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Conviction   /kənvˈɪkʃən/   Listen
Conviction

noun
1.
An unshakable belief in something without need for proof or evidence.  Synonyms: article of faith, strong belief.
2.
(criminal law) a final judgment of guilty in a criminal case and the punishment that is imposed.  Synonyms: condemnation, judgment of conviction, sentence.



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"Conviction" Quotes from Famous Books



... develop pink fingernails and gleaming teeth and eyeballs. Her real distrust of anything foreign was made keener by her homesickness. At last she fell into an uneasy sleep, clutching her purse and her gold beads tightly. At each station she woke with a jerk and a horrible conviction that the train had been wrecked and she was the sole survivor. Sometimes she put her hand up and felt of the wooden wall over her head for assurance that the upper berth to which Hannah had blithely ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett

... like a ton of notes and things on the various stunts of the bubonic germ in Manchuria when it is feeling fit and spry. But he is seized with a conviction that he must go somewhere in northwest China where he thinks there is happy hunting-ground of evidence which will verify his report to the Government. Suppose the next thing I hear he will be chasing around the outer rim of the ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... education in bird song correspond with the conviction expressed by Dr. W. H. Hudson on page 257 of his interesting book entitled "The Naturalist in La Plata," fourth edition, 1903: "It is true that Daines Barrington's notion that young song birds learn to sing only by imitating the adults, still holds its ground; and Darwin gives it ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... But slowly the conviction grew upon him that he was crawling in a small circle,—the very circle he had just made. Some way, he had missed the snowshoe trail. He did not remember how on his journey out he had once been obliged to backtrack a hundred yards and start on at a new angle. ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... his plans, and made himself out so great an invalid that Bessie felt a fear in her heart lest her lover should die and she be left in the world alone, in case—She did not dare finish the thought, or put into words her conviction that her father was daily growing weaker, with less care for or interest in any thing passing around him. This change for the worse had commenced with a heavy cold, taken soon after the holidays, and which none of Dorothy's prescriptions could reach. It was in ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes

... Alliance by a vote of 21,602 to 401. In its formal statement the Alliance declared: "It is our purpose to try, by educational methods, to bring about a more American spirit in the labor movement, so that what is now the clear expression of the vast majority may become the conviction of all. Where we find ignorance, we shall educate. Where we find something worse, we shall have to deal as the situation demands. But we are going to leave no stone unturned to put a stop to anti-American activities among workers." ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth

... William Thornhill, to whose virtues and singularities scarce any were strangers. The poor Mr Burchell was in reality a man of large fortune and great interest, to whom senates listened with applause, and whom party heard with conviction; who was the friend of his country, but loyal to his king. My poor wife recollecting her former familiarity, seemed to shrink with apprehension; but Sophia, who a few moments before thought him her own, now perceiving the immense distance to which he was removed by ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith

... on the contrary, was soft and sweet,—'an excellent thing in woman;' yet, in urging any favourite topic, which she often pursued with natural eloquence, it possessed as well the tones which impress awe and conviction, as those of persuasive insinuation. The eager glance of the keen black eye, which in the Chieftain seemed impatient even of the material obstacles it encountered, had, in his sister, acquired ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... propitiation respects God as well as us; the appeasing his wrath, and the reconciling of his justice to us, as well as the redeeming us from death and hell; yea, it therefore doth the one, because it doth the other. Now, if Christ, as an Advocate, pleadeth a propitiation with God, for whose conviction doth he plead it? Not for God's; for he has ordained it, allows it, and gloriously acquiesces therein, because he knows the whole virtue thereof. It is therefore for the conviction of the fallen angels, and for the confounding of all those cavils that can be invented and objected against ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... the gang. Through his glittering, bloodshot eyes he saw the cool, derisive sneer on her red lips. He had failed, however, to note the keen, appraising look with which she searched the faces of his baffled, glowering companions. In that long, tense look she had seen dawning comprehension change to conviction; she had read his doom, so she could, in perfect security, give him that scoffing, heartless smile to take with him on the journey from which he was never ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... of grandeur met their vision, although it appalled the stoutest hearts. Before them, stretching away in the distance and rising until its summit, capped with snow, pierced the clouds, a range of mountains lay—a formidable barrier over which they knew they ought not to go—and then came the conviction that they had wandered to the foot of the great barrier that separated the Pacific from the vast unexplored sandy desert, and the snowy peaks that rose before them were those of the Sierra Nevada. ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle

... idea of her being ignorant of Anjou's scheme, or opposed to its success. As for William of Hesse, while he bewailed more than ever the luckless plunge into "confusum chaos" which Casimir had taken, he unhesitatingly expressed his conviction that the invasion of Alencon was a master-piece of Catherine. The whole responsibility of the transaction he divided, in truth, between the Dowager and the comet, which just then hung over the world, filling the soul of the excellent Landgrave with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... prompted by the abiding conviction that Plautus as a dramatic artist has been from time immemorial misunderstood. In his progress through the ages he has been like a merry clown rollicking amongst people with a hearty invitation to laughter, and has been rewarded by commendation ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke

... made this speech with such a pretty air of assurance, such a conviction that there was something pardonable in her egotism, with such winning frankness, that Audrey forgave the thoughtless insinuation against poor overtasked Mollie. It was evident that Mrs. Blake idolised her eldest son; her eyes softened ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... for money, which all but confessedly she wanted on his account. He had blurred the significance of such a situation, persuading himself that neither was Eve capable of a great passion, nor the man he had seen able to inspire one. Now he rushed to the conviction that Eve had fooled him with ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing

... country there are individuals who depart from the general opinion and general conviction, both in their views and in their conduct; but the great, the overwhelming body of the American people love liberty, not in the restricted sense of desiring it for themselves alone, but in the broader sense of desiring it ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... Many people go through life with loose beliefs and purposes, and they never arrive at any glorious goal. "Let your loins be girded about." Bind your loose thinkings together with the girdle of truth into firm and saving conviction. ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... more from conviction than policy, though that policy was surely the most prudent in the world, that the great duke always spoke of his victories with an extraordinary modesty, and as if it was not so much his own admirable ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... unfortunately, the concession of Emancipation was spoilt not merely by the sense that it was granted to force rather than to conviction, but even more to the intense bitterness and dislike with which it was regarded by a large proportion of English Protestants. A new religious life and a new sense of religious responsibility was making itself widely felt there. The eighteenth century, with its easy-going ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... ruined by a high, unbroken level of success. Intellectually it makes for despotism and a conviction of infallibility. In the world of ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... pestilence they spread abroad. These men, like the owners of negro ships, never smell on their money the blood by which it has been gained, but sleep quietly in their beds, terming such occupations lawful callings; yet the lightning marks not their roofs to thunder conviction on them "and to justify the ways of God ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... diffusion of knowledge, but furnished the organization necessary for founding, supervising, and maintaining, in wholesome touch with the common man, both elementary and higher institutions of learning. Their disciplined and responsive conscience, their consequent intensity of moral conviction and spirit of self- sacrifice for the common weal, compelled them to realize, in concrete and permanent form, their ideals of college and common school." (Foster, H. D., In Monroe's Cyclopedia of Education, vol. ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... scholar and a patient man, blinded by conjugal love, had met futilities with arguments, expressions of emotional distaste with facts, trying to lift each absurd wrangle to the level of a discussion; and at last he died, leaving his wife with the conviction that she had been the equal mate of an able man. Her children had to face and conquer, with varying degrees of success, the temptation ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... out this journey," gasped Bobby, as he was lifted from the doolie. "Not going out this journey." Then with an air of supreme conviction—"I can't, you see." ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... is deemed that a calm consideration of the events so hastily and imperfectly narrated in the preceding pages must lead all unprejudiced persons among our countrymen to a firm conviction on ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... rise early will ever do any good. Only consider! You read a book; you are convinced by it; you do not know the authour. Suppose you afterwards know him, and find that he does not practice what he teaches; are you to give up your former conviction At this rate you would be kept in a state of equilibrium, when reading every book, till you knew how the authour practised.' 'But,' said Lady M'Leod, 'you would think better of Dr Cadogan, if he acted according to his principles.' JOHNSON. ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... level tracery of the yews, under the suffused, mild light, it sent her, from its open windows and hospitably smoking chimneys, the look of some warm human presence, of a mind slowly ripened on a sunny wall of experience. She had never before had so deep a sense of her intimacy with it, such a conviction that its secrets were all beneficent, kept, as they said to children, "for one's good," so complete a trust in its power to gather up her life and Ned's into the harmonious pattern of the long, long story it sat there weaving ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... oratory had been quite spontaneous and unaffected, and like most genuine things it carried conviction to its hearers. In the midst of a babel of voices the big bell rang for afternoon school. The girls fled to their various classrooms, discussing the ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil

... that she had uttered nothing to give the least offence. The hunter tried to compose himself to sleep, but he felt restive and uneasy, for he could hear the sighs and lamentations of the two strangers. Every moment added to his conviction that his guests had taken some deep offence; and, as he could not banish this idea from his mind, he arose, and, going to the strangers, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous

... bitterly on returning to his headquarters that the order he had sent to General Bernadotte had not been executed, and in consequence of this his corps had taken no part in the battle, and expressed his firm conviction that the victory, which remained in doubt between the Emperor and General Benningsen, would have been decided in favor of the former had a fresh army-corps arrived during the battle, according to the ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... experiential certainty as to the existence of the soul, its survival after death, the action of the law of karma, and other points of equally paramount importance. The difference between even the profoundest intellectual conviction and the precise knowledge gained by direct personal experience must be felt in ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater

... August he had reached the longitude of Tschaun Bay (170 deg. E. from Greenwich). He was engaged in whale-fishing, not in an exploring expedition, and turned here; but, in the short account he has given of his voyage, he expresses the decided conviction that a voyage from Behring's Straits to the Atlantic belongs to the region of possibilities, and adds that, even if this sea-route does not come to be of any commercial importance, that between the Lena and Behring's Straits ought to be useful ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... possessing a son whose noble sentiments and striking qualities were worthy of his illustrious blood, and announced his speedy return. The young lady was not forgotten; he confessed that to her generosity he was partly indebted for the submission of her lover, and expressed his conviction that the Count would not disapprove the gift he had made her, of ten thousand florins. That sum was remitted, on the same day, to this noble and interesting girl, who left the Hague without delay. The preparations for the Count's journey were made; a splendid wardrobe and an excellent carriage were ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... couldn't make office-rent," declared the expert with conviction. "What you want in the proprietary game is a jollier. Certina's that. The booze does it. You ought to see the farmers in a no-license district lick it up. Three or four bottles will give a guy a pretty strong hunch for it. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... gave it as his conscientious conviction that the Prince was guilty, and Hsi was then recalled. He started violently as he saw that his sword had been reversed and that its point was now toward, instead of away from, him; for he knew by that token that he had been found guilty, ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... better education than they once did," Eleanor Kemp replied with conviction. She refrained from explaining that a girl like Milly, with no social background, might marry "to advantage" on her looks, but she would need something more to maintain any desirable position in the world. Such ideas were getting ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... The humiliating conviction forced itself upon him that he was not figuring to great advantage in this adventure. Distinctly a humiliating sensation to one who ordinarily was by way of having a fine conceit of himself. It requires a certain amount of egotism to enable one to play the exquisite ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... had in it something of the inhuman, and dissevered the enthusiast from his fellow-creatures. It was possible that the barbarian suspected as much, that by some slow process of rumination he had arrived at his fixed and inveterate impression, by no means a clear reasoned conviction; the average Philistine, if pressed for the reasons of his dislike, would either become inarticulate, ejaculating "faugh" and "pah" like an old-fashioned Scots Magazine, or else he would give some imaginary and absurd reason, alleging that all "littery men" were ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... with scant courtesy. But Julius put this aside. He could afford to forget himself in his desire for any possible mitigation of the blow which must fall on Katherine Calmady. And, listening to his talk, he had, in the last quarter of an hour, gained conviction not only of this man's ability, but of his humanity, of his possession of the peculiar gentleness which so often, mercifully, goes along with unusual strength. As the coarse-looking hand could soothe, touching delicately, so ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... many another of the stories that delighted young readers when they first appeared in the pages of Aunt Judy's Magazine. The preeminence of "Jackanapes" among these many splendid stories may at least partly be accounted for by the fact that it grew out of the heat of a great conviction about life. Early in 1879 the news reached England of the death of the Prince Imperial of France, who fell while serving with the English forces in South Africa during the war with the Zulus. Perhaps the present-day reader needs ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... many thousands throughout the civilized world. Here was a life more winsome, more appealing, more complete than any creation of the genius of the man that lived it—a life which, whether we know it in detail or not, explains in part the fascination Daudet exerts upon us and the conviction we cherish that, whatever ravages time may make among his books, the memory of their writer will not fade from the hearts of men. Many Frenchmen have conquered the world's mind by the power or the subtlety of ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... inconsistent with the moralistic teachings unfolded above, and could only be united with them at a few points. To the Apologists the proposition: "it is impossible to learn to know God without the help of God" ("impossibile est sine deo discere deum") was a conviction which, with the exception of Justin, they subordinated to their moralism and to which they did not give a specifically Christological signification. Irenaeus understood this proposition in a Christological sense,[568] and at the same time conceived ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... he exclaimed, with conviction. "I know the sound now." And he began to push vigorously through the bushes, in the direction of ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson

... Poor dears!" he thought, with the cold to-morrow in view, yet retained his conviction of having done the unhappy lovers on ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... is useless for me to tell him anything," said the young Turk with a ring of quiet conviction. "I have been talking to that one—and to the others. They are at every entrance. It is as ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... saw a gleam of amusement in the girl's dark eyes, but Theo's ready tongue filled up the momentary pause, and soon all three were chatting like old friends, and when Mr. Scott took his departure, it was with the conviction that his new scholar was fortunate in having Nan for a friend. At the same time he realised that this great tenement with its mixed community was a most unsuitable place for a girl like Nan, and determined that she should be gotten into better surroundings as soon ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston

... of them to fill any theatre—who sincerely admire Mr. FECHTER; but it is impossible to resist the conviction that their admiration is only a dutiful acquiescence in the judgment of Mr. DICKENS. With the utmost desire to do no injustice to a genial gentleman, who conscientiously strives to carry out his theories of what acting should be, the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various

... in trying to think how she might compel, cajole, or bribe the man at the Dabney House to pledge her his eternal silence. But she had not been able to think of any promising way: each time, she brought up confronting with painful fascination the conviction that religious fellows were hard. And out of this conviction there grew, in time, her own resolve. Well, then, she would be hard, too. She would avoid seeing or having any communication with Dr. Vivian, and if he dared to repeat anything, she would simply laugh it all aside. She would deny ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... a deep-rooted conviction of mine that none but the gulls and I really and truly liked the wind. 'Fishermen are muffs,' I used to say; 'they talk about the wind as though it were an enemy, just because it drowns one or two of 'em now and then. Anybody can like sunshine; muffs can like sunshine; it ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... from her hand. No doctor was sent for. John thought, and I cannot but think, that the water in his bottle had to do with the sudden illness. His mother may have merely wished to prevent him from coming to me; but, for the time at least, the conviction had got possession of him, that she was attempting his life. He may have argued in semi conscious moments, that she would not scruple to take again what she was capable of imagining she had given. Her attentions, however, may have arisen ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald

... attorney-general speak for about an hour, when he gave way to the counsel for the prisoner. But, to my great surprise, for I knew that this accusation was much the gravest of the two, since the head of Noah would be the price of conviction, my brother Downright, instead of making a very ingenious reply, as I had fully anticipated, merely said a few words, in which he expressed so firm a confidence in the acquittal of his client, as to appear to think a further defence ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... the ordinary rules of logic force upon us the conviction that writings of the above stamp are gotten up to produce certain effects. Can any be found simple enough to believe that a whole people would be aroused, armed, and taught to what end and how to use the given arms, as was done ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... that may have flourished when 'the Dials' were built, in vessels as dirty as 'the Dials' themselves; and shops for the purchase of rags, bones, old iron, and kitchen-stuff, vie in cleanliness with the bird-fanciers and rabbit-dealers, which one might fancy so many arks, but for the irresistible conviction that no bird in its proper senses, who was permitted to leave one of them, would ever come back again. Brokers' shops, which would seem to have been established by humane individuals, as refuges for destitute ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... particular case in which it was the general opinion that an energetic and vigilant deputy had been removed, and an elderly lethargic man substituted, because of too great activity in the prosecution of liquor cases, resulted in the conviction that what should have been a matter of administrative righteousness only was a political matter ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... have disgraced our civilization—which have made the white people of the South almost a unit in opposing by every means, lawful and unlawful, the course of the Government in reconstruction, has been a deep and bitter conviction that hatred, envy, and resentment against them on the part of the North, were the motives which prompted those acts. Such a measure, planned upon a liberal scale, would be a vindication of the manhood ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... bluid o' Scots, Frae Maidenkirk to John o' Grots, The king o' drinks, as I conceive it, Talisker, Isla, or Glenlivet! For after years wi' a pockmantie Frae Zanzibar to Alicante, In mony a fash an' sair affliction I gie 't as my sincere conviction— Of a' their foreign tricks an' pliskies, I maist abominate their whiskies. Nae doot, themsel's, they ken it weel, An' wi' a hash o' leemon peel, An' ice an' siccan filth, they ettle The stawsome kind o' goo to settle; Sic wersh apothecary's broos wi' As ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... And when we say confidence we do not mean a purely intellectual conviction. We mean a profoundly emotional faith. It will help you to cultivate this feeling of confidence if you will affirm many times a day, "I have implicit confidence in myself! I have perfect faith in my own powers! I ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton

... head of the Great Bight, and so far, it might perhaps be practicable—since it is possible that a light party might, in a favourable season, force their way across. As regards the transit of stock, however, my own conviction is that it is quite impracticable. The vast extent of desert country to the westward—the scarcity of grass—the denseness of the scrub—and the all but total absence of water, even in the most favourable seasons, are in themselves, sufficient bars to the transit of stock, even to a distance we ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... Augustine Road about three miles south of Jacksonville, 102 years old and full of humorous reminiscences about most of those years. To his frequent visitors he relates tales of his past, disjointedly sometimes but with a remarkable clearness and conviction. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... conviction that, with the spread of true scientific culture, whatever may be the medium, historical, philological, philosophical, or physical, through which that culture is conveyed, and with its necessary concomitant, a constant elevation of ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... mistake in expressing the conviction that there are hundreds, not to say thousands, of the Presbyterian and Congregational clergy, who will sympathise with me thoroughly in these strictures on the encroachments of the laity upon pastoral prerogative; ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... to find myself among The choicest spirits of the age: health, sirs! I would commend your fame to future years, But that I know ere this ye must be old In the conviction, and that ye full oft With sure posterity have shaken hands Over the ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... that of Lady Isabel Vane. Work for their living? It may appear very feasible in theory; but theory and practice are as opposite as light and dark. The plain fact was, that Isabel had no alternative whatever, save that of accepting a home with Lady Mount Severn; and the conviction that it must be so stole over her spirit, even while her hasty lips were protesting ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... son's case: and the best course will be for me to enumerate in general terms the several symptoms of 'the Incubation of Insanity:'" he concluded with some severity. "After that, sir, I shall cease to intrude what I fear is an unwelcome conviction." ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... that gyroscope was tampered with before we started on this last flight!" declared Jack, with conviction. "And I'm sure HE did it!" he added, pointing an accusing finger at the retreating ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis

... the slavers did not escape conviction, though the only penalty inflicted was the seizure of their vessels. The pursuers rescued some of the drowning negroes, who were able to testify that they had been on the suspected ship, and condemnation followed. The captain of the slaver "Brillante" took no chance of such a disaster. Caught ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... rejoined Neale O'Neil, his conviction growing. "Now, on that basis, let's ask about the barges that have gone east ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill

... to comfort, there was no comfort anywhere. Susan grew sick of her own thoughts. Chief among them was the conviction of failure, she had tried to be good and failed. She had consented to be what was not good, and ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... I am enjoying exceedingly Orme's HISTORY OF HINDOSTAN, a lovely book in its way, in large quarto, with a quantity of maps, and written in a very lively and solid eighteenth century way, never picturesque except by accident and from a kind of conviction, and a fine sense of order. No historian I have ever read is so minute; yet he never gives you a word about the people; his interest is entirely limited in the concatenation of events, into which he goes with a lucid, almost superhuman, and wholly ghostly gusto. ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... body of a man. Or, rather, to be more exact, Racksole could discern the legs of a man on that half of the table which was visible to him. Involuntarily he shuddered, as the conviction forced itself upon him that Rocco had some unconscious human being helpless on that cold marble surface. The legs never moved. Therefore, the hapless creature was either asleep or under the influence of ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett

... a clerical post in the bureau of political police of the Empire, a department of the Ministry of the Interior, and for several years pursued a calm, uneventful life in that capacity. In consequence of a grave scandal discovered in my department—for my chief had secured the conviction of a certain wealthy nobleman named Tiniacheff, in Kharkoff, who was perfectly innocent of any offence—I was one day called as witness by the court of inquiry ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux

... sufficient evidence to convict them; and to make arrests without the means of conviction would be worse than doing nothing. The Ionian has cleared for Wilmington with a cargo of old iron. Everything looks regular in regard to her, and I have no doubt there is some party who would claim the castings if occasion required. The first thing ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic

... France who would not have laughed was perhaps Louis XIII; but as for his roue of a father, he would perhaps have banished the young man, either under the accusation that he was no Frenchman or from a conviction that he was ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac

... disappeared for a time. Almost everybody had enough money, or enough friends with money, to adopt the former course. Of 1,200 murders—or "killings"—committed in the San Francisco of those days, there was just one legal conviction! ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... all these defects, Mr. George Longford was a sincerely devout man, and a most firm believer in the Christian religion,—from a conviction of its truth, not merely because it was the fashion to believe it, or because his fathers believed it before him,—and a practical observer of its moral precepts. He read and studied the New Testament, because it contained ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... as in their having a better knowledge of their own interest than he has of his. It is by this superior knowledge of their own interest that they have frequently imposed upon his generosity, and persuaded him to give up both his own interest and that of the public, from a very simple but honest conviction, that their interest, and not his, was the interest of the public. The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... comprised about forty volumes. ] But, what is more curious, a Catholic writer of the present day, the Abb Faillon, in an elaborate and learned work, dilates at length on the details of the display; and this, too, with a gravity which evinces his conviction that squibs, rockets, blue-lights, and serpents are important instruments for the saving of souls. [ Histoire de la Colonie Franaise, I. 291, 292. ] On May-Day of the same year, 1637, Montmagny planted before the church a May-pole surmounted by a triple crown, beneath ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... me; and, besides, sensible that the character of my interlocutor was beyond my penetration; at least, beyond its present reach; and feeling the uncertainty, the vague sense of insecurity, which accompanies a conviction of ignorance. ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... think, I had something of a prophet's vision. And all the time I was struggling with my growing belief that this was to be a long war, and a merciless war. I did not want to believe some of the things I knew I must believe. But every day came news that made conviction sink ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder

... of the way, and the principles of the "Monroe Doctrine" imprinted as a legend upon our banners, we should have stood on unassailable ground; have exhibited a national importance and vitality—an uncompromising firmness, courage and dignity that would have carried conviction, achieved immediate and honorable success, and commanded the respect of the civilized world. But fettered, tantalized, and weakened, by the ambiguities and inconsistencies of this co-partnership treaty, the United States government was compelled to temporize, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various

... be called dignity; and the more I looked at him, the more I knew that he was a distinguished person, and wondered who. He might have been a minister of state; only there is not one of them who has any right to such a face and presence. At last,—I do not know how the conviction came,—but I became aware that it was Macaulay, and began to see some slight resemblance to his portraits. But I have never seen any that is not wretchedly unworthy of the original. As soon as I knew him, I began to listen to his ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... different tribes meet and mingle promiscuously among themselves. Negroes from the Soudan [Footnote: Soudan: the region south of the Sahara Desert.] and light-colored Arabs: Mussulmans [Footnote: Mussulmans: Mohammedans.] without conviction of the faith, whose women veil only their mouths; and the green-turbaned Derkaouas, merciless fanatics, who turn their heads and spit upon the ground at the sight of a Christian. Every day the "Holy woman," with wild eyes and vermilion-painted cheeks, ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... subjecting them to much discomfort, depriving them of sleep, lowering their morale, and making them likelier victims for fresh forms of devilment in the morning. War is a filthy thing, and must be stamped out ruthlessly. The facts of gas will have helped to drive this simple conviction into many a thick, egotistical, unsensitive head. But, as has been wisely said, you cannot half make a war of the modern sort, you cannot let a faint savour of regret hang about all your actions, and enervate your will. And, in plain, brutal truth, our employment of ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton

... feature of the case is that it has yet to be shown that the defendant was going at a rate exceeding ten miles an hour, and upon this point the witnesses did not agree. There was evidence tending to prove the machine was going ten miles an hour, but that would not lead to conviction under the first clause of the ordinance; but there is another clause which says that a machine must not be run in such a manner as to endanger or inconvenience public travel. What is detrimental to public travel? Does it mean to run it so as not to frighten a man of nerve like the chief of police, ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... I thought my aunt would be at home, and expressed my conviction that she would be delighted to see him, and I ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... knew regarding the situation before us. My own knowledge of the environments of the Minor house helped me greatly to appreciate the difficulties to be surmounted. He had succeeded in his escape by dodging among the negro cabins where the attacking line appeared weakest, but expressed the conviction that even this slight gap would be securely closed long before ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish

... particularly as it would not have suited the theory by which she accounted for the Major's unwonted good-humour, and her suggestion that the pop they had all heard so clearly was the opening of a bottle of stone ginger-beer was not delivered with conviction. To make sure, however, she took one more sip of the new supply, and, irradiated with ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... him an inmate of the house, as if no doubts had ever been cast on the legitimacy of their union. What thoughts passed through her mind during the long 'tete-a-tete'? She had accused this man of imposture, and now, notwithstanding her secret conviction, she was obliged to appear as if she had no suspicion, as if she had been mistaken, to humiliate herself before the impostor, and ask forgiveness for the insanity of her conduct; for, having publicly renounced her accusation by refusing to swear to it, she had no alternative left. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... in consequence of an express intimation that such was the will of heaven. Mr. Sen denied miracles, but believed in inspiration; and of his own inspiration he seems to have entertained no doubt. We thus obtain a glimpse into the peculiar working of his mind. Every full conviction, every strong wish of his own he ascribed to divine suggestion. This put him in a position of extreme peril. It was clear that an enthusiastic, imaginative, self-reliant nature like his might thus be borne on ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir

... little beyond him, and has, therefore, made no great figure in the examination, but of his conduct I can speak in the highest terms, and believe that his sense of duty is so strong that he only wants the conviction that it is his duty to exert himself a little more, to make him for the future as habitually industrious as he has been during the last ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May

... am too prolix upon this head, I am sorry for it. It is a strong conviction of the great importance of the subject, which carries me away, and makes me, perhaps, tiresome, where I would wish most to avoid it. The care of the Poor, however, I must consider as a matter of very serious importance. It appears to me to be one of the ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford

... the taking of the Bastille, and other revolutionary falsehoods, will, I trust, be elucidated. The people are now undeceived only by their calamities—the time may come, when it will be safe to produce their conviction by truth. Heroes of the fourteenth of July, and patriots of the tenth of August, how will ye ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... all sorts are so much the taste of genteel rogues of the present age, that the reader will readily dispense with a detailed account of the trial and conviction of Howel Jenkins. Any one of the various cases that fill those columns of the Times, devoted to such criminalities, will give a very good general idea of his. All that his mother's remnant of his father's hoarded wealth could do, was done, to prove him guiltless, but in vain. Counsel ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... people mention it," Noel Bridges intervened, "although not quite with the same conviction as you, Mr. Greene. Curiously enough, however, the photograph of Romilly which they sent out from England, and which was in all the Sunday papers, didn't strike me as being particularly ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... were married. Perhaps the wildest and maddest any human soul had, during that Century. I find in him, starting out from the Lethean quagmires where he had to grow, a certain rash greatness of idea; traces of veritable conviction, just resolution; veritable and just, though rash. That of admiration for King Friedrich was not intrinsically foolish, in the solitary thoughts of the poor young fellow; nay it was the reverse; though it was highly ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... navigators of the Murray would not have heard a human voice along its banks; but so it is, that in the wide field of nature, we see the hand of an over-ruling Providence, evidences of care and protection from some unseen quarter, which strike the mind with overwhelming conviction, that whether in the palace or in the cottage, in the garden, or in the desert, there is an eye upon us. Not to myself do I accord any credit in that I returned from my wanderings to my home. Assuredly, if it had not been for other guidance than the exercise of my ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... trained eyes noticed at once that the strangers were of varying figure. The foremost, even at the distance, seemed to be gigantic, the second was very long and thin, and the third was normal. Smith and Karnes watched them a little while, and then Karnes spoke in words of true conviction. ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler

... resolution in my favour; and, in short, mingled so much good sense and complacency in her reproof, that I became as much enamoured of her understanding as I had been before of her beauty, and asked pardon for my presumption with the utmost reverence of conviction. She forgave my offence with her usual affability, and sealed my pardon with a look so full of bewitching tenderness, that, for some minutes, my senses were lost in ecstacy! I afterwards endeavoured to regulate my behaviour according to her desire, and turn the conversation ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... yet," said Lucian, with an air of conviction, "however the man and woman entered, they were in ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume

... numerous instances in which nature has supplied similar wants by similar means, as detailed in Chapter III., are remembered; when also all the wonderful contrivances of orchids, of mimicry, and the strange complexity of certain instinctive actions are considered: then the conviction forces itself on many minds that the organic world is the expression of an intelligence of some kind. This view has been well advocated by Mr. Joseph John Murphy, in his recent work so often here ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... experiences also as a legislator and military commander, in early life, doubtless gave him a larger confidence in his own abilities on the one hand, and on the other a more profound conviction that everything in the State should, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... certainly looked very black for Mrs. Taylor and her son. The kind friends who appeared to assist them were staggered at the evidence, and feared it would be impossible to save him from conviction. They could only hope for the best, and hope against what appeared to be an absolute certainty. Judge Hamblin was confounded, but he was so averse to believing the brave boy was guilty, that he suspected ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic

... believed in God,—that He could do what He pleased, that He was a power to be supplicated; and she prayed to Him to save France, since princes could not save the land, divided by their rivalries and jealousies and ambitions. And the conviction, after much prayer and fasting, was impressed upon her mind—no matter how, but it was impressed upon her—that God had chosen her as His instrument, that it was her mission to raise the siege of Orleans, and cause the young Dauphin ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord

... illustrious Professor holds converse with Festus by the blazing logs deep into the night, and at length morning arises "clouded, wintry, desolate and cold," we listen with unflagging attention and entire imaginative conviction; and, when silence ensues, a wonder comes upon us as to where a young man of three-and-twenty acquired this knowledge of the various bitter tastes of life which belong to maturer experience, and how he had mastered such precocious ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... knowledge, one inference was sure to follow,—that now there could be no objection to his daughter becoming Gilbert Barton's wife. He was sounded, urged, almost threatened, and finally returned home with the conviction that any further opposition must result in ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... forever-recurring caprices and changes, his principles were high, always high, and absolutely unshakable. He was the strangest compound that ever got mixed in a human mould. Such a person as that is given to acting upon impulse and without reflection; that was Orion's way. Everything he did he did with conviction and enthusiasm and with a vainglorious pride in the thing he was doing—and no matter what that thing was, whether good, bad or indifferent, he repented of it every time in sackcloth and ashes before twenty-four ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... something to her in her early youth, which announced to her that he thought her lovely, changed her thoughts about herself for ever after. First, she accepted his compliment as his sincere and fervent conviction. Secondly, she never doubted that he expressed his continuous belief, not his feeling of the moment. Thirdly, she regarded beauty in her case as thenceforward an established fact, and not this one man's opinion. Fourthly, she spent some restless months in persuading herself ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... youth, became, sympathetically, the motive of a life as mobile, as ardent, as itself; of a continual journey, the venture and stimulus of which would be the occasion of ever new discoveries, of renewed conviction. ...
— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater

... shall willfully, premeditatedly and despitefully blaspheme or speak loosely and profanely of Almighty God, Christ Jesus, the Holy Spirit, or the Scriptures of Truth, such person, on conviction thereof, shall be sentenced to pay a fine not exceeding one hundred dollars, and undergo an imprisonment not exceeding three months, or either, at ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... already begun to feel uneasy at absence from the still reigning favourite of his heart, on perusing her letter was overcome with joy. He listened eagerly to the account of his fancied rival by the eloquent Ali Bin Ibrohim, to whom he expressed his conviction of her constancy, his own sorrow for his unreasonable desertion of her, and his intention of departing to visit her the next night, till when he desired the eunuch to repose himself after his fatigue. Ali Bin Ibrahim was then lodged, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... desire of shining before men that prompts us to whatever may effect it? and if it can create, can it not also support? I mean, that if you allow that to shine, to eclater, to enjoy praise, is no ordinary incentive to the commencement of great works, the conviction of future success for this desire becomes no inconsiderable reward. Grant, for instance, that this desire produced the 'Paradise Lost,' and you will not deny that it might also support the poet through his misfortunes. Do you think that he thought ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... inspiration, and inspiration without dictation; they have been and continue to be grievously confounded. Balaam and his ass were the passive organs of dictation; but no one, I suppose, will venture to call either of those worthies inspired. It is my profound conviction that St. John and St. Paul were divinely inspired; but I totally disbelieve the dictation of any one word, sentence, or argument throughout their writings. Observe, there was revelation. All religion ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... searched his desk and book-case in the office at school. He had never kept a diary; now he was wishing that he had. That might have contained something that would be evidence, one way or the other. All day, he vacillated between conviction of the reality of his future knowledge and resolution to have no more to do with it. Once he decided to destroy all the notes he had made, and thought of making a special study of some facet of history, and writing another book, to ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper

... grasped the situation (and I contrived to get a pretty clear account of it from my mother), there rushed upon me the conviction that a new phase had come over my prospects. When I put aside my own longings for my father's will; and every time that office life seemed intolerable to me, and I was tempted to break my bonds, and thought ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... a dollar a week, an' still I don't see any chance of your gettin' away yet awhile," said Ben, in a matter of fact tone, as he devoted his attention again to his horses, leaving Toby to his own sad reflections and the positive conviction that boys who run away from home do not have a good ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis

... not believe that I should hear from Farnham, because my conviction was steadily growing that his murdered body lay unidentified in the mortuary not far away. But I did expect to hear from the ship's company to the effect that no such passenger had been on board the St. Paul. Should this intelligence arrive, there would be so great an increase of ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson

... have implanted in every human heart some sense of right and wrong, some conviction of responsibility to a Superior Being. So far as Father Hennepin could understand their sign language, the chiefs informed him that they were going down the Mississippi to attack a village of the ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott

... impossible for him to give positive testimony as to what lies beyond, he may yet mention that all his own course of study, training and experience, long, severe and dangerous as it has often been, leads him to the conviction that everything is really as stated, save some details purposely veiled. For causes which cannot be explained to the public, he himself may he unable or unwilling to use the secret he has gained access to. Still he is ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... reading of history, and the reflections which it excites, produce a less powerful effect upon the soul than those heaps of stones, those ruins mingled with new habitations. So strongly do our eyes carry conviction to the mind, that after having beheld these ruins of Rome we believe the history of the ancient Romans as if we had been cotemporary with them. The recollections of the mind are acquired by study; the recollections of the imagination are born of a more immediate and intimate ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... from God, and called the school a seminary of the church and an apprenticeship of piety; holding that ignorance of letters had introduced into both church and state that thick darkness in which the tyranny of the Pope had had its birth and increase.... This conviction led him to lay out a large sum in building a college at Chatillon, and there he maintained three very learned professors of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, respectively, and a ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... be convicted, and that conviction would cut short my Army career," replied Prescott ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock

... said he. "That first. But a legal shingle can be turned into as handy a weapon as one could wish for, Padre, and I'm going to take that shingle and spank this sleepy-headed old town wide awake with it!" He spoke with the conviction of youth, so sure of itself that there is no room for doubt. There was in him, too, a hint of latent power which was impressive. One did ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... no answer from love, but from your conviction. Try your own self. The answer, which you are to give me now, is more than that which you are to give at the foot of the altar; there we are to exchange vows, and all will be settled; but here,—by ourselves,—no witnesses but ourselves,—here, where nothing influences us but ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland

... were all by the same speaker. Nowhere among the ribbons brought from the library was another of his making, although a great number of different voices was included; neither was there another talker with a fifth the volume, the resonance, the absolute power of conviction ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint

... the Civil War was the firing upon Fort Sumter. The cause was the collision between the ideals of the Union presented by Daniel Webster and the secession taught by Calhoun. The occasion of the American Revolution was the Stamp Tax; the cause was the conviction on the part of our forefathers that men who had freedom in worship carried also the capacity for self-government. The occasion of the French Revolution was the purchase of a diamond necklace for Queen Marie Antoinette at ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... different parts of Great Britain and Ireland. These were papists and Jacobites of strong prejudices and warm imaginations, who saw things through the medium of passion and party, and spoke rather from extravagant zeal than from sober conviction. They gave the court of Versailles to understand, that if the chevalier de St. George, or his eldest son Charles Edward, should appear at the head of a French army in Great Britain, a revolution ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... one thing to act from conviction and from the promptings of instinct while no obstacles opposed themselves to his decisions, and quite another thing to be brought face to face with such an emergency. Dr. Leslie wished first to be able to distinctly ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... "This sense of conviction in the people manifested itself still more powerfully when he returned to the same place in the year 1744, about which time Lord A— being informed of his resolution, determined again to be beforehand with him, and set out in person, with ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... the little form closer to her, in spite of its shuddering, and, looking into the upturned face (O mother, miserably blind), reads understandingly for the first time the hunger of heart so legibly written on every speaking feature. With the sharp arrow of conviction that pierces her soul at the sight, comes a voice appealing to its inmost recesses, a voice speaking those words spoken by the great heart of Divine Compassion, eighteen hundred years ago; those words of tenderest pleading: 'Feed my lambs!' How had ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... by the Italian astronomer Schiaparelli that one of these meteor swarms moves in the orbit of a previously observed comet, and other coincidences of the kind were soon forthcoming. The conviction grew that meteor swarms are really the debris of comets; and this conviction became a practical certainty when, in November, 1872, the earth crossed the orbit of the ill-starred Biela, and a shower of meteors came whizzing into our atmosphere in ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... was bound to give its protection, and to the same protection the church also had a claim, which was not done away, but only changed. Besides a mere declaration on the part of the government, that the tithe must be paid, nothing more was done. But conviction had to be wrought in the public mind, and to do this, again ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... would make conquests by no other means than by presenting to the observation of Europe a people more happy and better instructed than under other forms of Government. Fourth Stanza. Switzerland, and the Poet's recantation. Fifth Stanza. An address to Liberty, in which the Poet expresses his conviction that those feelings and that grand ideal of Freedom which the mind attains by its contemplation of its individual nature, and of the sublime surrounding objects (see Stanza the First) do not belong to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... did this idea enter his head, than it carried conviction with it. He was now all impatience to hurry back and secure the treasure, which, he did not doubt, lay at the bottom of the well, and which he feared every moment might be discovered by some other person. "Who knows," thought he, "but this night-walking old fellow ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... with wild imaginings. She was seized, too, by an irresistible desire to know what part Frederic was playing in this drama of the dark. Was his life in peril? Were Fleck and Carter now gathering evidence that would bring about his conviction, perhaps his shameful death? She must know what was happening. Quietly she had stolen up to ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston

... man in the most practical way that nuts provide the energy to be found in beef steak. It is said that knowledge creates an atmosphere in which prejudice cannot live. I know an old man who is absolutely settled in his conviction that New England has degenerated because her people have given up eating baked beans and cod fish balls, and introduced the sale of these delicacies in the West. That man says, with convincing logic, that in the old ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... Johnson (1890), ii. 266. It was asserted, on the other hand, by Sir John Fielding, the Bow-street magistrate, that on every run of the piece, 'The Beggar's Opera', an increased number of highwaymen were brought to his office; and so strong was his conviction, that in 1772 he remonstrated against the performance with the managers of ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... would avail. Far, far, down amid masses of rocks at the edge of the torrent lay a confused mass, amid which we could distinguish the wheel of a wagon, and the head of one of the animals which had drawn it, but nothing moved, no sound was heard. It was our conviction that both men and beasts had been, long ere they reached the bottom, ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston

... her own earliest friend of the patrimony that would otherwise return to Matilda with Darrell's pardon? This idea became exquisitely painful to the high-spirited Caroline, but it could not counterpoise the conviction of the greater pain she should occasion to the breast that so confided in her faith, if that faith were broken. Step by step the intrigue against the absent one proceeded. Mrs. Lyndsay thoroughly understood the art of insinuating doubts. Guy Darrell, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and action were great and comprehensive. By a solicitous examination of objections, and judicious comparison of opposite arguments, he attained what enquiry never gives but to industry and perspicuity, a firm and unshaken settlement of conviction. But his firmness was without asperity; for, knowing with how much difficulty truth was sometimes found, he did not wonder ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... peculiar fascination for them of the man who is not only wholly unselfish, but who utterly forgets himself in doing for others. The feeling is very common that the man in public life is chiefly concerned with what he can get out of it for himself. And when, now and then, the conviction seizes the crowd that some public man is not of that sort at all, but is devoting himself unselfishly and unsparingly to their interest, their admiration and love for him amounts to a worship and enthusiasm ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon

... forth down the river. As we tramped along, we discussed a question that was uppermost in the mind of each—what we should do with Snider when we had captured him, for with the action of pursuit had come the optimistic conviction that we should succeed. As a matter of fact, we had to succeed. The very thought of remaining in this utter wilderness for the rest ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... when the letters were discovered and the copies of them sent off to Noningsby, she thought that all was over. According to her ideas, as existing at that moment, the crime was conceived to be one admitting of no pardon; and in the hours spent under that conviction all her consolation came from the feeling that there was still one who regarded her as an angel of light. But then she had received Graham's letter, and as she began to understand that pardon was possible, that ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... back "by Saturday," but the Saturday's post did not bring the box containing the rector's teeth. There was no Sunday post, and the village was nine miles from the post town. The dentist, it afterwards appeared, had posted the teeth on the Saturday afternoon with the full conviction that their owner would receive them on Sunday morning in time for service. The old rector bravely tried to do that duty which England expects every man to do, more especially if he is a parson and if it be Sunday morning; but after he ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... me, Harry. There's only one way for this thing to end. His Royal Highness is doomed." Lorry spoke with the earnestness and conviction of one who is permitted to ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... well meant, and not without some show of reason, fail, however, to bring conviction to the senora. Her heart is too sad, the presentiment too heavy on it, to be affected by any such sophistry. In return, ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... happen," thought I, and over the whole room spread the same conviction. Electric currents seemed to snap from one consciousness to another. We dropped our books, and turned our eyes toward the western windows, to look upon a changed world. It was as if we peered through yellow glass. In the sky soft-looking, tawny clouds ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie

... realise at first. The crowd, already compact, increased every minute, for the official Salon was being deserted. People came stung by curiosity, impelled by a desire to judge the judges, and, above all, full of the conviction that they were going to see some very diverting things. It was very hot; a fine dust arose from the flooring; and certainly, towards four ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... winter campaign, as war records run, had been marked by only one engagement, Custer's attack on the Cheyenne village on the Washita River. But the hurling of so large a force as the Fort Sill garrison into the Indian stronghold in the depth of winter carried to the savage mind and spirit a deeper conviction of our power than could have been carried by a score of victories on the green prairies of summer. For the Indian stronghold, be it understood, consisted not in mountain fastnesses, cunning hiding-places, caves in the earth, and narrow ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter

... frequent floods and during the long season of high water in the spring—it is not surprising that the miracle theory was adopted to explain his eventual victory. Nor is it surprising that the popular conviction presently began to sustain itself by crystalizing into a definite legend—based upon the recorded fact that the Brothers worked under the vocation of the Holy Spirit—to the effect that the Spirit of God, taking human form, was ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... of sentiments and passions which defend a barricade, there is a little of everything; there is bravery, there is youth, honor, enthusiasm, the ideal, conviction, the rage of the gambler, and, above all, intermittences ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... the necessity for withholding fugitive slaves from the enemy, believing that there could be in it no danger of servile insurrection and that the Confederacy would thereby be weakened.[8] As this opinion soon developed into a conviction that official action was necessary, Congress, by Act of March 13, 1862, provided that slaves be protected against the claims of their pursuers. Continuing further in this direction, the Federal Government gradually reached the position ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson

... the result of experience, for he had never met one in the flesh before, but from instinct, conviction, and knowledge of the race acquired from books. Artists and poets: they were all alike—dirty beggars, all manners and no morals, who could talk the ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... as he had never yet done. He assumed that his end was won, and something of the triumph of passion endued his words with a joyous fervour. Very possibly there was truth in much that he said, for he spoke with the intense conviction which fulfils prophecies. But the only effect was to force Emily ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... which somehow makes the impression of superior importance may be presented inorganically and yet gain an interested hearing. The method of creating this impression, whether through the appearance of conviction in the writer or by various literary devices, need not detain us here. We shall be concerned merely with noting that the possible relation of the particular to the general, of this experience to the whole of experience, ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith

... and others down to Philip and Alexander[123]—firmly persuaded that with a tolerably numerous and well-appointed Grecian force, combined with exemption from Grecian enemies, they could succeed in overthrowing or dismembering the Persian empire. This conviction, so important in the subsequent history of Greece, takes its date from the retreat of the Ten Thousand. We shall indeed find Persia exercising an important influence, for two generations to come—and at the peace of ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... said, in a voice that carried no conviction. "The important thing is, stay quiet. Obey the rules. That's the ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley



Words linked to "Conviction" :   criminal law, convict, acquittal, belief, final decision, amateurism, final judgment



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