"Ken" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the "Epidemic Rag" (which seems to be quite as catching as the mumps), Gill upon the risks of the piscatorial art, or Savage upon an original Polynesian theme, "Zulu Lulu," was to feel like Keats's watcher of the skies, "when a new planet swims into his ken." For the admirer of Spanish customs there was A. E. J. Inglis (O.A.) to sing, as only he can, the Toreador's song; while for the Cockney there was Killick to give, in his own inimitable fashion, that really touching little ballad "My Old Dutch," ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... is our kimmander, There's the bos'n and all the ship's crew, There's the married men as well as the single, Ken-ows what we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... maintenance of the individuality of which it is the foundation; and since it is pure spirit it has its continual existence in that plane of being where all things subsist in the universal here and the everlasting now, and consequently can, inform the lower mind of things removed from its ken either by distance or futurity. As the absence of the conditions of time and space must logically concentrate all things into a present focus, we can assign no limit to the subjective mind's power of perception, and therefore the question arises, why does it not ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... Jimmy, to conceal our hate of his accomplice) had managed, with that prospective decease of his, to disturb even Archie's mental balance. Archie was the owner of the concertina; but after a couple of stinging lectures from Jimmy he refused to play any more. He said:—"Yon's an uncanny joker. I dinna ken what's wrang wi' him, but there's something verra wrang, verra wrang. It's nae manner of use asking me. I won't play." Our singers became mute because Jimmy was a dying man. For the same reason no chap—as Knowles remarked—could "drive in a nail to hang his few ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... could turn my eyes from the shades of Mount Vernon. But this seems to be the age of wonders. And it is reserved for intoxicated and lawless France (for purposes of Providence far beyond the reach of human ken) to slaughter her own citizens and to disturb the repose of all the world besides. From a view of the past—from the prospect of the present—and of that which seems to be expected, it is not easy for me to decide satisfactorily on the part it might ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... had sinned through the counsels of her much-sorrowing sister, and how with the sons of Phrixus she had fled afar from the tyrannous horrors of her father; but she shrank from telling of the murder of Apsyrtus. Yet she escaped not Circe's ken; nevertheless, in spite of all, she pitied the weeping ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... on this bench, if you will agree. She need never be traced from this point. Let her drop out of the ken of the whole world that knew her. The name can only bring you harm; it has brought you harm. Through it you are threatened with trouble, with disaster. Your whole future is menaced through that name and ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... Richelieu's health declining, the archbishopric of Paris was now almost within my ken, which, together with other prospects of good benefices, made me resolve not to fling off the cassock but upon honourable terms and valuable considerations; but having nothing yet within my view that I could be sure of, I resolved ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... found the shore so shallow, that for the space of a league from land there was but a fadome water. On the Northeast side from the said Cape about 7. or 8. leagues there is another Cape of land, in the middst whereof there is a Bay fashioned trianglewise, very deepe, and as farre off, as we could ken from it the same lieth Northeast. The said Bay is compassed about with sands and shelues about 10. leagues from land, and there is but two fadome water: from the said Cape to the bank of the other, there is about 15. leagues. We being a crosse ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... wash my hands on 't," said Israel. "I shall hanker arter the critter some, but he's a-gettin' too big to be handy; 'n it's one comfort about critters, you ken git rid on 'em somehaow when they're more plague than profit. But folks has got to be let alone, excep' the Lord takes 'em; an' He generally don't ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... he saw he reported faithfully, suppressing nothing, adding nothing. But the objects which passed across the disk of his editoral intelligence were confined almost entirely to the surface of things, to the superficies of national life. He had not the ken at twenty to penetrate beneath the happenings of current politics. Of the existence of slavery as a supreme reality, we do not think that he then had the faintest suspicion. No shadow of its tremendous influence as a political power seemed to have arrested for a brief instant ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... 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 light obscures it, one sees the Galaxy spanning the heavens from north to southeast of ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... large shoals, numerous sharks showed their dark triangular fins above the water, and turtles of several species floated on the surface; while ospreys and other sea-birds flew above our heads, darting down ever and anon to pick up a luckless fish which came within their ken. As the breeze fell light, our skipper determined to obtain a supply of turtle to feed us and his crew, and to dispose of at the first port we might touch at. He had been a turtle-hunter from his youth, and knew their ways, he told us, as well as any man. There are four different ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... thinks with mortal ken To pierce Infinitude which doth enfold Three persons in one substance. Seek not, then, O Mortal race, for reasons, but believe And be content, for had all been seen No need there was for Mary to conceive. Men have ye known who thus desired in vain And whose desires, that might at ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... have asked me to write the story of Ken's Island, and in so far as my ability goes, that I will now do. A plain seaman by profession, one who has had no more education than a Kentish grammar school can give him, I, Jasper Begg, find it very hard to bring to other people's eyes the wonderful things I have seen or to ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... of life. And here is the mystery that has no solution: we came out 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
... then the ninth morning, alternating with great regularity as long as I kept tabs on him. At other times I would stumble upon him far afield, fishing in other lakes and streams; or see him winging homeward, high over the woods, from waters far beyond my ken; but these appearances were too irregular to count in a theory. I have no doubt, however, that he fished the near-by waters with as great regularity as he fished the beaver pond, and went wider afield only when he wanted a bit of ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... over which it darted like a startled jackrabbit, kicking up behind it a tiny trail of yellow dust. Stone and dust diminished in size, until some of the party said the stone had stopped. That was because they could not see it any longer. It had vanished into the distance beyond their ken. Others saw it rolling farther on—I know I did; and it is my firm conviction that that stone is ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... names with glory on earth and shadows escaped from our ken, submissive to mercy in heaven. A vast chasm have my steps overleapt since we met, O Hilda—sweet Edith; a vast chasm, but a narrow grave." His voice faltered a moment, and again he renewed,— "Thou weepest, Edith; ah, how thy tears console ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and in 1631 he was so intimate with Dr. Donne that he was one of the friends who attended him on his death-bed. J. BOSWELL, jun. His first wife's uncle was George Cranmer, the grandson of the Archbishop's brother. His second wife was half-sister of Bishop Ken. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... brilliant one seen in 1882, must journey for eight hundred years before it again comes near to the sun. But we never know what might happen, for at any moment a comet which has traversed a long solitary pathway in outer darkness may flash suddenly into our ken, and be for the first time noted and recorded, before flying off at an angle which must take it for ever further and further from ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... utterance indicating the emotion which prompted it to about the same degree as does an intelligent dog's language to his master. But dogs and other social animals converse in a speech beyond human ken; and in this respect he was their inferior, for he had not yet known the need of language, and did not, until, one day, in a section of his domain that he had never visited before,—because game avoided it,—down by the sea on the side of the wall opposite to ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... forty-three ken and Hokkaido. Ken and fu are made up of the former sixty-six provinces. Sometimes the name of the ken and the name of the capital of the ken are the same: example, ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... Monkton's race— When that one forlorn shall lie Graveless under open sky, Beggared of six feet of earth, Though lord of acres from his birth— That shall be a certain sign Of the end of Monkton's line. Dwindling ever faster, faster, Dwindling to the last-left master; From mortal ken, from light of day, ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... "I ken," he said humbly. "But payin' is my job, and I simply havena the siller. It's no the first time it has happened, and it's a sair trial for them both to be flung out o' doors by a foreign hostler because they canna meet his charges. But, sir, if ye can lend to me, ye may be certain that ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... spoken language is to us as a sealed book, his is a mobility of countenance that will translate into, and expound by, a language shared by universal humanity, diverse mental emotions; and assure, to the grasp of universal human ken, the import of those emotions; that will express, in turn, fervor, pathos, humor; that, to find its completest purpose of unerringly revealing each passion, alternately, and for the nonce, swaying the human breast, will traverse, as it were, and compass, and range over the ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... orange-girl in the crowd pushed forward offering her wares, and Nell with a gay laugh bought fruit of her, announcing "I was an orange-girl once!" Brother Copas snorted, and snorted again more loudly when Prebendary Ken refused to admit the naughty ex-orange-girl within his episcopal gates. For the audience applauded the protest almost as effusively, and again clapped like mad when the Merry Monarch took the rebuke like a sportsman, promising that "the next Bishopric that ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... enfrenzied, and, from every breast Banished shrinks Pity, weeping, terrified. Now the earth quivers, trampled and oppressed By wheels, by feet of horses and of men; The air in hollow moans speaks its unrest; Like distant thunder's roar, scarce within ken, Like the hoarse murmurs of the midnight surge, Like the north wind rushing from ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... them with anxious care. But where were my good resolutions, and what had become of them? Why, they, under the effect of the wine and the magnetic influence of these three minds, had gone flying down the bay, and under a favorable gale were fast speeding seaward beyond the ken of mortal eye, not to be found by me again until years after, when, with the toils about me, I found myself in Newgate. Then the fugitives all came back, this ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... us! The chief of staff is watching us!" ran the whisper from flank to flank of the Braves. It was not wonderful to them that he should be there. This complicated business of running a war over a telephone was not in the ken of their calculations. The colonel was with them, so all the generals ought to be. "We'll show Lanstron!" determined the Braves. "We'll show him how ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... a great traveller," David was wont to begin: "through the length o' Edinburgh, and as far south as Newcastle, is a' that my legs ken about geography. But I've had a good deal o' crooks and thraws, and ups and downs, in the world for a' that. My faither was in the droving line, and lived in the parish o' Coldstream. He did a good deal o' business, baith about the fairs ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... There 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 that may know ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... waiting breathlessly for information as to what intelligence regarding the movements of the enemy the two stern-looking men up on the wall were gathering into their brains through their glasses—intelligence far beyond the ken of the sentries, whose duty it was to keep strict watch upon the great circle which was formed by ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... the story of the life of Alexander Gordon, of Earlstoun in Galloway. Earlstoun is a bonny place, sitting above the waterside of the Ken in the fair strath of the Glenkens, in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright. The grey tower stands ruinous and empty to-day, but once it was a pleasant dwelling, and dear to the hearts of those that had dwelt in it when they were in foreign lands or hiding out on the wild wide ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... for the great room buzzed with talk. The courtiers drew together in groups, and it seemed that a man's name was being bandied to and fro, dark shuttlecock to this painted throng. Damans Sedley, entering the antechamber by a small side door, swam into the ken of a number of eager players gathered around a gentleman of flushed countenance, who, with much swiftness and dexterity, was wreaking old grudges upon the shuttlecock. One of the audience trod upon the player's toe; each courtier bowed ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... "I shall then have on a suitable gown that will stand rough usage; but I beg of you, Ken, stop tucking that rug around my ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... Blockeflute or our Recorder. D.W.] in hand, his mouth at the blow-stop was relieved of its pained updraw by the form for puffing; he preserved a gentlemanly high figure in his exercises on the instrument, out of ken of all likeness to the urgent insistency of Victor Radnor's punctuating trunk of the puffing frame at almost every bar—an Apollo brilliancy in energetic pursuit of the nymph of sweet sound. Too methodical one, too ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was gone. Paul, with his bride, had vanished from human ken; Rose, a shattered illusion, gone too. Better so—of course; though, intermittently, the man she had roused in him still ached for the sight and feel of her. She gave a distinct thrill to life: and, if he could not forgive her, neither could ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... Theology is a set of resolutions. Religion is an endeavour to be numerous and communicative. We awe the impenitent with crowds, convert the world with boards, and save the lost with delegates; and how Jesus of Nazareth could have done so great a work without being on a committee is beyond our ken. What Socrates and Solomon would have come to if they had only had the advantage of conventions it would be hard to say; but in these days, when the excursion train is applied to wisdom; when, having little enough, ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... keep their day, Theirs who have passed beyond the sight of men, O'er whom the autumn strews its gold again, And the grey sky bends to an earth as grey; But we who live are silent even as they While the world's heart marks one deep throb; and then, Touched by the gleam of suns beyond our ken, The Stone of Honour crowns the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... by drops too slow,— "Angelo, Raffael, Pergolese,"—all Whose strong hearts beat through stone, or charged again The paints with fire of souls electrical, Or broke up heaven for music. What more then? Why, then, no more. The chaplet's last beads fall In naming the last saintship within ken, And, after that, none prayeth in the land. Alas, this Italy has too long swept Heroic ashes up for hour-glass sand; Of her own past, impassioned nympholept! Consenting to be nailed here by the ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... ye to gang awa thinking I misdoobtit yer word, Francie! I believe onything ye tell me, as far as I think ye ken, but maybe no sae far as ye think ye ken. I believe ye, but I confess I dinna believe in ye—yet. What hae ye ever dune to gie a body ony richt to believe in ye? Ye're a guid rider, and a guid shot for a laddie, and ye rin middlin fest—I canna say like a deer, for I reckon I cud lick ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... already the still heat of the desert was in the air. Behind the tall rancher and his glossy mare came Professor Longstreet driving his two pack animals. Just behind him, with much grave speculation in her eyes, came Helen. A new man had swum all unexpectedly into her ken and she was busy cataloguing him. He looked the native in this environment, but for all that he was plainly a man of her own class. No illiteracy, no wild shy awkwardness marked his demeanour. He was as free and easy as the north wind; he might, after ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... voice, lowered considerably, but not whispering, and with her keen eyes fixed on Susan—"Madam, what garred ye gie your bit lassie yonder marks? Ye need not fear, that draught of Maister Gorion's will keep her sleeping fast for a good hour or two longer, and it behoves me to ken how ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 'there's neither truth nor honesty in the leein' buddies, Sir. But here's your Bradbury, an', at onny rate, we hae the eggs, Sir, for I paid for them wi' a label off yin o' they Japaneesy beer bottles. It seemed an awfu' waste to spend guid siller on folk that dinna ken ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... said Dan, finally. "I pumped it out of the eminent legal lights that turned over to me poor old dad's collections of bonds and boodle. It amounts to $2,000,000, Ken. And I am told that he squeezed it out of the chaps that pay their pennies for loaves of bread at little bakeries around the corner. You've studied economics, Dan, and you know all about monopolies, and the masses, and octopuses, and the rights of laboring people. I never thought about those things ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... is to laugh, hiss, and vociferously applaud. When men make up their minds to vilify the Bible, denounce the Constitution, and defame their country (although this is a free country), they should go down in some obscure cellar, remote from mortal ken, and, even there, whisper their hideous treason against God ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the comber's crashing thunder Strange beaches flash into my ken; On jetties heaped head-high with plunder I dance and dice with sailor-men. Strange stars swarm down to burn above me, Strange shadows haunt, strange voices greet; Strange women lure and laugh and love me, And fling their bastards at ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... young and brave To leave her brotherless! Who knows when heaven May send that fortune? For to none is given To know the coming nor the end of woe; So dark is God, and to great darkness go His paths, by blind chance mazed from our ken. Whence are ye come, O most unhappy men? From some far home, methinks, ye have found this shore And far shall stay from ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... the home of logic, the temple where material progress is worshipped as a god. For her there is no meaning in those dim yearnings of the human mind, in which logic has no part, since their foundations are hidden in depths beneath our ken, but which alone separate us from the beasts that perish. And, above all things, I would not be thought to include in such a sweeping statement all those who call themselves German. There are many in Germany who are not of this Germany, and in the end ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... which the vulture's eye hath not seen, is penetrating so deeply into those dim and shadowy regions of consciousness where the external life takes its very first start, as to be beyond the reach of any eye, and the ken of any intelligence but his own, and then he may be sure that God understands the thought that is afar off, and deep down, and that at this lowest range and plane in his experience He besets him behind ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... lone ones lie (Lone sentries shot on midnight post)— A green-wood grave-yard hid from ken, Where sweet-fern flings an odor nigh— Yet held in fear for the gleaming ghost! Though the bride should see threescore and ten, She will dream of Mosby ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... accessible to James, which Mr. M'Craw's intellect has not yet explored. Look, gentlemen! Does a week pass without the announcement of the discovery of a new comet in the sky, a new star in the heaven, twinkling dimly out of a yet farther distance, and only now becoming visible to human ken though existent for ever and ever? So let us hope divine truths may be shining, and regions of light and love extant, which Geneva glasses cannot yet perceive, and are beyond the focus ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the drifts the snowy clifts Did send a dismal sheen: Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken— ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... and radiant visions, torment the dipsomaniac or the morphia victim in his guarded prison. He thought of his instruments, those magic machines with the working of which Stella had been familiar in her life. He even poured petitions into them in the hope that these might be delivered far beyond the ken of man, only to learn that he was travelling a road which led to a wall impassable; the wall that, for the lack of a better name, we call Death, which bars the natural ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... spear at rest, but always brandished and shaken, and the aim of his heart was to smite a foeman from afar, or to set on him at close quarters. But as he was aiming through the crowd, he escaped not the ken of Adamas, son of Asios, who smote the midst of his shield with the sharp bronze, setting on nigh at hand; but Poseidon of the dark locks made his shaft of no avail, grudging him the life of Antilochos. And part of the ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... nothing came of any of these noises, except a fresh period of tension on my part, they made the skin act on my forehead every time. Then I remember a real anxiety over a blue-bottle, that must have come in through the open window just below, for suddenly it buzzed into my ken and looked like attacking Levy on the spot. Somehow I slew it with less noise than the brute itself was making; and not until after that breathless achievement did I realise how anxious I was to keep my prisoner asleep. Yet I had the revolver, ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... 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, ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... Mort and Ken, The bien Coves bings awast, On Chates to trine by Rome Coves dine For his long lib at last. Bing'd out bien Morts and toure, and toure, Bing out of the Rome vile bine, And toure the Cove that cloy'd your duds, Upon the Chates to trine.' (From 'The ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... principal priest (heb) of Osiris, dressed in the sacerdotal leopard's skin, offers incense to the lady Te-bok ("The servant-maid"); below is a row of kneeling figures, namely: two sons, Si-t-mau ("Son of the mother"), Amen-Ken ("Amon the warlike"), and four daughters, Meri-t-ma ("Loving justice"), Amen-Set ("Daughter of Amen"), Souten-mau ("Royal Mother"), and Hui-em-neter ("Food for god"). As there is no indication of relationship between the subjects of the two vignettes, it may be inferred that Te-Bok ...
— Egyptian Literature
... wind at her ear, and even the faint breath of long-forgotten kisses on her cheek. She remembered her mother—a pallid creature, who had slowly faded out of one of her father's vague speculations in a vaguer speculation of her own, beyond his ken—whose place she had promised to take at her father's side. The words, "Watch over him, Christie; he needs a woman's care," again echoed in her ears, as if borne on the night wind from the lonely grave in the lonelier cemetery by the distant sea. She had ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... do with the making of him, Captain Campbell," said Jean Clerk, now safe and certain that the boy's future was assured. "It'll be Miss Mary will have the making of him, and I ken the lady well enough—with my humble duty to her—to know she'll make him a ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... my sen bay experience thot con show; Far in may portace the tongue ay de nat know, Yet when ay see the great gilded letter, Ay ken it sea well, as nea man ken better. As far example: on the day of Chraist's nativity, Ay see a bab in a manger and two beasts standing by: The service whilk to Newyear's-day is assaign'd Bay the paicture ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... certain degree of reverence. All worldly distinctions have ceased; it is thought that the veil has been removed, and that the character and destiny of the departed are now as much beyond human opinions, as they are beyond human ken. In nothing is death more truly a leveller than in this, since, while it may be impossible absolutely to confound the great with the low, the worthy with the unworthy, the mind feels it to be arrogant to assume a right to judge of those who are believed ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... Donald," the laird continued, "and I ken that in three months ye'd nae be ready to pay me ma money. Then, ye ken, we'd quarrel. But if we're to quarrel, Donald, I'd rather do it noo, when I hae ma twenty poonds ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... Kentucky wilderness, burned a camp-fire, whose faint smoke could be traced as it rose above the tree-tops. A careful study of the vapor led Deerfoot to suspect that it had served as a signal, but it was beyond his ken to determine ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... my eyes, and the woman, seeing them, suddenly stopped ironing and exclaimed eagerly: "Ou, mem, ye ken the family; or maybe ye'll hae been a friend of the puir thing's mither!" I was obliged to say that I neither knew them nor any thing about them, but that the child's piteous aspect had ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... she went out of the room, followed by John's wondering eyes. He sat quietly a moment, then went back to his book, feeling that woman's reasoning was far beyond his ken. ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... "Ye ken in this country ilka gentleman is wussed to be sae civil as to see the corpse aff his ain grounds. Ye needna gang higher than the loan-head—it's no expected your honour suld leave the land—it's just a Kelso convoy, a step and a half ower ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... to take it so; This offer comes from mercy, not from fear: For, lo! within a ken our army lies, Upon mine honour, all too confident To give admittance to a thought of fear. Our battle is more full of names than yours, Our men more perfect in the use of arms, Our armour all as strong, our cause the best; Then reason ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... not it is possible to apply known scientific principles to the whole of religion will be a matter of opinion; but the attempt is at least worth making. So much that appeared to be beyond the reach of science has been ultimately brought within its ken, so many things that seemed to stand in a class by themselves have been finally brought under some more comprehensive generalisation, and so become part of the 'cosmic machine,' that one is impelled to believe that given time and industry the same will ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... if the 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 ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... horse and looked upon her, the blood flowing from his lip. "Ay, Jess?" says he. "You too? And yet ye should ken me better." For it was he who had helped ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... crests of snow-topped mountain ranges in the distance were proof of whence these rivers sprang. The native tribes were of higher intelligence, had a partial knowledge of what lay beyond their immediate ken, and could show articles of barter and commerce that they had obtained from more ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... heed to any one who talked with serving-men; The houses ruled by women-folk—these I avoided most; And when policemen seemed to have me almost in their ken, I stood stock-still and acted just exactly like a post. A hundred such manoeuvres did I constantly essay, And by such means succeeded in ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... For a man of his years he was, as a matter of training and habit, amazingly honest with himself. He knew quite well what bent his inclination toward visiting the Chateau de Montalais just once before effecting, what he was resolved upon, a complete evanishment from the ken of its people. He had yet to hold one minute of private conversation with Eve de Montalais, he had of her no sign to warrant his thinking her anything but utterly indifferent to him; ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... as if she did not really know Heath very well. A great many things about him she knew. But how much of him was beyond her ken. She was not even sure how he regarded Charmian. Now she wished very much to ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... to His teaching voice. As the astronomer, the more powerful his telescope, though it may resolve some of the nebulae that resisted feebler instruments, only has his bounds of vision enlarged as he looks through it, and sees yet other and mightier star-clouds lying mysterious beyond its ken— so each new influx and tidal wave of knowledge of the Father, which Christ gives to His waiting child, leads on to enlarged desires, to longings to press still further into the unexplored mysteries of that magnificent and boundless land, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... elements; instincts common to my kind were no longer my only stimulus. I was my poor self again; it was my own little life, and no other, that I wanted to go on living; and yet I felt vaguely there was some special thing I wished to live for, something that had not been very long in my ken; something that had perhaps nerved and strengthened me all these hours. What, then, could it be? I ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... was the occasion on which my brother discovered a good many things in connection with the fair sex which had hitherto been beyond his ken; more especially that the mass of petticoats and clothes which envelop the female form were not, as he expressed it to me, "all solid woman," but that women were not in reality more substantially built than men, and had ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... 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; and I ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... glad, for your sakes, that you had a premonitory warning," said Shelby, in all sincerity. "Such things are indeed beyond our ken. Did you ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... 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 ...
— Bred In The Bone - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... is to hae me." Six miles from home he saw a mud house on the top of a hill, and ascended genially. He found at their porridge a very old lady with a nut-cracker face, and a small boy. We shall see them again. "Auld wifie," said Corp, "I dinna ken you, but I've just stepped up to tell you that Gavinia ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... AL'KEN, an old shepherd, who instructs Robin Hood's men how to find a witch, and how she is to be hunted.—Ben ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... see," said the good woman, taking his hand and shedding tears. "I kent ye had lost a' by that fearfu' bank failure, but I didna ken ye had come doon sae low. And oh! to think that it was a' through me, an your kindness in offerin' to tak the shares aff my hands. Oh! Maister Black, my heart is wae when I look at ye. Is there onything I can ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... physician, Sydenham—constitution of the atmosphere—and to what else than to some inscrutable condition of the element in which we live, and breathe, and have our being—in fact to an atmospheric poison beyond our ken, can we ascribe the terrific gambols of such a destroyer. 'Tis on record, that when our armies were serving in the pestilential districts of India, hundreds, without any noticeable warning, would be taken ill in the course of a single night, and thousands in the course of a few days, in one wing ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... souls to understand what various mischief Madame Marneffes may do in a family, and the means by which they reach poor virtuous wives apparently so far out of their ken. And then, if we only transfer, in fancy, such doings to the upper class of society about a throne, and if we consider what kings' mistresses must have cost them, we may estimate the debt owed by a nation to a sovereign who sets the example of a decent ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... "I ken he's a' that ye say, an' mair, my man," quoth John. "But am I sure that ye're no as bad, an' waur? It says nae muckle for ony o' ye to be tearing like tikes ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... continued: "Neow, to settle this question onct fer all, I make ther motion that this 'ere lib'ry be closed up and the librari'n discharged; she gits a dollar a week, and ther town ken use that fifty-two dollars a year, in my ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... "sanctified cave or grotto") there was a fountain, from which the augur drank," [Greek: einai gar paegaen en oiko katageio, kai ap autaes pinein ton prophaetaen.] How can we believe that Tacitus was ignorant of such an ordinary native ceremony, and one, too, that must have come repeatedly within his ken? ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... coming, 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 clasp thy ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... investigations. If it was not exactly by the toss of a shilling it was by an almost fortuitous combination of circumstances that he was decided to take to mathematics, and in that field won a European reputation. He soared, however, so far beyond ordinary ken that even Europe must be taken to mean a small set of competent judges who might almost be reckoned upon one's fingers. But devoted as he was to these abstruse studies, Smith might also be regarded as a typical example of the finest qualities of Oxford society. His mathematical ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... no books, or larnin' uv any kind allowed. You better not be ketched wid a book in yore han's. Dat wus sumptin dey would git you fer. I ken read an' write a little but I learned since de surrender. My mother tole me 'bout dat bein' 'ginst de rules of de white folks. I 'members it while I wus only a little gal. When de Yankees ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... to Rhea's lap, The mighty main; then, stormily distraught, Backward again and eastward. To all time, Be well assured, that inlet of the sea All mortal men shall call Ionian, In memory that Io fared thereby. Take this for proof and witness that my mind Hath more in ken than ever sense hath shown. (To the CHORUS) That which remains, to you and her alike I will relate, and, to my former words Reverting, add this final prophecy. (To Io) There lieth, at the verge of land and sea, Where Nilus issues thro' the silted sand, A town, Canopus called: and there at ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... cried the King at length, spluttering wrathfully in the broadest of his native Scotch, as was his habit when angered or surprised. "Ye reckless fou, wha hae put ye to sic a jackanape trick? Dinna ye ken that sic a boon is nae for a laddie like you to meddle wi'? Wha hae put ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... crimson velvet, bed included, yet so high, though only the second story, that it made me giddy to look into the park, and tired to wind up the flight of stairs. It was formerly the favourite room, the housekeeper told me, of Bishop Ken, who put on his shroud in it before he died. Had I fancied I had seen his ghost, I might have screamed my voice away, unheard by any assistant to lay it; for so far was I from the rest of the habitable part of the mansion, that not the lungs of Mr. Bruce could ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... "I ken I'm talking in my sleep," said the lad; "but can ye tell me what dell is this, and how I ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... Turning with prophetic ken to his Augusta friends, he asked what would be the effect were the Savannah River turned through the beautiful plains of Augusta, and manufactures built up where the industrious could find employment. Hundreds of persons, he said, would be brought ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... and wave and foam Was to be for Odysseus ere his home Of scrub and crag and scanty pasturage He saw again! What stress of pilgrimage Through roaring waterways and cities of men, What sojourn among folk beyond the ken Of mortal seafarers in homelier seas, More trodden lands! Sure, none had earned his ease As he, that windless morning when he drew Near silent Ithaca, gray in misty blue, And wondered on the old familiar scene, Which was to him as it ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... but ready to stand by his guns, "I'm thenkin' he's one of them what feels they owns the airth, an' is bound to step on all worms of the dust whut comes in thur wy. But Jim, mon, we better be steppin' on, fer tomorra's the Sawbeth ya ken, an' it wuddent be gude for our souls if the parson shud cum out to investigate." Chuckling away into the silent street they disappeared, while Laurence Shafton stalked angrily up the little path and pounded loudly on the quaint knocker of ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... let him take it 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
... an inexpressible pang, that she had set foot in the midst of some domestic tragedy, the like of which had never come within her ken before. She was conscious of a little recoil from it, such as is natural to a young girl who has not learnt by experience the meaning of sorrow; but the recoil was followed by a rush of that sympathy for which she had always shown a great capacity. Her instinct led her instantly ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... suffers from this less than most professional men; but, even so, it is melancholy to reflect how the boys one has cared for, and tried to help, drift out of one's sight and ken. I have no touch of the feeling which they say was characteristic of Jowett—and indeed is amply evidenced by his correspondence—that once a man's tutor he was always his tutor, even though his pupil became grey-headed and a grandfather. ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... girl stood silent. This was the sort of thing that was outside her ken. Though she had been at Wistaria Porch for some weeks now, and had become fairly conversant with the ways of Patty and her friends, this kind of a gay project was ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... that any mon said sic a fuleish speech? Mon, its borne in on me that we'll tak a dooms lot of managin'. These chaps dinna ken ower weel what they're talkin' aboot. An' they maun say somethin' to please the fellows that keep them in siller. These things hae gane on in Scarva sin' auld lang syne, an' nothin' e'er stappit them. They went on when the Party Processions ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... bow-wow-wowed so fiercely, that he fairly took the lead in the discussion. Dr. Barclay eyed the hairy dialectician, and thinking it high time to close the debate, gave the animal a hearty push with his foot, and exclaimed in broad Scotch—"Lie still, ye brute; for I am sure ye ken just as little about it as ony o'them." We need hardly add, that this sally was followed by a hearty burst of laughter, in which even the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... carriages and one open cart on the rail; the three aristocratic conveniences were full; and the coal-box—for it looked very like one—was full also, of loafers and luggage; so I despaired of quitting the Falls almost as much, by way of balance, as I rejoiced when they once again met my ken. ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... your fader is asleep, maid, listen unto me; Will you follow in my trail to Ken-tuck-y? For cross de Alleghany to-morrow I must go, To chase de ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... Do ye ken hoo to fush for the salmon? If ye'll listen I'll tell ye. Dinna trust to the books and their gammon, They're but trying to sell ye. Leave professors to read their ain cackle And fush their ain style; Come awa', sir, we'll oot wi' oor tackle ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... 'r Welsh Joan 'll be ootward bound afore the morn's nicht. They'll pit 'm up afore Judge Kelly, a bluidy Fenian, wha'll gie 'm 'ten dollars or fourteen days' fur bein' a British sailorman alane. Pluggin' a Dutchman 's naethin'; it's th' 'Rid Rag' that Kelly's doon oan. Ah ken the swine; he touched me twinty dollars fur gie'n a winchman a clout i' the lug—an ill-faured Dago wi' a haun' on 's knife. Ah guess there's nae chance for a lime-juicer up-bye, an' ye may take it that yer man 'll be fined. Noo, withoot sayin' ony mair aboot it, ye ken fine that yer Captain ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... vanish—and there was John Addington Symonds, eager for him to write on the "Characters" of Theophrastus! He might as well have written, or better, on the "Characters" of Sir Thomas Overbury, which are rather less remote from the ken of the British public than ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their delicacy, but to make them feel as if the obligation were all on his side. When Farmer Paterson, who married a sister of George's first wife, Fanny Henderson, died and left a large young family fatherless, poverty stared them in the face. "But ye ken," said our informant, "George struck in fayther for them." And perhaps the providential character of the act could not have been more graphically expressed than in ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... and Idaeus as they showed out upon the plain did not escape the ken of all-seeing Jove, who looked down upon the old man and pitied him; then he spoke to his son Mercury and said, "Mercury, for it is you who are the most disposed to escort men on their way, and to hear those whom you will hear, go, and so conduct Priam to the ships of the Achaeans ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... close these very long inquiries by confessing they are beyond our ken? It almost seems so. For, with regard to the testimony afforded by family documents, Dr. Jacobi (whose labours were utilised by Crowe and Cavalcaselle) so conscientiously examined all that is left, that a discovery in this direction is not to be ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... sorry to part with Harris. Nearly two hundred hours (as we had calculated it) had we walked the ship's deck together, at anchor watch, when all hands were below, and talked over and over every subject which came within the ken of either of us. He gave me a strong gripe with his hand; and I told him, if he came to Boston, not to fail to find me out, and let me see my old watchmate. The same boat brought on board Stimson, who had begun the voyage ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... Gladstone has the same superstition. He has moments—especially if there be the stress of the sheer brutality of obstructive and knavish hostility—when he seems to retire into himself—to transfer himself on the wings of imagination to regions infinitely beyond the reach, as well as the ken, of the land in which the Lowthers, the Chamberlains, and the Bartleys dwell. At such moments he gives one the impression of communing with some spirit within his own breast—a familiar daemon, whose voice, though still and silent to all outside, shouts louder than the roar of faction or the ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... April Poole, in the lovely hats and gowns and jewels of Lady Diana, would accept the dignity and social obligations that hedge a peer's daughter, even on a voyage to South Africa. On arrival at the Cape, each to assume her identity and disappear from the ken of their fellow-travellers: April to be swallowed up by a Cape suburb, where she was engaged to teach music and French to the four daughters of a rich wine-grower; Diana to proceed to her destination—the farm of an eccentric woman painter, ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... 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
... have let you ken My very thoughts, from heart and pen, 'Tis needless for to conten' Or yet controule, For there's not a word o't I can men'; So ye ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the rest of humanity, is notoriously and distressingly familiar. But what the ordinary, educated German of peaceful pursuits, staying by his hearthstone far behind and safe from the battle line, thought and wished to say, has been beyond our ken. There has been no way to get at him or hear from him as to what lay ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... a poor old negro who saved the Columbia express from destruction at the time of the Charleston earthquake, and vanished from human ken after his brave deed was accomplished, swallowed up, probably, in some yawning crevice of the envious earth. The story is written with that simplicity which is the perfection of art, and its subtle pathos is given ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... had seen Billy since he had passed from the ken of the trussed deputy sheriff, and as Billy had no desire to be seen he slipped over the edge of the embankment into a dry ditch, where he squatted upon his haunches waiting for the train to depart. The stop out there in the dark night was one of those mysterious stops which trains ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... how shall I thee ken, Tam Lin, Or how my true-love know, Amang sae mony unco knights The ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... with which the earth is absolutely smothered. Humanity wants precious few books to read, but the great living, breathing, immortal volume of Providence. Life,—real life,—how to live, how to treat one another, and how to trust God in matters beyond our ken and occasion,—these are the lessons to learn, and you find little of them ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... 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 ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... people like the English, amid habitual acquiescence, are every now and then interfering, and almost always in the wrong place. The real causes which determine the prosperity or wretchedness, the improvement or deterioration of the Hindoos, are too far off to be within their ken. They have not the knowledge necessary for suspecting the existence of those causes, much less for judging of their operation. The most essential interests of the country may be well administered without ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... mighty abilities in the higher than in the lower rank; since experience teaches him that there is a crowd oftener in one year at Tyburn than on Tower-hill in a century." Mr. Wild with much solemnity rejoined, "That the same capacity which qualifies a mill- ken,[Footnote: A housebreaker.] a bridle-cull,[Footnote: A highwayman.] or a buttock-and-file, [Footnote: A shoplifter. Terms used in the Cant Dictionary.] to arrive at any degree of eminence in his profession, would likewise ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding |
