"Unbelievable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... doctor said was absolute truth. The footsteps certainly did end here, and in a patch of charred grass as big round as a small table. What did it mean? What could it mean, but one thing? Somehow, somewhere, Wynne had vanished. It was incredible, unbelievable, and yet—there was the evidence of their own eyes. From that spot onward the ground was wholly free of the footprints of any man, woman, or child. No mark disturbed the sodden mud of it. And yet—right here, where ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... insurrection. Now a slave insurrection was the one thing which the South feared more than any other—it was the terror which was ever present. And so John Brown's mad attempt excited a degree of hysteria almost unbelievable. ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... planning always for the great day that should bring them all back. He pictured the news arriving—saw Brownie's dismayed old face, and heard her cry of incredulous pain. And there was nothing he could do. It seemed unbelievable that such things could be, in a sane world. But then, the world was no longer sane; it had gone mad nearly two years before, and he was only one of the myriad atoms caught into the ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... the tragedy of the golden snare. In a way the look that he saw in her face shocked him more than anything that he had seen in Bram's. It was as if, in fact, a curtain had lifted before his eyes revealing to him an unbelievable truth, and something of the hell through which she had gone. She was hungry—FOR SOMETHING THAT WAS NOT FLESH! Swiftly the thought flashed upon him why the wolf-man had traveled so far to the south, and why ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... other marvels they had seen merely as bewilderingly clever examples of legerdemain: but for a man to make a single sprig of rose grow into a tree bearing both red and white roses without even touching it meant something quite unbelievable—until they had seen it. Instinctively the circle narrowed, and ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... accept the records of Jimmu-Tenno's origin as essentially accurate in so far as they state what is human and reasonable, rejecting them only when they set forth what is supernatural, and, to them, unbelievable. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... and beyond the call of duty, in which you single-handedly, and against unbelievable odds, attacked and destroyed an enemy cruiser while flying a Scout armed only with a short-beam ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... date of the production was set. It gave Bambi unbelievable pleasure to read the announcements on the billboards, and to stand in front of the three-sheets in the foyer of ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... Kennedy rushed along in his reconstruction of the scene, almost unbelievable. The girl watched ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... the whole transaction had been characterised by almost unbelievable rapidity. And that square opening of the window-port was hardly vacant when Lanyard sprang to his feet; the fugitive had barely time to find his own upon the outer deck before Lanyard leaped after ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... that numerous crossing places had been made since their arrival before Leipzig and that these had been increased on the 16th and above all on the 17th, when the whole day had passed without any fighting. Well!... for a number of deplorable reasons and by unbelievable negligence, nothing whatsoever had been done... and among those official documents which we possess relating to this famous battle, one can find nothing, absolutely nothing, which would show that any ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... the soul had not a rational leg to stand on. The anima, or spirit, being merely the product of certain elements combined in life, was wiped out when those elements dissolved their union in death. It was the flame of a candle blown out. Yet with what unbelievable persistence this doctrine had survived through history. Science had annihilated it again and again, but these people resolutely stopped their ears to science. They could not answer science with argument, so they had answered her with the axe and the stake; and they ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... stranger twice her age—why, he was even a little bald—a man who had travelled, who knew people of title, knew books, and manners, and languages—that he should marry an undertaker's daughter in Los Lobos! It was unbelievable. Clara's only misgiving during her short engagement was that he would disappear like a dream. She agreed with everything he said; even carrying her new allegiance to the point of laughing a little at her own people: the layer cakes her mother made for the Sunday noonday dinner; ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... the stifling interior straggled the unhappy inmates. They looked again upon the unbelievable: a smiling, dancing sea of blue under a canopy clean and spotless. It was unbelievable. Even the stouthearted Captain and the faithful mate, blear-eyed and haggard from loss of sleep, ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... Cossack, with nothing in his hands, forced his way through and rescued the policeman, amid the cheers of the same people who were harassing him. It was quite evident that the people and the Cossacks were on the same side, and only the unbelievable stupid old Russian Government could have ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... Orpheus complied, and with a heart almost breaking with gladness he heard the call for Eurydice and turned to retrace his way, with the light footfall of the little feet that he adored making music behind him. Too good a thing it seemed—too unbelievable a joy. She was there—quite close to him. Their days of happiness were not ended. His love had won her back, even from the land of darkness. All that he had not told her of that love while yet she was ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... abruptly. "Jock, tell me, how did you happen to come here a day ahead of me, and how do you happen to be so chummy with that pretty, weak- faced little thing at the veiling counter, and how, in the name of all that's unbelievable, have you managed to become a grown-up ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... distinguishable by finer garb, walking among them, appeared to be men of average size, and the tops of their heads came about to the workers' chins. That there should be such men among the Germans was not unbelievable, but the strange thing was that there should be so many of them, and that they should be so uniformly large, for there was not a workman in the whole vast factory floor that did not over-top the officials by at ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... I must dash to earth, that I must shatter A faith so specious; but I may not spare thee! 160 For this is not a time for tenderness. Thou must take measures, speedy ones—must act. I therefore will confess to thee, that all Which I've entrusted to thee now—that all Which seems to thee so unbelievable, 165 That—yes, I will tell thee—Max! I had it all From his own mouth—from the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... persuasion. I have said enough to show that this attitude does not exclude the use of violence; but I feel sure that it limits it far more than it has ever been limited in Europe. Even in time of revolution the Chinese are peaceable and orderly to an extent unknown and almost unbelievable in the West. And the one thing the West is teaching them and priding itself on teaching them is the absurdity of this attitude. Well, one day it is the West that will repent because China has learnt ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... and her big eyes were child's eyes. What her figure was like, except that she was a tall, long-legged, upstanding young creature, no one could judge, not even an anatomist, because of that weird wrap. As a cloak it was a shocking production—a hideous, unbelievable contribution to cloakhood from the hands of a mantle-making vandal—but it caught the man's interest, because before his eyes danced the hunting tartan of the MacDonalds of Dhrum. Once that particular combination of green, blue, red, brown, purple, and white had flashed to his heart a signal of ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... into the Thompson about half a mile from the hotel. The angling editor was provided with strong spinning gear and rod, and much to the bar-tender's surprise, very soon got into a fish of most surprising strength and dimensions, for they saw him several times, and estimated him at the unbelievable weight of over 30lb. The fish took them rapidly down to some impassable rocks, and went away with everything but the rod. I believed this story at the time, and see no reason to disbelieve now, though of course the size of the fish was probably over-estimated. No other fish was seen ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert
... with her, carrying the books. Five. Five. And when you had finished them there would be five more. It was unbelievable. ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... in haste. There is much agitation among the computer staff at the Institute. An assistant technician has been discovered to be able to predict the answer the computer will give to problems set up at random. He is one Hans Schweeringen and it is unbelievable. ...
— The Leader • William Fitzgerald Jenkins (AKA Murray Leinster)
... The thing was unbelievable. Yet he contemplated it serenely. He would talk to her soon and find out what was the matter. There was undoubtedly something the matter. His eyes stared at her furtively as she returned to her work. ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... looks like the impossible. It's unbelievable that these people could be mistaken about someone they had trailed from Europe. They were so sure about it ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... the words hardly able to believe the sight of his own eyes. What odd coincidence, what odd impulse had brought him to her very chair? It was extraordinary, unbelievable almost. And then another thought flashed into his brain, making his heart ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... had pounced on the unbelievable thing, and called to Edwards for his light. "Worth, ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... The unbelievable thing must be true, then. This girl was sacrificing her own chance of advancement for the sake of her brother and sister. He looked at her with a feeling of reverence. To give up so much was commendable, but to give it up quietly, without a murmur, without even the chance ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... curious, crablike motion. Upon its face were stamped countless wrinkles and its blackness seemed less that of pigmentation than the weathering of unbelievable years, the very stain of ancientness. And about neither face nor figure was there anything to show whether it was ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... were searching hers as if what he had heard was unbelievable. "Your engagements must be very imperative. I have not seen you for nearly six months and naturally my time here must ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... this game is called, there is required a great amount of especial skill though not necessarily a high degree of intelligence. Along the flats all goes well enough, but once in the unbelievable rough country of a hill trek the situation alters. A man must know cattle and their symptoms. It is no light feat to wake up eighteen sluggish bovine minds to the necessity for effort, and then to throw so much ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... Vienna, and lost track of him for several years. Then I heard that he had married a dear friend of mine—Lady Dagmar Cooper, one of the greatest beauties and perhaps the sternest prude in England. She wrote me, soon after that unbelievable mating: "I have married Cecil Grimshaw. I know you won't approve; I do not altogether approve myself. He is not like the men I have known—not at all English. But he intrigues me; there is a sense of power behind his awfulness—you ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... bland comradeship: he was to see these men in a light so bright that it blinded him to their vulgarities, their quaint blasphemy and their prodigious lack of veracity as applied to personal achievements. He was to find in them a splendid chivalry, almost unbelievable at first: their regard for the women in the troupe was in the nature of a revelation to him, who came from the land ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... father was never drunk in his life!" was the astonished exclamation with which Elizabeth Hunter met this unbelievable accusation. ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... was about to interrupt once more, to tell the Council of the thought coil, the most unbelievable part of the miracle he had wrought. But something seemed to warn me that he should not speak. Standing behind him I nudged him, while I myself replied: "Yes, Your Excellency." The chief flung me a startled look, but did ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... freezing cold. He called at a bleak two o'clock and as they shook hands he wondered confusedly whether he had ever kissed her; it was almost unbelievable—he seriously doubted ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... sharp and shrewd trader, but his honesty was never questioned; indeed, the only trait in his character that ever came up for general discussion was his extraordinary, unbelievable, colossal meanness. This so eclipsed every other passion in the man, and loomed so bulkily and insistently in the foreground, that had he cherished a second vice no one would have observed it, and if he really did possess a casual virtue, it could scarcely ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... taking as her text the three words which have been used so often as the inspiring trumpet-calls of man,—the words God, Immortality, Duty,—pronounced, with terrible emphasis, how inconceivable was the first, how unbelievable the second, and yet how peremptory and absolute the third. Never, perhaps, have sterner accents affirmed the sovereignty of impersonal and unrecompensed law. I listened, and night fell; her grave, majestic countenance ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... that they contained some archaeological significance; but, in any case, he ceased not to ask himself how came a slip of papyrus to be found in such a situation,—on the bed of a dead Berlinerin of the poorest class? The story of its being taken from the mouth of the woman was, of course, unbelievable. The whole incident seemed to puzzle, while it amused him; seemed to appeal to the instinct—so strong in him—to investigate, to probe. For days, he declared, he had been endeavouring, in vain, to make anything of the figures. Dr. Hofmeier, too, examined the slip, but inclined ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... people, it is worth ninety millions of dollars, and not a penny less. It is a pleasure park of which the greatest of the nations of the earth,—whichever that may be,—might well be overbearingly proud; and its accessibility is almost unbelievable until seen. ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... brown-varnished straw hat firmly upon his ancient poll and went scrambling up his gravel walk as fast as two rheumatic underpinnings would take him, and on into his house like a man bearing incredible and unbelievable tidings. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... unthinkable, as unbelievable, and as obnoxious to me as is autocracy on earth. There is no such thing as divine right, here or elsewhere,—no divine prerogatives for tyranny, for punishment, ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... distrustful as to, shy as to, suspicious of; doubting &c. v. doubtful &c. (uncertain) 475; disputable; unworthy of, undeserving of belief &c. 484; questionable; suspect, suspicious; open to suspicion, open to doubt; staggering, hard to believe, incredible, unbelievable, not to be believed, inconceivable; impossible &c. 471. fallible &c. (uncertain) 475; undemonstrable; controvertible &c. (untrue) 495. Adv. cum grano salis[Latin: with a grain of salt]; with grains of allowance. Phr. fronti nulla fides[Lat]; nimium ne crede colori [Lat][Vergil]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... ship with infinite care. Presently there came the gentlest of impacts and then a clanking sound. The appearance out the vision-port became stationary, but still unbelievable. The Med Ship was grappled magnetically to a vast ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... Virginia City mines still yielded treasure harvests unbelievable. Windham's bank account had risen to the quarter-million mark. Month by month he watched his assets grow by leaps more marvelous than even his romantic fancy could fore-vision. Stocks were climbing at a rate which raised the value of each share ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... my fellow officers are anxious to meet the famed Joseph Mauser. Would it surprise you to know that I have replayed, a score of times, your celebrated holding action on the Louisiana Military Reservation? Zut! Unbelievable. With but a single ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... that for nearly half a century had lain with the bones of its dead, alone with its terrible secret, alone until Donald MacDonald had found it again! He had not told Joanne the story of it, the appalling and almost unbelievable tragedy of it. He had meant to do so. But they had talked of other things. He had meant to tell her that it was not the gold itself that was luring him far to the north—that it was not the gold alone that was taking Donald ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... day after day from dawn to dark and fought again and again a fierce outlaw tusker elephant that from sheer lust of slaughter had killed men, women, and children and carried on for years a career of crime unbelievable. ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... the broad, rolling prairies, as yet bare and frost-bound, the sun shone brightly. A half-mile away he could see his own herd scattered and grazing. The stillness after the sudden excitement was almost unbelievable. Minutes passed by which dragged into an hour. Over the face of the sun a faint haze began to form and, unnoticeable to one not prairie-trained, the air took on a sympathetic feel, almost of dampness. A native would have sensed a warning; but Calmar Bye, one time writer, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... surprised and stricken look, and their faces were nearly old. Mr. Starr cut the blessing short, and the dinner was eaten in silence. The twins tried to start the conversation. They talked of the weather with passionate devotion. They discussed their studies with an almost unbelievable enthusiasm. They even referred, with stiff smiles, to "papa's good joke," and then laughed their dreary "ha, ha, ha," until their father wanted to fall upon ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... when the resolution was passed. No one at that time believed that the California would discharge its obligations on a parity with the largest and strongest insurance companies in the world. Indeed the public announcement that the company would pay in full was regarded as ridiculous and unbelievable and was generally considered in the light ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks
... that little bird-box, spite of all its spunky beliefs and twittering complacencies. I wanted to save it and him; and over and over there has seemed such good ground of hope in him. It's been always so unbelievable that he should utterly fail us. Ruth, if you could have seen his contrition the night I tore up that shameful, servile resignation! I don't need to see Isabel to know he is wearing the soul out of her. You needn't have answered one of my questions,—which ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... no. It was unbelievable. I could not put myself in their place. I could not imagine such insecurity—that lives could be broken in ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... his serfdom, he was liable—as one of them expressed it—"to be found missing." It would be reported that he had suicided. Among people who did not speak English, naturally, no details would be given. It seems almost unbelievable that in a country wrestling with the whole Asiatic problem the fact has to be set down that the government has no interpreter among the Chinese who is not a Chinaman, no interpreter among the Japanese who is not a Jap. As it chances, the government happens to have ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... us, I hope," apologized Frank, "but this is all so unexpected and so unbelievable that your words struck me speechless. And I know that my friend was similarly affected—We place ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... or thirty lions can make, deliberately bent on making it and roaring all at once, is unbelievable. They throw their heads up and glory in strength of lungs until thunders take second place and the listener knows why not the bravest, not the most dangerous of beasts has man aged to impose the fable of his grandeur on ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... engine started, and nearer and nearer came the terrible curve. The train was now running at fifteen miles an hour, a speed almost unbelievable to the simple souls of that time. Round the curve it went in safety, increasing its velocity to eighteen miles an hour. The railroad officials who were Cooper's guests were frantic with enthusiasm. One man produced paper ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... were both women capable of seizing those rare opportunities for service that flit past so many intelligent women lacking initiative, and here was one that the most clear-thinking man would have envied. It was a piece of unbelievable luck; Gisela Doering was not only here to their hand in a relaxed and friendly mood, but she possessed charm combined with a great intelligence and an iron will: she was far more the obvious leader than they had inferred from her work, and they guessed ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... strange things are prepared even in the dead of night, and the unusual, which lurks least in the cafe, home of the prosaic and inevitable, was preparing to spoil for him the waning romance of Broadway. The way it took was so inexpressibly terrible, so unbelievable, that afterward he never thought of it as experience; but it was a scene from a misty tragedy, played far behind the veil, and that it meant something ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... silence—minutes during all of which the Master remained calmly waiting, with grave confidence. Bohannan shuddered a little. His Celtic imagination was at work, again. Uncanny the attack seemed to him, unreal and ghostlike. So, perhaps, might strange, unbelievable creatures from some other planet attack and conquer the world, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... involuntary gestures, helping ourselves sometimes with the rifle. Mechanically the eye fastens on some detail of the declivity, of the ruined ground, on the sparse and shattered stakes pricking up, at the wreckage in the holes. It is unbelievable that we are upright in full daylight on this slope where several survivors remember sliding along in the darkness with such care, and where the others have only hazarded furtive glances through the ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... She had made all her plans. The house in Virginia was being renovated. She would take him there as soon as he could be moved. When he was strong again he would start his newspaper. Holt and Lacey were as overjoyed at the prospect of being his assistant editors as at the almost unbelievable ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... it is strange indeed that so few writers have considered the subject of play in the animal world. Most of those who have noticed the subject at all, drop it with a few remarks, to the effect that it is "highly amusing," or "very funny," or "unbelievable," or "so like the play of children," without even a word of explanation of the ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... not, and there is none to tell us. That which is actually happening were unbelievable if we did not see it, from hour to hour, from day to day. Horror succeeding horror has in some sort blunted our sensibilities. Not only are our sympathies numbed by the immensity of the slaughter and the sorrow, but patriotism itself is chilled by the selfish ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... the nourishment. He cooks eternally, imperturbably, suspended in the chaos of which the Master interprets the meaning. Tinsley, bowed down with the laurels of both hemispheres, raises himself to yet nobler heights in his capacity of a devoted chef. It is almost unbelievable! And yet men write of the Master as cold, aloof, self-contained. Such characters do not elicit the joyous and unswerving devotion which Lavalle commanded throughout life. Truly, we have changed very little ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... whom our modern complex life supports hundreds of thousands—telephone operators, stenographers, and the like—greedily devour the newspaper accounts of the American aristocracy and model themselves, so far as possible, after it. It is almost unbelievable how intimate a knowledge these young women possess of the domestic life, manner of speech and dress of the conspicuous ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... her hair-brush, and fumbled in a tumbled mass of shining, yellow hair quite as unbelievable in its way as were her eyes—Grant had shown a faculty for observing keenly when he called her a Christmas angel—and drew out a half-dozen hairpins, letting them slide from her lap to the floor. "MUSHY!" she repeated, and shook down her hair so that it framed her face and ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... these German-named Blue Devils had come to him, here and there and everywhere. Dorn remembered all he heard, and believed it, too, though some of the charges and some of the burdens attributed to these famed soldiers seemed unbelievable. His opportunity had now come. With the moving up to the front he would meet reality; and all within him, the keen, strange eagerness, the curiosity that perplexed, the unintelligible longing, the heat and burn ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... wild, unbelievable dream!" sighed the old gentleman, as, with flushed face and dishevelled hair, he spread himself out in an easy chair, with Queen Pina on his knee and Brown-eyes at his feet. "Hush! all ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... It was an almost unbelievable balm—it soothed so her impression of danger and pain. She sank back in her chair, she covered her face with her hands. "Oh mother, mother, mother!" she sobbed. She had an impression that the Captain, beside her, if more and ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... ships were, yet who still dared to set sail with them? For we know that there were such dusky voyagers, that they crossed the sea more than once in the English fishing vessels, and that they brought back to their own people almost unbelievable tales of cities and palaces, or harbors crowded with shipping and of whole countrysides covered with green, tilled fields. With all these wonders, however, they could tell their comrades that these white beings were ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... to alter his appearance. From his bold insouciance it seemed evident that he was totally indifferent as to who recognized him. Either the man possessed moral courage of the extremest sort or else an unbelievable effrontery. ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... Curdled out of the air; How it is all sung delivering magic To your pent hamper'd souls! I tell you, kings, yours are but stammer'd songs To that enchantment fashion'd for him, That ceremony of life's powers, The loveliness of Vashti; That unbelievable worship made For King Ahasuerus. He to whom the loveliest she is given, Least is bound to ended things, Belongeth most on earth to Heaven; Hath the whitest wind of flame To burn his soul clean of the world, Clean of mortal imaginings, And back to the Beauty ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... great Grass Jungle; but he did not know the meaning of the words when they first fell upon his ear. There India herself first opened for him the magic gates that seal her mystery. But he did not know it was her glamour that made him utterly forget outside things, in the unbelievable loveliness of Grass Jungle days; did not know it was just as much her spell that made him forget his own birthright, in the paralysis of ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... The almost unbelievable applause that greeted her tempted her to further wickedness. "Very few people seem ever to remember that I had an Irish grandfather, Denis St. Regis, and that I like once in a while to be getting ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... an unbelievable difference with her ladyship; and it must have been a blow to poor Sir Samuel, after all his years of hopeless love for a fond gazelle, when at last he made that gazelle his own, and saw it running about its bedroom with all its copper-coloured "ondulations" naively ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... of most of the cathedrals ran through the centuries with various architecture in vogue at different periods. The interior, however, lacks interest, and the absence of stained glass gives an air of coldness. It seems almost unbelievable that the original stained windows were deliberately destroyed at the end of the Eighteenth Century by a so-called architect, James Wyatt, who had the restoration of the cathedral in charge. To his everlasting infamy, ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... the corrals on a lather-gray horse, coming from Kenmore, where was a telephone-station connected from Osage. I read the message incredulously. Dad sick unto death? Such a thing had never happened—couldn't happen, it seemed to me. It was unbelievable; not to be thought of or tolerated. But all the while I was planning and scheming to shave off every superfluous minute, and ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... impossible!" he burst forth, finally. "Are you telling me that you, alone and unprotected, managed to inveigle this murderer into confessing his crime to you? Gee, it's—it's unbelievable! The four of you would be a great help to me in my profession," he added, ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... baser nature among the questionable attractions of the Inferno, she'd shot three hundred of her Precol credits on a formal black gown ... on what, yesterday, she would have considered a rather unbelievable gown. Even at an Ermetyne dinner she couldn't actually look dowdy in it. And then, accompanied by Gaya, who had turned out to be a very pleasant but not very communicative companion, she'd headed for a gambling room to make back the price ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... fierce frightened anguish of my love For the poor little spirit I had wronged With life that was no life. What had befallen Since yesterday? No need to stop and ask! Back there in the dark places of my mind Where I had thrust it, fearing to believe An unbelievable mercy, shone the news Told by the village neighbors coming home Last night from the great city, of a man Arisen, like the first evangelists, With power to heal the bodies of the sick, In testimony of his master Christ, Who heals the soul when it is sick with sin. Could such a thing ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... not been the only member of that household who had held early communion with himself. The girl had sat long and dreamily at her dressing table—the dainty one of rich, dark mahogany that Uncle Martin's thoughtfulness had provided. It seemed unbelievable, but there was no use pretending she was mistaken—Uncle Martin, Aunt Rose's husband, was falling in love with her. She felt a little heady with the excitement of it. He was so different from the callow youths and dapper ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... that you consult him by telephone, are wise precautions against sudden crises of weather or health. Of course, if a member of your family is seriously ill, your doctor will come with all haste when summoned. But he is a busy man who often works from before breakfast until nearly midnight covering unbelievable distances in his automobile. So, if you can report illness clearly, give exact symptoms, and have a stock of the simple medicines that you can administer as he directs, both the sick person and the physician gain. ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... had been for Hester—more like some unbelievable romance! For the time she had forgotten her own troubles! Ah, if she had been of one mind with lord Gartley, those poor creatures would be now moaning in darkness by the dead body of their child, or out with it in their arms in the streets, or parted asunder in the casual wards of some ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... laid down before me offeecially that the limmers had made infraction, vi et clam, into Leddy Mar'get Dalziel's, and left her leddyship wi' no' sae muckle's a spune to sup her parritch wi'. It's unbelievable, it's awful, it's anti-christian! ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a tremendous world. The Merchant, especially, had been taken aback. He had known the figures that expressed the planet's diameter, but from a distance of two light-seconds, he had stood at the visi-plate and muttered, "Unbelievable!" ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov
... ministry, hundreds of times from the evangelistic field, and missionary fields in other lands, from insane asylums, hospitals, sick rooms, and the Lord has heard prayer, and wrought many miracles, almost unbelievable. To God belongs all the glory ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag
... themselves and see all that was to be seen and yet be unmolested. And so they sat there and looked down upon the splendid spectacle, and were moved till the tears ran down their cheeks to see the unbelievable honors that were paid to their small darling, and how naively serene and unafraid she sat there with those consuming glories beating ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... head of his table, and his eyes never left those pencilled words. His mind fought with them, discarded them, only to find them still there hammering at his brain, traced in letters of scarlet upon the distant walls. War! The great, unbelievable tragedy, the one thousand-to-one chance in life which he had ever taken! His hand almost fell to his side. There was a queer little silence. No one liked to ask him a question; no one liked to speak. It was the Duchess at last who murmured a few words, when the silence ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... all, they had to leave their cars and their furniture behind them too, not to mention almost unbelievable stockpiles of every metal imaginable that will last us for centuries. The logistics of space travel make taking even an extra handkerchief along a calculated risk. Anyway, when their dogs 'found' us, they were overjoyed, and as for us, we fell in love with them at first sight. Our own dogs, though, ...
— The Servant Problem • Robert F. Young
... day it had been! He had started out in the morning, vaguely hoping to divert his mind with some of those trite little happenings that for lack of a better term we call adventures in this humdrum world. And then, with the miraculous, unbelievable luck of youth, he had stumbled plump into the middle of the most wondrous adventure it was possible to conceive. And yet this wasn't adventure, after all—it was something bigger, finer, more precious. With a suddenness that was blinding ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... way that the adult wins the battle of religious education. In the deeper and more far-seeing sense he has lost it. Religion has become, not a charming privilege, but a lesson, a lesson about unbelievable things, a meaningless task to be learnt by heart, a drudgery. It may be said that even if that is so, religious lessons merely share the inevitable fate of all subjects which become school tasks. But that is not the ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... that the social evil might have a cause, and that it might be possible to attack it at its source. Yet that any large number of girls enter upon such a horrible career, willingly, voluntarily, is unbelievable to one who knows anything of the facts. There must be strong forces at work on these girls, forces they find themselves entirely ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... the countryside, men and women, have been making articles, and I can assure you it is a relief to have it over and such a success to boot, and life's quiet tone restored. We made large numbers of purchases, and consumed unbelievable quantities of more than solid nourishment. The people have shown the greatest ingenuity and diligence, and the display was a credit to their talent. I was particularly struck with the really clever carving representing local scenes which the fishermen had done with no ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... French were "a gay people, fond of dancing and light wines," he'd like to know where it came in! Nothing but drill and mud, mud and drill, and rain, rain, rain! And old women with tragic faces, and young women with old eyes. And unbelievable stories of courage and sacrifice. And more rain, and more mud, and ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... myself with rage and astonishment: "Must I then kill that brute?" There didn't seem to be any alternative. Between him and Dona Rita I couldn't hesitate. I believe I gave a slight laugh of desperation. The suddenness of this sinister conclusion had in it something comic and unbelievable. It loosened my grip on my mental processes. A Latin tag came into my head about the facile descent into the abyss. I marvelled at its aptness, and also that it should have come to me so pat. But I believe now that it was suggested simply by the actual ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... I was trysted with the Writer, I had much rebellion against fate. The thought of him waiting in the "King's Arms," and of what he would think, and what he would say, when next we met, tormented and oppressed me. The truth was unbelievable, so much I had to grant, and it seemed cruel hard I should be posted as a liar and a coward, and have never consciously omitted what it was possible that I should do. I repeated this form of words with a kind of bitter relish, and re-examined in that light the steps of my ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... chorus. Then they drank more, amid a perfect fracas of talk and laughter. Ivan Petrovitch and Athanase Georgevitch walked across and kissed the general. Rouletabille saw all around him great children who amused themselves with unbelievable naivete and who drank in a fashion more unbelievable still. Matrena Petrovna smoked cigarettes of yellow tobacco incessantly, rising almost continually to make a hurried round of the rooms, and after having prompted the servants to ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... of himself in a swiftly propelled motor-car, beside an absorbed mechanician. He half turned in his seat and met the cool, steady gaze of the flapper; she smiled, but quickly checked herself to resume the stare; he was aware that Breede was at her side. And the fog closed in again. It was too unbelievable. ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... awful unbelievable honesty. Prudence told him. "Yes," she said, "that is true. I hated to mention it, but there is something! Mr. Rayburn, I just ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... These joys entered into all the work of the nursery school and helped the children for months to retain a breath of the country in their London surroundings. They realised much from that visit. Cows now have horns, wasps have wings and fly—alas they sting also. Hens sit on eggs, an almost unbelievable thing. Fishes, newts, tadpoles, were all met with and greeted as friends. Children and helpers alike returned home full of health and vigour and longing for the next time. One little maid wept bitterly, and there seemed ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... Vanderpole, without a struggle, without any cry sufficiently loud to reach the driver or attract the attention of any passer-by, had been strangled to death by a person who had disappeared as though from the face of the earth. The facts seemed almost unbelievable, and yet they were facts. The driver of the taxi knew only that three times during the course of his drive he had been caught in a block and had had to wait for a few seconds—once at the entrance to Trafalgar Square, again at the junction of Haymarket and Pall Mall, and, for a third time, opposite ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "Unbelievable as it may seem, seven officials of the party had the monumental effrontery to assume the right to expel and suspend 40,000 members. Think of it. That such a dastardly deed should ever be perpetrated upon the rank and file of our organization is almost beyond comprehension. And yet it was done—it ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... that the renegade who stood a little in front of the others, who seemed by his manner and bearing to consider himself their leader, was the terrible Girty, a man who left behind him an almost unbelievable record for cruelty and treachery to his own race. He was partly in Indian, partly in white dress, and when his glance fell upon Henry it was full of most inhuman mockery. The boy's wrath flamed ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... is considerably below their actual value," said Totten, frowning." A million pounds sterling is what their holdings really represented; according to the despatches they must have sold at a loss of nearly fifty thousand pounds. It is unbelievable that the house can be hard-pressed for money. There isn't a sounder concern in Europe ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... The fact that any one in creation should not know what an archaeologist was seemed unbelievable, but a fact it evidently was. So he explained and the explanation, under questioning, became lengthy. Primmie's exclamations, "My savin' soul" and "My Lord of Isrul" became more and more frequent. Mr. Bloomer interjected a remark here and there. At length a sound outside caused him to look ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Mrs. Grey's disposal of the income was unbelievable blasphemy against the memory of a mighty man. He did not put this in words to Mrs. Grey—he was only head clerk in her late husband's office—but he became watchful and thoughtful. He ate his soup in silence when she ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... father's sister, the gifted and vivacious Aunt Emily. They were to live in the country—somewhere right in the country, with grass and trees up to the door, and birds singing everywhere, and a tutor. For he was not to go back to school. Unbelievable! He was never to go back to school, and the head-master had written saying that he regretted the step, but that possibly it was ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... gone away from the Wescott house and from Willow Springs, Iowa, feeling that life was essentially ugly. In a way she hated life and people. In Chicago sometimes it was unbelievable how ugly the world had become. She tried to shake off the feeling but it clung to her. She walked through the crowded streets and the buildings were ugly. A sea of faces floated up to her. They were the faces of dead people. The dull death that was in them was in ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... as though at his word, and with unbelievable suddenness. Thunder rolled; the breeze stiffened into a gale. Another drop fell upon his hat, and then another, and another. The young man came to an ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... smile grew into an almost unbelievable grin. He turned sideways to speak to someone out of sight of the camera and suddenly burst into a series of roaring cackles. "He's laughing, sir." The translator ...
— A Matter of Magnitude • Al Sevcik
... brought Henriette and Maurice directly from their arrest to their trial, and they gazed upon a sight for Gods and men—a travesty on the sacred name of justice. Such scenes would seem unbelievable to us but for the recent events of the Russian Revolution, which prove that in our age also a proletarian dictatorship can ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... his almost unbelievable encounter with Miss Vernon—more concerned perhaps, be it said, about the fact that she had wept to part with him than about the recovery of his father's papers, when another traveller overtook him, this ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... pang of disappointment. She had expected something quite different. The adjective "astonishing" seemed strangely cold and unlike Ronnie. She had thought he would say "wonderful," or "unbelievable," or "glorious." ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... said he, petulantly. It is almost unbelievable how boyishly silly a full-grown man ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... knew well the wondrous quickness of the jungle folk and their almost unbelievable powers of hearing. To them the sudden scraping of one blade of grass across another was as effectual a warning as her loudest cry, and Sabor knew that she could not make that mighty leap without ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... suffragist—such a one, for instance, as Betty's elder sister, Ethel, who carried copies of Votes for Women about with her when she strolled through the home park. That Ethel should share Dr. Primrose's ingenuous views on this matter is unbelievable—by me, but not by the author. For she insisted, under threat of cutting off supplies, that Betty should marry Cecil, and (so to speak) become a lady again. Betty wisely refused, which left the way clear for Sir Egbert Englefield, and so brought down ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... brooks and springs flowing inside and out, and an inexpressible number of people in it,' etc. Dietrich von Schachten describes Venice in this way: 'Venice lies in the sea, and is built neither on land nor on mountain, but on wooden piles, which is unbelievable to one who has not seen it'; and Candia: 'Candia is a beautiful town in the sea, well built; also a very fruitful island, with all sorts of things that men need for living.' He describes a ride through Southern Italy: 'Saturday we rode from Trepalda, but the same day through ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... exactly the same for a human being, burns him out and fills him with clinkers. Many people think that it is a hardship to be moderate in eating and drinking, but it is not. It brings such a feeling of well-being and comfort that it is unbelievable to those who have not ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... decision was reached to let the law take its course. The feeling in Quebec in support of the commutation was so intense and overwhelming that it was accepted as a matter of course that Riel would be reprieved; and the news of the contrary decision was to them, as Professor Skelton says, "unbelievable." The actual announcement of the hanging was a match to a powder magazine. That night there were mobs on the streets of Montreal and Sir John Macdonald was burned in effigy in Dominion square. On the following Sunday forty thousand people swarmed ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... round, and Malaysians, who give them the name "pisang," eat them without bothering to cook them. In addition to bananas, we gathered some enormous jackfruit with a very tangy flavor, some tasty mangoes, and some pineapples of unbelievable size. But this foraging took up a good deal of our time, which, even so, we ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... all this in the early fifties," he said. "The Mexicans never got this far, so it was government land. Everybody got a hundred and sixty acres. And such acres! The stories they tell about how much wheat they got to the acre are almost unbelievable. Then several things happened. The sharpest and steadiest of the pioneers held what they had and added to it from the other fellows. It takes a great many quarter sections to make a bonanza farm. It wasn't long before it ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... and a happy contrast to awakening in Lancaster Gate; and breakfast a little later was delightful, in a big sunny room, with interesting people coming and going all the time. Bob and Cecilia smiled at each other like two happy children. It was almost unbelievable that they were free; away from tryanny and coldness, with no more plotting and planning, and no more ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... with his Uncle Silas and Aunt Melissy Lovejoy, over beyond the Wide Blue Water. Then the 'Coon and the Old Black Crow begged Mr. 'Possum to tell about it, because they said Mr. 'Possum's stories always sounded so unbelievable, and yet always turned out to be almost ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the verge of despair as I saw that Riggs had given up, in spite of my efforts to hearten him. After the stories he had been telling that very evening about mutinies and wrecks and fights against odds, it seemed unbelievable that he should submit so tamely to Thirkle and his men. As he sat opposite me on the sea-chest and ate mechanically of the broken bits of biscuits, I observed him closely, and it seemed that he had aged twenty years ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... analogy," said Baker, recovering with a smile now. "But it's hardly an accurate or applicable one. The human mind is not a piece of precious metal found in a mountain of ore. Rather, it's an intricate device capable of producing computations of unbelievable complexity. And we know how such devices that are superior in function are produced, and we know what their characteristics are. We also know that such a device does not 'play out'. If it is superior in function, it can remain ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... sky behind the foaming wake of the packet was a blaze of glory. The sinking sun wove a cloth of gold on the halo of cloud about it, and circled the horizon with a belt of rose and opal. Gradually the gold faded into fiery purple, with arms of unbelievable green stretching out to clasp the round cup of ocean; the purple died away reluctantly like the drums of a triumphant march receding to a distance; night took sea and sky into her arms, and crooned to them a mother-song ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... I'll not believe it! Would Tull leave my herds at the mercy of rustlers and wolves just because—because—? No, no! It's unbelievable." ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... at an unbelievable pace. Ben held his paddle like iron, yet with a touch as delicate as that of a great musician upon piano keys, and he steered his craft to the last inch. His face was still like metal, but the eyes, steely, vivid, and magnetic, had a look ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... with shining eyes and put her arms about his neck, and she saw the unbelievable wonder in his face. The man trembled. Then he took her and held her and ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... Dick. "I suppose I must not keep you. To think I have the unbelievable good fortune to kiss you good ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... he quieted her. "I shall not kiss you. It is a long time since I have. I want to tell you about that affair. But first I want to tell you how proud I am—proud of myself. I am proud that I am a lover. At my age, a lover! It is unbelievable, and it is wonderful. And such a lover! Such a curious, unusual, and quite altogether remarkable lover. In fact, I have laughed all the books and all biology in the face. I am a monogamist. I love the woman, the ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... spite of crossing and the clearing of his eyes, Eltz Castle remained firmly seated on its stool of rock, and, when his first astonishment had somewhat abated, Von Richenbach, who was a most practical man, began to realise that here, purely by a piece of unbelievable good luck, the very secret he had been sent to unravel had been stumbled upon, the solving of which he had given up in despair, returning empty-handed to his grim master, the redoubtable ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... dinner, Susan," said Mrs. Blythe wildly. "Oh, this thing is unbelievable—it must ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... series of events, startling, almost unbelievable and utterly unexpected, such as only take place in real life. Had this story been the outcome of my own imagination, I should never dare to relate them; but because I have undertaken the task of writing what actually took place ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... acreage of back, forested with endless rows of fins and spines and enigmatic tendrils. The Scoop, he saw, and only half believed it, had wallowed into the shallows alongside his dock. It had reversed its unbelievable length to keep the head submerged, and at the same time had backed out of the water until its leviathan tail spanned the hundred-odd yards of sloping ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee
... and almost unbelievable situation! Historians wonder that the Aztecs of Cortez' time, with their comparatively high civilization, tolerated human sacrifices. But their human sacrifices were merciful compared with ours. What is cutting out a man's heart on an altar to propitiate ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... brown wooden walls and white heavy roof, deep and deserted in the waste of snow, like a dream. It stood like a rock that had rolled down from the last steep slopes, a rock that had taken the form of a house, and was now half-buried. It was unbelievable that one could live there uncrushed by all this terrible waste of whiteness and silence ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... waste of it all; the criminal, unbelievable waste! Consider the vast loss of products that is due, not only to actual war, but to unceasing ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... speak to her in the hallways she shrank from him in both fear and indignation. But her rebuffs did not lessen by one ray the smiling amicability of his bland countenance He tried to become confidential, tried to press toward intimacy; one evening he even had the unbelievable audacity to ask if he might call upon her! She flamed with the desire to destroy him with a look, a word; Mrs. De Peyster knew well how thus to snuff out presuming upstarts. But caution warned her that she dared not unloose her powers. So she merely ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... He saw an unbelievable thing. The mountaineer upon whose coolness and courage he had absolutely relied had not ventured the crossing at all! He had wheeled after firing and kicked his mount into wild flight, making for the protection of the turn about which they had come. Twice before he gained safety the rifle above spat ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck |
