"Intelligible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I describe as Modern History that which begins four hundred years ago, which is marked off by an evident and intelligible line from the time immediately preceding, and displays in its course specific and distinctive characteristics of its own 10. The modern age did not proceed from the medieval by normal succession, with outward tokens of legitimate descent. Unheralded, it founded ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... planting them. This message had been unluckily misunderstood. Grant gave his answer to his wife; she to a Welsh servant-girl, who did not perfectly comprehend her mistress' broad Scotch; and she in her turn could not make herself intelligible to Mrs. Oakly, who hated the Welsh accent, and whose attention, when the servant-girl delivered the message, was principally engrossed by the management of her own horse. The horse, on which Mrs. Oakly rode this day being ill-broken, ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... since we are on the subject, we may as well open our minds to each other in a man-to-man way; answer me one question; you have had so much luck among the game as to have gotten a title, it would seem, but did you ever hit anything human or intelligible: did you ever pull trigger on an inimy that was capable of pulling one ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... what follows. Now, the Psalmist's theme was the vanity of all care and labour, unless the Lord both provide for and watch over His people; for so He will give His beloved sleep—that happy, confiding repose which the solicitude of the worldly cannot procure. This is, surely, intelligible enough and even if [Hebrew: KN] may be translated for (which Noldius, in his Concordantia Particularum, affirms that it here may, adducing however but one dubious instance of its being so used elsewhere, viz. Jeremiah xiv. 10.), or if the various ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... Andy writes about the affair. I give the letter as he wrote it, merely correcting the punctuation, and enough of the spelling, to make it intelligible. ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... geography]. By the application of water is made ascertainment of the revolution of time. One may construct a sphere-instrument combined with quicksilver: this is a mystery; if plainly described, it would be generally intelligible in the world. Therefore let the supreme sphere be constructed according to the instruction of the preceptor [guru]. In each successive age this construction, having become lost, is, by the Sun's favour, again revealed to some one or other, at his pleasure. ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... Adams, I shall by no means put them asunder; nor will they ever be pronounced apart so long as language shall celebrate the triumphs Of science in her sublimest walks. On the great discovery of Neptune, which may be said to have surpassed, by intelligible and legitimate means, the wildest pretensions of clairvoyance, it Would now be quite superfluous for me to dilate. That glorious event and the steps which led to it, and the various lights in which it has been placed, are already familiar to every ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... that the matter of the action be fully shewed in the demonstration and in the writ." Long before this wise measure of reform was obtained by the urgent wishes of the nation, the French of the law courts had become so corrupt and unlike the language of the invaders, that it was scarcely more intelligible to educated natives of France than to most Englishmen of the highest rank. A jargon compounded of French and Latin, none save professional lawyers could translate it with readiness or accuracy; and whilst it unquestionably ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... a fortunate thing for Mozart's music that so few opera-goers understand Italian nowadays. The play is a moral blister, and the less intelligible it is made by excisions in its dialogue, the better, in one respect, for the virtuous sensibilities of its auditors. One point which can be sacrificed without detriment to the music and at only a trifling cost to the comedy (even when ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... very intelligible exclamation, you will allow, but as intelligible as her whole conduct. For in another moment every sign of emotion had left her, and she stood quite calm and cold in the center of the room. But her pallor remained, ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... going out; they enjoy it in common. By conjunction with the other factors in activity the sound "hat" soon gets the same meaning for the child that it has for the parent; it becomes a sign of the activity into which it enters. The bare fact that language consists of sounds which are mutually intelligible is enough of itself to show that its meaning depends upon ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... illustrates the fact that the Christian message and work are finding greater power over the people because conveyed to them in more intelligible terms. It can come home to them in their common life as ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... our music could be developed to an indefinite extent it might at last begin to resemble it. Yet she said that she sometimes heard strains here in the Holy Mass which reminded her of that language, and might be intelligible to an immortal. ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... the aid of a dictionary. Thus he had acquired a fairly extensive if somewhat archaic vocabulary. But Lady Bridget's veiled intimation of Wombo's escape couched in up-to-date and highly idiomatic French which would have been perfectly intelligible to Willoughby Maule, conveyed little to him beyond the fact of a secret understanding between his wife and a man whom he knew had once been her lover. That idea drove every other into the background of his thoughts. ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... glimpse of some remote context they may have and by no direct imagination of themselves. As minds may differ here, let me speak in the first person. I am sure that my own current thinking has WORDS for its almost exclusive subjective material, words which are made intelligible by being referred to some reality that lies beyond the horizon of direct consciousness, and of which I am only aware as of a terminal MORE existing in a certain direction, to which the words might lead but do not lead yet. The SUBJECT, or TOPIC, of the words is usually something towards ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... was burned, sir, to keep us from freezing to death," Roswell then gave a brief but very clear and intelligible account of what had happened, and of the manner in which he had caused the hulk of the deacon's Sea Lion to be raised upon by the materials furnished by the Sea Lion of the Vineyard. The narrative brought Mary Pratt back to ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... chair which, with the desk, constituted the principal furniture of a tiny office, sat a man in a dress-suit which had palpably not been made for him. He had a sullen and suspiciously Teutonic cast of countenance, and he was engaged in a voluble but hardly intelligible speech as I entered. ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... which it is so pleasant to find combined with much else that is valuable. A few evenings since, he kept Annie and me in the library, with his agreeable chat, till so late an hour, that Col. Donaldson, who is the least bit of a martinet in his own family, gave some very intelligible hints to us the next morning, at breakfast, on the value of early hours. With a readiness and grace which I never saw surpassed, Mr. Arlington turned to us with the exquisite apology of the ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... drew nearer the words became intelligible. "Howld him tight, now! d'ye hear? Och! whereiver have ye gone an' lost yersilf? Howld him tight till I come an' help ye! What! is it let him go ye have? Ah then it's wishin' I had the eyes of a cat this night for I can't rightly see the length of my nose. ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... not assumed a high philosophical or metaphysical position in this work; my efforts have been confined to indicating how by a very simple and well-nigh mechanical process, perfectly intelligible to every human being with an intellect, one may induce certain states of mind and thereby create a Will. But I quite agree with Mr. FLETCHER that Forethought is strong thought, and the point from which all projects must proceed. As I understand it, it is a kind of impulse or projection ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... They thought that when they died, that was the last of them. The Catholic missionaries who undertook the unpromising task of converting them to Christianity, were at first obliged to depend upon the imperfect translations of half-breed interpreters. These "made the idea of soul intelligible to their hearers by telling them they had a gut which never rotted, and that this was their living principle!" Yet even they were not destitute of religious notions. No tribe was more addicted to the observance of charms, omens, dreams, and guardian spirits, and they believed that illness ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... friend of mine," he said. "A curious story, Escott, but quite intelligible. There seem to be the best reasons for answering no questions about ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... our white officers, being six feet high, perfectly proportioned, and of apparently inexhaustable strength and activity. His gait is like a panther's; I never saw such a tread. No anti-slavery novel has described a man of such marked ability. He makes Toussaint perfectly intelligible, and if there should ever be a black monarchy in South Carolina ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... which would not be fair or worth while, as I have begun on a better abstract for the Linnean Society. My excuse is that it NEVER was intended for publication. I have made only a few corrections in the style; but I cannot make it decent, but I hope moderately intelligible. I suppose some one will correct the revise. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... not intelligible he was put on an allowance of five shillings weekly, for his menus plaisirs, till he was twenty-three years of age. He never was an expensive man (except in giving, wherein he knew no stint); his favourite velvet ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not very intelligible to anybody but Joel, and he had ceased to laugh at Mike's voyage, now, some six or seven years; divers other disasters, all having their origin in a similar confusion of ideas, having, in the interval, supplanted that ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... have been difficult for either of the two malcontents to give a very satisfactory answer to this question. Both were secretly goaded by mysterious and superstitious apprehensions, that were powerfully aided by the more real and intelligible aspect of the night; but neither had so far forgotten his manhood, and his professional pride, as to lay bare the full extent of his own weakness, at a moment when he was liable to be called upon for the exhibition of qualities of ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... that you cannot read my letter, No. 3, and the duplicate of No. 2; when, upon examining my letter book, I find it is written in the very cypher, which you acknowledge to have received, and in which your letter of the 20th of September is written; so that if it is not intelligible, it must have undergone some alteration since it left my hands, which I am the more inclined to think, because you speak of a cypher said to be enclosed, of which my letters make no mention, and only ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... to their connection or association with my past history. And the rooms at The Grange had each in this way some distinctive characteristic. The library, of course, was the chief home of the Horror which had hung upon my spirit even during the days when I hardly knew in any intelligible sense the cause of it. But the drawing-room and dining-room both produced upon my mind a vague consciousness of constraint. I was dimly aware of being ill at ease and uncomfortable in them. My own bedroom, on the contrary, gave me ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... opened his eyes; then, looking at Rachel, who was anxiously bending over him, he rapidly poured out a succession of words and phrases of which only a word here and there was intelligible. "Frank," he said once or twice, then "Pateley," but Rachel had not the clue that would have told her what the words meant. She tried in vain to quiet him: he was not conscious of her presence. Then suddenly his voice subsided to a whisper, and a strange ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... moves and crumples the sheet. Just wait a little, poor impatient father, and tomorrow, on his awakening, he will say "Papa." You will see what good it will do you, this "Papa," faint as a mere breath, this first scarcely intelligible sign of a return to life. It will seem to you that your child has been born again a ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... those words are obvious to scholars, I believe the method observed by the famous Lord Falkland[1] in some of his writings, would not be an ill one for young divines: I was assured by an old person of quality who knew him well, that when he doubted whether a word was perfectly intelligible or no, he used to consult one of his lady's chambermaids, (not the waiting-woman, because it was possible she might be conversant in romances,) and by her judgment was guided whether to receive or reject it. And if that great person thought such a caution ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... reached his own house, where strange events had lately taken place, the visible results of which now filled the minds of the whole community of Nemours. A few explanations are needed to make this history and the notary's remark to the heirs perfectly intelligible to ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... he could sit up and use pen and pencil, he set to work to finish his cottage plans, and soon drew and talked himself into a vehement condition about Marksedge. Mary's patronage drew on the work, even to hasty learning of perspective enough for a pretty elevation intelligible to the unlearned, and a hopeless calculation ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... understanding each other; but there is a lingua Franca used in the Mediterranean, which all mariners, who traverse that sea, very quickly pick up; and, what with that and the aid of signs, they made themselves tolerably intelligible to each other; at all events the Greek learned all he wished to know; even before he had spoken, his quick glance had made him acquainted with the armament of the vessel, and her probable seaworthy qualities. His foot, too, as he walked aft, happened to strike one of the carronades, the look ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... out, with great minuteness, the simple, but ingenious method devised for the inflation of this enormous machine, and the regulation of the gas; which I pass over, from an inability to render it intelligible by mere description. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... of insanity, until he had so suddenly rushed away home. It was, therefore, possible that there might prove to be some important meaning in what he had said. At first "Cobbler" Horn had gathered nothing intelligible from the impassioned apostrophe of his excited little friend; but, by degrees, there dawned upon him some faint gleam of what its meaning might be. "The sec'tary!" That was the quaint term by which Tommy was wont to designate Miss Owen. But their conversation had been drifting in the direction ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... to the Court. The writer himself had never been in America, and was ignorant of its geography; hence blunders on his part might reasonably be expected. His statements, however, are in some measure intelligible; and the following is the substance of them. After leaving the priests, La Salle went to Onondaga, where we are left to infer that he succeeded better in getting a guide than he had before done among the Senecas. Thence he made his way to ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... seen were remote to him. He perceived effects, shapes, associations of colour, divorced from their habitual significance. It was as though he looked at the written characters of a language unknown to him, observing the form of them, but attaching no intelligible meaning to that form. And so it happened that those many superimposed tiers of boxes were to him as the waxen cells of a gigantic honeycomb, against the angular darknesses of which little figures, seen to the waist, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... pipes and merriment, drove the unhappy Count of Helfenstein upon their spears, before the eyes of his wife and child. Luther's ignorance of this and similar atrocities, at the time when he was writing his pamphlet at Eisleben, is easily intelligible from the slow means of communication then existing. Soon the news came, however, of bands of rioters in Thuringia, busy with the work of pillage, incendiarism, and massacre, and of a rising of the peasantry in the immediate neighbourhood. Towards the end of April they achieved a crowning ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... enthusiasm amused them; they talked kindly with me, and I looked up to them as to earthly divinities. Everything which I had formerly heard about my musical voice, and my recitation of poetry, became intelligible to me. It was the theatre for which I was born: it was there that I should become a famous man, and for that reason Copenhagen was the goal of my endeavors. I heard a deal said about the large theatre in Copenhagen, and that there was to be soon what was called the ballet, a something which surpassed ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... Keats, who was kill'd off by one critique, Just as he really promised something great, If not intelligible, without Greek Contrived to talk about the gods of late, Much as they might have been supposed to speak. Poor fellow! His was an untoward fate; 'T is strange the mind, that very fiery particle, Should let itself be snuff'd ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... has been edited by Professor Fausboell (2nd ed., 1900), and has been frequently translated. Where the verses deal with those ideas that are common to Christians and Buddhists, the versions are easily intelligible, and some of the stanzas appeal very strongly to the Western sense of religious beauty. Where the stanzas are full of the technical terms of the Buddhist system of self-culture and self-control, it is ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... children for little Lucy Rose, although sadly wrangled, became intelligible. Madame came, holding up her silk skirt and sniffing at her smelling-bottle, and everybody asked questions of everybody else, and nobody knew any satisfactory answers. Johnny Trumbull was confident that he ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... his head to sober himself, and, having partially succeeded, put on his green spectacles and issued forth. Resisting all entreaties to stay till he came back, and finding it quite impossible to engage Mr. Ben Allen in any intelligible conversation on the subject nearest his heart, or indeed on any other, Mr. Winkle took his departure, and returned ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... known when astronomy was first studied by the Egyptians; but what astronomical information they have handed down is not of a very intelligible kind, nor have they left behind any data that can be relied upon. The Great Pyramid, judging from the exactness with which it faces the cardinal points, must have been designed by persons who possessed a good knowledge of astronomy, and it was probably made use ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... utterly impossible for me to describe all the things which were shown to me; their number was so great that I could not reduce them sufficiently to order to define and render them intelligible. Besides which my sufferings are very great, and when I speak on the subject of my visions I behold them in my mind's eye portrayed in such vivid colours, that the sight is almost sufficient to cause a weak mortal like myself ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... time without any help from Tuly. The linkage fairly snapped together and shrank instantaneously to a point. Hilton thought of Terra and there it was; full size, yet occupying only one infinitesimal section of a dimensionless point. The multi-mind visited relatives of all eight, but could not make intelligible contact. If asleep, it caused pleasant dreams; if awake, pleasant thoughts of the loved one so far away in space; but that was all. It visited mediums, in trance and otherwise—many of whom, not surprisingly now, were genuine—with whom it held lucid conversations. Even in linkage, ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... unconscious of the irony of this proximity, Amherst had come to accept his wife's guests as unquestioningly as their background, and with the same sense of their being an inevitable part of his new life. Their talk was no more intelligible to him than the red and yellow hieroglyphics of the racing-prints, and he smoked in silence while Mr. Langhope discoursed to Westy Gaines on the recent sale of Chinese porcelains at which he had been lucky ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... asset his value could be expressed in intelligible terms. But as a party liability, or asset,—many a good Republican wishes he knew which,—he remains an enigma. There is not one of the array of elders of either political persuasion who, while laughing at his satirical sword-play, does not watch him covertly out of the corner ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... our looks, turn'd to me, and with words that broke their necks over each other for haste, abused both of us. The most intelligible of his great number of words were Jack Pudenges, and the like expressions of contempt. But our play was ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... William Jones, who died at the age of forty-seven, had 'studied eight languages critically, eight less perfectly, but all intelligible with a dictionary, and twelve least perfectly, but all attainable.' Teignmouth's Life of Sir W. Jones, ed. 1815, p. 465. See ante, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... possess books highly priced in dealers' catalogues, and, if they want money, they carry their treasures to the dealers. But "advantage seldom comes of it." The dealer has a different price, very often, when he is a purchaser. This is intelligible, but, to many persons who are not amateurs, the mania for rare postage-stamps passes all understanding. Yet it is capable of being explained. Like many other oddities and puzzling features in the ways of collectors, the high price of certain ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... God (hence called infusae), and are taught by revelation. Given in connection with the natural faculties of intellect and will, they are exhibited in the attainment of the supernatural order of things. With intellect goes Faith, as it were the intellect applied to things not intelligible; with Will go Hope and Charity or Love: Hope being the Will exercised upon things not naturally desired, and Love the union of Will with what is not naturally brought ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... I have been commonly blessed with robust appetite, yet where that man found space within his ribs to store away all he ate in that hour remains a mystery. Nothing, except total inability to address him in intelligible language, held De Noyan quiet as our limited supply steadily diminished before the Puritan's onslaught, and long before the latter heaved a sigh of profound satisfaction the gallant soldier had fallen fast asleep. But Madame remained in her place opposite, apparently fascinated ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... thoughts to you, that is an impossibility which I cannot govern or control. This ought not to be so, but so it is. Am I to blame? I feel not. And what if I could tell? It might be only a deep dissatisfaction which could not be made intelligible, or at least not be felt as it is felt by me. Let us be untroubled about it. A little time, and, I hope, all will pass away, and I be the same as usual. We all differ a little, at least in our characters; hence there is nothing surprising ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... skilful in analysis, discerned with precision the central idea on which a question turned, and knew how to disengage it and present it by itself in a few homely, strong old English words that would be intelligible to all. He excelled in logical statements more than in executive ability. He reasoned clearly, his reflective judgment was good, and his purposes were fixed; but, like the Hamlet of his only poet, his ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... Carnock were to write his memoirs, not only would that volume help the historian to follow the immediate causes of the war to one intelligible origin, but it would also afford the people of England an opportunity of seeing the conspicuous difference between a statesman of the old school and a politician of these ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... good a son as any rationalist among you to our common mother. What troubles me more than this misapprehension is the genuine abstruseness of many of the matters I shall be obliged to talk about, and the difficulty of making them intelligible at one hearing. But there two pieces, 'zwei stuecke,' as Kant would have said, in every philosophy—the final outlook, belief, or attitude to which it brings us, and the reasonings by which that attitude ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... regarded not as an independent thing, but as a political instrument; and it is only by taking this point of view that we can avoid finding ourselves in opposition to all military history. This is the only means of unlocking the great book and making it intelligible. Secondly, this view shows us how Wars must differ in character according to the nature of the motives and circumstances from ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... In the better class of these reviews it is possible, if we know where to look, to find several articles on both sides of almost any subject. Furthermore, these are often written by the foremost authors or scientists, and are in a language intelligible to all. The amateur cannot give the time or patience to wade two-volume deep in the subject his club wishes him to treat in half an hour's speech. The magazine gives just what he wants in several pages. There are periodicals exclusively devoted to every branch ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... practical test. The election of Lincoln, the success of a "sectional party," and the evasion of the fugitive-slave law through the passage of "personal-liberty laws" by many of the Northern States, are the leading reasons assigned by South Carolina for her secession in 1860. These were intelligible reasons, and were the ones most commonly used to influence the popular vote. But all the evidence goes to show that the leaders of secession were not so weak in judgment as to run the hazards of war by reason of "injuries" so minute ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... the difference between Serbo-Croatian and Slovene. The Serb-Croat-Slovene State has been astonishingly little incommoded by the fact that the Slovene language is quite distinct, the two tongues being only in a moderate degree mutually intelligible. The Slovenes have never been exposed to the influence either of Byzantium or of the Turks, so that their language is free from the orientalisms which abound in the southern dialects. But it is curious to note[1] that many of the Slovene archaisms of form and structure, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... comparison of her features with those of the guilty wretch who had dared to personate her in the garden at Versailles completely destroyed his self-possession. Her Majesty's person was become fuller, and her face was much longer than that of the infamous D'Oliva. He could neither speak nor write an intelligible reply to the questions put to him. All he could utter, and that only in broken accents, was, 'I'll pay! I'll ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... unthinkability, Messrs. Spencer, Tyndall, and the rest assure us of the eternal self existence of an intelligent cloud of gas, endowed with all promises and potencies, of life and thought, as a simple and intelligible substitute! Belief in God Almighty is only superstition, but faith in Mr. Tyndall's gas-god is science. Mr. Spencer honestly lands in the unknowable. Well, then, what science have we gained of the ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... for a moment, then found her hand, where it lay in her lap, lifted it in both his own, and pressed it, for a long, tense moment, against his lips. She felt the contact burn against the cool flesh, and it made intelligible all that he would not allow himself to say, in terms which no ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... mouthful of it, a change she could not describe began to take place in her. She heard a murmuring all about her, which became more and more articulate, and at length, as she went on eating, grew intelligible. By the time she had finished her share, the sounds of all the animals in the forest came crowding through the door to her ears; for the door still stood wide open, though it was pitch dark outside; and they ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... strong and the severe to keep The empire of the world: thus Cythna taught 965 Even in the visions of her eloquent sleep, Unconscious of the power through which she wrought The woof of such intelligible thought, As from the tranquil strength which cradled lay In her smile-peopled rest, my spirit sought 970 Why the deceiver and the slave has sway O'er heralds so divine of truth's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... at some play of diverting but incomprehensible humour. In fact, he never could clearly distinguish between Keith's sense of humour and his sense of honour; both seemed equally removed from the safe, intelligible methods of ordinary men. He wasn't sure but what there was something fine in it, something in keeping with the intellectual extravagance that distinguished his son from other people's sons. There were moments when it amused and interested him, but ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... possible sort—and so I suppose there is hardly an intelligent person in the English-speaking communities who has not thought of some possible remedy—from the naive scoldings of Mr. Roosevelt and the more stolid of the periodicals to sane and intelligible ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... quantity of hard water. Thus the addition of hard water to a solution of soap, or the converse of this operation, causes the production of the insoluble curdy matter before mentioned. These facts render intelligible the process of washing the skin with soap and hard water. The skin is first wetted with the water and then soap is applied; the latter decomposes the hardening salts contained in the small quantity of water with which the skin is covered, and there is then formed a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... and we have "The Progresse of Warre," in a series, as part of a frieze for his Temple of Peace. This is most clear—for he who runs may read; yet, on a second view, we doubt that—for we see, what we did not at first see, writing under each tablet that is by no means intelligible. Having, with Mr Bell, seen an end of the battle, it is fit time, with Mr Herbert, to discuss "The Day after the Battle." "Next day did many widows come"— that verse of Chevy Chase is the subject. The slaughtered knight, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... intelligible. It would not be legitimate to take it into consideration without having verified its authenticity, if its authenticity has not been already settled beyond a doubt. Now in order to verify the authenticity or ascertain the origin of a document two things are required—reasoning ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... the Canon Chronicus, was published in 1672, and was the first attempt to make the Egyptian chronology clear and intelligible, and to reconcile the whole to the Scripture chronology; a labour he had commenced in Diatriba ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... said so everywhere; and she charmed every one. In spite of this, or, perhaps, because of this, since Fate is so perverse, she cared only for one man, and he was Major Vansuythen. Had she been plain or stupid, this matter would have been intelligible to Kashima. But she was a fair woman, with very still gray eyes, the colour of a lake just before the light of the sun touches it. No man who had seen those eyes could, later on, explain what fashion of woman she was to look upon. The eyes dazzled him. Her own sex said ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... manage him; that she can prevent him from trying to make love to her. Well, what does that mean, if you're right, but that she—understands him; his talk; his ideas; his point of view. You can't make yourself intelligible to a man like that; she can. It's defilement to meet his mind anywhere—any angle of it. She's given him carte blanche, she says, to manage the publicity for her. Do you realize what that means? He's licensed to try to make the public believe anything that he thinks would heighten ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... an author simply in order to refute him is not the way to understand him; and to read the book of Nature with a conviction that it is all illusion is just as unlikely to lead to understanding. If our logic is to find the common world intelligible, it must not be hostile, but must be inspired by a genuine acceptance such as is not usually ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... or Forrest's imprisonment and martyrdom has not been well ascertained; and Knox's subsequent remark, "after whose death, the flame of persecution ceased, till the death of Norman Gourlay, the space of ten years or neirby," is not intelligible, according to the dates usually assigned. Foxe gives no precise date, but says, that within few years after Hamilton's martyrdom, "ane Henry Forrest, a young man born in Linlithgow, who a little before had received the orders of Benet and Collet, &c., suffered death at the North ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... suggestion did not meet the approval of the mathematical physicists of his day, for it necessitated the abandonment of the conceptions they had worked with, as well as the terminology which had been employed, and made it needful to reconstruct all their work to make it intelligible—a labour which was the more distasteful as it was forced upon them by one who, although expert enough in experimentation, was not a mathematician, and who boasted that the most complicated mathematical work he ever did was to turn the crank of a calculating machine; who ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... do something to make the little book more intelligible, and to connect its parts, if in this introduction I tell of the one occasion when the dramatis personae met each other; and in order to that, if I tell how ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... and sat me down to read. As I turned over page after page the interest became absorbing; but how familiar it seemed; how my mind leapt forward to presage the conclusions, how natural it was, how coherent, how subtle, and yet how intelligible. I was dazzled, blinded by the light in which disjointed facts were seen as parts of a mighty whole, and all my puzzles, riddles, problems, seemed to disappear. The effect was partially illusory in one sense, in that they all had to be slowly unravelled later, the brain ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... of the sentiments they utter. Until we live among those with whom we cannot converse, it is impossible to be sensible of this truth; but I am confident, from long experience, that it is the fact. I have formed as correct an opinion of a German's character, not a word of whose language was intelligible to me, as of the Englishman's beside him, and perhaps more so, as not being misled by what he might choose to advance. And in support of this assertion, I will just mention, that I have subsequently met with foreigners, whom it has given me great pleasure to meet with, again and again, and that ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... For some time nothing intelligible could be gathered from his excited chatter. But finally Azazruk made out that only an hour before, as he watched the reindeer, a great hairy monster had dashed at the herd, scattering it far and wide, and carrying ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... to the effect following:—Sir, though it should be granted, that the clause before us is intelligible to every member of this assembly, it will not certainly follow, that there is no necessity of farther elucidations; for a law very easily understood by those who make it, may be obscure to others who are less acquainted with our general intention, less ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... distinct, and are human. The Queen was in love with one man, and hated another to the death; or her enemies desired to prove that these were her moods. Absolute certainty escapes us, but, either way, motives and purposes are intelligible. ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... fixed between you and that Outer World. But my studies and training have taken me far outside these orthodox trips, and I have made experiments that I could scarcely speak to you about in language that would be intelligible ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... revenues are only available for the purpose on the establishment of an Irish Government. Baronial guarantees, union guarantees, county guarantees, debenture schemes, have all been tried and found wanting, and vague assertions as to possibilities are idle unless they are based on intelligible working plans. ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... of lovely woman. There is a gentleman in company whom two accomplished and delightful females regard with veneration, as the fountain of their existence. Yes, when yet the two Miss Pecksniffs lisped in language scarce intelligible, they called that individual 'Father!' There is great applause. He gives them 'Mr Pecksniff, and God bless him!' They all shake hands with Mr Pecksniff, as they drink the toast. The youngest gentleman ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... anywhere but in Oxford House. There was no escape. The wise Countess added no unnecessary words to help him out, but having put her question in plain terms, quietly awaited his reply. He muttered something not very intelligible, in which "business" was the chiefly ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... me out. Yet she is usually most tranquil, too dejected and thoughtful indeed sometimes. In time, I doubt not, I shall make her uniformly sedate and decorous, without being unaccountably pensive. I ever disapprove what is not intelligible." ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... book, Le Debacle, Zola shows in a vivid and intelligible manner the downfall of Napoleon III. and his army, and paints in his usual matter-of-fact tints the actual condition of the great host led forth to destruction. He makes us read in the soul of the common French soldier and in that of his commanding officer. The keen analysis ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... that the material is available for a complete and final chronicle. By the aid, however, of the official dispatches, of the newspapers, and of many private letters, I have done my best to give an intelligible and accurate account of the matter. The treatment may occasionally seem too brief but some proportion must be observed between the battles of 1899-1900 ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to cover his disgraced uniform with the rough greatcoat which he had formerly despised. He pulled the stained, drooping cockade out of his unfortunate hat; and he was now sufficiently recovered from his vexation to give an intelligible account of his accident to his uncle and Patty, who anxiously inquired what had detained him so long, and what had been the matter. In the midst of the history of his disaster, he was just proving to Patty that his taking the hatband to spin his top ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... is one intelligible, and, perhaps, necessary cause of variation: the fact, that there are two sexes sharing in the production of the offspring, and that the share taken by each is different and variable, not only for each combination, but also for different members ...
— The Perpetuation Of Living Beings, Hereditary Transmission And Variation • Thomas H. Huxley
... saw We saw not; neither we nor yet the Queen What then? Is God not potent to divulge The thing He wills, or hide it? Brethren, God Shrouding from us that beam far dwellers saw Admonished us perchance that far is near; That ofttimes distance makes intelligible What, nigh at hand, is veiled. This too He taught, That when Northumbrian foot our Mercia spurned The men who saw that ruin saw not all: The light of Christ drew near us in that hour; His pillar o'er us stood, and ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... the first of these it is enough that the scheme should be intelligible and feasible in itself, that what is good in it should be adapted to the nature of things, in this case, for example, that the proposed method of education should be suitable to man and adapted to the ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... brains about puzzles more idle than the dilemma of Buridan's donkey, while all the time, at Constantinople and at Seville, in Greek and Arabic, Plato and Aristotle were alive, but sleeping, awaiting only the call of the Renaissance to bid them speak with voice intelligible to the modern mind. It is no less pathetic to watch tide after tide of the ocean of humanity sweeping from all parts of Europe, to break in passionate but unavailing foam upon the shores of Palestine, whole nations ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... he could search out and make use of all the native Egyptian sources, and, thanks to his knowledge of Greek, he could present them in a form intelligible to the Hellenes. It must be confessed that he has occasionally fallen into the error of allowing Greek thoughts and traditions to slip into his work. The great worth in Manetho's work lies in the fact that he relates the history of Egypt based on monumental sources and ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... of his times. Had Milton been so, he might have avoided many faults, but he would not have been a representative poet; nor could Shelley have classed him with Homer and Dante, and above Virgil, as "the third epic poet; that is, the third poet the series of whose creations bore a defined and intelligible relation to the knowledge and sentiment and religion of the age in which he lived, and of the ages which followed it, developing itself in correspondence with their development." Hence it is that in the "Adonais," ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... inveloped the feudal monarch in clouds and mysteries, and from whence they had deduced the most mischievous of all doctrines, that of passive obedience and non-resistance. They knew that government was a plain, simple, intelligible thing, founded in nature and reason, and quite comprehensible by common sense.——They detested all the base services, and servile dependencies of the feudal system.——They knew that no such unworthy dependencies took place in the ancient seats ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... Grey are the descendants, and that with their disappearance from that district some of their customs disappeared with them, the natives of the present day retaining only those best suited to their actual mode of life—then the Norman captain's narrative will become intelligible. Besides, as regards the use of bow and arrow, certainly known to the Malays, although the intercourse of the latter with other tribes on the north Australian coast has been undoubtedly frequent, nowhere have the Australian natives adopted that kind of arm, whilst in New Guinea and ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... This time it was intelligible, for it was a lantern in the hand of a young man of about thirty. His face was open and smiling. He wore his hair rather long for an American, and ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... ferocity brutal, a butchery without motive, a grotesquerie in horror absolutely alien from humanity, and a voice foreign in tone to the ears of men of many nations, and devoid of all distinct or intelligible syllabification. What result, then, has ensued? What impression have ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... a far more rapid writer, and even grammatical faults are not infrequent in his papers. He explicitly declares that 'Elegance, purity, and correctness were not so much my purpose, as in any intelligible manner as I could to rally all those singularities of human life ... which obstruct anything that was really good and great'. [Footnote: Dedication to The Drummer.] His style varies with his mood, and with the degree of his interest. Occasionally ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... health had been for many months very bad; he had had a severe paralytic stroke, and when acting as Secretary of the Treasury he had been unable to sign his name, so that a stamp or die had been used; his speech was scarcely intelligible; and when Mr. Clay visited him in the retirement in which his friends now kept him, the fact could not be concealed that he was for the time at least a wreck. Mr. Clay therefore had to decide for himself, his followers, and ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... cannot be discriminated, nor the finer movements of the countenance perceived from the front, hardly from the middle of the house. Authors, therefore, substitute what is here called broad farce for genuine comedy; their jests are made intelligible by grimace, or by that sort of mechanical wit which can be seen; comedy is made up of trick, and tragedy of processions, pageants, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... phases of the "woman question" have brought out in intelligible form the extent to which the life of women in modern society, and in the polite circles especially, is regulated by a body of common sense formulated under the economic circumstances of an earlier phase of development. ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... the human shores of mental appreciation. Playing this part in his work it becomes necessary that his words should divest themselves, as far as it is humanly possible for them to do so without losing their intelligible symbolic value, of all merely logical and abstract connotation. It is necessary that his words should be light-footed and airily winged, swift, sharp and sudden, so that they may throw the attention of the reader away from ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... men, that they have not altogether succumbed to the demand for cachinnations. A school, which first drew breath before the Great Skirmish began, has perfected itself, till now we have whole tomes where hardly a sentence would be intelligible to any save the initiate; this enables them to defy the Watch Committees, with other Philistines. We have writers who mysteriously preach the realisation of self by never considering anybody else; ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... manifested towards the boy, he was mistaken. They all watched him keenly as he slowly sauntered towards the water, and then, when he had got about half way, the chief suddenly springing to his feet, and brandishing his tomahawk demanded in broken, but perfectly intelligible English, ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... laughed at for their emendations, but sometimes unjustly. When we consider the crop of blunders that have gathered about the texts of celebrated books, we shall be grateful for the labours of brilliant scholars who have cleared these away and made obscure passages intelligible. ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... and his sister extemporize on the piano, and scarcely comprehended how two persons could understand and feel themselves so perfectly and yet never, not even in a single note, disturb the harmony of their playing. Now it became intelligible to me. Yes, now I understood for the first time that my soul was not so poor and empty as it had seemed to me, and that it had been only the sun that was lacking to open all its germs, and buds to the light. And yet what a sad and brief spring-time it was that our souls experienced! ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... one's mouth at the sight of those sweet fruits of love, without counting the other things that he raised, carved, and caressed with the chisels, smoothed down with his file, and fashioned in a manner that would make their use intelligible to the mind of a greenhorn, and stain his verdure in a single day. The ladies would criticise these beauties, and all of them were smitten with the youthful Cappara. And the youthful Cappara would eye them up and down, swearing that the day one of them gave him her little finger to kiss, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... The material, however, is plentiful, and it illuminates vividly the character and meaning of that city-life which, in its different forms, was a vital element in both the Greek and the Roman world. Even our little towns of Silchester and Caerwent in Roman Britain become more intelligible by its aid. The Roman student gains perhaps more than the Hellenist from this inquiry, since the ancient Roman builder planned more regularly and the modern Roman archaeologist has dug more widely. But admirable German excavations at Priene, Miletus, ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... splotch of semi-luminous vapor in a great void. Year by year the voice of Carlyle rings clearer and clearer from the "Eternal Silence." And as we listen with rapt attention to the music of the spheres becoming audible, intelligible to our dull ear—the Waterloo and Lisbon earthquakes, the Revolutions and the Warring Religions, all the glory and shame, the wild loves and bitter hatreds of humanity—even Birth and Death—but minor notes in the Grand Symphony, the Harmony ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... is intelligible; the manner how is unknown; the belief therein is obligatory; and the asking about it is a ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... been seated on the ground, listening with profound interest, but scarcely understanding a word, though here and there, after her six months' stay in the island, a single phrase was dimly intelligible to her. But now, at this critical moment she rose, and, standing upright by Felix's side in her spotless English purity among those assembled savages, she pointed just once with her uplifted finger to the calm vault of heaven, and then across the moonlit ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... together some particulars of the early life of William James and present him in his setting, his immediate native and domestic air, so that any future gathered memorials of him might become the more intelligible and interesting, I found one of the consequences of my interrogation of the past assert itself a good deal at the expense of some of the others. For it was to memory in the first place that my main appeal for particulars had to be made; ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... acquaintance with the poor and the despised, the nature and work of Christ first became perfectly intelligible to her; for how many traits of simple, self-sacrificing readiness to help, what touching contentment and grateful joy in the veriest trifle, what childlike piety and humble resignation even amidst intolerable suffering, these unfortunates had shown! Nay, when she had become familiar with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... simplicity, and variety of his composition. Antique expressions I have avoided; admitting, however, some old words, where they seemed to suit the subject: but I hope none will be found that are now obsolete, or in any degree not intelligible to a reader of ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... smaller degree — since previous labours in the same direction had left far less to do — the same work has been performed for the spelling of Spenser; and the whole endeavour in this department of the Editor's task has been, to present a text plain and easily intelligible to the modern reader, without any injustice to the old poet. It would be presumptuous to believe that in every case both ends have been achieved together; but the laudatores temporis acti - the students who may differ most from the plan pursued in this volume — will best appreciate ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... English Church with some injustice. His recorded estimates of the leading theologians of the age, and personal relation to them, are hopelessly bewildering. His lifelong friendship for Erskine of Linlathen is intelligible, though he did not extend the same charity to what he regarded as the muddle-headedness of Maurice (Erskine's spiritual son), and keenly ridiculed the reconciliation pamphlet entitled "Subscription no Bondage." The Essayists and Reviewers, "Septem contra ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... despised caution. He was one of those statesmen whom modern critics, on the watch for the partially obsolete and with the complexity of present problems always before them, tend to depreciate. He had the first quality which is necessary for popularity: he was readily intelligible. In addition he was prompt, combative, and magnanimous; shrewd, but never subtle; sensible, but not imaginative. He had no ideas which he wished to carry out; he did not like ideas. He wanted England to dominate in Europe and to use her power ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... imagination can see or say, for all that the scientist's investigation can discover, it sees that beneath the beauty is the Fountain of all loveliness, beneath and behind the 'number' of the numberless stars works the infinite will of God. Surely an intelligible creation must have an intelligent source. Surely a universe in which Mind can apprehend order and number must have a Mind at the back of it. Wordsworth has nobly said of Duty what we may more truly say of God: 'Thou ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... work is to give to the reader of the present day an intelligible view of a transaction of the past, and not to illustrate any thing else than the said transaction, no attempt has been made to preserve the orthography of that period. Most of the original papers were written without ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... without which, it was contended, no administration could be successful in framing and carrying out a definite policy. Hill's action, in again presenting himself as a candidate for Governor in the fall of 1894, is intelligible only in the light of this ambition. He had already served two terms as Governor and was now only midway in his senatorial term; but if he again showed that he could carry New York he would have demonstrated, so it was thought, that he was the most eligible Democratic ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... on his birthday in 1866. The rejection of Semper's splendid design for the theatre by the civil-list led his thoughts anew to the wide German fatherland, and he at once returned to the Meistersingers, in the hope that by this more intelligible work the public would finally turn to him, and that then the great German people would assist in the erection of a festival-building for a national art-work and thus realize his grand ideal. We know to-day that he succeeded in uniting ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... would punish them as enemies. Worshippers of nature gods, therefore, based their ceremonial practices on natural phenomena. "The dread of the worshippers that the neglect of the usual ritual would be followed by disaster, is particularly intelligible", writes Professor Robertson Smith, "if they regarded the necessary operations of agriculture as involving the violent extinction of a particle of divine life."[108] By observing their ritual, the worshippers won the ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... his high friends and connections who threw a shield over him when his audacity had gone beyond endurance. We know Clodius only from Cicero; and a picture of him from a second hand might have made his position more intelligible, if not more reputable. Even in Rome it is scarcely credible that the Clodius of Cicero could have played such a part, or that the death of such a man should have been regarded as a national calamity. Cicero says that Clodius revived Catiline's faction; but ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude |
