"Inconceivably" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sometimes led away from the principles he had adopted, to a belief in supernatural appearances." Nor was it likely that it should be otherwise; for the wildest dreams of fancy were cherished in the seclusion of the region, then inconceivably retired and remote, in which Rob Roy is said to have passed days in silent admiration of Nature in her grandest aspects; for the man who afterwards appeared so stern and rugged to his enemies, was accessible to the tenderest feelings, and to ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... by some one of those who have power over the benefit which they impart to men, than by me, who benefit or not, just as it may happen." As if he had said, "I have no system. I cannot be answerable for you. You will be what you must. If there is love between us, inconceivably delicious and profitable will our intercourse be; if not, your time is lost, and you will only annoy me. I shall seem to you stupid, and the reputation I have, false. Quite above us, beyond the will of you or me, is this secret affinity or repulsion laid. ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Clodd reminds us that at the very time when the great oracle voiced this assertion discoveries had already been made in England that, when interpreted as they have been since, were to make the landing of Caesar seem, by comparison, a contemporary occurrence. Now this inconceivably remote prehistoric era furnishes not merely arrowheads and stone chisels and burial mounds, but also other objects that are the background of that "picture of time" of which the book of to-day is ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... hands of more than three million readers in all parts of the country, has of late become even much more friendly as a result of the English boycott of the International News Service and the exclusion of all the Hearst publications from circulation in Canada. Mr. Hearst has replied to the inconceivably shortsighted policy of the British authorities towards his news service in a series of forcible, full-page leading articles against the British censorship which must have seriously shaken the confidence, apart from this already weakened long ago, of ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... had insulted him by the meanest, the grossest distrust of the honor and the credit of his house, and that on the word of an absolute stranger, of a vagabond, if ever there was one yet. It was madness—downright madness in any man to have acted as I had done. I could not account for my own inconceivably thoughtless proceeding. I could hardly believe in it myself. I opened the safe and looked at the bank-notes again. I locked it once more, and flung the key down on the table in a fury of vexation against myself. There the money was, ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... me, seemed a difficulty not easily to be got over. However, as every one knows, my then master, l'Empereur, was not the man to be overcome by such small difficulties. The book, a huge quarto, was procured through the smugglers, and in an inconceivably short space of time most admirably translated into French for my especial use. [A copy of this translation was found in Napoleon's library at St. Helena.] I need hardly say with what interest I perused ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... ascending lift with the cat's expression of impotent dismay and stupefaction. It was inconceivably grotesque. It brought into my tragedy an element of infernal farce. I became conscious of peals of laughter, and looking round beheld the American doubled up in a saddlebag chair. I fled from the vestibule of the hotel clothed from head to foot ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... stood still since the Ptolemies. I wondered, at first, how it concerned them or any man if such and such a Pharaoh had used to his own glory the plinths and columns of such another Pharaoh before or after Melchizedek. Their whole background was too inconceivably remote for the mind to work on. But the next morning we were taken to the painted tomb of a noble—a Minister of Agriculture—who died four or five thousand years ago. He said to me, in so many words: 'Observe I was very ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... see untruly (second order of poets); the men who feel strongly, think strongly, and see truly (first order of poets); and the men who, strong as human creatures can be, are yet submitted to influences stronger than they, and see in a sort untruly, because what they see is inconceivably above them. This last is the usual condition ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... imposing array. To say that the decline of Egyptian art began with Rameses II. is a commonplace of contemporary criticism; yet nothing is less true than an axiom of this kind. Many statues and bas-reliefs executed during his reign are no doubt inconceivably rude and ugly; but these are chiefly found in provincial towns where the schools were indifferent, and where the artists had no fine examples before them. At Thebes, at Memphis, at Abydos, at Tanis, in those towns of the Delta where the court habitually resided, and even at ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... is an opening in the centre, to the left, nearly facing the bronze ornament—through which, as you enter, and look to the left, appear the upper halves of two enormous GLOBES. The effect is at first, inconceivably puzzling and even startling: but you advance, and looking down the huge aperture occasioned by these gigantic globes, you observe their bases resting on the ground floor: both the upper and ground floor having the wainscots entirely covered by books. These globes are ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... make a reply to an objection, that is usually advanced against particular instances of cruelty to slaves, as recorded by various writers. It is said that "some of these are so inconceivably, and beyond all example inhuman, that their very excess above the common measure of cruelty shews them at once exaggerated and incredible." But their credibility shall be estimated by a supposition. Let us suppose that the following instance had ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... all that it meant to the merest background in their lives. Her real life consisted in Gregory; in Tante. All that she had to do with these people—oh, so nice and kind they were, she saw that well, but oh so stupid, most of them, so inconceivably blind to everything of value in life—all that she had to do was, from time to time, to open their box, their well-padded, well-provendered box, and look at them pleasantly. She felt sure that for Gregory's sake, if not for theirs, she should always be able to look pleasantly; unless—she ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... swift, and inconceivably swift The adornment of earth winds itself round, And exchanges Paradise-clearness With deep dreadful night. The sea foams in broad waves From its deep bottom, up to the rocks, And rocks and sea are torn on together In the eternal ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... that they would equally make it appear that the immortality of man in any condition would be undesirable is met. A conclusion drawn from the facts of the present scene of things, of course, will not apply to a scene inconceivably different. Those whose only bodies are their minds may be fetterless, happy, leading a wondrous life, beyond our deepest dream and farthest fancy, and eternally free from trouble ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... languages, had been compelled to discriminate, and continue to remember, a distinct arbitrary mark or character for the many thousands of words contained in each. We may not be warranted, perhaps, to say that such a task would be impossible; but that it would be inconceivably burdensome can admit of no doubt. We have, indeed, in the writings of the Chinese, although it is but one language, a living monument of the evil effects of the neglect of this principle in literature, and the unceasing inconveniences ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... next morning. By that time, the Americans had assembled in sufficient force to defeat any landing party the enemy could send ashore. The bombardment of the town continued; but the aim of the British was so inconceivably poor, that, during the three days' firing, no damage was done by their shot. A more ludicrous fiasco could hardly be imagined, and the Americans were quick to see the comical side of the affair. Before departing, the British fired over fifteen tons ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... filled the entire visiplate, they arrived at the outermost edge of the galaxy. No more stars were visible: they saw empty space stretching for inconceivably vast distances before them. But beyond that indescribable and incomprehensible vacuum they saw faint lenticular bodies of light, which were also named, and which each man knew to be other galaxies, charted and named by the almost unlimited power of the Fenachrone ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... tongs. Good-tempered herself, she demanded good temper from him. Failing that, she lectured him roundly. Failing again, she turned her back upon him and left him severely alone, with the result that, in an inconceivably short time, Allyn generally came to terms and exerted himself to be agreeable once more. Allyn still kept up the pretence of indifference to her, of superiority over her; Cicely had no pretences. She showed her liking for him frankly; just as frankly she showed her disgust ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... sudden and startling flaws of wind common to the Strait. The breeze, which had been strong all day, increased with sudden fury just as the vessel was passing through a rather narrow channel, which gave the wind the additional force of compression. In an inconceivably short time, the channel was lashed into a white foam; the roar of wind and water was so great you could not hear yourself speak, though the hoarse shout of command and the answering cry of the sailors ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... brought the thought of the French to their minds was received with eyes alight, and nerves aquiver, and blood all in a rush. The favorite of the whole camp was a young fellow who had achieved that enviable station by virtue of an inane yet inconceivably droll intonation of the phrase, "Bong chure" (Bon jour), delivered at all manner of unconformable times and in inappropriate connections, and invariably greeted with shouts of laughter. And when at last the party reached the vicinity of Blue Lick and the stationers ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... loftiest views and boldest action to bring a speedy relief. Once relieved, its form of government is saved to the world; its beloved history and cherished memories are vindicated, and its happy future fully assured and rendered inconceivably grand. To you, more than to any others, the privilege is given to assure that happiness and swell that grandeur, and to link your own names ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... small that fifty millions of them could lie together in the one-hundredth of an inch square. Yet these definite living things have the power of locomotion, of ingestion, of assimilation, of excretion, and of enormous multiplication, and the material of which the inconceivably minute living speck is made is a highly complex chemical compound. We dare not attempt a conception of the minuteness of the ultimate atoms that compose the several simple elements that thus mysteriously combine to form the complex substance and properties of this least and lowliest ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... far weakened her army as to lead to the failures of the Revolutionary War. There is some force in this contention. A closer examination, however, will reveal facts that necessarily weaken it. Firstly, England had never kept up a large army in time of peace. Dislike of a standing army was almost inconceivably strong; and it is certain that an attempt by Pitt to maintain an army in excess of the ordinary peace establishment would have aroused a powerful opposition. He therefore concentrated his efforts on the navy; and ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... beg or starve? I deplore it, but I, for my part, have a genteel family to maintain on what I rend from your grip.' He set his forehead against shame; he stooped to the basest chicanery; he exposed himself to insult, to curses, to threats of violence. Sometimes a whole day of inconceivably sordid toil resulted in the pouching of a few pence; sometimes his reward was a substantial sum. He knew himself despised by many of the creditors who employed him. 'Bad debts? For how much will you sell them to me?' And ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... some courts, they appear in rich furs: and all of them are loaded with jewels, if they can obtain them. The female part of the burgher's families, in many of the German towns, dress in a very different manner, and some of them inconceivably fantastic, as may be seen in many prints published in books of travels. But, in this respect, they are gradually reforming, and many of them make quite a different appearance in their dress from what they did ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... Danglars thoughtfully, "how is it that your patron, M. de Monte Cristo, did not make his proposal for you?" Andrea blushed imperceptibly. "I have just left the count, sir," said he; "he is, doubtless, a delightful man but inconceivably peculiar in his ideas. He esteems me highly. He even told me he had not the slightest doubt that my father would give me the capital instead of the interest of my property. He has promised to use his influence to obtain it for me; but he also declared that he never had taken on himself the responsibility ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... lay in becoming what the inventor of him meant in the inventing of him—to speak after the fashion of man's making. Going on thinking about it all, and reading my New Testament, I came to see that, if the story of Christ was true, the God that made me was just inconceivably lovely, and that the perfection, the very flower of existence, must be to live the heir of all things, at home with the Father. Next, mingled inextricably with my resolve about the money, came the perception that my fellow-beings, my brothers and sisters of the same father, ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... solemnly to our salutations. They dwelt in cabins and held to agriculture and the herding of the wild mountain cattle. From them we heard of the high country to which we were bound. They spoke of it as you or I would speak of interior Africa, as something inconceivably remote, to be visited only by the adventurous, an uninhabited realm of vast magnitude and unknown dangers. In the same way they spoke of the plains. Only the narrow pine-clad strip between the two and six thousand feet of elevation they felt to be their natural environment. In it they ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... inconceivably remote past, there had been put into effect a program of selective breeding and of carefully-calculated treatments. It was mathematically certain that this program would result in a race of beings of pure force—beings having no material ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... boys who should have been expelled, but whose expulsion would have lost to the school their independent sympathizers as well, and so would have seriously embarrassed the finances. An American principal with a bevy of "free and independent" youths to cater for is in an inconceivably different position from his English confrere, who is empowered to read his pupils' weekly letters to their parents and to send a policeman in pursuit of any runaway malcontent among them. From the moment an English ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... covered by the Drift-dbris, than to believe that a race of human beings, far enough advanced in civilization to manufacture bricks, and build pavements and cisterns, dwelt in the Mississippi Valley, in a past so inconceivably remote that the slow increase of ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... down a cup of wine. Then he warmed to it, and smoothly set out all his shifts, malices, and treacheries, his extreme boldnesses (he was desperate bold); his retreats, shufflings, and counterfeitings (he was also inconceivably a coward); his lack of gear and honour; his despair at their loss; his remedies, and well-coloured contrivances. Yes, he waved the filthy rags of his life before us, as though they had been some proud banner. When he ceased, we saw ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... almost rolled out; his mouth flew open, his tongue swelled, his whole countenance became convulsed with the most unparalleled, and for that reason indescribable, expression of agony, whilst the yellowness of his complexion deepened to a livid, lurid black, that was so inconceivably repellent and hellish that I sprang away from the bed—appalled. There was then a gasping, rasping noise, and a voice that, despite its unnatural hollowness, I identified as that of Ralph, broke forth: 'I have been wanting ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... the impression was inconceivably deeper. She had but newly learned to pray, and it seemed to her that her prayers had been instantly answered—that the compassion of Heaven, which she had learned to implore in the words of Scripture, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... trivial, rejected, or unheeded phenomena vouched for by the evidence here defended may, not inconceivably, be of considerable importance. But, stating the case at the lowest, if we are only concerned with illusions and fables, it cannot but be curious to note their persistent uniformity in ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... Christendom, the new and brilliant Court that had been established at CAMBALUC: The first Traveller to reveal CHINA in all its wealth and vastness, its mighty rivers, its huge cities, its rich manufactures, its swarming population, the inconceivably vast fleets that quickened its seas and its inland waters; to tell us of the nations on its borders with all their eccentricities of manners and worship; of TIBET with its sordid devotees; of BURMA with its golden pagodas and their tinkling ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... restrain the active and insatiable curiosity of man within the circle of his present acquirements? We may guess with plausibility what we cannot anticipate with confidence. The day may yet be coming when our instruments of observation shall be inconceivably more powerful. They may ascertain still more decisive points of resemblance. They may resolve the same question by the evidence of sense which is now so abundantly convincing by the evidence of analogy. They may lay open to us the unquestionable vestiges of art, and ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... by Locke. James Mill deserved the most contemptuous language for daring to push those doctrines beyond the sacred line. When Macaulay attacks an old non-juror or a modern Tory, we can only wonder how opinions which, on his showing, are so inconceivably absurd, could ever have been held by any human being. Men are Whigs or not-Whigs, and the not-Whig is less a heretic to be anathematised than a blockhead beneath the reach of argument. All political wisdom centres in Holland House, and the ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... The "will of God" is, indeed, the atmosphere of heavenly magnetism; it is liberation, not captivity; it is achievement, not renunciation. People talk about being "resigned" to the will of God; as well might they phrase being "resigned" to Paradise! That has been an inconceivably false tradition that repeated the prayer, "Thy will be done," as if it were the most sorrowful, instead of ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... her sympathy," said their father quietly, seeming to have settled it all a long time before. "She was the most absolutely loving person. You girls may be like her in that, too. I'm sure you're inconceivably good ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... (given in Cottle) an inconceivably sarcastic, galling, and admirable letter from Lamb to Coleridge, regarding which I never could learn how the deuce their friendship recovered from it. Cottle says the only reason he could ever trace for its being written ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... inconceivably scarce. The labourer's wages were paid partly in rations of food, partly in other allowances, and only partly in money; he had to take what he could get. Even the quit- rent, or what I have called the ground rent, was frequently ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... Christopher paid, some four years ago, a merited tribute to the genius of Mr Macaulay, commenting upon the thews and sinews of his verse, and the manly vigour of his Lays of Ancient Rome—ballad poetry in all its forms and ramifications has become inconceivably rampant. The Scottish poetry also, which from time to time has appeared in MAGA, seems to have excited, in certain quarters, a spirit of larcenous admiration; and not long ago it was our good fortune to behold in the Quarterly Review a laudation of certain lines which are ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... important kinetic and potential use-values produced by humanity—the invention of the steam engine. Through this invention, humanity has been able to avail itself, not only of the living fruits of dead men's toil, but also of the inconceivably vast amounts of solar energy and time bound up in the growth of vegetable life and conserved for use in the form of coal and other fuels of vegetable origin. This invention has revolutionized our life in countless directions. ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... oxygen and hydrogen might be measured by the velocity imparted to the atoms in their rushing together. Of course such a unit of time as a second is not here to be thought of, the whole interval required by the atoms to cross the minute spaces which separate them amounting only to an inconceivably small fraction of ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... this wretched hostelry met my enquires about supper with a stare of astonishment, and offered me a huge loaf of hard black bread as the whole contents of his larder. Ivan, however, presently appeared, having managed to forage out a couple of fowls, which, in an inconceivably short space of time, were plucked, and one of them simmering in an iron pot over the fire, while the other hung suspended by a string in front of the blaze. Supper over, we wrapped ourselves in our furs, and lay down upon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... her want of insight into Paul de Roustache's true character was inconceivably stupid, the Countess of Fieramondi maintained that her other mistakes (that was the word she chose—indiscretions she rejected as too severe) were extremely venial, and indeed, under all the circumstances, quite natural. ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... that the effort is almost paralyzed. Mathematically, the resistance increases in the ratio of the square of the velocity; and although the air is of course more easily displaced than water, the same rule applies to it, and the flight of a ball is so inconceivably rapid that the resistance becomes enormous. The average initial velocity of a cannon- or rifle-ball is sixteen hundred feet in a second, and a twelve-pound round shot, moving at this rate, encounters an atmospheric resistance of nearly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Episcopal Church. In the whole history of Irish misgovernment there is nothing more stupid than this persecution of Irish Presbyterians. But, indeed, we may not blame our forefathers for this stupidity. Persecution of this kind belonged to the times. It seems to us inconceivably stupid that men should be exiled because they would not acknowledge the authority of a bishop, but, out of Maryland, there was nowhere any real religious toleration; the dream of every sect was to trample down and to destroy all other sects. Our people in Ireland ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... felt so inconceivably wretched, that, unable to work, he begged leave to go to bed at once. It was long before he fell asleep; but when he did, the sleep was more terrible than the haunted wakefulness. For he had no rest from tormenting and horrid dreams. Brigson and Billy, their ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... and the geese flock in, and even semi-tropical birds, like the brown pelican and the Florida snake-bird, have been known to come there to nest. Pigs, gone back to wildness, range the ridges, each razor-backed drove captained by a gaunt, savage, slab-sided old boar. By night the bull frogs, inconceivably big and tremendously ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... whether the frost had begun yet." "And that's the way you spend your time in the mathematics lesson?" But thank goodness that made things all right. Only in the interval Hella said that really I am inconceivably stupid sometimes. What on earth did I want to write a thing like that for? When it begins, of course she will let me know directly. As a matter of fact it has not begun yet. We have agreed now that it will be better to say "Endt," a sort of portmanteau word of ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... child-bearing and hard field labour, her back was almost broken in two. With an almost savage vehemence of gesticulation she suddenly tore up her scanty clothing, and exhibited a spectacle with which I was inconceivably shocked and sickened. The facts, without any of her corroborating statements, bore tolerable witness to the hardships of her existence. I promised to attend to her ailments and give her proper remedies; but these are natural results, inevitable and irremediable ones, of ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... clear, until the pure voice of the Princess thrilled through all the perfumed air. Then it became more and more glorious, until its beatific beauty caused many of the older hearers to die, and go straight to paradise. The close was inconceivably sweet; and when the last notes died away, the people bowed their heads in tearful peace, and all evil left their hearts, and to many ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... cattle. One especially was pointed out to me by my host as a horse-dealer from Basle, who was willing to play high, and was always ready to pay his losses. This was sufficient. I immediately proposed to ruin that horse-dealer. I stood behind him and studied his play, which was inconceivably bad. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... according to their face-pretension and never thinks of asking what they may signify below the surface. Since they profess for the most part to be revealers of spirit life, it is either as being absolutely that, or as being absolute frauds, that they are judged. The result is an inconceivably shallow state of public opinion on the subject. One set of persons, emotionally touched at hearing the names of their loved ones given, and consoled by assurances that they are "happy," accept the revelation, and consider spiritualism ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... were established at the residence of a sheik. The house had been new whitened, and looked well enough outside, but the interior was inconceivably wretched. Every domestic utensil was broken, and the only seats were a few dirty tattered mats. Bonaparte knew that the sheik was rich, and having somewhat won his confidence, he asked him, through the medium of the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... better position. He had nothing to complain of. No one was ever brutal to him. On the contrary, he was much better treated than ever he was likely to be in Boston — let alone New York or Washington — and if his reception varied inconceivably between extreme courtesy and extreme neglect, it merely proved that he had become, or was becoming, at home. Not from a sense of personal griefs or disappointments did he labor over this part of the social problem, but only because his ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... evaporates; and thus each leaves, by the last act of its life, the means of perpetuating and diffusing its species by thousands of fertile germs. When the once thickly tenanted pool is dried up, and its bottom converted into a layer of dust, these inconceivably minute and light ova will be raised with the dust by the first puff of wind, diffused through the atmosphere, and may there remain long suspended; forming, perhaps, their share of the particles which we see flickering in the sunbeam, ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... San Antonio has a husband so good. I will never condescend to speak of you when other women talk of their husbands. New furniture for my whole house! The thing is inconceivably charming. But when, Roberto, will these things arrive? Is there danger on the road they are coming? Might not some one take them away? I shall not be able to sleep until I am ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... paid no attention to Mrs. Wells, but at once picked out a tall old woman huddled over the fire smoking a pipe. She did this, by the sceptical Nash's evidence, instantly and without hesitation. The old woman rose. She was 'tall and swarthy,' a gipsy, and according to all witnesses inconceivably hideous, her underlip was 'the size of a small child's arm,' and she was marked with some disease. 'Pray look at this face,' she said; 'I think God never made such another.' She was named Mary Squires. She added that on January ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... worlds, suns, all the infinite cluster of colossi, move into place to the exactness of a hair at the precise instant. That instant has been planned, you see; it is part of a system—and can a system exist that no mind made? Think of the Mind that made this one! Do you believe so inconceivably majestic an Intelligence as that could be anything but good? Ah, when you wonder, look above you; look above you in the night, I say," he cried, his hand upraised like his transfigured face. "Look above you and you will never fear that a sparrow's ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... not, however, inconceivably I hardly knew how to express either my concern for his altered situation since our meeting, or my joy in again being with him: but my difficulty was short; Miss Palmer eagerly drew me to herself, and recommended to Sir Joshua to go on with his cards. He had ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... halfway out of the earth, and would sink down and reappear in some other place the moment he has done with you. His countenance is large, fresh, and very intelligent; but his great power lies in his fixed gaze, which is inconceivably difficult to bear. He never once removes his eye from you till you are quite past his range; and you feel it all the same, although you do not meet his glance. He is perfectly respectful; but the intentness and directness ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... exhibits the form produced by another person when trying to hold exactly the same thought. Here also we have an amazing complexity of almost inconceivably delicate blue lines, and here also our imagination must be called upon to insert the golden globe from Fig. 42, so that its glory may shine through at every point. Here also, as in Fig. 44, we have that curious and beautiful pattern, resembling somewhat ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... touched his face, and then—It drooped, drooped like a wounded thing. He reached out his hand and plucked it, wondering. And he found, at its tip, a floating crimson blossom as delicate as the frailest cobweb, so inconceivably delicate that it wilted and crumbled ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... piloted us in the heat about the "grounds." I can see her now, dear plump lady, under her pink sunshade, saying all this with a luminous, enchanting smile. We were not to miss him; we were to look at him giving up his precious, his inconceivably precious time, laying himself out to amuse, to entertain us—"Just giving himself—giving himself all the time." And then, lest we might be uplifted, she informed us, still with the luminous, enchanting smile, that Mr. Wrackham was like that to ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... obvious to me that I belong and that I am living in an infinite and eternal world, inconceivably better planned and managed than one of mine would be, and the only logical thing that I can do, is to take it for granted that the next one is even better than this. If the main feature of the next world consists in there not ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... imagination were beyond all control. A thick, black cloud swirled before my eyes, and my mind told me that in this cloud, unseen as yet, but about to spring out upon my appalled senses, lurked all that was vaguely horrible, all that was monstrous and inconceivably wicked in the universe. Vague shapes swirled and swam amid the dark cloud-bank, each a menace and a warning of something coming, the advent of some unspeakable dweller upon the threshold, whose very shadow would blast ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the bed. The room was so dark that it was not until Bertha had come quite close that she could see Anna's face clearly. Frau Rupius seemed to be asleep. Bertha came nearer. She could hear the patient's breathing; it was regular, but inconceivably rapid—she had never heard a human being breathe like that before. Then Bertha felt that the eyes of the two others were fixed upon her. Her surprise at having been admitted in this unceremonious manner lasted only for a moment, since she understood that all precautionary measures had now ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... remarked, in a voice of shocked pity for one so inconceivably unfortunate. "How very, ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... mission! Let England imagine herself dependent on such a protectorate for her cotton, and the thought may possibly occur that it would have been better to have sided at once openly and squarely with the North. But John Bull is strangely changed in these times, and Yankee protection is inconceivably more awful to him than the slavery with which he has been for twenty years ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... then we arrived at the New Church, which looked inconceivably old, and inside was like a vast prison. But the tomb of black and white marble was fine, almost too fine, too much encrusted with ornament to perpetuate the memory of William the Silent. Still, I felt a thrill as I stood looking at the white, recumbent figure of the man who made Holland, and ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... with it, every crop that grows. All the oxygen will follow. They're already having their domestic-service apparatus manufactured—their cold-pipe radiators, meters, evaporators and respirators. I tell you, comrades, this thing is close upon us, not as a theory, now, but as a terrible, an inconceivably ghastly reality! ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... old, gouty subject. Hypochondria, baby as he was, seemed already to have fixed his fangs upon him. He had days of profound melancholy, when nothing provoked a smile, and others of bitter, silent fretting, inconceivably distressing; again there were periods of the wildest joy, only restrained by that reticence which had become habitual, from ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... forward, expecting to find the Major crushed, but involuntarily halted midway in his stride as the heavy trunk, landing at the Major's feet with a slithering thud, writhed a terrible length into massive folds. No eye could follow the inconceivably swift contortions that wrapped the Major in ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... towards Him, but can never bring Him to our scope. As the fulness of the conscious mental existence of a man stands to the subconscious activities of an amoeba or of a visceral ganglion cell, so our reason forces us to admit other possible mental existences may stand to us. But such an existence, inconceivably great as it would be to us, would be scarcely nearer that transcendental God in whom the serious men of the future will, as a ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... remark. One would seem compelled, in the absence of any such chronicle, to accept the alternative theory—known to us Aryan students as a fact—that writing and writing materials were, as above remarked, known to the Brahmans in an antiquity inconceivably remote—many centuries before the epoch ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... of view, must be one of the most common things in nature. All organisms are to be considered as internally formed of a host of units, partly active and partly inactive. Extremely minute and almost inconceivably numerous, these units must have their material representatives within the most intimate parts ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... no ray of the sun ever perforates this grove, where black eternal darkness would reign was it not excluded by innumerable lamps which are placed in pyramids round the grove; so that the distant reflection they cast on the palace, which is plentifully gilt with gold on the outside, is inconceivably solemn. To this I may add the hollow murmur of winds constantly heard from the grove, and the very remote sound of roaring waters. Indeed, every circumstance seems to conspire to fill the mind with horror and consternation as we approach to this palace, which we had scarce time to admire before ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... limae labor, perhaps incompatible with the wonderful expedition with which work after work has issued from the press. This facility of production is too remarkable to be overlooked. It is almost unexampled. Voltaire and Lord Byron have written some of their best works in an inconceivably short time. Dryden produced five act plays at the rate of three a-year. Shakspeare is supposed in one year to have written five, among which is that whereon he must have expended most thought—Hamlet. This, considering the value of the productions, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... a blaze of light when they arrived, and Francoise, the maid, came flying out to report sundry breakages and mishaps. How the salad had precipitated itself downstairs, dish and all. How Monsieur Gaston was so gay, so inconceivably gay, that he could hardly stand, and insisted on kissing her clandestinely. That Mademoiselle Pelagie had wept much because her veil was torn; and Madame F. had made a fresh toilette, ravishing to ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... contemptible herd or crowd of ignorant, sordid slaves, subjected to a government qualified only to rule such a people; and, in a word, for I am now launched quite beside my design, I say, in a word, were not its distance inconceivably great from Muscovy, and were not the Muscovite empire almost as rude, impotent, and ill-governed a crowd of slaves as they, the czar of Muscovy might, with much ease, drive them all out of their country, and conquer them in one campaign; and had the czar, who I since hear is a growing prince, and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... inclination, they resolved to dispose of me in a manner the most repugnant to them. I was sent to Mr. Masseron, the City Register, to learn (according to the expression of my uncle Bernard) the thriving occupation of a scraper. This nickname was inconceivably displeasing to me, and I promised myself but little satisfaction in the prospect of heaping up money by a mean employment. The assiduity and subjection required, completed my disgust, and I never set foot in the office without feeling a kind of horror, which ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... which fetter our free-born reason,' and his atheistic faith that to die is to be 'dispersed to the elements of which our strange forms are so mystically composed,' are all wonderful indications of insight into a type of mind differing inconceivably from the mere infidel villain of modern novels, and which could never have been attributed to a knight of the superstitious Middle Ages without a strong basis of historical research. Very striking indeed is his fierce love for Rebecca—his intense appreciation of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... level wisp of fleecy cloud, and apparently the limits of earth have been reached and sky has begun. We would rest content with that. But our eyes are drawn higher still. And high above the cloud, and rendered inconceivably higher by its presence, emerges the snowy summit of Kinchinjunga, serene and calm and flushed with the rose of the setting sun. As a background is a sky of the clearest, ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... sharply and yet sadly upbraiding his unspeakable treason. Her fingers gripped convulsively the handle-bars. She was moving alone. It was inconceivably awful and delightful. She was on the back of a wild pony in the forest. The miracle of equilibrium was being accomplished. The impossible was done, and at the first attempt. She thought very clearly how wondrous was life, and how perfectly ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... of the water, the command was at length given to unhook; the tackle at the stern was, in consequence, immediately cleared; but the ropes at the bow having got foul, the sailor found it impossible to obey the order. In vain was the axe applied to the entangled tackle; the moment was inconceivably critical, as the boat, which necessarily followed the motion of the ship, was gradually rising out of the water, and must, in another instant, have been hanging perpendicularly by the bow, and its helpless passengers ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... unconditioned is found. By the principles we have laid down, however, the problem is solved. The absolute infinity of a series is a contradiction in adjecto. As every number, although immeasurably and inconceivably great, is impossible unless unity is given as its basis, so every series, being itself a number, is impossible unless a first term is given as a commencement. Through a first term alone is the unconditioned possible; that is, if it does ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... and thus it was in the days of Moses and Pharaoh. The wise men, sorcerers, and magicians, held undisputed sway, not only over the superstitions of the people, but over their educated monarchs and princes. Egypt possessed, at an inconceivably early period, numberless towns and villages, and a high amount of civilization. Arts, sciences, and civil professions, were cherished there, so that the Nile-land has generally been regarded as the mysterious cradle ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... theorem in NEWTON'S 'Principles of Natural Philosophy' in which the time that the light takes to travel from the sun is proved with a simplicity which requires but a few steps in reasoning. In talking of some inconceivably distant bodies, he introduced the mention of this plain theorem, to remind me that the progress of light could be measured in the one case as well as the other. Then, speaking of himself, he said, with a modesty ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... at least its pleasant intimacy. And so it went from house to house, especially among the settled married folk, who regarded Milly as inconceivably foolish and silly. Who was she to be so scrupulous about her precious heart? Even the younger, unmarried sort had a knowing and disapproving look on their faces when she met them. As for the stream of invitations, there was a sudden drought, as of a parched desert, and the muteness ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... them a stunted growth of hybrid pines and cedars flourishes in great abundance. These, with the quaking ash and cottonwood along the streams, are the only woods of Montana. None of the harder woods, such as oak or maple, are found. It is inconceivably grand from the top of this range to look out upon the endless succession of vast peaks rolling away on every side, like waves in the purple distance. High above them all towers Bald Mountain,—the old Indian landmark of this section,—like Saul among ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... Theism,' 'supposing Theism true,' &c. By such phrase my meaning will always be equivalent to—'supposing, for the sake of argument, that the nearest approach which the human mind can make to a true notion of the ens realissimum, is that of an inconceivably magnified image ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... warfare one should "never cast back on the lines of a mistake." This idea afterward restated, defended, developed in many discussions, had settled into one of the stock notions of his brain, became a part of his mental individuality. And whether it had gone so inconceivably deep as to affect the dictates of his instinct, or simply because, as he himself declared, he was "too scared to remember the confounded pistols," the fact is that General D'Hubert never attempted to ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Something has placed me where I am, something urges me along; there is a will behind me, I am sure of that. But I do not know whether that will is just or unjust, kind or unkind, benevolent or indifferent. I have had much happiness and great prosperity, but I have had to bear also things which are inconceivably repugnant to me, things which seem almost satanically adapted to hurt and wound me in my tenderest and innermost feelings, trials which seem to be concocted with an almost infernal appropriateness, not things which I could hope to bear with courage and faith, ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... play but a secondary part in her solitary and meditative life. Her intelligence, less facile than the dog's, and far less highly differentiated, owes little to our tutelage; her character has not been moulded by our hands. The changing centuries have left no mark upon her; and, from a past inconceivably remote, she has come down to us, a creature self-absorbed and self-communing, undisturbed by our feverish activity, a dreamer of dreams, a lover of ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... group of purple-lavender, white-lipped bloom, made by years of spreading from one root, until above the rank moss and beneath the dark tamarack branch the picture appeared inconceivably delicate. ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Biddy listened to music inconceivably tender. She had been awakened from her prayers by the sound of a harp string touched very gently; and the note had floated down like a flower, and all the vibrations were not dead when the same note ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... their ears. It was produced evidently by an organ and a choir of singers, and it seemed to come from far above their heads. The sound was at once deepened in volume by the reverberation of the vaults and arches of the cathedral, and at the same time softened in tone, so that the effect was inconceivably solemn. ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... solar system, little was known of the magnitude and extent of the sidereal universe which occupies the infinitude of space by which we are surrounded. The stars were recognised as self-luminous bodies, inconceivably remote, and although they excited the curiosity of observers, and conjectures were made as to their origin, yet no conclusive opinions were arrived at with regard to their nature and constitution, and except that they were regarded ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... in this manner is quite different from the manifestation of muscular energy, although both are, of course, intimately connected. Muscular energy begins at its maximum and gradually diminishes to the point of exhaustion, whereas nervous energy rises in an inconceivably short space of time to its climax, and then drops immediately to nothing. Nervous energy may be said to be represented by an increased rapidity of emission. It is what the athlete would call ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... ago, when appreciation of the architecture of the dead centuries when Englishmen built with superlative skill had ebbed to its lowest, the Abbey had sunk to inconceivably debased uses. The monastic kitchen had been converted into a public-house, and the great gateway—the finest structural relic of the Abbey—had become the entrance to a brewery, while cock-fighting took place in the state bedroom above. The ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... while the Senate was in session; but there was one friend who was steadily in Washington. This was an army surgeon, Dr. Leonard Wood. I only met him after I entered the navy department, but we soon found that we had kindred tastes and kindred principles. He had served in General Miles's inconceivably harassing campaigns against the Apaches, where he had displayed such courage that he won that most coveted of distinctions—the Medal of Honor; such extraordinary physical strength and endurance that he grew to be recognized as one of the two or ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... off, and soon the immense building is all but still. Comfortable people who have their journal punctually handed in at a convenient hour in the morning are apt to think lightly of the raging effort, the inconceivably complicated organisation, the colossal expense needed to produce that sheet which is flung away at the close of each day. A blunder of the most trivial kind might throw everything out of gear; but stern discipline and ubiquitous precaution render the blunder almost an ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... beautiful and becomes merely an illustrative element, an aid to dramatic expression. What shall be said, then, when music adorns itself with its loveliest attributes and lends them to the apotheosis of that which is indescribably, yes, inconceivably, gross and abominable? Music cannot lie. Not even the genius of Richard Strauss can make it discriminate in its soaring ecstasy between a vile object and a good. There are three supremely beautiful musical moments in "Salome." Two of them are ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... hopes that he might be persuaded to undo the mischief he had done, and to set everything right again, by giving up Proserpina. Quicksilver accordingly made the best of his way to the great gate, took a flying leap right over the three-headed mastiff, and stood at the door of the palace in an inconceivably short time. The servants knew him both by his face and garb; for his short cloak and his winged cap and shoes and his snaky staff had often been seen thereabouts in times gone by. He requested to be shown immediately into the king's presence; and Pluto, ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... inconceivably brief time had Edison passed from poverty to independence; made a deep impression as to his originality and ability on important people, and brought out valuable inventions; lifting himself at one bound out of the ruck of mediocrity, and away from the deadening drudgery of the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin |
