"Conviction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not depend on gold or force, on the possession of vast estates, unlimited taxation, or a standing army. It rested on the willing support of the nation at large, a support due to the deeply-rooted conviction that a strong executive was necessary to the national unity, and that, in the face of the dangers which threatened the country both at home and abroad, the sovereign must be allowed a free hand. It was this conviction, instinctively felt rather than ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... very center of Browning's creed. His is the heartiest, happiest, most beautiful poetic voice that his age has read. He stands apart from most others of his kind and age in the positiveness of his religious faith, a faith that is based upon a conviction of the conquering universality of love ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... civilization, have, in the property they have acquired, and the protection and aid extended to them, too many advantages to be induced readily to take up arms against us, particularly if they can be brought to the full conviction that their new homes will be permanent and undisturbed; and there is every reason and motive, in policy as well as humanity, for our ameliorating their condition by every means in our power. But the case ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... With this conviction came a store of assurance. He felt a quiet manhood, nonassertive but of sturdy and strong blood. He knew that he would no more quail before his guides wherever they should point. He had been to touch the great death, and found that, after all, ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... had taken the romantic plunge with all the charming enthusiasm of inexperienced youth, and entertained the firm conviction that, if Senhorina Maraquita did not become "his," life would thenceforth be altogether unworthy of consideration; happiness would be a thing of the past, with which he should have nothing more to do, and death at the cannon's mouth, ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... with all the earnestness of a man of conviction. Somehow or other I greatly mistrust him. ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... like a ton of notes and things on the various stunts of the bubonic germ in Manchuria when it is feeling fit and spry. But he is seized with a conviction that he must go somewhere in northwest China where he thinks there is happy hunting-ground of evidence which will verify his report to the Government. Suppose the next thing I hear he will be chasing around ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... not give fetes to display their happiness. They give them too often to relieve a tedious monotony, to silence a gnawing discontent, and forget for the moment in hilarious excitement some uneasy foreboding of evil to come, or disquieting conviction that all, even now, is ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... "Overwhelming conviction rarely results from merely circumstantial evidence, but a combination of accusing circumstances certainly pointed to the prisoner; and following their guidance, I am responsible for her arrest and detention for trial. To the scrutiny of the Court I have submitted every fact ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... of God. This being the case, we feel satisfied that the mass of people at the North, whose conscience and action are ultimately determined by the teachings of the Bible, will soon settle down into the conviction that the law in question is not in conflict with the ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... cell, or did not read his Hippocrates by the blaze of Paraffine; a man greedy of all knowledge, and welcoming it from all comers, but who, at the end of a long life of toil and thought, gave it as his conviction that one of the best helps to true education, one of the best counteractives to the necessary mischiefs of mere scientific teaching and information, was to be found in getting the young to teach themselves some one of ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... of the evidence? Once again, in his eagerness to show that Mexico, so recently as 1842, had tacitly recognized the Rio Grande as a boundary in her military operations, he controverted his own argument that Texas had been in undisturbed possession of the country. He corroborated the conviction of those who from the first had asserted that, in annexing Texas, the United States had annexed a war. This from the man who had formerly declared that the danger of war was remote, because there had been no war between Mexico and Texas for ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... The slayer is brought in between two knights—a stalwart youth, fearless, unabashed, while the death-music of the swan, the slow distilling and stiffening of its life-blood, is marvelously rendered by the orchestra. Conviction of his fault comes over the youth as he listens to the reproaches of Gurnemanz. He hangs his head ashamed and penitent, and at last, with a sudden passion of remorse, snaps his bow and flings it aside. ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... believe that in my extremity some kindly Power did speak to me in answer to my earnest prayers and to those of others, giving me guidance and, what I needed still more, judgment and calmness. At any rate, that this was my conviction at the moment may be seen from the fact that I hastened to obey the teachings of that ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... world went always well. No cloud!—not even a shadow to darken the road before them. Of this levity, for I suppose I must give it a hard name—the source of much that is best and worst amongst us—our English rulers take no account, and are often as ready to charge us with a conviction, which was no more than a caprice, as they are to nail us down to some determination, which was simply a drollery; and until some intelligent traveller does for us what I lately perceived a clever tourist did for the Japanese, in ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... cause of their distemper. And although they did after some certain space recover out of their fits, yet they were every one of them struck dumb, so that none of them could speak, neither at the time, nor during the Assizes, until the conviction of ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... his friend, and trusting not at all in his judgment of affairs, Franklin none the less believed implicitly in the genuineness of his friendship, and counted upon his comradeship as a rallying point for his beginning life in the new land which he felt with strange conviction was to be his future abiding place. He read again and again the letter Battersleigh had written him, which, in its somewhat formal diction and ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... of superciliousness. He was, however, seldom inclined to be silent when any moral or literary question was started; and it was on such occasions that, like the sage in "Rasselas," he spoke, and attention watched his lips; he reasoned, and conviction closed his periods; if poetry was talked of, his quotations were the readiest; and had he not been eminent for more solid and brilliant qualities, mankind would have united to extol his extraordinary memory. His manner of repeating deserves to be described, ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the fire. And it is singularly suggestive that in English literature the two things have died together. The very people who would blame Dickens for his sentimental hospitality are the very people who would also blame him for his narrow political conviction. The very people who would mock him for his narrow radicalism are those who would mock him for his broad fireside. Real conviction and real charity are much nearer than people suppose. Dickens was capable of loving all men; but he refused ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... and then—it might be in my lifetime or a little after it—there would be trumpets and shoutings and celestial phenomena, a battle of Armageddon, and the Judgment.... To talk about the Man of the year Million was, of course, in the face of this great conviction, a whimsical play of fancy. The year Million was just as impossible, just ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... for a moment, and then taking her by the hand, he led her over to the chair and placed her in it. He drew back a few steps, and in a gentle but firm tone, tinged with grief which carried tremendous conviction ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... Venus was Burne-Jones' last cartoon for Merton Abbey looms. (Plate facing page 260.) Although a critique of the art of this great painter would be out of place in a book on the applied arts, at least it is allowable to express the conviction that more beautiful, more fitting designs for tapestry it would be difficult to imagine. Modern work of this sort has produced nothing that approaches them, preserving as they do the sincerity and reverence of a simple people, the ideality ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... ideal which it unconsciously sought. He was pleased to hear that she had been beautiful and good. He paused from his books to muse on her, and picture her image to his fancy. That there was some mystery in her fate was evident to him; and while that conviction deepened his interest, the mystery itself, by degrees, took a charm which he was not anxious to dispel. He resigned himself to Mrs. Fairfield's obstinate silence. He was contented to rank the dead amongst those ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... sinking almost as fast as she was. He seldom now stirred from his chair in the warmest corner of the room, and his cough had become terribly harassing, especially at night. His breathing, too, was much oppressed; and poor Nelly had often a heavy heart, as the conviction forced itself upon her that she was about to lose the kind friend and protector around whom her warm heart had closely entwined itself. She tried hard to earn a little for his support and her own, by the sewing which she occasionally ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... waiting there, to startle her. Once she had such a fancy of his being in the next room, hiding—though she knew quite well what a distempered fancy it was, and had no belief in it—that she forced herself to go there, for her own conviction. But in vain. The room resumed its shadowy terrors, the moment she left it; and she had no more power to divest herself of these vague impressions of dread, than if they had been stone giants, rooted in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... unsteadily in longhand to his manager's dictation, and was strengthened in the conviction that Penton had stolen that parcel of silver. Usually the manager composed hesitatingly, especially when addressing head office, but now he was glib, and seemed familiar with his subject. He even appeared to be in suppressed good humor ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... There is the resort to personification—for instance, in the battle of Love and Shame, which serves as climax to the elaborate description of the lovers' kissing. In short, all our old friends—the devices which every generation of seekers after style parades with such a touching conviction that they are quite new, and which every literary student knows to be as old as literature—are to be found here. The language is in its decadence: the writer has not much to say. But it is surprising how much, with all ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... gypsy, and accompanied me into the garden, where to my surprise, I found Lucy. It looked like old times to be in that spot, again, with those two dear girls. Rupert alone was wanting to complete the picture; but, I had an intimate conviction that Rupert, as he had been at least, could never come within the setting of the family group again. I was rejoiced, however, to see Lucy, and more so, just where I found her, and I believe told her as much with my eyes. The charming girl looked happier ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... like a growl. "You're awful," he said, with conviction. "Why do you ask me to come and stay here? Why do you tell me you'd like me to ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... merely in the abstract, this conception might be treated as a harmless eccentricity or speculative aberration, and is likely to be so treated by the ordinary "practical" man, with his contempt for "theories," and his pathetic conviction that speculation does not matter; let us, however, see what is implied in this particular speculative theory. From the primary assumption of this philosophy it follows with an irresistible cogency that there is no such thing as real, objective evil. Sin, if the ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... they said to him. "Monsieur de Rhetore has been personally insulted; you, on the contrary, have not been. Right or wrong, he has the conviction that Monsieur Marie-Gaston has done him an injury. We must always make certain allowances for wounded self-interests; you can never get absolute justice ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... death of her son; but to me, as I wrote it, it seemed to express a world-sorrow rather than a particularised grief." His estimate of the value of the music has, naturally, no extraordinary importance; but my conviction is that, in this instance, his judgment was correct. As to the sonatas, he cared most for the "Keltic"; after that, for the "Eroica," as a whole; though I doubt whether there was anything in the two that he cared for quite as he did for the Largo in the "Tragica" ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... is my firm conviction that that same certainty is your privilege and mine. I believe that Jesus spoke the simple truth when He said, "If any man is willing to do His will, he shall know." However little you may believe at this present moment, if you will be loyal to what you do believe, ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... cheerful, for the reason, as he remarked vacuously, that the Great Medicine was with us and that therefore, however bad things seemed to be, all in fact was well; an argument that carried no conviction to my soul. ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... approaching enemy would cause it to be run down and brought to bay sooner or later; and that its best chance lay in facing the danger now, before its strength should be worn out by a prolonged and exhausting flight? Apparently some such instinct or conviction must have possessed it, for the antelope remained standing motionless, as though carved out of stone, the only signs of life which it betrayed being a continuous quivering of its nostrils and an occasional slight ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... spoil—some L20, which he said was all that he had obtained from Weare's body—with his companions. Hunt, it may be mentioned, afterwards declared his conviction that Thurtell, when he first committed the murder, had removed his victim's principal treasure, notes to the value of three or four hundred pounds. Suspicion was aroused, and the hue and cry raised through the finding by a labourer of the pistol in the hedge, ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... was the Habeas Corpus Act,[4] 1679, which provided that no subject should be detained in prison except by due process of law, thus putting an end to the arbitrary confinement of men for months, and years even, without conviction of guilt or ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... seized. No one aided my dear mistress. A surgeon at length came. He pronounced her dead. These cruel men had allowed her to die unaided. I was accused of being her murderess. My horror, my indignation, at the way she had been treated, my grief, my agitation, impressed them with the conviction that I was guilty of the foul crime which had been committed; for murdered she had been, of that there was no doubt. Branded as a murderess I was borne off to prison. Many thought me guilty. It was cruelly said that I was found red-handed by the side of my victim. ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... sir, for the sight of the book, which I return by Mr. Essex It is not new to me that Burnet paid his court on the other side in the former part of his life* nor will I insist that he changed On conviction, which might be said, and generally is, for all converts, even those who shift their principles the most glaringly from interest. Duke Lauderdale,(289) indeed, was such a dog, that the least honest man must have been driven to detest him, however connected with him. I doubt Burnet could ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... the power of redress into their own hands, and committed acts of outrage and rebellion which no sufferings could justify, and which can only tend to aggravate ten-fold the other calamities of their country. Deeply impressed, however, as I am with a conviction that these difficulties stand in my way, I shall yet venture to state to Englishmen the case of Ireland. In doing so, I rest not on a vain confidence in my own strength, but on the nature of the cause I plead; for I am convinced, that when the train of measures which have led that miserable ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... minds to the magnitude of the interests involved. Yet the conditions were simple enough. That student who should, in the space of two hours, produce the best composition illustrative of "Hope" was to receive a prize of five hundred dollars! The conviction prevailed among them that the vivacious little old lady with the white hair could be none other than the fairy godmother of nursery lore, and it was only too delightful to find that agile and beneficent myth interesting herself in the ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... histories written on their tombstones by weeping relatives; their religion, with all its debasing idolatry, strong in death, exhibiting pleasantly the firmness of their faith; splendid sarcophagi tardily wrought from massive rock, yet perseveringly accomplished in the strong conviction that the dead would shake off the mummy bandages, discharge the natron from their pores, reclaim their scattered intestines, pass the brain back through the nose into the skull, and once more feel quickening blood in the veins. Proudly men of the passing century ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... were perhaps none too faithful chroniclers and Charles's "excellent shots" in his "royal hunt," and hideous oaths and threats such as: "We'll have them all, even the women and children," are not details as well authenticated as we would like to have them. Like Rizzio's blood stains they lack conviction. ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... Mowbray resided fell, regarding the personal history of that person, was, that he was a gentleman who possessed a moderate annuity from some fixed sum, and that some disgust with the world had driven him into his present retirement; and in this conviction they had now been so long and so completely settled, that they firmly believed in its truth, and never after dreamed of again agitating the question, even ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... speaking easily. But no man had ever spoken to her in that way before. She flushed, and her eyes sparkled angrily as he ceased. Her glance did not disconcert him. He stood looking at her—not masterfully, but with the quiet dignity of conviction. It was plain that if their association were to continue, it must be at the price of something more than the scientific, aloof, touch-and-go interest which had hitherto characterized her ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... the existence of space, it is equally impossible to prove its subjective nature. We cannot conceive of space but as existing really around us. The metaphysician says we may be deceived. This universal and irresistible conviction—this fundamental law of human belief, may not be correspondent with absolute truth, may not be trustworthy. Granted that we may be deceived, that there is footing here for his scepticism, he cannot proceed a step further, and show that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... sampan, during the latter part of the journey, for it was often invisible; and so at last they felt their way onward in silence, till the Malay allowed his sampan to drift alongside the bows of the leading boat, and whispered to the interpreter his conviction that they were close up to ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... grand work. When the fever runs high, or the strength gets wasted and the heart goes down, a pleasant smile, a kind word, a verse of Scripture, a brief prayer, goes a long way to revive the drooping spirits. I record my solemn conviction that hospital work, rightly done, is by far and away the most needful and the most acceptable of the chaplain's work. But, of course, like the doctors at the base, we are all wanting to the front to see the "pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war," while the brave fellows battling with fever, ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... confirmation, and O'Moy, who loved her with all the passionate reverence which Nature working inscrutably to her ends so often inspires in just such strong, essentially masculine men for just such fragile and excessively feminine women, afforded this confirmation with all the enthusiasm of sincere conviction. ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... have been impeached by the English press, of which the prevailing section first excited, and to this day nurses intermittingly, that miserable Russian superstition?[1] The Polish craze, adopted by the press of England and France, and strengthened by the conviction that in Russia lay the great antagonist balance to the disorganizing instincts of Western Europe, had made the Czar an object of hatred to the Liberal leaders. But to improve this hatred into a national sentiment in England, it was requisite to connect him by some relation with English "interests." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... Teddy said, with an air of conviction, "an' then you can sneak back long enough to tell us where you're hangin' out. I'll work down 'round the markets for a spell, an' p'rhaps I'll see some of ...
— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis
... the consul's eyes. He was troubled, but the prospect of massacre did not account for all of his expression. There was debate, inspiration against conviction, being fought out under cover of forced calm. Inspiration ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... of expert service in the courts I am disposed to speak guardedly. I see no reason why an engineer should not willingly go upon the witness stand to give expert testimony if he has made proper preparation and has an honest conviction that his testimony can be given with a conscientious regard for the obligations of his oath as a witness. It is his duty and his privilege to defend his opinions, for the man without opinions which he is prepared to defend is worthless as a witness and cannot properly be called an expert. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... crumpled up the letter and thrust it from him, persuading himself that he was justly annoyed that the permanence of his sober habits should be doubted; whereas, in truth, the sting was in this, that the reading of the letter dragged out from some dark recess of his consciousness the conviction that, with all his high resolve and good intentions, he was standing on an utterly sandy foundation, and leaning for support on a brittle wand of glass. And thus he was but ill-fortified to wrestle with his special temptation when he settled down, a few weeks after his arrival, in a commodious ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... and mien full of celestial conviction, was placed in the loathsome dungeon which served as a prison ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... trace its lineage from the gods, or from those who were especially favored by the gods. Every people has had its age of gold, or Augustine age, or historic age—an age, alas! forever passed. These prejudices are not altogether unwholesome. Although they produce a conviction of declining virtue, which is unfavorable to generous emulation, yet a people at once ignorant and irreverential would necessarily become licentious. Nevertheless, such prejudices ought to be modified. It is untrue that in the period of a nation's rise from disorder to ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... and of sufficient importance to become the principal subject of the piece. It is not the last fatal crisis of a slow mental malady, as is so often the case in these more effeminate modern times; still less is it that more theoretical disgust of life, founded on a conviction of its worthlessness, which induced so many of the later Romans, on Epicurean as well as Stoical principles, to put an end to their existence. It is not through any unmanly despondency that Ajax is unfaithful to his rude heroism. His delirium is over, as well as his first comfortless ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... for whatever cause waged, is, as Tolstoi declares, directly hostile to the commands, to the authority of Christ. This is a subject which I approach with reluctance, with reverence, more for the sake of those amongst you upon whom such conviction may have weighed, than from any value I attach to the suggestions I have ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... has said that every young mother, when her first child is born, regards the babe as the most wonderful production of that description which the world has yet seen. And this too is true. But I doubt even whether that conviction is so strong as the conviction of the young successful lover, that he has achieved a triumph which should ennoble him down to late generations. As he goes along he has a contempt for other men; for they know ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... be a good friend to me if you can make me understand anything," cried Morris, with a sudden energy of conviction. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... blind, deaf, feeble-minded, or epileptic child, and the householder in whose house any such child resides, shall send notification of the fact to the Minister, giving name, age, and address of the child; and if any such person neglects or fails to comply with this provision, such person shall on conviction thereof be liable to a fine not exceeding one pound, or in the case of a second or subsequent offence, whether relating to the same or another child, not ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... told him what I wanted and he was amiably amused at my impotence. He didn't laugh—he wasn't a laugher: his system was to present to my irritation, so that I should crudely expose myself, a conversational blank as vast as his big bare brow. It always happened that I turned away with a settled conviction from these unpeopled expanses, which seemed to complete each other geographically and to symbolise together Drayton Deane's want of voice, want of form. He simply hadn't the art to use what he knew; he literally was ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... the "Crisis Extraordinary," and understood every word of it, we may be sure. Paine's lucidity of statement is never more remarkable than when he handles financial questions. But conviction did not work its way down to the pocket. Few men gave who could avoid it, and each State appeared more fearful of paying, by accident, a larger sum than its neighbor, than of the success of the British arms. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... that his decrees should be so immutable, his destiny so inexorable, and that the youngest must soon cease to be young, and the middle-aged become old—or die! this was the thought that preyed on her very soul. She could not endure the conviction that her own father must one day walk with a less elastic step, and smile on her with eyes ever loving indeed, but more and more dimmed with age—and that her own mother must one day move to and fro with tottering gait, and speak with the tremulous accents of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... of delight at the professor's manifest discomfiture, made some casual remark about things not being very straight. The way in which his advance was received the good orderly never divulged, but henceforward he maintained the firm conviction that there was something very much amiss ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... but without conviction. 'Then you'll make a lot of money. You must be very careful about your next contracts. I hope you didn't agree to let Mr. Winter have a second book on the same ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... this exuberance of zeal. The Mason, however, who is affiliated with more than one lodge, must remember that he is subject to the independent jurisdiction of each; may for the same offense be tried in each, and, although acquitted by all except one, that, if convicted by that one, his conviction will, if he be suspended or expelled, work his suspension or expulsion in ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... the initiating offence, they ascend unscrupulously to the perpetration of felony without benefit of clergy; so he, with effrontery only the more deeply burnt in, and conscience the more callous from each conviction, will still lie on, so long as lungs are left, and vulgar listeners can be found in the scum of town populations. How grandiloquent was Mr Cobden with his "new facts," brand new, as he solemnly assured the House ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... offered a reward of five thousand dollars for the arrest and conviction of the dynamiters, and detectives flocked to Riverbank. Real detectives came to try for the noble prize. Amateur detectives came in hordes. Citizens who were not detectives at all tried their ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... third point, a correspondence which passed between Father White and Colonel Turner, after the conviction of the boycotters of Mrs. Connell, and copies of which the latter has handed to me at my request, ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... no comment; and, to an unbiased observer, it will not be less apparent in the project of subjecting the existence of the national government, in a similar respect, to the pleasure of the State governments. An impartial view of the matter cannot fail to result in a conviction, that each, as far as possible, ought to depend on itself for its own preservation. As an objection to this position, it may be remarked that the constitution of the national Senate would involve, in its full extent, the danger which it is suggested might flow from an exclusive ...
— The Federalist Papers
... catch-penny treatise on Duncan Campbell, a Highland fortune-teller in London), Theophilus Insulanus (who was urged to his task by Sir Richard Steele), Wodrow, a great ghost-hunter: and so we reach Dr. Johnson, who was 'willing to be convinced,' but was not under conviction. In answer to queries circulated for Aubrey, he learned that 'the godly' have not the faculty, but 'the virtuous' may have it. But Wodrow's saint who saw Bothwell Brig, and another very savoury Christian who saw Dundee slain at Killiecrankie, may surely be counted among 'the godly'. There was difference ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... conscious pride of white stockings and cleanly brushed Bluchers. Dumps beheld all this with an eye of supreme contempt—his triumph was at hand. He knew that if it had been fine for four weeks instead of four days, it would rain when he went out; he was lugubriously happy in the conviction that Friday would be a wretched day—and so it was. 'I knew how it would be,' said Dumps, as he turned round opposite the Mansion-house at half-past eleven o'clock on the Friday morning. 'I knew how it would be. I am concerned, and that's enough;'—and certainly ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Rupert Louth did, he never turned a hair. But she was nearly twenty years older than he was, and decidedly out of training. She fought desperately against her physical fatigue, and showed a gay face to the world. But a horrible conviction possessed her. She began presently to feel certain that her effort to live up to Rupert Louth's health and vigour was hastening the aging process in her body. By what she was doing she was marring her chance of preserving into old age the appearance of comparative youth. Sometimes at night, when ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... direct violation, for its "gay rainbow colours," and modish arrangement, were out of all keeping with her matronly age. One would easily have inferred from it that she was fully impressed with the conviction, that the years which had glided over her head, were not of the old-fashioned kind that contain twelve months, or at least, that she did not consider the lapse of time as at all calculated to impair the attractions of her physiognomy, however prejudicial its effect might be upon ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... of its characters and the dangerous tendency likely to arise from its performance. Of this Your Highness is aware. It is not for me to apprise you that, to avert the excitement inevitable from its being brought upon the stage, and under a thorough conviction of the mischief it would produce in turning the minds of the people against the Queen, His Majesty solemnly declared that the comedy should not be performed in Paris; and that he would never sanction its being brought before the public ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... back the very first minute that he can get away," said Virginia with conviction, before she stooped to comfort Harry, who was depressed by the discovery that he was not expected to eat his entire cake, but instantly hopeful when he was promised a slice of ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... ages, half scarlet and half white, with a rich belt round the waist. In this belt, as if in horrible mockery of the dead, was stuck a tiny baton surmounted by a fool's cap, and hung with silver bells. Looking down thus upon the body—so young, so beautiful, so evidently unprepared for death—a conviction of foul play flashed upon me with all the suddenness and certainty of revelation. Here were no appearances of disease and no signs of strife. The expression was not that of a man who had fallen weapon in hand. Neither, however, was it that of one who had died in the agony of poison. ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... finding himself entangled, he desisted, and went to his old occupation of money-changing again. If once God would by his Spirit convince them of sin, a Saviour would be a blessing indeed to them: but human nature is the same all the world over, and all conviction fails except it is produced by the effectual working ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... more certainty; it was clear to me, as I glanced back over my earlier life, that a loving Providence watched over me, that all was directed for me by a higher Power; and the firmer becomes such a conviction, the more secure does a man feel himself. My childhood lay behind me, my youthful life began properly from this period; hitherto it had been only an arduous swimming against the stream. The spring of my life commenced; ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... action as a citizen, of course, comes from no source but my own conviction. and, therefore, my position has been so frequently defined, and I hope so candidly defined, and it is so impossible for me until the orders of my party are changed, to do anything other than I am doing as a party leader, ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... but determined as ever, I turned away and began to follow the wall, looking for a place where I might climb it by means of some tree or rise in the ground. And with every step the sudden conviction I had formed that Trenchard was Haredale grew stronger; and Haredale, as I knew, was but another name for that evil rogue whose ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... the identity of the number-plate were of no avail. Daphne followed her cousin. She was a little nervous at first, and the Judge requested her to raise her voice. She responded gallantly, and the conviction with which she told her story in corroboration of Jonah produced a noticeable effect upon the Court. The result of her cross-examination was in our favour. I came next. Counsel for the defence made a great effort to pin me to a certain estimate of the speed at which the offending car ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... prejudice to her literary ability, it must be allowed that Miss Bacon was wholly unfit to prepare her own work for publication, because, among many other reasons, she was too thoroughly in earnest to know what to leave out. Every leaf and line was sacred, for all had been written under so deep a conviction of truth as to assume, in her eyes, the aspect of inspiration. A practised book-maker, with entire control of her materials, would have shaped out a duodecimo volume full of eloquent and ingenious dissertation,—criticisms ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... circumstances, but although she's timid by nature, an' not over strong in body, I've never seen her give in or fairly cast down. No doubt she was pretty low last night, poor thing, but that was 'cause she was nigh dead wi' cold—yet her spirit wasn't crushed. It's my solemn conviction that if my Peggy ever dies at all she'll ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... violated the Elba arrangement and so justified his escape. The facts prove that the allies sought to compel Louis XVIII. to pay Napoleon the stipulated sum, and that the Emperor welcomed the non-payment. His words to Lord Ebrington on December 6th breathe the conviction that France ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... for the speaker. Mr. Beecher, with his marvellous power, raised his voice so that it could be heard all over the Square, and for an hour he held the audience spellbound with his arraignment of the slave power of the South, and the wrongs it was committing, while he affirmed his conviction that the conflict would result in a storm of civil war. It was a wonderful illustration of the ...
— Sixty years with Plymouth Church • Stephen M. Griswold
... bridge, which afforded us a fine view of the Dee. There are at present only four or five persons who meet regularly as Friends. They live scattered in the country, and are in the humbler walks of life; but we thought them upright-hearted Christians who had received their religious principles from conviction. We saw them on First-day morning in the room where they usually meet, and again in the evening at our inn, and were much comforted in being with them. The room where they meet is in such [an obscure ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... the conviction, and was one of a committee that reported a plan for carrying those measures into effect. He was not an impulsive man to raise the battle cry, but the executive man to marshal the troops into the field, and carry ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... shall be able to put our hand on the murderer—I think we can get a conviction, sir, on the evidence that I shall get from this bullet in ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... reasons, that we should have found it difficult to represent in honest English the exact degree of affirmation to which the Frenchman pledges himself by his "j'enterpreterais volontiers." It is something less than conviction, and something more than guess;—it certainly should be, or it ought to have no place ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... influence; they are supported only by those whom they really represent, that is to say, those who elected them, a tenth of the population, and forming a sectarian minority. Again, in this minority there are a good many who are lukewarm; with most men the distance is great between conviction and action; the interval is filled up with acquired habits, indolence, fear and egoism. One's belief in the abstractions of the "Contrat-social" is of little account; no one readily bestirs oneself for an abstract end. Uncertainties beset one at the outset; the road one ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... two had played—at the expense of the British Treasury—was beyond any other means of expression. Rust, who began to grasp something of the truth, also broke into a laugh, and the amusement of the principals brought instant conviction to the audience. The repentance of those who had thirsted for Rust's blood a moment since was very pleasant to witness. The women begged permission to kiss his brave hands, which had slain the ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... his mother whom he had so dearly loved, was suddenly and ruthlessly despoiled of its purity and its charm, and in its place came the desolating conviction that she whom he had trusted and followed had been ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... think differently; and this revolutionary aspiration brought down the priest with all the terrors of the law. He launched into harrowing details of hell. The damned, he said—on the authority of a little book which he had read not a week before, and which, to add conviction to conviction, he had fully intended to bring along with him in his pocket—were to occupy the same attitude through all eternity in the midst of dismal tortures. And as he thus expatiated, he grew in nobility of aspect ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... way, and were so hard that it was impossible to pierce them either with sword or spear. Then I exhibited my hunting knife, which excited Pousa's highest admiration, and also a certain amount of apprehension when, of set purpose, I casually mentioned my conviction that I could drive the blade through the best scale armour that the Bandokolo could produce. "Shining stones", also, it seemed, were fairly abundant, but they had no particular use for these excepting as adornments, the stones being admired ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... have to enter into a very serious struggle with France; and it is more and more evident that the powerful faction which has for years opposed the government is determined to go every length with France. I am sincere in declaring my full conviction, as the result of a long course of observation, that they are ready to new model our constitution, under the influence or coercion of France; to form with her a perpetual alliance, offensive and defensive; and to give her a monopoly of our trade, by peculiar ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... room with nothing of that apathy of resignation to his personal [Greek: ananke] which of all moods is to Fortune, the goddess of spontaneity, the most antipathetic. Indeed, he felt his wit, like Romeo's, to be of cheveril; and his conviction that it needed only the pull of circumstance to stretch it "from an inch narrow to an ell broad" expressed but the very wooing quality ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... subjected previous to their removal to Canada appears to be all that could be desired. I was delighted with their knowledge of Scripture, their general intelligence, their respectful bearing to their superiors, their promptness of obedience, and other evidences of religious conviction working itself out in their general conduct. The extraordinary care exhibited in the selection of homes and in the placing of them out in Canada strikes me as one of the most important and valuable elements of the work. Most of all was I charmed with the noble Christian character of ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... in which Hobbes had left it, and from which the former had scarcely endeavoured to raise it. Hence arose the rigid scheme of necessity, for which Hartley is so zealous an advocate. In reading his treatise on the "Mechanism of the Human Mind," we are irresistibly compelled to feel the conviction that the only circumstance which prevents the movements of the soul from being subjected to mathematical calculation, and made a branch of dynamics, is the want of a measure of the force of motives. If this want were supplied, then the philosophy of the mind might be, according to his ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... affection, family duties, and the various mental occupations which interest in others affords. But though the question whether life is worth living has long ago been settled among us in the negative, suicide, the logical outcome of that conviction, is the rarest of all the methods by which ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... there will be exceptional conditions which will at times indicate a different course. These will become evident when the occasions present themselves, and extraordinary forms and effects of inflammation and growth in the tumors offer special indications. But our conviction remains unshaken that surgical treatment of the operative kind is usually useless, if not dangerous. We have little faith in the method of extirpation except under very special conditions, among which that of diminutive size has been named; this seems in itself to constitute a sufficient ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... purchased by the crown, still the cattle of individuals had subsequently, at various times, intermixed with them, and prevented that identification of property, which the late judge advocate considered essential to the conviction of the offenders. His opinion, however, has been overruled by his successor, and several persons have been lately tried for and found guilty of this offence; and although they were not punished capitally for it, there can be no doubt that their conviction will greatly diminish such depredations ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... its existence. The brain of the scientist is rather a sort of electrical accumulator, which feels and assimilates the vibrations and heart-beats of life, its splendor and its shame, and derives therefrom the conviction that it must of necessity provide for definite social wants. And on the other hand, it would be an evidence of intellectual short-sightedness on the part of the positivist man of science, if he did not recognize the historical accomplishments, which his predecessors on the field ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... could only fall back upon the saving clause that this primacy was claimed mainly if not wholly for New York in the future. He was willing to leave me the connotations of prophecy, but I think he did even this out of politeness rather than conviction, and I believe he had always a sensitiveness where Boston was concerned, which could not seem ungenerous to any generous mind. Whatever lingering doubt of me he may have had, with reference to Boston, seemed to satisfy ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... you see her, I am sure you will. It would be sacrilege to look on and permit such a thing. You know, they are cousins. She asked me, where in the world there was one like Richard? What could I answer? They were your own words, and spoken with a depth of conviction! I hope he is really calm. I shudder to think of him when he comes, and discovers what I have been doing. I hope I have been really doing right! A good deed, you say, never dies; but we cannot always know—I must ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... this was Chatz Maxfield, through whose mind had run the conviction that poor Nat Scott must have paid dearly for his temerity in ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... organizer and driver of industry. "I may make a million dollars from this reaper," said McCormick, in the full tide of enthusiasm over his invention; and these words indicate an indispensable part of his program. He had no miserly instinct but he had one overpowering ambition. It was McCormick's conviction, almost religious in its fervor, that the harvester business of the world belonged to him. As already indicated, plenty of other hardy spirits, many of them almost as commanding personalities as himself, disputed the empire. Not far from 12,000 patents on harvesting ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... his face brightened up with the idea of my freedom, and a doubt of his veracity intruded upon my growing conviction. Distracted, excited, pressed down with cares and fears, I still had to attend to my daily tasks. I begged him to go away, and not to say a word to any other mortal about what he had told me; and he gave me the promise I desired. That ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... people. On the eve of that last battle, on which he stakes throne and life, he intrusts a large sum of money to a Bonder, to be laid out "on churches, priests, and alms-men, as gifts for the souls of such as may fall in battle AGAINST HIMSELF,"—strong in the conviction of the righteousness of his cause, and the assured salvation of such as ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... adopts for his own whatsoever the church believes, though he may never have hoard of it even: his faith is implicit, i.e. involved and wrapped up in the faith of the church, which faith he firmly believes to be the true faith upon the conviction he has that the church is preserved from all possibility of erring by the spirit of God.' [2] Now, as this sort of believing by proxy or implicit belief (in which the belief was not immediate in the thing proposed to the belief, but in the authority ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... adventure was a nobler one than mine, Seated as I was in a regal motor-car, and in company with one favoured of all the gods in the world, I must have had an intense conviction of my own saintliness not to distrust my excitement. But Sylvia, for her part, had nothing to get from me but pain. I talked of the factory-fires and the horrors of the sugar-refineries, and I saw shadow after shadow of suffering cross her face. You may say it was cruel ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... their freedoms, to discard old creeds and old moralities—that was his game. Wilson became content, interested again. The girl was nimble-minded. She challenged his philosophy and gave him a chance to defend it. With the conviction, as their meal went on, that Le Moyne and his companion must surely have gone, she ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... who have sprung up like mushrooms all over Europe and even in America. And what have they proved? What have the Bourbons proved in frustrating their frauds? That the son of Louis XVI did not die in the Temple. That is all. And Madame herself has gathered further strength to her conviction that the little King was not buried in that forgotten corner of the graveyard of Sainte Marguerite. At the same time, she knows that none of these—neither Naundorff, nor Havergault, nor Bruneau, nor de Richemont, nor any other pretender—was her brother. ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... her a conviction grew that her old playmate must be classed with other men—man in the abstract—that indefinite and interesting term, hinting of pleasures to ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... she replied, so frankly that his conviction was a bit unsettled. "I tried to powder away the dark rings under my eyes, but I am afraid I have failed. Is that why ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... without conviction. "I do wish that woman would come. I've been up the best part of ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... replied Mr. Walkingshaw, with conviction. "I have no settled opinions left. I am a mass of ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... die by poison in order to show his abhorrence of them—this, when we know Hamlet to have died by the poisoned foil in the earlier play. On that view, Cordelia died by hanging in order to show Shakspere's conviction that she was a malefactor; and Desdemona by stifling as a fitting punishment for adultery. The idea is outside of serious discussion. Barely to assume that Shakspere held Hamlet for a pitiable weakling is a sufficiently ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... they said the devil took over the souls of his victims, paying therefor in red-hot dollars, after the hangman was done with their bodies. The belief of the negroes that this unholy traffic existed amounted with them to a profound conviction. They held Mr. Dramm in an awesome and horrified veneration, bowing to him most respectfully when they met him, and then sidling off hurriedly. It would have taken strong horses to drag any black-skinned resident of Chickaloosa to the portals of the little three-roomed frame ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... countryside continually: then, amid all these tremors of delight, from time to time she felt unexpectedly heavy at heart. She then turned round to Mary Seyton, trying to fortify her strength with hers, and the young girl kept up her hopes, but rather from duty than from conviction. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... purely coincidence, but soon after Tish's recommendations had been received at the War Department the Fosdick Commission was appointed. Yet we carried away a conviction that though certain things had been sadly neglected Charlie Sands was in good hands. The colonel came up to speak to us when, seeing the men standing in rows on the parade ground about sunset while the band played, we ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of social commonplaces was perfunctory enough, their manner suggested nothing to a casual observer; but Miss Bunker was not a casual observer. "She's ashamed," was her mental conviction. "Her eyes give her away. She don't look up at him like a girl can look at any man when there's nothing on her conscience. Whatever it was that happened, she's the one who's to blame—but if she can't be sorry it doesn't excuse her because ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... be imagined that men who sacrificed their friends, their family, and their native land, to a religious conviction, were absorbed in the pursuit of the intellectual advantages which they purchased at so dear a rate. The energy, however, with which they strove for the acquirements of wealth, moral enjoyment, and the comforts as well as the liberties of the world, was scarcely inferior ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... three minutes there was a lull in the grumbling. But it was not to be expected, in that brutal age, that moral strength should find a keen appreciation. Indeed, Sigurd's words were far from ringing with his own conviction. Little by little, the discontent broke out again. At last it grew so near to mutiny, that the steersman felt called upon to exercise ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... into numerous little circular and semicircular paths, so contrived that the most ingenious are caught like flies in a spider's trap. Round and round, backwards and forwards, in and out, scuttle the uninitiated, only to find themselves at the precise point whence they had started hours before. The conviction of being thus foiled in my purpose, and for the second time, weighed upon my spirits. My companion also became somewhat dejected. The superb weather might forsake us. September was at hand. It really seemed as if we were doomed ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards |
