"Conjectural" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... explanation or generalization, and try to find some accepted law that explains them. Failing in that, you are driven to guess at a general law, i.e., to formulate a hypothesis that will fit the known facts. Then, having found such a conjectural general law, you proceed to deduce its consequences; you see that, if the hypothesis is true, such and such facts must be true. Next you go out and see whether these facts are true, and if they are, your hypothesis {475} is verified to that extent, though it may be upset ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... be thus obtained, the writer will repine at no censure which the precipitate publication of mere conjectural suggestions may incur; but shall think himself fully rewarded by having excited the attention of those, who may point out the most appropriate means of relieving a tedious and most ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... had wheeled away all Cheveleigh and half Ormersfield, till the last unfortunate wheal failed when the rope broke, and there were no funds to buy a new one. No wonder Lord Ormersfield trembled when he heard his son launch out into those easily-ascending conjectural calculations, freely working sums in his head, so exactly like the old Earl, his grandfather, that she could have laughed, but for sympathy with the father, and anxiety to see how the son would take the damp so vexatiously cast on ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... satisfaction was distinctly dominant as she took leave of her hostess. St. Michael's gossip, or rather the manner in which it had been received, had given her a clue to the real state of affairs, which, however slender and conjectural, at least pointed in the desired direction. At first she had been horribly afraid lest she should be listening to a definite announcement which would have been the death-blow to her hopes, but as the recitation went on without any of those assured little minor details ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... three verses, that I may by the way offer a conjectural emendation, purely my own, upon each: First, oris should be read aris, it being, as we see, Aen. ii. 513, from the altar of Jupiter Hercaeus that Aeneas fled as soon as he saw Priam slain. In the second line I would flatu for fato, since it is most clear it was by winds that ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... when the speculator, with the true gambling instinct, gave no indication in his face of what was drawn in this lottery. Generally, however, some suggestion in the exterior of the trunk, a label or initials; some conjectural knowledge of its former owner, or the idea that he might be secretly present in the hope of getting his property back for less than the accumulated dues, kept ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Gardens, where she now resides. I must say that his details were rather vague. She rode in a circus or had a talking horse—he was not quite sure; and concerning her conjugal or extra-conjugal heart affairs he admitted that his information was either unauthenticated or conjectural. At any rate, she had not a shred of reputation. And she didn't want it, said Renniker; it would be as much use to ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... be innobled with a Pedigree as ancient as the first creation, and farr exceed the greatest beings in their numerous Genealogies. But on the other side, if it should be found that these, or any other animate body, have no immediate similar Parent, I have in another place set down a conjectural Hypothesis whereby those Phaenomena may likely enough be solv'd, wherein the infinite wisdom and providence of the Creator is no ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... then our bond Had best be loosed for ever: but think or not, By Heaven that hears I tell you the clean truth, As clean as blood of babes, as white as milk: O Merlin, may this earth, if ever I, If these unwitty wandering wits of mine, Even in the jumbled rubbish of a dream, Have tript on such conjectural treachery— May this hard earth cleave to the Nadir hell Down, down, and close again, and nip me flat, If I be such a traitress. Yield my boon, Till which I scarce can yield you all I am; And grant my re-reiterated wish, The ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... questions, "Have we got any Bible?" and "If any Bible, how much?" had not been hatched. When I was in Princeton Seminary, our profoundly learned Hebrew Professor, Dr. J. Addison Alexander no more disturbed us with the much-vaunted conjectural Biblical criticisms than he disturbed us with Joe Smith's "golden plates" at Nauvoo. For this fact I feel deeply thankful; and I comfort myself with the reflection that the great British preachers of the last ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... of Michael Angelo's compositions are conjectural, it may be assumed that the two sonnets on Dante were written when he was himself in exile. We know that, while sojourning in the house of Gian Francesco Aldovrandini at Bologna, he used to spend a portion of his time in reading ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... was in search of under a root or in a cranny of rock he repeated their many-syllabled names. Curious to know what these names literally meant and whence derived, the writer made inquiry, sometimes hazarding a conjectural etymology. To his astonishment and dismay he found this "scientist," whom he had looked up to, entirely ignorant of the meaning of the terms he employed. They were just arbitrary terms to him. The little hopping and crawling creatures might as well have ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... blowing with a steadiness that they had not experienced before that night. Paul suspected this change, though he had no certain means of knowing it; for as soon as the wind baffled, his course had got to be conjectural again. As the breeze freshened, the speed of the boat necessarily augmented, though she was kept always on a wind; and after half an hour's progress, the gentlemen became once more uneasy ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... modestly confessed, "that from this point I shall have to be largely conjectural. Welkin wasn't able to be very definite, except as to moments, and he had his data almost altogether from his wife. Braybridge had told him overnight that he thought of going, and he had said he mustn't think of it; but he supposed Braybridge had spoken of it ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... not worth while to consider this at length; but I give the following conjectural account of the list as it appears in the Morals and Legislation above. In classifying pain or pleasures, Bentham is, I think, following the clue suggested by his 'sanctions.' He is really classifying according to their causes or the way in which they are 'annexed.' Thus pleasures may or may ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... Revised Version gives it better, 'a solemn rest.' Observe, also, that these verses connect the feast with the ingathering of the harvest, as does Exodus xxiii. 16. It is quite possible that Moses grafted the more commemorative aspect of the feast on an older 'harvest home'; but that is purely conjectural, however confidently affirmed as certain. To tumble down cartloads of quotations about all sorts of nations that ran up booths and feasted in them at vintage-time does not help us much. The 'joy of harvest' was unquestionably blended with the joy of remembered national deliverance, but that the latter ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... be pointed out:—but the Tobacco-PIPES that are shown as Friedrich Wilhelm's in the KUNSTKAMMER or Museum of Berlin, pipes which no rational smoker, not compelled to it, would have used, awaken just doubt as to the cicerones; and you leave the Locality of the Tabagie a thing conjectural. In summer season, at Potsdam and in country situations, Tabagie could be held under a tent: we expressly know, his Majesty held Tabagie at Wusterhausen nightly on the Steps of the big Fountain, in the Outer Court there. Issuing from Wusterhausen Schloss, and its little clipped lindens, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... that it can act and feel without the assistance of this body; that deprived of this body and robbed of its senses, this soul will be able to live, to enjoy, to suffer, be sensitive of enjoyment or of rigorous torments. Upon such a tissue of conjectural absurdities the wonderful opinion of the immortality of the soul ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... medicine. He spoke of it as an art entirely conjectural, and his opinion on this subject was fired and incontrovertible. His vigorous mind rejected all but ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the fourteenth century of the Christian era. This is what Professor Wilson has done in his translation of the first book of the Rig-veda; and by strictly adhering to this principle and excluding conjectural renderings even where they offered themselves most naturally, he has imparted to his work a definite character and a lasting value. The grammar of the Veda, though irregular, and still in a rather floating state, has almost been mastered; the etymology and the meaning of many words, unknown in ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... and over every one who sought acceptance with God. Upon the two latter subjects, a natural, perhaps, and venial, but a fruitless, eager, and impatient curiosity, prompted by the philosophy and by the scholastic habits of the age, which carried men much into bold hypotheses and conjectural solutions, raised, amongst some who professed Christianity, very wild and unfounded opinions. I think there is no reason to believe that the number of these bore any considerable proportion to the body of the Christian church; and, amidst ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... the estimates of the majority are very much more indefinite and conjectural than the more carefully prepared estimates of the minority of the Board of Consulting Engineers. Upon this point the majority of the Senate ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden
... our conjectural survey, from the form to the subjects with which the poetry of the future is likely to be engaged. Here we are confronted with the fact that, if we examine the whole of history, we see that the domain of verse has been persistently ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... deserved well of all Raleigh students by editing for the first time, in 1868, the correspondence of Raleigh. I hope that I do not seem to disparage Mr. Edwards's book when I say that in his arrangement and conjectural dating of undated documents I am very frequently in disaccord with him. The present Life contains various small data which are now for the first time published, and more than one fact of considerable importance which I owe to the courtesy of Mr. John Cordy Jeaffreson. ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... likewise to be observed, that, though the exportations may appear to exceed the importations, yet may this in part arise from the accounts of the former being of a more certain nature, and those of the latter very conjectural, and always ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... and build worlds of our own, we must not wonder at our going wide from the path of truth and nature. On the other hand, if we add observation to observation without attempting to draw not only certain conclusions but also conjectural views from them, we offend against the very end for which only observations ought to be made. I will endeavor to keep a proper medium, but if I should deviate from that, I could wish not to fall ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... of sombre gray that comes between the darknesses can be called day. For a week, now, we have not seen the sun. Our ship's position in this waste of storm and sea is conjectural. Once, by dead reckoning, we gained up with the Horn and a hundred miles south of it. And then came another sou'west gale that tore our fore-topsail and brand new spencer out of the belt-ropes and swept us away to a conjectured longitude ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... separated extremes of conjectural possibility lay the mediate truth of the matter: which truth—thus resembling precious gold in its valueless rock matrix—lay embedded in, and was to be extracted from, the irresponsible utterances of the double row of loosely hung tongues, always ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... need hardly be explained that, in the case of a modern poet, these various readings are not like the conjectural guesses of critics and commentators as to what the original text was (as in the case of the Greek Poets, or of Dante, or even of Shakespeare). They are the actual alterations, introduced deliberately as improvements, by the hand of the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... of the Gospels to their respective authors had been arbitrary or conjectural, they would have been ascribed to more eminent men. This observation holds concerning the first three Gospels, the reputed authors of which were enabled, by their situation, to obtain true intelligence, ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... g: This number is conjectural, but cannot be far from the truth, as Mr. McElvaine, the sub-agent, states that but 8 or 10 ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... and settlement of the Danish West Indies by Europeans are not of ancient date, their early history is fragmentary and conjectural. Tribes of Caribs[361] were found on these islands by Christopher Columbus when he discovered the group on his second voyage to America in 1493. Judging from carvings upon the rocks and numerous relics these people had occupied ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... points must be carefully kept in mind; the first is the distinction between theory and conjecture on the one hand, and well ascertained facts on the other. We shall have much to do with theory, and with conjectural interpretations of observed facts. These can never stand on the same footing as the facts themselves, but can only be regarded as invested with greater or less probability. If it is found that these theories do explain many observed facts, that they harmonize with, and as it were ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... an increase in income of 30%, in assets of 23%, and in profit balances of 46%, and a diminution of the properties in possession and mortgages in arrear of 14% in the nine years. The total assets and income are more than three times the amount of the conjectural estimate made for 1870 by the royal commission. It is not too much to say that a quarter of a million persons have been enabled by means of building societies to become the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... 2 preliminary leaves containing title and dedication by Paulus Manutius to Guillaume Pellicier, Bishop of Montpellier, 331 numbered leaves of text, 10 unnumbered leaves of translations of the Greek passages, conjectural emendations which the editor "would not hesitate to adopt it he should ever find an ancient MS. to confirm them" and a final leaf with colophon and anchor. The Scholia, 24 unnumbered leaves, have a separate title, ...
— Catalogue of the William Loring Andrews Collection of Early Books in the Library of Yale University • Anonymous
... by tradition, on the west borders, but much mangled by reciters; so that some conjectural emendations have been absolutely necessary to render it intelligible. In particular, the Eden has been substituted for the Eske, p. 193, the latter ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... doubt that the people of the United States will wish the Democratic Party to continue in control of the Government. They are not in the habit of rejecting those who have actually served them for those who are making doubtful and conjectural promises of service. Least of all are they likely to substitute those who promised to render them particular services and proved false to that promise for those who have ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... examination, and must be pronounced apocryphal. Nehemiah was a statesman, not a priest or scribe; a politician, not a literary man. It is true that he may have had assistants, or committed the work to competent hands; but this is conjectural. The account of his supposed canon hardly commends itself by inherent truthfulness or probability, though it is ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... Edward Livingston, the brilliant New York congressman, that "it is the sense of the Republicans in this State that, after some trials in the House, Mr. Jefferson should be given up for Mr. Burr."[112] This was wholly conjectural, and Burr and his young friend knew it; but it was a part of the game, since Burr, so Hamilton wrote Morris, "perfectly understands himself with Edward Livingston, who will be his agent at the seat of government," adding that Burr had volunteered ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... to the geographical origin of the Aryan linguistic family of peoples brings us to speculative sources, more or less scientifically based, reaching from Scandinavia and Lithuania to the Hindu Kush Mountains and northern Africa.[236] The sum total of all these conjectural cradles, amounting to a large geographical area, would more nearly approximate the truth as to Aryan origins. For the study of the historical movement makes it clear that a large, highly differentiated ethnic ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... suppose?" said Nigel, thrusting in his conjectural emendation, with infinite difficulty, betwixt two clauses ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... pile. As he proceeded, the lecturer pointed with his finger at the various features appertaining to the date of his story, which he told with splendid vigour when he had warmed to his work, till his narrative, particularly in the conjectural and romantic parts, where it became coloured rather by the speaker's imagination than by the pigments of history, gathered together the wandering thoughts of all. It was easy for him then to meet those fair concentred eyes, when the ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... there made of the comparative value of the authorities has been on the whole accepted as a just one, rather than that which depreciates the value of the Medicean MS. and of the class to which it belongs. On the other hand the conjectural emendations proposed by Stein have very seldom been adopted, and his text has been departed from in a large number of other instances also, which will for the most part be found ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... is no evidence to prove whether the original edifice had, or had not, a third story; since the chamber seen by the Arabs was no doubt a late Babylonian work. The third story of the accompanying sketch must therefore be regarded as conjectural. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... purports to be,—not a collection of elaborate essays devoted to metaphysical analysis or to conjectural emendations of doubtful lines,—but a series of ideal portraits of the women of Shakspeare's plays. The reader may fancy himself led by an intelligent cicerone who pauses before each picture and with well-chosen words tells enough ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... mixtures, quid pro quo, &c. See Fuchsius lib. 1. sect. 1. cap. 8. Cordus' Dispensatory, and Brassivola's Examen simpl., &c. But it is their ignorance that doth more harm than rashness, their art is wholly conjectural, if it be an art, uncertain, imperfect, and got by killing of men, they are a kind of butchers, leeches, men-slayers; chirurgeons and apothecaries especially, that are indeed the physicians' hangman, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... computations. He investigated the methods of casting a nativity, but a suspicion, or, indeed, rather more than a suspicion, seems to have crossed his mind as to the value of these astrological predictions, for he says in fine, "I found astrology to give generally strong conjectural hints, not ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... Tatian have given his name to a collection of materials begun, used, and left in a more or less advanced stage of compilation, by Justin? However, we can really do little more than note the resemblance: any theory we may form must be purely conjectural. ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... mentioned above and to later works bearing on the subject have been inserted in the hope that others, more leisured and more competent, may supplement them by further research, and convert those portions of the narrative which are at present largely conjectural ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... as if a hasty hand had dashed the odours of Araby here and there to discourage the herrings. A large velvet cloak, the worse for wear, disguised the rents of the sofa, whereon sat Mrs Gunning, majestic in another of faded purple satin, beneath which her dress remained conjectural. A noble square of Limerick point was flung over her head and hung veil-like by each ear; and, indeed, with the little cherub Lucy at her feet, she might have sat for ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... habitually wrote. In opposing Mr. Collier's folio, he did not hesitate to insinuate broadly that he believed it to be an imposition. But as he based his suspicion solely upon the very numerous coincidences between the marginal readings in that volume and the conjectural readings of the editors and critics of the last century,—coincidences which, however, affect the character of a very large proportion of the noticeable changes in the folio,—he failed to accomplish his conservative purpose at the expense of Mr. Collier's reputation. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... appear the most extraordinary. These principles we have found to be sufficiently convincing, even with regard to our most certain reasonings from causation: But I shall venture to affirm, that with regard to these conjectural or probable reasonings they still acquire a ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... which they drive over the mountains and sell for cash. This extensive trade, which, from its peculiar character, more easily overcomes the difficulties of transportation than any that can be substituted in its place, is about to be put in jeopardy for the conjectural benefits of this measure. When I say this trade is about to be put in jeopardy, I do not speak unadvisedly. I am perfectly convinced that, if this bill passes, it will have the effect of inducing the people of the South, partly from the feeling and partly ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... acknowledge that, without Scott's interpolation, we could have no more of Kinmont Willie than verses, "much mangled by reciters," as Scott says, of a ballad perhaps no more poetical than Jock o' the Side. Scott says that "some conjectural emendations have been absolutely necessary to render it intelligible." As it is now very intelligible, to say "conjectural emendations" is a way ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... however, that some or most of the snakes in which no rattles appear, are nevertheless intended for rattlers. It may have been that the figures were so well understood that the addition of rattles in the drawings was quite unnecessary. This, however, is quite conjectural. The species of rattlesnake is probably Crotalus basiliscus or C. terrificus of southern Mexico and adjacent regions, not C. horridus or adamanteus as supposed by Stempell since these two species are confined ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... earth; but, when we struck a cold belt, eternal Winter would mantle a large part of the globe with snow and ice. This, of course, is simply guess-work. No less than seven distinct causes have been urged; most of them either purely conjectural, like the last, or manifestly incompetent to produce the great results which we have seen must be accounted for. But, amongst these, two causes have been advanced—the one astronomical, the other geographical; and, to the ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... ports, but that is altogether insignificant when compared with the conflicts in valuation which are likely to arise from the differences of opinion among the numerous appraisers of merchandise. In many instances the estimates of value must be conjectural, and thus as many different rates of value may be established as there are appraisers. These differences in valuation may also be increased by the inclination which, without the slightest imputation on ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Tyler • John Tyler
... examination of the early copies, and trusted to his own insight "to settle the genuine text." The critical ingenuity of editors and commentators, before the authority of the Folios was established, betrayed them into inevitable error. The amusing variety of conjectural readings was met by the exquisite satire of Fielding,(21) as well as by the heavy censure of Grub Street. "It is to be wished," says a catchpenny publication, "that the original text of Shakespeare were left unaltered for every English reader to understand. ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... St. Peter.[683] Unfortunately, the secret treaty, if it ever existed, has never come to light; nor have we the testimony of a single person who pretends to have seen it, or to be acquainted with its contents. Indeed, the circumstances of the case seem to render such a united effort as the conjectural treaty supposes either Quixotic or superfluous—Quixotic, if the two monarchs, without the concurrence of the empire, whose crown had passed from Charles, not to his son Philip, but to his brother Ferdinand, should institute a scheme for a general crusade against ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... coast-line shows breaks in various places: De Witt's land is not connected with the coast of Willems-rivier; the coast-line of Eendrachtsland does not run on; there is uncertainty as regards what is now called Shark-bay; the coast facing Houtmans Abrolhos is a conjectural one only; the coast-line facing Tortelduyf is even altogether wanting; Dedelsland and 't Land van de Leeuwin are not marked by unbroken lines. This fragmentary knowledge sufficiently accounts for the fact, that about ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... emendations are purely conjectural; the least unsatisfactory being Cornill's: The houses ... shall be torn down against which the Chaldeans are coming to fight with mounds and sword and to fill with the corpses of men whom I have ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... on the Whales, think it not improbable that he visited the Bermudas; but it seems much more likely, that he should amuse himself with forming an imaginary scene, than that so important an incident, as a visit to America, should have been left floating in conjectural probability. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... settled, that he should write an account of the Isle of Sky, which Dr. Johnson promised to revise. He said, Mr. M'Queen should tell all that he could; distinguishing what he himself knew, what was traditional, and what conjectural. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... too much on the other. Besides, Berthier gave no orders of himself; he thought it enough to repeat exactly the very letter of Napoleon's commands; for, as to their spirit, either from fatigue or habit, he was incessantly confounding the positive with the conjectural ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... is any truth in this conjectural explanation of the custom, we can readily understand why other Asiatic goddesses of fertility were served in like manner by eunuch priests. These feminine deities required to receive from their male ministers, who personated the divine lovers, the means of discharging their beneficent ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the alarm generally entertained of that encroaching and immense power. He even thinks that, even if she possessed Constantinople, she could not long retain it. As all this is future, and of course conjectural, we may legitimately express our doubts of any authority on the subject. That Russia does not think with the Marquis is evident, for all her real movements for the last fifty years have been but preliminaries to the seizure ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... incorporated in the mass of merchandise for sale in a neutral country it is an unwarranted and inquisitorial proceeding to detain shipments for examination as to whether those goods are ultimately destined for the enemy's country or use. Whatever may be the conjectural conclusions to be drawn from trade statistics, which, when stated by value, are of uncertain evidence as to quantity, the United States maintains the right to sell goods into the general stock of a neutral country, and denounces as illegal and unjustifiable ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... conjectural science is divided into natural and judicial. The first is confined to the study of exploring natural effects, as change of weather, winds and storms—hurricanes, thunder, floods, earthquakes, and the ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... trial. As each leader kept to himself the names of his proselytes, and as Monday Gell was the only one of these who turned traitor, any opinion as to the numbers actually engaged must appear altogether conjectural. One witness said nine thousand; another, six thousand six hundred. These statements were probably extravagant, though not more so than Governor Bennett's assertion, on the other side, that "all who were actually concerned had been brought ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... not true,' said Medb; 'for Conchobar is in his sickness at Emain and the Ulstermen with him, with all the best [Note: Conjectural; some letters missing. For the Ulster sickness, see Introduction.] of their warriors; and my messengers have come and brought me ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... which he so strangely found himself, he had fits of impulse to leap out and take the next train back. But, back where? He had the assurance of his colored friend and brother that forward was New York. Backward was the void conjectural. Slowly the dawn whitened at the window. He raised the curtain and saw the rocks and fences and snow of a winter's landscape—saw them with a shock which, lying prone as he was, gave him the sensation of staggering. It was true, then: the thing he had still ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... throw a bridge between those two great divisions of the public. Literary Miscellanies are classed among philological studies. The studies of philology formerly consisted rather of the labours of arid grammarians and conjectural critics, than of that more elegant philosophy which has, within our own time, been introduced into literature, and which, by its graces and investigation, augment the beauties of original genius. This delightful province has been termed in Germany the AEsthetic, from a Greek term signifying ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... theatre for the delusions of imagination), the nightly forest noises, the glimpse, perhaps, through the leaves, of a painted savage face, uncertain whether of redman or Devil, but more likely of the latter, above all, that measureless mystery of the unknown and conjectural stretching away illimitable on all sides and vexing the mind, somewhat as physical darkness does, with intimation and misgiving,—under all these influences, whatever seeds of superstition had in any way got over from the Old World would find an only too ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Chouan movements, of which Burke here complains, has never been fully explained. The poltroonery of the Bourbon princes, and the factions of the emigrants, throw a certain but not a complete light on it; and though conjectural explanations are obvious enough, there is little ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... hill of gentle slope, green as grass; and it is backed close against a steep mountain-side, of which the tree-trunks are conjectural, for I never saw any, the trees resembling rather one continuous leafy tree-top, run out high and far over the ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... the walls. The use to which we have put them is quite in harmony with the spirit of Mesopotamian architecture, but there is no direct evidence of their presence in these buildings. In this particular our restoration is conjectural. ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... like most others, have only resulted occasionally in one that will bear the test of examination after it has been placed aside, and carefully considered when the impression of novelty has worn off. I think we may safely appeal to all critics who occupy themselves much with conjectural criticism, and ask them if TIME does not frequently impair the complacency with which they regard their efforts on ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... perhaps more nice than wise as to why such a condition should have been appointed; and yet it will sometimes force itself upon the thoughtful mind. The answer to it must in great measure be conjectural, but may we not suppose that one design of it was to do away with the last vestige of self-righteousness in man? If Moses had struck the rock with something more powerful than the little rod, the gushing of the waters might have been attributed to his ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... those at which a copy of the respective works was deposited at the Paris Bibliotheque du Conservatoire de Musique, the dates without an asterisk in parentheses are derived from advertisements in French musical journals; the square brackets [ ] enclose conjectural and approximate dates and additional information; and lastly, the dates without parentheses and without brackets were obtained by me direct from the successors of the original German publishers, and consequently are more exact and ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... village scandal, but involved in legal documents, a story so significant and so eloquent to the intelligent, should formerly have been dismissed without notice of any kind, and even now, after the discovery of 1836, with nothing beyond a slight conjectural insinuation. For our parts, we should have been the last amongst the biographers to unearth any forgotten scandal, or, after so vast a lapse of time, and when the grave had shut out all but charitable thoughts, to point any moral censures ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... employed. Sandy Flash was not the game to be unearthed by a loud, numerous, sweeping hunt; traps, pitfalls, secret and unwearied following of his many trails, were what was needed. So much time had elapsed that the beginning must be a conjectural beating of the bushes, and to this end several small companies were organized, and the country between the Octorara and the Delaware very ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... cause for the practice which suggests itself to me and that must be owned to be purely conjectural, is that within the Sotadic Zone there is a blending of the masculine and feminine temperaments, a crasis which elsewhere occurs only sporadically. Hence the male feminisme whereby the man becomes patiens as well as agens, and the woman a tribade, a votary of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... grandeur and melody than for their exact connexion with the context or bearing upon his meaning. The consequence was a certain gorgeous haziness and bewilderment, which made the task of translating his harangues rather troublesome and conjectural. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... masses gave it to the pope. What the popes did with it we know. That is history. What the emperors would have done with it is matter for conjecture. It is very probable that they would have abused the power as badly as the popes did, but conjectural history is idle. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... take first the fact of biological evolution. Why has it been selected as the basis of the system? Is it really a fact, or is it only a more or less conjectural and plausible theory? ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... millions. This genius owned, or edited, a weekly paper already dear to the populace, and one day he announced in its columns a species of lottery—ignoble word dignified by the use here made of it. Readers of adequate culture were invited to exercise their learning and their wit in the conjectural completion of a sentence—no quotation, but an original apophthegm—whereof one word was represented by a blank. Each competitor sent, together with the fruit of his eager brain, a small sum of money, and the brilliant ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... this strange relation of the adventures of Antonio de Faria are so extremely corrupt as to defy even conjectural commentary.—E.] ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... overflowing—was still there, mingling with its last emotions! Was I never more to look upon that radiant form? never more behold that face so divinely fair? never more listen to that melodious voice? Never more! The negative answer to these mental interrogatives—though only conjectural—was the bitterest reflection ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... granted, then, from this very literal survey of the text, that the Sonnets are autobiographical, we find their study divided into two branches: (1) the story that the poems themselves tell by the most simple and direct statements; and (2) the conjectural explanation of the personages of that story, involving a careful historical comparison of names and dates, but amounting, after all is said that can be said, simply to conjecture, incapable of direct proof. The first part is to the real lover of Shakespeare and of poetry ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... lady he married in Maidenhead. If one short sweet spell of constancy and heart repose interrupted the plunging torrent of his profligate life, we will not deprive him of that long past possibility. After that conjectural date, alas, he seems to have plunged deeper and deeper into the shaking ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... it has been found to correspond properly with nature; it would then be held a proper explanation of those natural appearances with which it corresponded; and, the more of those phenomena that were thus explained by the theory, the more would that, which had been first conjectural, be converted into a theory legitimately ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... ports and her commerce, as well as the land communication for the French laborers, who were accustomed annually to gather in the harvest in Spain. Indeed, she must grant a free communication for travellers and traders through her whole country. In that case it is not conjectural, it is certain, the clubs will give law in the provinces; Bourgoing, or some such miscreant, will give law ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... themselves: they are more, they are all: For them are past and future spread together Like a green landscape lit by golden weather: For them the rhythmic change conjectural Of time and place is but the question whether Their God shall stand (as stand he must) ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... The translation of this line is founded solely on a conjectural emendation of the text. The wrong alluded to ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... refuge in a shadowy world of dreams and conjectures, which dissolve as you try to grasp them. The doctrine offered for my acceptance cannot be stated without qualifications and reserves and modifications, which make it as useless as it is vague and conjectural. I may learn in time to submit to the inevitable; I cannot drug myself with phrases which evaporate as soon as they are exposed to a serious test. You profess to give me the only motives of conduct; and I know that at the first demand to define them honestly—to ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... offended, sir," he said, "and indeed quite naturally, because I have not spoken about this matter to you before; but really it appears so hopeless, and I hate speaking of things that are only conjectural. I suppose you had set your heart on Miss ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... France and Mr. Buckle in England have been the foremost champions, would bear the same relation to political events as Optics and Astronomy do to the phenomena of light and of the solar and sidereal systems. It would deal less with the conjectural and probable than with the predicable and positive. 'In the moral as in the physical world,' say its leading advocates, 'are invariable rule, inevitable sequence, undeviating regularity,' constituting 'one vast scheme of universal order.' ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... only two layers of cells, and is known as the gastrula, to be the ontogenetic recapitulation, maintained by tenacious heredity, of a primitive common progenitor of all the Metazoa, the Gastraea. At a later date (1895) Monticelli discovered that this conjectural ancestral form is still preserved in certain primitive Coelenterata—Pemmatodiscus, Kunstleria, ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... offer even a conjectural solution of the problems involved in the differences thus shown to exist between populations that are ethnologically identical, or that stand at nearly the same level of educational ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... the structural methods of the pre-Homeric architecture of Tiryns and Mycen, as set forth by Drpfeld and by Perrot and Chipiez, can hardly be regarded as proved in all details, since much of the argument advanced for this derivation rests on more or less conjectural restorations of the existing remains, it seems to be fairly well established that the Doric order, and historic Greek architecture in general, trace their genesis in large measure back in direct line to this prehistoric art. The remarkable feature of this ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... him strive to keep a free, open sense; cleared from the mists of prejudice, above all from the paralysis of cant; and directed rather to the Book itself than to the Editor of the Book. Who or what such Editor may be, must remain conjectural, and even insignificant:[1] it is a voice publishing tidings of the Philosophy of Clothes; undoubtedly a Spirit addressing Spirits: whoso hath ears, let ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... therefore, saw of her in a cursory view was very little; in truth, mainly something that was not she. The woman herself was a shadowy, conjectural creature who had little to do with the outlines presented to Sherton eyes; a shape in the gloom, whose true description could only be approximated by putting together a movement now and a glance then, in that patient and long-continued attentiveness which nothing but watchful ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... understood that there was such a country, until at length it was mapped, measured and circumnavigated. Before this process began, there was a dialectical stage, when it was hotly contested whether there could possibly be upon the globe lands antipodean to Europe; and both earlier and later there were conjectural stages when makers of maps, having no certain data, but feeling sure that the blank southern hemisphere ought to be filled up somehow, exercised a vagrant fancy and satisfied a long-felt want by decorating their drawings with representations of a Terra Incognita having not even a casual ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... Knight in his "Inquiry into the Symbolical Language of Ancient Art," not trustworthy, being little more than a mass of conjectural memoranda, but the heap is ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... direction is not restrained to some definite means, but comprehendeth all the means and ways possible; for the poet saith well SAPIENTIBUS UNDIQUE LATAE SUNT VIAE, and where there is the greatest plurality of change, there is the greatest singularity of choice. Besides as a conjectural direction maketh a casual effect, so a particular and restrained direction is no less casual than an uncertain. For those particular means whereunto it is tied may be out of your power or may be accompanied ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... fixed his canon against self-slaughter,' and, therefore, he prays for natural dissolution, by any wasting disease, which may 'thaw' and dissolve his 'too too solid flesh.' This, perhaps, you will consider merely conjectural criticism: plausible, but not demonstrative. I own it has a higher character in my eyes; and, unless I am greatly mistaken, even the ghost of his own father glances at his adipose ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... that the strong assertions of so many investigators in favor of Brentano and Loeben have made careful study of the matter appear not worth while; the problem was apparently solved. And since Heine never committed himself in this connection, the matter will, in all probability, remain forever conjectural. This much, however, is irrefutable: even if Heine knew in 1823 the five Loreleidichtungen, that had then been written, those by Brentano, Niklas Vogt, Eichendorff, Schreiber, and Loeben, and if he borrowed what he needed from all of them, he borrowed ...
— Graf von Loeben and the Legend of Lorelei • Allen Wilson Porterfield
... declaration had on the different members of the household. Sir Robert, after turning pale and saying "God bless my soul! you don't mean it," to the doctor, rallied from the shock as soon as he had left the house, and refused to believe anything of the kind, talked about "the art conjectural," and did all he could to impress this view on Miss Noel, who promptly gave herself up as lost, told him that she had made her will "before leaving town for the North" the year before, asked that her body might be "taken back to dear old England," if this could be done without risk to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... excellent missionary's general deficiency, furnishes a striking confirmation of the views and sagacity of a critic of the North American Review, writing on that topic, in 1825. And the more so, as those views were conjectural, but they were the conjectures of one who ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... of quartz, though in these banket reefs the gold-bearing solutions would seem to have come up through the interstitial spaces of the conglomerate instead of in the more or less open fissures of the gold-bearing quartz-veins. The chemical conditions under which gold is thus deposited are still conjectural. Gold has long been known to exist in sea-water, in the form of an iodide or a chloride; and one skilful metallurgist at Johannesburg told me that he believed there was as much gold in a cubic mile of sea-water as the whole then annual output ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... contains a relation of most of the facts which had come under my own inspection at the time it was written, interspersed with some conjectural observations. Since then Dr. G. Pearson has established an inquiry into the validity of my principal assertion, the result of which cannot but be highly flattering to my feelings. It contains not a single case which I think can be called an ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... the heavens was supposed to find support upon the outlying circle of mountains. But the precise mechanism through which the observed revolution of the heavenly bodies was effected remains here, as with the Egyptian cosmology, somewhat conjectural. The simple fact would appear to be that, for the Chaldeans as for the Egyptians, despite their most careful observations of the tangible phenomena of the heavens, no really satisfactory mechanical conception ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... estimates is evident, and if he did not always succeed, his failures are not discreditable. Mr. Fitzpatrick does not believe that the autobiography compels a revision of established historical judgments, although it "presents authority for much in our political history hitherto somewhat conjectural and records political motives and activities of the period in an illuminating and suggestive manner." On reading this work one must agree with its editor that, "in analyzing men and measures, Van Buren all unconsciously paints a picture ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... of the ill-starred colony and the conjectural refuge of its remnants among the Croatan Indians of Virginia—as Raleigh named the whole region, including the present North Carolina—fittingly completes the history of Sir Walter's American enterprise. The failure of the colony ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... 15 [ {anesis}: a conjectural emendation of {aneos}. (Perhaps however, the word was rather {ananeosis}, "after a short time there was a renewal of evils"). Grote wishes to translate this clause, "after a short time there was an abatement of ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... will you allow me to have the Greek court I mentioned?' she asked tentatively, after a long break in their discourse, as she scanned the green stones along the base of the arcade, with a conjectural countenance ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... a work of compromises, or of conjectural interpretations of the Sacred Scriptures, neither is it a paraphrase, but a strict [strictly] literal rendering. It neither adds nor takes away; but aims to express the original with the utmost clearness and force, and with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... these dimensions from Middleton's Plan of the Palatine Hill (ut supra, p. 156), but until the site has been excavated they must be more or less conjectural. ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... "Collar taken from the Spanish Armada," which however was here in 1547, and has been in later times filled with lead to make it more terrible. It was only a collar for detention of ordinary prisoners. A conjectural model of the rack is also shown, but the only pictorial authority for this instrument (at no time a legal punishment) is a woodcut in Foxe's Martyrs, the illustrations for which were drawn from ...
— Authorised Guide to the Tower of London • W. J. Loftie |
