"Inconceivable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were led on by the retreating Romans into a broken and marshy ground, where their movements were in every way impeded, and thousands were suddenly fixed immovable in the deep morass. At this moment, the enemy, by preconcerted signals, with inconceivable rapidity, being light-armed, formed; and, returning upon our now scattered forces, made horrible slaughter of all who had pushed farthest from the main body of the army. Dismay seized our soldiers, the panic spread, increased by the belief that a fresh ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... something which appeared like a windmill in motion, as seen from a distance on a dark night. A wind of inconceivable ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... their circulation, interesting microscopic objects) for oxygen-breeding vegetables; and for animals, the pickings of any pond; a minnow or two, an eft; a few of the delicate pond-snails (unless they devour your plants too rapidly): water-beetles, of activity inconceivable, and that wondrous bug the Notonecta, who lies on his back all day, rowing about his boat-shaped body, with one long pair of oars, in search of animalcules, and the moment the lights are out, turns head over heels, rights himself, and opening a pair ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... distinct. But in the annelid the mouth is on the second segment; here it is on the fourth. It has evidently travelled backward. That the mouth of an animal can migrate seems at first impossible, but if we had time to examine the embryology of annelids and insects, it would no longer appear inconceivable or improbable. And its backward migration brought it among the legs which were grasping and chewing the food. And in vertebrates the mouth has changed its position, though not in exactly the same way. Our present mouth is probably ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... that occasion his total following was estimated to amount to 300,000 or 400,000 persons, and the journey from Delhi to Lahore occupied two months. The burden royal progresses on this scale must have imposed on the country is inconceivable. Jahangir died in his beloved Kashmir. He planted the road from Delhi to Lahore with trees, set up as milestones the kos minars, some of which are still standing, and built fine sarais at ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... refuse the implication which comes along with it: that only theoretically, only as it were by deference to others, did the attribute, in that particular apprehension of it, move him to admiration. I do not, of course, mean anything so inconceivable as that he questioned the loveliness of the "pure in heart"; I mean merely that he questioned the artificial value which has been set upon physical chastity—and that when departure from this was the circumstance ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... he made Joe Gargery, not a man one might easily find in a forge; and Esther Summerson, not a girl one may easily meet at a dance; and Little Dorrit, who does not come to do a day's sewing; not that the man and the women are inconceivable, but that they are unfortunately improbable. They are creatures created through a creating mind that worked its six days for the love of good, and never rested until the seventh, the final Sabbath. But granting that they are the counterpart, the heavenly side, of caricature, this is not to ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... grave persons were offended at the vehement sentiments expressed in the Robbers; and the unquestioned ability with which these extravagances were expressed, but made the matter worse. To Schiller's superiors, above all, such things were inconceivable: he might perhaps be a very great genius, but was certainly a dangerous servant for his Highness the Grand Duke of Wuertemberg. Officious people mingled themselves in the affair: nay, the graziers of the Alps were brought to bear upon it. The Grisons ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... glanced about the room, at the far, closed doors where it was not inconceivable that old Miriam was lurking, and strode over to her and began talking very jerkily and huskily, ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... but their representatives in Europe are, as far as is known only to be found in the north-west highlands of Scotland, and in the island of Lewis, which consists entirely of them. And it is to be remembered, as a proof of their inconceivable antiquity, that they have been upheaved and shifted long before the Cambrian rocks were laid down "unconformably" on ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... Lemaea or of the Anthesteria—for neither is mentioned by name,—but of the Dionysia [Greek: epi Lenai]. The Basileus and the Epimeletae together directed the procession; Page 78 but the basileus alone controlled the [dramatic] contest. Here again, it is inconceivable that either Anthesteria or Lenaea should be omitted; so both must be included ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... keenly from under the quiet droop of languid lids at the Carrolls sitting in their gay fluff and flutter of silks and muslins and laces, and wondered, especially concerning Mrs. Carroll and her sister-in-law. It seemed almost inconceivable that they were ignorant, and if not, how entirely innocent! And then the expressions of their pretty, childish faces disarmed him as they sat there, their dark, graceful heads drooping before the divine teaching ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... felt his curiosity growing, and made a rash vow to find out the truth at any price. It was inconceivable, he thought, that Spicca should still have perfect control of his faculties, considering the extent of his potations. The second flask was growing light, and Orsino himself had not taken more than two or three glasses. Now a Chianti flask never ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... a goral which ran down the sheer wall opposite to us at full speed, bouncing from rock to rock as though made of India rubber. It was almost inconceivable that anything except a bird could move along the face of that cliff, and yet the goral ran apparently as easily as though it had been on level ground. I missed it beautifully and the animal disappeared into ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... the possibility of such serious consequences as offending the tutor under whose care we were placed, I (wholly ignorant of the impudence and recklessness of public school boys) considered such a solution of the mystery inconceivable. Moreover, everything around me was so strange, and so entirely 20different from the habits of life in which I had been hitherto brought up, that for the time my mind was completely bewildered. I appeared to have lost my powers of judgment, and to have relapsed, as far as intellect was concerned, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... were in constant apprehension of parting our cables, in which case we must have been almost instantly dashed to atoms against the rocks that were just to leeward of us, and upon which the sea broke with inconceivable fury, and a noise not less loud than thunder. We lowered all the main and fore-yards, let go the small bower, veered a cable and a half on the best bower, and having bent the sheet-cable, stood by the anchor all the rest ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... was the gray, ugly old palace, and its many courts, just as void of system and as inconceivable as when we were burrowing through its bewildering passages. No end of historical romances might be made out of this castle of the popes; and there ought to be a ghost in every room, and droves of them in some ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... stanzas. They seemed addressed less to the God of mercy, to the Son who listens to prayer, than to the inflexible Father, to Him whom the Old Testament shows us, overcome with anger, scarcely appeased by the smoke of the pyres, the inconceivable attractions of burnt-offerings. In this chant it asserted itself still more savagely, for it threatened to strike the waters, and break in pieces the mountains, and to rend asunder the depths of heaven by thunder-bolts. ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... expended its last flickering powers in undignified gibes at the expense of Pitt and his regicide peace. Fate denied to him the privilege of seeing Malmesbury again expelled from France and whipped back "like a cur to his kennel." The great Irishman passed away, amidst inconceivable gloom, in his 68th year, at Beaconsfield (8th July 1797). In the view of Windham and other extreme Royalists, Burke was wholly right, and Pitt's weakness was the cause of all ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... thought of the long, cheerful day to be enjoyed, and planned some rural walk, or rustic entertainment. The ills that flesh is heir to, if they occurred for a moment, appeared like idle visions. They were inconceivable as real things. As I heard the lark singing in "a glorious privacy of light," and saw the boughs of the green and gold laburnum waving at my window, and had my fancy filled with images of natural beauty, I felt a glow of fresh life in my veins, and my soul was inebriated with joy. ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... hand over his mouth with a quick but awkward schoolgirl gesture, inconceivable to any who had known her usual languid elegance of motion, and held it there. He struggled angrily, impatiently, reproachfully, and then, with a sudden characteristic weakness that seemed as much of a ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... is inconceivable how the city of Rome, whose adjacent fields were untilled, and whose vineyards had been frozen the year before, could for twelve months support such a confluence of people. He extols the hospitality of the citizens, and the abundance of food which ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... of the views they take; it is something to me so inconceivable. I am utterly at a loss how it can be ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... correspond apparently to our present stewed (dried) prunes. It is inconceivable how this sauce can be white in color, but, as a condiment and if taken in small quantity, it has our ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... engaged in earnest dialogue, as if in discussion. The chief promised his followers a spectacle,—a "bit of sport," as he facetiously termed it. Clancy has been forecasting torture, but in his worst fear of it could not conceive any so terrible as that in store for him. It is in truth a cruelty inconceivable, worthy a savage, or Satan himself. Made known to Chisholm, though hardened this outlaw's heart, he at first shrinks from assisting in its ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... It was inconceivable any literate person in the United States could be ignorant of my position. "It is neither," I returned with some dignity. "I am here to do you a favor. To help you in your work." And I explained ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... not believe it. On the other hand, there was the British private. I have known him all my life, God bless him! Thank God, it is my privilege to know him now, as he lies knocked to bits, cheerily, in our hospital. It was inconceivable that out of sheer funk he could abandon a popular officer. And his was not even a scratch crowd, but a hard-bitten regiment with all sorts of glorious ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... Still less was it conceivable that Catherine would give him the slightest pretext for such daring. The large check that Mr. Arrowpoint was to draw in Klesmer's name seemed to make him as safe an inmate as a footman. Where marriage is inconceivable, a girl's sentiments ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... in that of small capitalists. Otherwise we might see that these two forces, interwoven in interest at nearly every point, are also well matched and likely to remain so. And we should see also that it is inconceivable that they will long escape the law of social evolution, stronger than ever to-day, toward organization, ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... of religion, the conception of a person on the other hand tends to degenerate into a new kind of idolatry. Neither criticism nor experience allows us to suppose that there are interferences with the laws of nature; the idea is inconceivable to us and at variance with facts. The philosopher or theologian who could realize to mankind that a person is a law, that the higher rule has no exception, that goodness, like knowledge, is also power, would breathe a new religious life ...
— Statesman • Plato
... faithful companions of poets; but those charming phantoms scarcely visit the rest of us, even for the space of a season. We do not know how to retain them with us. If the fair shade of some Perdita should ever, through some inconceivable whim, take a notion to traverse my brain, she would hurt herself horribly against heaps of dog-eared parchments. Happy the poets!—their white hairs never scare away the hovering shades of Helens, Francescas, Juliets, Julias, and Dorotheas! But the nose alone of ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... stands, there was born—or brought out from England as an infant—a little boy named Henry Kellsey, who as a child took a great fancy to the Amerindians who came to trade at Fort Nelson. As he played with them, and they returned his affection, he learnt their language, and—for some inconceivable reason—this gave great offence to the stupid governor of the fort (indeed, when Kellsey as a grown man, some years afterwards, compiled a vocabulary of the Kri language for the use of traders, the Hudson's Bay Company ordered it to be suppressed). Stupid Governor Geyer ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... awhile to good Papa and my sisters in Paris. But it was not in my nature to remain and be a burden on them at home. I returned again to London, with recommendations: and encountered inconceivable disasters in the effort to earn a living honorably. Of all the wealth about me—the prodigal, insolent, ostentatious wealth—none fell to my share. What right has anybody to be rich? I defy you, whoever you may be, to prove that anybody has a right ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... wine, though suitable enough in considering a small State in which everybody was the effectual inspector of everybody, is entirely beside the mark under modern conditions, in which we are to have an extraordinarily higher standard of individual privacy and an amplitude and quantity of migration inconceivable to the Academic imagination. We may accept his principle and put this particular freedom (of the use of wine) among the distinctive privileges of maturity, and still find all that a modern would think of ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... imposed on them. Yet peace was not secure for a moment. The Kickapoos and Mascoutins would not leave their neighbors, the Illinois, at rest; the Saginaws made raids on the Miamis; and a general war seemed imminent. "The difficulty is inconceivable of keeping these western tribes quiet," writes the governor, ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... so much worn by men who have returned from the Haj, are annually exported to Mecca, where they are sold, as articles of real Arabic manufacture, to the confiding pilgrims. All these silks and cloths fade and wear out with inconceivable rapidity, but, until this occurs, the purchaser is but rarely able to detect the fraud of which he has been a victim. Weapons, too, are made in exact imitation of those produced by the natives of Celebes or Java, and it is often not until the silver watering ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... before the city swarmed with moving thousands of Medes and Persians. At this time no warriors were finer in appearance than the battlemen of the Persian prince. Their discipline had reached to an almost inconceivable degree of perfection. The wishes and desires of their great commander had become their law; and each one vied with the other in rendering obedience to his orders. Their fame had spread throughout lower Asia, and through many ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... Mekka." On the dignified bearing and self-possession of our youthful sovereign, the Khan enlarges in the strain of eulogy which might be expected from one to whom the sight of the ensigns of sovereignty borne by a female hand was in itself an almost inconceivable novelty, declaring, that "the justice and virtues of her Majesty have obliterated the name of Nushirvan from the face of the earth!" But the remarks of the simple-minded Parsees on the same subject will be found, from their honest sincerity, we suspect, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... Vienna to draw up the articles for her marriage-contract. "I should blush," said she, "if that proof of the quackery of my education were shown to me. I do not believe that I ever put a pencil to that drawing." However, what had been taught her she knew perfectly well. Her facility of learning was inconceivable, and if all her teachers had been as well informed and as faithful to their duty as the Abbe Metastasio, who taught her Italian, she would have attained as great a superiority in the other branches of her education. The Queen spoke that language with grace and ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... admitted unworthiness of its object. When it is not the reason for marriage, it can hardly fail to grow from the conjugal relation between one man and one woman, if the mutual duties belonging to that relation be held sacred. It is inconceivable that a mother should not love her child, inevitably cast upon her protection from the first moment of his being; the father who extends a father's care over his children finds in that care a constant source of love; and the children, waking into conscious life ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... or the other, you will hear it. It has been strange to go about all these years among my Unitarian and dissenting friends and to know that this would be the inevitable end of it. I have struggled alone for peace and certainty. I cannot get them for myself. There is an august, an inconceivable possibility which makes my heart stand still when I think of it, that the Catholic Church may verily have them to give, as she says she has. I am weak—I shall submit—I shall throw myself upon ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... are times when waves of passion sweep over him in such prodigious volume as to roll him to and fro like a pebble in the surf. Gusts of emotion blow over him with such violence as to hurl him pro and con with inconceivable fury. In such moods, if it were not for the relief offered by writing verse we really do not know what would happen to him. His verse written under the impulse of such emotions marks him as one of the greatest masters of passion, wild and yet restrained, objectionable and ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... "it is level with the water's edge, and towards the sea, as steep to as a wall of a house; that he sounded frequently within twice the ship's length of it with a line of one hundred and fifty fathoms, or nine hundred feet, without being able to reach the bottom." How wonderful, how inconceivable, that such stupendous fabrics should rise into existence from the silent but incessant, and almost imperceptible, labours of such ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various
... to the star part in any conversation. He likes nothing better than to drive home his point and then look about exultingly. He says gleefully, "I told you so." That he can ever be wrong is inconceivable to him. He knows the facts since he can readily manufacture them himself. He is self-satisfied, for in his own opinion he has never lost an argument. He is a brave and ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... The inconceivable uncertainty of the climate is, however, such, that I will not venture to state about what time this change takes place, for it is certain, that let me name what time I would, it would be easy for any weather journaliser to prove ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... fundamental safeguarding of property and of individual right. This is the high enterprise of the new day: To lift everything that concerns our life as a Nation to the light that shines from the hearthfire of every man's conscience and vision of the right. It is inconceivable that we should do this as partisans; it is inconceivable we should do it in ignorance of the facts as they are or in blind haste. We shall restore, not destroy. We shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it may be modified, not as ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... operations, indeed, were at first as inconceivable to me as a crab's or a cockchafer's. That is where all the trouble came in. For that reason alone they fascinated me and aggrieved me. From the conditions of our acquaintance—we were colleagues—I had to study him with some thoroughness, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... that individual with a fiery sideglance—was a debased idiot and the misbegotten son of a yet greater and still more debased idiot. The cashier was a green hand and an imbecile besides. It was incredible, impossible, that the overcharging had been done deliberately; that was inconceivable. But the honor of his establishment was at stake. They should both, garcon and cashier, be discharged on the spot. First, however, he would rectify all mistakes. Would monsieur intrust the miserable addition to him for a moment, for one short ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... essential nature of what is here called "directability." The man at the wheel on board the Vaterland, so long as the fires burn and the oil continues to lubricate the engines, has a power in his hands that is almost inconceivable. The ship that he is handling weighs more than the 870,000 men that comprise ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... more:—From the flimsy manner in which most modern houses are built, where every step on the stairs, and along the floors, is felt all over the house; the higher the story, the greater the vibration. It is inconceivable how much the sick suffer by having anybody overhead. In the solidly built old houses, which, fortunately, most hospitals are, the noise and shaking is comparatively trifling. But it is a serious cause of suffering, in lightly built houses, and with the irritability peculiar to some ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... In passing down an alley in the rear of the Rue Morgue, the fugitive's attention was arrested by a light gleaming from the open window of Madame L'Espanaye's chamber, in the fourth story of her house. Rushing to the building, it perceived the lightning rod, clambered up with inconceivable agility, grasped the shutter, which was thrown fully back against the wall, and, by its means, swung itself directly upon the headboard of the bed. The whole feat did not occupy a minute. The shutter was kicked open again by the Ourang-Outang as it ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... traditions. The views of others are just as dramatic, for the phenomenon is actuated by will of some sort anyhow, and wills give rise to dramas. The spiritist view, as held by Messrs. Hyslop and Hodgson, sees a "will to communicate," struggling through inconceivable layers of obstruction in the conditions. I have heard Hodgson liken the difficulties to those of two persons who on earth should have only dead-drunk servants to use as their messengers. The scientist, for his part, sees a "will to deceive," watching its chance in all of us, and able ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... opposed than these two impulsions; one having for its object change, the other immutability, and yet it is these two notions that exhaust the notion of humanity, and a third FUNDAMENTAL IMPULSION, holding a medium between them, is quite inconceivable. How then shall we re- establish the unity of human nature, a unity that appears completely destroyed by this primitive ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... unremitted labor; indeed your services were so great that it is hard to make the world believe it. Many have been most generously rewarded for services having no more proportion to yours than a mole hill to a mountain—and that all this great work should be brought about by a woman is inconceivable to vulgar minds, but I hope and believe that justice ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... hypochondriac, thinks he is swelling up like the "pipsy" husband. Isabella, in the same play, says "keeping begins to be as ridiculous as matrimony.... The insolence and expense of their mistresses has almost tired out all but the old and doting part of mankind." It is not inconceivable that in a freakish or embittered moment this singular woman threw herself with malicious joy into an ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... donc, lorsqu' Othon s'est offert Camille, A-t-il paru contraint? a-t-elle t facile? Son hommage auprs d'elle a-t-il eu plein effet? Comment l'a-t-elle pris, et comment l'a-t-il fait? Where it is almost inconceivable, that the poet could have failed to see the application which might be made of the passage, especially as he allows the confidant to answer, J'ai tout vu. That Attila should treat the kings who are dependent on him like good-for-nothing fellows: Ils ne sont pas venus, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... Trainers of performing animals are aware how these differ in plasticity of disposition and amenability to discipline; the spiritual adviser, who knows his business, must be quick to detect these various qualities in the minds of his penitents and to utilize them to the best advantage. It is inconceivable, for instance, that the convent-foundress Orsola was other than a neuropathic nonentity—a blind instrument in the hands of what we should call her backers, chiefest of whom (in Naples) were two Spanish priests, Borii and Navarro, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... with their ignorance of the people themselves. It is to be feared, however, that their disinclination to introduce poor laws arises less from actual ignorance, than from an illiberal selfishness. The facts of the case are these: In Ireland the whole support of the inconceivable multitude of paupers, who swarm like locusts over the surface of the country, rests upon the middle and lower classes, or rather upon the latter, for there is scarcely such a thing in this unhappy country as a middle class. In not one out of a thousand instances ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... settled, all eyes were turned to Mount Vernon. The masses took for granted that Washington would respond to every call of duty the public chose to make, and it was inconceivable that anyone else should fill the first term of that great executive experiment. The universal confidence in Washington and belief that he was to guide the Constitution over the more critical of its shoals, had operated more than any other factor in the ratification of that ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Brazier, as he feels her pulse, "You see, my child, that there's a God after all. You have been the cause of a great misfortune, and you must now repair it. The finger of God is in all this [it is inconceivable what they don't say the finger of God is in!]. Religion is religion: submit, resign yourself, and that will quiet you better than my drugs. Above all, resolve to stay here and take care of your ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... their way to the environs; market farmers with their rude carts; wine-sellers; fig-dealers; peddlers of oranges, of dates, of anisette, of water; of macaroni. Through the throng innumerable calashes dashed to and fro, crowded down, in true Neapolitan fashion, with inconceivable numbers; for in Naples the calash is not full unless a score or so are in some way clinging to it—above, below, before, behind. There, too, most marked of all, were the lazaroni, whose very existence in Naples is a sign of the ease with which life is sustained in so fair a spot, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... outlaw had more than revived all the old enthusiasm for him. We know on the authority of Burke that the acclamations of joy with which he was welcomed by the populace were inconceivable, and that the marks of public favor which he received were by no means confined to the lower order of the people. Several merchants and other gentlemen of large property and of considerable interest openly espoused ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... another near the left shore, where he halted at two large mat-houses. Here, as at the three houses below, the inhabitants were occupied in splitting and drying salmon. The multitudes of this fish are almost inconceivable. The water is so clear that they can readily be seen at the depth of fifteen or twenty feet; but at this season they float in such quantities down the stream, and are drifted ashore, that the Indians have only to collect, split, and dry them on the ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... developments drew attention to them. That she should consent to accompany him to this place, and that after she was there should submit, as she did, to taking all the business of the scheme upon herself, would be inconceivable in a woman of a self-respecting character; but Louise Van Burnam cared for little save her own aggrandisement, and rather enjoyed, so far as we can see, this very doubtful escapade, whose real meaning and murderous purpose she was so ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... The Abbe Prevost, who was in England at the time, says that he refused the degree out of modesty; later biographers have differed in their views as to whether modesty was one of Handel's characteristics. Others have supposed that he refused to pay the fee of L100 that was demanded, but it is inconceivable that a fee should have been demanded for an honorary degree, although it would naturally have been paid by candidates who took the degree in the normal way. The concerts were attended by large audiences, ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... It was inconceivable that Patricia Dale should thus die. And yet I had had an earnest of the devil's ferocity. East of the mountains I could not have imagined a hand ever being raised against her. And I had seen her buffeted and struck down this day. Therefore, I did ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... the pen over the lines with inconceivable rapidity, the writer occasionally glancing over his left arm at the document he was copying. The tortoise-shell cat sat at her master's feet with an air of self-importance and a look which seemed to say, "woe be to him who dare to drive ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... there." Fanny had been listening. Immediately she married Ellen to young Lloyd, and the next moment she went to live in a grand new house built in a twinkling in a vacant lot next to Norman Lloyd's residence, which was the wonder of the city. She reared this castle in Spain with inconceivable swiftness, even while she was turning her head towards Eva on the other side, and prodding her with an admonishing elbow as Mrs. Zelotes had prodded Andrew. "That's Norman Lloyd's nephew dancing with her now," she said. Eva looked at her, smiling. Directly ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... conceive the inexpressible, inconceivable joys that are there! None but they who have tasted of them. Lord, help us to put such a value upon them here, that in order to prepare ourselves for them, we may be willing to forego the loss of all ...
— Miscellaneous Pieces • John Bunyan
... of South America and South Asia; among the jungly banks of the Godavery and the woody shores of the Pamoni, of the Oroonoko, and the Bramahputra—in short, in every sunny clime and region where the rigours of his own winter are not only unknown, but inconceivable. There is something sublime in the mere consideration of the prodigious remoteness from one another of the various points from which these animals have thus been collected; something gratifying to human pride, in the thought that neither the freezing atmosphere of the countries which surround ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... subjects by the eradication of the cause had they known of the existence of such a cause? Would they have spent their time in social festivities and in exchanging compliments had they known that they were on the brink of war? It is inconceivable! It would be a gross libel on them, one and all, to charge such a wanton ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... thrust had served but to exasperate him. The chulos ran to the rescue, waving their pink and blue cloaks. Militona grew pale; the old woman uttered lamentable ejaculations, and sighed like a stranded whale. The public, beholding Juancho's inconceivable awkwardness, commenced one of those tremendous uproars in which the Spanish people excel: a perfect hurricane of insulting epithets, of vociferations and maledictions. "Away with the dog!" was shouted on all sides; "Down with the thief, the assassin! To the galleys with him! To ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... amorphous and crystalline; but whether one or the other of these divisions be considered, their ultimate and common division will be the ATOM. By the atom we understand that portion of matter which admits of no further division, which, though as inconceivable for minuteness as space is for extent, has still definite weight, form, and volume; which under favorable circumstances, has that power or force called cohesion, the intensity of which constitutes strength of material, which every engineer is supposed to understand, but which lies far beyond the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... this ill-starred boy never had a steady drill in anything. He never remained longer at any one school than a year, and he learned at school very little that he needed most to know. In the course of his desultory schooling he picked up some Latin, a little Greek, a good deal of French, and an inconceivable medley of odds and ends of knowledge, which his wonderful memory enabled him to ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... cold and white, like the Shah of Persia's diamond plume. Then the wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms that glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold—the tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... man in the uniform of the Helmans waved his sword, and the Cossacks pulled up their horses and turned them with inconceivable dexterity. This movement showed the length of their column. The gipsy was right, ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... things were true and important, it is inconceivable that the Church Fathers, the very founders of Christianity, should have been all at sea in regard to them, should have held divergent opinions, and should have been discussing these questions one way and the other for ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... placed upon England a greater or more sacred obligation than was hers before:—to see to it that this War accomplishes the freedom, not only of Belgium and Russia and Poland and Serbia and Roumania, but of Ireland also, and of Hungary, and, if Germany so wills it, of Germany herself. It is inconceivable that we should fail; but, if we did fail, we should now have to answer to the soul and conscience of America as to our own conscience and our ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... of the fact that the Jews still had some power of self-government through the Sanhedrin, the great mass of the people hated the Romans with an almost inconceivable fury. The world had never before seen such cruel rulers. The Assyrians had been bad, but the Romans were worse. Think of that form of punishment which they inflicted carelessly every day even for minor crimes—crucifixion! ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... great military heroes of those times. But apparently these temptations rebounded from him as an arrow from a steel plate. When only a boy of seventeen, his noble relatives had been unable to conceive his refusing an honorable place in royalty's household. It had been inconceivable to the Prussian that this Frenchman had not gone to America on a quest solely for military glory. The Jacobin clubs, first by fair promises and then by the demand for his life blood, had sought to force him from liberty to license, from real freedom to debauched ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... the indifferent fashion of the usual American woman of the comfortable classes. She had always had a maid; she could not even dress herself properly without the maid's assistance. Life without a maid was inconceivable; life ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... Custer never would have rushed deliberately on destruction. If, for any reason, he had desired to end his own life, and that is inconceivable, he would not have involved his friends and those whose lives had been entrusted to his care in the final and terrible catastrophe. He was not a reckless commander or one who would plunge into battle with his eyes shut. He was cautious ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... formidable and respectable. These Ishmaels of the sea rendered an account to no man, and treated their prisoners according to the drunken whim of the moment. Flashes of grotesque generosity alternated with longer stretches of inconceivable ferocity, and the skipper who fell into their hands might find himself dismissed with his cargo, after serving as boon companion in some hideous debauch, or might sit at his cabin table with his own nose and his lips served up with ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... simply true; a woman does treat each person as a peculiar person. In other words, she stands for Anarchy; a very ancient and arguable philosophy; not anarchy in the sense of having no customs in one's life (which is inconceivable), but anarchy in the sense of having no rules for one's mind. To her, almost certainly, are due all those working traditions that cannot be found in books, especially those of education; it was she who first ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... works are ever written at all, it is difficult to imagine; but how it is, that, when written, they find publishers, is inconceivable. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... of the world I had my parents point out to me the route of his journey, a journey which would take about five months. To me his return belonged to an inconceivable and unreal future; and, most strange of all, what spoiled for me the pleasure of his home-coming, was that I at that time would be twelve or thirteen years of age—almost a ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... de Calonne, with the inconceivable levity which characterized him, "we have the agreeable resource of believing ourselves the instruments of God, according to the ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... a condition is almost inconceivable, is it not? and in this enlightened age? But it exists, and is only harmful when its victims are stubborn and rebellious. To be cheerful and pay promptly is the only sensible way ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... resources fail him; but Man remains, and the poet needs no more. The destinies of mankind—man himself, taken aloof from his age and his country, and standing in the presence of Nature and of God, with his passions, his doubts, his rare prosperities, and inconceivable wretchedness—will become the chief, if not the sole theme of poetry amongst these nations. Experience may confirm this assertion, if we consider the productions of the greatest poets who have appeared since the world has been turned to democracy. The authors ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... snort together revealed the intruders, and all the monkeys, except pink-face, crowding the trees above the spot where they stood, gazed down upon them with expressions in which unparalleled indignation and inconceivable surprise ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Rhine, as king of Bohemia. When he came upon the scaffold he said, "I have travelled through many countries, and traversed various barbarous nations, yet never found so much cruelty as at home. I have escaped innumerable perils both by sea and land, and surmounted inconceivable difficulties, to suffer innocently in my native place. My blood is likewise sought by those for whom I, and my forefathers, have hazarded our estates; but, Almighty God! forgive them, for they know not what they do." He then went to the block, kneeled down, and exclaimed ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... demand for personality and initiative in elected persons. The press, which was once entirely subordinate politically to parliamentary politics, adopts an attitude towards parliament and party leaders nowadays which would have seemed inconceivable insolence in the days of Lord Palmerston. And there has been a vigorous agitation in support of electoral methods which are manifestly calculated to subordinate "delegated" to ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... leadership in matters of religion is terribly needed in our day? Sabatier is right in saying that a religion without doctrine is a self-contradictory idea. Harnack is not wrong in saying that a Christianity without it is inconceivable. ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... trial. If realized, we shall adopt the language of the suffering apostle—"None of these things move me, neither do I count my life dear to myself, that I may finish my course with joy"—and share such blessed society—such inconceivable felicity and glory in my Father's house above, ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... touches will tell as a compact and intelligible mass, a little way off, though confused when seen near; but also a dark touch gains at a little distance in apparent darkness, a light touch in apparent light, and a colored touch in apparent color, to a degree inconceivable by an unpractised person; so that literally, a good painter is obliged, working near his picture, to do in everything only about half of what he wants, the rest being done by the distance. And if the effect, at such distance, is ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... Mercantilists, money. Notwithstanding what may be called the tangible absurdity of this doctrine, it remained unquestioned for generations; nay, to be candid, most men still cling to it—a fact which would be inconceivable did not the doctrine offer a very simple and plausible explanation of the enigmatical phenomenon that increasing capacity of production does not necessarily bring with it a ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... prospect for England; there is not an Envoy of the most petty State in Italy, but exults at it. The want of intelligence from America, hurts the cause prodigiously in Europe, and the anxiety of those who have its interest at heart, is from that circumstance, inconceivable. I hope I need not offer assurances to convince the honorable Congress of the zeal with which I wish to serve them. To be directed by that honorable body in what manner to do it most effectually, will be the happiest circumstance of ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... does not matter of what subject, or whether a sketchy or finished one, but the sketchy ones are generally cheapest, and will teach you most. Copy it as well as you can, noticing especially that Rembrandt's most rapid lines have steady purpose; and that they are laid with almost inconceivable precision when the object becomes at all interesting. The "Prodigal Son," "Death of the Virgin," "Abraham and Isaac," and such others, containing incident and character rather than chiaroscuro, will be the most instructive. You can buy one; copy it ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... covered all the proceedings of the inquisitors, and made them the arbiters of the life and honor of all Spaniards, without responsibility to anybody on earth. They were men, and as such subject to the same errors and passions as the rest of mankind, and it is inconceivable that the nation did not exact responsibility since, in virtue of the temporal power that had been delegated to them, they condemned to seclusion, imprisonment, torture, and death. Thus the inquisitors exercised a power which the Constitution denies to every authority in the land save the sacred ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... hardly within the bounds of possibility that any individual could be saved—allowing any to have been on board the boat. Yet, as the reader has seen, both Augustus and myself were rescued; and our deliverance seemed to have been brought about by two of those almost inconceivable pieces of good fortune which are attributed by the wise and pious to the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... inconceivable how long Fnglishmen have retained their barbarous practices. It is not more than a century since a trial for witchcraft took place in England, and hardly eighty since one occurred in Scotland. The crime of coining the King's money is still ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... roundhouse foreman, himself a man-queller of no mean repute, thought differently. Lidgerwood would, most likely, take to the high grass and the tall timber. The alternative was to "pack a gun" for Rufford—an alternative quite inconceivable to Lester when it was ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... singularly unfortunate in his editors. With a single exception, every edition of his poems up to the present time has contained a multitude of textual errors which, in the case of any other writer of equal eminence, would have been well-nigh inconceivable. The great majority of these errors were not the result of accident: they were the result of deliberate falsification. Blake's text has been emended and corrected and 'improved,' so largely and so habitually, that there was a very real danger of its becoming permanently corrupted; and this ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... consequence, but all are carried on so noiselessly, and quietly that the evidence of a government seems to vanish altogether, and social order to be as regular and unobtrusive as if it were a law of nature. Machinery is employed to an inconceivable extent in all the operations of labour within and without doors, and it is the unceasing object of the department charged with its administration to extend its efficiency. There is no class of labourers or servants, but all who are required to assist or control ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the elections for mayor the most inconceivable interest was excited, and in one case, that of 1828, between Messrs. Porter and Robinson, from 16,000 to 20,000 pounds, if not a larger sum, was said to have been expended in carrying the day. I recollect a worthy tobacconist, who kept a little shop ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... Calvinist, and the Lutherans had never warmly received him. The impotent monarch, instead of establishing himself in the affections of his subjects, by vigorously driving the invaders from his realms, with almost inconceivable silliness endeavored to win their popularity by balls and smiles, pleasant words and masquerades. In fact, Frederic, by his utter inefficiency, was a foe more to be dreaded by Bohemia ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... hypocrite with his other patient. He says to Mademoiselle Brazier, as he feels her pulse, "You see, my child, that there's a God after all. You have been the cause of a great misfortune, and you must now repair it. The finger of God is in all this (it is inconceivable what they don't say the finger of God is in!). Religion is religion: submit, resign yourself, and that will quiet you better than my drugs. Above all, resolve to stay here and take care of your ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... himself, more clearly and startlingly than would be otherwise possible, a revolving globe that whizzes through elemental space around a ball of fire: which, in turn, is rushing with all its satellites at an inconceivable speed from nowhere to nowhere; and to the surface of the revolving, whizzing globe a multitude of living things desperately clinging, and these living things, in the midst of cataclysmic danger, and between the twin enigmas of birth and death, quarrelling ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... and benevolent parent knows that the first and last question to ask and answer regarding a child is "What are his moral quality and strength?" Now, who is better able to judge of the true aim than thoughtful and solicitous parents? In the second place, it is inconceivable that a conscientious teacher should close his eyes to all except the intellectual training of his pupils. It is as natural for him to touch and awaken the moral qualities as it is for birds to sing. Again, the state is more concerned to see the growth of just and virtuous citizens ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... of the water, of the bowels of the earth, of many of the most dreaded aspects of disease and suffering. Only for forty years have we practiced antisepsis; only for sixty years have we had anesthetics; yet life to-day is well-nigh inconceivable without them. And all of this has been accomplished without any forethought on the part of the acknowledged rulers and leaders of mankind or any save the most trumpery and uncertain provision for research. What will the millions of years which stretch in front of us bring of power to mankind? ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... ghastliness, until finally we came within view of an enormous entrance hall, most unsightly of all that I had previously seen. It was very spacious and terribly steep, running in the direction of a gloomy red corner, full of the most inconceivable abominations and horrors: it was the royal court. At the upper end of the king's accursed hall, amidst thousands of other dread sights, by the light my companion shed, I could see in the darkness two feet of prodigious size, and so enormous as ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... experience—a world still being made and enlarged daily. It creates and settles its own problems as it goes along, and if it cannot help itself no one else can. So the Trade lives in the dark and thinks out inconceivable and impossible things which it afterwards puts ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... which we all are thinking in these days is war between civilized men. One civilized man cannot improve another civilized man by killing him, although it is not inconceivable that a civilized man may do humanity a service by destroying human savages, for with the savages ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... ever do anything wrong was an idea inconceivable to him. Nor was there much chance of his discovering it if she did. When not at work, he was constantly reading. Most people close a book without having gained from it a single germ of thought; Mr. Craig seldom opened one without falling directly into a brown study ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... self-will and forgetfulness—these it is who need the Redeemer: "I come not to call the Righteous, but sinners to repentance." From this it would seem that there are souls who, though they are in this world, are yet fundamentally righteous: not fallen, but working to receive sight. It is inconceivable to the soul that, had she ever Beheld God, she could have left Him, but not inconceivable to her that, having never Beheld Him, she may have been unfaithful on her road to Sight. She understands this awful possibility after coming to Union with Him from this earth, because then she learns ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... "Already the inconceivable fertility of the earth is yielding its bounties a hundred fold; and trade-routes circle the ends of the great Abyss; and all the vast territory once the United States has begun to open again before the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... that I have found you it is as if you and I had been rocked together on the tide of that inconceivable ocean that casts us half-awake upon life," he said dreamily. "It isn't friendship of ideas, it's a friendship of spirit. Indeed, I hope and pray never ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... The church steeples, once of an inconceivable height, were now but a scant sixty feet; and the buildings beneath them, that once had vied with old-world cathedrals, were seen ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... to see what action the snakes were taking, and to my horror I found that they had separated, and were pursuing us with inconceivable rapidity. Their huge heads were raised about eighteen inches from the ground, and their wide mouths were expanded as though ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... Narrow, blind, bigoted young man. And it was amusing to think, as a comment on his fierce consciousness of Herr Lippheim's unfitness, that here Herr Lippheim was, admitted to the very heart of Karen's sorrow. It was inconceivable that anyone but very near and dear friends should have been tolerated by her to-day. Karen, too, after her fashion, was an artist. The music, no doubt, was helpful to her. Soft thoughts of her great, lacerated friend, speeding now towards her solitudes, filled Mrs. Forrester's ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... strange and beautiful prayer—or so it seemed to me—a ray of blinding light cleaved up from where Vere stood, like a shot arrow speeding straight through house and night into inconceivable space. Then the room vanished from my sight as the great wave burst out ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... the veranda, a room in itself with its many squatters' chairs, hammocks and tables. Beyond, stretched the green expanse of plain, utterly lonely, the waters of the lagoon taking a reddish tinge where they reflected the lowering sun. It seemed an inconceivable environment to have been chosen by the Lady Bridget he had known in London, one of whose chief attractions to him had been that she represented a certain section of the aristocracy of Great Britain, decadent perhaps, but 'in ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... outbuildings of the temple the most inconceivable mountebanks have taken up their quarters, their black streamers, painted with white letters, looking like funereal trappings as they float in the wind from the top of their tall flagstaffs. Hither we turn out steps, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... write to Sir Ratcliffe, Ferdinand? Must you really go? Must we, indeed, be separated? I cannot believe it; it is inconceivable; it is impossible; I cannot ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... solemnity, and your gravity," said Lord Sherbrooke, "and your not yet understanding me, almost tempt me, Wilton, to play some wild and inconceivable trick, just for the purpose of opening your eyes, and letting you see, that your friend is not such an unfeeling rascal as ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... sense of the becoming, her delicate perception of propriety. When dining alone or with Hugh, she dressed as carefully as for a ceremonious occasion. Any approach to personal disorder or neglect was inconceivable in Sibyl. Her husband had, by accident, heard her called 'the best-groomed woman in London'; he thought the praise well ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... war-chariot of Queen Boadicea, charging the legions of Caesar, or (in our own neighbourhood) that of the British warrior Raengeires, routing his Saxon foes, at Tetford, with their wheels of solid wood and other massive carpentry, would form a, then inconceivable, contrast to the future taximeter cab, to be evolved in this ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter |
