"Intelligible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... injury he had done himself in lending his assistance to the payment of the creditors. Had his brother been utterly bankrupt, so that the Jews might have seized any money that might have come to him, his father would have left no will in his favor. All that was now intelligible to Augustus. The idea that his father should strip the house of every stick of furniture, and the estate of every chattel upon it, had not occurred to him before the ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... character of this book, the "St. John of the Old Testament," as Ewald called it, is thus rendered intelligible; as it stands for the aspirations of the noblest movement in ancient Jewish history. It is the issue of a long travail of soul to whose words we hearken in such a truth ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... was so wary about disclosing what was in his mind in regard to the letter that Rolfe, who disliked his chief very cordially, jumped to the conclusion that Inspector Chippenfield had no intelligible ideas concerning it. ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... the Princess of Eboli in Don Carlos," said Mirah, with a quick intensity. She was pursuing an association in her own mind not intelligible to her hearers—an association with a certain actress as well as ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... it, "it is hard to be understood." The three words in Italics, arbitrarily introduced, make the passage by no means more intelligible. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various
... than a quarter of an inch in width and containing a succession of apparently arbitrary and unmeaning characters written in ink. I reproduce a section of the strip, which should make my description more intelligible. ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... myself intelligible to you," said he, in a milder tone. "You must understand, that I know you, Corilla. That assassin who followed the Princess Tartaroff at the festival of Cardinal Bernis, was employed by you, Signora Maddalena Morelli Fernandez, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... sinking under the most agonizing of human maladies, and it is very near the close; this is the second visit to-day, in his urgent need. But, blessed be God, grace, once absent, has found its way through the terrible obstacle of pain, and his scarcely articulate utterance—intelligible to his visitor only because now so familiar—speaks of the joy and rest of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the sufferer's longing for the salvation of another soul, a soul very ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... is intelligible, the other three-fourths is unintelligible darkness; and our earliest duty is to cultivate the habit of not looking round ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... been gasping throughout this harangue, for the intellectual pressure of Marriott's conversation (of which there was always plenty) was generally too much for him, caught thankfully at the last remark as being the only intelligible one uttered up to present date, ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... English plainly and distinctly, with a little of the Irish emphasis, and has the use of words so well as to render herself intelligible on any subject with which she is acquainted. Her recollection and memory exceeded my expectation. It cannot be reasonably supposed, that a person of her age has kept the events of seventy years in so complete a chain as to be able to ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... of mechanic rules which contribute to the structure of different sorts of poetry, as the receipts of good housewives do to the making puddings of flour, oranges, plums, or any other ingredients. It would, methinks, make these my instructions more easily intelligible to ordinary readers, if I discoursed of these matters in the style in which ladies learned in economics dictate to their pupils for the improvement of the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... accidental way he did, he not only wrote with unexampled clearness on matters the most abstruse, but never, that we are aware, in all the variety of his communications, extending over so many years, contradicted himself. No philosopher is more intelligible, none ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... wonder. If a London ballroom were suddenly invaded by Phoebus, Ares, and Hermes, such as Homer drew them, they would probably be unwelcome guests; at least in the eyes of the gentlemen. The latter would, I suspect, thoroughly sympathise with the Negro in the old story, intelligible enough to those who know what is the favourite food of a West ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... cowboys gave a reply that was not quite intelligible, but as there was an oath attached to it, our hero knew that it was not complimentary ...
— Young Wild West at "Forbidden Pass" - and, How Arietta Paid the Toll • An Old Scout
... monkeys, and horses has not observed the desperate efforts of some of them to make themselves understood. All are not alike, but we often come across an animal which seems to understand almost everything we say, but none has yet developed the power of making an intelligible communication to us, although some try hard to do so. It does not seem beyond the bounds of possibility that a few thousand years hence some animals, especially the monkey species, may be able to ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... the connected meaning of the passage, so that a connected passage can be learned in a fraction of the time needed to memorize an equally long list of unrelated words. No one in his senses would undertake to memorize an intelligible passage by the pure rote method, for this would be throwing away the best possible aid in memorizing; but you will find students who fail to take full advantage of the sense, because, reading along passively, they are not on the alert for general ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... inhabitant, but hardly practicable in this. His life was singular; less on account of the romantic vicissitudes which diversified it, than the ideal tinge which it received from his own character and feelings. The present Poem, like the "Vita Nuova" of Dante, is sufficiently intelligible to a certain class of readers without a matter-of-fact history of the circumstances to which it relates and to a certain other class it must ever remain incomprehensible, from a defect of a common organ of perception for the ideas ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... process took time; months and even years passed before its results were apparent. But some account of it must be given at this point in the story if the events of the later years of the war in the air are to be made intelligible or credible. ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... It has a special world and a private language all to itself. How can one explain its significance to those whose musical faculties are in a rudimentary state of development, or who have never had them trained? Can you describe in intelligible language the smell of a rose as compared with that of a violet? No,—music can be translated only by music. Just so far as it suggests worded thought, it falls short of its highest office. Pure emotional movements of the spiritual nature,—that is what I ask of music. Music will ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... me," he answered, choking so the words were scarcely intelligible. "Is that what has happened; the bark ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... in reply to an application for a provision for one of Moore the poet's sons: "My dear John," he said, "I return you Moore's letter. I shall be ready to do what you like about it when we have the means. I think whatever is done should be done for Moore himself. This is more distinct, direct, and intelligible. Making a small provision for young men is hardly justifiable; and it is of all things the most prejudicial to themselves. They think what they have much larger than it really is; and they make no exertion. The young should never hear any language ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... which he preached last Sunday, Mr. Hodder, for the first time in my life, made Christianity intelligible to me. I want him to know it. And there are other men and women in that congregation who feel as I do. Gentlemen, there is nothing I would not give to have had Christianity put before me in that simple and inspiring way when I was a boy. And in my opinion St. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "Perfectly intelligible!" was my reflection on this reply; and I forthwith arrested a Whig parson,—"Who is Mr. ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... recognise different standards of morality are likely now and then to differ. But difference of opinion on moral questions was not first introduced into the world by utilitarianism, while that doctrine does supply, if not always an easy, at all events a tangible and intelligible mode ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... little to give way before the interesting appearance of the youthful stranger: an expression of pity arose for the distress which could have brought him into that situation: and in a few words of Welsh, which were rendered intelligible to Bertram by the courteous gestures which accompanied them, he was invited into the house—and seated by a blazing fire of peat and wood. With the cheerful hospitality of mountaineers, his fair hostesses proceeded to prepare breakfast for him; and Bertram had ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... and obvious utility of language, consists in the commutation of our perceptions for a significant sound or word, which by convention may be communicated to others, bearing a common and identical meaning. In this manner we become intelligible to each other, by the transmission and reception of these articulate and significant sounds. Words are not only the representatives of the perceptions we receive through the medium of our five senses, but likewise of many internal feelings, passions, ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... perceived by us; whence it plainly follows that in the tenets we have laid down there is nothing inconsistent with the right use and significancy of language, and that discourse, of what kind soever, so far as it is intelligible, remains undisturbed. But all this seems so manifest, from what has been largely set forth in the premises, that it is needless to insist any ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... science. Life may sometimes appear, and with a much greater legitimacy, as a book of metaphysics. But life is always a novel. Our existence may cease to be a song; it may cease even to be a beautiful lament. Our existence may not be an intelligible justice, or even a recognizable wrong. But our existence is still a story. In the fiery alphabet of every sunset is written, "to be continued in our next." If we have sufficient intellect, we can finish a philosophical and exact deduction, and be certain that ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... inward experience. The authority of Scripture is in its truthfulness, its answer to the highest aspirations of the human reason and the most urgent necessities of the moral life. The doctrine of an atonement is intelligible only in so far as it too comes within the range of spiritual experience. The apostolic language took colour from the traditions concerning sacrifice. Much has been taken by the Church as literal dogmatic statement which should be taken as more figure ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... within the timbers of a man-of-war is a most remarkable community, hardly to be rendered vividly intelligible to the mere landsman in these days of constitutional government and freedom ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... Ordination Service, the Visitation Service, and the Baptismal Service were far greater difficulties to Evangelicals, and to Latitudinarians like Whately and Hampden, than the words of any Article could be to Catholics; and there was besides the tone of the whole Prayer Book, intelligible, congenial, on Catholic assumptions, and on no other. But as to the Articles themselves, he was indisposed to accept the defence made for them. He criticised indeed with acuteness and severity the attempt ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... turned easily away, and joined a circle of officers at a few paces' distance, leaving Waverley to meditate upon his parting expression, which though not intelligible to him in its whole purport, was sufficiently so in the caution which the last word recommended. Making, therefore, an effort to show himself worthy of the interest which his new master had expressed, by instant ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... the morning that the ceremonies were to begin with prayer by a hundred ministers, but I missed this striking feature of the exhibition, for I did not arrive in the afternoon till the last speech was being made by a gentleman whom I saw gesticulating effectively, and whom I suppose to have been intelligible to a matter of twenty thousand people in his vicinity, but who was to me, of the remote, outlying thirty thousand, a voice merely. One word only I caught, and I report it here that posterity may know as much as we ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... remains [Greek: amousos anaer]. I should prefer to take a higher point of view, and apply the term philistine to people who are always seriously occupied with realities which are no realities; but as such a definition would be a transcendental one, and therefore not generally intelligible, it would hardly be in place in the present treatise, which aims at being popular. The other definition can be more easily elucidated, indicating, as it does, satisfactorily enough, the essential nature of all those qualities which distinguish the philistine. ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... against a system of moral philosophy so beneficent, so enlightened, so ideal, and at the same time so practical,—so Christian, as we may say without exaggeration,—and which has the further advantage of resting morality on a principle intelligible to all capacities? Have we not found that which Socrates and Plato 'grew old in seeking'? Are we not desirous of happiness, at any rate for ourselves and our friends, if not for all mankind? If, as is natural, we begin by thinking of ourselves first, we are easily led on to ...
— Philebus • Plato
... Romans, had no eye for the picturesque; nay, that it was a sense utterly unawakened amongst them; and that the very conception of the picturesque, as of a thing distinct from the beautiful, is not once alluded to through the whole course of ancient literature, nor would it have been intelligible to any ancient critic; so that, whatever attraction for the eye might exist in the Rome of that day, there is little doubt that it was of a kind to be felt only by modern spectators. Mere dissatisfaction with its external appearance, which must have been a pretty general ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... away dazzled, and we rest our eyes, as Socrates was wont to say, on images, on reflexions. We try to make the mystery intelligible, or at least to pacify the reason by throwing it some such sop as the theory that 'Size is only relative,' or that 'Space is only a mode of consciousness' and therefore nothing real in itself. Or we lull the mind to sleep with imaginative metaphors and speak (as Plato did) of the Central ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... him that such exceptions could not be made, he found it intelligible; but when the schoolmaster tried to explain the reason, saying that a priest didn't merely have to know the reading of the mass by heart, but must know even more, the Bridge Farmer shook his head and laughed a bit. He wasn't such a fool as to swallow that. Why did ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... easily acquired that a learner soon begins to construct sentences, and the tendency, of course, is to reproduce the phrases of his own language with words of the new one. He may thus succeed in making himself intelligible, but it need hardly be said that he does not speak the language of the natives. Correctness of expression cannot be entirely learnt from grammars. In this manual cautions and hints will be given, and, where possible, absolute rules will be laid down, but these must not be regarded as ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... such as was exercised by parliament at that time; but the limits of a MORAL competence, subjecting, even in powers more indisputably sovereign, occasional will to permanent reason, and to the steady maxims of faith, justice, and fixed fundamental policy, are perfectly intelligible, and perfectly binding upon those who exercise any authority, under any name, or under any title, in the state. The House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to dissolve the House of Commons; no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it would, its portion in the legislature ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... of the B. S. S. was as readily intelligible to both as if the messages had been couched in open ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... Fullnesses (19). And the Father sealed the Man His Son in their interior so that they might know Him interiorly, and the Word moved them to contemplate the Invisible One beyond knowledge, and they gave glory to this One and Only One, to the Concept which is in Him and to the Intelligible Word, praising these Three who are One, because by Him have they been made essential beings. The Father took their total image and made of it a City or a Man and figured in Him all those of the Pleroma, that is to say, all ...
— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh
... construction of these {mekhanai}, these battering engines, before, to prepare us for this. Is that a slip, or how explainable? I think he is betrayed into the description by reason of his interest in such strategic matters. The expression is intelligible enough to any one who knows about engines, just as we might speak of the butt or the ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... amalgamated, reduced to uniformity and turned into the growth of complete opinion we can no more tell than we can say when, how and where food becomes flesh and blood. All we can say is that the miracle, stupendous as it is and involving the stultification of every intelligible principle on which thought and action are based, is nevertheless worked a thousand times an hour ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... lot, but in many of the descriptions other than strictly proper botanical terms have been employed, where it seemed desirable to use more intelligible ones; as, for instance, the flowers of the Composites have not always been termed "heads," perianths have sometimes been called corollas, and their divisions at times petals, and so on; this is hardly worthy of the times, perhaps, ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... meaning of this outburst of feeling. At first there was no intelligible answer. Then it became clear that the bond against which I had been fretting inwardly, night and day, had broken. To my surprise I discovered that my mind was freed from all mistiness. I could see everything relating to Bimala as if vividly pictured on a camera screen. It was palpable ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... which requires the careful attention of those who desire to make themselves perfectly intelligible to all, irrespective of nationality, is the correct use of prepositions. In English the same preposition is often employed to express many diverse ideas, and it therefore becomes desirable to consider this when ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 3 • Various
... called Broite or Brute, and in it, in imitation of the English, he traces the Scottish royal lineage to Brutus. Although by no means equal to Chaucer, he is far superior to any other English poet of the time, and his language is more intelligible at the present day than that of Chaucer or Gower. Sir Walter Scott has borrowed from Barbour's poem in ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... several false alarms had thrilled him with happiness. One was a cablegram from Gibraltar in which the only words that were intelligible were "congratulate" and "engagement." This lifted him into an ecstasy of joy and excitement, until, on having the cable company repeat the message, he learned it was a request from Miss Kirkland to congratulate two mutual friends who had just announced their engagement, and of whose address ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... her hand to O'Brien, who led her to the sofa, where we all three sat down: and he then commenced a more intelligible narrative of what had passed. He had called on the day appointed, and sent up his card. The First Lord could not see him, but referred him to the private secretary, who presented him with his commission to the Rattlesnake, eighteen-gun ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... and offered him my hand. The man felt ashamed to refuse taking the hand so freely offered; but his grasp was certainly not very cordial; and, with a few words, which, if they had meaning, were uttered in too low a voice to be intelligible, he passed on his way. As I gazed after his retreating form I could not fail to mark the change which a year had wrought in his appearance. His step was far less brisk than formerly, his hair was fast turning gray, and I fancied that his countenance wore ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... present husband. She remembered well that Miss Altifiorla had written to her, asking whether Mr. Western had forgiven "that episode." And her mother, too, had in writing dropped some word,—some word intended to be only half intelligible as to the question which Miss Altifiorla had asked after the wedding breakfast. She knew well what had been in the woman's mind, and knew also what had been in her own! She remembered how proudly she had disdained the advice of this woman when it had been given to her. And yet ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... consistent scheme of the Christian Dispensation, and more largely of all the peculiar doctrines of the Christian faith; and to answer all the objections to the same, which do not originate in a corrupt will rather than an erring judgment; and to do this in a manner intelligible for all who, possessing the ordinary advantages of education, do in good earnest desire to form their religious creed in the light of their own convictions, and to have a reason for the faith which they profess. There are indeed mysteries, in evidence of which no reasons can be brought. But ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... do it lazily, you may always get enough form to be satisfactory. An extra quarter of an hour, distributed in quietness over the course of the whole study, may just make the difference between a quite intelligible drawing, and a slovenly and obscure one. If you determine well beforehand what outline each piece of color is to have, and, when it is on the paper, guide it without nervousness, as far as you can, into the ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... hundred and fifty characters, many of them mere repetitions, it remained for me to discover a key whereby their meaning might be rendered intelligible. ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... duplicate of No. 2; when, upon examining my letter book, I find it is written in the very cypher, which you acknowledge to have received, and in which your letter of the 20th of September is written; so that if it is not intelligible, it must have undergone some alteration since it left my hands, which I am the more inclined to think, because you speak of a cypher said to be enclosed, of which my letters make no mention, and only notes ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... you and me?" He echoed her words slowly, as though they were only half-intelligible and he wanted time to repeat the question to himself. She seemed to catch the uncertainty of his voice, for she went on in a deepening tone: "Let us talk frankly, Newland. Sometimes I've felt a difference in you; especially since our engagement ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... Published in the "Miscellaneous Essays."]—This little paper, according to my original intention, formed part of the "Suspiria de Profundis," from which, for a momentary purpose, I did not scruple to detach it, and to publish it apart, as sufficiently intelligible even when dislocated from its place in a larger whole. To my surprise, however, one or two critics, not carelessly in conversation, but deliberately in print, professed their inability to apprehend the meaning of the whole, or to follow the links of the connection between ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... to asking myself if the girl had on the spot improvised an engagement—vamped up an old one or dashed off a new—in order to arrive at the satisfaction she desired. She must have had resources of which I was destitute, but she made her case slightly more intelligible by returning presently: "What the state of things has been is that we felt of course bound to do nothing in ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... position. And if that is the case, then he does not suspend judgment, for the simple reason that there is no case made out concerning which judgment is to be suspended. There is simply no case before the court. For the Agnostic, no more than the Atheist, can attach no intelligible meaning to "God." He must have it defined to understand it, and when it is defined he rejects it without ceremony. And it is quite obvious that when an Agnostic says, "I know nothing about God," he means more than that; otherwise it would not be worth ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... said coffer, and drew from it the said royal seal. He commanded me, the undersigned secretary, to read the royal decree and instruction of his Majesty, wherein is ordered and directed the formality that shall be observed in receiving the said royal seal. Having read this in an intelligible voice, so that it was heard by all, the said lord governor turned to the city officials, and other persons present; and, with the royal seal in his hands, told them that that was the seal of the arms ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... frame and the constitution of things progresses, so our ability to conceive of them as all naturally and necessarily evolved will likewise and concurrently progress. Thus, for example, how vast a number of the most intricate and delicate correlations in nature have been rendered at once intelligible and conceivably due to non-intelligent causes, by the discovery of a single principle in nature—the principle ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... experiment were hired by sanguine farmers. But the cranberry-cultivator has one enemy, which is neither bird, nor worm, nor blight, but biped,—a Rat, two-legged, erect, or moderately so, talking, even, in audible and intelligible speech,—the Pine Rat, namely. Few but New Jerseymen, and of them chiefly those who dwell about the forest, have heard of this human species; it has not yet had its Agassiz nor its Wyman,—yet there it flourishes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... "The Epicureans were more intelligible in their notion, and fortunate in their expression, when they placed a man's happiness in the tranquillity of his mind and indolence of body; for while we are composed of both, I doubt both must have a share in the good or ill we feel. As men of several languages say the same things ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... work will be tolerably obvious from its title, and we cordially recommend the author and his book to all who are suffering from nervous debility and general weakness. Mr La'Mert has treated the subject in a very scientific and intelligible ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... also be found therein: one would thus have acquired the right to define ALL active force unequivocally as WILL TO POWER. The world seen from within, the world defined and designated according to its "intelligible character"—it would simply be "Will to Power," and ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... much misunderstanding still exists as to its exact meaning and nature and value; and it is one of the primary objects of these discussions to do away with certain current errors of judgment about it. It is often supposed to be a remote and recondite subject, intelligible only to the technical expert in knowledge, and apart from the everyday world of life. It is more often conceived as a metaphysical and philosophical system, something antagonistic to the deep-rooted religious instincts and the theological beliefs of mankind. ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... tale-bearing, whispering, backbiting, supplanting, taking up reproach: which terms some of them do signify the nature, others denote the special kinds, others imply the manners, others suggest the ends of this practice. But it seemeth most fully intelligible by observing the several kinds and degrees thereof; as also by reflecting on the divers ways and ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... with "varying inversely," which when regular indicates a true concomitance. It is often a matter of convenience whether we regard concomitant phenomena as varying directly or inversely. It is usual to say—'the greater the friction the less the speed'; but it is really more intelligible to say—'the greater the friction the more rapidly molar is ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... my beautiful betrothed," said Herr Ebenstreit, in a hoarse, scarcely intelligible voice. "This title crowns all my wishes, as it makes me your husband. I came to beg, dear Marie, that our marriage should take place to-morrow, as there ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... (wish of parents??), instinct and structure becomes full of speculation and lines of observation. View of generation being condensation (I imagine him to mean that each generation is "condensed" to a small number of the best organized individuals.) test of highest organisation intelligible...My theory would give zest to recent and fossil comparative anatomy; it would lead to the study of instincts, heredity, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... contract was based on the wages then current and that, the price of labour having more than doubled in consequence of the "discovery" of America, no one will undertake the job on the old terms. That is sufficiently intelligible. But why operations proceeded so slowly at first, and why a new contract cannot now be drawn up—who can tell! The persons interested blame the contractor, who blames the engineer, who blames the dilatory and corrupt administration of Cosenza. My private ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... though they may have been rendering valuable assistance in a variety of forms, such as watching in the offing, guarding an open outlet of escape to the intended prize. In the disputes arising from these joint captures, Sir William Scott was the first to establish a settled intelligible system, on principles that might become in future easily applicable to the ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson
... feeling it appeared to him that by taking her so suddenly at her word he had again done her an injustice. The process of reasoning by which he arrived at this conclusion was not clear to himself, and probably could not be made intelligible to any one else. He had assuredly sacrificed himself unhesitatingly, and at first the action had given him pleasure. But this was destroyed by the thought of the possible consequences. He asked whether he had ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... fertility of the seedlings raised from self-fertilised and crossed seeds; for we have already seen that the two classes of cases do not by any means run parallel. This want of parallelism would be intelligible, if it could be shown that self-sterility depended solely on the incapacity of the pollen-tubes to penetrate the stigma of the same flower deeply enough to reach the ovules; whilst the greater or less vigorous ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... was now a peerless young heiress, famous in California. Whether this lighter tone of narrative suited him better, or whether the active feminine sympathy of his auditors helped him along, certain it was that his story was more coherent and intelligible and his voice less hoarse and constrained than in his previous belligerent reminiscences; his expression changed, and even his features worked into something like gentler emotion. The bright eyes of Phoebe, ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... over Clee as it did so, and in the midst of it he felt a series of sharp, staccato thoughts—thoughts which did not seem to be composed of words, and yet were clear and intelligible. ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... objects of the war,[55] when contrasted with the opposite views which he propounded later on, were ascribed to quick political evolution—but were not taken as symptoms of a settled mind. He seemed a pacifist when his pride revolted at the idea of settling any intelligible question by an appeal to violence, and a semi-militarist when, having in his own opinion created a perfectly safe and bloodless peace guarantee in the shape of the League of Nations, he agreed to safeguard it by a military compact which sapped its foundation. He owed ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Middleton told me a compliment she made him two years ago, which I thought pretty. She said she was persuaded that he was a very great writer, for she understood his works better than any other English book, and that she had observed that the best writers were always the most intelligible. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... make the thing intelligible, and I will try not to weary you; but I am doubtful of my success either way. First, however, I wish to say a word or two about the eminent person whose name is connected with this way of looking at History, and whose premature death struck us all with such a sudden sorrow. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... opinion. The business of banking ought to be simple; if it is hard it is wrong. The only securities which a banker, using money that he may be asked at short notice to repay, ought to touch, are those which are easily saleable and easily intelligible. If there is a difficulty or a doubt, the security should be declined. No business can of course be quite reduced to fixed rules. There must be occasional cases which no pre-conceived theory can define. ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... coal-vessel as he could be while playing beside his mother's door. It is really touching to see how free and happy he is,—how the little fellow takes the whole wide world for his home, and all mankind for his family. He talks Spanish,—at least that is his native tongue; but he is also very intelligible in English, and perhaps he likewise has smatterings of the speech of other countries, whither the winds may have wafted this little sea-bird. He is a Catholic; and yesterday being Friday he caught some fish and fried them for his dinner in sweet-oil, and ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... upon earth, and the spiritual head of Christendom; and it was a simple exhortation addressed to the fierce conquerors before whom they stood, to repent and believe. The answer of the Tartars was equally prompt and equally intelligible. When they had fully mastered the business of their visitors, they sentenced them to immediate execution; and did but hesitate about the mode. They were to be flayed alive, their skins filled with hay, and so sent back to the Pope; or they were to be put in ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... pictorially illustrated by his disciple William Law (the author of The Way to Divine Knowledge, The Serious Call, &c.), in some seventeen simple, and four compound emblematic drawings. Of these the most remarkable, and in fact the most intelligible, are three compound emblems representing the Creation, Apostasy, and Redemption of Man. Every phase of each stage in the soul's history is disclosed to view by means of double and single doors. We are now concerned ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... does not excel that of Philips, or rival the more serious Lewesdon Hill of Crowe. The Art of Politicks, in its turn, would need a fairly long commentary to make what is only moderately interesting moderately intelligible, while eighteenth-century copies of Horace's letter to the Pisos are "plentiful as blackberries." But The Man of Taste, based, as it is, on the presentment of a never extinct type, the connoisseur against nature, is still worthy of ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... professedly regard as a rash and dangerous proposition. As I evince a disposition to override their well-meant interference and pull out, they hurriedly send for a Frenchman, who can speak sufficient English to make himself intelligible. Speaking for himself, and acting as interpreter in echoing the words and sentiments of the others, the Frenchman straightway warns me not to start into the interior so late in the day, and run the risk of getting benighted in the brush; for ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... also as an authoritative denotement of old economic landmarks. In the light it casts on bygone commercial and political conditions, the rapid progress and impulsive changes in present-day methods of trade and legislation become clearly outlined and intelligible."—American, Philadelphia. ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... who died at the age of forty-seven, had 'studied eight languages critically, eight less perfectly, but all intelligible with a dictionary, and twelve least perfectly, but all attainable.' Teignmouth's Life of Sir W. Jones, ed. 1815, p. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... future convenience. He plunged into that Dismal Swamp of constitutional hermeneutics, in which the wheels of government were stalled at the outbreak of our rebellion, and from which every untrained explorer rises with a mouth too full of mud to be intelligible to Christian men. He appears to have thought it within the sphere of his duty to take charge of the statesmanship of the President no less than of the movements of the army, nor was it long before there were ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... wondering for a moment what she could have to think of, but, with an intelligible gesture of welcome, she beckoned me into my own room. The aspect of it was somewhat dreary; the walls were of bare plaster, but dazzlingly white, with one little black silhouette of a woman's head hanging in a common black frame over the low, open hearth, on which a fire of seaweed was smouldering, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... lot. Another mode of amusing them is by taking vessels of gold, and brass, and silver, and the like, and mingling them, or distributing them without mingling. As I was saying, they adapt to their amusement the numbers in common use, and in this way make more intelligible to their pupils the arrangements and movements of armies and expeditions, and in the management of a household they make people more useful to themselves, and wide-awake." This, together with the ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... dear friend in Australia, and never thought about him, he would even cease to be dear, and it would be all one to you as if he were dead. If he were really dear to you, you would think about him. We may say (though, of course, there are other ways of looking at the matter) that, in a very intelligible sense, the degree in which we think about Christ, and in Him behold the love of God, is a fairly ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... little hampered with the material and immaterial qualities of his angels. Enchanters and witches may, at first sight, appear more manageable; but Mr. Southey has had difficulty enough with them; and cannot be said, after all, to have kept his fable quite clear and intelligible. The stars had said, that the Destroyer might be cut off in that hour when his father and brethren were assassinated; yet he is saved by a special interposition of heaven. Heaven itself, however, had ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... right. That was the gruesome part of it—this dreadful thing had come upon him at a moment when he could have sworn that he was sound as a bell. If this had happened in the days when he ranged the Great White Way, sucking up deleterious moisture like a cloud, it would have been intelligible. But it had sneaked upon him like a thief in the night; it had stolen unheralded into his life when he had practically reformed. What was the good of practically reforming if this sort of thing was ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... memory, even the word of interpretation seems superfluous. Mr. Warner wrote out of a clear, as well as a full mind, and lucidity of style was part of that harmonious charm of sincerity and urbanity which made him one of the most intelligible and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... is a body of fundamental facts. There is time enough later to evolve an all-inclusive and all-exclusive system. I am not aware that even the "doctors" have yet fully settled this question. The psychological order is the one sought. What is intelligible, full of living interest, and of largest probable importance in the life and work of the student teacher are the criteria applied in the selection of materials. The student verdict is ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... mere accident that he was enrolled as a pensioner to a large amount on the civil list of almost every native prince in Upper India, from the emperor of Delhi downwards—his principal moonshee, or native secretary, having thrown out intelligible hints, as though from his master, that such douceurs would not be without their use in securing his powerful interest at Calcutta—the moonshee himself quietly pocketing the proceeds. This was certainly an outrageous instance; but it is the direct interest of every native subordinate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... while the whole Province pressed the charges home against Classicus. He forestalled their accusation by a sudden death which may or may not have been self-inflicted, for there was some doubt about his dishonourable end. Men thought that though it was quite intelligible that he should have been willing to die as he had no defence to offer, yet they could hardly understand why he had died rather than undergo the shame of being condemned when he was not ashamed to commit the crime which merited the condemnation. None the less, the Province determined ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... and definitely, what, from the point of view of this volume, sociology is. This resulted finally in the imposition of a rather formidable essay upon what is in other respects, we trust, a relatively concrete and intelligible book. Under these circumstances we suggest that, unless the reader is specially interested in the matter, he begin with the chapter on "Human Nature," and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... touched the CORE of any religion, Christian or Pagan. Bibles, Korans, Zandevestas—all sacred books—are but the feeble efforts of finite man to interpret the infinite; to speak forth the unspeakable; to reduce to intelligible human characters the flame-written hieroglyphs of the sky. Who made God? Suppose, Mr. Atheist, that I find thee an answer? Who will furnish thee with an intellect to understand it? How will you comprehend the genesis of a God ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... a bill of attainer against nine millions of people at once. It is based upon an accusation so vague as to be scarcely intelligible, and found to be true upon no credible evidence. Not one of the nine millions was heard in his own defence. The representatives even of the doomed parties were excluded from all participation in the trial. The conviction is to be followed by the most ignominious ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... could devour it all at a single sitting; they were slowly starving. Little sympathy was felt with these uneasy gourmands. Our sources of supply were by no means inexhaustible, and the Colonel's restriction was intelligible to all reasonable men. The Boers, on the other hand, appeared to possess more live stock than they needed, and it was upon this hypothesis that the plan of confiscating a portion of the one to equalise the other was conceived by the artful and gallant ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... matters which a paper would like to have, and finally I gave him a veiled but still intelligible story, which we both knew the papers were anxious to get. He told me afterwards that he sold the interview for enough to meet his present needs and his wife's journey. Some time after he entered Wall Street and made ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... of Bunyan's imprisonment long current, now that the facts are better known, has led, by a very intelligible reaction, to an undue depreciation of it. Mr. Froude thinks that his incarceration was "intended to be little more than nominal," and was really meant in kindness by the authorities who "respected ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... is very simple: it is this, Dignified Melody. Good melody is never out of fashion; and as it is by all confession the seal of high musical genius, so it is that form of music which is universally intelligible and in the best sense popular; and we have a rich legacy of it. What we want is that our hymn-books should contain a collection of the best ecclesiastical and sacred hymn-melodies, and nothing but these, instead of having but a modicum of these, for the most part mauled and illset, among ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... account of what took place in the five stations in that island of Leite. Before we pass on to the rest, it will be fitting to explain, as far as we can, their usages in marriage and divorce—as well to make more intelligible what we have already related as to have a better understanding of a topic which in the course of our ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... very valiant Constables: one is the Inspector himself, the others are ordinary P.C.'s. And now I hope you shall hear some better language. I was obliged to be plain and intelligible in my manifesto, because there was so much matter-of-fact ground for remonstrance, and even chiding; but still, 'i faith, I am proud of my men, who, in point of fact, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. Sep. 12, 1891 • Various
... may, the greater portion of what either Dr. Clarke or the theologians tell us, becomes, in some respects, sufficiently intelligible as soon as applied to nature—to matter: it is eternal, that is to say, it cannot have had a commencement, it never will have an end; it is infinite, that is to say, we have no conception of its limits. ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... enunciated by Democritus, in so far as they regard all bodies as built up of atoms, and reduce all changes to movements of these minutest-discrete particles. All these changes, however, in organic as well as in inorganic nature, become truly intelligible to us only if we conceive these atoms not as dead masses, but as living elementary particles endowed with the power of attraction and repulsion. "Pleasure" and "pain," and "love" and "hate," as predicates of atoms are only other expressions for this ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel
... artificial hybrid from Odont. vexillarium x Odont. Roezlii." That's a staggerer. But Dend. phalaenopsis Schroderae Dellense is a still bigger horticultural swaggerer. O. Coradenei! likewise O. Crispum! I only wish that your Godmother, Flora, Would insist upon shorter and more intelligible names for her modern offspring. By bright Aurora, I can't go on worshipping at your floral shrine if the ritual is polyglot gibberish, and what's more, I won't, Ma'am. In the word (queerly spelt) of which you seem very fond, I earnestly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... matter?" was passed from one sleigh to another up to the front: the return message, shouted and taken up as each one interpreted it, became soon about as intelligible as it does in the game of Russian scandal, and for the next few minutes everybody was ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... this is an extreme case; but there are others very similar. "He affected," says Hawkins, "Johnson's style and manner of conversation, and, when he had uttered, as he often would, a laboured sentence, so tumid as to be scarce intelligible, would ask if that was not truly Johnsonian?" Is it not truly dismal to find such an utterance coming from a presumably reasonable human being? It is not to be wondered at that Goldsmith grew shy—and in some cases had to ward off the acquaintance of certain ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... that there is a religious sphere, distinct and intelligible by itself, which is not to be confounded with the sphere of theology or science. This is the sphere in which Christ worked, and in which St Paul also, although not so exclusively, worked after Him. This is the special sphere of Christianity, ...
— Religion and Theology: A Sermon for the Times • John Tulloch
... notion that women are reluctant to enter into marriage—that they have to be persuaded to it by eloquence and pertinacity, and even by a sort of intimidation. The truth is that, in a world almost divested of intelligible idealism, and hence dominated by a senseless worship of the practical, marriage offers the best career that the average woman can reasonably aspire to, and, in the case of very many women, the only one that actually offers a livelihood. ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... some time before any one of them could shape his speech, so as to be understood by the others; and, after all had at length succeeded in making themselves intelligible, it was found that each had the same story to tell. Each had felt two pressures on some part of his person; and had seen, though very indistinctly, some huge creature passing over him,—apparently a quadruped, though what sort of quadruped ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... otherwise with such a man as Ex-President Hopkins in the chair of instruction. Dr. Hopkins has had, in a remarkable degree, the faculty of making these studies, usually regarded as abstruse and repulsive to the majority of students, both intelligible and attractive. It has been his conviction that we may know and ought to know what is nearest to us—ourselves; that we are capable of ascertaining the laws and movements of our own being. This is properly the science of ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... young friend. His young friend, at this moment, looked at Neil Paraday with an anxious eye, greatly wondering if he were doomed to be ill again; but Paraday's own kind face met his question reassuringly, seemed to say in a glance intelligible enough: "Oh I'm not ill, but I'm scared: get him out of the house as quietly as possible." Getting newspaper-men out of the house was odd business for an emissary of Mr. Pinhorn, and I was so exhilarated by the idea of it that ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... word-elements, not because they were a means of communication, but because the need of exercising my vocal organs was imperative. There was, however, one word the meaning of which I still remembered, WATER. I pronounced it "wa-wa." Even this became less and less intelligible until the time when Miss Sullivan began to teach me. I stopped using it only after I had learned to spell the word on ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller |
