeped—these ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... personal honour, and would tolerate no faltering. Yet in the winter of 1778 the rumours of a French alliance thickened; and, when the probability seemed to be a certainty, North made a desperate effort to end the war through a policy of granting everything except independence. In a speech of incredible assurance, he observed that he had never favoured trying to tax America, and brought in a Bill by which every parliamentary measure complained of by the Americans was repealed, and the right of internal taxation was expressly renounced. ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... fought for its freedom, just as fast as, and no faster than, they proved that they could be trusted with it. He has gone about that task, devoted himself to it, body and soul, spending his strength, his courage, and perseverance, and in the face of incredible obstacles he has accomplished very, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... an experiment illustrating the mechanical theory of heat. It may seem incredible that mere friction should be sufficient to generate heat enough to produce so brilliant a display, but we must recollect two facts: first, that the velocity of the meteor is, perhaps, one hundred times that of a rifle bullet; and, second, that the efficiency of friction ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... the inkstand. "It is incomprehensible! That is what I always say." It was thus the inkstand addressed itself to the pen, and to everything else that could hear it on the table. "It is really astonishing all that can come from me! It is almost incredible! I positively do not know myself what the next production may be, when a person begins to dip into me. One drop of me serves for half a side of paper; and what may not then appear upon it? I am certainly ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... papers he read had been sharp schoolmasters, and of slave life he knew nothing except from his aunt's pleasant memories of plantation life when a girl on a great Maryland manor. That she could betray to servitude the years of grey-haired freedom seemed to John incredible of the angel of kindly helpfulness. He stood still in thought, troubled by his boy-share of puzzle over ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... with the ardour of the modern reformer, armed not only with charity but with science, found himself confronted by the opposition of a man who combined the shrewdness of an attorney with the callousness of a drunkard. It seemed incredible that a great landowner should commit his interests and the interests of hundreds of human beings to the hands of ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thirteen days after the first trial, and five days after the execution of a sentence then passed. It alludes to the success which had been given to the prosecutions. If the Government had asked counsel of the Ministers before the trials commenced, it is inexplicable and incredible, besides being inexcusable, that the Ministers should have delayed their reply until after the first act of the awful tragedy had passed, and blood begun to be shed. Hutchinson expressly says: "The further trials were put off to the adjournment, the thirtieth of June. The Governor and Council ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... war raged on, and on, and still on, year after year, decade after decade. Children were born, grew up, married, died—the war raged on; their children in turn grew up, married, died—the war raged on; their children, growing, saw France struck down again; this time under the incredible disaster of Agincourt—and still the war raged on, year after year, and in time these children married ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the result of current illusions in regard to it. Let us forget for the moment any impressions we may have derived from the philosophers, and see what seems to happen in ourselves. The first thing that we notice is that our thought moves with such incredible rapidity that it is almost impossible to arrest any specimen of it long enough to have a look at it. When we are offered a penny for our thoughts we always find that we have recently had so many things in mind ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... these parts amongst the common sort, much sought unto by many, and great concourse of people have daily gathered and flocked to them both neere, and a farre off, as is most commonly seene, when any new thing is first found out. Fama enim grescit eundo, even unto incredible wonders and miracles, or rather fictions, and lyes. All which commeth to passe as wee may well suppose, through our overmuch English credulity, or (as I may better say) rather superstition. For to any such like Well, will swarme at first both yong and old (especially the female ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... mean to tell me that Ashton was walking about London with a diamond worth fifty thousand pounds in his pocket? Incredible!" ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... reader almost incredible that so small a sampling of words would give a reliable index of an individual's vocabulary. That it does so is due to the operation of the ordinary laws of chance. It is analogous to predicting the results of an election when only a small proportion of the ballots have been counted. It is known ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... passion. In his public acts he plodded sluggishly from detail to detail, with eyes turned downward, never comprehending the larger scope and relations of things. He was incapable of perceiving the vileness, cruelty, or folly of what he did; the almost incredible murders in Scotland never for a moment disturbed his clammy self-complacency. Perhaps no baser or more squalid soul ever wore a crown; yet no doubt ever crept into his mind that he was God's chosen and anointed. His pale eyes, staring dully from his pale face, saw in the royal prerogative ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... deafness on the part of the brothers; they were in the prime of life, aged forty-two and thirty-nine respectively, and in complete possession of all their faculties. It was due simply to the fact that they had quarrelled, and would not speak to each other. The history of their quarrel would be incredible were it not full of that ridiculous pathetic quality known as human nature, and did not similar things happen frequently in the manufacturing Midlands, where the general temperament is a fearful and strange compound of pride, obstinacy, unconquerableness, romance, and stupidity. ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... appropriate forms of the immortals." Giotto said,—"See what divine meanings in every-day faces and actions; with these eyes you are to look upon the people in the street." The one is a remote and incredible perfection,—the other, the intimate reality of the actual and present. It is, in truth, therefore, a closer approach to Nature than was before possible. The artist no longer shuns full actuality for his conception, for he fears no confusion with the actual. For instance, from the earliest times ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... fish should fall from the sky in a shower of rain? A gentleman of veracity, who spent many years in the East Indies, declares to his friends that he has been witness to this several times; but speaks of it with caution, knowing that it will be thought incredible by those who are not acquainted with the cause. I have a servant, a native of the West Indies, who assures me he was once a witness to this fact himself, when small fish, about two or three inches long, fell in great numbers during a storm of rain. The spot where this happened was in the island ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... world could put forward anything to compare with it. That did not prove it to be true, but at least it proved that it must be treated with respect and could not be brushed aside. Take a single incident of what Wallace has truly called a modern miracle. I choose it because it is the most incredible. I allude to the assertion that D. D. Home—who, by the way, was not, as is usually supposed, a paid adventurer, but was the nephew of the Earl of Home—the assertion, I say, that he floated out of one window and into another at the height of seventy feet above ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the following entry:—"1658, 27 Jan. After six fits of an ague, died my son Richard, five years and three days old onely, but, at that tender age, a prodigy for witt and understanding; for beauty of body, a very angel; for endowment of mind, of incredible and rare hopes. He was all life, all prettinesse. What shall I say of his frequent pathetical ejaculations uttered of himselfe: Sweete Jesus, save me, deliver me, pardon my sins, let thine angels receive me! So early knowledge, so much piety and perfection! Such a child I never saw! ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... application of electricity were shown, and many things entirely unknown and unrecognized in works on Electro-Therapeutics. The entire class was placed under a medical influence simultaneously by the agency of electricity—an operation so marvelous that it would be considered incredible in medical colleges. By these and other experiments and numerous illustrations and lucid explanations of the brain and nervous system, the instruction was made deeply interesting, and students have attended more than one course to perfect themselves in the science. The following declaration ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... proud and obstinate—so proud and obstinate as to find it a thing incredible that the order should indeed change and the old regime pass away—still remain, and by their vain endeavours to lord it in their castles provoke such scenes as that enacted at Bellecour in February of '93 (by the style of slaves) or Pluviose of the ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... extent of rocks that we had not yet visited. Shortly before sunset, as I stood on the summit of the highest rock, I was astonished by the sight of some horses grazing in a little valley beneath. I could hardly believe that I saw aright; it seemed incredible that horsemen should have reached this drought-begirt spot. Little time was wasted in idle speculation, and the appearance of our camels soon proved the horses to be flesh and blood, and not mere phantoms of the brain, unless indeed phantoms can ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... doubt commingled, both so much The heavenly words distrust; yet still they hope The essay cannot harm. The temple left, Their heads they cover, and their vests unbind; And o'er their heads as order'd heave the stones. The stones—(incredible! unless the fact Tradition sanction'd doubtless) straight began To lose their rugged firmness,—and anon, To soften,—and when soft a form assume. Next as they grew in size, they felt infus'd A nature mild,—their form resembled man! But incorrectly: marble so ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... philosophy, as well as those in war and patriotism, have a grandeur and force of sentiment, which astonishes our narrow souls, and is rashly rejected as extravagant and supernatural. They, in their turn, I allow, would have had equal reason to consider as romantic and incredible, the degree of humanity, clemency, order, tranquillity, and other social virtues, to which, in the administration of government, we have attained in modern times, had any one been then able to have made a fair representation of them. Such is the compensation, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... nothing at all. It was the way in which he spoke. It is incredible how these biscuit soak up wine! They are veritable ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... soft or a cloudburst above the peaks strikes the southerly face of the range, winter unfrocks in a single night. A glacier of snow melts within twenty-four hours into a torrent of lava and bursts with incredible fury ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... Paideia, which were cherished by the nation and by individuals as their highest good. Latium in the poverty of its artistic development stands almost on a level with uncivilized peoples; Hellas developed with incredible rapidity out of its religious conceptions the myth and the worshipped idol, and out of these that marvellous world of poetry and sculpture, the like of which history has not again to show. In Latium no other influences were powerful in public ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... country of incredible natural beauty and proud nomadic traditions, Kyrgyzstan was annexed by Russia in 1864; it achieved independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Current concerns include: political freedoms, interethnic relations, and ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... this Mr. Mosier was the veriest Munchausen, and nobody in Rome thought of crediting his stories. But Mosier's statement shows on its face signs of internal weakness. When he says that Count D'Ossoli in attempting to model a foot placed the big-toe on the wrong side, he states what is altogether incredible, and discloses his own splenetic humor. Neither is it more likely that Margaret Fuller permitted him to examine her manuscripts so that she might obtain his assistance in regard to their publication. Whatever may be said of her, she was ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... took England ten centuries to accomplish, the United States has done in two hundred, and Japan in thirty years. What mighty leavening agency has been employed, what secret learned from nature's workshop, that these almost incredible results, should have been so quickly, yet beyond question so well, won? The answer may be given in two words: England was chiefly hand-made, the United States, and above all Japan, have been made by machinery. Richly endowed with human genius, as with natural resources, ...
— A Comparative Study of the Negro Problem - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 4 • Charles C. Cook
... middle of September; yet the great body of men engaged in opening the new military road, after incredible toil, had not advanced above forty-five miles, to a place called Loyal Hannan, a little beyond Laurel Hill. Colonel Bouquet, who commanded the division of nearly two thousand men sent forward to open this road, had ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... wretchedness and misery; and others, though possessed of more bodily strength, must soon have followed their unfortunate companions. Even in our present situation we were most deplorable objects; but the hopes of a speedy relief kept up our spirits. For my own part, incredible as it may appear, I felt neither extreme hunger nor thirst. My allowance contented me, knowing that I ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... family connections of the Emperor may be equally capable of deciding on the subject. I tell Mr. Hazlitt that I never flattered Napoleon on the throne, nor maligned him since his fall. I wrote what I think are the incredible antitheses of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... indulged in throughout the army, to a degree which to the ignorant outsider seems incredible, is another evil of perhaps as great magnitude. Of that Bilse's book gives a faithful impression. For these excessive drinking habits, and in an equal degree for the luxurious habits of life, more particularly the indulgence in sybarite banquets, ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... come to me sometimes, don't you?" she said, with her embroidered handkerchief at her lips. "What is this I hear about the carriage and horses? Sold them! It is incredible. I will not believe it unless you ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... the inquisition of a biography his heart gains, though we wonder whether Butler himself would have smiled upon the exchange. Butler loses almost the last vestige of a title to be considered a creative artist when the incredible fact is revealed that the letters of Theobald and Christina in The Way of all Flesh are merely reproduced from those which his father and mother sent him. Nor was Butler, even as a copyist, always adequate to his originals. The brilliantly witty letters ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... One they sent to Bordeaux, another to La Vendee, a third to Germany, and so on. These are the children who, when they became men, tried to keep up the character which they had been previously taught to play. This explains the incredible number of false dauphins who have appeared.' He ended by declaring that when, in 1814, the Congress of Vienna ceded the crown of France to Louis XVIII., they knew perfectly well of his existence; but the obligations the allies were under ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... ragged mountain boy in old Major Buford's carriage, one court day long ago, and now he was looking that same lad over from the visor of his cap down his superb length to the heels of his riding-boots. His eyes rested long on Chad's face. The change was incredible, but blood had told. The face was highly bred, clean, frank, nobly handsome; it had strength and dignity, and the scar on his cheek told a story that was as well known to ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... since he regarded Philostratus as the incarnation of goodness—though he had lost faith in that—his threat of leaving disturbed him greatly. He laid his hand on his brave adviser's arm, and assured him that he was only too happy to believe a thing so incredible. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... be amazed," said Simontault, "at this act of cruelty. Those who have passed through Italy have seen such incredible instances, that this one is in comparison but ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... a hunchback, and his body was twisted and distorted to a remarkable degree yet in spite of his curved shoulders he was of more than average height, and of a breadth incredible. But his face! who can describe it? Seamed and scarred in deep gashes, as though by some hideous torture, the nose broken and flattened almost upon the cheek, there remained but little human about the awful ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... widened, swollen, half obliterate, and yet distorted like those sometimes found in the bark of very hoary trees, I seemed an antiquary of a geologist, studying the bird-tracks and ciphers upon the exhumed slates trod by incredible creatures whose very ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... to hear, the husbands there have a perpetual faculty of enjoyment." When the novitiate spirits heard that no other love of the sex prevailed in heaven than conjugial love, and that they had a perpetual faculty of enjoyment, they smiled at each other, and said, "What you tell us is incredible; there cannot be such a faculty: possibly you are amusing us with idle tales." But at that instant a certain angel from heaven unexpectedly stood in the midst of them, and said, "Hear me, I beseech you; I am an angel of heaven, and have lived now a thousand years with my wife, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... he do? His actions form one of the most incredible and, let it be said, contemptible ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... faint!' she moaned. He sprang up and hastened to his sleeping-room to bring water for her. Now was her moment: with incredible swiftness she drew the letter from its hiding-place and slipped it under a bundle of papers and plans on the bureau. When his Highness returned carrying a goblet of water, he found his mistress still weeping bitterly with her ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... incredible! Come now, have I made a mistake? Am I the dupe of an illusion? Am I not imprisoned in the hold of a ship ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... their history. The petty daily activities of a vast legion of people grouped together in this extraordinary way, and actuated by impulses which seem sharply to conflict with the impulses of the other great races of the world, appear incredible to Westerners who know what the outer perils really are, and who believe that China is not only at bay but encircled—caught in a network of political agreements and commitments which have permanently destroyed her power of initiative and reduced her to inanition. ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... after a moment's silence, "I must not tell you more. We are, I know, to all appearances, safe from eavesdroppers or interruption; but, if a word of what I know were to leak out by some incredible agency, my life would not be worth a day's purchase. As it is, I am alarmed; I believe these people wish for my death. In fact, there is no doubt on that subject. But they dare not attempt it openly. I have told them that if I should die under suspicious circumstances of any sort, the weapon ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... said. "There must be some other explanation. Godfrey Mills say those things about you! It is incredible. My dear boy, until it is proved, you really must not let yourself believe that to be possible. You can't believe such wickedness against a man, one, too, whom I have known and trusted for years, on no evidence. There is no direct evidence yet. Let us leave that ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... It seemed incredible. It was too awful to believe. The stranger she had left on board the sailboat was not coming to their aid. He was deliberately taking their boat to shore, leaving them to the mercy of ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... It is incredible, what three days of rest and forced feeding at my implacable hands, have done for Dinky-Dunk. He is still a little shaky on his pins, if he walks far, and the noonday sun makes him dizzy, but his eyes don't look so much ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... senses. He said, "You go out by the back door and turn to the right"; and he opened a little, old, dark door in the wall through which I went, and he wheezed and shut the door. The back of the shop was of incredible age. I saw in antique characters upon a mouldering board, "Licensed to sell weasels and jade earrings." The sun was setting now and shone on little golden spires that gleamed along the roof which had long ago been thatched and with a wonderful straw. I saw that ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... every hour have its employment, in business, study, social conversation, or diversion; and unless it be on extraordinary occasions, you must not suffer your plan to be broken. It is in this way that many men who perform an incredible amount of business, have abundant leisure. And it is for want of doing business systematically that many who effect but little, never find much leisure. They spend their ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... 1910, Commissioner Perry makes the almost incredible statement that twenty-five new detachments have been established during the past year without any increase in the strength of the Force. The corps seems to have had all through the years an extraordinary elasticity. It ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth |
