"Conjecture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... take bonds for money not due to him, and why he enters some and not others,—he knows nothing of these things: he begs them not to ask about it, because it will be of no use. "You foolish Court of Directors may conjecture and conjecture on. You are asking me why I took bonds to myself for money of yours, why I have cheated you, why I have falsified my account in such a manner. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... promises when neither side can get anything by the breaking of them; and he would so fit his laws to the citizens, that all should understand it was more eligible to be just than to break the laws. But the event rather agreed with the conjecture of Anacharsis than Solon's hope. Anacharsis, being once at the assembly, expressed his wonder that in Greece wise men spoke ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... Nevertheless, he quarreled with Joselyn—and Joselyn disappeared. There was some reason for that quarrel; some reason for that disappearance; some reason why a man like Edward Joselyn made Old Swallowtail his confidential friend. A business connection, perhaps. Before daring a conjecture I must discover what ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... secrets. Frailties must be expiated; but they need not be exposed. And the true story of the fault which condemned Father Fabiano to end his days amid the swamps of St. Apollinare, as well as the precise nature of the connection which had existed between him and Paolina's parents, can be only matter of conjecture. ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... the slightest imputation of murder, but until the murder itself should be avenged, it had been rumored that the party at the Waldorf was in possession of facts containing the clue to the whole mystery. Though this was mere conjecture, it was plainly evident that whatever secrets that party held in its possession were not likely to be divulged before their time. The party had been augmented by the arrival of the senior member of the firm of Barton & Barton, while the register of the Waldorf ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... muffin"—was quite incomprehensible. He was a youth of no particular intelligence, and certainly of no ideality or genuine political or anti-political convictions, and I was quite at a loss to conjecture why he had followed the Anarchists into exile—his only apparent reason being a disinclination to study and a desire to escape from school. When Giannoli informed me that he was a police-spy I really did not know whether to believe ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... very much," Leibowitz said. "Not these days. I've often told Emily—that's my wife, Mr. Malone—that I could hide a TV circuit under her lipstick. Not that there would be any use in it—but the techniques are there, Mr. Malone. And if your conjecture is correct, someone ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... while Paresi turned the fat man over on his back, ran skilled fingers over his bleeding face, his chest, back to the carotid area of his neck. "He's all right," said Paresi, still working; then, as if to keep his mind going with words to avoid conjecture, he went on didactically, "This is the other fear reaction. Johnny's was 'flight.' Ives' is 'fight.' The empirical result is very ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... bewildering succession, climax after climax had piled itself upon those which already had left the white-haired circle of regulars about the Tavern stove breathless with fruitless argument and footless conjecture. ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... not know anything more than you do; I can only observe and conjecture. What do you ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... commended by Tickell at the expense of those of Pope, who took his revenge by damning them, not with 'faint' but with fulsome and ironical praise, in the Guardian; and the subjoined fragment from Sappho, which is, particularly in the first stanza, melody itself. Some conjecture that it was touched up ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... have told herself at this moment whether she was glad or sorry that the impressive manager was awaiting her presence. She was slightly flurried and tingling in the cheeks, but it was more nervousness than either fear or favour. She did not try to conjecture what the drift of the conversation would be. She only felt that she must be careful, and that Hurstwood had an indefinable fascination for her. Then she gave her tie its last touch with her fingers and ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... Adjutant von Nordenfels, "from the moment she stood before the officers in her cold protest and unrelenting pride," was madly in love with the countess. The feelings of these two young people being thus from the first removed from the region of doubt and conjecture, what few slight obstacles contrive to separate them for a time carry little weight with the reader. There is a dearth of incident which the side-play of the coquettish maid, Nathalie's femme-de-chambre, fails to relieve. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... Strange stories, too, were told to the visitors of a miserable remnant of the old inhabitants, who still lingered on in the forest which lay to the right hand of the travellers. The whole of this country was submerged from time to time by the flooded rivers, and no one knew or could conjecture how these people lived. The smoke of their fires was occasionally seen, but they never held any communication with the people who had come to occupy the ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... joined him, and the three did not hesitate to enter together into the grotto I had seen. What a chance to study the machine, at least its exterior! As to its inner parts, probably I should never get beyond conjecture. ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... of the coins, and the tendency which the high price of gold in Spain has, to draw thither all that of their mines, leaving silver principally for our and other markets. It is not impossible that 15 for 1, may be found an eligible proportion. I state it, however, as a conjecture only. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... well as the present insurrection from its start. No alternative save physical exhaustion of either combatant, and therewithal the practical ruin of the island, lay in sight, but how far distant no one could venture to conjecture. ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... as if the plagues of Pharaoh were pent therein. To her dazzled eyes this luxurious home was a fairy palace, an enchanted region, and, with eager curiosity and boundless admiration, she gazed upon beautiful articles whose use she could not even conjecture. The furniture throughout the mansion was elegant and costly; pictures, statues, bronzes, marble, silver, rosewood, ebony, mosaics, satin, velvet—naught that the most fastidious and cultivated taste or dilettanteism ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... individuals into societies—the protozoon, in other words, evolves into the animal, the animal into what some have called the 'hyper-zoon,' or super-organism. Well, now, to this physical evolution corresponds a psychical one. What kind of consciousness an animal may have, we can indeed only conjecture; and we cannot even go so far as conjecture in the case of the cell; but we may reasonably assume that important psychical changes of the original elements are accompaniments and conditions of their aggregation into larger entities; and the morality (if you will permit the word) of the ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... business," said Mr. Windham, smiling a little at such an upright downright question "it is Mr. Hastings's affair now to settle it: however, I understand he means to answer charge after charge as they were brought against him, first by speeches, then by evidence: however, this is all conjecture." ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... their courtship. What put a period to an intercourse which, being founded upon mutual attachment, held forth so favourable a prospect of mutual happiness, has never been developed, and is only matter of conjecture. Mrs. Kauffman, after the termination of this promising courtship, went abroad, and was unfortunately deluded into a marriage with a common footman, in Germany, who had assumed a title and appeared to be a person of high ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... reflection upon the temptations and depravity of large cities, "that it's common enough. I dare say it isn't the first time Ben Halleck has taken a fellow home in a hack." Bartley got so much comfort from the conjecture he had thrown out for Marcia's advantage, that he felt a sort of self-approval in the fact with which he followed it up. "And there's this consolation about it, if there isn't any other: that it wouldn't have happened now, if it had ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... any means be esteemed a wild conjecture; for where is there a man of common sense, honesty, or good-nature, who would not gladly propose even a much greater sum to be freed from a scold, a knave, a fool, a liar, a coxcomb conceitedly repeating the compositions of others, or ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... the General called the freemen together, and communicated to them the contents of the letters which he had received from the Governor of St. Augustine; and this he did to prevent the ill impression that vague conjecture and idle reports might occasion, and then, in compliance with the requisition of the Governor of St. Augustine that hostile intrusion on the Spanish settlements might be prevented, he immediately fitted out a periagua and the marine boat, with men and provisions ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... muzzles of the guns turned towards the spot where the mujicks were expected to assemble— significant, as a cynical friend of Cousin Giles observed, of the way in which people in the parts there are governed. He may, however, have been wrong in his conjecture. ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... leave the city, which she knew was in a fresh ferment of gossip and conjecture on the subject of her lost husband, the deceased governor-elect. The news from the Indian Territory had renewed all the public interest in the mystery of ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... daylight, I began to reflect how this could have happened; and it occurred to me that the pirates had scuttled the bottom of the vessel to sink her; and in this conjecture I was right. ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... would be floating through the flat; the cook, watching the boiling cabbage, would be singing A Few More Years Shall Roll; her mother would be sighing; and her little brother Percy would be employed upon some juvenile deviltry, the exact nature of which it was not possible to conjecture, though one could be certain that it would be something ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... doctor; and he looked keenly at the woman from the Lodge. "I wonder what else you have known?" he thought. But he did not voice the conjecture. Deryck Brand rarely asked questions of a third person. His patients never had to find out that his knowledge of them came through the gossip or the breach of ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... mission, and simply translated the refusal into a confession that all was lost, whilst in very fact all was on the brink of absolute and triumphant consummation, it is impossible for us, without documents or hints, to conjecture. Enough is apparent to show that, in reference to any hopes that could be consolatory for him, all was indeed lost. The kingdom of this world had melted away in a moment like a cloud; and it mattered little to him that a spiritual kingdom survived, and that intellectually he might suddenly become ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... down from the tree to the ground; [but meanwhile the lover had returned to his hiding- place] and his wife said to him, 'What sawest thou?' 'I saw a man swive thee,' answered he; and she said, 'Thou liest; thou sawest nought and sayst this but of conjecture.' ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... Harris claims (and Sir James Frazer seems to approve of the suggestion) that the Hebrew word duda-im was derived from dodim, "love"; and, on the strength of this derivation, he soars into a lofty flight of philological conjecture to transmute dodim, into Aphrodite, "love" into the "goddess of love". It would be an impertinence on my part to attempt to follow these excursions into unknown ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... the first Matthew Flinders would probably have been contemporary with Sir Cornelius Vermuyden's reclamation works. He may have been one of the "participants" who benefited from them. The fact is significant as bearing upon this conjecture, that no person named Flinders made a will in Lincolnshire before 1600.* (* See C.W. Foster, Calendar of Lincoln Wills ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... oviformed stones, with a groove round the centre for the purpose of securing a handle, then to be used as a hammer to shatter the vein-stone after it probably had been reduced by the action of fire and water on the calcareous matter entering into its composition. In favour of this conjecture, quantities of charcoal have been found in the bottom of some of these pits, which are almost effaced by the accumulation of timber decayed and foliage of ages past."—From a letter in the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... loss to conjecture the nature of the accident which had befallen her. The pail had contained hot water, and its accidental overturn had scalded ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... said, "my dear child," going to Elsie and taking her hand in his in tender, fatherly fashion. "Remember it is only a report,—or rather a conjecture,—which may be without any foundation in fact. The captain may be alive and well ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... her parents remained during her absence. Her hapless mother, as we have related, watched her with anxious eyes till she had entered the governor's palace with the Moorish soldier; and, utterly unable to form a conjecture as to the cause of her sudden abduction, she hastened full of grief and consternation to find her husband Haim, to whom she gave a scarcely coherent relation of all that ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... castle, on the opposite side to the entrance, flows a stream, sending up a pleasant murmur from among the trees. The housekeeper said it was not a stream, but only a "wash," whatever that may be; and I conjecture that it creates the motive-power of some factory-looking edifices, which we saw on our first ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Shakespeare or Fletcher came to write of the "bells" of a primrose. Mr. W.J. Linton proposed "With harebell slim": although if we must read "harebell" or "harebells," "dim" would be a pretty and proper word for the color of that flower. The conjecture takes some little plausibility from Shakespeare's elsewhere ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that the first dancers in Aix-la-Chapelle appeared in July with St. John's name in their mouths, the conjecture is probable that the wild revels of St. John's Day, A.D. 1374, gave rise to this mental plague, which thenceforth has visited so many thousands with incurable aberration of mind ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Lowndes supposes the designer of these plates to have been some person distinct from Hogarth; and he was right in his conjecture; but he was ignorant of the name of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various
... do on land when the steamer was the property of others?... Would he not have to sail on an inferior boat, running the same risks?... He decided to undo his work, and was about to counsel Ferragut again, declaring that his ideas were mere conjecture and that he must continue living as he was at present, when the captain gave the order for departure. The repairs were not yet ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... from ai, self, or the same, and hu to find or be present; and from this he infers that "to love," in Guarani, means "to find oneself in another," or "to discover in another a likeness to oneself." I submit that this is altogether too airy a fabric of fanciful conjecture to allow the inference that the sentiment of love was known to these Brazilian Indians, whose morals and customs were, moreover, as we have seen, fatal obstacles to the growth of refined sexual feeling. Both the Tupis and Guaranis ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... or Christmas dinners. Whether the turkey which Scrooge gave to Bob Cratchit had experienced a lovelier or more melancholy career than that of less attractive turkeys is a subject upon which I cannot even conjecture. But that Scrooge was better for giving the turkey and Cratchit happier for getting it I know as two facts, as I know that I have two feet. What life and death may be to a turkey is not my business; but the soul of Scrooge and the body of Cratchit are my business. Nothing shall induce me ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... to the latter. A calamity might come to reenforce the interest,[1664] but can hardly be postulated to explain a custom so widespread. All the ultimate causes of the law of incest, therefore, lie beyond our investigation. They are open only to conjecture and speculation. The case is very important, however, to show the operation of the mores on facts erroneously assumed, and their power to work out their effects, as an independent societal operation, without regard to error in the material to which ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... was in such confusion, that, before I came to the place where I went to sleep, my hat, which I had fastened with a string to my head while I was rowing, and had stuck on all the time I was swimming, fell off after I came to land; the string, as I conjecture, breaking by some accident which I never observed, but thought my hat had been lost at sea. I intreated his Imperial Majesty to give orders it might be brought to me as soon as possible, describing to him the use and the nature ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... garments of tapestry. Give me a wreath for my head—aye and another to that, and new wine in the cup! To the glory of Rome and to your health, Publius Cornelius Scipio, and to our last critical conjecture, my Aristarchus—to subtle thinking and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... stood spellbound for a full half-minute, gazing down at the flaming, flashing gems coiled in their silken bed. He was aroused from his wonder and wild conjecture by ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... and despair. We have only to read the earliest and greatest forms in which the story of Tristan and Iseult have come down to us to see this for ourselves. It is indeed true that we can see or that we can conjecture that behind the present romance there may have lain an epic story of the hero's actions, but what we see now is nothing but the story of the 'infinite passion', the 'infinite pain' of the human heart. It is the story of their fatal love, of the passion which ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... Prytania, to be put for Brytannia. But at that tyme he sayde no more to me. Afterwarde, I gevyng much study and diligence to the readynge of hystories, consyderynge wherof this woorde Britannia first came, fyndynge that all the yles in this parte in the occean, were called Brittaniae, after conjecture of Albion, remebringe (remembering) the sayde wrytynge, and by chaunce fyndyng in Suidas, that Prytania in Greeke, with a circumflexed aspiratio (aspiration,) doeth signifie metalles, fayres and markettes, also revenues ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... the canoe had been imperfectly secured, and had drifted from its moorings during the gale of the previous night, unless by some accident the owner had fallen into the lake and been drowned. This was of course only a matter of conjecture on which it was useless to speculate, and the boys joyfully took possession of the good fortune that had so providentially been wafted, as it were, to ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... themselves passed this way after dark, a majority of the denizens of Little Hintock deemed window-curtains unnecessary; and on this account Mr. Percombe made it his business to stop opposite the casements of each cottage that he came to, with a demeanor which showed that he was endeavoring to conjecture, from the persons and things he observed within, the whereabouts of somebody ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... I don't know why you should conjecture it. Admitting that you are right, I don't know that I have any right to object. I should like it better, however, if I were frankly told by Mr. ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Manasseh must be convinced, converted, and saved. That legion of devils that was in the possessed, with all the sins which he had committed in the time of his unregeneracy, could not take away his life before his conversion (Mark 5). How many times was that poor creature, as we may easily conjecture, assaulted for his life by the devils that were in him, yet could they not kill him, yea, though his dwelling was near the sea-side, and the devils had power to drive him too, yet could they not drive ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... closes on shapes whose embrace is vacancy. The bark that ploughs within this mystic expanse, sheds from its cleaving keel but coruscations of phosphorescent sparkles, which glimmer and quench in a gloom that Egyptian seers never penetrated, and modern guessers cannot conjecture through. There is, indeed, 'oak and triple brass' upon his breast who steeps his lips in the chalice of the Rosicrucian, and the doom of Prometheus is the fabled defeat which is waiting for the wanderer in those opaque spaces. While we warily, therefore, tread not upon the ground whose trespass ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... reversal of the solar spectrum. But his memoir, philosophical as it is, is distinctly marked by the uncertainty of his time. Foucault, Thomson, and Balfour Stewart have all been near the discovery, while, as already stated, it was almost hit by the acute but unpublished conjecture ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... experience would seem to justify them in declaring that, throughout the inhabited world, no such house exists. I, knowing at all events of one, admit the possibility that there may be more; yet I feel that it is to hazard a conjecture; I cannot point with certainty to any other instance, nor in all my secular life (I speak as one who has quitted the world) could I have named ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... "The conjecture might be that the dress was given her by her intended husband," said Hardy, "who adopted this method of giving her a dress. I should like to impose on Helga ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... or fellow lodger, though there is room in his cabin for three birds at least. Where the female is I can only conjecture; maybe she is occupying a discarded last year's lodge, as I notice there are a good many new holes drilled in the trees every fall, though many of the old ones ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... it is the only conjecture that bears a semblance of likelihood. However we can run over to Clayborough to-morrow and see if anything is to be learned. By the way Prendergast tells me ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... horizon, as some one, more eager than the rest, rose to his greatest height in order to extend the limits of his view. But it was not long before even these fugitive glimpses of the moving, and constantly increasing circle, were lost, and uncertainty and conjecture were added to apprehension. In this manner passed many anxious and weary minutes, during the close of which the listeners expected at each moment to hear the whoop of the assailants and the shrieks of the assailed, rising together on the stillness of the night. But it would seem, that the search ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... celebration; that is, when any one was sufficiently energetic to get up and get into church in time. What happened upon those other days, when the rector was abandoned to the rows of empty pews, was still a matter of profane conjecture. Discussed in whispers, it was agreed to be a subject best left to the ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... St. Paul to be the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Luther's conjecture is very probable, that it was by Apollos, an Alexandrian Jew. The plan is too studiously regular for St. Paul. It was evidently written during the yet existing glories of the Temple. For three hundred years the church ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... reindeer. We looked in vain—not a living thing was to be seen in any direction. Yes—when we were close inshore we at last descried a large flock of geese waddling upward from the beach. We were base enough to let a conjecture escape us that these were the mate's reindeer—a suspicion which he at first rejected with contempt. Gradually, however, his confidence oozed away. But it is possible to do an injustice even to a mate. The first thing I saw when I sprang ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... said nothing, for what was the use of hazarding conjecture when they would soon know for certain? So they held their tongues and watched the approach of the boat with gloomy, louring glances. They were disappointed, and in a savage, dangerous mood, ready to plunge at a word ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... branch; he had his knife out and cut off the shred of cloth. Then with the bow and knife in one hand he struck out for the opposite shore. His hope was that the gipsies, being horsemen, and passing all their lives on their horses, might not know how to swim. His conjecture was right; they stopped on the brink, and yelled their loudest. When he had passed the middle of the slow stream their rage rose to a shriek, startling a heron far ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... evergreens. The ground was almost bare of grass and dark of aspect. Remains of rustic seats and an old and corrugated oak post somewhere near the middle of the clearing had given rise to Mr Anstruther's conjecture that a summer-house ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... surprised no one more than Jack Borlan. He had never spoken to Mr. Ruger a dozen times in his life, and he could not account for such disinterestedness. However, there was not much time for conjecture, for ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... piety, and some of humble origin—small boot-makers, in fact; sometimes I believed that the visiters and they were the same individuals. Circumstances, however, unfavourable to this idea, arose, and I turned from one conjecture to another, until I reposed, at length, in the belief that they were sinners—sinners of the deepest dye—such as their ill-omened looks betrayed—and that they sought the kind and ever-ready minister to obtain his counsel, and to share his prayers. At all events, this was a subject ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... that I shall have to go and superintend the matter personally," she said, "for the customs of years are too strong to be utterly overcome all at once. I can only dimly conjecture Peter's dismay if he were asked to pass the Hamburger steak to Mr. Wilkinson, yet that is the shadowy ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... arrangement; that Catherine might be induced by Charles himself to retire privately, and sacrifice herself, of her free will, to the interests of the two countries. This, however, is no more than conjecture; I think it probable, because so many English statesmen were in favour at once of the divorce and of the Spanish alliance—two objects which, only on some such hypothesis, were compatible. The fact cannot be ascertained, however, because the divorce itself was not discussed at the council table until ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... expecting to hear some message from the Intendant. He was right in his conjecture, for, on the third day, Oswald Partridge came ever to say that the Intendant would be happy to see him, if he could make it convenient to go over; which Edward assented to do on the following day. Oswald had ridden over on a pony: ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... scenes which were unfolding in Europe. At the time of the French Revolution, he threw out many conjectures, and what were then accounted paradoxical anticipations, especially in regard to military operations, which were as punctually fulfilled as his own memorable conjecture in regard to the hiatus in the planetary system between Mars and Jupiter,[Footnote: To which the author should have added—and in regard to the hiatus between the planetary and cometary systems, which was pointed out by Kant ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... numerous details which have come down to us. The word sacrificium, let us note, in its widest sense, may cover any religious act in which something is made sacrum, i.e. (in its legal sense) the property of a deity;[347] I am not now concerned to conjecture what exactly may have been the meaning of this immortal word before it was embodied in the ius divinum. "Sacrificium" is limited in practical use by the Romans themselves to offerings, animal or cereal, made on the spot where the deity had taken ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... and condemned. They made every effort to induce him to explain the reason which led him to such an act, or, if he was employed by others, to reveal their names; but he would reveal nothing. He was executed for his crime, leaving mankind to conjecture that his motive, or that of the persons who instigated him to the deed, was a desperate determination to save Scotland, at all hazards, from falling under ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... minerals abound, there is not one collection; and, in all probability, I venture a conjecture, the want of mechanical and chemical knowledge renders the silver mines unproductive, for the quantity of silver obtained every year is not sufficient to defray the expenses. It has been urged that the employment of such a number of hands is very beneficial. ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... matrimony approximate most nearly to zero. Her intelligent eyes, her broad forehead, her thoughtful carriage, ensured one thing, that of all the girls he had known he had never met one with more charming and solid qualities than Avice Caro's. This was not a mere conjecture—he had known her long and thoroughly; her every ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... many instances how little the laboured researches of philologists into the origin of languages are to be depended upon, is the variety of opinions entertained by French authors concerning the formation of the Gallic Romance. A learned Benedictine[AJ] first starts the conjecture, and then maintains it against the attacks of an anonymous writer, that the vulgar Latin became the universal language of Gaul immediately after Caesar's conquest, and that its corruption, with very little mixture of the original language of the country, gradually produced the Romance towards ...
— Account of the Romansh Language - In a Letter to Sir John Pringle, Bart. P. R. S. • Joseph Planta, Esq. F. R. S.
... would have done, and Herbert showed that he was not wholly without knowledge of the world in forming the conjecture. ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger
... Constitution, except in such ways as would be well pleasing in the eyes of those states; especially as one of them was the "Ancient Dominion!" And now after half a century, this assumed expectation of Maryland and Virginia, the existence of which is mere matter of conjecture with the 36 senators, is conjured up and duly installed upon the judgment-seat of final appeal, before whose nod constitutions are to flee away, and with whom, solemn grants of power and explicit guaranties are, when weighed in the balance, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Asia, that numerous private consultations were held, as to the duration of their authority, and the person of the individual who should come after them. The succession of the Roman empire was elective; and consequently there was almost an unlimited scope for conjecture in this question. Among the various modes of enquiry that were employed we are told, that the twenty-four letters of the alphabet were artificially disposed in a circle, and that a magic ring, being suspended over the centre, was conceived to point to the initial letters ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... art to the moral writer: he, too, gives to your eye but a single figure; yet each attitude, each expression, may refer to events and truths you must have the learning to remember, the acuteness to penetrate, or the imagination to conjecture. But to a classical judge of sculpture, would not the exquisite pleasure of discovering the all not told in Thorwaldsen's masterpiece be destroyed if the artist had engraved in detail his meaning at the base of the statue? ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... to the post-office since you left the chateau in such an abrupt and inexplicable manner. I am lost in conjecture about your sudden departure, which was both unnecessary and unprepared. It is doubtless because you do not wish to tell me the reason that you refuse to see me. I know that you are still at Pont de l'Arche, and that you have never left Madame Taverneau's ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... Gautama, Prince of Kapilavastu (six centuries before Christ) whereas the Jainas recognize a Buddha in each of their twenty-four divine teachers (Tirthankaras) the last of whom was the Guru (teacher) of Gautama. This disagreement is very embarrassing when people try to conjecture the antiquity of this or that vihara or chaitya. The origin of the Jaina sect is lost in the remotest, unfathomed antiquity, so the name of Buddha, mentioned in the inscriptions, may be attributed to the last of the Buddhas as easily as to the first, who ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... or other to come and lodge a complaint against Pao-y. And when she also unexpectedly heard Hsi Jen's disclosures on the subject, she became more positive in her surmises. The one, who had, in fact, told Hsi Jen was Pei Ming. But Pei Ming too had arrived at the conjecture in his own mind, and could not adduce any definite proof, so that every one treated his statements as founded partly on mere suppositions, and partly on actual facts; but, despite this, they felt quite certain that it was (Hseh P'an) ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... only conjecture as to the significance of Ike's statement. There certainly was some vivid interest that centered about the missing son of the railroad president. That name, Marvin Clark, had been used to lure Ralph to the old shed. Now it was ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... curve of a huge gray moustache against the stern profile of his face, while a long straight sword dangled at his side. Evidently the stranger was a soldier, and one not to be despised in feats at arms, although in what service I might merely conjecture, as his dress was not distinctive. Yet it was small likelihood any other nation than Spain had ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... Royalty's weeping in 1812 (now republished) have occasioned.... The 'Morning Post,' 'Sun,' 'Herald,' 'Courier,' have all been in hysterics.... I am an atheist, a rebel, and at last the devil (boiteux, I presume). My demonism seems to be a female's conjecture.... The abuse against me in all directions is vehement, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... with spies, and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of counsel, our peace within and without, our industries, and our commerce. Indeed it is now evident that its spies were here even before the war began; and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture, but a fact proved in our courts of justice, that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country have been carried on at the instigation, with the support, and even under the personal ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... asleep, with all creation, from saints and kings to birds and beasts, passionately bewailing him. The composition is known from Japanese copies; and it is in fact from the early religious schools of Japan that we can best conjecture the grandeur of the T'ang style. Wu Taotzue excelled in all subjects: other masters are best known for some particular one. Han Kan was famous for his horses, the models for succeeding generations of painters, both Chinese and Japanese. A specimen ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... was returned to my residence, did not discover any concern or chagrin as at a disappointment, for such was his privacy and dissimulation that the most penetrating could never form any conjecture that could be depended on, about his designs, till everything was ready for the execution of them. My servant, a man of wit, was surprised as well as everybody else; and I can ascribe to nothing but a miracle my escape from so many snares as he ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... sought him the next time he came on board, when he was not so busy as he had been before. But he said nothing to him about his mission at the North, and treated him as a guest rather than a prisoner. For reasons of his own, though not difficult to conjecture, he was very anxious to make a good appearance before the father of Miss Florry, and he was a gentleman in ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... councillors gave the king any great reason to felicitate them on their erudition. In fact, they all remained silent. Sully held his peace with the rest; but he looked so knowing, that the king turned towards him, and said:—"Great master! by your face I conjecture that you know more of this matter than you would have us believe. I pray you, and indeed I command, that you tell us what you think and what you know." The coy minister refused, as he says, out of mere politeness to his more ignorant colleagues; but, being ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... and yet more bitterly they bewailed them, and the mariners were at their wits' end, as the gale grew hourly more violent, nor knew they, nor might conjecture, whither they went, they drew nigh the island of Rhodes, albeit that Rhodes it was they wist not, and set themselves, as best and most skilfully they might, to run the ship aground. In which enterprise Fortune favoured them, bringing them into a little bay, where, shortly before ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... it?" I asked. "You seem to have some wish that I cannot conjecture; and you can trust by this time my anxiety to gratify every desire of yours, reasonable or not—if indeed you ever ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... Drogo, which occurs in Domesday Book, and is, through Old French, the origin of our Drew. But in many cases the name has been so deformed that one can only guess at the continental original. I should conjecture, for instance, that the curious name Shoppee is a corruption of Chappuis, the Old French ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... view, Cuvier conjectures that since central Asia seems to be the region where the sheep first appeared, and from which it has been distributed, the argali may have been distributed over this continent from Asia by crossing Bering Strait on ice. This conjecture is not so ill founded as at first sight would appear; for the Strait is only about fifty miles wide, is interrupted by three islands, and is jammed with ice nearly every winter. Furthermore the argali is abundant on the mountains adjacent to the Strait at East Cape, where it is well known ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... history—she had even died a natural death. Again was the Russian imperial throne vacated! Who is there to mount it? whom has the empress named as her successor? No one dared to speak of it; the question was read in all eyes, but no lips ventured to open for the utterance of an answer, as every conjecture, every expression, if unfounded and unfulfilled, would be construed into the crime of high-treason as soon as another than the one thus indicated should be ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... the lookout on the foretopsail yard, and after a time our eyes would be greeted from the deck with the sight of another white-winged wanderer like ourself, steering for his distant port. Then would come conjecture as to whither he might be bound, and sailor-like reflections upon his rig, qualities of sailing, and the judgment of the skipper in ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... his men and women he would have her to be a companion in his work, and yet, he adds, "I don't think I shall let you hear, after all, the savage things about Popes and imaginative religions that I must say." We can only conjecture as to whether the theme of the poem of 1850 was already in Browning's mind. His wife's influence certainly was not unlikely to incline him towards the choice of a subject which had some immediate relation to contemporary thought. She knew ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... and that we can positively understand; but what force per se is, we do not know. It is always better for us to explain phenomena by positive known laws and motions, than by any that rest merely upon conjecture. ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... there was a sort of engine, from the back of which were extended twenty long poles, resembling the palisadoes before your majesty's court; wherewith we conjecture the man-mountain combs his head; for we did not always trouble him with questions, because we found it a great difficulty to make ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... known, watched eagerly for the day when he was to be brought out to suffer. They kept an account of those who were brought out to execution, and reckoned them against the number of the crew, which it had been easy to conjecture from the size of the ship. Verres had to correct the deficiency as best he could. He had the audacity to fill the places of the prisoners whom he had sold or given away with Roman citizens, whom on various false pretenses he had thrown into prison. ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... hands after he had carefully looked to its priming, he was keenly observant of all about him. He had been disturbed more than he had acknowledged to Peleg by the sounds which they had heard. He had known of instances in which a panther had trailed a man for many hours. The conjecture of Peleg that a pair of the hated beasts might be following the slowly moving ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... as if looking for further signs, because scouts are always keen to find tell-tale marks that will add to the size of the edifice they are building up, founded partly on conjecture and ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... to study her appearance for the first time. He had not been mistaken in his conjecture. She was tall, with pale brown coloring, black eyebrows, eyes like drops of ink, and a light down on her lip and on her temples. Her youthful figure was full and firm, announcing a greater expansion for the future, as in all ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Edward was a prey to the greatest anxiety; he thought his friend had staked and lost. He imagined an elopement, a clandestine marriage, a duel with a rival, and all these casualties were the more painful to conjecture, since his entire ignorance of the real state of things gave his fancy full range to conjure up all sorts of misfortunes. At length, after many more posts had come in without a line to pacify Edward's fears, without a word in reply to his earnest entreaties ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... in northern Louisiana. Thither the expedition which started out from Blennerhassett's Island was ostensibly directed. How far Burr's plans went beyond the occupation of this tract is a matter of conjecture. One of Blennerhassett's servants may inadvertently have told the truth when he said that they were "going to take Mexico, one of the finest and richest ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... end, however, to conjecture founded upon circumstances and appearances, we directed Tupia to ask what bones they were; and the Indians, without the least hesitation, answered, the bones of a man. They were then asked what was become of the flesh, and they replied that they ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... words recurred to his memory! And Dicky was not happy. He had watched him narrowly ever since that night. Dicky was not really hopeful for the winning of his heart's desire. He had said there were many obstacles. What they were, Robin could but vaguely conjecture—save one! And that one stood out in the darkness of his soul, clear as a cross against the falling night. Dicky had no chance of winning any woman so long as he—the village idiot—the hideous abortion—stood in his way. That was the truth as he saw it—the bitter, ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... human as well as pale-faces. It must be seventy miles from this spot to the foot of Lake George, and your conjecture would make it necessary that a party should have travelled that distance in less than twenty-four hours, and be here some ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... that the comet did not originate in our solar system has been verified, for we find that the globe of which it was once a part revolved around an immense sun which had a retinue of twenty- seven planets of various sizes. Whether this great sun is one of the stars of our firmament we can only conjecture; perhaps in some future state of existence we ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... old lady spoke it would be difficult to conjecture which was the predominant sentiment of her mind—sorrow, because of the untimely death of Dr. Dalton; or a certain feeling of triumph, because her ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... awaited developments. It was a trying wait. I sat there from seven to ten-thirty, smoking incessantly. I was just finishing my last cigarette and I had about come to the end of my resources in entertaining myself. One has ample time to conjecture all sorts of possible mishaps, and mishaps are deucedly uncomfortable in this ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... Grote, "these poems, or indeed any other Greek poems, first began to be written, must be matter of conjecture, though there is ground for assurance that it was before the time of Solon. If, in the absence of evidence, we may venture upon naming any more determinate period, the question a once suggests itself, What were the purposes ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer |
