"Undoubting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of poets and sculptors; but it is the amusement of the day, the terror of the night, the fertile source of wild superstitions. It turns the clouds into gigantic shapes, and the winds into doleful voices. The belief which springs from it is more absolute and undoubting than any which can be derived from evidence. It resembles the faith which we repose in our own sensations. Thus, the Arab, when covered with wounds, saw nothing but the dark eyes and the green kerchief of a beckoning Houri. The Northern warrior laughed in the pangs ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... confident, convinced, satisfied, undoubting; undeniable, irrefutable, indubitable, incontrovertible, incontestable, sure; inevitable, unavoidable; unfailing, infallible, inerrable; fixed, stated, specified. Antonyms: indefinite, uncertain, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... with such loving truthfulness from the lips of her childish teacher. A teacher exactly fitted, however, to the scholar; Molly's poor closed-up mind could best receive any truth in the way a child's mind would offer it; but in this truth, the undoubting utterance of Daisy's love and belief won entrance for her words where another utterance might not. ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... enough to write three or four needful notes, explaining her sudden departure. The aunt could not talk of a future she so much dreaded for her nieces, losing in it the thought of her own loneliness; Alice kept back her own loving, tender, undoubting joy with a curious sense that it was hard and ungrateful towards the aunt; but it was impossible to think of that, and Nuttie ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who, with undoubting eyes, Through present cloud and gathering storm, Behold the span of Freedom's skies, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... But all depends upon this, that we learn also to say Amen, that is, that we do not doubt that our prayer is surely heard and [what we pray] shall be done. For this is nothing else than the word of undoubting faith, which does not pray at a venture, but knows that God does not lie to him, since He has promised to grant it. Therefore, where there is no such faith, there cannot be true prayer ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... death; charities, that had bound together the brotherhoods of the mountain and the desert, and had woven chains of pitying or aspiring communion between this world and the unfathomable beneath and above; and, more than these, the spirits of all the innumerable, undoubting, dead, beckoning to the one way by which they had been content to follow the things that belonged unto their peace;—these all stood on the other side: and the choice must have been a bitter one, even at the best; but ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... respects more strongly contrasted, than the Mr. Falkland of a date prior and subsequent to these events. Hitherto he had been attended by a fortune perpetually prosperous. His mind was sanguine; full of that undoubting confidence in its own powers which prosperity is qualified to produce. Though the habits of his life were those of a serious and sublime visionary they were nevertheless full of cheerfulness and tranquillity. But from this moment, his pride, ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... lately, as "Berlin to Baghdad," if not "Calais to Calcutta"? And even if we had not, would not the sense and the satire of it be delectable? A great deal has been left out: the chapter is, for Rabelais, rather a long one. The momentary doubt of the usually undoubting Picrochole as to what they shall drink in the desert, allayed at once by a beautiful scheme of commissariat camels and elephants,[99] which would have done credit to the most modern A.S.C., is very capital. There is, indeed, an ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... distemper by persuading himself that his own age and generation are peculiarly feeble and decayed; and would even perhaps be willing to exchange the restless immaturity of our self-consciousness, and the promise of its long throe-pangs, for the unawakened undoubting simplicity of the world's childhood; of the times in which there was all the evil and horror of our day, only with the difference that conscience had not arisen to try and condemn it. In these longings, if they are Teufelsdrockh's, he seems ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... construction is not brick and timber, but sentient beings, by the sudden alteration of whose state, condition, and habits, multitudes may be rendered miserable. But it seems as if it were the prevalent opinion in Paris, that an unfeeling heart and an undoubting confidence are the sole qualifications for a perfect legislator. Far different are my ideas of that high office. The true lawgiver ought to have a heart full of sensibility. He ought to love and respect his kind, and to fear himself. It may ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in a little while, in his own time, God comes. This cardinal experience is an undoubting, immediate sense of God. It is the attainment of an absolute certainty that one is not alone in oneself. It is as if one was touched at every point by a being akin to oneself, sympathetic, beyond measure wiser, ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... and undoubting by his side, and wholly at his mercy as the chariot rattled off; but, unknown to herself, beneficent powers were shielding her with buckler and armor—her childlike innocence, and that memory of her parents which her tempter himself had revived in her mind, and which soon came ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Wilmet came home, her genuine wholesome overflow of undoubting rapture could not but sweep Cherry along in the tide. Ferdinand combined the apparently impossible advantages of being thoroughly one of themselves, and yet of being able to give Alda the luxuries to which she had become ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... apparition, in spite of Dr. Johnson's belief, and that of others as wise and stout as he, would be scouted as preposterous in cultivated circles, I believe that there are many places in New England where undoubting faith in both superstitions still prevails, and I know that within a third part of the period above mentioned, very many creditable persons in a certain place in New England accepted the ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... given to the family of the Blessed Virgin, the multiplication of legendary subjects, and all the variety of adventitious, unmeaning, or merely ornamental accessories, strike us just in proportion as a learned theology replaced the unreflecting, undoubting ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... nature seem When thou, with all thy gold, so common art! Thou teachest me to deem More sacredly of every human heart, Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show, Did we but pay the love we owe, And with a child's undoubting wisdom look On all these living pages ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... thy unaltering blaze The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost, Fixes his steady gaze, And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast; And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night, Are glad when thou dost shine to guide ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... he lay dying and her future not assured? These people are not kith and kin of his that he need feel so anxious, neither are they friends of long standing. Then he sees the lithe figure again, stepping from crag to crag, holding out its girlish arms, with a brave, undoubting faith, and clasping Cecil. Yes, it is through her endeavor that his child is not marred and crushed, even if the great question of life is put aside. Does he not owe ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... authoritative voice with that of the living, actual present in testimony of the truth of this great Catholic dogma. The Saints, the Fathers, the Doctors of the Church in the ages of antiquity, and the prelates and priests of our own day all speak the same language of undoubting faith, of solemn conviction regarding Purgatory,—make the same earnest and eloquent appeal to the faithful on behalf of the dear suffering souls. Even the heathen nations and tribes of both hemispheres are brought forward as witnesses to the existence of ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... at the creature thus flashing those shining eyes, not without a smile lurking in their depths, upon him—to see the triumphant, undaunted, undoubting youthfulness which never dreamt of failure—to note that pretty anxiety, the look which might have become a bride in her first troubles "playing at housekeeping," and think how desperate was the position she had assumed, how dreary the ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... longest yarns for our edification, though older people who went down there for the purpose found no little difficulty in getting anything out of them. This was not surprising. The old sailors found in us attentive and undoubting listeners. We never thought of even questioning them to let them suspect that we had not the most perfect reliance on what they said, which older people were apt to do, I observed, for the purpose of gaining more information from them. The old tars were either offended, from ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... there deeply wounded. I knew no one in all Copenhagen who could give me either counsel or consolation. I thought of death as being the only thing, and the best thing for me; but even then my thoughts rose upwards to God, and with all the undoubting confidence of a child in his father, they riveted themselves upon Him. I wept bitterly, and then I said to myself, "When everything happens really miserably, then he sends help. I have always read so. People must first of all suffer a great deal before they can bring anything ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... Stanley, without previous intimation, announced the change from twelve years to seven. 'I spoke a few sentences,' Mr. Gladstone enters in his diary, 'in much confusion: for I could not easily recover from the sensation caused by the sudden overthrow of an entire and undoubting alliance.' ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Protestant apprehension there will appear something unnatural in the earnest and perpetual sentiment of the relations between God and men which pervade the tragedy of the Cenci. It will especially be startled at the combination of an undoubting persuasion of the truth of the popular religion with a cool and determined perseverance in enormous guilt. But religion in Italy is not, as in Protestant countries, a cloak to be worn on particular days; or a passport which those who do not wish to be ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... form or show—purely and without earthly regret—humbly and without touch of taint from spiritual pride. She had no burden to cast from her conscience, and she sought neither confessor nor director for the guidance of her thinking or doing. Straight and undoubting, her thoughts went heavenwards, to lay before God's feet the sad, sweet offering ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... as it engaged his generosity. She had made a no less open avowal of her faults to him. She had acknowledged the imperfections of her temper (the sorest of her troubles) both at the outset of their engagement, and often since. At first, the confession was made in an undoubting confidence that she should be reasonable, and amiable, and serene henceforth for ever, while she had him by her side. Subsequent experience had moderated this confidence into a hope that, by his example, and under ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... such loss of power through the crank as he imagined, nor is it likely that any other device for obtaining rotary from rectilinear motion will be found superior to that which Watt devised. But Peter Cooper assailed this fancied evil with undoubting confidence, both as to its existence and as to his ability to do away with it. The result was an invention for which he received, April 28, 1828, letters patent of the United States. At that early day patents were comparatively few,—so few that this one bears no number; ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... wavering soul your blind, undoubting, earnest faith in Christ and in His church: at once the source of your noblest deeds on earth, your brightest hopes in heaven! Oh, let it open for me, as it was wont to do for you; and I will struggle with fire and sword ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... its accumulated wealth, if he had not insisted on joining the ministry. But he threw up all to preach the Gospel. Dale thought of the nature of the faith that would make a man go and do a thing like that. It must be unquestioning, undoubting; a conviction that ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... hour that brought to Richmond the story of Sharpsburg. Flushed with hope, undoubting of triumph, her citizens only listened for the wild cheer that would echo back from conquered Washington. But the sound that reached their ears was the menacing roar from retreating ranks that left near one-third their number stark and ghastly on that grim field, where the ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... the Way—and he who sighs Amid this starless waste of woe To find a pathway to the skies, A light from heaven's eternal glow— By thee must come, thou Gate of love, Through which the saints undoubting trod, Till faith discovers, like the dove, An ark, a ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... wilt reveal, that has been from men [So] long concealed. Let, Author of life, Now from this plain a winsome smoke 'Neath heaven's expanse mount up on high 795 Playing in the air. I'll the better believe, And I'll the more firmly stablish my mind, Undoubting trust, upon the hanged Christ, That he be in truth the Saviour of souls, Eternal, Almighty, Israel's King, 800 Forever may have glory in heaven, Rule without ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... their fortunes. With these philosophic financiers, this universal medicine made of church mummy is to cure all the evils of the state. These gentlemen, perhaps, do not believe a great deal in the miracles of piety; but it cannot be questioned, that they have an undoubting faith in the prodigies of sacrilege. Is there a debt which presses them?—Issue assignats. Are compensations to be made, or a maintenance decreed to those whom they have robbed of their freehold in their office, or expelled from their profession?—Assignats. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... into a Gothic church. It is easy to make merry with this piece of simplicity, but a reflecting mind will see the subject in a very different light. A powerful consciousness of the universal validity and the solid permanency of their own manner of being, an undoubting conviction that it has always so been and will ever continue so to be in the world: these feelings of our ancestors were symptoms of a fresh fulness of life; they were the marrow of action in reality as well as in fiction. Their plain and affectionate ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... of the greatest errors of his life arose from too rash a confidence in the honour and integrity of others. When these errors took place, they seem to have arisen from an over refined system of policy, which induced Louis to assume the appearance of undoubting confidence in those whom it was his object to overreach; for, in his general conduct, he was as jealous and suspicious as any ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... undoubting faith which for ages has been the support and consolation of a large portion of mankind, especially of the weak, the humble, the unlearned, who form an immense majority, cannot disappear without a painful wrench, and leaving for a time a great blank ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... Cassandra. But, unless Katharine began the subject of her own accord, he could not even hint—he must ignore the whole affair; it was the part of a gentleman to preserve a bearing that was, as far as he could make it, the bearing of an undoubting lover. At intervals he sighed deeply. He talked rather more quickly than usual about the possibility that some of the operas of Mozart would be played in the summer. He had received a notice, he said, and at once produced a pocket-book stuffed with papers, and began shuffling them in ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... The old gentleman's undoubting, unquestioning simplicity has a rare freshness about it in these matter-of-fact railroading and telegraphing days. Hear him, concerning the church of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hand, where there is a clear knowledge of, or an undoubting belief in the being and providence of God, and especially for persons who receive Christianity as a revelation of the truth, though, as an affection, piety is independent of virtue, the duties of piety are an essential ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... would be after he was gone, and she was frightened; she could not imagine her old life resumed. When Clayton came, it was as though she had risen from sleep in a dream, and had lived in it thereafter without questioning its reality. Into his hands she had delivered her life and herself with the undoubting faith of a child. She had never thought of their relations at all. Now the awakening had come. The dream was shattered. For the first time her eye was turned inward, where a flood of light brought into terrible distinctness ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... Ward, with the greatest good-humour, was unreservedly defiant and aggressive. There was something intolerably provoking in his mixture of jauntiness and seriousness, his avowal of utter personal unworthiness and his undoubting certainty of being in the right, his downright charges of heresy and his ungrudging readiness to make allowance for the heretics and give them credit for special virtues greater than those of the orthodox. He was ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... having the witness of men who, by their prudent suspension of judgment, betrayed their lurking unbelief, we have the testimony of men who, by their surrender of themselves, soul and body, evinced their undoubting faith in a matter in which there could ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... think, unjustly. Perhaps the reason is that the quality of poetry is more definite, if not more definable, than that of prose fiction, or else that poets are more really sure of themselves. Barbey d'Aurevilly[445] had an apparently undoubting mind, but perhaps there were unacknowledged doubts, which transformed themselves into jealousies, in his heart of hearts. For myself, I sympathise with his political and religious (if not exactly with his ecclesiastical) views pretty decidedly; I think (speaking as usual with the due ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... whatever may be right, my dear child," said Mr. Wardour, holding her close, so that she felt his deep love, though it was not an undoubting welcome. "I will hear all about it when you have rested, and then I may know what is best ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... truths, When the adulterous generation sought after a sign, the sign was not given; nay, it is even said that in the presence of unbelief our Lord was not able to work miracles. But science has less respect for that undoubting and submissive willingness to believe; and it is quite certain that if we attempt to establish the truth of the New Testament on the principles of Paley, if with Professor Jowett "we interpret the Bible as any other book," the element ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... wilful fancy stretched after the object passing out of her grasp,—Roger's love became for the instant a treasure; but, again, she knew that in its entirety of high undoubting esteem, as well as of passionate regard, it would no longer be hers; and for the flaw which she herself had made, she cast it away, and would none of it. Yet often in after years, when it was too late, she wondered, and strove to penetrate ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... dined—seated under a canopy, the cup presented to him on the knee, the dishes solemnly tasted before he ate. These manifestations of respect he held to be indicative of an altered feeling. But he also had an undoubting confidence that he should be righted, by aid from Ireland, from Denmark, from other kingdoms—"I have three more cards to play, the worst of which will give me back everything." After three weeks of comparative comfort, the etiquette observed toward him was laid aside; and with a fearful ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... was spoken. Words cannot describe the voice, or paint the wild gleams of enthusiasm that, like lightning-flashes, coursed each other over the features of Holden, as, without a gesture, and immovable as a rock, an image of undoubting confidence, he delivered himself of this extraordinary speech. Nor, carried away by its impassioned utterance, were either Armstrong or his daughter aware of its full fanaticism. But the impression made upon the two was somewhat diverse, and marked how differently the chords of their ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... God forgive you as my heart forgives. Even as a vine that winds about an oak, Rot-struck and hollow-hearted, for support, Clasping the sapless branches as it climbs With tender tendrils and undoubting faith, I leaned upon your troth; nay, all my hopes— My love, my life, my very hope of heaven— I staked upon your solemn promises. I learned to love you better than my God; My God hath sent me bitter punishment. O broken pledges! what have I to live And suffer ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... every sacred and sublime word. For centuries on centuries his brethren and forerunners had held up the Man of Sorrows before the anguished and the dying; his turn had come, his moment and place in the marvellous never-ending task; he accepted it with the meek ardour of an undoubting faith. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had so long opposed, nor the magnificent result which had at length attended her exertions. The forces destined for the invasion, and which were denominated by anticipation the army of England, had been encamped around the town. The characteristic arrogance—the undoubting anticipation of victory—the utter thoughtlessness—the unsinking vivacity of the French soldiery, were then at the highest pitch. Some little idea of the gay and light-hearted sentiments with which they contemplated the invasion of England, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... utilitarian doctrine, implying that they, too, could make a priori first principles when they wanted them. It has become a sort of orthodox dogma with radicals, who do not always trouble themselves about a philosophical basis, and is applied with undoubting confidence to many practical political problems. "One man, one vote" is not simply the formulation of a demand, but seems to intimate a logical ground for the demand. If, in politics, one man is rightfully entitled to one vote, is it not also true ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... industry and profound interest in the subject has brought together throws but an uncertain light on Bacon's long disappointment. Was it the rooted misgiving of a man of affairs like Burghley at that passionate contempt of all existing knowledge, and that undoubting confidence in his own power to make men know, as they never had known, which Bacon was even now professing? Or was it something soft and over-obsequious in character which made the uncle, who knew ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... him and put on his clothes, mimicked his walk, and, thanks to the early hour and the undoubting confidence of the warders of the great gate, he walked out ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... partisanship is even slower than secular partisanship to see what it does not choose to see; and Milton's Arianism was not generally admitted until it was here avouched under his own hand. The general principle of the book is undoubting reliance on the authority of Scripture, with which such an acquaintance is manifested as could only have been gained by years of intense study. It is true that the doctrine of the inward light as the interpreter of Scripture is asserted ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... this system—looking forward with undoubting faith to such an eternity—the Scandinavians were zealous to serve their gods according to their creed. Their rude hill altars gave way as they increased in numbers and wealth, to spacious temples at Upsala, Ledra, Tronheim, and other towns and ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... been granted. They gathered around their weeping, broken-hearted father and penitent mother, and pointed them to the cross of Jesus. Long and earnestly they prayed, and wept and agonized. With undoubting trust in the promises, they waited at the mercy-seat, and their prayers were heard. Faith conquered. The Spirit came and touched these penitent hearts with the finger of love; and then sorrow was turned to joy—their night, dark and ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... desert, for did not the Prophet counsel his people not to pray exactly at sunrise or sunset or at noon, because they might be confounded with the infidels who worshipped the sun? Yet it gave him a fresh thrill each morning to watch these desert worshippers prostrate themselves in undoubting faith before their omnipotent God. In the untrodden desert, with its mingling of sky and sand, their perfect trust and faith in Allah seemed a convincing and evident belief. At such times he forgot that these same men were the children of Superstition and that one and all of ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... of that bright constellation of Master Minds who have gone before us and guided our footsteps through tedious and tentative wanderings into the pathway of Truth. May their undoubting, united testimony act as a reassuring, convincing influence which will carry the reader back to the very fountain head of Medical jurisprudence, through the medium of the Encyclopedia Britannica, the highest accepted authority and criterion of authenticity in the English speaking world; for, at ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... very little silk about the fetter, And 'twere flattery to say your sway was sweet: Nay, you made the light and airy shrine of beauty A centre for the most exacting duty, And the fealty of the family undoubting Met with flouting, As a tribute which was nothing but your due, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various
... know that, Editha. I know how sincere you are, and how—I wish I had your undoubting spirit! I'll think it over; I'd like to believe as you do. But I don't, now; I don't, indeed. It isn't this war alone; though this seems peculiarly wanton and needless; but it's every war—so stupid; it makes me sick. Why shouldn't this thing have ...
— Different Girls • Various
... neither more nor less, to this gigantic market? What is the intelligent and secret power which presides over the astonishing regularity of movements so complicated—a regularity in which each one has a faith so undoubting, though comfort ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... fancy, that soft, gentle, summery atmosphere that fills the room, and makes the little, lonely heart thrill as with the pleasant consciousness of a loving presence? It is real to Harry, with his child's undoubting faith. Stretching forth his rounded arms, and clasping the dark, impalpable air in a joyous embrace, he nestles closely to the wet pillow as if it were a loving bosom, and falls asleep with a smile upon his lip. A childhood robbed of childish joys and pleasures, the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... would decide the question in favour of Mr. Jefferson. At present I am by no means decided as to the object of preference. If the federal party should take up Mr. Burr, I ought certainly to be impressed with the most undoubting conviction before I separated myself from them. I cannot, however, deny that there are strong considerations which give a preference to Mr. Jefferson. The subject admits of many and very doubtful views; and, before I resolve on the ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... blessed as others. There is a higher faith than that. There is a better part. The same part which Mary chose. The same faith of which our Lord says,— 'Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed.' The faith of the heart; the childlike, undoubting, ready, willing faith, which welcomes the news of the Lord; which runs to meet it, and is not astonished at it; and, if it ever doubts for a moment, only doubts for very joy and delight; and feeling that the news of the gospel is good news, cannot ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... tucked behind His ear. And never he mistakes The wildest signs the doctor makes Prescribing drugs. Brown paper, string, He will not use for any thing, But all in neat white parcels packs And sticks them up with sealing-wax. Miss Thompson bowed and blushed, and then Undoubting bought of Mr. Wren, Being free from modern scepticism, A bottle for her rheumatism; Also some peppermints to take In case of wind; an oval cake Of scented soap; a penny square Of pungent naphthaline to scare The moth. And after ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... before he had ended with her. She should experience a heartfelt relief, instead of a broken heart, on his departure. He could n't help chuckling. He had such confidence in his nerve and his reticent habit that his confidence and ability to carry out the scheme were undoubting, and at its first suggestion he had felt almost as much relief as if ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... said the cook, in firm, undoubting tones. 'I've always wanted to be the Queen, God bless her! and I always thought what a good one I should make; and now I'm going to. IF it's only in a dream, it's well worth while. And I don't go back to that nasty underground kitchen, and ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... ghost in Hamlet. There we see the positive of Shakspeare's superior power. But now turn and look to the negative. At a time when the trials of witches, the royal book on demonology, and popular superstition (all so far useful, as they prepared a basis of undoubting faith for the poet's serious use of such agencies) had degraded and polluted the ideas of these mysterious beings by many mean associations, Shakspeare does not fear to employ them in high tragedy, (a tragedy moreover which, though not the very greatest of his efforts as an intellectual whole, nor ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... striking three, made her feel that she had really been much longer absent than usual, and brought the previous self-inquiry of whether she should take leave or not just then, and how, to a very speedy issue. With undoubting decision she directly began her adieus; and Edmund began at the same time to recollect that his mother had been inquiring for her, and that he had walked down to the Parsonage on purpose to bring ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... sagacity discover no other cause of thy mother's error than Talbot's fraud? Could thy heart so readily impute to him so black a treachery? Such a prompt and undoubting conclusion it grieves me ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... him so frigid and unnatural" that he could not get himself to interest himself about them any further; that a dinner with a friend, or a game at backgammon, put them all to flight, and restored him to the undoubting belief of all the maxims which his meditative hours had stripped him of. It was natural, Harrington said; for such scepticism was impossible. He added, however, that, had Hume been honest, he would never have employed his subtilty in the one-sided way he did; "for," said he, "if ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... rigid discipline of manners and faith, a system of church government, a form of church worship, stripped, as they held, of the last remnant of the superstitions of the past. Calvin himself with his austere and frugal life, his enormous industry, his power of government, his quick decision, his undoubting self-confidence, his unswerving will, remained for three-and-twenty years till his death in 1564 supreme over Protestant opinion. His influence told heavily on England. From the hour of Cromwell's fall the sympathies ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... wider and more uncontrollable terror than that of the fifth of November. Its outlines seem utterly incredible, and are only supported by the evidence of wretches, the meanest and most worthless in the creation; yet it is received by the credulous people of England with the most undoubting belief." ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... by the calm and resolute hunter,—who at different times had been over the whole way, and in whose skill and discretion, as a woodsman, for conducting them by the nearest and easiest route, they all had undoubting confidence,—they vigorously made their way onwards through the accumulating snows and natural obstructions of the forest; now threading the thickets of the valleys; now skirting the sides of the hills; now crossing deep ravines; ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... dinner-giving friends; fine, pleasant friends, as such friends go. He had such friends by hundreds; but he had failed to prepare for stormy times a leash or so of true hearts on which, in stress of weather, he could throw himself with undoubting confidence. One such friend he may have had once; but he now was among his bitterest enemies. The horizon round him was all black, and ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... undoubting confidence in what he believed to be a general law of Providence, he based his whole management of the school on his early-formed and yearly-increasing conviction that what he had to look for, both intellectually and morally, was not performance ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... know them at a single visit. Come and sit by this indoor sea, day by day, and learn to love its people. Many a lesson for good have they taught me. When weary and disheartened, the patient perseverance of these undoubting beings has given me new impulses upward and onward. Remembering that their sole guide is instinct, while mine is the voice behind me, saying, "This is the way," I have risen with new resolve to walk therein. Seeing the blind persistency with which some straying zooephyte has refused to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... might Chase that worst phantom of the night! - Again returned the scenes of youth, Of confident undoubting truth; Again his soul he interchanged With friends whose hearts were long estranged. They come, in dim procession led, The cold, the faithless, and the dead; As warm each hand, each brow as gay, As if they parted yesterday. And doubt distracts him at the view - Oh, were his senses ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... respects to some of the schools of Germany. In the analysis offered of the human faculties, it has much akin to Kant: in the deep conviction that the highest truth is revealed to a faculty of faith, and in the undoubting belief in our own intuitions and the conviction of their reality, it resembles Jacobi and Schelling: in regarding the human reason to be the impersonal reason, the divinity in man, it resembles Schelling or ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... from abroad, and to rescue thirty millions of people from ruin. The enterprise was undeniably magnificent in its grandeur and noble in its object. He had two foes to encounter, each formidable, the royalists of combined Europe and the mob of Paris. The quiet and undoubting self-confidence with which he entered upon this enterprise, is one of the most remarkable events in the whole of his extraordinay career. He took with him no armies to hew down opposition. He engaged in no deep-laid and wide-spread conspiracy. Relying upon the energies of his own mind, and ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... not be regarded as fully proved against him. Mr. Adams, while blaming himself for carelessness in not having more closely examined original documents, yet felt "scarce a doubt" that Onis "did intend by artifice to cover the grants while we were under the undoubting impression they were annulled;" and he said to M. de Neuville, concerning this dark transaction, that "it was not the ingenious device of a public minister, but 'une fourberie de Scapin.'" Before long the rumor got abroad in the public prints ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... often receives its significance and power from the person who uses it. Unless permeated by the higher faculties of the mind, unless it be not the clothing, but the 'incarnation of thought,' it is quite an humble power. There are some writers who repose undoubting confidence in words. If their minds be filled with the epithets of poetry, they fondly deem that they have clutched its essence. In a piece of inferior verse, we often observe a great array of expressions ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... brave as thou consent To use a coward's argument? The glory of the Warrior race With craven speech his lips debase? Can one like thee so falsely speak, Exalting Fate, confessed so weak? Canst thou, undoubting still restrain? Suspicions of those sinful twain? Canst thou, most duteous, fail to know Their hearts are set on duty's show? They with deceit have set their trains, And now the fruit rewards their pains. Had they not ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... confidently expect guidance. "Let him ask in faith nothing doubting," There are many and many who cannot find the way, though they ask God to show it to them, simply because they have not the absolutely undoubting expectation that God will show them the way. God promises to show it if we expect it confidently. When you come to God in prayer to show you what to do, know for a certainty that He will show you. In what way He will show you, He does not tell, but He promises that He will show ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... more noble and generous, she cherished his honor, as the only treasure which violence or injustice could never wrest from him. Affection is always credulous, and fortunately for her happiness she gave no belief to the high charges which were publicly alleged against him; but placed the most undoubting trust in his assurance, that they were the baseless calumnies of an enemy. Even the many dark shades in his character, which could not escape her discernment, she was ever ready to palliate; and her bland influence often ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... a year. It was a very happy year. The brothers had waited long for it. They listened from morning until night to his boastful little stories with undoubting faith and pleasure. As for their hero, he felt that he had made his mark: he had his circle of admirers and limitless applause: what could life give ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... refrain from again expressing my surprise at the frequency and the undoubting positiveness of this assertion in so great a scholar, so profound a Patrician, as Jeremy Taylor was. He appears 'bona fide' to have believed the absurd fable of this Creed having been a pic-nic to which each of the twelve Apostles ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... the countenances of his scholars. Upon them he read extreme surprise, undoubting belief in the veracity of their teacher, and the dawning gleam of a timid hope that they themselves might become participators in the transcendent discovery he proclaimed. Addressing himself to the latter sentiment—"I am willing," ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... aside the great religious questions nor give a positive answer to them. We must act on the hypothesis that one answer or the other is true; but we must not allow any juggling to transmute a judgment of probability into an undoubting conviction of truth. There are real arguments on both sides, and we must not ignore the existence of either. In the attack upon Manning he indicates his reasons for believing in a God. He accepts the argument from final causes, which is, of course, the only argument open to a thorough empiricist, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... of Aberfoyle, found materials for collecting and compiling his Essay on the "Subterranean and for the most part Invisible People heretofore going under the name of Elves, Fawnes, and Fairies, or the like."[36] In this discourse, the author, "with undoubting mind," describes the fairy race as a sort of astral spirits, of a kind betwixt humanity and angels—says, that they have children, nurses, marriages, deaths, and burials, like mortals in appearance; that, in some respect, they represent ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... associates. She found no fault; who was she, to find fault with any one? But she had been compelled to hint that her children must not be too intimate with him. And so, between one brother who meant no unkindness, and another who was all affection and goodwill, this undoubting woman created difference, distrust, dislike, which might one day possibly lead to open rupture. The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts: but who can tell the mischief which the very ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... yet, 'tis not doubt, but worse: I doubt my doubt. Oh, ye all-wise spirits in the air, how can ye witness all this woe, and give no sign? Would, would that mine were a settled doubt, like that wild boy's, who without faith, seems full of it. The undoubting doubter believes the most. Oh! that I were he. Methinks that daring boy hath Alma in him, struggling to be free. But those pilgrims: that trusting girl.—What, if they saw me as I am? Peace, peace, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... transaction in Jeremiah xxxii. 6, to 44, where the prophet purchases his uncle's estate at the approach of the Babylonian captivity, in his undoubting confidence in the future restoration of the people. In the one case it is the triumph of religious faith, in the other ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... obtained not by the might of man, but by the grace of God, and that not our will or desire, but only the mercy of the Most High, can bestow it upon us. For this reason you must first of all cleanse your heart, lift it up to Him alone, and ask of Him this gift in true, earnest and undoubting prayer. He alone can give and bestow it."(1) Whilst another alchemist declares: "I am firmly persuaded that any unbeliever who got truly to know this Art, would straightway confess the truth of our Blessed Religion, and ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... she have meant about that fellow Finn?" he said to himself. "They cannot both have been murdered." He went to his club, and there he soon learned the truth. The information was given to him with clear and undoubting words. Phineas Finn and Mr. Bonteen had quarrelled at The Universe. Mr. Bonteen, as far as words went, had got the best of his adversary. This had taken place in the presence of the Prince, who had expressed himself as greatly annoyed by Mr. Finn's ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... queenly bearing, and so graceful in every movement that she scarcely seemed to touch the ground as she walked. Her reception by the king, the queen, and the whole court was every thing that could be desired. The duchess and her daughter that night placed their heads upon their pillows with the undoubting conviction that Marguerite was to be the Queen of France. The king ordered his suite to be ready, in their gala dresses, to attend him on the morrow to the ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... groundless; and in the case of Bettine has been refuted by irrefragable proof. To say that he was wanting in love, heartless, cold, is ridiculously false. Yet the charge is constantly reiterated in the face of facts,—reiterated with undoubting assurance and a certain complacency which seems to say, "Thank God! we are not as this man was." There is a satisfaction which some people feel in spotting their man,—Burns drank; Coleridge took opium; Byron was a rake; Goethe ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... will spare you a satire dotted with as many I's as an Argus pheasant; and, without exacting upon good-nature by troublesome contributions, will hazard a few couplets concerning Blackstone's cast-off mistress, the Law. One word more though: undoubting of thine amiability, friend that hast walked with me hitherto in peace, I will be tame as a purring cat, and sheathe my talons; therefore are you still unteased by divers sly speeches and sarcastic hints, of and concerning ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... over these spots upon the general goodness, it satisfied every wish of her heart to be able to do so much for the cottagers. They did not, perhaps, stand so much in awe of her as they ought to have done, but they brought all their troubles to her with the most perfect and undoubting confidence. ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... was the discipline of the ancient gymnasium, and so important was it considered that confidence should be undoubting there, that thefts, exceeding ten drachmae in amount, committed within its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... question must be put in an altogether different way... one must attack it more deeply.... Love!' he pursued, 'all is mystery in love; how it comes, how it develops, how it passes away. Sometimes it comes all at once, undoubting, glad as day; sometimes it smoulders like fire under ashes, and only bursts into a flame in the heart when all is over; sometimes it winds its way into the heart like a serpent, and suddenly slips out ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... own way, the story of what he supposes to have occurred, without, of course, admitting the smallest real foundation for what was so positively asserted, but with very little reproach or discredit to the ardent and undoubting assertors. He begins with a statement which is meant to save the character of the Teacher. "Jesus, though he spoke unceasingly of resurrection, of new life, had never said quite clearly that he should rise again in the flesh." He says this with the texts before him, for he quotes them and classifies ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... like were walking about with the ploughboys in the park. It was a great point gained by Mrs Lookaloft, and it might be fairly expected that from this time forward the tradesmen of Barchester would, with undoubting pens, address her husband and ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... read so much about agnostic Buddhism, and about Nirvana meaning annihilation, it may seem bold in me to present Buddha as an undoubting believer in the fundamental truths of all religion, and as not only a believer in a spiritual world but an actual visitor to its sad and blissful scenes; but the only agnosticism I have been able to trace to Buddha ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... brought back. He is a splendid old fellow, and I felt I looked on the face of a Christian martyr, a curious sight in the nineteenth century: the calm, fearless, rapt expression was like what you see in noble old Italian pictures, and he had the perfect absence of 'doing pious' which shows the undoubting faith. He and the Mufti, also a noble fellow, sparred about religion in a jocose and friendly tone which would be quite unintelligible in Exeter Hall. When he was gone the Mufti said, 'Ah! we thank ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... reads her romance, but the mystic's creed Is something far beyond her simple need. She goes to church, but the mixed doubts and theories that thinkers find In all religious truth can never enter her undoubting mind. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... calamity. That their visions were, as a rule, gruesome and included pale and ghastly faces and voices hollow with portent was now a supporting recollection. "He was not dead. He was not an angel. He was Donal," Robin had said in her undoubting voice. And she had stood the test—that real test of earthly egg and buttered toast. Dowie was a sensible and experienced creature and had been prepared before the doctor's suggestion to lose no advantage. If the child began ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... he paused a moment and waited, his small head turned sideways, his big, round, dew-bright black eye roguishly attentive. Then with more swelling of the throat he trilled and rippled gayly anew, undisturbed and undoubting, but with a trifle of insistence. Then he listened, tried again two or three times, with brave chirps and exultant little roulades. "Here am I, the bright-breasted, the liquid-eyed, the slender-legged, the joyous and conquering! Listen ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... difficulty whatever in creating a live little girl out of the snow. And, to say the truth, if miracles are ever to be wrought, it will be by putting our hands to the work in precisely such a simple and undoubting frame of mind as that in which Violet and Peony now undertook to perform one, without so much as knowing that it was a miracle. So thought the mother; and thought, likewise, that the new snow, just fallen from heaven, would be excellent material to make ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... now flounders in the brake, Now sinks his barge upon the lake; Now leader of a broken host, His standard falls, his honor's lost. Then,—from my couch may heavenly might Chase that worst phantom of the night!— Again returned the scenes of youth, Of confident, undoubting truth; Again his soul he interchanged With friends whose hearts were long estranged. They come, in dim procession led, The cold, the faithless, and the dead; As warm each hand, each brow as gay, As if they parted yesterday. And doubt ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... the blacks in the building where I attend public worship. I have, in the years past, devoted myself assiduously, every Sabbath morning, to the labour of learning them to read. I find them quick of apprehension. They learn the rudiments of reading quicker than even the whites, but it is with me an undoubting conviction, that having advanced them to a certain point, it is much more difficult to carry them beyond. In other words, they learn easily to read, to sing, and scrape the fiddle. But it would be difficult to teach them arithmetic, or combination of ideas ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... surface of amusement in his mind. How easy and facile these girlish loves and fancies were! Ursula knew nothing of this stranger, and yet so free were the girl's thoughts, so open her heart to receive impressions, that on so short knowledge she had received the other into it with undoubting confidence and trust. He did not come forward himself to say good-bye, but he perceived that Reginald followed downstairs, and took his hat from the table, to accompany Phoebe home. As they closed the outer door behind them, the last gust thus forcibly shut in made a rush through the narrow ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the mass of billets you possess from her, there must be enough to compromise her. Look them well over; select passages, and threaten to do so. Write to her at first in the undoubting tone of a lover who has every claim upon her. Then, if she is silent, remonstrate, alluding to former promises from her; producing proofs of her former regard for you; vowing despair, destruction, revenge, if she prove unfaithful. Frighten her—astonish ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... unavoidable deficiencies, as now in exercise, have added yearly cumulative weight to the considerations presented by him as persuasive to the measure, and in recommending it to your deliberations I am happy to have the influence of this high authority in aid of the undoubting ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams
... expresses his limitation, that he is treating history more distinctively as a moralizer than any other noted writer of the time. He assumes in this respect the Hebraistic point of view, and looks out from it with an undoubting heartiness which in these days is really refreshing. He believes in the Old Testament, and doubts not that riches and honors are the rewards of right-doing. And in this, too, there is a vast deal of truth; and it is truly delightful to find one who affirms ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the termination of the Niger, or to perish in the attempt, adding, "Though all the Europeans, who are with me should die, and though I were myself half dead, I would still persevere." To Mrs. Park he announced the same determination, combined with an undoubting confidence of success, and the commencement of his voyage down the Niger, through the vast unknown regions of interior Africa, he called, "turning his face ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... therefore sleep for a season. May their repose be long and profound! But the time must arrive when the interests and honor of this great nation will command them to awake; and when it does arrive, I feel undoubting confidence that they will rise from their slumber in the fullness of their strength and majesty, unenfeebled and unimpaired by the judgment ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... influence from Algernon Dusautoy to keep up a thriving aversion. Albinia marvelled at the power exercised over Gilbert by one whose intellect and pretensions he openly contemned, but perceived that obstinacy and undoubting self-satisfaction overmastered his superior intelligence and principle, and that while perceiving all the follies of the Polysyllable, Gilbert had a strange propensity for his company, and therein always resumed the ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all the military vigor and precision of a general in case of a sudden attack. It was her habit. Sickness and death were her opportunities; where they were, she felt herself at home, and she addressed herself to the task before her with undoubting faith. ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe |
