"Comprehensible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... If it had been Inglethorp who was carrying on an intrigue with Mrs. Raikes, his silence was perfectly comprehensible. But, when I discovered that it was known all over the village that it was John who was attracted by the farmer's pretty wife, his silence bore quite a different interpretation. It was nonsense to pretend that he was afraid of the scandal, as no possible scandal could attach to him. ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... with all its inhabitants going about their daily business, and not suspecting that they were being made a show of. And these books are just as English as a beef-steak. Have they ever been tried in America? It needs an English residence to make them thoroughly comprehensible; but still I should think that human nature would give them ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... neither trees, nor grass, nor even land, and only stones and dust? What is the significance of the words "to earn a livelihood in the city," which are in such constant use, both by those who earn the livelihood, and by those who furnish it, as though it were something perfectly clear and comprehensible? ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... the two, considered alone, is fairly comprehensible. But taken together, there is something between them which must always baffle me—something which I cannot believe to have been at all typical of the relation between owner and slave, else many of the facts noted by our discerning and impartial investigators ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... me and drew me back on the ottoman. She began to kiss me anew, and this silent language was so comprehensible, so convincing— ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... had popped off at 'em the night before had left 'em with an uncomfortable feeling that their spy was taking quite unreasonable risks. It is of course most unusual for a spy to make use of rocket signals. Do I make myself comprehensible?" ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... first, facts secondary;—with the Pre-Raphaelites it is the reverse; it is far less important to them that their facts should be broadly stated and in keeping in their pictures, than that they should be there and comprehensible. To him a fact that was out of keeping was a nuisance, and he treated it as such; while any falsehood that was in keeping was as unhesitatingly admitted, if he needed it to strengthen the impression of his picture. Turner would put a rainbow by the side of the sun, if he wanted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... kindness, the old sailor became the recipient of insults, not only from their tongues,—which he could not understand,—but by acts and gestures which were perfectly comprehensible ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... undoubtedly much in primitive Christianity to appeal to this man, and Jesus' hard sayings to the rich and about the rich would have been entirely comprehensible to him. Yet the religion that is preached in our churches and practiced by our congregations, with its element of display and self-aggrandizement, its active proselytism, and its open contempt of all religions ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... meaningless on the eyeball an instant before slid into proper proportion. Roads were meant to be walked upon, houses to be lived in, cattle to be driven, fields to be tilled, and men and women to be talked to. They were all real and true—solidly planted upon the feet—perfectly comprehensible—clay of his clay, neither more nor less. He shook himself like a dog with a flea in his ear, and rambled out of the gate. Said the Sahiba, to whom watchful eyes reported this move: 'Let him go. I have done my share. ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... has at any rate given to the world the most credible and comprehensible portrait of the poet ever drawn ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... companionship. The only human being with whom he ever came in contact was Said, the Egyptian; and Said, at best, was uncommunicative. A man of very limited intellect, Luke Soames had been at a loss for many days to reconcile Block A and its temporary occupants with any comprehensible scheme of things. Whereas some of the rooms would be laden with nauseating fumes, others would be free of these; the occupants, ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... inexplicable hitherto, become comprehensible by the aid of the engraphia of the mnemic energies. (Vide above; Semon). The sexual glands, being of undifferentiated origin, contain the energies of both sexes. The ecphoria of one of them provokes that of its correlative characters and excludes that of the characters of the other. ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... flow was as clear and even as the arrangement of the matter was lucid; the voice was not loud, but so distinct that it carried to the furthest benches. No syllable was slurred, no point hurried over. All this made for the lucid and comprehensible; well-chosen language and fine utterance shaped a perfect vehicle of thought. But it was the lucidity of the thought itself, thus expressed, that gave his lectures their quality. A clever and accomplished lady once, in intimate ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... least in England, is founded. There is no more usual deliverance of superficial criticism than that which declares French poetry in general to be either nought—which is still a not uncommon notion—or at least not great enough to be worth the study which alone could make it comprehensible. There are many good people who dare to say this, yet live, audacious, and unconscious of their folly. We have, however, to consider Victor Hugo on a ground which no one ventures to dispute. The great romances—for which we should like to invent another name—which we cannot ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... was about to marry a horrible Megaera ten or twelve years his senior, he looked unhealthily happy. There was no doubt that his handsome roguery had caught the woman's fancy. She was at the dangerous age, when even the most ferro-concrete-natured of women are apt to run riot. She was comprehensible, and pardonable. But the man baffled me. He was obviously marrying her for her money; but how in the name of Diogenes and all the cynics could he manage to look so confoundedly joyful ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... marvelous creation—"a mere woman, nothing but her sex"; but the king, though relatively passive, is the most important character. He is attracted to Rachel by a charm that he has never known in his coldly virtuous English consort, and, after an error forgivable because made comprehensible, is taught the duty of personal sacrifice to morality and to the state. In doctrine and in inner form this drama is comparable to Hebbel's Agnes Bernauer; it is a companion piece to A Faithful Servant of his Master, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... their death in 1616. It is doubtful if the plays of the elder dramatists were allowed her, though there are hints in her poems of some knowledge of Shakespeare, but by the time girlhood was reached, the feeling against them had increased to a degree hardly comprehensible save in the light of contemporaneous history. The worst spirit of the time was incorporated in the later plays, and the Puritans made no discrimination. The players in turn hated them, and Mrs. Hutchinson wrote: "Every stage and every table, and every puppet- ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... which the people of those days might possess, we may remember that those comparatively few who could read were just those who would have access to the necessarily rare copies then existing of the Word of God, and that to them also the Latin version would be more comprehensible than any other. Again, with regard to Latin services, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to translate the devotions of the Church into any of the slowly-forming dialects of the different European nations; whilst Latin was more universally spoken and understood than ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... and seven in a bar,—would be more comprehensible for the performers, if instead of indicating them by a particular series of gestures, they were treated as though the one was composed of three and two in a bar, and the other ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... therefore be explained or interpreted by this rule; whereas, on the contrary, by following our own method, we can explain many questions of this nature, and discuss them on a sure basis, as we have already shown, by reason and example. Those matters which are by their nature comprehensible we can easily explain, as has been pointed out, simply by ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... either personally or through his intermediate agents, one half of the annual amount of lumber felled for market, the sale of which was arranged with the neighboring forge owners by mutual agreement; the other half was disposed of by notarial act. This latter arrangement was clear and comprehensible; the price of sale and the amounts falling due were both clearly indicated in the deed. But it was quite different with the bargains made by the owner himself, which were often credited by notes payable ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... was three parts drunk, and for some reason, not very comprehensible, he had chosen to resent the presence of this clean-limbed, clean-featured English lad. Possibly he recognized in him a type which for its very cleanness he abhorred. Possibly his sodden brain was stirred by an envy which the Colonials round him were powerless to excite. For he ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... election. This explanation will perhaps be more comprehensible if the actual result of the polling in the Nyland division, so far as the first 25 candidates are concerned, is ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... talked as few men ever talked before or since, and probably drank too much with those "poor unhappy brains for drinking" which his Cassius deplored. Thus fanned, the weak flame of his life wasted quickly and guttered out. It is all comprehensible enough, and more than likely, that the greatest man in the world, after the boredom of solitary years spent in Stratford, died through a merry meeting with his friends; in his joy and excitement he drank a glass or so of wine, which brought on a fever. It is all true, true to ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... afflict the reader by attempting to describe in detail my plan of operations, for it involved a mathematical problem of some complexity, only interesting to and comprehensible by a mathematician. Suffice it to say that what I had undertaken to do was to make three separate sets of observations from as many chosen points, consisting of carefully observed compass bearings, and angles taken with my pocket sextant; and the taking of ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... to bear upon Eriecreek, and wholly failed to conceive of it. He did not like the notion of its being thrust within the range of his knowledge; and he resented its being the home of Miss Ellison, whom he was beginning to accept as a not quite comprehensible yet certainly agreeable fact, though he still had a disposition to cast her off as something incredible. He asked no further about Eriecreek, and presently she rose and went to join her relatives, and he went to smoke his cigar, and to ponder upon the problem presented to him in this young ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... title-page from a precious volume; but with me the feeling has never taken this turn, else I should never have confessed to the possession of it. Whatever may be said or believed, however, I must refer to it in more or less comprehensible terms, because it may explain the conditions, although it will not unveil the causes, of the incidents I am about to describe ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... not complete your good work?" broke out the man tied to the chair in harsh and foreign but sufficiently comprehensible French, "by straightway ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... their object, like Fate, whose ministers they seem, (and whose march neither wars nor earthquakes, nor all the scourges which Providence permits, ever arrest,) without deigning to make the utility of their purposes comprehensible to their victims. ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... was out of sight; for some occult reason, not comprehensible even to her, she felt interested in the old man, although she had never spoken to him; but he looked old and ill and lonely; three decided claims on Olivia's bountiful and ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... she had come. This was evidently the silent maid of whom Gouache had spoken. The few words she had spoken had revealed to Orsino the fact that she was an Italian from the north, for she had the unmistakable accent of the Piedmontese, whose own language is comprehensible only by themselves. ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... we should neither take photographs nor write down exact descriptions. As regards the latter, the Staff officers had reason to be reassured. No living journalist could have reproduced the scientific account of the sighting arrangements given to us in an esoteric yet quite comprehensible language by the high priest of these guns, who was a middle-aged artillery Captain. It lasted about twenty minutes. It was complete, final, unchallengeable. At intervals the artillery Captain himself admitted that such-and-such a part of the device was tres beau. It was. There ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... theater. Is there not here a human world created by us, unforeseen and unknown by Eternal destinies, comprehensible by our minds alone, a sensual and intellectual distraction, which has been invented solely by and for that discontented and restless little animal that ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... abuse on the great men of modern times, are equally incapable of perceiving the real excellence of established canons, are ignorant of the commonest and most acknowledged principia of the art, blind to the most palpable and comprehensible of its beauties, incapable of distinguishing, if left to themselves, a master's work from the vilest school copy, and founding their applause of those great works which they praise, either in pure hypocrisy, or in admiration of ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... gentleman in evening dress stood at the welcoming doors, and on perceiving him this gentleman ran down the steps, and, with a sort of hurried grace, took his carpet-bag from him, addressing him in broken English, and indicating by incomprehensible words and comprehensible signs that he regarded him, the new arrival, as the light of his eyes and the protector of the poor and of the oppressed. And no sooner had he got the new arrival safe into the hall than he stripped him of hat, coat, and muffler, and might have proceeded to ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... found the names of Lord and Lady Northmoor, and then, growing more eager as obstructions came in her way, and not liking to turn back as if on a fool's errand, she suggested to Miss Gattoni that questions might be asked about their visit. The Tyrolean patois was far beyond her, and not too comprehensible to her friend, but there was a waiter who could speak French, and ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... acting 'ab intra' as a new nature infused by grace, as the mind of Christ prompting to all obedience, is the Gospel. Yet what Luther says is likewise very true. Could we reduce the great spiritual truths or ideas of our faith to comprehensible conceptions, or (for the thing itself is impossible) fancy we had done so, we should ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... appetible apprehensible audible cessible coercible compatible competible comprehensible compressible conceptible contemptible contractible controvertible convertible convincible corrigible corrosible corruptible credible decoctible deducible defeasible defensible descendible destructible digestible discernible ...
— Division of Words • Frederick W. Hamilton
... her side, for presently he took her hand, a fat little round hand, with a golden circle upon one of the fingers, which denoted betrothal or marriage, and pressed it fondly. We could not understand their Finnish speech; but there is a language comprehensible to all, in every clime. That the pair were in love no one could for a moment doubt, and that they heeded nothing of those quaint old Finnish chants, distinctly audible from the opposite carriage, was evident, for they ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... recognized or not—and all with the purpose not of diminishing but of increasing the general liberty—so the Church, divinely safeguarded too in the process, takes the Revelation of Christ and by her dogma and her discipline popularizes it, so to speak, and makes it at once comprehensible and effective. ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... the Czar makes the whole situation in northern Europe and Austria easily comprehensible; it is necessary to examine from the same standpoint, also, what occurred in the southern states of Europe, remote as they were; otherwise the course of affairs at the opposite extremities of Europe seems utterly mysterious. If the path followed at St. Petersburg ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... sing to the strains of the voluptuous-waltz made vocal? The words mattered not; in Esquimaux they would have been as intelligible from the intonation with which she imbued every note, and the restricted but perfectly comprehensible gestures with which she emphasized the phrases of double meaning—one for the literary censors who had "passed" this corruption, the other for even the more ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... far the greatest labour—labour which, I hope, will not remain uncompensated. The view there taken, which goes somewhat deeply into the subject, has two sides, The one relates to the objects of the pure understanding, and is intended to demonstrate and to render comprehensible the objective validity of its a priori conceptions; and it forms for this reason an essential part of the Critique. The other considers the pure understanding itself, its possibility and its powers of cognition—that is, from a subjective point of view; and, although ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... duties, cultivation, finance, punishment, and so on, but endeavoured to bring all human actions whatsoever into practical harmony with supposed natural laws; that is to say, to make them as regular, as comprehensible, as beneficent, and as workable, as the perfectly manifest but totally unexplained celestial movements were; as were the rotation of seasons, the balancing of forces, the growth and waning of matter, male and female ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... Blake caught an Atlas liner for Colon. And at Colon he found himself once more among his own kind. Scattered up and down the Isthmus he found an occasional Northerner to whom he was not unknown, engineers and construction men who could talk of things that were comprehensible to him, gamblers and adventurers who took him poignantly back to the life he had left so far behind him. Along that crowded and shifting half-way house for the tropic-loving American he found more than one passing friend to whom he talked hungrily and ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... not in the least what one expects an old person to be. Old persons ought to take up the position of audience. They ought, above all things, to give a rest to the minds of young people, who, goodness knows, have enough to worry them, by being easily comprehensible. With mother one knew exactly where one was; one knew everything that had happened to her and how she had felt about it, and there was no question of anything fresh ever happening to her. But from the deep, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... those whose intellectual faculties were so limited that they could not understand the mysteries of religion. The incarnation of the Word, they would say, was a trifle for God, and therefore easy to understand, and the resurrection was so comprehensible that it did not appear to them wonderful, because, as God cannot die, Jesus Christ was naturally certain to rise again. As for the Eucharist, transubstantiation, the real presence, it was all no mystery ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... assimilating power may be increased by presenting new ideas and methods in agreeable form. A full realization of the effect of this inertia of thought and habit makes the great efficiency of specialization more comprehensible. ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... Pedolsky opened the pouch on his belt and took out the false palate and tongue-clicker without which no Terran could do more than mouth a crude and barely comprehensible pidgin-Ulleran. Stuffing the gadget into his mouth, he turned and ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... it was of a kind that Lettice rejoiced in exceedingly, and that Alan loved without quite knowing why. The Tannhauser Overture, the Walkueren-Ritt, two of Schubert's loveliest songs, and the less exciting but more easily comprehensible productions of an earlier classical composer, were the chief items of the first part of the concert. Then came an interval, after which the rest of the afternoon would be devoted to the Choral Symphony. But during this interval Alan hastened ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... that he was struggling to see in the origin of species a process just as scientifically comprehensible as the birth of individuals. They show, I think, that he recognised the two things not merely ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... if not completely crushed, by the horrors of the war, would be small cause for surprise to most people who have given the matter a thought. But to those of us acquainted with the facts, an entirely different and wholly comprehensible aspect of the case has been ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... instrumental pieces of a people will reveal a quite definite general scheme of construction which can be accepted as representative of that people alone; and if such an analysis be made of the music of many peoples and the findings so tabulated that the material will be comprehensible to ethnologists trained to that branch of musical research, many interesting and instructive side-lights will be thrown on the ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... instructions, which provide that large passenger steamers are to be torpedoed only after previous warning and after the rescuing of passengers and crew. The failure to observe the instructions was based on an error which is at any rate comprehensible and the repetition of which appears to be out of the question, in view of the more explicit instructions issued in the meantime. Moreover, the commanders of the submarines have been reminded that it is their duty to exercise greater care and to ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... contested absolutely the truth of any mystery, but have merely stated that, as long as the testimonies of its truth were hidden in obscurity, such a mystery must be liable to be questioned. He was wont to add, however, that the mysteries of religion did not appear to him less comprehensible than those of science and ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... the best among the German people; many quotations to this effect (for example, Geibel's lines) are to-day in everybody's mouth. Deeper thoughts are aroused by a less-known remark of Richard Wagner's: "A great mission, scarcely comprehensible to other nations, is unquestionably reserved for the whole German character (Anlage)"; this character he defines as "the spirit of pure humanity," and the mission of the Germans as "the ennoblement of the world...." Not to believe in this mission is folly, is treason.—H.S. ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... repeal before the house. He asked, what was meant by the watch-word of repeal of the union between Great Britain and Ireland. If those who used it meant a complete separation, or a species of Hibernian republic, their conduct was both comprehensible and consistent; but if, as they asserted, they only meant two separate independent legislatures, under the same monarch, the motion was inconsistent with the first principles of the science of government. After having shown this inconsistency by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... from its educational possibilities one never ceases to marvel at the power of even a mimic stage to afford to the young a magic space in which life may be lived in efflorescence, where manners may be courtly and elaborate without exciting ridicule, where the sequence of events is impressive and comprehensible. Order and beauty of life is what the adolescent youth craves above all else as the younger child indefatigably demands his story. "Is this where the most beautiful princess in the world lives?" asks a little girl peering into the door of the Hull-House Theater, or "Does Alice in Wonderland always ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... district shrank not from subjecting themselves. If Joseph Fleming chanced to call at the Red House after her return from one of these entertainments, he was sure to find Mrs. Temperley in one of her least comprehensible moods. But whatever she might say, he stood up for her among the neighbours with persistent loyalty. He decked her with virtues that she did not possess, and represented her to the sceptical district, radiant in domestic glory. Hadria thus found herself in an awkwardly uncertain position; ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... knowledge the convulsive movements become a little more comprehensible. They are futile attempts to run away. They are the partial movements ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... the subject, or whether they should be arranged in a single series to be repeated without substantial alteration in each of the cities visited by me. The latter plan was ultimately adopted, as tending to render the discussion of the subject more generally comprehensible to each local audience. A series of five lectures, substantially the same, was accordingly delivered by me in New York, Cambridge, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. But whilst this plan secured continuity of treatment, ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... Leuchtmar, smiling, "I find it very comprehensible that the Princess Ludovicka should gladly have him as consort. But we must not submit to it, but do everything to prevent it, for it is contrary to policy and reasons of state. And I think, too, such an union would not be for the Prince's welfare, for the Princess—But hush! the Electoral Prince ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... sounded harsh—but something more than merely that. Her interpretations of peculiar conduct were liable to run in terms of the heart. Had Theresa, poor thing, by chance formed a hopeless attachment?—Hopeless, of course, almost ludicrously so; yet what more natural, more comprehensible, Charles being who and what he was? Not that he would, in the faintest degree, lend himself to such misplaced affection. Of that he was incapable. The bare idea was grotesque. He, of course, was guiltless. But, assuming there was ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... of his contemporaries as were not inclined to deny that there was a great Power at work behind the phenomena of the Universe, but were not prepared to admit that this Power could be any degree comprehensible by us. The most systematic exponent of this view was Herbert Spencer. He allowed that we are obliged to refer the phenomenal world and its law and order to a First Cause. "And the First Cause," he said, "must be in every sense perfect, complete, total—including within itself all power, and ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... city hall involved and at the indignation which interference with it produced. Hull-House lost some large subscriptions as the result of this investigation, a loss which, if not easy to bear, was at least comprehensible. We also uncovered unexpected graft in connection with the plumbers' unions, and but for the fearless testimony of one of their members, could never have brought the ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... princes, Henry and John, who stood hand in hand staring at her. She flew to him directly, with a broken entreaty that she might be taken to her father. Again they tried questioning her, but Richard, whether speaking English or Provencal, always succeeded in obtaining readier and more comprehensible replies than did the Princess. Whether she recognized him as her preserver, or whether his language had a familiar tone, she seemed exclusively attracted by him; and he it was who learnt that she lived at home—far off—on the Green near ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... submission to authority in intellectual matters, on the part of either children or adults, is no less objectionable. It is not any person's mere assertion that makes a thing true, but evidence of some sort; and evidence is likewise usually necessary to make it interesting and comprehensible. The artificiality of the authority of a teacher as the main support for conclusions is plainly seen in the fact that there is no substitute for it outside of and after school and college. Its evil influence is also evident from the fact that persons accustomed to rely much upon ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... actual words, but I felt the thoughts that underlay them, unexpressed. I resented the opinion she held of me. It was untrue, and I meant to remove it. I was silent an instant, thinking how to find words passably comprehensible and yet conventionally circumlocutory and euphemistic. After ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... be expected that any idea we may form of the astral life will be incomplete, and inadequate to give a true conception what it is really like. Perhaps the most comprehensible of the subplanes is that which reproduces the physical landscape in astral matter. There the average man will begin his conscious astral career. If we think of the world as we know it here and then imagine all that is material to have vanished from it we shall gain some comprehension ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... the definition given by Balthasar of the kingdom the king was coming to establish. A kingdom of souls, if not intolerable to his Sadducean faith, seemed to him but an abstraction drawn from the depths of a devotion too fond and dreamy. A kingdom of Judea, on the other hand, was more than comprehensible: such had been, and, if only for that reason, might be again. And it suited his pride to think of a new kingdom broader of domain, richer in power, and of a more unapproachable splendor than the old one; of a new king wiser and mightier than Solomon—a new king under whom, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... thing was the thick darkness at night. That seemed to him whole and comprehensible and restful. He could leave himself to it. Suddenly a piece of paper started near his feet and blew along down the pavement. He stood still, rigid, with clenched fists, a flame of agony going over him. And he saw again the sick-room, his mother, her ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... world toward these problematical occurrences is quite comprehensible. Throughout the nineteenth century the attention of scientists has been almost wholly directed toward the investigation of the forms and forces of matter, the phenomena and principles of the visible universe. In this they entered, at the opening of the century, ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... falsities, errors, and absurdities and which we are to commit to our little alembic, and distil as we may; not only from the absurdity of supposing that God has demanded our faith, for statements which are to be received only as they appear perfectly comprehensible by our reason;—or, in other words, only for what it is impossible that we should doubt or deny; not merely because the principle inevitably leaves man to construct the so-called revelation entirely ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... humanism and rationalism have brought antiquity into the field as an ally; and it is therefore quite comprehensible that the opponents of humanism should direct their attacks against antiquity also. Antiquity, however, has been misunderstood and falsified by humanism . it must rather be considered as a testimony against humanism, against the benign nature of man, &c. The opponents of humanism are wrong ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... it. She could feel herself relaxing, slipping down and away, drifting down through her mind ... farther ... deeper ... toward the tiny voice that spoke in such a strange language and still was becoming daily more comprehensible. ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... bulls have the better time. Their sufferings in life are certainly brief, and their careless days are very long drawn out. But I would not give the impression that the spectators here are assembled for amusement, or that my view of some of their proceedings would be comprehensible to them. However I may feel, the other occupants of this place are here in the ordinary course of business, and are certainly animated by no such fierce passions as thrill through the air of a plaza de toros. I am in the East but of the West, and ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... got into the depths where the comprehensible ends in the incomprehensible—where the symbols which may be used with confidence so ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... angry Judas, after each conversation, would go to the women and weep. They heard him gladly. The tender womanly element, that there was in his love for Jesus, drew him near to them, and made him simple, comprehensible, and even handsome in their eyes, although, as before, a certain amount of disdain was perceptible in his ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... Europe moated off into this manageable and comprehensible space, you are next to fix the limits which divide the four Gothic countries, Britain, Gaul, Germany, and Dacia, from the four Classic countries, ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... expression with ease and certainty. In two things he might be said to be profoundly versed—the spirit of the Scriptures, and the workings of the human heart. With regard to these his powers of expression were commensurate with his knowledge. The Psalms of David were more comprehensible to him than the ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... also not to tire the vocal muscles. Hence, apart from the jesting inference which M. Claretie, in French journalist's fashion, is bent son twisting out of the scientific statistics, there would appear to be a mutual influence, perfectly comprehensible, of rapidity in utterance and a tendency to stammering. We could not safely go on to generalize that only voluble people become stutterers, or that all stutterers are unusually garrulous and unusually eager in enunciation; but we may conclude ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... philanthropic feelings which accompanied the skepticism of their remote founders, they based their denial of moral accountability—as narrow and vulgar minds naturally do—on a predestination, which is as insulting to GOD as to man, since it is consistently comprehensible only by supposing HIM a slave to destiny. Among such vassals to a worse than earthly tyranny, the man who as 'a Scottish servant regarded not his own life or that of any other save his master,' would find doctrines congenial enough ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and being utterly baffled in that direction, we can only appeal to the fact of consciousness, in order to establish the doctrine of liberty. "The philosophy which I profess," says he, "annihilates the theoretical problem—How is the scheme of liberty, or the scheme of necessity, to be rendered comprehensible?—by showing that both schemes are equally inconceivable; but it establishes liberty practically as a fact, by showing that it is either itself an immediate datum, or is involved in an immediate datum of consciousness."(55) ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... utterances of "the spiritual" and "the spiritual life." I am sure that to the great majority of men and women the term spiritual, or better, the spiritual life, means something, but something by no means fully tangible or clear-cut. I shall be glad indeed if I am able to suggest a more comprehensible concept of it, or putting it in another form and better perhaps, to present a more clear-cut portraiture of the spiritual life ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... champion of a single interest; and in the knowledge of this truth, rather than in the futile attempt to modify the relation, we must seek our freedom. Hebbel's plays are historical: character in its setting of circumstances is the only character really and fully comprehensible. They are sociological: exhibiting the ceaseless collision of individualistic and collectivistic tendencies, they teach forbearance, and patience, and the will to face the facts—tout comprendre, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... other.... How many homes there are where the menfolk can get anything done willingly, and the mistress nothing whatever! The girls go out so early. They miss the rough and tumble of their homes. They have their own little ambitions, hardly comprehensible to anyone else. Whether or no they desire to be satisfactory, they do want their own ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... saplings peeled and twined together by the hand of a Titan, as lads twist withy-wands; the sturdy limbs and spreading branches, although little broken, were wound about and knotted together in a way so curiously complicated as hardly to be made comprehensible without the aid ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... in firing at the missionary, yet taking pains that no harm should be inflicted? That was another impenetrable mystery; but, let it be comprehensible or not, the wrathful servitor inwardly vowed that, if the man crossed the path of himself or his master again, and the opportunity offered, he should shoot him down as he would ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... be rendered comprehensible by considering what takes place in the formation of compound photographs—when the images of the faces of six sitters, for example, are each received on the same photographic plate, for a sixth of the time requisite to ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... loses its light, the enchanting down of the upper lip turns to a bristly moustache; the features harden, grow coarse and vulgar; and the countenance assumes a rapacious expression, so that she appears a bird of prey; and her strident voice is like the shriek of vultures. It is easily comprehensible that the Spanish stage should have taken the old woman as one of its most constant, characteristic types. But in Ronda even the girls have a weary look, as though life were not so easy a matter as in warmer places, or as the good God intended; and ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... the timid dispiritment of the needy, all stood in lively remembrance before his fancy, which liked to go back into that first and only period of his freedom, though, perhaps, also of his beggarhood. In Freudenberger's school he had learned a natural, easy, and comprehensible arrangement of little groups, and a neat, dainty manner, in which wise it was no difficult task for him to represent such scenes with truth and grace. Thus we find these pictures of his, which, for the most part, are painted on small sheets, his sports, banterings, quarrellings, sledge-parties ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... boundaries might everywhere be raised, and the government of an Italian community would probably find as much difficulty as a private possessor in furnishing documentary evidence of title. The fears of the Latin communities are far more comprehensible, and it was probably in these centres that the Italian revolt against the proceedings of the commission chiefly originated. The interests of the Latins in this matter were almost precisely similar to those of the Romans: and this ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... with obscurity, that unto many philosophers, and those no mean ones, they seemed altogether incomprehensible, and the Stoics themselves, though they judge them not altogether incomprehensible, yet scarce and not without much difficulty, comprehensible, so that all assent of ours is fallible, for who is he that is infallible in his conclusions? From the nature of things, pass now unto their subjects and matter: how temporary, how vile are they I such as may be in the power and possession of some abominable loose liver, of some ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... to no such misconception. His qualities were on the surface, visible and comprehensible to all; and although none of them was brilliant, he had several which have a peculiarly impressive effect when displayed in an exalted station. He was indefatigably industrious; worked on an average eight hours a day for fifty-four years; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... she is unapprochable, unjustifiably. Perhaps the head of the institution, Dr. Mondmilch, is a possibility, but when I try to make my valleys and peaks comprehensible to her, looking with longing into her eyes, give myself to her—she is distant, takes notes, has secret talks with Lenzlicht, prescribes tranquilizers. She is very brutal, I sometimes believe that she loves me secretly. She seems to be unhappy; I like her.-Yesterday ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... in her mind, the parrot becoming sanctified through the neighbourhood of the Holy Ghost, and the latter becoming more lifelike in her eyes, and more comprehensible. In all probability the Father had never chosen as messenger a dove, as the latter has no voice, but rather one of Loulou's ancestors. And Felicite said her prayers in front of the coloured picture, though from time to time she turned ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... slipped quietly through the halls; and women narrowed their eyes, and looked questioningly at one another. Isabelle, who was far too securely throned to be jealous of any one, sometimes told her that she would make a fortune on the stage, but old Mrs. Carter, who for reasons perfectly comprehensible in an old lady who had once been handsome herself, detested Harriet, and said to her daughter-in- law that in her opinion there was something queer ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... the one impulse needed to crystallize these disconnected facts into one comprehensible whole. The connecting link was everywhere common descent, difference was due to the continual variation and divergence of their ancestors. The classification, which all were seeking, was really the ancestral tree of the animal kingdom. ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... suitable opening for emigration or settlement within its own territories; and we have conditions which explained and emphasized German naval construction. Both German ambition and German naval construction were therefore easily comprehensible. ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... comprehensible to Thor that his father might raise the rent and still not be an instrument of oppression. It was consoling to him to perceive this. It helped to allay certain uncomfortable suspicions that had risen in his mind since coming home, and which were not ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... could contribute to the pleasure of very few. Only a student of history, or a poet, or an antiquarian, would dwell with loving interest on the lays of Vafthrudnis, Grimner, Skirner and Hymer (as Cottle spells them). Besides, they are difficult to read, and must be abundantly annotated to make them comprehensible. In such works as this of Cottle, a Scott might find wherewith to lend color to a story or a poem, but the common man would borrow Walpole's words, used in characterizing Gray's "Odes": "They are not interesting, and do not ... touch any passion; our human ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... there was a casus belli. There always is among savage as well as civilised nations, and it is a curious coincidence that the reasons given for the necessity for war are about as comprehensible among the civilised as the savage. Of course among civilised nations these reasons for war are said to be always good. Christians, you know, could not kill each other without good reasons; but is it not strange that among educated people, ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... true and definite notions in regard to the principles of public and private morals. It is profoundly learned and philosophical, but the writer thinks logically and clearly, and is therefore at all times lucid and comprehensible.—Buffalo Commercial Advertiser. ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... as when {173} "The Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered" (Rom. 8: 26). But the idea which is really intelligible is the idea that is embodied in speech. For finite minds, at least, words are the measure of comprehensible thoughts. Evidently Jesus claims for his teaching not only inspiration, but verbal inspiration, when he says that his words are "spirit and life." And to this agrees the saying of Paul, in speaking of the inspiration of the Holy Ghost: "But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... flying chariots, from that of Phaeton downwards to Astolfo's,[3] were evidently intended by their authors as mythical; not so, however, with Bishop Wilkins;—he boldly avers, for several reasons which he keeps to himself, and for others not very comprehensible to us, which he details "seriously and on good grounds," "that it is possible to make a flying chariot, in which a man may sit, and give such a motion unto it, as shall convey him through the air; and this perhaps might be made large ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... Spirituality of Thought, have insufficiently considered, or held in subordinate regard, Language; the prominent criterion, by which a human being is proudly elevated above the rest of the animated creation. Speech, and its representation by characters, are exclusively comprehensible by man; and these have been the sources of his vast attainments and rapid progression. The ear receives the various intonations that convey intelligence, and the characters or symbols of these significant sounds are detected by the human eye. Some ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... study proceeds on the assumption that all religions are products of thought, commenced and continued in accordance with the laws of the human mind, and, therefore, comprehensible to the extent to which these laws are known. No one disputes this, except in reference to his own religion. This, he is apt to assert, had something "supernatural" about its origin. If this word be correctly used, it may stand without cavil. The "natural" is that of which we know ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... "were very far from there," but the surroundings of the sick-bed seemed to us to ring out the command with a force as strong as six peals of thunder, saying "Suffer little children to come unto Me," and such Divine orders, comprehensible only to those to whom they are issued, took precedence of any words of encouragement that may be uttered by a mortal minister of religion. That these good men of God know the ways of their Master is patent ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... of speech was greatly increased by weakness, was long in making her answer comprehensible; but Miss Fennimore gathered it at last, and it made her spirit quake, for it referred to the terrors beyond the grave. ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... conveniently classified migratory birds into two easily comprehensible and distinguishable groups, the way was open to deal with them separately and distinctively. Therefore, after declaring it to be illegal to kill any bird of either class between sunset and sunrise, the ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... manner, in varying degree, I hold all religions to be in a measure true. Least comprehensible to me are the Indian formulae, because they seem to stand not on common experience but on those intellectual assumptions my metaphysical analysis destroys. Transmigration of souls without a continuing memory is to my mind utter foolishness, ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... on a white ground, in the elaborate Persian pattern so popular among industrious ladies of leisure in the reign of good Queen Anne. It may be questioned whether the parable, wrought out with such patience of innumerable stitches, was closely comprehensible or sympathetic to the said ladies; since a particularly wide interval, both of philosophy and practice, would seem to divide the temper of the early eighteenth century from that of the mystic East. Still the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... (Evolution of Sex, 1889), the common grass-snake has been induced under artificial conditions to bring forth its young alive.] and the correlation between the retained developing ova and the hypertrophy of the ruptured follicles is comprehensible on my theory of the influence of substances absorbed by the walls of oviduct or ovary from ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... he had been made to sit down a moment. Hard they were in line, fixed in expression, and opaque in color, these copies of famous masterpieces,—saints of either sex, ascensions, assumptions, martyrdoms, and what not,—and they were not quite comprehensible till Don Ippolito explained that he had made them from such prints of the subjects as he could get, and had colored them after his own fancy. All this, in a city whose art had been the glory of the world for nigh half a thousand years, struck Ferris as yet more comically pathetic than the ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... Count Confalonieri wrote wisely to Gino Capponi that revolutions are not made by high intelligences, but by the masses which are moved by enthusiasm, and for a possibility of success, the word Constitution, the least magical of words, should have been replaced by the more comprehensible and stirring call: 'War to the stranger.' But this, instead of sounding from every housetop, was purposely stifled at Naples, and kept a ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... his reply. In order properly to understand this reply it will be necessary to offer to the reader's notice a specimen of the MS. The conclusion arrived at by Mr. Bexell, and the mode by which he reached them, will then be more clearly comprehensible. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... in a sort of grunt. It was an expressively uttered though not very comprehensible reply; but Jessie was satisfied, for she knew the man well, as he had for a considerable time been, not exactly a servant of the house, but a sort of self-appointed hanger-on, or unpaid retainer. For an Indian, he was of a cheerful disposition ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... comprehensible. There was no secret resolution of the members who applied for the three millions. It was Bonaparte who offered the money, which, however, he did not send; it was he who despatched Augereau; and he who wished for the triumph of the Directorial majority. His memory served ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... motion of his hand round his throat, completed the sentence in a manner doubtless comprehensible enough to the esquilador. The latter now turned himself about, and supported himself with his breast and arms upon the roof, his legs and the lower part of his body hanging against the side wall of the house. Paco kept his seat behind the chimney, astride as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... wise (?) legislators see it or not—whether the undercurrent that is beating to the shore speaks with an utterance that is comprehensible to their heavy apprehensions or not, the coming century has in preparation for the country a truer humanity, a better justice of which the protest and declaration of the fathers pouring its vital current down through the departed century, and surging on into the future, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... of England is, on superficial examination, not very comprehensible. Of course, German industries and trade have lately made astounding progress, and the German navy is growing to a strength which commands respect. We are certainly a hindrance to the plans which England is prosecuting in Asiatic Turkey and Central Africa. This may well be distasteful ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... left. Of course, I hate to swallow an early and rapid dinner. One did such things in the war, gladly dislocating an elderly digestion in the service of one's country. In peace time one demands a compensating leisure. But this would be comprehensible only to a well-trained married woman. My misery would have been outside Auriol's ken. I meekly said nothing. The world of young women knows nothing of its ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... to me a comprehensible reason why I should not accept that scholarship? I don't understand your objection in the least. But anyway, it won't do the slightest good for you to object, for I've already accepted it and I am not going ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... that is enough! Seize him!" And now here was her Yashenka come back to her safe and sound! She did notice, it is true, that he appeared to have grown thin, and his face seemed to be sunken—that was comprehensible ... he had had no one to look after him. But she did not dare to question him concerning his trip. At ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... be occasionally what they may, the affections speak a far simpler and more natural language: and one remark is sufficient to illustrate this. Love, as it is represented in comedy, is absolutely unintelligible to the lower classes: in tragedy it first becomes perfectly comprehensible to them.] ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... striking passages. Afterward, in the hours of rest, in the moments when one needs a stimulant from within and one searches for harmony, sympathy of a thing apparently so dead and strange as a book is, they come back to the marked passages, to their own thoughts, more comprehensible since an author expressed them; to their own sentiments, stronger and more natural since they found them in somebody else's words. Because ofttimes it seems to us—the common readers—that there is no difference between our interior world and the horizon of great authors, and ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... human race progresses, perfecting its powers. Everything that is unattainable now will some day be near at hand and comprehensible, but we must work, we must help with all our strength those who seek to know what fate will bring. Meanwhile in Russia only a very few of us work. The vast majority of those intellectuals whom I know seek for nothing, do nothing, and are at present incapable ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... the mind of the present time can best apprehend them, not according to the portraiture of mediaeval pictures, but in a language perhaps not more true and adequate in itself but less boisterous and more comprehensible to our self-conscious and introspective moods. Father Faber's treatment of these last things, hell and heaven, would furnish matter for instruction not beyond the understanding of those in their last years at school, and of a kind which if understood ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... condition, and their rhythmic arrangement, corroborate the natural laws already defined:—uniformity of fundamental pulse, uniform recurrence of accent, and sufficient regularity of rhythmic figure to insure a distinct and comprehensible total impression. This also may be verified in the time-values of Ex. 5. Scrutinize also, the melodic and rhythmic conditions of Exs. 1 and 2,—and the examples on later pages,—and endeavor to vindicate their classification as "good" ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... time when the German shall consent to clear his throat, the Frenchman his nose, the Spaniard his tonsils and the Englishman the tip of his tongue—when all shall become as little children and be mutually comprehensible. Commerce at present is doing more than the philosophers to that end. While the countrymen of Wilhelm von Humboldt and Max Mueller persist in burying their laboriously heaped treasures under a load of black-letter type and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... comprehensible. For up to this point the unconscious processes of Nature, the law of mutual strife, has prevailed. So far, collective organizations have been beasts of prey; only now are they about to cross the boundaries of ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... have also seen (section 31) that, as soon as men began to realize that the mind is not material, the question of its presence in the body became a serious problem. If I say that a chair is in a room, I say what is comprehensible to every one. It is assumed that it is in a particular place in the room and is not in some other place. If, however, I say that the chair is, as a whole, in every part of the room at once, I seem to talk nonsense. This is what Plotinus ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... said Dr. Latrobe, "is perfectly comprehensible to me. The only way to get along with him is to let him know his place, and make him ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... ity, through which the understanding of Mind-science 115:3 comes, is the inadequacy of material terms for metaphysical statements, and the consequent difficulty of so expressing metaphysical ideas as to make 115:6 them comprehensible to any reader, who has not person- ally demonstrated Christian Science as brought forth in my discovery. Job says: "The ear trieth words, as the 115:9 mouth tasteth meat." The great difficulty is to give the right impression, when translating material terms back into the ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... methods by which Science has arrived at conclusions so strangely in harmony with the ancient thought of the East, may suggest the doubt whether those conclusions could ever be made clearly comprehensible to the mass of Western minds. Certainly it would seem that just as the real doctrines of Buddhism can be taught to the majority of believers through forms only, so the philosophy of science can be communicated to the masses through suggestion only,—suggestion ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... mile from the city we came upon the country turnpike; and of this, as I now viewed it for the first time, any comprehensible description is out of the question, since I am possessed of no means of illustrating its condition to English senses;—a Cumberland fell, ploughed up at the end of a very wet November, would be the Bath road compared with this the only turnpike leading ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... quite comprehensible and correct; but if, as you are kind enough to inform us, the plunging of the medium into a trance produces perturbations of the spiritual ether, allow me to ask why (as is usually supposed to be the case in spiritualistic sances) these perturbations result in an activity on ...
— Fruits of Culture • Leo Tolstoy
... dislike, both as an independent person and a man of business, of giving a monopoly of his work to one publisher, and by his constant fancy for trying experiments on the public—a fancy itself not wholly, though partially, comprehensible. As a matter of fact, Old Mortality and the Black Dwarf were offered to and pretty eagerly accepted by Murray and Blackwood, on the terms of half profits and the inevitable batch of 'old stock.' The story of the unlucky quarrel with Blackwood in ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... they thought of him, people in Iping, on the whole, agreed in disliking him. His irritability, though it might have been comprehensible to an urban brain-worker, was an amazing thing to these quiet Sussex villagers. The frantic gesticulations they surprised now and then, the headlong pace after nightfall that swept him upon them round quiet corners, the inhuman bludgeoning ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... dwelling was to preserve a purely Middle Age character as to style. In the air, slightly colored by the brightly stained-glass, hovered something archaic and exotic—hoary antiquity reigned—and a critical spirit with the odor of mysticism might be felt floating around there. But all this seemed quite comprehensible and natural to anyone who knew Baron Emil, the owner of that dwelling—a trained and exacting aesthete—moreover, the baron was of that school called Mediaeval; and as a Mediaevalist he professed homage for Middle Ages romances and legends; for subtle works ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... transactions came from a host of other men who would have plundered him as quickly as he plundered them. They came from members of the Legislature who had grown rich on bribes for granting a continuous succession of special privileges, or to put it in a more comprehensible form, licenses to individuals and corporations to prey in a thousand and one forms upon the people. They came from bankers, railroad, land and factory owners, all of whom had assiduously bribed Congress, legislatures, common councils and administrative officials to give them special ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... through coming centuries men can only approximate, must present to the child the precise step in knowledge which he waits for, and upon which he is able to raise himself with that glow of pleasurable activity which God gives to exertion directed to a comprehensible end. The feeblest mind is capable of assimilating knowledge with a satisfaction the same in kind as that which rewarded the maturest labors of Humboldt or Newton. There are sequences of facts every one of which, imparted in its natural order, brings an immediate interest. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... pre-Revolutionary policy, asserting that they misinformed the Government as to conditions and sentiment in America, partly through stupidity and partly through selfish interest. It was therefore perfectly comprehensible that the feeling should be bitter against them in the United States, especially as they had given efficient aid to the British during the war. In various States they were subjected to personal violence ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand |
