"Credulity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... believe that the "gift of healing" is nothing more than the application of imaginary balm to non-existent disease, but if one says so he gets into a jolly row with people who consider an open mind synonymous with credulity. Our own state of mind was accurately described by Charles A. Dana: "I don't believe in ghosts," said he, "but I've been afraid ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... plenty of superstitions and scandals have followed in the track of the Spaniard's curse; and no doubt, as you would put it, any accident happening to this Cornish family would be connected with it by rural credulity. But it is perfectly true that this tower has been burnt down two or three times; and the family can't be called lucky, for more than two, I think, of the Admiral's near kin have perished by shipwreck; and one at least, to my own knowledge, on practically ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... in which Bajazet was imprisoned by Timur, so long and so often repeated as a moral lesson, is now rejected as a fable by the modern writers, who smile at the vulgar credulity. They appeal with confidence to the Persian history of Sherefeddin Ali, according to which has been given to our curiosity in a French version, and from which I shall collect and abridge, a more specious narrative of this memorable transaction. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... midst of his apparent prosperity, Alaric was conscious, perhaps, of some secret weakness, some internal defect; or perhaps the moderation which he displayed was intended only to deceive and disarm the easy credulity of the ministers of Honorius. The King of the Goths repeatedly declared that it was his desire to be considered as the friend of peace and of the Romans. Three senators, at his earnest request, were sent ambassadors to the court of Ravenna, to solicit ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... Pored on the pictured wonders[13] thou hadst done: Clarissa mournful, and prim Grandison! All Fielding's, Smollett's heroes, rose to view; I saw, and I believed the phantoms true. But, above all, that most romantic tale[14] Did o'er my raw credulity prevail, Where Glums and Gawries wear mysterious things, That serve at once for jackets and for wings. Age, that enfeebles other men's designs, But heightens thine, and thy free draught refines. In several ways distinct you make us feel— Graceful as Raphael, as Watteau genteel. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the good American tradition that it is the educated man who finally succeeds. The richest man in the Italian colony can neither read nor write—even Italian. His cunning and acquisitiveness, combined with the credulity and ignorance of his countrymen, have slowly brought about his large fortune. The child himself may feel the stirring of a vague ambition to go on until he is as the other children are; but he is not popular with his schoolfellows, ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... where the italics began he would have stretched our credulity to the utmost. But if "our people" meant to him American Socialists, we readily believe that invading Bolsheviki, coming to wrest the American dictatorship from our native talent, would find themselves and their undesirable "form of ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... transmitter will be described presently. The best devices of these inventors were finally embodied, and in the resulting instrument we have one of the chiefest of those modern wonders whose first appearance taxed the credulity of mankind. [Footnote: There were, until a recent period, a line of statements, alleged facts and reasonings, that were incredible in proportion to intelligence. The occurrences of recent times ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... with his own particular case. For though a certain neatness, or precision, carelessness, or other habit, may be discovered by handwriting, to describe from it all the minutiae of character is only feeding the love of the marvelous, so much on the increase in these days, when a reaction of credulity bids fair to make nothing too extravagant for our ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... of the fraud practised by the caciques, since they believe that it is the cemi that speaks, and all are imposed upon by the deceit, except the cacique and the person who combines with him to abuse their credulity, by which means he draws what tribute he pleases ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... circumstance," she said, laughing; "no, Lord St. Eval, you will not impose thus on my credulity. Eugene St. Eval, the most courted, flattered, and distinguished, leave London ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... scandal. But what a scandal was there not, shortly afterwards, in connection with it, and how that scandal was heaped up later, by stories so revolting of the doings of that night that one is appalled at the minds that conceived them and the credulity that accepted them. ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... doctor; it was quite natural that you should have believed a man who had himself so well in hand, and who knew so well how to play his part. When we come to think of it, we realise that most crimes have been made possible through some one's credulity, or over-confidence, a credulity which, in the light of subsequent events, seems quite incomprehensible. Do not reproach yourself and do not lose heart. Your only fault was that you did not recognise the heart of the beast of prey in this ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... seat of the imitative part of our nature is our belief, and the causes predisposing us to believe this, or disinclining us to believe that, are among the obscurest parts of our nature. But as to the imitative nature of credulity there can be no doubt. In 'Eothen' there is a capital description of how every sort of European resident in the East, even the shrewd merchant and 'the post-captain,' with his bright, wakeful eyes of commerce, ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... walking with him in the High Street, to be honoured by him with a private interview of a quarter of an hour, were enviable distinctions. He, after the fashion of all the false prophets who have deluded themselves and others, drew new faith in his own lie from the credulity of his disciples. His countenance, his voice, his gestures, indicated boundless self-importance. When he appeared in public he looked,—such is the language of one who probably had often seen him,—like Atlas conscious that a world was on his shoulders. But the airs which he gave himself ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of virtue. And this circumstance was the more to be admired in the case of Romulus because most of the great men that have been deified were so exalted to celestial dignities by the people, in periods very little enlightened, when fiction was easy and ignorance went hand-in-hand with credulity. But with respect to Romulus we know that he lived less than six centuries ago, at a time when science and literature were already advanced, and had got rid of many of the ancient errors that had prevailed among less civilized ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... dulcetly, "do you really credit her fabulous fortune?" Her manner expressed her pity for the other's credulity. "Such a sum as five hundred thousand lire a year too much ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... buildings of the old barracks and flooded the low ground about the sheds and stables. Drills for the infantry were necessarily suspended, several sentries, even, being taken off their posts. The men clustered in the squad-rooms and listened with more or less credulity to the theories and confirmatory statements of fact as related by the imaginative or loquacious of their number. The majority of the officers gathered under the flaring lamp-lights at the sutler's store and occupied themselves ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... chaos into which were already jarring the sanctities of the World's Venerable Belief, arose many shapeless and unformed chimeras. Need I remind the reader that, while that was the day for polished scepticism and affected wisdom, it was the day also for the most egregious credulity and the most mystical superstitions,—the day in which magnetism and magic found converts amongst the disciples of Diderot; when prophecies were current in every mouth; when the salon of a philosophical deist was converted into an Heraclea, in which necromancy ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... elements Greece was powerless to shake off; philosophers, by various expedients, might explain away the contradictory myths which overgrew the religion, but ritual, the luck of the State, and popular credulity, were tenacious of the whole strange mingling ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... forefathers during the stirring and glorious days of good Queen Bess. But until quite recently I have been deterred from undertaking the pleasant task, for the reason that certain portions of the narrative are of such a character as either to strain the credulity of the reader to breaking point, or to cause him to denounce the good Sir Richard as a—shall we say—perverter of the truth. And I should be exceedingly reluctant to do anything which would produce the latter result; for it seems perfectly evident, from contemporary records, that the ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... main objection, both with the old and the new forms of infidelity, is, that against the miracles; the main argument with both, those which attempt to show their antecedent impossibility; and criticism directed against the credulity of the records which contain them. The principal difference is, that modern infidelity shrinks from the coarse imputation of fraud and imposture on the founders of Christianity; and prefers the theory of illusion or ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... themselves freethinkers on principle. On the contrary, Dryden seems to have doubted with such a strong wish to believe, as, accompanied with circumstances of extrinsic influence, led him finally into the opposite extreme of credulity. His view of the doctrines of Christianity, and of its evidence, were such as could not legitimately found him in the conclusions he draws in favour of the Church of England; and accordingly, in adopting them, he evidently stretches ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... on the early history of Asia. His talents are spoken of in high terms, but his credit as an historian is held very light—"probatur ingenium, fides infamatur," Quint. x. 1, 74. Cicero also (de Leg. i. 2) ranks him very low. That his credit as an historian was sacrificed to a childish credulity and a foolish love of fable and adventure is sufficiently testified by the pretty numerous fragments which still remain (Pauly). Demetrius Phalereus, quoted by Pearce, quotes a grandiloquent description of the ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... its accompanying smile reminded Westerfelt of the deception the old lady had played on Bates, and that added weight to the vague convictions once more alive in his brain. Mrs. Floyd's smile implied a certain confidence in his credulity and pliability that was galling to ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... General Assembly have not been wont to point with pride to their record. With a few notable exceptions they had fallen victims to a credulity which had become epidemic. When the assembly of 1840 repealed this magnificent act for the improvement of Illinois, they encountered an accumulated indebtedness of over $14,000,000. There are other aspects of the assembly of 1836-37 upon which it is pleasanter ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... their antagonism is the most notable characteristic of the modern scientific mind; and I believe no credulity or fallacy admitted by the weakness (or it may sometimes rather have been the strength) of early imagination, indicates so strange a depression beneath the due scale of human intellect, as the failure of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... not avail to issue thence by another way; but, finding no means thereunto, he fell a-ranging to and fro like a lion, cursing the foulness of the weather and the lady's malignity and the length of the night, together with his own credulity; wherefore, being sore despited against his mistress, the long and ardent love he had borne her was suddenly changed to fierce and bitter hatred and he revolved in himself many and various things, so he might find a means of revenge, the which ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... What number may be found to answer those appeals it is impossible to conjecture. Common sense would say not one, but experience of what has been practised over and over again reminds us that the active parties on the present occasion are not calculating too largely upon the credulity of their countrymen. That the country will be a pandemonium long before any one can reach it from this side is hardly to be doubted, unless, indeed, the United States government shall have been able to establish a blockade and ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... the gentleman still lives; but this is about as near the truth as the majority of her statements. The loafing English men and women who visit America, as penny-a-liners, are perfectly understood here, and Jonathan amuses himself whenever he meets them, by imposing upon their credulity the most absurd stories which he can invent, which they swallow whole, go home with their eyes sticking out of their heads with wonder, and print all they have heard for the ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... tale of terror; the element of fear in myths, heroic legends, ballads and folk-tales; terror in the romances of the middle ages, in Elizabethan times and in the seventeenth century; the credulity of the age of reason; the renascence of terror and wonder in poetry; the "attempt to blend the marvellous of old story with the natural of ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... own concessions in the present treaty; and an evidence that he had no intention to perform what he had agreed to, but dissembled with GOD and man; and he, on the other hand, put them off with sham excuses and professions; and so, from their too much credulity to his fraudulent professions and promises all along, they brought him over to Scotland, and before his landing in this kingdom, he takes the covenant at Spey, on the 23rd of June, 1649, by his oath subjoined in ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... "Creation or Evolution? A Philosophical Inquiry," George Ticknor Curtis says: "The whole doctrine of the development of distinct species out of other species makes demands upon our credulity which the [tr. note: sic] irreconcilable with the principles of belief by which we regulate, or ought to regulate, our acceptance of new ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... examinations of the Maid of Kent and her admirers; had formed one of the congregation at Paul's Cross when the confession drawn up for her had been read aloud in her name by Dr. Capon, who from the pulpit opposite the platform where the penitents were set, preached a vigorous sermon against credulity and superstition. Ralph had read the confession over a couple of days before in Cromwell's room, and had suggested a few verbal alterations; and he had been finally present, a few days after More's ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... upright plainness." {222d} His upright simplicity had won him an earldom and the destruction of his rival! He and Lethington may have exaggerated Huntly's iniquities in council with Mary, but the rumours reported against her by Knox could only be inspired by the credulity of extreme ill-will. He flattered himself that he kept the Hamiltons quiet, and, at a supper with Randolph in November, made Chatelherault promise to be a good subject in civil matters, and a ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... veterans—race of victors! Race of the soil, ready for conflict—race of the conquering march! (No more credulity's race, abiding-temper'd race,) Race henceforth owning no law but the law of itself, Race of passion ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... and trappers had indeed invested the white steed with this character; their stories recurred to my memory at the moment. I had used to smile at the simple credulity of the narrators. I was now prepared to believe them. ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... persuading his credulous sovereign to let him go ambassador into Spain, where he put a final seal to his enormities, by plotting the destruction of his employer, and the special overthrow of Orlando. Charles was now old and white-haired, and Gan was so too; but the one was only confirmed in his credulity, and the other in his crimes. The traitor embraced Orlando over and over again at taking leave, praying him to write if he had any thing to say before the arrangements with Marsilius, and taking such pains to seem loving and sincere, that his villany was manifest ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... gentle look of trust, as though committing to him, with the good faith of a child, her ignorance, her credulity, her little rudimentary convictions and her little tentative aspirations, relying on him not to abuse or misdirect them in the boundless supremacy of ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... that he could not even tolerate. On Animal Magnetism he held a very different opinion, and he wrote to Greg encouraging his enthusiasm in that direction. 'There has always,' he said, 'seemed to me a foundation of truth in the science, however overlaid with a superstructure of credulity and enthusiasm.... I foresee as great a clamour in favour of the science as there is at present a contempt and prejudice against it, and both ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... who governs all things by His Providence, he bows before the horrid phantom of blind chance or inexorable destiny. He is a man who obstinately refuses to believe the most solidly-established facts in favor of religion, and yet, with blind credulity, greedily swallows the most absurd falsehoods uttered against religion. He is a man whose reason has fled, and whose passions speak, object and decide in ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... M. Funck-Brentano. But the story is so strangely complicated; the astuteness and the credulity of the Cardinal are so oddly contrasted; a momentary folly of the Queen is so astonishing and fatal; the general mismanagement of the Court is so crazy, that, had we lived in Paris at the moment, perhaps we could hardly have believed the Queen to ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... strength, the ostrich feather with its equal filaments for truth, the lotus for Upper and the papyrus for Lower Egypt. To these we may add the bird, which denotes a cycle of time (in Coptic phanech), and about which such wild fables were received by the credulity of Herodotus and by that of the Fathers. But the greater part of the hieroglyphics are phonetic like our alphabet, and are being slowly and precariously deciphered into the words of a language which is identified with the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... added to fact and law to law, the true method and order of the Universe being thereby more and more revealed. In doing this, Science has encountered and overthrown various forms of superstition and deceit, of credulity and imposture. But the world continually produces weak persons and wicked persons, and as long as they continue to exist side by side, as they do in this our day, very debasing beliefs will also continue ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... examined the tablets which the Vizier Horam had given him; but was very uneasy at finding the leaves always fair. "Alas!" said he to himself, "I have trusted to a base man, who perhaps has taken this advantage of my credulity, and intends to set the crown of India on my brother's head! There needed not the powers of enchantment to overthrow me, since I have betrayed at once my folly ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... follies of mankind, and an ability to use these follies advantageously to further his own ends. Something of the cunning and foresight of an ancient Egyptian sorcerer was in the composition of the Archbishop himself, for he judged mankind alone by its general stupidity and credulity;— stupidity and credulity which formed excellent ground for the working of miracles, whether such miracles were wrought in the name of Osiris or Christ. Mokanna, the "Veiled Prophet," while corrupt ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... of partisanship in watching a contention, one of the most important traits in the psychology of crowds is their extreme credulity. A crowd will nearly always believe anything that it sees and almost anything that it is told. An audience composed entirely of individuals who have no belief in ghosts will yet accept the Ghost in Hamlet as a fact. Bless ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... the ground hasn't yet gone, so you may, by coming over, get another sunstroke. Of course, I've had a thrashing but I don't feel any pains or aches. If I behave in this fashion, it's all put on to work upon their credulity, so that they may go and spread the reports outside in such a way as to reach my father's ear. Really it's all sham; so you mustn't treat it as ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... stories there was one which I was inclined to hear with more credulity. As I was told, in that tempest which scattered the ships of the Invincible Armada over all the north and west of Scotland, one great vessel came ashore on Aros, and before the eyes of some solitary ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the War, the officers of the Federation maintained a calm and neutral attitude which increased in vigilance as the strain upon American patience and credulity increased. As soon as the United States declared war, the whole energies of the officials of the Federation were cast into the national cause. In 1917, under the leadership of Gompers, and as a practical antidote to the I.W.W. and the foreign labor and pacifist organization known as ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... no difficult solution for reflecting minds, yet for the reading many it would be a serviceable work, to bring together and exemplify the causes of the extreme and universal credulity that characterizes sundry periods of history (for example, from A.D. 1400 to A.D. 1650): and credulity involves lying and delusion—for by a seeming paradox liars are always credulous, though credulous persons are not always liars; ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... I had read nothing of late that could have conjured up such a figure. As to preternatural manifestations of such a kind—I had but that very day, and but an hour or two ago, passed supercilious judgment on what I thought the credulity of ignorant rustics. And yet here I was, the victim to some such hallucination—unless it was possible that I had really seen the figure with my bodily eyes! My knees were shaking under me as I managed to reach my room, my whole being agitated by ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... is wisely put in April. The jest of the day resides in the success with which credulity is imposed upon, and April is the month of easiest credulity. Let bragging travellers come in April and hold us with tales of the Anthropopagi! If their heads are said to grow beneath their shoulders, still we will turn a ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... day. So it has had to make practical compromise with the paganism and superstition it found here. Many of its religious observances are the aboriginal pagan practices disguised in Christian dress and given Christian names. The church has sold its birthright for the privilege of exploiting the credulity and the fears of the people. It has made merchandise of all its functions. Now, after the centuries have come and gone, both church and people through long custom are willing to have it so. The people have their great churches, with incense and lights and all the pomp of ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... or matter without life? Then dead atoms set dead atoms into motion and produced life! Can you believe this? If you can, you need find no trouble in believing in the most orthodox hell. Can you get more out of a thing than there is in it? We don't think so. But we do think that there is credulity enough, even blind credulity, in the advocates of spontaneous generation to enable them to believe anything they may happen to wish true. We are told that "life in its higher forms is not an immaterial entity, nor the result of a special form of force termed vital, but, that it is a ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... in silence to find the table laid, a plentiful supper spread, and the company seated. After supper came singing of songs, saying of ballads, and telling of tales. I know with what in- credulity many highlanders will read of a merry-making in their own country at which no horn went round, no punch-bowl was filled and emptied without stint! But the clearer the brain, the better justice is done to the more etherial wine of fthe soul. Of several ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... great devotee to the modern science—if science it can be called—of spiritualism. The officers found this out, and determined to play upon his credulity. The quarter-master was quite a wag, and lent himself to the proposed fun. His large tent was prepared: holes were made in it, and long black threads attached to various articles in the apartment, and one or two persons stationed to play ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... passion for the marvelous and monstrous, and what was deemed preternatural, infernal, and diabolical, throughout the whole mass of the people, in England as well as America. The public mind became infatuated and, drugged with credulity and superstition, was prepared to receive every impulse of blind fanaticism. The stories, thus collected and put everywhere in circulation, were of a nature to terrify the imagination, fill the mind with horrible apprehensions, degrade the general intelligence ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... gained currency, either because those who knew the truth were precluded by their official status from revealing the facts or because no one took the trouble to contradict the absurdities. Some of these yarns saw the light in the newspapers, and the credulity of the public in accepting everything that happens to appear in the Press is one of the curiosities of the age. Not, however, that many of the criticisms of which the War Office was the subject during the protracted broil were not fully warranted. ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... the late Francis Purcell, who has the honour of selecting such of his lamented old friend's manuscripts as may appear fit for publication, in order that the lore which they contain may reach the world before scepticism and utility have robbed our species of the precious gift of credulity, and scornfully kicked before them, or trampled into annihilation, those harmless fragments of picturesque superstition, which it is our object to preserve, has been subjected to the charge of dealing too largely in the marvellous; and it has been half insinuated ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... against "old maids," as this class are ignominiously termed, which do much to strengthen the impression just spoken of. They are said to possess an inordinate curiosity. Addison, like many others, alleges that old maids are given to credulity, and pours on them, for this reason, contempt and raillery. They are accused of disgusting affectation, of pretending to youth, to censorial importance, and to an exquisite sensibility. Finally, it is said, that they are ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... pointing with his finger, showed the spot where Nelson landed some of his men the day before his action in 1801; and, as the Dane reminded me of the crafty manner in which the officers of the English fleet imposed on the credulity of the good folks at Elsineur, the sound of distant thunder was heard. He ceased to speak, and listened to the low, rumbling peals, as they swelled, now loudly on the tops of the far mountains of Sweden, then sank faintly in the valleys. ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... all haste; there was a report that the whole coast was to be shelled; a lady had passed, flying with her children; the carriage was ordered out; they were only waiting for us, to run, too. We did not believe a word of it, and were indignant at their credulity, as well as determined to persuade them to remain where they were, if possible. When told their plan was to run to the house formerly used as a guerrilla camp, we laughed heartily. Suppose the Yankees ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... borne to her another of the strange crashings. These inexplicable sounds and the inexplicable sight would have frightened Miss Sullivan had she not the resources with which modern science fortifies the mind against credulity and superstition. The round object, she told herself, was some sudden puff of smoke on a railway track far beyond; the crashing was the shunting of cars, which things, coming coincidentally with a battle of the frogs, to an ignorant mind would appear to be a phenomenon in the immediate vicinity. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... He laughed in his heart at the gifts of the grateful ones; those crosses of ivory and handsome lamps were but symbols of barbarism and superstition. The tablets, with their inscriptions, "Merci" and "Ex voto," were to him absurd, and he gibed at the simple credulity of the people who could thus be misled. All these evidences of thanksgiving were but cumulative testimony that men and women are like little children, who will be pleased over fairy tales or frightened over ghost stories. The promise of paradise, but the fairy tale told by priests to ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... first place," said the king, "in what way can you possibly have offended me? I cannot perceive how. Surely not on account of a young girl's harmless and very innocent jest? You turned the credulity of a young man into ridicule—it was very natural to do so; any other woman in your place would have done ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... even by them. Then, as now, curiosity was inflamed, and the most careful study was expended in analyzing the process by which such miracles had been performed. The investigators and their readers were so overpowered by the spectacle and its results that they were prevented by a sort of awe-stricken credulity from recognizing the truth; and even yet the notion of a supernatural influence fighting on Bonaparte's side has not entirely disappeared. But the facts as we know them reveal cleverness dealing with ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... naturalists as to evolution do not explain the evolution and the vast variety of the vegetable kingdom. To attribute this to any power of modification by environment, when we see how little environment can do to make any essential change in vegetation, would require more credulity than I would consider justifiable in the pursuit of scientific truths. So in the evolution of the animal kingdom, I believe the power of the physical environment has ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... attitude when these facts were related to him can be imagined. He did what most of us do, or have done. He played the esprit fort, joked his relatives about their credulity, and thought that women were decidedly deficient in critical spirit. His curiosity was none the less awakened. Some days after, in the company of his wife, and having taken all possible precautions that Mrs Piper should not know his name or intentions beforehand, he ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... have been no sex life at first, and perhaps for ages. They can not tell us when the animals, by chance, acquired the wonderful adaptation of the sexual life. They have no evidence whatever. Their guess is no better than that of others. It passes credulity to believe that the sexual life, with all its marvelous design, was reached by the invention of irrational animals, when man, with all his powers of reason, invention, and discovery, is helpless even to understand the great wisdom and ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... been an accident of his presence in Alexandria. But to suppose that such a person as Caesar, with the concerns of the world upon his hands, would have allowed his public action to be governed by a connection with a loose girl of sixteen is to make too large a demand upon human credulity; nor is it likely that, in a situation of so much danger and difficulty as that in which he found himself, he would have added to his embarrassments by indulging in an intrigue. The report proves nothing, for whether true or ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... part of Connaught, and, as our divine Lord promised to those whom He commissioned to teach all nations, proved his mission by the exercise of miraculous powers. Some of his early biographers have been charged with an excess of credulity on this point. But were this the place or time for such a discussion, it might easily be shown that miracles were to be expected when a nation was first evangelized, and that their absence should be ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... same satisfaction I found that the result of my inquiry concerning your clergy was not dissimilar. It is no soothing news to my ears, that great bodies of men are incurably corrupt. It is not with much credulity I listen to any, when they speak evil of those whom they are going to plunder. I rather suspect that vices are feigned or exaggerated, when profit is looked for in their punishment. An enemy is a bad witness; a robber is a worse. Vices ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... you see into what hands you are fall'n; 'Mongst what a nest of villains! and how near Your honour was t' have catch'd a certain clap, Through your credulity, had I but been So punctually forward, as place, time, And other circumstances would have made a man; For you're a handsome woman: would you were wise too! I am a gentleman come here disguised, Only ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... reason, ruin the soul, and prove no better than slow poison to the body? If your business calls you to buy or sell, do you use falsehoods? do you equivocate? do you exaggerate or conceal the truth in order to impose upon your neighbour, and make a profit of his necessity or credulity? If any of these marks be upon you, God's word singles you out and drags you to the bar of Divine justice to hear your doom in the text, 'The wicked shall surely die.' Oh, see your danger; repent and make restitution! Why should you ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... which the crime was held by us. Until the affair was cleared up, they would affect great readiness to show every article which they had got from the ships, repeating the name of the donor with great warmth, as if offended at our suspicions, yet with a half smile on their countenance at our supposed credulity in believing them. There was, indeed, at all times, some, trick, and cunning in this show of openness and candour; and they would at times bring back some very trifling article that had been given ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... did little Tim behave?' asked Mrs. Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... Jim's immediate forebears, rich in all possible mechanical appliances for the ease of life, speculated whether Reardon had, in the old days, been good for Jeff. Could he, with his infernal luck, have been good for any youth of Jeff's impetuous credulity? Mightn't Jeff have got the idea that life is an easy job? The colonel felt now that he had always distrusted Reardon's bluff bonhomie, his sympathetic voice, his booming implication that he was letting you into his absolutely habitable heart. He knew, too, that without word of his own ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... was too flattering to the ardent young boy of fifteen: with all the credulity of his time and the simplicity of his age, he caught at such a means of restoring his family to peace and joy, and, gratefully accepting the present of his uncle, he suspended the little bag containing the wondrous drug round his neck ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... believers in the angel? Perhaps she no longer included Fritz among them. The impotence of his mind seemed to her an impotence of heart just then. He was to her like a numbed creature, incapable of movement, incapable of thought, incapable of belief. Credulity—yes, but not belief. And so, when she looked at the believers, she saw but a few people: Robin Pierce, Sir ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... considerable sums of money about that period. To which it is to be added that if any person chanced to evince particular curiosity on such a subject, my brother was likely enough to divert himself with practising on their credulity. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Jones, watched only one day, and spoke in a similar manner, and was dismissed on account of his credulity. ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... to have been eminently holy men,—full of spiritual wisdom and of a truly sublime faith, though conjoined with much ignorance and credulity, which it is unworthy of us ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... None contains a more grotesque revelation of the smallness and the complexity of human nature, and none—not even the records of the Tichborne trial, nor of general elections—displays more pleasantly the depths of mortal credulity. The literary forger is usually a clever man, and it is necessary for him to be at least on a level with the literary knowledge and critical science of his time. But how low that level commonly appears to be! Think of the success of Ireland, a boy of eighteen; think of ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... my instructions. I was young in practice at that time, and took a great deal more in—I mean in the way of credulity—than I did in after life. Nor was I very learned in the ways of solicitors' clerks. I knew that hearsay evidence, even in the case of a Judge's observation, was inadmissible, and therefore what the Baron said could not strictly be given; but I did not ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... upon anybody's credulity in matters of that sort," said the doctor. "If a young man likes to believe that the moon is made of green cheese, I may let him; but atmospheric and scientific facts are above being trifled with. Well, if you go ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... of the social instinct, is a credulity, a willingness to accept as if personally experienced things stated. Part of the seeking of experience is the asking of questions, because the mind seeks a cause for every effect, a something to work from. ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... acquaintanceship with a suspected person is enough to condemn one here. By the way, we have moved our lodging, but will give you our new address when we meet you, that is, if you are good enough to continue our acquaintance in spite of the trouble that has been caused you by the credulity ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... device, if it is honestly used, for inculcating knowledge or principles of conduct; that is, for education in the broadest sense of the word. Criticism is the operation by which suggestion is limited and corrected. It is by criticism that the person is protected against credulity, emotion, and fallacy. The power of criticism is the one which education should chiefly train. It is difficult to resist the suggestion that one who is accused of crime is guilty. Lynchers generally succumb to this suggestion, especially if the crime was a heinous one which has ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... in the treacherous natives made him an easy victim. In the centre of an insurrection which was extending day by day under their eyes and under their own roofs, these representatives of a powerful nation, with a small but effective force, deliberately buried their heads in the sand of their credulity, not realizing the nature of the danger which for weeks was evident to many ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... without resentment or spite, and at the truth I had put before her with candour, credulity, pity. I was afterwards happy to remember that she must have gathered from my face the liveliness of my interest in herself. "I think I see ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... gulf between him and them! What motives, what beliefs, what embryonic processes of thought and morals, what bizarre combinations of ignorance and knowledge, of the highest sanctity with the lowest credulity or falsehood; what extraordinary prepossessions, born with a man and tainting his whole ways of seeing and thinking from childhood to the grave! Amid all the intellectual dislocation of the spectacle, indeed, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the heavy blows by which Roselius and his colleagues endeavored to lay upon the defendants the burden of proof which the lower court had laid upon Salome. He admitted generously the entire sincerity of Salome's kinspeople in believing plaintiff to be the lost child; but reminded the court of the credulity of ill-trained minds, the contagiousness of fanciful delusions, and especially of what he somehow found room to call the inflammable imagination of the German temperament. He appealed to history; to the scholarship of the bench; citing the stories of Martin Guerre, the Russian Demetrius, Perkin ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... Christ, the natives exclaimed 'El Dorado'—the golden. The ignorant sailors and adventurers seized upon the literal meaning, instead of the spiritual one. The time, being that of Don Quixote and of the Inquisition, accounts for the childish credulity on one side and the unparalleled ferocity on the other. The search for El Dorado, whether it was believed to be a fabulous country of gold, or an inaccessible mountain, or a lake, or a city, or a priest who anointed ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... some manner about their arms, resembling, except the cross, those of the Moors, and by the great number of Amulets, (gris-gris of another kind) which they wear round their necks, and by which they seemed to wish to rival the infidels in credulity. There is then, in the South of Europe, as well as in the North of Africa, a class of men, who would found their authority, upon ignorance, and derive ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... the necessity of these rules (proceeding from the magistrates and myself) being strictly enforced. You, dear sir, are too little experienced in these circumstances, however obvious your other merits are to me, to act on your own judgment in the matter, as you have hitherto done. Credulity can in the present instance only lead to embarrassment, the result of which might prove injurious to you rather than beneficial, and this I wish to avoid for the sake of your ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... centuries later, when credulity concerning miracles was on the wane, that the priests began to study and to apply medical means in order to sustain the reputation of the place, and to keep up its ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... also accused himself of having caused the feud by his rash credulity, and driven Bertha to perjury and insanity by his impetuous and uncontrollable temper. For, he reasoned, had she reposed any confidence in his justice and charity, she would have told ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... present an image of the terror which he had inspired. The accident of a procession, and the sound of a doleful litany, "From the fury of the Tartars, good Lord, deliver us," had scattered the hasty report of an assault and massacre. In the blind credulity of fear, the streets of Nice were crowded with thousands of both sexes, who knew not from what or to whom they fled; and some hours elapsed before the firmness of the military officers could relieve the city from ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... be thought by some that this narration is a biassed one. But those acquainted with the charlatanry in these days of what is called 'Christian Science,' and know the extent to which crass ignorance and predisposed credulity can be duped by childish delusions, may have some 'idea how acute was the spirit-rapping epidemic some forty or fifty years ago. 'At this moment,' writes Froude, in 'Fraser's Magazine,' 1863, 'we are beset with reports of conversations with ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... the idea that an order so noble, so heroic in its history, so rich in symbolism, so skilfully adjusted, and with so many traces of remote antiquity, was the creation of pious fraud, or else of an ingenious conviviality, passes the bounds of credulity and enters the domain of the absurd. This fact will be further emphasized in the chapter following, to which those are respectfully referred who go everywhere else, except to Masonry itself, to learn what Masonry is and how it came ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... independent thinking. When I approached my Bible without the bias of the Westminster Confession I discovered that it did serve admirably as a wardrobe in which to hang any sort of religious prejudice. Continued study made me see that religious faith is generally mere human credulity. I discovered that in my pitying contempt for those of differing belief I much resembled the Yankee who ridiculed a Chinaman for wearing a pig-tail. 'True,' the Celestial replied, 'we still wear the badge of our former slavery. But you emancipated Americans, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... who had chanced to be passing through Southern Berkshire at this time, would have deemed an informant practicing on his credulity who should have assured him that everywhere throughout these quiet and industrious communities, the entire governmental machinery was prostrate, that not a local magistrate undertook to sit, not a constable ventured to attempt an arrest, not a sheriff dared to serve a process ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... less sure that they are untrue. It seems to me that a vast amount of credulity is needed for positive unbelief. Do atheists ever ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... Psychical Research delivered in January 1904.[73] It is full of interest, but is not easy to quote from. Speaking of "spiritualistic phenomena," he says: "We must all agree that indiscriminate condemnation on the one hand, and ignorant credulity on the other, are the two most mischievous elements with which we are confronted in connection with this subject. It is because we, as a Society, feel that in the fearless pursuit of truth, it is the paramount duty of science to lead the way, ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... eleventh century who compiled a historical work ([Greek: Synopsis historion]) the scope of which extended from the creation to 1057 A.D. He gives no evidence of historical knowledge or the critical sense, but rather of great credulity and a fondness for legends. His treatise is, moreover, largely plagiarized from the Annals of Ioannes ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... that hold the trust of everything that is dear to us. Nothing can render this a point of indifference to the nation, but what must either render us totally desperate, or soothe us into the security of idiots. We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of infancy, to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignity truly diabolical, to believe all the world to be equally wicked and corrupt. Men are in public life as in private—some good, some ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... interpolation, but doubtless also through a lingering credulity from which even philosophers are not immune, we find in Aristotle many a strange story. The goats that breathe through their ears, the vulture impregnated by the wind, the eagle that dies of hunger, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... manifested. I cannot find any bounds for my admiration how that reason was able, in Aristarchus and Copernicus, to commit such a rape upon their senses, as in despite thereof to make herself mistress of their credulity. ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... credulity and superstition have constantly and strongly competed with the art of medicine. There is no doubt, according to Pliny, that the magical art began in Persia, that it originated in medicine, and that it insinuated ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... counsel they addressed to their heirs, their wise laws and maxims—and we know that this account rests on traditions—he who believes that they are of historical value, is surely possessed of a good store of credulity. We do not mean to say that his writings are of no account. On the other hand, they are of value. The historical part we are to consider simply as traditions, and we are to weigh them just as we would any other collection of traditions and compare them with monuments still extant. He is ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... would take the warning. Party spirit ran wild. Extremism had its fling. Thus a long, bloody and costly War of Sections—a fraternal war if ever there was one—brought on by alternating intolerance, the politicians of both sides gambling upon the credulity and ignorance of ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... he every where mentions the popular belief in omens and prodigies; but this was the general superstition of the times; and totally to renounce the prejudices of superstitious education, is the last heroic sacrifice to philosophical scepticism. In general, however, the credulity of Livy appears to be rather affected than real; and his account of the exit of Romulus, in the following passage, may be adduced as an instance in ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... this unfortunate affair. Mr. Blake had not experience enough to judge of all possible contingencies, and he had now only to lament the credulity with which he listened to a projector, fond of his own scheme but certainly not possessed of skill enough to guard against the variety of accidents to which he was liable. The poor man has unfortunately shortened his days; he was not however tempted ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... probability generally enables him to employ the marvellous moderately, and, therefore, effectively; he is specially given to dreams; they are generally verified just enough to leave us the choice of credulity or scepticism, and are in excellent keeping with the supposed narrator. Roxana tells us how one morning she suddenly sees her lover's face as though it were a death's-head, and his clothes covered with blood. In the evening the lover is murdered. One of Moll Flanders' husbands ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... length they were all gone, and Frank found himself alone, he exclaimed—'Thank heaven, I am at last rid of those miserable and servile fellows, who in my presence load me with the most extravagant praise and adulation, while behind my back they doubtless ridicule my supposed credulity. I have too long tolerated them—henceforth, I ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... making some foolish joke. Directly he saw she was serious, however, his rage and mortification were indescribable. Here was this young man, not content with hanging about the girl so that neighbors talked, but actually imposing on her credulity, and making a jest of that engaged ring which ought to have been sacred to her. Mr. Roscorla at once saw through the whole affair—the trip to Plymouth, the purchasing of a gypsy-ring that could have been matched a dozen times over ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... equally important with the result,—a principle that has acquired canonical authority in modern scientific research. "In what follows," writes he, introducing a long string of hypotheses, the fallacy of which he had already discovered, "let the reader pardon my credulity, whilst working out all these matters by my own ingenuity. For it is my opinion that the occasions by which men have acquired a knowledge of celestial phenomena are not less admirable than the discoveries themselves." His tentatives, failures, leadings, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... story, and in the course of a few weeks follow it with a complete and sarcastic expose of the whole matter as a baseless fabrication, piling facts on facts to show that the first story was an ingenious piece of deception got up by the subject with the purpose of making capital out of the credulity of the public. There are no better detectives in the world than newspaper men. They work for the love of it. An expose is dearer to the detective-instinct in them than a laudatory article, and they leave no stone unturned to get at the facts. When, therefore, after the lapse of months, the ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... mountaineers seems to have been carefully studied, and is so thoroughly outlandish and so devoid of fine expressions that we are inclined to believe it more accurate than the poetic and musical dialects which it is the fashion to impose upon our credulity. But it must be confessed that, with only his own rude and pointless patois in which to express himself, the Southern cracker becomes painfully devoid of interest, to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... have been made. To assert that Pashitch, who, with his set, had worked to make Great Serbia ever since they had removed the Obrenovitch from its path in 1903, was innocent of plotting against Austria in 1909-10, is to ask for too much credulity. Had not Russia already said the road to Constantinople lay ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... An intelligent native attempted to convince the author that these highwaymen were not composed of native Indians, half-breeds, or Spaniards, but that they were mostly made up from Italians and other Europeans who had been induced to leave their own country for their country's good. Our credulity was not, however, equal to this solution. Brigandage was long chronic here, ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... certain statements you sent me from English papers on cruelty to Boer refugee families. I am amazed at the iniquity of men who circulate such lies, and the credulity of those who believe them. The opinion of Germans, French, Americans, and even many Dutch, here on the spot, is that the leniency and amazing liberality of the Government to their foes is prolonging the war. A Dutch girl in the Pretoria Camp declared to the nurse that for seven months they ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... False priests, false prophets, false doctors, false patriots, false prodigies of every kind, veiling their proceedings in mystery, have always addressed themselves at an immense advantage to the popular credulity, and have been, perhaps, more indebted to that resource in gaining and keeping for a time the upper hand of Truth and Common Sense, than to any half-dozen items in the whole catalogue of imposture. Curiosity is, and has been from the creation of the world, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... not but respect it. It was so much better than gross selfishness and carelessness, that she could pity and almost honour it. She felt that Mr Walcot was as far superior to the quacks who were making a market of the credulity of the suffering people, as her husband, with his professional decision, his manly composure, and his forgetfulness of the injuries of his foes in their hour of suffering, was above Mr Walcot. The poor young man drank in, as if they were direct from Heaven, the suggestions contained ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... appear disposed to return, Piccolomini determined to put Wallenstein's credulity once more to the test. He begged to be sent to bring back Gallas, and Wallenstein suffered himself a second time to be overreached. This inconceivable blindness can only be accounted for as the result of his pride, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... ever ready to undertake any disreputable work which the Executive might have for him to do. He was a smooth-tongued hypocrite, who made extravagant professions of zeal for religion when he was in the society of religious people, but afterwards laughed at their credulity for believing him. "When electioneering," said he, "I pray with the Methodists." At other times he gained votes by threatening to bring down upon the electors the vengeance of the Executive, who, he averred, were specially desirous of having his services in the Assembly. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... families, waiting for advancement; but a greater number are nominally attached to colleges, and live by the practice of astrology, fortune-telling, the sale of charms, talismans, &c. They who are not possessed of the requisite ingenuity to subsist by the credulity of others, take charge of an inferior school, or write letters, and draw up marriage and other engagements, for those who are unequal to the task. They mix at the same time largely in the domestic concerns of families. But in addition to these and other vocations, ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... was as anxious to leave as she was. Yet I am not a superstitious man. As proof of it, after the first effect of these events had left me I began to question my first impressions and feel tolerably ashamed of my past credulity. Though the phenomenon we had observed could not to all appearance be explained by any natural hypothesis; though I had seen, and my wife had seen, a strange woman suddenly become visible in a room which a moment before had held no one but ourselves, and into which no live ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... Eochaid in Connaught. An arbitrary division once limited the free clans to six in the southern half-kingdom, and six in the north; and the unfree also to six. But Geoffrey Keating, whose love of truth was quite as strong as his credulity in ancient legends—and that is saying much—disclaimed that classification, and collected his genealogies from principal heads—branching out into three families of tribes, descended from Eber Finn, one from Ir, and four from Eremhon, sons of Milesians of Spain; and ninth tribe ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... credulity of the Indians, that this crafty impostor not only succeeded for a time, in correcting many of the vices of his followers, but likewise influenced them to the perpetration of outrages upon each other, shocking to humanity. If an individual, and especially a chief, was ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... Industry where they were kept, and to bring them to the White House, before ten o'clock the following morning. This was done. To believe that the President of the United States would engage in a vulgar robbery of the jimmy and black-mask sort indicates a degree of credulity which even the alienists could hardly have expected to encounter outside of their asylums. It suggests also, that Baron Munchausen, like the Wandering Jew Ahasuerus, has never died. Does any one suppose that the person whose desk was rifled would have kept quiet? Or ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... credulity to the whispers of fancy and pursue in imagination the pleasures of hope, attend to the story of Dr. Hansombody, Mr. Pennefather, and ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
