"Credible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... audible cessible coercible compatible competible comprehensible compressible conceptible contemptible contractible controvertible convertible convincible corrigible corrosible corruptible credible decoctible deducible defeasible defensible descendible destructible digestible discernible distensible divisible docible edible effectible eligible eludible enforcible evincible expansible expressible extendible extensible fallible ...
— Division of Words • Frederick W. Hamilton
... relation to the Peanut. This, however, was soon found to be impracticable. The more we studied the few data at hand, the more were we convinced of their utter unreliability. The fact is, so far as the writer is aware, there are no credible data of this crop existing. No authoritative and systematic attempt to gather and compile the statistics of the Peanut has ever been made, and until this is done we shall never know its full extent ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones
... informed that, on the same occasion, in language of which I have no credible report, you expressed your contempt for your country ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... no additions. A lively image of the Black Plague, and of the moral evil which followed in its train, will vividly represent itself to him who is acquainted with nature and the constitution of society. Almost the only credible accounts of the manner of living, and of the ruin which occurred in private life during this pestilence, are from Italy; and these may enable us to form a just estimate of the general state of families in Europe, taking into consideration what is peculiar in ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... ground. Strange to say, Rollin was not hurt, but he was effectually thrown out of the running for that time, and Victor saw him no more till evening. We relate no fanciful or exaggerated tale, good reader. Our description is in strict accordance with the account of a credible eye-witness. ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... in Sweden is maintaining one 'live' ITS site at its computer museum (right next to the only TOPS-10 system still on the Internet), so ITS is still alleged to hold the record for OS in longest continuous use (however, {{WAITS}} is a credible rival for this palm). 2. A mythical image of operating-system perfection worshiped by a bizarre, fervent retro-cult of old-time hackers and ex-users (see {troglodyte}, sense 2). ITS worshipers manage somehow to continue believing that an OS maintained by assembly-language hand-hacking ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... unreal to Dick, some hideous nightmare that would soon pass away when he awoke. Such a thing as this could not be! Yet it was real, it was credible, he was awake and he had seen it—he had seen it all from the moment that the first trooper appeared in the valley until the last fell under the overwhelming charge of the Sioux. He still heard, in the waning afternoon, their joyous ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... agency, ever at hand and ever credible to Easterns, makes this the most satisfactory version ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... coming from India by the south-east, yet must they without all doubt have struck upon some other part of Europe before their arrival there, as the isles of Madeira, Portugal, Spain, France, England, Ireland, etc., which, if they had done, it is not credible that they should or would have departed undiscovered of the inhabitants; but there was never found in those days any such ship or men, but only upon the coasts of Germany, where they have been sundry times and in sundry ages ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... fierceness that was hardly credible either in the dignified Mrs. Peter Ascott or the languid Miss Selina. To think of Miss Selina expecting a baby! The idea ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... is scarcely credible. I thought little Colbert, as you said just now, had passed over that love, and left the impression upon it of a spot of ink or ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in 1821; two years later Borrow is said to have "translated with fidelity and elegance from twenty different languages." {34b} In spite of his later achievements in learning languages, it seems scarcely credible that he acquired eight separate languages in two years, although it must be remembered that with him the learning of a language was to be able to read it after a rather laborious fashion. Taylor, however, uses the ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... their talents and property, entirely to the work of seeking out and saving the fallen of their own sex; and the wonders worked by their self-denying love on the hearts and lives of even the most depraved are credible only to those who know that the Good Shepherd Himself ever lives and works with such spirits engaged in such a work. A similar order of women exists in New York, under the direction of the Episcopal Church, in connection with St. Luke's Hospital; and another in England, who tend the "House ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... which characterized England's dealings with Ireland at this time would be hardly credible, were it not on record in the acts passed in the reigns of Charles II. and William III., and embodied in the resolutions of the English parliament during Walpole's term of power. An impartial historian is forced to the conclusion ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... nature without mitigation,) as that it is impossible for any mortall creature to indure the same, by the vertue of whose working power, those Northerly Seas are wholly congealed, making but one mas or contenent of yse, which is the more credible because the ordenary experience of our fishermen geueth vs sufficient notice thereof, by reason of the great quantitie of yse which they find to be brought vpon the cost of newefound land from those Northerne regions. By the aboundance whereof ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... arms and withdrawn (in Yoga meditation) from surrounding sights, none will be able to slay me. This that I tell thee is true. I also tell thee truly that I will cast off my arms in battle, having heard something very disagreeable from some one of credible speech.—'" ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... who had come up from nothing and was even yet barely on his feet, deliberately attempting to break the great copper combine was hardly credible to Rimrock. He marveled now at the presumption of Stoddard in offering him fifty millions for his half and the control of the mine. From what he could gather Stoddard had never possessed fifty millions, nor did he possess them then. ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... non fit. She was so silent and shadowy that the whole house sympathized with her, until it became extremely uncomfortable to the servants, who constantly went away; and a story that the house was haunted became immensely popular and credible the ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... gently she was speaking. With that perception of its being no challenge of wrath, no heat of the deceived soul, but only a free exposure of the completeness of past ignorance, inviting derision even if it must, the elder woman felt, first, a strange, barely credible relief: she drew in, as if it had been the warm summer scent of a flower, the sweet certainty of not meeting, any way she should turn, any consequence of judgment. She shouldn't be judged—save by herself; ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... better position to provide funds than any private individuals. What can be easier than for the Council (18) to invite by public proclamation all whom it may concern to bring their slaves, and to buy up those produced? Assuming the purchase to be effected, is it credible that people will hesitate to hire from the state rather than from the private owner, and actually on the same terms? People have at all events no hesitation at present in hiring consecrated grounds, sacred victims, (19) houses, etc., or in purchasing the right of ...
— On Revenues • Xenophon
... reckon on an Anglo—French entente. This union is cemented by the common hostility to Germany. No other reason for the political combination of the two States is forthcoming. There is not even a credible pretext, which ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... credible that one should be obliged to urge facts so obvious against the Baconian argument that only a Bacon, intimately familiar with the society of the great, could make the great speak as, in the plays, they do—and as in real ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... antiquarian prejudices in an exaggerated shape—in colors, to say the truth, altogether different from what they assumed under other circumstances, or which had any real influence upon his mind and conduct on occasions of practical moment. But I fancy it will seem equally credible, that the most sharp-sighted of these social critics may not always have been capable of tracing, and doing justice to, the powers which Scott brought to bear upon the topics which they, not he, had ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... perhaps it will not be impertinent if, before I proceed, I acquaint your Lordship with a conceit of that deservedly famous mechanician and Chymist, Cornelius Drebel, who, among other strange things that he perform'd, is affirm'd, by more than a few credible persons, to have contrived for the late learned King James, a vessel to go under water; of which, trial was made in the Thames, with admired success, the vessel carrying twelve rowers, besides passengers; one which ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... Austria. For that end it was necessary that Prussia should be all sting. Lewis the Fifteenth, with five times as many subjects as Frederic, and more than five times as large a revenue, had not a more formidable army. The proportion which the soldiers in Prussia bore to the people seems hardly credible. Of the males in the vigour of life, a seventh part were probably under arms; and this great force had, by drilling, by reviewing, and by the unsparing use of cane and scourge, been taught to form ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... acquired promptly seemed to disappear. He stuck at nothing to obtain it, and once in his grasp, he never let it go again. Frequently he risked the loss of his character for honest dealing rather than relinquish a fraction of his wealth. According to many credible people, it was generally believed by his contemporaries that this monster possessed treasures which he had buried in the ground, the hiding-place of which no one knew, not even his wife. Perhaps it is only a vague and unfounded rumour, which should be rejected; or is ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... age. Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta was one of the strangest products of the earlier Renaissance. To enumerate the crimes which he committed within the sphere of his own family, mysterious and inhuman outrages which render the tale of the Cenci credible, would violate the decencies of literature. A thoroughly bestial nature gains thus much with posterity that its worst qualities must be passed by in silence. It is enough to mention that he murdered three wives in succession,[2] Bussoni ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... as unstintingly upon the manner of their delivery. Thoroughly natural, impulsive, and seemingly artless, though that manner always appeared at the moment, it is due to the Reader as an artist to assert that it was throughout the result of a scarcely credible amount of forethought and preparation. It is thus invariably indeed with every great proficient in the histrionic art, even with those who are quite erroneously supposed by the outer public to trust nearly everything ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... understanding the poetry. For the choral songs are, and ever must have been, the most difficult part of the tragedy; there occur in them the most involved verbal compounds, the newest expressions, the boldest images, the most recondite allusions. Is it credible that the poets would, one and all, have been thus prodigal of the stores of art and genius, if they had known that in the representation the whole must have been lost to the audience,—at a time too, when the means of after publication were so difficult and expensive, and the copies of their works ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... and drivel over his own slothful and self-willed prejudices, as to believe that he will make a single convert to the beauty of Legitimacy, that is, of lawless power and savage bigotry, when he himself is obliged to apologize for the horrors he describes, and even render his descriptions credible to the modern reader by referring to the authentic history of these delectable times? He is indeed so besotted as to the moral of his own story, that he has even the blindness to go out of his way to have a fling at flints and dungs (the contemptible ingredients, as he would ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... that then took place between him and the curate must have been heard to be credible, especially as, being so close behind the old man, we could not fail to be aware of all the remarkable shots at long words which he bawled out at the top of his voice, and I refrain from recording, lest they should haunt others as they have done by ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... miracles are wrought in holes and corners, in deserts, within closed doors, where they find easy dupes among a small company of spectators already disposed to believe them. Who will venture to tell me how many eye-witnesses are required to make a miracle credible! What use are your miracles, performed if proof of your doctrine, if they themselves require so much proof! You might as well have let ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... 1903) that he showed every evidence of eyestrain with resulting symptoms, particularly headache. This does not, however, preclude his having had hypochondria also, and in view of the violent and reiterated complaints running through his letters it seems quite credible that Froude's estimate of his condition was not far wrong. Surely, unless Carlyle was merely trying his pen without intending to be taken seriously, he devoted to the question of health a degree of attention which ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... the sandstone formation, bearing no relation whatever to the stones of these ruins; so that I should think that the materials for these buildings cannot have been obtained on the spot. The people of Siwah have preserved no credible traditions respecting these objects. They merely imagined them to contain treasures, and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... expedition, it behooves us to give some account of the country which the king of the Franks was about to invade, and particularly to describe the extraordinary defences and interior conditions with which it is credited by the gossipy old Monk of St. Gall, the most entertaining, though hardly the most credible, writer of that period. All authors admit that the country of the Avars was defended by an ingenious and singular system of fortifications. The account we propose to give, the Monk of St. Gall declares that he wrote down from the words of an eye-witness, Adelbart by name, who took part in ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... extraordinary charm, confessing his willingness for evil courses as readily as his later repentance, is no less striking a personality. By sheer imagination the genius of Defoe makes Singleton's adventures, including the impossible journey across Central Africa, real and credible. The book is a model ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Macbeth is susceptible of all three. You smile! but that remains to be proved. The reason that Shakspeare's wicked women have such a singular hold upon our fancy, is from the consistent preservation of the feminine character, which renders them more terrible, because more credible and intelligible—not like those monstrous caricatures we ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... so faithful a transcript of "the truth as it is in Nature" came as a surprise and to me at least as a rebuke. How, under the rigid necessity of incorporating in its system much that seemed nearly unintelligible, and much that was barely credible, Theology has succeeded so perfectly in adhering through good report and ill to what in the main are truly the lines of Nature, awakens a new admiration for those who constructed and kept this faith. But however nobly it has held its ground, Theology ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... this mass of admirable poetry in dialogue. Beddoes' genius was essentially lyrical: he had imagination, the gift of style, the mastery of rhythm, a strange choiceness and curiosity of phrase. But of really dramatic power he had nothing. He could neither conceive a coherent plot, nor develop a credible situation. He had no grasp on human nature, he had no conception of what character might be in men and women, he had no faculty of expressing emotion convincingly. Constantly you find the most beautiful poetry where it is absolutely inappropriate, but never do you find one ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... capable of bearing it. Were the ring formed of the toughest steel that was ever made, the pressure would be so great that the metal would be squeezed like a liquid, and the mighty structure would collapse and fall down on the surface of the planet. It is not credible that any materials could exist capable of sustaining a stress so stupendous. The law of gravitation accordingly bids us search for a method by which the intensity of ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... a duty incumbent on upright and credible men of all ranks, who have performed anything noble or praiseworthy, to record, in their own writing, the events of their lives; yet they should not commence this honourable task before they have passed their fortieth year. ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... be conueniente. [Sidenote: Educacion.] It skylleth more by whom, and by what wayes men be brought vp, then of whom they be begotten. [Sidenote: Hauiour of the bodie.] The hauioure of the bodye comprehendeth fayrnes or foulnes, strength or weaknes: For more credible is the accusacion of lecherye in a fayre body then in a foule, and violence more probable in the strong, then in the weake. [Sidenote: Fortune] Fortune perteineth to ryches, kynred, friendes, seruitures, dignities, honours. [Sidenote: Condicion.] Condicion comprehendeth manye ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry
... your name Mr. Rivington (whom I consulted on the matter) tells me are only nominally your's, or, at least, were chiefly collected by understrappers. Mr. Rivington also gives me such an account of the shortness of time in which you wrote the History, as is hardly credible." A list of Smollett's genuine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... French-Canadian, whom Mr. Edwards had hired as a drover, and abruptly discharged, was spreading stories about his former employer which made Blackbeard, the pirate, seem like a babe by comparison. Pete was not a very credible witness; but still, building upon a suspicion that already existed, he succeeded in adding something to ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... pistils; in the long-styled form, the stamens equal the pistil in length, but their pollen has no more effect on it than so much inorganic dust; whilst this pollen fully fertilises the short pistil of the other form. Now, it is scarcely credible that a mere difference in the length of the pistil can make a wide difference in its capacity for being fertilised. We can believe this the less because with some plants, for instance, Amsinckia spectabilis, ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... word, if the legend were not one which I heard on my grandmother's knee, and which had established its place among things credible before my childish judgment could analyze its probability, I question whether I should have the face to tell ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... historians are thus curiously silent, what deduction shall we draw from the similar silence of the great Jewish annalist? Is it credible that Josephus should thus have ignored Jesus Christ, if one tithe of the marvels related in the Gospels really took place? So damning to the story of Christianity has this difficulty been felt, that a passage has been inserted in Josephus (born A.D. 37, died ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... horses for "the defence of the king and both houses of parliament." Those living in and around London within a radius of eighty miles were allowed a fortnight; and so great was the enthusiasm displayed for the parliamentary cause that (in the words of Clarendon)(531) "it is hardly credible what a vast proportion of plate was brought in to their treasurers within ten days, there being hardly men enough to receive it or room to lay it in." It was in vain that Charles protested and threatened ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... him, hang it all! And then is it credible that a man who has committed a murder for the sake of sixty thousand francs should do away with the money in this way? If the hiding-place was such a good one—and it was, because we never discovered ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... you, neighbour Smith, for not backing of me! I would not have believed in it, though fifty credible witnesses had ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... found that the constant demand on my stock of animal spirits reduced them to the lowest state of exhaustion; at times I felt—and, I suppose seemed—depressed. To my astonishment, I was taken to task on the subject by Mrs. Sidgwick, with a sternness of manner and a harshness of language scarcely credible. Like a fool, I cried most bitterly. I could not help it; my spirits quite failed me at first. I thought I had done my best, strained every nerve to please her; and to be treated in that way, merely because I was ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... opinions respecting him. I afterwards met Delisle at the house of one of my friends. To please me, the family asked Delisle to operate before me, to which he immediately consented. I offered him some iron nails, which he changed into silver in the chimney-place before six or seven credible witnesses. I took the nails thus transmuted, and sent them by my almoner to Irabert, the jeweller of Aix, who, having subjected them to the necessary trial, returned them to me, saying they were very good silver. Still, however, I was not quite satisfied. M. de ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... this manner of correction. The rogue being apprehended, committed to prison, and tried in the next assizes (whether they be of gaol delivery or sessions of the peace), if he happen to be convicted for a vagabond, either by inquest of office or the testimony of two honest and credible witnesses upon their oaths, he is then immediately adjudged to be grievously whipped and burned through the gristle of the right ear with a hot iron of the compass of an inch about, as a manifestation of his ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... devil-fish, told in the harbor these many years; for the various descriptions of how the long slimy arms had curled about the punts had rung too true to be quite disbelieved; but he had considered them somewhat less credible than certain wild yarns of shipwreck, and somewhat more credible than the bedtime stories of mermaids which the grandmothers told the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... she refused to live with him. There have been hints in abundance, and shrugs and shakings of the head, and "Well, well, we know," and "We could if we would," and "If we list to speak," and "There be that might an they list." But we are not aware that there is before the world, substantiated by credible, or even by tangible evidence, a single fact indicating that Lord Byron was more to blame than any other man who is on bad terms with his wife. The professional men whom Lady Byron consulted were undoubtedly ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... subject of consideration and preparation, and was heralded to the world for months before it was undertaken. The order of the king of Spain under which it was made, still exists in the archives of that kingdom. The results of the expedition were announced by credible historians of the country, immediately after its return; and the nautical information which it brought back, and in regard to which alone it possessed any interest at the time, was transferred at once to the marine charts of the nation, imperfectly ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... that the "Fishing Admirals," authorized by the Star Chamber and confirmed in their authority by 10 and 11 William III., c. 25, had already asserted a de facto jurisdiction on the spot, for it is hardly credible that the mere wantonness of legislative invention can have produced such a tribunal. To anticipate for a moment: the Act provided that the master of the first ship arriving from England with the season should be admiral of the harbour; ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... universal salvation for every human being, past, present, or future, as certain, and, as I hope for my own, no doubt comes into my mind on this subject. Is it credible that so many would wish it to be otherwise, and fight you about it? And among those many are numbers, whose lives, weighed truly as to their merits by the scale of the sanctuary, would kick the ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... as clerk in an attorney's office it is clear that he must have served for a considerable period in order to have gained (if, indeed, it is credible that he could have so gained) his remarkable knowledge of the law. Can we then for a moment believe that, if this had been so, tradition would have been absolutely silent on the matter? That Dowdall's ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... room, in which they foregathered, had affected me curiously in spite of my effort to keep myself at a matter-of-fact phase. They seemed to belong to another age, an older age, an age when things spiritual were indeed to be feared, when common sense was uncommon, an age when omens and witches were credible, and ghosts beyond denying. Their very existence, thought I, is spectral; the cut of their clothing, fashions born in dead brains; the ornaments and conveniences in the room about them even are ...
— The Red Room • H. G. Wells
... held fast, are committed to writing for a memorial to posterity. Why should we not believe those things were sent from heaven which so many heavenly miracles confirm? And that I may make what has been said credible, let me touch on some of these miracles in a few words. For who can enumerate all? Though I confess I had rather dwell on those things which can be imitated than on those ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... said that Mrs. Holton emerged from Amzi's house daily to take the air. She had been observed by credible witnesses at the stamp window of the post-office; again, she had bought violets at the florist's; she had been seen walking across the Madison campus. The attendants in the new Carnegie library had been thrilled ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... shew that the Jews under the Romans enjoyed a similar power in his day. Origen defends the correctness of v. 62 by adducing this as a similar instance in his own knowledge. Blunt treats the matter as a kind of "undesigned coincidence," rendering credible the death penalties spoken of in Acts ix. 1, xxii. 4, xxiv. 6.[45] So Edersheim (D.C.B. art. Philo, p. 365b), "The rule of the Jewish community in Alexandria had been committed by Augustus to a council ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... high standing as scholars and artists, should have been blinded into the acceptance, and betrayed into the assertion of a fallacy which only authority such as theirs could have rendered for an instant credible. For the contrary of it is written in the history of all great nations; it is the one sentence always inscribed on the steps of their thrones; the one concordant voice in which they speak to us ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... I went over and over the man's story, in memory. The facts were tolerably clear and coherent: his narrative was simple and credible enough, after my own personal experience of the mysterious noises, and the secret, whatever it was, must be sought for in Rachel Emmons. She was still living in Toledo, Ohio, he said, and earned her living as a seamstress; it would, therefore, not be difficult to find ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... indeed, to make allowance for the intense animosity of sectarian strife among the various Catholic orders in which the charges against the society were engendered and unrelentingly prosecuted; but after all deductions it is not credible that the almost universal odium in which it was held was provoked solely by its virtues. Among the accusations against the society which seem most clearly substantiated these two are likely to be concerned in that "brand of ultimate failure which has invariably been ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... without further consideration, as a monstrous and unwarranted assumption. The supposition that all these types were rapidly differentiated out of Lacertilia, in the time represented by the passage from the Palaeozoic to the Mesozoic formation, appears to me to be hardly more credible, to say nothing of the indications of the existence of Dinosaurian forms in the Permian rocks which have already ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... A more credible explanation must be looked for, and it can only be discovered in the intense odium theologicum which the name of Hume excited at the moment, and which made it imperative, if the new Review was to get justice, that it should be severed ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... thereby the very words of the Virgin are rendered more credible by which she asserted her virginity. Thus Ambrose says: "Belief in Mary's words is strengthened, the motive for a lie is removed. If she had not been espoused when pregnant, she would seem to have wished to hide her sin by a lie: being espoused, she had no motive for ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... he risked the enmity of Catholic Europe; he defied the authority of the vicar of Christ; and lavished vast sums to obtain verdicts in his favour from most of the universities in Christendom. It is not (p. 187) credible that all this energy was expended merely to satisfy a sensual passion, which could be satisfied without a murmur from Pope or Emperor, if he was content with Anne Boleyn as a mistress, and is believed to have been already satisfied in 1529, four years before ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... nature of what was told him; so he desired that Isaiah would give him some sign or wonder, that he might believe him in what he had said, and be sensible that he came from God; for things that are beyond expectation, and greater than our hopes, are made credible by actions of the like nature. And when Isaiah had asked him what sign he desired to be exhibited, he desired that he would make the shadow of the sun, which he had already made to go down ten steps [or degrees] in his house, to return again ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... Hist. of England, x. 230. This statement, in itself sufficiently credible in view of Leicester's subsequent career, rests on a passage in a MS. from Simancas, which Mr. Froude ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... reach the mortars. If this last were correct no other reason was needed; but as the nearest schooner was but 3,000 yards from Jackson, it seems likely he deceived himself, as he certainly did in believing "on credible information" that a rifled gun on the parapet of Jackson, of the same calibre as that of the Louisiana, had not been able to reach. Three schooners had been struck, one at the distance of 4,000 yards, during the first two days of the bombardment, not only by rifled, but by VIII-and ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... A very credible and interesting biography of Mark Twain might be compiled from his own works; and Roughing it is full of autobiography of a coloured sort, though in the main correct. His joy in the prospect of that trip, the exciting details of the long journey, are all narrated with gusto and fine effect. In ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... only one credible reading of the situation, but Alford let the summer pass in this pleasant dreaming without waking up till too late to the pleasanter reality. It will seem strange enough, but it is true, that it was no part of his dream ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... conclusion, however, the legend of their genesis gives no hint of an origin in other than their historical habitat. The history and the legendary lore of the Indian are passed down from generation to generation, so that it would seem hardly credible that all trace of this migration from a distant region should have become lost within a period of somewhat more ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... be his daughter it would have been more credible on the score of their respective years, though equally incredible on the score ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... this touching picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in giving us both? Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... to Paris in the eighteenth year of his age, and fell immediately on the study of philosophy. 'Tis scarcely credible with how much ardour he surmounted the first difficulties of logic. Whatsoever his inclinations were towards a knowledge so crabbed and so subtle, he tugged at it with incessant pains, to be at the head of all ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... been told about people floating a mile up the river and then back two or three times are easily credible after seeing the evidences of the strange course the flood took in this part of the town. People who stood near the ruins of Poplar Bridge saw four women on a roof float up on the stream, turn a short distance above and come back and go past again and once more return. Then they went far down ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... handsome young aristocrat, cousin to the Inquisitor of Spain, who was distinguished for his dash and strength and pluck; an ideal adventurer, the idol of his fellows, and one of whose daring any number of credible and incredible tales were told. There was Pedro Margarite, a well-born Aragonese, who was destined afterwards to cause much trouble; there was Juan Ponce de Leon, the discoverer of Florida; there was Juan de La Cosa, Columbus's faithful pilot on the ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... matter, that a very few words may suffice to give the opinions of those who are practically acquainted with the subject. Undoubtedly, active, industrious, and prudent persons, are likely to prosper in Australia to a degree which is impossible, and scarcely credible, in Great Britain. No doubt, Providence has in these, and in our other colonies, given England a means of letting its surplus population escape in a way that shall not be merely safe, but even profitable, to the mother country, as well as to the emigrants themselves. ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... credibility of the gospel of Luke and to deny that of this work would be altogether inconsistent. In truth, there is no ground for doubting the credibility of the Acts of the Apostles other than that which lies in the assumption that no record of miraculous events can be credible, and this is ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... very credible, you will say. "If the husband felt he could not face the agony of death by cancer, why didn't he leave a note saying so, and every one would have understood and been quite 'nice' about it?" I really can't say. Perhaps he wished to leave ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... Through occasional sunlit vistas he peeped into main streets in which loitered numbers of Italian soldiers and civilians. Even a few carriages appeared, conveying ladies to the shops or public gardens, now that the intense heat of the sun had subsided. Therefore he found it scarcely credible that in the fetid slums there should be such covert hatred of the white race which held undisputed sway in thoroughfares distant not a stone's throw. And, in puzzling contrast to the evidences of eye and ear, he was conscious of an uncanny sense of familiarity ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... rich, those who made the law, have so arranged matters, that not only they subject themselves to their own proportion of the general diminution, but taking the whole of it upon themselves, that they submit also to a further loss in order to increase your gains. Is this credible? Is this possible? It is, indeed, a most suspicious act of generosity; and if you act wisely you ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... one would gladly believe, were it possible, I have inserted as one of those which hang on the verge of credibility. In the very next page, Sulpicius Severus tells a story quite credible, of a she-wolf, which he saw with his own eyes as tame as any dog. There can be no more reason to doubt that fact than to ascribe it to a miracle. We may even believe that the wolf, having gnawed to pieces the palm basket which the good old man was weaving, went off, knowing that she had done wrong, ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... hazard no opinion. But I do not conceive the power would be supernatural. Let me illustrate what I mean from an experiment which Paracelsus describes as not difficult, and which the author of the Curiosities of Literature cites as credible:—A flower perishes; you burn it. Whatever were the elements of that flower while it lived are gone, dispersed, you know not whither; you can never discover nor recollect them. But you can, by chemistry, out of the burnt dust of that flower, raise a spectrum ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... of the conflict, he at last consented to purchase a peace with them; and then, seeking the military renown which Oleg had so signally acquired, he resolved to imitate his example and make a descent upon Constantinople. The annals of those days, which seem to be credible, state that he floated down the Dnieper with ten thousand barges, and spread his sails upon the waves of the Euxine. Entering the Bosporus, he landed on both shores of that beautiful strait, and, with the most wanton barbarity, ravaged the country far and near, massacring the inhabitants, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... for the misuse of the slanderer a considerable field of truth. For the truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy. The world, in your despite, may perhaps owe you something, if your letter be the means of substituting once for all a credible likeness for a wax abstraction. For, if that world at all remember you, on the day when Damien of Molokai shall be named Saint, it will be in virtue of one work: your letter to the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on the day of his reception into the French Academy, that he had never read. Many protested, some smiled, and a large number of persons refused to believe the assertion. Yet the statement was actually quite credible, for the foundation and basis of M. Loti rest on a naive simplicity which makes him very sensitive to the things of the outside world, and gives him a perfect comprehension of simple souls. He is not a reader, ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... to appeal to the argument from Inconceivability in this case would not be legitimate; for we are in possession of an abundant analogy to render the supposition in question, not only conceivable, but credible. In the words of Mr. Mill, "Apart from experience, and arguing on what is called reason, that is, on supposed self-evidence, the notion seems to be that no causes can give rise to products of a more ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... make that central figure an Italian. First of all the thing is perfectly credible: Italians were swarming into the Occidental Province at the time, as anybody who will read further can see; and secondly, there was no one who could stand so well by the side of Giorgio Viola the Garibaldino, the Idealist of the old, humanitarian revolutions. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... value of the long-distance telephone. Few have the imagination to see what has been made possible, and to realize that an actual face-to-face conversation may take place, even though there be a thousand miles between. Neither can it seem credible that a man in a distant city may be located as readily as though he were close at hand. It is too amazing to be true, and possibly a new generation will have to arrive before it will be taken for granted and acted upon freely. Ultimately, ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... credible, we heere receiue it, A certaintie vouch'd from our Cosin Austria, With caution, that the Florentine will moue vs For speedie ayde: wherein our deerest friend Preiudicates the businesse, and would seeme To haue ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... from south-west by south to north-east by north; our distance from the shore two leagues. It is not possible for me to describe the pleasure which the blessing of the sight of this land diffused among us. It appeared scarcely credible to ourselves that, in an open boat, and so poorly provided, we should have been able to reach the coast of Timor in forty-one days after leaving Tofoa, having in that time run, by our log, a distance of 3,618 miles and that, notwithstanding ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... you have been accused by most credible witnesses of holding in disrespect many of the principal articles of our most holy faith. What have ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... really gone—so clear of mind and active was he to the very last. Nor can it be easily imagined how Bridgeport in this generation can accustom itself to so great a loss. To hear that the average man—of distinction even—has died, seems common and credible. But the message which announced Mr. Barnum's death came like a troubled dream from which we somehow expect to awaken. That one so full of life as to be its very embodiment, should leave us, it will take time to fully comprehend. If, in the world, his demise ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... instruction. No, he had not, wished he had, but could not afford it, the youth replied; and Deuchat's offer to give him a lesson once or twice a week was accepted eagerly. The story is pleasant and circumstantial enough to be credible; and the existence of an early Raeburn miniature of Deuchar is evidence of the existence of friendship between the two. But, as a free drawing-school had been founded in 1760 by the Honourable the Board of Manufactures ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... about the wharves, I found a pile of dry hides lying by the side of a vessel. Here was something to feelingly persuade me what I had been, to recall a past scarce credible to myself. I stood lost in reflection. What were these hides—what were they not?—to us, to me, a boy, twenty-four years ago? These were our constant labor, our chief object, our almost habitual thought. They brought us out here, they kept us here, and ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... the fourth charge, the natives were captured in the Cape Colony, where Kritzinger was Chief Commandant. The statement that his authority as such ceased the moment he crossed the Orange River is hardly credible. The natives were shot at Biscuitfontein, where Kritzinger was laagered at the time, and their dead bodies were seen by de Klerk there. Jan Louw is very clear as to who the commandant was. He recognized his photo on two occasions, and identified him at once in court. The dark ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... hand still upon the life-spring, the affectionate wife earnestly answered, "My husband, I will. But why," said she, after a moment's hesitation, "do you doubt the truth of the report, that you have hitherto considered credible?" ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... of the dynastic Powers; and nowhere is there more urgent need of such professions. Official and "inspired" professions are, of course, to be overlooked; at least, so charity would dictate. But there have, in the historic present, been many professions of this character made also by credible spokesmen of the German, and perhaps of the Japanese, people, and in all sincerity. By way of parenthesis it should be said that this is not intended to apply to expressions of conviction and intention that ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... instance, even quite responsible people believe that I have obtained for cash certain compromising letters of Wilson's in order to be able to get a hold over him by this means. Senator Lodge, in his own house, privately expressed the view that this was a credible rumor, and then turned it to account in the Senate. The President is so terribly put out by this and other similar machinations on the part of the Republicans, who refuse to grant him the fame of the peace-maker, that he recently kept away from a public festival, because ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... went without the permission of the consuls, and unknown to all, he might perhaps be seized by the Roman guards and brought back as a deserter, since the circumstances of the city at the time rendered such a charge credible, he approached the senate. "Fathers," said he, "I desire to cross the Tiber, and enter the enemy's camp, if I may be able, not as a plunderer, nor as an avenger to exact retribution for their devastations: a greater deed is in my mind, if the gods assist." The senate ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... care was to glance up at the roof. It was a sloping one and Anitra's story seemed credible enough when they noted how much easier it would be to drop upon it from the little balcony overhead than to traverse the roof itself and reach the ground beneath without slipping. But as they looked longer, each face betrayed doubt. The descent from the balcony was easy enough, but how about ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... by the Sikhs it is impossible to calculate; according to themselves it was much less than that of the English; and this is credible when the strength of their position is considered, and the losses to which the unaccountable flight of Pope's brigade exposed the British light. The English loss, according to the official returns, was three thousand men in killed and wounded, nearly one-third ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... hear denying that the blood, aye, the whole mass of the blood, may pass through the substance of the lungs, even as the nutritive juices percolate the liver, asserting such a proposition to be impossible, and by no means to be entertained as credible, I reply, with the poet, that they are of that race of men who, when they will, assent full readily, and when they will not, by no manner of means; who, when their assent is wanted, fear, and when it is not, ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... of a secret temple in the shadow of the distant Himalayas. Was it credible that this quiet country house, so typical of rural England, harboured that same dread secret which he had believed to be locked away in those Indian hills? Could he believe that the dark and death-dealing power which he had seen at work in the East was now centred ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... load of the faver." The Irish are particularly apprehensive of contagious maladies. The moment it had been discovered that Jemmy was infected, his schoolfellows avoided him with a feeling of terror scarcely credible, and the inhuman master was delighted at any circumstance, however calamitous, that might afford him a pretext for driving the friendless youth ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... their genius; but they fulfilled their purpose. The wrecks and fragments of their subtle and profound minds obscurely suggest to us the grandeur and perfection of the whole. Their language excels every other tongue of the Western world; their sculptures baffle all subsequent artists; credible witnesses assure us that their paintings were not inferior; and we are only accustomed to consider the painters of Italy as those who have brought the art to its highest perfection, because none of the ancient pictures have been preserved. Yet of all their fine arts, it was music of which the ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... monodica, sui juris, yet the cogitations of man do feign unto them relatives, parallels, and conjugates, whereas no such thing is; as they have feigned an element of fire to keep square with earth, water, and air, and the like. Nay, it is not credible, till it be opened, what a number of fictions and fantasies the similitude of human actions and arts, together with the making of man communis mensura, have brought into natural philosophy; not much better ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... in any place remotely resembling the house in which he now waited, a stranger in every sense of the word, more strange to the everyday, fine type of home known to the American of good birth and breeding than may seem credible as it ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... all right," Willie hesitated, "only kind of crazy, like all Eastern boys. It don't seem credible that no sane man would dast to bluff after what we've said. He'd be flyin' ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... remarkable thing how John Redmond has lost the old Parnellite grip upon the younger life of the country, and it seems hardly credible that such an attitude should be due entirely to the perversity of youth and in no way to the natural consequence of tradition-loving age; but in any case the broad fact remains, and a tone of persistent criticism seems to have taken the place ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... assembly for the suppression of blasphemy and profaneness; by which bill, whoever should be convicted of having spoken or written any thing against the Trinity, or the divine authority of the Old or New Testament, by the oath of two or more credible witnesses, were to be made incapable, and disabled in law to all intents and purposes, of being members of assembly, or of holding any office of profit, civil or military, within the province: and whoever should be convicted of such crimes a second time, ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... JERROLD'S Lady Beaconsfield was, I suppose, more in the nature of an imaginary portrait. It was beautiful and convincing. As a stage adventuress MME. DORZIAT was most attractive, if only she had been credible. She had no business to be in any of the situations in which she found herself, and must have needed all her skill to conceal the fact from herself. Miss MARY GLYNNE as The Lady Clarissa, the portentous Duchess of Glastonbury's pretty daughter and the doomed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various |
