"Incredible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... became a proved and undeniable fact; the captain no longer set foot inside the Cafe de Paris, where the chemist, it was averred, once more reigned in his stead, to the profound sorrow of the retired magistrate. An even more incredible statement was that Captain Burle led the life of a recluse in the Rue des Recollets. He was becoming a reformed character; he spent his evenings at his own fireside, hearing little Charles repeat his lessons. His mother, who had never breathed a word to him of his manipulations with Gagneux, ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... experienced would have said, and said rightly: "This must be a woman of wealth and fashion." It was the detail that finished the demonstration. The detail was incredible. There might have been ten million stitches in the dress. Ten sempstresses might have worked on the dress for ten years. An examination of it under a microscope could but have deepened ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... The distance from Langholm to Carlisle, twenty miles, occupied only two and a-half hours in the journey. It was a cold day and I had to ride on the outside, as the inside had been taken up. We changed horses, and took in and put out passengers with a rapidity which seems almost incredible. The road was ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... this Bay, about a Mile from the Shore, there is a small low woody Island, not above a Mile in Circumference; our Ship rode about a Mile from it. This Island was the Habitation of an incredible number of great Batts, with Bodies as big as Ducks, or large Fowl, and with vast Wings: For I saw at Mindanao one of this sort, and I judge that the Wings stretcht out in length, could not be less assunder than 7 or 8 Foot from tip to tip; for it ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... seen men who could hide their tongues so perfectly that even an Anatomist, after the most accurate inspection that a living subject could admit, has affirmed the organ to be wanting, but this was effected by the exertion of muscles unknown and incredible to the greater ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... existed before the construction of the Via Postumia in 148 B.C. Indeed Polybius (iii. 39. 8) tells us (and this must refer to the time of the Gracchi if not earlier) that the Romans had in his time built the coast road from the Rhone to Carthago Nova; and it is incredible that the coast road in Italy itself should not have been constructed previously. It is, however, a very different thing to open a road for traffic, and so to construct it that it takes its name from that construction in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... over India, but the amount of rainfall varies enormously in localities not far removed from each other. There are parts of India where rain hardly ever falls, and there are other parts where the total rainfall reaches an almost incredible figure. But it would be possible for a skilful wanderer so to travel about India that he would never come under the influence of the ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... that we call magnetic charm, and yet his troops are eager to follow him anywhere. He has won no victories, but his men believe him capable of many. He takes none of his officers into his confidence, but all have it. Incredible, but ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... wisdom which is not wise till after the event,—the children were less noisy in their play, checked by the grave faces of their parents—the very dogs seemed to know that something had occurred which altered the aspect of ordinary daily things. The last of the famous Jocelyns was no more! It seemed incredible. And Briar Farm? What would become ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... were still at breakfast. Nothing had changed in the house during his absence. But the whole house was changed. It was a house unconvincing, incredible, which might vanish at any moment. He himself was incredible. What had happened was incredible. The screeching voices of the children were not real voices, and the children were apparitions. The newspaper was illegible. Its messages for the most part had no meaning, ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... and the tide closes around them, are actually in the coldest and bitterest of practical situations. Yet the whole incident has a quality that can only be called boyish. It is warmed with all the colours of an incredible sunset. Rob Roy trapped in the Tolbooth, and confronted with Bailie Nicol Jarvie, draws no sword, leaps from no window, affects none of the dazzling external acts upon which contemporary romance depends, ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... authenticated by the most undeniable testimonies, it would appear incredible that the impostures of the disciples of Aesculapius, and the common faith in his regenerative powers, should have survived with equal potency and acceptation during the ages immediately succeeding the Christian era. It must not however, be forgotten, that these were ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... to me. The murder, then, had not sprung in cold blood from calculation; it was an act of madness no more to be condemned than to be pardoned. My uncle was a dangerous madman, if you will, but he was not cruel and base as I had feared. Yet what a scene for a carouse, what an incredible vice, was this that the poor man had chosen! I have always thought drunkenness a wild and almost fearful pleasure, rather demoniacal than human; but drunkenness, out here in the roaring blackness, on the edge ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... give anything like a sufficient look at each one. Such glories of vegetable beauty Faith had never imagined. It was almost a new revelation. There were deep brilliant crimsons; there was the loveliest rose-colour, in large heads of the close elegant flowers; there were, larger still and almost incredible in their magnificence, enormous clusters of cream-coloured and tinted and even of buff. There were smaller and humbler members of the family, which would have been glorious in any other companionship. There were residents of the rich ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... a year! Here I was in Flagstaff again outfitting for another hunt. It seemed incredible. It revived that old haunting thought about the shortness of life. But in spite of that or perhaps more because of it the pleasure was all the keener. In truth the only drawback to this start was the absence of ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... even of such comparatively recent times is almost incredible. As Hilary was telling me of such things as we sat in his house one evening, there grew upon our ears a peculiar sound, a humming deep bass, somewhat resembling the low notes of a piano with a pressure on the pedal. It increased and became louder, ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... in the city, Gabriella reflected while she embraced Jane, was as nothing compared to the incredible change in Charley himself. Middle-age had passed over him like some fattening and solidifying process. He was healthy, he was corpulent, he was prosperous, conventional, and commonplace. If Gabriella had been seeking, with Hogarthian humour, to portray ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... no friends in England," he went on, with unconcealed concern. "That is incredible; and yet, if there be any truth in it, what a terrible position! I fear that everybody will not share your conviction, and, I may add, my own. If one can judge thus early by what one has heard and seen for oneself, this verdict is a personal disappointment ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... wisdom spent large sums of money in attracting immigrants to our shores, but it did not occur to them to increase the population by preventing people from dying. Very few persons die now, except from old age, and the tremendous and almost incredible mortality of old times among infants is stopped, consequently the death rate is very low, and the excess of births over deaths very great. There are only three doctors to each large city, and they are subsidised by government or the town councils, because there are not enough sick people from ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... him with eyes of wonder. So much effrontery, so much ease after their last scene together seemed to the Basha a thing incredible, unless, indeed, it were accompanied by a conscience entirely ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... thought of another contrivance, which may seem incredible. He resolved no longer to put up for sale, as before, the offices which he believed to be of greatest repute in Byzantium and other cities, but sought out a number of hired persons, whom he appointed at a fixed salary, and ordered to bring all the revenues to himself. These ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... about it. There the thing was. It was impossible for the Sportsman to have been hoaxed. No, the incredible, outrageous fact must be faced. Sheen had been down to Aldershot and won a silver medal! Sheen! Sheen!! Sheen who had—who was—well, who, in a word, ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... the other, walk upstairs with ease and grace, while, with flowing robes, I pulled myself up with difficulty, lamp and baby out of the question, readily convinced me that there was sore need of reform in woman's dress, and I promptly donned a similar attire. What incredible freedom I enjoyed for two years! Like a captive set free from his ball and chain, I was always ready for a brisk walk through sleet and snow and rain, to climb a mountain, jump over a fence, work in the garden, and, in fact, for any ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... works of Jesus. They could not deny that they were good works, they could not deny that they were miracles of beneficence, but rather than acknowledge that they were done by a good man through the co-operation of a Divine spirit, they preferred to account for them by the wildest and most incredible hypothesis; they said they were done by the power of Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. It was upon this occasion that our Redeemer said with solemn meaning, "For every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account in the ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... might not the protector's flatterers and partisans have made use sometimes of one false rumor, sometimes of another? Sir Thomas More mentions the one rumor as well as the other, and treats them both lightly, as they deserved. It is also thought incredible by Mr. Carte, that Dr. Shaw should have been encouraged by Richard to calumniate openly his mother the duchess of York, with whom that prince lived in good terms. But if there be any difficulty in this supposition, we need only suppose, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... injurious to living protoplasm, or constructive protoplasm as it may be called, that which builds up, and forms all kinds of structures, and living beings of all higher types, I accidentally discovered that in minute quantities, under about one per cent., and even in such almost incredible amounts as 1 part in 100,000, (1/10 millilitre in 10 litres) it favors the growth and multiplication of many microbes whose function is antagonistic to the protoplasm of organized beings, and which may therefore be called ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... "Incredible carelessness!—And you cannot shoe a horse, or cut his mane and tail; or worm a dog, or crop his ears, or cut his dew-claws; or reclaim a hawk, or give him his casting-stones, or direct his diet when he ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Barberigo, had been sorely pressed by the Turks, as we have seen, at the beginning of the fight. Barberigo himself had been mortally wounded. His line had been turned. Several of his galleys had been sunk. But the Venetians gathered courage from despair. By incredible efforts they succeeded in beating off their enemies. They became the assailants in their turn. Sword in hand, they carried one vessel after another. The Capuchin, with uplifted crucifix, was seen to head the attack, and to lead the boarders to the assault. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... northern provinces, not owing to a failure of the rice, as I had understood, but of the millet, which is used by the poor instead of rice. Some writers estimate that five millions of people must die from starvation before the next crop can be gathered; but this seems incredible. And now America comes to the rescue, so that at this moment, while from its Eastern shores it pours forth its inexhaustible stores to feed Europe, it sends from the West of its surplus to the older races of the far East. Thus from all sides, ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... Gregory's faith, and, to be fair, phenomena were exhibited at his house, in the presence of a learned and distinguished witness known to the writer, which could only be accounted for either by thought transference, or by an almost, or quite incredible combination of astuteness, and imposture on the side of Dr. Gregory himself. In presence of the clairvoyants the nobleman of whom we speak thought not of his own house, but of a room in the house of a friend. It possessed a very singular feature which it is needless to describe here, but which ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... Chichester Splay occurs in most issues and in many columns. At first we merely noticed him. Some one would say, 'Oh, here's old Splay again,' as if—it seems incredible now—the matter was of no importance. It needed Luttrell to discover the real significance of Sir Chichester, the ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... supposed to represent the Earthly Paradise. Sauval says: "The sculptured birds and ornaments are marvellous. They are made of wrought iron, the invention of Biscornette and which died with him. He worked the iron with an almost incredible industry, rendering it flexible and tractable, and gave it all the forms and scrolls he wished, with a 'douceur et une gentillesse' which surprised and astonished all the smiths." The iron master Gaegart ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... Wilkes will live, but is not likely to be in a situation to come forth for some time. The blasphemous book has fallen ten times heavier on Sandwich's own head than on Wilkes's: it has brought forth such a catalogue of anecdotes as is incredible! Lord Hardwicke fluctuates between life and death. Lord Effingham is dead suddenly, and Lord Cantelupe(377) has ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... companions implied—a suspicion that the discovery of Somerset's depravity was wounding her heart—than by the wound itself. The ostensible ease with which she drew them into a bye conversation had perhaps the defect of proving too much: though her tacit contention that no love was in question was not incredible on the supposition that affronted pride alone caused her embarrassment. The chief symptom of her heart being really tender towards Somerset consisted in her apparent blindness to Charlotte's secret, so obviously suggested by her ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... to them, all the drives of ordinary day-to-day existence, had never seemed very important to him. He had felt that there must be something wrong with him, something lacking, for it seemed to him that people everywhere committed the most outlandish follies, believed in the most incredible things, were swayed by pure herd-instinct into the most harmful courses of behavior. They could not all be wrong, he thought, so he must be wrong—and it had worried him. He had taken partial refuge in pure science, but the study and then the teaching ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... contented, do what you will to please them. Mad. de Coulanges actually quarrelled with me for begging that we might have peace; and that we might talk upon subjects where we should not be likely to disagree. This will seem to you incredible; but it is the nature of French caprice: and for this I ought to have been prepared. But, indeed, I never could have prepared myself for the strange manner in which this lady thought proper to manifest her ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... where the surgeons at once declared the wound mortal. The sad news spread rapidly among the soldiery, and nerved them to desperate efforts—if they must lose their general, he should, they determined, be avenged. Striking their shields with their spears, they everywhere rushed upon the enemy with incredible ardor, careless whether they lived or died, and only seeking to inflict the greatest possible loss on those opposed to them. But the Persians, who had regarded the day as theirs, resisted strenuously, and maintained the fight with obstinacy till ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... wife, Lady Redmond—the successor of all the starched and spotless dames who hung in the old guest-chambers—should so forget herself and him as to tarnish his reputation by an act so improper and incredible. ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... going to tell you a thing, the most astonishing, the most surprizing, the most marvelous, the most miraculous, the most magnificent, the most confounding, the most unheard-of, the most singular, the most extraordinary, the most incredible, the most unforeseen, the greatest, the least, the rarest, the most common, the most public, the most private till to-day, the most brilliant, the most inevitable; in short, a thing of which there is but one example in past ages, and that not an exact one either; a thing that we can not ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... light railways at the public expense, also witnessed the formation in Ireland of a Society which was destined to work great changes in the social conditions of the country. The Irish Agricultural Organisation Society represents the fruit of a work begun in the face of incredible difficulties and remorseless opposition by Sir Horace Plunkett in 1889. "Better farming, better business, better living"—these were the principles which he and Mr. Anderson set out to establish in Ireland. Their representatives were described as monsters ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... their faces, and began praying and crying, fearing they should be killed; he himself threw away his gun and knife, that they might not attract the flashes, for they were within two feet from the earth, flitting along with incredible swiftness, and moving parallel to its surface. They continued for upwards of five minutes, as near as he could judge, and made a loud rustling noise, like the waving of a flag in a strong breeze. After they had ceased, the sky became clear, with ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... Persians under their king Sapor, invading Syr'ia, took the unfortunate Vale'rian prisoner, as he was making preparations to oppose them; and the indignities as well as the cruelties, which were practised upon this unhappy monarch, thus fallen into the hands of his enemies, are almost incredible. 13. Sapor, we are told, used him as a footstool for mounting his horse; he added the bitterness of ridicule to his insults, and usually observed, that an attitude like that to which Vale'rian was reduced, was the best statue that could be erected in honour of his victory. 14. This ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... moment our train halted and waited an incredible length of time vainly whistling for the tower-man to lift the signal which impeded ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... positive science could not approach it without running a risk of incurring all sorts of mischances. I felt that in investigating several subjects at once I was forsaking the fundamental principles of archaeology. If to-day I confess my mistake, if I acknowledge the incredible enthusiasm with which I was inspired by a far too ambitious scheme, I do so for the sake of the young, who will thus learn by my example to conquer their imagination. It is our most cruel foe. The student who has ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... citizens, it may, I hope, be now and then pardonable. At the present juncture, as many have applied for my assistance, I cannot find in my heart to refuse it them. Were I to attempt fully explaining, why, at the present juncture, I fear it would be vain. Would it not seem incredible to the Ladies, were I to tell them, that the period approaches, when upwards of a hundred Epic Poems will be exposed to public view, most of them nearly of equal length, and many of them nearly of equal ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... man of haggard countenance, "was a cultivator of Auvergne. By incredible hardship I made myself owner of a plot of ground. My woman and I lived scantily on our daily black bread and 'pepperpot'; we spent nothing; we had no comforts, but from year to year, as the sous were piled ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... attention, and thus to prescribe the directions and limits of observation and memory. What is strange or foreign (that is to say outside the activities of the groups) tends to be morally forbidden and intellectually suspect. It seems almost incredible to us, for example, that things which we know very well could have escaped recognition in past ages. We incline to account for it by attributing congenital stupidity to our forerunners and by assuming superior native intelligence on our own part. But the explanation is that their modes ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... paths. They have now been carried further, and a lifetime is too short for one man to investigate thoroughly more than one or two; but in those days it was still possible for a man of keen intelligence, added to the almost incredible diligence, as it appears to us, of the Middle Ages, to make himself acquainted with all the best that had been done and said ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... in the island pool were superb, astonishing, incredible. We stood on the cobble-stones at the upper end, and cast our little flies across the sweeping stream, and for three days the fish came crowding in to fill the barrel of pickled salmon for our guides' winter use; ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... to inform your Lordship, that that fever of which I informed you in my letter No. 1 has proved a very malignant one, and has carried off an incredible number of our people, especially the blacks. Had it not been for this horrid disorder, I am satisfied I should have had no doubt of penetrating into the ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... omnivorous ravages of the white ants is that they shrink from the light; in all their expeditions for providing food they construct a covered pathway of moistened clay, and their galleries above ground extend to an incredible distance from the central nest. No timber, except ebony and ironwood, which are too hard, and those which are strongly impregnated with camphor or aromatic oils, which they dislike, presents any obstacle ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... survey Patience with wondering eyes. It was simply incredible that this brusque, matter-of-fact young woman whom she had held in secret contempt should be the daughter of a man whose name was known and honored throughout the newspaper world. Sheer astonishment tied ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... upon him so suddenly, looking so dreadful, and to realize that, incredible as it seemed, he must have learned the secret of the cavern, was all so bewildering and startling as to very nearly take away her ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... It was almost as if he had been waiting for that desperate appeal. He caught up the native garment and flung it over Phil's shoulders. He dragged the beard down over his face and secured the chuddah about his head. He did it all with incredible rapidity and a strength that ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... naked humanity—with nothing between it and the blazing sky, and only the used-up, overhandled earth underfoot." Mr Kipling's Indian administrators are practical and simple men, who obey orders and accept the incredible because their position requires them to administer India as though they were never at fault, whereas their experience tells them that, if they are never to be at fault in India, it is wise to be not too original and fatal ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... Flying Fish, that marvellous achievement of science, actually surpasses all Jules Verne's creations; with incredible speed she flies through the air, skims over the surface of the water, and darts along the ocean bed. We strongly recommend our school-boy friends to possess themselves of ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... in that which is not rational, philosophic, nor eternal; its efficacy lies in the unforeseen, the miraculous, the extraordinary. Thus religion attracts more devotion in proportion as it demands more faith,—that is to say, as it becomes more incredible to the profane mind. The philosopher aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light. It is mystery, on the other hand, which the religious instinct demands and pursues: it is mystery which constitutes the essence of worship, the power of proselytism. When the cross ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and death amongst the cattle was far from groundless. Indeed, however strange and incredible it may sound in the present day to those who are unacquainted with this caste, and the peculiar habits of the Rommanees, the practice is still occasionally pursued in England and many other countries where they are found. From this practice, when they ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... confidently now that the way was visible. A moment later he stood upon the threshold of an apartment which calls for no further description at this place; he stood in the doorway of the incredible, unforgettable cave of the golden dragon; he looked into the ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... from his chin to his toes was dressed in fine buckskin—shirt, trousers, leggings, and moccasins—and around his neck was tied a blue cotton handkerchief, new and clean. That the man could be a horse thief, an outlaw, seemed most incredible. ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... got everything and everyone into full swing; he sat Varia down to the piano, begged her to play a dance tune, and proceeded to dance a Cossack dance in competition with Ivan Semyonitch. The lieutenant uttered little shrieks, stamped and cut such incredible capers that even Matrona Semyonovna burst out laughing and retreated to her own room upstairs. The hunchback old woman laid the table; we sat down to supper. At supper Kolosov told all sorts of ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... though struck by a hammer, shot through the shoulders and killed at once. The larger ram, which had fallen to John's lot, was not struck beyond a slight singe of the bullet along the hair of its back. It sprang, and with incredible speed began to make its way up the opposite slope. The ewes also scattered and ran. Alex was on the point of using his rifle, when again John's piece rang out, and this time the great ram, hit fair by the bullet, fell and rolled ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... written in simple language, suitable for those with no preliminary knowledge of science, but were the work of the chief authorities in the leading branches of science. They were published at what was then the phenomenally cheap price of a shilling, and they sold in almost incredible numbers. Huxley himself wrote the introductory volume to this great series of tracts, taking for his subject the simplest and most natural phenomena of the world and the simplest chains of cause and effect that can be observed around us. The keynote of the little book ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... his; one word written by his hand traverses Europe. Princes love, and kings fear him; they think they are not sure of their kingdom if he be not with them. Whole nations, on their side, adopt without discussion, and emulously repeat, every syllable that falls from his pen. Who exercises this incredible power, which had been nowhere seen since the middle ages? Is he another Gregory II.? Is he a ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... incredible versatility and fecundity; he literally tried his hand at everything: operas, church-music, ensemble combinations. Since, however, he exercised little power of selection or revision much of this music has become obsolete. The joke is well-known that he could set a theatre notice to music, ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... people who have so kindly received us, I revise my record of these adventures once more. Not a fact has been omitted, not a detail exaggerated. It is a faithful narrative of this incredible expedition in an element inaccessible to man, but to which Progress will one day ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... not so with the author of Nile Notes, than whom a June breeze is not more bland, and moonlight not less gairish or oppressive. This conviction, indeed, strikes us in a very peculiar manner as we read, that no more genial nature ever penetrated that dismal and incredible East, to avouch the eternal freshness of man against the decay of nature and the mutability of institutions. An actually weird effect is produced by the sight of this plump and rosy Christian pervading the graves of dead empires, and thinking democracy amidst the listening ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... of America has been its incredible ability to improve the lives of its citizens through a unique combination of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Gerald R. Ford • Gerald R. Ford
... fire in his dark eyes, a note of passion vibrating in his slow tones. The girl especially watched him with keen interest. To her all this was new and incredible. She was used to men to whom self-restraint was amongst the cardinal virtues, to the patriotism of torchlight processions and fire-crackers. This was all so different, it was as though some one had turned back for her the pages of history.... Reist surely ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... unfortunately, the vine broke. The residue, unable to cross, remained on the hither side, and became afterwards the enemies of those who had passed over. Cusick anticipates that his story of the grape-vine may seem to some incredible; but he asks, with amusing simplicity, "why more so than that the Israelites should cross the Red Sea on dry land?" That the precise incident, thus frankly admitted to be of a miraculous character, really took place, we are not required ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... stated that the more serious were unfounded; that many were ministerial acts; and the whole series were reduced to comparative nothingness.[199] While Arthur had the power, he was not sparing in its use: he endowed his friends. Nor is it incredible, that a private service to himself detracted nothing ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... sectarianism!" said Murty. "You, that accuse Catholicity of teaching absurd and incredible doctrines, are yourselves enslaved by the most incredible and contradictory creeds. It is the same in every sect. Take the Methodists, and they are the very contrary of what their name signifies. Instead of following any method in their mad orgies, they would seem to be, ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... difference between these two versions of the Parable in respect to their representation of the end of the seeking. The one says 'seeks until He finds.' Oh! the patient, incredible inexhaustibleness of the divine love. God's long-suffering, if I may take such a metaphor, like a sleuth-hound, will follow the object of its search through all its windings and doublings, until it comes up to it. So that great seeking Shepherd follows us through all the devious courses ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... mean his suggestion that I should try a little speculation? Frankly, I had no idea that such things could be begun with so little capital. It seems incredible. I fancy that Del Ferice was exaggerating. You know how carelessly bankers talk of a few thousands, more or less. Nothing short of a million has much meaning for them. Three thousand or thirty thousand—it is much the same in ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... political divisions, while Bulgaria, except for those Bulgars claimed as 'unredeemed' beyond the frontier, presents a united whole. It is only within the last thirty years, with the gradual improvement of communications (obstructed to an incredible extent by the Austro-Hungarian government) and the spread of education, that the Serbs in the different countries which they inhabit have become fully conscious of their essential ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... winning his own victory. And as talents are various, so do moral natures vary, each having its own weak and strong side; and that one man should grasp into his single self the highest perfection of every moral kind, is to me at least as incredible as that one should preoccupy and exhaust all intellectual greatness. I feel the prodigy to be so peculiar, that I must necessarily wait until it is overwhelmingly proved, before I admit it. No one can without unreason urge me to believe, on any but the ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... which custom made them perfect in (which seem incredible to us who have not seen them), by which they supplied the effects of our powder and shot. They darted their spears with so great force, as ofttimes to transfix two targets and two armed men at once, and pin them together. Neither was ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... to carry on the war with Carthage. A Carthaginian quinquereme which happened to be wrecked on their coast was taken possession of by the Romans, used as a model, and one hundred and thirty ships constructed from it. These ships were all built, it is said, in six days; but this appears almost incredible. We must not, however, judge the power of the ancients by the standard of present times. It is well known that labour was cheap then, and we have recorded in history the completion of great works in marvellously short time, by the mere ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... it seems to me at times incredible that I should have held out so long against such entreaty and distress; but it is to be said on the other hand that my whole future happiness was involved in the decision of the question. My natural obstinacy ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... myself for the suffering which my love had brought upon him through the baseness of the deception I had practiced, I went to him to entreat his forgiveness, promising to make any amends that he himself might decree. I pointed out that what had happened could not seem incredible to any one who had ever felt the power of love, or who remembered how, from the very beginning of the human race, women had cast down even the noblest men to utter ruin. And in order to make amends even beyond his extremest hope, I offered to marry her whom I had seduced, provided only ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... Gasko was in the plain, and presented few objects to attract attention, unless it was another victim of fell disease. A poor girl, suffering from elephantiasis, was one of the only women whom I had seen for many days. Her foot was swollen to an incredible size, and I have been since informed that it is not an uncommon complaint in those countries. As usual, we found the force already encamped at Gasko drawn up to receive us, four mountain guns on either flank. These were mounted, and ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... did he do? His actions form one of the most incredible and, let it be said, contemptible chapters ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... examining the apartment. The rich furniture and the many adornments, though only such as were common in the daily life of the great at that period, had for her simple eyes all the marvellousness of the most incredible illusion. She touched the velvet couches almost with fear, and passed from object to object in a sort of maze. When she arrived at the alcove, she thought she heard a slight rustling within, and then a smothered laugh. Her heart beat quick as she stopped ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... as the boat plunged from the crest of a wave the whale swirled, making a suction like a whirlpool into which the craft lurched drunkenly. Then the great creature, turning with a speed that seemed incredible, brought down the flukes of his tail in the direction of the boat, snapping off the stroke oar like a pipe-stem. Avidsen, the oarsman, a burly Norwegian, though his wrist was sharply and painfully wrenched by the blow, made no complaint, but reached out for ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... willing to meet that terrible man whom legend and story had endowed with supernatural powers. Finally, a criminal consented to attempt the deed on the promise of his liberty, and this led to one of the most incredible episodes in Marko's life. The criminal lay in wait for him on a lonely part of the road near Rijeka, and as Marko was passing along he stepped suddenly on to the road pistol in hand. Marko in no way attempted defence, but simply transfixed the man with a glance. ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... of the end of 1951—the date of this briefing—there was no positive proof that any craft foreign to our knowledge existed. All recommendations for the reorganization of Project Grudge were based solely upon the fact that there were many incredible reports of UFO's from many very reliable people. But they were still just flying saucer reports and couldn't be considered ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... on us," said one of the officers, with a reluctant laugh. "But, really, Jamieson, you can't blame us much, can you? It's pretty incredible, even now." ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart
... the compilation of my Lives and Trials I was exposed to incredible mortification, and ceaseless trouble, from this same rage for interference.... This was not all; when about a moiety of the first volume had been printed, he materially altered the plan of the work; ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... of a pure, simple-hearted, well-taught Christian child is so immeasurably and indescribably great, that we may safely conclude that the workmen and workwomen employed in producing the result must have spent upon their work an incredible amount of honest self-denying toil: a perfunctory discharge of the office of schoolmaster,—so many hours a week, and so much pay,—will never do: the master of the Elementary School must ever be a Christian Brother in reality, if ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... supposed that the progress has been an unceasing forward movement. Quite the contrary, in every aspect of it the life of the early part of the nineteenth century presents the spectacle of a great reaction. The resurgence of old ideas and forces seems almost incredible. In the political world we are wont to attribute this fact to the disillusionment which the French Revolution had wrought, and the suffering which the Napoleonic Empire had entailed. The reaction in the world of thought, and particularly ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... ships, cannot fail to see that the saving of so many valuable lives is a positive material benefit to the nation. But to descend to the lowest point, we maintain that the value of the lifeboats to the nation, in the mere matter of saving property, is almost incredible. In regard to these things, it is possible ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... steam-sped shuttles carried the woof of enterprise to and fro with tireless celerity; machines to save labor multiplied themselves as if they had been procreative forces, and wares of every sort were produced with incredible swiftness and cheapness. Money seemed to flow from the ground; vast fortunes 'rose like an exhalation,' ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... any intimacy. She tried to realize that she had promised to marry this man, but never before had he seemed so much a stranger to her, so little a part of her life. It came to her with a sensation of the incredible that she had done this thing, taken ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... carry up the ephemeral vessels popularly called "caccavelle" [18] and scatter them about. With the exception of one fragment of white Pentelic marble, no materials of an early period have been incorporated into the masonry of the little chapel or the walls of the fields below. It is incredible that no vestige of a structure like the Athene temple should remain on a spot of this kind, so favourably situated as regards immunity from depredations, owing to its isolated and exalted position. The rock-surface ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... in the development of any musical talent, but because, considered in the context of his entire intellectual structure, it involves a curious problem. The mere repetition of music heard but once, even when, as in Tom's case, it is given with such incredible fidelity, and after the lapse of years, demands only a command of mechanical skill, and an abnormal condition of the power of memory; but to play secondo to music never heard or seen implies the comprehension of the full drift of the symphony in its current,—a capacity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... advance, on the kind of machinery, the speed with which it is run, and on the general state of the arts and industrial inventions. The extent to which the productive capacity of a single laborer has been increased in the United States has been almost incredible. Instead of weaving cloth by hand, as was done a hundred years ago, "one operative in Lowell, working one year, can produce the cotton fabric needed for the year's supply of 1,500 to 1,800 Chinese." Moreover, there is no question as to the fact that ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... religion. Hatred without reason, without common sense, and absolutely without foundation. No room is left for any other faculty. Intelligence and morality have abdicated. Nicolai quotes a number of almost incredible examples from the Germany of 1914 and 1915, and equally striking instances could be given in the case of every belligerent nation. There was no resistance to these suggestions. In the collective aberration, all differences of class, education, intellectual ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... science and philosophy were not proof against the unaccountable effects of this communication. In after ages it will hardly be believed, that on the evening of the eighth day of April, the open fields that skirt the metropolis were filled with an incredible number of people assembled in chairs, in chaises, and coaches, as well as on foot, who waited in the most fearful suspense until morning, and the return of day disproved the truth of the dreaded prophecy. Then their fears vanished; they returned to their respective habitations in a transport ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Virchow's pupils, Prof. Recklinghausen, we chiefly owe our knowledge of the phenomena of diapedesis as a part of the inflammatory activity. How incredible it seems that masses of living matter can make their way through the walls of blood vessels which do not rupture and which have no ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... killed; and, about twenty, including Lieutenant Johnstone, wounded, when again, one of those murderous globes fell, hissing in the very centre of the bomb-proof. In an instant, the Indian fire was discontinued; and their dark and pliant forms were seen hurrying with almost incredible rapidity over the dilapidated walls, and flying into the very heart of the forest, so that when the shell exploded, a few seconds afterwards, not a warrior was to be seen. From this moment the attack was not renewed, and Captain Erskine made good ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... home, make them free, and the Irish market will soon require more manufactured goods than now go to all India. Raise the value of man in Great Britain, and the domestic market will absorb an amount of commodities that would now be deemed perfectly incredible. ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... interference would suggest the conclusion that the course he recommended was opposed to the general sentiments of his brethren; so we felt at this time. But we mistook his influence with the people. It was reported to us that he used certain arguments, incredible, because blasphemous. But the argument which succeeded, and which all alike attested, was this, "that he would put himself at the head of the people if they but ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... beam flies over land and sea with incredible velocity, and you think the light itself must be in swiftest movement; but when you climb up thither you find the lamp absolutely stationary. It is only the reflection that is moving. The rider on horseback may gallop to and fro wherever ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... at least, goes a long way with a woman. She was also loyal and truthful. No one doubted her word when once she had spoken. This makes her testimony valuable, though many incidents circumspectly narrated by her seem incredible. Of the young duchesse de Bourgogne, second daughter of Louis XIV., she says: One of her amusements was to make her lackeys drag her over the floor by her feet. It is to be presumed that the duchess was a very young person at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... may have gotten into his life. That same will-power, that same stubbornness, touched by the power of Christ becomes the rock-ribbed steadfastness that has enabled men to put through great achievements for God. I see a boy who can invent much devilment and get himself and others into an almost incredible amount of trouble and sorrow. It might be the judgment of some that "killing is the only thing good for him," but touched by the spirit of Jesus, that boy becomes a veritable genius for doing effective things to promote the Kingdom of God—and no fellow in the community happier than ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... licentiousness." He then spoke of the hinderances to speedy success in the establishment of a sound republican government, and said: "After having avowed all this, my dear general, I will tell you, with the same frankness, that we have made an admirable and almost incredible destruction of all the abuses, of all the prejudices; that all which was not useful to the people—all which did not come from them—has been retrenched; that, in considering the situation, topographical, moral, and political, of France, we have effected more changes in ten months ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... to some other tribunal. For the sentence of death appears to have been almost invariably passed by the inferior courts, and no appeal seems to have been possible; indeed in these affairs their worships, as in this case, usually made incredible haste, which, it must beadmitted, is perhaps the only good quality which the modern courts of justice might borrow from the ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... later saw Barton Common, an enclosed acre of ground, covered with every sort of garment that could by any possibility be useful in a hospital. Besides the incredible numbers of sheets and pillow-cases, wrappers and stockings, which every housekeeper drew forth from her stores, notwithstanding her previous belief and assertion that she "really had nothing more fit to give to the soldiers," there were countless boxes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... of the quality of these articles of sailors' fare, the abundance in which they are put onboard a whaling vessel is almost incredible. Oftentimes, when we had occasion to break out in the hold, and I beheld the successive tiers of casks and barrels, whose contents were all destined to be consumed in due course by the ship's company, my heart ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... pleasure in showing them the unsuspected extent of their own powers, and showing how thoroughly the questions they are interested in were investigated over forty years ago, to scatter the mystery and bring the wonderful and almost incredible powers of the mind into correlation with ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... charity of other poor villagers as they go, or they carry sacks of bread-crusts, getting more and more mouldy every week. Thousands arrive at the Holy Land every year just before Easter, old and frail men and women who have undergone incredible hardships. They say, "What does it matter what happens to our bodies?" and many of them die uncomplainingly. They are so good and simple that they believe everything that is told them, and almost faint with joy to think they ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... eye of the younger man dilated, and, as his courage rose, the colour mounted to his cheek. The swart brow of the other darkened as he marked the change; then, with sudden spring and shout, the two fell upon each other and dealt their blows with incredible vigour and rapidity. ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... No solid foundation can be found for these assertions. The records of the Basque maritime cities contain nothing to confirm them, and these assertions are mixed up with so much that is absurd—such as a statement that the Newfoundland Indians spoke Basque—that the whole hypothesis is incredible."[4] ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... arts. Blaise was educated entirely by his father at home. He was exceedingly precocious, indeed excessively precocious, for his application to studies in childhood and adolescence impaired his health, and is held responsible for his death at thirty-nine. Prodigious, though not incredible stories are preserved, especially of his precocity in mathematics. His mind was active rather than accumulative; he showed from his earliest years that disposition to find things out for himself, which has characterised the infancy of Clerk-Maxwell and ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... After a day and a night's rest I went to them, and with my own hands made a fine ball of pure india-rubber; it hardened immediately as it became exposed to the air, and its elasticity was almost incredible. ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... WOOD, she says. But her mother and Monsieur le Cure find her pale, agitated, distressed, ON THE SOFA IN THE SALON. One is asked to believe that she is transported through the air—like an angel—by the spirit of Armand de Fontonelles. Incredible!" ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... incredible to you, it seems incredible now to myself, but I completed my journey, entered my uncle's house, was made welcome there and started upon my new life without letting my eyes fall for one instant on the columns of a newspaper. I did not dare to see what they contained. ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green |
