"Ken" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... suit the ardor of my angry favorite. After wasting a couple of months, he purchased the aid of certain bushmen, headed by a notorious scoundrel named Jen-ken, who had acquired renown for his barbarous ferocity throughout the neighborhood. Jen-ken and his chiefs were cannibals, and never trod the war-path without a pledge to return laden with human flesh to gorge ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... expression of sentiments and aspirations which could only be rendered by emphasising psychical qualities revealed through physiognomy. At the same time, modern habits of life removed the naked body from their ken. ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... of effect which will follow the given mechanical impulse, yet the quantity of effect—the height to which the stone will ascend, and the rapidity with which it will fall—is something utterly beyond his ken. The servant-girl has no need of chemistry to teach her, that, when the match is applied, the fire will burn and smoke ascend the chimney; but she is far from being able to predict the proportional ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... he lived aloof from ken, The world's unwitnessed denizen, The love within him stirs Abroad, and with the hearts of ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... air, shouting terrific threats. But the rested and agile legs of the boys had a good start, and plunged into narrow ways where horses could not follow; and doubling, twisting, following paths but recently beaten by Anastacio in pursuit of deer, Roldan and Adan were soon far beyond the reach or ken of the men of war. It was an hour, however, before they thought it wise to arrest their flight and pause to recuperate in a redwood tree hollowed by fire. Two weeks of exposure and unwonted exertions had ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... sometimes in the streets, whose haunts and homes we know, whom we could probably find almost any day in the week if we were set to do it, yet from whom we are really farther than we are from the dead, and from those who have gone out of our ken? Yes, there are and must be such; and therein lies the sadness of old School memories. Yet of these our old comrades, from whom more than time and space separate us, there are some by whose sides we can feel sure that we shall stand again when time shall be no more. We may think of one another ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... gods are beyond our ken, and if the world to come is misty, we still have this world with us; a world not always to be daffed aside with love and wine and comradeship, since behind its frolic wantonness lie the ennobling claims of duty and of conscience. As with Fielding, as with ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... and yet nothing wond'rous. I love this country for the sake of man. My parents, and I thank them, cross'd the seas, And made me native of fair Nature's world, With room to grow and thrive in. I have thriven; And feel my mind unshackled, free, expanding, Grasping, with ken unbounded, mighty thoughts, At which, if chance my mother had, good dame, In Scotia, our revered parent soil, Given me to see the day, I should have shrunk Affrighted. Now, I see in this new world A resting ...
— Andre • William Dunlap
... first been smeared with human blood, and subjected to magical incantations—is the worst spell that one aboriginal can cast upon another. It means death or the direst misfortune. All that the afflicted one can do is to fly—to hide himself beyond the sorcerer's ken and the reach of pursuit. For this reason, Wombo and Oola had fled back to Moongarr. No outside black dared venture within range of McKeith's gun. Now Wombo and Oola besought Bridget to hide them from the vengeful furies. There was that slab and bark hut at the end of the ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... glides away. The riches, long sought for, are never found. This blood-stained gold may lie hidden beneath the soil of Mariposa, but it is beyond human ken. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... gathered songs and stories, and sometimes relics of border wars to take back with them to Edinburgh. Even then the youth had little notion of what he should do with all the facts he was gathering. The friend he traveled with said later, "Walter was makin' himself a' the time, but he didna ken maybe what he was about till years had passed. At first he thought o' little, I dare say, but the queerness ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... all through the journey to London the Russian had his hands full with Ajax. Each new face of the thousands that came within the anthropoid's ken must be carefully scrutinized, much to the horror of many of his victims; but at last, failing, apparently, to discover whom he sought, the great ape relapsed into morbid indifference, only occasionally evincing interest ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Perkwite of all that's happened, within our own ken," he said, and proceeded to give the visitor a brief account of the various important details. "Now," he concluded, "it seems to me there's only one conclusion to be arrived at. The man who shared the secret with Ashton is certainly ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... the Milky Way is one of the most delicately beautiful phenomena in the entire realm of nature — a shimmer of silvery gauze stretched across the sky; but studied in the light of its revelations, it is the most stupendous object presented to human ken. Let us consider, first, its appearance to ordinary vision. Its apparent position in the sky shifts according to the season. On a serene, cloudless summer evening, in the absence of the moon, whose ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... see why I shouldn't make money as well's other fellers. It's a free country, an' if a feller wants to try suthin' else 'sides fishin' uv it, what d'yer all want to be down on him fur? I don't want to slave all my days, when other folks ken live in big houses an' ride in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... found that rest and peace which has been so long denied him in this life." "And who was old Davy? may I enquire," said I, addressing Mr. C. "Ay, man," he replied, "tis a sad story; but when my work is by for the night, I'll tell ye a' that I ken o' the life o' Davy Stuart." I was then young and very imaginative; and a story of any kind possessed much interest for me; and the thought that the story of Old Davy was to be a true one, rendered it doubly interesting; so I almost counted the hours of the remaining portion of ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... to do if I am to stand up for a' my friends' wives," said the old gentleman. "But, however, Archie, you are to blame: Leddy Maclaughlan is a very decent woman—at least, as far as I ken—though she is a little free in the gab; and out of respect to my auld friend Sir Sampson, it is my desire that you should remain here to receive him, and that you trait baith ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... killed the lion with. Ugh! I never think of that scene without feeling a little quiver; and my nerves are pretty good, too. Well, he took me into an awful part of the town, down a filthy close, into some boozing ken—I beg pardon, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Touches of Nature, and which lies still deeper from the Ken of common Observation, has been taken notice of in a Note upon The Tempest; where Prospero at once interrupts the Masque of Spirits, and starts into a sudden Passion and Disorder of Mind. As the latent ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... justice to America. Her lakes, rivers, forests and cataracts are peculiarly her own, and when I think of their superiority to all that we have in the Old World, and still more, when I recollect that by a mysterious ordinance of their Creator, these were hid from "learned ken" till modern times, I fell into the fanciful belief that the Western continent was brought forth at a second birth, and intended by Nature as a more perfect specimen of her handiwork. But how in the name of breeding must we account for the degeneracy of the human form ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... which cannot brook the supernatural, the vast; far be from me the lust of explaining away all which appeals to the imagination, and the great presentiments which haunt us. Willingly I too say Hail! to the unknown, awful powers which transcend the ken of ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... "Eh! what, Ken, my boy?" cried The Mackhai, with his countenance changing. "I've only just come in. Sit down, my lad. You must be ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... the one who runs away that the blame is always laid, and Archibald Wickersham knew fully as well as did Caleb and Allison and Fat Joe that, without Harrigan, they could not hope to touch him. Harrigan had disappeared from the ken of men, and Wickersham delayed only until his departure could no longer be construed as flight. Then one evening modestly he boarded ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... fingers which no fingers are; * Keys of our daily bread those fingers ken: And praise his actions which no actions are, * But precious ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... (September 24, 1835), he had lived up to the age of fifty or sixty; thus much, however, is certain, that there was still in him a vast amount of undeveloped capability. Since his arrival in Paris he had watched attentively the new musical phenomena that came there within his ken, and the "Puritani" proves that he had not done so without profit. This sweet singer from sensuous Italy was not insensible even to the depth and grandeur of German music. After hearing Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, for instance, he said to Hiller, his eyes glistening as if he had ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... "a dictionary 's a graund institution; aye, jist a graund institution, like. When me an' the master now meets a word we dinna ken, we jist run him doon in the dictionary, an' there he is, ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... than I had given myself credit for possessing, I continued to survey the scene. I looked out again for my boat, thinking it possible that the current might drive her back to the rock, but she had been carried far beyond my ken. This made my heart sick. Knowing, however, that my life depended very much on my keeping up my courage, I endeavoured to muster all I possessed. I thought if I could climb up to the top of the rock and make a signal, ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... politics and sociology, and secondly, by the reaction in general esteem which followed his death—it is not very necessary to enquire. One certainly sees fewer, indeed, positively few, references to it and to its contents now. But it was so bright a planet when it first came into ken; it exercised its influence so long and so largely; that even if it now glows fainter it is worth exploring, and the analysis of the composition of its light is worth putting ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... sunken ships which cumbered it, and to clear the entrance channel; but on the 10th of February the naval contingent rejoined its ships, and on the 14th the Japanese battle fleet disappeared from human ken, and for three whole months was no more seen, save by a few who were made clearly to understand the vital necessity to ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... bark! Then I'll recognize your voice, ye ken. It's no canny to hear ye speak like a Christian, my ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... her, gently but with complete confidence. "Call me Ken," he said, noticing that he was seven feet tall and superbly muscled. He put his free hand on the girl's warm, soft shoulder and she ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... case ended there. As in so many instances, he knew solely the point of tragedy: the before and the after went on outside the hospital walls, beyond his ken. While he was busy in getting away from the hospital, in packing up the few things left in his room, he thought no more about Preston's case or any case. But the last thing he did before leaving St. Isidore's was to visit ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... not hungrily bowing and smirking for patronage, but interchanging ideas which I am glad to express, and which you listen to as thoughtfully and as kindly as you would to those of any other student, any other man who had won his way into such prominence as to come under the ken of a distinguished institution such as that which I have the honor to address? I do not mince the matter as to my personal position here, because I feel it is a representative one, and marks an epoch in the estimation in which the art I love is held by the British world. You have had many ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... the State, he left me, still in the wilderness and in danger, and went his way.' My honor, madam, is my own, and I choose not so to stain it. Again: I must be the witness to your story. You have wandered for many weeks in a wilderness, far beyond the ken of your friends. To your world, madam, I am a rebel, traitor and convict, a wretch capable of any baseness, of any crime. If I go back with you, throwing myself into the power of Governor and Council, ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... have often lurked in systems longer than anyone expected or planned, and a few have become widely known. Ken Thompson's 1983 Turing Award lecture to the ACM admitted the existence of a back door in early Unix versions that may have qualified as the most fiendishly clever security hack of all time. In this scheme, the C compiler contained code that would recognize when the 'login' command was being ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... the truth to ken, Minded I am to love you very well. Of Charlemagne I wish to hear you tell, He's very old, his time is nearly spent, Two hundred years he's lived now, as 'tis said. Through many lands his armies he ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... in rocks and men, in trends and streams; the prophets raved, to sages' ken Thou shewed'st dreams; Thou shrouded'st dark the How and When in starry schemes, and ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... in woman's smiles, An' ruin in her ee; I ken they bring a pang at whiles That's unco' sair ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... was no dark secret in my Camille's life. If the little head held pictures beyond the ken of us simple women, the angels painted them of a certainty. Moreover, it is that I willingly recount this grief to the wise friend ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... been seventy and seven to that," said another; "I have a right to ken the glance ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... to-day we stand Where half a century sweeps our ken, Since God, through Lincoln's ready hand, Struck off our bonds and made ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... as the creator of all things, but as the organizer and director of the surprising and almost incredible epiphenomenon which we call life? Our scheme would then take this shape: an inconceivable unity behind the veil, somehow manifesting itself, where it comes within our ken, in the dual form of a great Artificer and a mass of terribly recalcitrant matter—the only medium in which he can work. In other words, the Veiled Being would be as inscrutable as ever, but the Invisible ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... the words from McAndrew's hymn. It had rather got him at first; it was a new philosophy of life. To give thanks for life was understandable, even if unnecessary. But thanks for work! There was another framed card above the desk, more within the Red Un's ken: "Cable crossing! Do ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and muddy, the rush of the water over the dam in the winter-floods had here made a great hollow. There was besides another weir a very little way below which again dammed the water back; so that the depth was greater here than in almost any other part within the ken of the village boys. Indeed there were horrors afloat concerning its depth. I was but a poor swimmer, for swimming is a natural gift, and is not equally distributed to all. I might have done better, however, ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... born in Europe, but he was ours by adoption, and he might dispute with Fiske the title to first place in the American Pantheon of Science, were it not for the fact that the Law of Evolution was beyond his ken, being obscured by a marked, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... hour later, and the other boat had also passed from their ken, swallowed up in the little wavelets that covered the surface of the rapidly growing river; for they were now approaching the spot where the mighty flood of the Missouri joined forces with the swollen current of the Mississippi, to boom along toward ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... fields divine. Innumerable mountains rise, and rise, Ambitious for the hallowing of thine eyes, And yet thy benediction passeth not One obscure hiding place, one little spot Where pleasure may be sent; the nested wren Has thy fair face within its tranquil ken." ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... some of yon land-loupers be not of Walter Stewart's meine? Granted that they ken not yourself, that lad is only too ken-speckle. Moreover, you ye made free enough with your siller to set the haill crew ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thousand of us dead; Don't think because yer feelin well you won't be sick no more— Sometimes the reddest pippin has a worm-hole to the core. Don't let a killin' habit grow upon you soft and still Because you think thet you ken throw it from you at your will— Now's ther time ter quit it when yer feelin' brave an' stout— You've lost ther chance to do it ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... behind the scenes. Their busy-ness was but the outward semblance that masked their actual purposes. They bought and sold, and ate and drank, and walked about the streets, yet all the while the main stream of their existence lay somewhere beyond my ken, underground, in secret places. In the shops and at the stalls they did not care whether I purchased their articles or not; at the inn, they were indifferent to my staying or going; their life lay remote ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... filling of which she had a thousand times fondly talked to Harry Esmond: how they never should part; how he should educate her boy; how to be a country clergyman, like saintly George Herbert, or pious Dr. Ken, was the happiness and greatest lot in life; how (if he were obstinately bent on it, though, for her part, she owned rather to holding Queen Bess's opinion, that a bishop should have no wife, and if not a bishop why a clergyman?) she would find a good wife for ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... intuition, children know A heart that cares for them; They recognize a friend or foe, At instantaneous ken. No mask can shield a fraud or fool, E'en from a puerile mind; It knows by rules not learned at school The way true hearts to find. An earnest love, unbounded, firm,— A God-gift from our birth— By far outweighs the noblest charm Can be ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... watchfully near, was a man who was the embodiment of all that was nervous. He was alternately wringing his hands and rumpling his hair. Beside him was a middle-sized, middle-aged lady in a most amazing state of preservation, who evidently presided over the cosmetic mysteries beyond the male ken. She was so perfectly groomed that she looked as though her clothes were a mould into which she ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... not know how long it was before the girl became sufficiently, articulate to speak to her. She herself was scarcely articulate for some time. She could only try to find words to meet a need so far beyond her ken. She had never come in contact with a woman in this ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the youngest of them, were more or less interested in the novel enterprise, too, though they scarcely knew the nature of it or how much was at stake. That a human mind was tottering to its fall, and that Mistress Mary was engaged in preventing it, was beyond their ken. They could see certain details, however, for they were all one great family of little people, and it was no unaccustomed thing for them to watch a moral conquest, though they had no ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... you on the train that I was the victim of an uncanny premonition. I guess that Horatio was right about there being many things outside the ken of our limited philosophy. What psychic whisper from a world whose existence we men of 'common sense'"—he spoke the words sarcastically—"are loath to credit; what inspiration, born of the memory of that story of the case of the Bentley Moors' child in New York, which I told her ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... stress and striving Beyond the nations' ken, By vigils stern when others slept, By lives of many men; Through nights of storm, through dawnings Blacker than midnights be— This sea that God created, England has ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... happiness exactly as his son-in-law was missing it. The same thing had befallen them both. Love could do there no mighty works because of their unbelief. When he remembered his wife's face he realised that her joy had been something beyond his ken. He had not shared it. He had not known love, even when it had drawn very ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... to everything to which she had been accustomed, were to her a revelation of something beyond her of which she had had no conception; a revelation also that her comrade of by-gone days had grown away from her, beyond her—beyond even her reach or ken. ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... eye on both. Mrs. Baker was a silly woman, as he knew, and there were old transactions between Ratcliffe and Baker of which she might be informed, but which Ratcliffe had no wish to see brought within Mrs. Lee's ken. As for the fiction invented to set Keen in motion, it was an innocent one. It harmed nobody. Ratcliffe selected this particular method of inquiry because it was the easiest, safest, and most effectual. If he were always to wait until he could ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... inexcusable and wicked character, against the best government on earth; and I am free to confess that I am filled with horror when I contemplate the result of this suicidal act on their part, an act that must lead to years of war, as far as human ken can see, and the most fearful desolations in its train. But, gentlemen, there is no alternative. The glove is thrown to us, and we must accept it. If our principles are right, and we believe they are, we would ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... more absurd, I may say more impious, than for man, with a ken surrounded by the dense mists of sense, to reason respecting the decrees of eternal justice. You adopt here the same limited view that you embraced in reasoning against the indestructibility of the sentient principle ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... witnessed, and took occasion from it to confirm them in their vocation. He entered in detail as to the secret dispositions of their consciences; he foretold them many circumstances relative to the increase of his Order; he made known to them, in fine, so many sublime things beyond human ken, that they became perfectly aware that the Spirit of God rested fully on him, and that their greatest security would be in a conformity of themselves to his life ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... into absolute irrelevance. Emerson was intellectually to blame in that, seeing as he did the hiatus between the poet's life and the prevailing conception of his verse, he did not try to conceive it all anew, but rather resigned himself to the solution that Shakspere's mind was out of human ken. "A good reader can in a sort nestle into Plato's brain and think from thence," he said; "but not into Shakspere's; we are still out of doors." We should indeed remain so for ever did we not set about patiently ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... Christianity of her settled mind; and although she was strongly invited, both by the Macadams and the Howards, to see their felicity, she ever declined the same, saying—"No! I have been long out of the world, or rather, I have never been in it; my ways are not as theirs; and although I ken their hearts would be glad to be kind to me, I might fash their servants, or their friends might think me unlike other folk, by which, instead of causing pleasure, mortification might ensue; so I will remain in my own house, trusting that, when they can spare ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... in his rusty, brown fingers, that was the most wonderful moment of all. The tick, tick inside was a marvel, almost a thing uncanny to the boy, and when it was explained how the hands went round and round, telling the time of day, it surely seemed a thing beyond mortal ken. ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... you," she said, eagerly opening first one door, and then the other, "that is, ef they ain' gone. I mighty 'feared they gone. I seen 'em goin' out the back way about a little while befo' you all come,—but I thought they might 'a' come back. Mister, ken y' all teck me 'long with you when you go?" she asked the officer, in a low voice. "I want to ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... clenched his fists: this slim man embodied the very spirit of the outre. The fantastic surroundings melted from the ken of Soames, and he seemed to stand in a shadow-world, alone ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... need." Therefore they repeated to him all that the Ministers had taught them and the Wazirs also spoke with them; and Azadbakht said to them, "O folk, I would have it known to you that there is no doubt with me concerning this your speech proceeding from love and loyal counsel to me, and ye ken that, were I inclined to kill half these folk, I could do them die and this would not be hard to me; so how shall I not slay this youth and he in my power and in the hending of my hand? Indeed, his crime is manifest and he hath incurred death penalty; ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... old houses which have vanished from the close is one in which Charles II. in vain requested Bishop Ken to allow Nell Gwynne to lodge; and one which was erected for her and not pulled down until this century. The cathedral precincts, however, still contain on the southern side several buildings well worthy of notice. A picturesque house yet standing ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... we feel its mandates now; We see and know it rules, but know not how: Nor shall we know, indeed, Till in the breast of God we read. And, speaking in all verity, Descartes is just as ignorant as we; In things beyond a mortal's ken, He knows no more than other men. But, Iris, I confess to this, That in the beasts of which I speak Such spirit it were vain to seek, For man its only temple is. Yet beasts must have a place Beneath our godlike race, Which no mere plant requires ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... passed, and that I had lived through it and was much the same Carlotta still. I gently opened the window and pushed back the shutters. A young woman, tall, with a superb bust, clothed in blue, was sweeping the footpath in long, dignified strokes of a broom. She went slowly from my ken. Nothing could have been more prosaic, more sane, more astringent. And yet only a few hours—and it had been night, strange, voluptuous night! And even now a thousand thousand pillows were warm and crushed under their burden of unconscious dreaming souls. But that tall woman must go to bed ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... species, like all origination, like the institution of any other natural state or order, is beyond our immediate ken. We see or may learn how things go on; we can only frame hypotheses as to how ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... order to show that he had nae ill wull to Mr. Weft, ax'd his pardon for the rough way he had treated him, but the worthy manufacturer wadna hear o't. "Houts, man," quo' he, "dinna say a word about it. It's a mistak a'thegether, and Solomon himsell, ye ken, whiles gaed wrang." Whereupon the Heelandman bought a Kilmarnock nichtcap, price elevenpence happeny, frae Mr. Weft, and paid him wi' part of the very note that brocht on the ferly I hae just been ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... lap would be the large green volume ("British Poets of the Nineteenth Century," edited by Professor Curtis Hidden Page) which was the textbook of that sophomore course. He was reading Keats. And his eyes were those of one who has seen a new planet swim into his ken. I don't know how many evenings we spent there together. Probably only a few. I don't recall just how we communed, or imparted to one another our juvenile speculations. But I plainly remember how he ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... conscientiously done my duty, though inconveniences and annoyances may have apparently happened in consequence, the end has always been fortunate when I have been able to arrive at the result. The consequence of many of our acts, we must remember, is yet in the eternal future, unfathomed by mortal ken. To that time we must look forward for the reward of any of our acts which may be considered by our beneficent Father worthy of reward; and also to that time (we must not conceal from ourselves) for punishment ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... other thoughts he owns, Though still the same the scene that meets his view! The same sun glistens o'er the lichen'd stones— Scarce one year more seems to have gnarl'd the yew. There, too, the hamlet where his boyhood pass'd Sends, as of old, its curls of smoke to ken— So near, his stalwart arm a stone might cast Among the cots that deck ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... He walked out, carrying the great gold timepiece, bewildered, embarrassed, modest beneath his honors, but little cock of the walk, whether he would or no, for reasons entirely and forever beyond his ken. ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... more was heard of him. None knew how he fared. Not even a rumour reached the coast of success or failure. When he had crossed the mountains that divided the British protectorate from the lands that were to all intents independent, he vanished with his followers from human ken. The months passed, and there was nothing. It was a year now since he had arrived at Mombassa, then it was a year since the last letter had come from him. It was only possible to guess that behind those gaunt rocks fierce battles were fought, new lands explored, and the slavers beaten ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... sorrow, because of necessary crudities. So live that when thy summons comes to join the everlasting cavalcade which sweeps across the world, thou shalt apprehend thy high emprise, and go forth exultingly to claim thine own meed of further existence in spheres yet undiscovered to thy longing ken." ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... silent, patient lips too well foretold. Yes, this is he who ruled a world of men As might some prophet of the elder day— Brooding above the tempest and the fray With deep-eyed thought and more than mortal ken. A power was his beyond the touch of art Or armed strength—his pure ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... particular man was walking slowly up and down on the roadside opposite to the hotel by the Park railings. That he was walking up and down Dolores became conscious of through the fact that, having half unconsciously seen him once float into her ken, she noted him again, with some slight surprise, and was aware of him yet a third time with still greater surprise. The man paced slowly up and down on what appeared to be a lengthy beat, for Dolores mentally calculated that something like a minute must have elapsed between each glimpse of ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... conditions of life, from first to last nought is free from destruction. But the incomparable seer dwelling in the world, thoroughly acquainted with the highest truth, whose wisdom grasps that which is beyond the world's ken, he it is who can save the worldly-dwellers. He it is who can provide lasting escape from the destructive power of impermanence. But, alas! through the wide world, all that lives is ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... same result without waste or suffering. We expect immeasurably higher procedure of such an intelligence as Christians ascribe to God. One can understand the man who says that the plan of such an intelligence might be beyond human ken, but I am discussing the opinions of people who contend that they bring it within human ken. In fact, there is no need here to remind us of the mysteriousness of the ways of an infinite intelligence. If the war was designed for certain practical uses, such ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer rul'd as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... metamorphosis is no false image of what has been the result of our subjecting it to a jet of fervent, though nowise brilliant, thought to-night. It has become luminous, and its clear rays, penetrating the abyss of the remote past, have brought within our ken some stages of the evolution of the earth. And in the shifting "without haste, but without rest" of the land and sea, as in the endless variation of the forms assumed by living beings, we have observed nothing but the natural product of the forces originally possessed ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of the burning nebulae just as our horse and dog, but why we are men and they are still horse and dog we owe to some Power, or, shall I say, to the chance working of a multitude of powers, that are beyond our ken. That some Being willed it, designed it, no; yet it was in some way provided for in the constitution ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... opposition to him and to the work of his whole life; his name has remained connected with the commencement of all these wonders, beneficial or disastrous, which he had grasped and presaged, in a future happily concealed from his ken. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... intently did he eye and read that fair river; not more swiftly did his thoughts pass from the Mong to things beyond human ken; than Mrs. Derrick eyed and read—his back, and suffered her ideas to roam into the far off regions of speculation. The light summer coat, the straw hat, were nothing uncommon; but the silk umbrella was too good for the coat—the ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... gar polloi kai epetrimoi emata panta piptousin, pote ken tis anapneuseie ponoio; alla chre ton men katathaptemen, hos ke thanesi, nelea thymon echontas, ep' emati dakrysantas.]— Hom. Il. ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... that in which the universe is to dissolve. Indeed, this universe of mobile and immobile creatures hath sprung into existence from Krishna only. He is the unmanifest primal cause (Avyakta Prakriti), the creator, the eternal, and beyond the ken of all creatures. Therefore doth he of unfading glory deserve highest worship. The intellect, the seat of sensibility, the five elements, air, heat, water, ether, earth, and the four species of beings (oviparous, viviparous, born of filthy damp ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... a step or two in the direction of the Brodie house, but he turned his head, and with a bright smile said, "Thank you, Ken!" and McLeod watched him a moment and then with a sigh softly ejaculated: "What a courteous chap he is—when he is in the mood to be courteous—and what a —— when he is not in ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Leeby; "an' there's nae doot 'at he's makkin for the minister's, for he has on his black coat. He'll be to row the minister's luggage to the post-cart. Ay, an' that's Davit Lunnan's barrow. I ken it by the shaft's bein' spliced wi' yarn. Davit broke ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... up the rear. Their countenances were full of war, even the twins looked like angry lambs, but something written on them informed me that they had suffered defeat recent and grievous. So they vanished up the stairway and out of my ken for ever. ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... whispered Edie, "maun be, according to a' likelihood, Sir Arthur Wardour. I ken naebody but himself wad come here at this ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... Good how can we trust? Only the Wise are just. The Good we use, The Wise we cannot choose. These there are none above; The Good they know and love, But are not known again By those of lesser ken. They do not charm us with their eyes, But they transfix with their advice; No partial sympathy they feel, With private woe or private weal, But with the universe joy and sigh, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... warfare—albeit a "Holy war"—humanized and spiritualized himself with his lute—(who does not sympathize with his unfailing "Deus noster refugium," that divine stay of his stout heart that trembled not at men or devils!) Ken, undaunted opponent of the tyranny of a king—meek sufferer for that monarch's lawful rights, rose at day-dawn, or so soon as the first brief slumber had recruited his exhausted frame, to give thanks unto the King of kings in strains that, handed down to us, yet thrill the heart by their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... or lesser, and seeing this I began to question him, for I was uneasy in my innermost mind and, you will remember, so far had no certain knowledge of where I was, only a dim, restless suspicion that I had come beyond the ken of all men's knowledge. ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... events, and form at last the constants of human understanding. A character of the first order of greatness, such as seems to pass out of the limits and course of ordinary life, often lies above the ken of intellectual judgment; but its merits and its infirmities never escape the sleepless perspicacity of the common sentiment, which no novelty of form can surprise, and no mixture of qualities can perplex. ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... Maggie?" asked Mrs Gordon, after much talk on the subject of fomentations and bandages. The old woman hesitated to tell, but after a little pressing she said, in half apologetic tone,—"Weel, mem, it was na Ivor's fau't, but the day before yesterday he cam in—fou—ye ken he's fond o' his glass, mem, an' he was swingin' aboot his airms, poor falla, an' withoot the least intention, his haund cam doon wi' sik a ding on my heed that knockit me doon. But he kens na aboot it, so ye'll no speak o't ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... compairison," returned Malcolm. "Mistress Kelpie here 's e'en ower ready to confess her fauts, an' that by giein' a taste o' them; she winna bide to be speired; but for haudin' aff o' them efter the bargain's made—ye ken she's no even responsible for the bargain. An' gien ye expec' me to haud my tongue aboot them—faith, Maister Crathie, I wad as sune think o' sellin' a rotten boat to Blue Peter. Gien the man 'at has her to see tilt dinna ken to luik oot for a storm o' ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... ye sure ye ken the way ye are taking us?" said Jeanie, who began to imagine that she was getting deeper into the woods, and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... gay and fairly," exclaimed Tim, "'at Ay rammed an Eley's patent cartridge into 't single goon this morning; and yonder is 't i' t' birk tree, and Ay ken a load o' shot fra an ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... aligned in battle against himself. And when the ex-Minister beheld his King approaching, he bade his host stir for battle and prepare to smite the opposing ranks; to wit, those of his liege lord, even as he had been commanded by royal rescript, nor did he ken what manner of pit had been digged for him by Nadan. But seeing this sight the monarch was agitated and consterned and raged with mighty great wrath. Then quoth Nadan, "Seest thou, O King, what this sorry fellow ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... greedy; but gin ye wad lat her lie next the kirk there—i' that neuk, I wad tak' it kindly. And syne gin ever it cam' aboot that I cam' here again, I wad ken whaur she was. Could ye get a sma' bit heidstane putten up? I wad leave the siller ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... read not much better than you ken ride," retorted Robin. This was a crusher in that company, where riding stood high above any literary attainment; for the other had been a failure as ...
— Bred In The Bone - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... say that, Cecil, when ye look at your aunt; she's no invalid, but she gi'es up her life for the sak' o' others. Did ye ken that these verra rooms are the anes she likes most, the anes she lived in till we came, and she gave them up that ye might enjoy the best ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... property of Saint-Graal had passed to her son, Edmond,—Andre's feu Monsieur le Comte. Edmond rarely lived there, and never asked his sister or her boy there; whence, twenty years ago, at the respective ages of thirteen and eleven, Paul and Helene had vanished from each other's ken. But Edmond never married, either; and when, last winter, he died, he left a will making Paul his heir. Of Helene's later history Paul knew as much as all the world knows, and no more—so much, that is, as one could gather ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... of prognostication was being followed up beyond her ken, Tilly Ann sat bolt upright in her father's arms, looking round her with a proprietary air, and occasionally patting his cheek with a broad dimpled little palm. She was a tall, well-made child, plump and fair, with rosy cheeks and sturdy limbs that would in themselves have given ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... signify that the time for the game had expired. Whose would be high score when that minute came around was an unknown quantity; and many a Chester lad would have given much to be able to lift the veil of the future just that far. But this was beyond their ken, and they could only possess their souls in patience while ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... eh? puir body! work at Smith's shop, eh? Ye'll ken John Crossthwaite, then? ay? hum, hum; an' ye're desirous o' reading books? vara weel—let's ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... thou in light descending O'er the wide land which is thine own 2220 Like the Spring whose breath is blending All blasts of fragrance into one, Comest upon the paths of men!— Earth bares her general bosom to thy ken, And all her children here in glory meet 2225 To feed upon thy smiles, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... allowed Thebes to increase in power, and her monuments now recommence. Three kings who bore the family name of Taa, and the throne name of Ra-Sekenen, bore rule in succession at the southern capital. The third of these, Taa-ken, or "Taa the Victorious," was contemporary with Apepi, and paid his tribute punctually, year by year, to his lawful suzerain. He does not seem to have had any desire to provoke war; but Apepi probably thought that he was becoming too powerful, and would, if unmolested, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... from that of Ken's. To say nothing of the last miserable century, which has given us to start from a much lower level and with much less to spare than a Churchman in the 17th century, questions of doctrine are now coming in; with him, it was ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... clank, like a dimber mort as you are; trim a ken for the gentry cove; he is no lanspresado, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... suggest that the fancy seemed to be mutual. Diogenes, sick, was no longer an "imp of the devil", but a normal, appealing little child. It occurred to me that possibly the care of a sick Polydore might develop Silvia's tiny germ of child-ken. ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... hiede If ther be cause of eny nede, Which oghte forto be defended, Er that his goodes be despended: He mot ek, as it is befalle, Amonges othre thinges alle Se the decertes of his men; And after that thei ben of ken 2050 And of astat and of merite, He schal hem largeliche aquite, Or for the werre, or for the pes, That non honour falle in descres, Which mihte torne into defame, Bot that he kepe his goode name, So that he be noght holde unkinde. For in Cronique a tale I finde, Which spekth ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... those strips of bright-coloured ribbon on the breasts of soldiers have been won. After the decorations had been presented, the men fell back to their battalions. The band struck up the strains of "D'ye ken John Peel?", and the whole Brigade marched past the General, the masses of men moving with machine-like precision. Even the rain which had begun to fall did ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... know that with Ken Armstrong dead our whole approach has to be changed—it's going to be trickier, but it might even work out better. The Senate knows what's been going on between Rinehart and me, and so does the President. ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse |
