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More "Comprehension" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... permit this translation of the Ars Grammaticae to be of use in both these areas of scholarship I have made an effort to reduce to a minimum those places where a knowledge of either Japanese or Latin is required for the comprehension of the translation. It is sincerely hoped that the result is not an effort that is satisfying to neither, and thus to ...
— Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language • Diego Collado
... Zoraida was, managed to appear startled that she should speak so. Then, as he looked from her to Jim and Bruce, he smiled as though in comprehension. ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... is recommended for its convenience, clearness, rapidity, and ease in colloquial use, as well as for its value as an educational instrument in impressing words, phrases, and sentences in their spelled form upon the mind, in testing the comprehension of children, and in affording by easy steps ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... moment he approached the finesse of deportment. He was exactly of that school of elegants who fancy drinking a glass of wine with another, and introducing, are touches of breeding; it being altogether beyond his comprehension that both have especial uses, and are only to be resorted to on especial occasions. Still, the worthy master, who had begun life on the forecastle, without any previous knowledge of usages, and who had imbibed ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... the fundamental reasons and the comprehensive results of the actual practice of the Golden Rule are shot through with such fine insight, such abounding comprehension, that they deserve to become immortal. He was my friend and I would not see them die. I reproduce them here: "As I view it, the Golden Rule is the supreme law of life. It may be paraphrased this way: As you do unto others, others will do unto you. What I give, ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... and "subjective," occupy prominent places, and out of which no man ever has succeeded, or ever will succeed, in extricating an idea. Also, Mr. Gimble, fluently laudatory, with the whole alphabet of Art-Jargon at his fingers' ends, and without the slightest comprehension of the subject to embarrass him in his flow of language. Also, certain respectable families who tried vainly to understand the pictures, opposed by other respectable families who never tried at all, but confined themselves exclusively to the Dowager Countess. Also, the obscure general visitors, who ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... the Mistress's more melodious speech, yet, from puppyhood, he had been talked to by both of them. And, as ever with a highbred collie, such constant conversation had borne ample fruit;—not only in giving the dog a startling comprehension of voice-meanings, but also in teaching him to understand many simple words ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... this ain't enough to dumbfound a codfish," exclaimed Bill. "Here's two total strangers, disguised as undertakers, actually accusin' us of stealin' our own Puddin'. Why, it's outside the bounds of comprehension!" ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... his present discomfort in recalling past happiness, as he described the chateau, the gardens, the burly tutor, and beautiful Madame, or laughed over his childish remembrances of the toad's teeth in Claude Mignon's pocket; whilst Monsieur Crapaud sat well-bred and silent, with a world of comprehension in his fiery eyes. Whoever thinks this puerile must remember that my hero was a Frenchman, and a young Frenchman, with a prescriptive right to chatter for chattering's sake, and also that he had not a very highly cultivated mind of his own to converse with, even if ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... could not understand us, and when they spoke, which was very seldom, their language was utterly beyond our comprehension; but we got on pretty well by signs, after a few weeks when ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... Englishman's proudest boast, and which I fondly hope to bequeath to my children, untarnished and unsullied. Actuated by no personal motives, but moved only by high and great constitutional considerations; which I will not attempt to explain, for they are really beneath the comprehension of those who have not made themselves masters, as I have, of the intricate and arduous study of politics; I would rather keep my seat, and ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... gives me something to think about. He is beyond my comprehension! I may say candidly, that I cannot understand him. What do you think he ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... the housekeeper should be particularly sensitive because the man who had driven him from the station ate peppermint was quite beyond the boy's comprehension. Nor could he thoroughly understand why the suspicion of Mr. Keeler's slight inebriety should cause such a sensation in the Snow household. He was inclined to think the tipsiness rather funny. Of course alcohol was lectured against often enough at ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... people grieving for things that do not call for grief. He, however, that is of foolish understanding, does not see this. He who, casting his eyes on visible things, really seeth them, is said to have eyes and understanding. The faculty called understanding is so called because of the knowledge and comprehension it gives of unknown and incomprehensible things. He who is acquainted with the words of persons that are learned, that are of cleansed souls, and that have attained to a state of Brahma, succeeds in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... shrewd face gained comprehension. "Oh! Well, I ain't boasting, but I could do that job up pretty fine. Failing me, Devlin is the nastiest thing on the place. You couldn't pat his ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... spake—"That is a grave and serious question, maiden, and the answer would be above thy comprehension; yet this much I will explain to thee—if there were no devil and no evil, many attributes of the Almighty God our Lord would have remained for ever hid from you, children of humanity, as well as from us, spirits of heaven. Therefore, from the beginning, hath God permitted such ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... she'd give anything or do anything to get news of him. It's all rot, you know, to say he's run away—it's my impression he's never gone out of Scarnham or the neighbourhood. But where he is, and whether dead or alive, is beyond my comprehension," he concluded, shaking his head. "If he's alive, why don't we hear ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... already seen that the purpose of the word is to fix ideas and to facilitate the elementary comprehension of things. In the same way writing and arithmetic now fix the complex inner acquisitions of the mind, which proceeds henceforward continually to enrich itself ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... the comprehension of the campaign to seize this last point that, at the risk of repetition, I will restate for the reader the main elements of ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... it,—his own utter inability to understand the cause of the sorrow which is literally a thunderbolt out of a clear sky,—plunges him almost into despair. He had endeavored to give the best, but the result is as if he had given the worst; he had come to rely on a perfect and beautiful comprehension and sympathy, but he is confronted with the most inexplicable misapprehension of all his motives, the most complete misunderstanding of all his aspirations and prayers. This, or other combinations and ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... were not under the obligation to France which Germany was under to Austria in 1884, I felt, to use the words of Caprivi himself, when he succeeded Bismarck, and was asked to renew the engagement with Russia, that the arrangement was "too complicated" for my comprehension. It would have been not only wrong to expose a friendly France to the risk of being dismembered by an unjustifiable invasion, while her friend England merely stood looking on, but it would also ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... comprise many famous paintings; and I must acknowledge that I had more enjoyment of them than of those portions of the National Gallery which I had before seen,— including specimens of the grand old masters. My comprehension has not reached their height. I think nothing pleased me more than a picture by Sir David Wilkie,—The Parish Beadle, with a vagrant boy and a monkey in custody; it is exceedingly good and true throughout, and especially the monkey's face is a wonderful production of ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the women of the world. The problems of that time will strike to the roots of many things that we have hitherto questioned, and I for one believe that our safety in those questioning days, as well as our comprehension of matters that touch society to the quick, will depend upon the direct and authoritative participation of women in our counsels. We shall need their moral sense to preserve what is right and fine and worthy in our system of life as well ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... Sands came up to call him to breakfast, and stood looking from the cot to her master's dusty coat, with such a look of delighted comprehension on her face, that the organist felt that no words were needed to prepare her for ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... depth of comprehension that terrified me; and the motor pulled up with a jerk at a spot where hardly a post served to mark where the woods commenced and the wayside grass stopped. We took one of the dim paths which the rabbits had made and forced our ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... sudden anger passed over Father Payne's face—unmistakable and uncompromising wrath. "Come, Rose," he said, "this isn't a political meeting; and even if it were, why proclaim yourself as accepting a definition which is almost within the comprehension ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... who walked first of the little company, and had a look of intelligence and power, addressed himself to the porter at the gate in excellent French—almost too excellent for comprehension. For though French was at that date the Court tongue in England, as now in Belgium, it was Norman French, scarcely intelligible to a Parisian, and still less so to a Provencal. The porter understood only the general scope ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... personality in man is to conform and gain likeness. Environment can act on the digestive and muscular systems through mere material. But how can personality in environment act on personality in man except by personal contact or by symbols easy of comprehension according to its own laws? Some method of attaining acquaintance at least we ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... apprehension, experience, light, scholarship, cognition, information, lore, science, cognizance, intelligence, perception, wisdom. comprehension, intuition, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Lois Boynton listened breathlessly, with parted lips, and with apparent comprehension, to the story Ivory told her. Over and over again he told her gently the story of her husband's death, trying to make it sink into her mind clearly, so that there should be no consequent bewilderment She was calm and silent, though her face ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... things are new and strange, not to be reckoned by our measures. There the sight is not our sight nor the hearing our hearing. I repeat that all things are different, but that difference I cannot describe, and if I could it would prove past comprehension. ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... one year of marriage for even the cleverest Benedict to uproot those weeds of stupidity, denseness, and non-comprehension that seem to grow so riotously in the mental garden of the bachelor; so, said Himself, "We came all together; why shouldn't we go home all together?" (So like a man! Always reasoning from analogy; always, so to speak, 'lugging ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... centuries; and being particularly interested in the study of minerals and different species of rock, he often endeavored to explain to me the various forms of strata which were found below the earth; but my comprehension could not take it in. He was continually poring over fossil remains, and digging in the garden for something curious. He one day ran in with his apron full of stones and other rubbish, and holding up in triumph an object of various hues, through which a slight blue shade ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... reasonably. "Let us not be inconsistent. You say this is something man was not meant to know; yet you, yourself, have devoted your life to gaining a greater comprehension of it." ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... observed with augmenting frequency in the preceding members of the same series the same concupiscence, inflammably transmitted, first with alarm, then with understanding, then with desire, finally with fatigue, with alternating symptoms of epicene comprehension and apprehension. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... it is what people call dancing. I am passionately fond of music; but why people should conceive it necessary to shuffle about in all varieties of awkwardness, in order to enjoy it to their satisfaction, has been, is, and probably will ever be, beyond my comprehension. It is all very well for young ladies on the look-out for husbands to affect a fondness for dancing: in the first place, some women dance gracefully, and even elegantly, and show themselves off undoubtedly to advantage; (if any exhibition on a woman's part be an advantage;) then it gives an excuse ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... great enough incentive to awaken the housewife to the realization that something must be wrong in her present methods. It is in vain that she complains bitterly, on all occasions, of the scarcity of good servants, asserting that it is beyond her comprehension why work in factories, stores, and offices, should be preferred ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... pealed, lilting silvery. She tottered up, clinging to me. She stared. She released me, and to my gladly questing gaze her face was very white, her eyes struggling for comprehension, like those of one ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... distracted organist, fairly kissing the dear remains, and restored to perfect speech and comprehension by the awful shock. "I had one, but it is broken now!—Allie, my long-lost Allie!" he continued, tenderly apostrophizing the skeleton, "do we meet ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... banished from science hypothetical causes and all the entities admitted by the ancients,—such as the creative power of matter, the horror of a vacuum, the esprit recteur, etc. (p. 22),—admits immediately, as necessary to the comprehension of chemical phenomena, a series of entities no less obscure,—vital force, chemical force, electric force, the force of attraction, etc. (pp. 146, 149). One might call it a realization of the properties of bodies, in imitation of the ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... languages, the medium through which such men received their education, the court-language, so to speak, of religion, and the vehicle of all the literature of knowledge which did not directly stoop to the comprehension of the unlearned; but it was indirectly as well as directly, unconsciously as well as consciously, a schoolmaster to bring the vernacular languages to literary accomplishment. They could not have helped imitating it, if they would; and they did not think of avoiding imitation ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... tenderly, and expressed mingled surprise and joy that he felt able to leave his bed so soon. But as her eyes caught Rosendo's meaning glance, and then turned to the child, they seemed to indicate a full comprehension of the situation. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... own, may puzzle you. If so, that is because you are walking either in artificial Darwinian darkness, or to mere stupidity. All genuinely religious people have that consciousness. To them Undershaft the Mystic will be quite intelligible, and his perfect comprehension of his daughter the Salvationist and her lover the Euripidean republican natural and inevitable. That, however, is not new, even on the stage. What is new, as far as I know, is that article in Undershaft's religion which recognizes in Money the first ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... really a perfect harmony. Slavery—so said these logicians of liberticide—has solved the great social problem of the working-classes, comfortably for capital, happily for labor; and has effected this by an ingenious expedient which could have occurred only to minds of the greatest depth and comprehension, the expedient, namely, of enslaving labor. Now doubtless there has always been a struggle between employers and employed, and this struggle will probably continue until the relations between the two are more humane and Christian. But Slavery exhibits this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... comprehension of the necessities which that fame, that career to which you allow she is impelled by the instincts of genius, impose on this girl, young, beautiful, fatherless, motherless? No matter how pure her ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... points in the Christian scheme which are too deep for human comprehension, do not relate to practice. All required, in relation to them, is an assent to their truth, on the credit of God's word. This is ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... disapproving look brought a mocking little smile to the other girl's face; her quick comprehension evidently detected the rebuke, but she ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Sam Brewster was so amazed, that he leaned back in his chair and puffed for breath. To think that Jeb could ever have summoned enough courage to propose to a woman—but let that woman be an Amazon like Sary, was past his comprehension! ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... culture; whereas the drama designed for the people was to cater in its earlier forms to the rude tastes and love of the marvellous which are characteristic of an unlettered people. And, besides, the Roman drama of Plautus and of Terence was not suited to the comprehension of the multitude, in its form and its preservation of the unities. To gratify the taste for shows and excitement, the people already had the high ritual of the Church, but they demanded something more: the Church itself acceded to this demand, and dramatized ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... slightest reflection of her personality upon us, with never a word too much of praise or blame, of too much intimacy or of too much reserve. She was a figure of familiar friendliness, ready with sympathy and comprehension, but wholesome, sound and sane, without trace of sentimentality. Above all, I felt her a singularly honorable spirit, toward whom we always turned our best side, to whom we might never go with talk wanton or idle or unkind or critical, but always with our very precious thoughts on whatsoever ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... Ile St. Louis, and indeed in all the antiquated quarters of Paris. It was reassuring, at all events, to know one was not in Hades, and to feel tolerably certain that a sergeant de ville could not be many yards distant. All this passed into his comprehension like a flash of lightning, for hardly had the bandage left his eyes ere his whole attention was riveted upon ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... word of an advance of the enemy in the direction of Cincinnati. It was a question whether they would come or not. Thousands did not believe in the impending danger; yet the proclamation was obeyed to the letter, and this, too, when there was not a regiment to enforce it. The secret is easy of comprehension: it was the universal confidence reposed in the man who issued the order; and he was equally confident, not only in his own judgment, but in the people with whom ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... the orifices we call stars, who sees celestial beings in meteor form winging their way across the skies, or who is surrounded by the benevolent spirits which her discriminating education, banishing the terrors of the supernatural world, has permitted to exist for her comprehension, illustrates that readiness of fancy and control of vision by expectation which belongs to humanity in the reverse degree of the reflective habit. Herein childish conceptions and vivacity of feeling represent the human faculty which education ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... a look of sudden comprehension overspreading his features. "No doubt it is the internal constitution of the asteroid which is the cause of the anomaly. We must look into that. Let me see? This gentleman's weight is three and one-half times ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... his previous remark, had thought it likely he should be above his listener's comprehension, looked surprised. What pursuits, too, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... she wandered back most frequently—to stare blankly at it without comprehension—was her husband's appeal to her on his deathbed. To-night she had gone back to it again as to a tottering wall. She had worn a little pathway over heaps of miserable conjectures and twisted ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... pain for her. The father, on the other hand, seemed crushed. So broken was his figure that, after the services, Bob was impelled to lay his hand on the man's shoulder and mutter a few incoherent but encouraging words. The mountaineer looked up dully, but sharpened to comprehension and gratitude as his eyes met those of the tall, vigorous young man ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... phenomena of life; for it certainly lies in the nature of a definition that it can be nothing else but that. Nevertheless, we will state that such a definition of life not only does not lead us any nearer to the comprehension of its processes, and especially of the richness and the organization of its forms and functions, but that it {140} clearly shows us how little the origin of life is explained. For this very definition necessarily and obviously leads ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... the religious view; the aesthetic view; the inward connection of the aesthetic enjoyment of nature with its artistic representation; the scientific view as empirical science and natural philosophy; the relations of the various views of nature to each other; the poetic comprehension of nature among the Indians; the poetic comprehension of nature among the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans; the Christian contemplation of nature; German poetry in the middle ages; Italian poetry; the poetic comprehension of nature in modern times; the representation ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... eyes upon him, but she gave no sign of comprehension; once only she started and winced, when he said his Highness the Duke, otherwise she remained unmoved and unresponding as one deaf. He waited a moment for her to speak, then slowly ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... man who follows the mandate of his State, resuming her sovereign jurisdiction and power, is disloyal to his allegiance to the United States, which allegiance he only owed through his State, is such a confusion of ideas as does not belong to an ordinary comprehension of our Government. It is treason to the principle of community independence. It is to recur to that doctrine of passive obedience which, in England, cost one monarch his head and drove another into exile; a doctrine which, since the Revolution of 1688, has obtained ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... his knowledge and great skill and success in defensive warfare, as shown in his Peninsular campaign, after our defeat at Gaines's Mill, is wanting in the rapidity of comprehension and audacity which are necessary components of the highest military talent. He waits for too many chances, and fears ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... inhale these delicious scents, and dream and dream in this caressing air. She hated the thought of London. The world had no real call for her. She wondered at her submission to the will of a woman who had not the least comprehension of her nature. On Nevis would she stay, live her own life, find happiness in beauty and solitude, since the highest happiness was not for her; and at this point she heard ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... caused many reams of verse to be published, whereof both himself and his bookseller, if lawfully required, can still produce authentic copies, and therefore wonders why the world is pleased to make such a secret of it. There is a third, known by the name of Tom Durfey, a poet of a vast comprehension, an universal genius, and most profound learning. There are also one Mr. Rymer and one Mr. Dennis, most profound critics. There is a person styled Dr. Bentley, who has wrote near a thousand pages of immense erudition, giving a full and true account of a certain squabble ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... well as he could, and perhaps his simple explanation was better adapted to Dick's comprehension than one from an older person would have been. Dick felt more free to ask questions, and the example of his new friend, for whom he was beginning to feel a warm attachment, had considerable effect upon him. When, therefore, Fosdick asked again ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... is about to make under the influence of the laws which govern evolution until it has culminated in man, and these laws still acting on the brain of man, perfecting it, and leading him on to the comprehension of a grander and nobler conception of the ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... satisfaction to answer the numerous and varied questions of our inquisitive little readers; and except in instances where the answer, were it given correctly, would occupy too much space in our columns, or be too scientific for the comprehension of the youthful querist, we have left but two or three ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... father! what's in the wind now? well, it beats my comprehension altogether. But did not you say you wished me ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... having little conception of anything, save what they have been familiar with and surrounded by all their lives, and the appearance of the bicycle is indeed a strange visitation, something entirely beyond their comprehension. The mehana is crowded by a wildly gesticulating and loudly commenting and arguing crowd of Turks and Christians all the evening. Although there seems to be quite a large proportion of native unbelievers in Eski Baba there is not a single female visible ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... only as something quite different from her every-day life. For this reason the unnatural event that was taking place this very day was gradually appearing to her something possible and natural. Because she knew there was such a thing as romance, and that it was something quite beyond her comprehension, she was the more willing to receive this event ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... has avoided the error of slurring over the difficulties of the subject through the desire of making it intelligible and attractive to unlearned readers. The numerous illustrations which accompany every chapter are of unquestionable value in the comprehension of the text, and come next to actual experiment as an aid to the ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... cigar assisted his comprehension considerably—just as a second bottle of wine not only helps men through their difficulties, but shows them the way to unbounded wealth. Many of the bright railway schemes of former days, we make no ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... Sorgue, and gathered Laura's roses to adorn their buttonholes, and stripped the consecrated laurel of its leaves to make garlands for their own dull heads, and poured forth international compliments, and glorified one another, and hugged themselves for delight at their fine comprehension of the poet, and fell on their knees before him, and immolated their individual hearts and souls at the shrine of his genius; and, lo! there was not a true appreciater of Petrarch among them all! The right appraiser of Petrarch has been there before and since, but he was not there ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... of two persons whose lives were spent in solitude and self-denial, it is somewhat difficult to understand; and how the dull, dreary, desolate, and ruined town can ever be made to wear a brilliant aspect, is equally difficult of comprehension; but such is said to be the case. On the morning of the fete, great honours were paid, formerly, to St. Eustelle, which are not even yet altogether discontinued. An image of the holy Virgin is suspended in the grotto near the miraculous well, and there ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... place before the reader a short and rapid outline of the state and circumstances of that city in which the principal scenes of this story are laid;—an outline necessary, perhaps, to many, for a full comprehension of the motives of the actors, and the vicissitudes ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... struggle for the rights of conscience. Their wish was to bring the great body of the Protestant Dissenters within the pale of the Church by judicious alterations in the Liturgy and the Articles, and to grant to those who still remained without that pale the most ample toleration. They framed a plan of comprehension which would have satisfied a great majority of the seceders; and they proposed the complete abolition of that absurd and odious test which, after having been, during a century and a half, a scandal to the pious and a laughing-stock to the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... obtain a character little indeed awakening our sympathy, but yet not wholly at variance with our judgment; and although we may be astonished at, and recoil from the motives which prompted his crime, they will not be altogether of a class which sets our comprehension ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... finds little difficulty in stirring up multitudes to violence. * * Add to all this the invasions of the rights of speech and of the press by lawless force, the extent and toleration of which oblige us to believe that a considerable portion of our citizens have no comprehension of the first principles of liberty. It is an undeniable fact that, in consequence of these and other symptoms, the confidence of many reflecting men in our free institutions is very much impaired. Some despair. That main pillar of public liberty—mutual trust ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... Sixty-nine years seem impossible when I see his single, slimpsy garments pressed like fleshings against his form and bulged by heavy bone and huge muscle. A splendid figure of a man! What he must have been in the hey-day of youth two score years and more ago passes comprehension. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... estimate of Whitman, as for a clear comprehension of the symbolism contained in Leaves of Grass, a few blades of the latter will not suffice. It must be all, or none. The two poems here given should be taken, therefore, not as representative of the whole, but as types of ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... can't be trusted to behave rationally without restraining rules. It's rather a dismaying conclusion when it's dragged out in the open like that, and it seems to horrify him. An ordinary kid learns by experience and accepts the rules with sporadic rebellion, but our boy acts as if they were beyond comprehension. And I think they are ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... philosophy of the world and of life is possible to a person only on the basis of a knowledge of one's self and of one's relation to surrounding nature." Diesterweg says: "No one can afford to neglect a knowledge of nature who desires to get a comprehension of the world and of God according to human possibility, or who desires to find his proper relation to Him and to real things. He who knows nothing of human history is an ignoramus, likewise he who knows nothing of natural science. To know nothing of either is a pure ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... learn the very complex rules by which your army is now regulated, and those by which it was regulated a very short time since. Unhappily for me I have found it in a state of transition, and nothing is so difficult to a stranger's comprehension as a transition state of affairs. But this I can see plainly; that every improvement which is made is received by those whom it most concerns with a horror which amounts almost to madness. So lovely to the ancient British, well-born, feudal instinct is a state of unreason, that the very absence ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... did not know. As long as the sheet rose and fell he was alive at all events, still with her. But she was too exhausted for any sustained effort of will; and her glance wandered back to, and followed with agonised comprehension, the formless, motionless elevation and depression of that same sheet towards the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Golightly, save us both," she whispers. And Golightly tosses up his head with a little whinny of comprehension, and, bracing up every nerve, prepares for a rush through that ominous path blocked as it ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... for the scene we have presented to the reader at the roadside inn on the Apennines, we must now go back with him to the night on which Carlton delivered his letter of arrangement to Florinda, and thus render our tale plain to the comprehension of all. ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... such a work (however elementary) at once accurate as well as interesting, would require sound scientific knowledge; and, however skilfully and popularly written, there would still be portions somewhat difficult of comprehension to the ordinary reader; but curiosity would be stimulated by the very occurrence of difficulty, and thus an impulse might be given to the acquisition of rudimentary botany, which would eventually enable the inquirer to contribute his quota ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... brochure solves the problem of combined cylinders in all its aspects, and in a manner simple enough for the comprehension of the average student of ophthalmology. The author is to be congratulated upon the success that has crowned his labors, for nowhere is there to be found so simple and yet so complete an explanation as is contained in these ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... is a vast comprehension, and hath not hapned in many Ages. Be it then remembred to the Glory of our owne, that all these are Demonstrative and met in BEAUMONT & FLETCHER, whom but to mention is to throw a cloude upon all former names and benight ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... Hegel, the philosopher of the present, himself dimorphous, for both a 'left'-minded and a 'right'-minded Hegel can always be quoted, has best explained the contradictions of life, of history and of the spirit, with his own magic formula. Thesis: affirmation; Antithesis: negation; Synthesis: comprehension! Young man, or rather, comparatively young man! You began life by accepting everything, then went on to denying everything on principle. Now end your life by comprehending everything. Be exclusive no longer. Do not say: either—or, but: not ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the woman works because she has told the man to work and he hasn't obeyed. I do not affirm that this is the whole truth, but I do affirm that we have too little comprehension of the souls of savages to know how far it is untrue. It is the same with the relations of our hasty and surface science, with the problem of sexual dignity and modesty. Professors find all over the world fragmentary ceremonies in which the bride affects some sort of reluctance, ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... he was conscious that he came nearer a feeling of affection for her than for any living person. Well, not affection, precisely, he corrected. It was rather that he relished, with a quizzical amusement, the completeness of their mutual comprehension. She was growing to be more like their mother, too. Decidedly, this was the type of woman he should have married, not someone soft and eager and full of silly sentiment like Rose. Why didn't she hold her own as Nellie did? Have more snap and stamina? ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... they are made acquainted with evil for the first time, to go at once too far, beyond reason. When he was once convinced of the treachery of Georges and Sidonie, Risler's degradation seemed to the cashier less impossible of comprehension. On what other theory could his indifference, in the face of his ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... soon assimilates to them in manners, and conforms to their religious practices. The love of novelty, the vanity of learning, the fascination of ceremony, the contagion of example, veneration for what appears above his immediate comprehension, and the innate activity of man's intellectual faculties, which, spurred by curiosity, prompts him to the acquisition of knowledge, whether true or false—all conspire to make him embrace a system ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... different case from the antecedent ones. So it had been sworn to them too frequently before. He was as a man with mighty tidings, and no language: intensely communicative, but inarticulate. Good round oaths had formerly compassed and expounded his noble emotions. They were now quite beyond the comprehension of blasphemy, even when emphasized, and by this the poor lord divinely felt the case was different. There is something impressive in a great human hulk writhing under the unutterable torments of a mastery he cannot contend with, or account for, or explain by means of intelligible words. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... essential criminality of any man-of-war's-man; and Christianity has taught me that, at the last day, man-of-war's-men will not be judged by the Articles of War, nor by the United States Statutes at Large, but by immutable laws, ineffably beyond the comprehension of the honourable Board of Commodores and Navy Commissioners. But though I will stand by even a man-of-war thief, and defend him from being seized up at the gangway, if I can—remembering that my Saviour once hung between two thieves, promising one life-eternal—yet I would not, after the ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... out to see whether any one else was coming, addressed them in words a little too fine for their comprehension, and then read a few prayers, after which he and Mrs Carbonel went away, taking the unwilling Sophy to her lessons, but leaving Dora to follow when she had heard the names called over, and inaugurated the work; and their ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... men whom I have ever met. I believe that he would have talked all day and all night, for days together, to any officer who could instruct him, until his companion, at least, fell asleep exhausted. His comprehension of the whole problem of Slavery was more thorough and far-reaching than that of any Abolitionist, so far as its social and military aspects went; in that direction I could teach him nothing, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... subjected; for Oshasqua—the fierce warrior to whom Girty had consigned her, in the expectation, probably, that she would long ere this have been knocked on the head and scalped—had, by one of those strange mysterious phenomena of nature, (so difficult of comprehension, and which have been known to link the rough and bloody with the gentle and innocent,) already begun to feel towards her a sort of affection, and to treat her with great kindness whenever he could do so unobserved by the others. The apparel of which he had at first ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... Lady Halifax's drawing-room in Paris six months earlier it would have filled him with the purest, amusement. He would have added the circumstance to his conception of the type of young woman who enacted it, and turned away without stopping to consider whether it flattered her or not. His comprehension of human nature was too catholic very readily to permit him impressions either of wonder or contempt—it would have been a matter of registration and a smile. Realizing this, Kendal was the more at a loss to explain to himself the feeling of ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... intelligence superior to that of man." In reading such expressions we are strongly reminded of the poem on the "rationalistic chicken," which would not admit that it ever came out of an egg. When the wisdom shown in the universe is so immensely beyond the comprehension of man, how can he assume his own ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... heaven. They are simply unspeakable, because they are beyond our present powers of comprehension. Eye hath not seen them, ear hath not heard them, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive them. We shall, therefore, make no further attempt to express what no human tongue can utter. But we may say that, as a pure and mutual love produces the greatest happiness we know of in this ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... no effort to simplify language. Children always observe this, and are always displeased with it, unless they are very young; and it is not necessary. They can understand ordinary language well enough, if the subject is within their comprehension, and treated in a manner adapted to their powers. If you doubt whether children can understand language, tell such a story as this, with ardor of tone and proper gesticulation, to a child only ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... her with an expression that was never intended to be worn in a public conveyance, and the thin-faced Polish woman on whose toes they were all but standing looked at them with such lively comprehension that Eleanor felt called upon to assume her most haughty and dignified manner for the rest ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... which she distinguishes herself, separated from her by something like the gulf that separated Caliban from Ariel. He has his hands in his pockets, his head poked forward; what is going on is quite beyond his comprehension. He vaguely wonders what his wife will do next; her manoeuvres quite transcend him. Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns always succeeds. She is never at fault; she is as quick as the instinct of self-preservation. She is the little London lady who is determined to be a greater one—she pushes, ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... point of time and influence. She is their best teacher at home and in the school. And her share in this ever-expanding work is becoming vaster every day. Woman as mother, sister, teacher, has an intelligence, a comprehension of the educational needs of our youth, and an interest in their development, far in advance of the other sex. She can organize, control and teach the most difficult school in the State; yet she has no vote in the selection of teachers, the building, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... while, he found himself at the Theatre Royal. Still raging against Maggie, he paid for a seat in the pit. He had forgotten that he was in mourning, and he remembered only that he was a jilted lover, a MacDermott cast aside for a policeman. He sat through the first act of the play, without much comprehension of its theme. Then in the middle of the second act, he heard the heroine vowing that she loved the hero, and he got up and walked ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... acquiescence than of comprehension went up in chorus from all but one of the revelers; he held his glass silently a moment, disposed to put ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... if they had never been. The past is to him as yesterday, and the future scarcely more than to-morrow. Ancestral monuments, he has none; written documents fraught with cogitations of other times, he has none; and any instrumentality calculated to awaken and expound the intellectual activity and comprehension of a present or approaching generation, he has none. His condition is that of the leopard of his own native Africa. It lives, it propagates its kind; but never does it indicate a movement towards that all but angelic intelligence of man. The slave eats, drinks, and sleeps—all ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... hast!—like a frightened child! I know not if I shall reach thy comprehension, were I to answer thee—but I, being only daughter to my father, Gualtier of Montferrat, who had no son—plead with my mother to send me hither when I came of age, to do homage loyally to King Janus, and claim ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... her, as a girl in ordinary circumstances has the new developments of life to think of, and how to be a wife and mother. And the news brought by every passer-by would prove doubly interesting, doubly important to Jeanne, in her daily growing comprehension of what she was called upon to do. As she felt the current more and more catching her feet, sweeping her on, overcoming all resistance in her own mind, she must have been more and more anxious to know what was going on in the distracted ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... people was to cater in its earlier forms to the rude tastes and love of the marvellous which are characteristic of an unlettered people. And, besides, the Roman drama of Plautus and of Terence was not suited to the comprehension of the multitude, in its form and its preservation of the unities. To gratify the taste for shows and excitement, the people already had the high ritual of the Church, but they demanded something ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... apparently less important branch of Landscape Art for several reasons: from a conviction that its importance is, and is only apparently less; from the fact that from it have been derived all other classes of landscape; and because a comprehension of its scope and purpose aids more than any other agency in understanding those of the pure and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... us the greatest satisfaction to answer the numerous and varied questions of our inquisitive little readers; and except in instances where the answer, were it given correctly, would occupy too much space in our columns, or be too scientific for the comprehension of the youthful querist, we have left but two or three questions to ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... (pp. 44-57) treats of the utility of grammar, and the necessity of a true linguistic science for the adequate comprehension either of the Scriptures or of books on philosophy. [v.03 p.0155] The necessity of accurate acquaintance with any foreign language and of obtaining good texts, is a subject Bacon is never weary of descanting upon. A translator should ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... the shock, when Harry Blount and Colin, coming up in close pursuit, stooped over the prostrate pair; and neither Arab nor Irishman was very clear in his comprehension, when a crowd of strange creatures closed around them, and took possession of the whole party; as they did so yelling like a ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... and its valuable research. This volume is an unusual contribution in this field. It is an historical treatise, a study in economic progress and a survey of contemporary movements. As suggested by its title, the book examines with scholarly comprehension the continued migrations of the nineteenth century. The point of view which the volume presents is that of the new historical school, which holds that movements of the present have their roots in the past; and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... amused by them, owing to their excessive improbability. Such ingenuity seems misplaced, we see more absurdity than talent in representing a sheep as talking to a wolf. To us fables now present, not what is strange and difficult of comprehension, but mentally fanciful folly. In some few instances in La Fontaine and Gay, the wisdom of the lessons atones for the strangeness of their garb, and the peculiarity of the dramatis personae may tend to rivet them in our minds. There is something also ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... attention. And of many of the impressions which came to me then I have realized the full import only within the past few years, since I have had a broader knowledge of men and history, and a fuller comprehension of the tremendous struggle which is going on between ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... Johnson says, "was a man of great comprehension, skilful in his profession, versed in the sciences, acquainted with ancient literature, and able to animate his mass of knowledge by a bright and active imagination; a scholar with great brilliance of wit; a wit who in the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... streams, the study of the soils, studies that have to do with the location of homes, of villages, the study of the weather, of the common plants, of domestic animals—all of these things will give the child a better start in education, a better comprehension of the life he is to live, a better idea of the business of farming, a better notion about the importance of agriculture, and will tend to fit him better for future life either on the farm or anywhere else, than could any amount of the old-fashioned book ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... action: Burke furnished them with reasons for action which might have little effect upon them at the time, but for which they would be the wiser and better all their lives after. In research, in originality, in variety of knowledge, in richness of invention, in depth and comprehension of mind, Burke had as much the advantage of Lord Chatham as he was excelled by him in plain common sense, in strong feeling, in steadiness of purpose, in vehemence, in warmth, in enthusiasm, and energy of mind. Burke was the man of genius, of fine sense, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... temple. There was a youthful alertness about the tall athletic figure; but the lean brown face, clean shaven and reposeful, held a look of quiet strength and power, mingled with a keen kindliness and ready comprehension, which inspired trust, ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... fond of Maura in their school life, and who dearly loved patronising, pounced upon her guest to show her all manner of treasures and curiosities, at which she looked in great delight; and Fergus was so well satisfied with her comprehension of the principles of the letter balance, that he would have taken her upstairs to be introduced to all his mechanical inventions, if the total darkness and cold of his den had not ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... discovered promptly an especial reason for the calmness exhibited by these men. Their slow minds had not wakened to full comprehension. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... and they were right. For Maria Theresa, who with her husband, was the tender wife; toward her children, the loving mother; was in all that related to her empire, her people, and her sovereignty, a man both in the scope of her comprehension and the strength of her will. She was capable of sketching bold lines of policy, and of following them out without reference to personal predilections or prejudices, both of which she was fully competent to stifle, wherever they threatened interference with the good of her ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... designs formal, decent, and monumental. But the Lombards threw into their work their own restless energy, and some of their cruelty and relentlessness. Queen Theodolinda, in her palace at Monza, encouraged the arts; it was because of her appreciative comprehension of such things that St. Gregory sent her the famous Iron Crown, of which a description has been given, on the occasion of the baptism of her son. Under the influence of these subsequently civilized barbarians many of the greatest specimens of carving in North Italy came into ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... understand him. He was confounded by the presence in which he found himself. But, not daring to confess his want of comprehension, he made ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... with every full breath she was now able to draw. Gradually a look of comprehension replaced the apathetic stare. She looked squarely at the priest for the first time since his entrance. Father Honore could but wonder if the thought behind that look would ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... disfranchise him from 1838 to 1873, seek to get rid of him by colonization and yet hide him from his master and resolutely refuse to close to him the door of freedom even in the face of Federal laws? The answer is one of fundamental importance for the comprehension of the status of the Negro in the social consciousness of the nation now as well as then. The people of Pennsylvania had been educated for generations in the great traditions of freedom. These traditions had ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... proximity in St. Ogg's on any other supposition, until after years of separation, threw an insurmountable prospective difficulty over Maggie's stay there. On the other hand, he entered with all the comprehension of a man who had known spiritual conflict, and lived through years of devoted service to his fellow-men, into that state of Maggie's heart and conscience which made the consent to the marriage a desecration to her; ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... his chair and looking impressively at Darrin and Dalzell, "it seems to me I had better preface my remarks by giving you some idea of the Fleet's unusual and special mission in the Mediterranean. That may lead you to a better comprehension of why a certain foreign power should wish to create, between Great Britain and the United States, a situation that would probably call for war between the two greatest nations of ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... aerolites. In our own abode we have variations of weather, apparently accidental and sometimes noxious, atmospheric influences which beget plagues, ministers of destruction such as earthquakes and volcanoes. The plan, if plan there is, transcends our sense and comprehension. ...
— No Refuge but in Truth • Goldwin Smith
... With fine comprehension and insight the author shows a terrific contrast between the woman whose love was of the flesh and one whose love ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... country; Panchito taking the fences easily, the hounds belling lustily as they strung out behind him. Kay did not wait to follow his flight, but calling for William to get out the car, she ran round to the barn and delivered Farrel's message to Pablo, who grunted his comprehension and started for his cabin at a surprising rate of speed for an old man. Five minutes after Farrel had left the Rancho Palomar, Kay and Pablo were roaring down the valley ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... as a witness at the frolic of my younger life. Or if I narrated things that were beyond her, on account of her narrower experience, she listened with an eager longing to understand that was better than some people's easy comprehension. My world ever rang with good tidings, and she was grateful if I brought her the echo of them, to ring again within the four walls of the kitchen that bounded her life. And I, who lived on the heights, ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... boots were standing there as they always stood when he had gone to rest. Going up to their chamber, she found him in bed sleeping as sound as a rock. How he could have got back again without her seeing or hearing him was beyond her comprehension. It could only have been by passing behind her very quietly while she was bumping with the iron. But this notion did not satisfy her: it was surely impossible that she should not have seen him come in through a room ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... fanatics. Out of similar notions have risen the absurdities of a polemic Bible chronology, &c. [Footnote: The Bible cosmology stands upon another footing. That is not gathered from a casual expression, shaped to meet popular comprehension, but is delivered directly, formally, and elaborately, as a natural preface to the history of man and his habitation. Here, accordingly, there is no instance of accommodation to vulgar ignorance; and the persuasion gains ground continually ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... reared in ignorance, surrounded by demoralizing influences, cut off from the blessings of church and Sabbath school, see nothing but licentiousness, intemperance and crime. These young girls are lost forever. They are beyond the reach of the moralist or preacher and have no comprehension of modesty and purity. Virtue to them is a stranger, and ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... which a voyage of this kind brought before him. The Nemesis steamer under weigh puzzled him at first—he then thought it was "all same big cart, only got him shingles** on wheels!" He always expressed great contempt for the dullness of comprehension of his countrymen, "big fools they," he used often to say, "blackfellow no good." Even Malays, Chinamen, and the natives of India, he counted as nothing in his increasing admiration of Europeans, until he saw some ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... running fifty yards. "Burn the trees!" she screamed over her shoulder. "Burn the cabin! Burn it all!" She ran on, Ted's answering shouts beyond her comprehension. ...
— Tree, Spare that Woodman • Dave Dryfoos
... towards the ships. Alarcon, however, was not of this mind. The natives were, of course, armed only with the bow-and-arrow and similar primitive weapons, while the Spaniards, though few in number, possessed the advantage of firearms, of which the natives had no comprehension whatever. The interpreter, being a native from down the coast, understood not a word of this language, but the presence among the strangers of one of their own kind somewhat pacified the natives, and Alarcon did all he ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... shown by his hatred and, indeed, non-comprehension of cowardice. In his first battle, upon the French surrendering, he wrote to the governor, "if the whole Detach't of the French behave with no more Resolution than this chosen Party did, I flatter myself we shall have no g't trouble in ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... and also by inducing several of the Indians to engage in talk and story-telling in signs between themselves. Thus it was possible to notice the difference in the signs made for the same objects and the degree of mutual comprehension notwithstanding such differences. Similar studies were made by taking Indians to the National Deaf Mute College and bringing them in contact with ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... dear Miss Betham,—I have been pleased with your friends, tho' (which is not singular) they sometimes fly higher than my imagination can follow. I think the author ought to mix more, I will not say with Fools, but with People of Common Comprehension. His own intellect would be as bright, and what emanated from it more clear. This is perhaps a very impertinent Remark for me to venture at making, ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... top of the world. When you establish a predominant Parliament, you give over the rule of the country to a despot who has unlimited time—who has unlimited vanity—who has, or believes he has, unlimited comprehension, whose pleasure is in action, whose life is work. There is no limit to the curiosity of Parliament. Sir Robert Peel once suggested that a list should be taken down of the questions asked of him in a single evening; they touched more or less on fifty subjects, and there were a thousand other ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... of comprehension. "You often imagine, don't you? Let's ride on to where the road goes down ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... Mrs. Adams divined the motive of Hyde's early visit; she opened her eyes wide, and looked at him with a comprehension so clear and real that Hyde was compelled to answer, and acknowledge her suspicion by a look and movement quite as unequivocal. Yet this instantaneous understanding contained neither promise nor sympathy; and he could ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... the mind, of which it is the object, more fitted than others for forming many simultaneous perceptions; and the more the actions of the body depend on itself alone, and the fewer other bodies concur with it in action, the more fitted is the mind of which it is the object for distinct comprehension. We may thus recognize the superiority of one mind over others, and may further see the cause, why we have only a very confused knowledge of our body, and also many kindred questions, which I will, in the following propositions, deduce from what has been advanced. ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... down with reference to this great teacher's life and personality reveal one of those saints whose preaching and ministration have bestowed a perpetual blessing on humanity. Here, it must suffice to say that he found no peace of mind until a visit to China brought comprehension of a Sutra which he had vainly studied in Japan. On his return, in 806, he appeared before the emperor and many bonzes, and astonished all by his eloquence and ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... make a bonfire of the gilded carriages, wring, if you will, the necks of both swans and cygnets. It is all vanity and vexation. Man is an intellectual animal: he wants none of these gewgaws. Alas! Wisdom may cry aloud in the streets, but no one will heed her words if she speaks beyond his comprehension. In theory, these Pecksniffs of retrenchment might possibly be correct if mankind had attained the same degree of marble indifference with themselves. In the mean time, while we are honest and true, it is good ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... said I, suiting my language to his comprehension, while from my eye the Gladiator broke—"bale you snavel-um that peller bullock. Me fetch-um you ole-man lick under butt of um lug; me gib-it you big one dressum down. Compranny pah, John?" The Chinaman had turned back with me, and, as if he had been hired for the work, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... all," is not alone the penetration and universality of his comprehension, but likewise and especially "the force, flexibility, and constancy of his attention. He can work eighteen hours at a stretch, on one or on several subjects. I never saw him tired. I never found ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Schopenhauer, and Darwin, and Diogenes, of course; but she's heard their names, and she'll pretend to be posted—you know how women are. And when you need a mental tonic—the companionship of a robust intellect, the stimulus of wide acquaintance with the great world of men and things, a manly comprehension of any difficulties that you may meet, or sound and wise advice how to steer your way through the pitfalls and intricacies of the female character—in such cases, which will no doubt often arise, you have only to come to me. I know all about these ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... his unequalled comprehension of national political problems was a surprising streak of frank insouciance and happy-hearted boyishness, which frequently expressed itself in the open defiance of authority in the shape of his great-aunt Maud, his slightly dropsical mother (nee Sheila Soddle) and his two resident ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... object of his presence; but, beyond that, there is something deep and desperate in the appearance of the man, rendering his familiarity exceedingly disagreeable. That he should present himself at such an untimely hour was strange, beyond Marston's comprehension. It was, indeed, most inopportune; but knowing him, he feared him. He could not treat him with indifference,—there was his connection with Graspum, his power over the poor servile whites; he must be courteous-so, summoning ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... world the housekeeper should be particularly sensitive because the man who had driven him from the station ate peppermint was quite beyond the boy's comprehension. Nor could he thoroughly understand why the suspicion of Mr. Keeler's slight inebriety should cause such a sensation in the Snow household. He was inclined to think the tipsiness rather funny. Of course alcohol was lectured against often enough at school ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... cast, there he enters with zest into the live sentiment of the community. No thought born of enterprise within the scope of his comprehension, no undertaking to enhance the common wealth fail to enlist his good will. He will at least talk for it and praise it, even if he has not a cent to invest. However limited by industrial conditions to few and humble ways of acquiring a livelihood, his scanty earnings are on the market to ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... of those who did not understand a word of English, and he was indebted to the gestures of Deerslayer, and to the expression of an eye that did not often deceive, for an imperfect comprehension of his meaning. Perhaps, too, the sight of the rifle that lay so near the hand of the white man quickened his decision. At all events, he crouched like a tiger about to take his leap, uttered a yell, and the next ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... hope, still, that I may find sympathy and comprehension among some, at least, of my audience, as I proceed to examine the ancient realist schools of Alexandria, on account of their knowledge of the modern realist schools of Germany. For I cannot but see, that a revulsion is ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... with awe and a bit of envy at her success. To imagine her desperately in love with her employer, working for and with him each day, and finally in extreme desperation telling the truth as brutally as women sometimes tell it to women over clandestine cups of tea—was farthest from their comprehension. ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... to draw up the contract. It was a simple contract, framed in language that could not fail of comprehension by the dullest mind. For and in consideration of the sum of one dollar, the receipt whereof was duly acknowledged, Bob McGraw agreed to furnish, his applicants for land with certain valuable information, ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... he was to marry Miss Kimball that fall. Her lip curled a little, for she remembered Leonora of old; she knew her pink-and-white prettiness and the few and simple enfoldments of her elementary little brain, just large enough to hold a few attractive near-ideas, a thorough comprehension of all the social conventionalities, and a fixed and stubborn conviction as to what was or was not "smart." "If she has a soul," Silvia said to herself with rather unusual heat, "no one could tell whether it is in a condition of arrested development, hopeless atrophy or complete ossification. ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... of these has shows that our present system is seriously defective. There is need of a change. Unfortunately, however, many of the proposed changes must be ruled from consideration because they are complicated, are not easy of comprehension, and tend to, disturb existing rights and interests. We must also rule out any plan which would materially impair the value of the United States 2 per cent bonds now pledged to secure circulations, the issue of which was made under conditions peculiarly creditable to the Treasury. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... he can be induced to speak, the racial and religious prejudice of the other stands in the way of his sympathetic comprehension. ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... of common sense can take any interest in this stuff is beyond my comprehension," said Mr. Tolman, as he closed the book and put it on a little shelf behind ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... Gorringe. If this was intended to inform the new pastor of the exact financial situation in Octavius, it lamentably failed of its purpose. Theron had little knowledge of figures; and though he tried hard to listen, and to assume an air of comprehension, he did not understand much of what he heard. In a general way he gathered that the church property was put down at $12,000, on which there was a debt of $4,800. The annual expenses were $2,250, of which the principal items were $800 for his salary, $170 ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... pictures it to himself under the indefinite ideal of the Future, or clothes it in the more solid guise of romance. These violent revulsions of the mind on itself gave me, without my knowing it, a comprehension of its power, and accustomed me to ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... and startling communication caused the good old man much uneasiness, even although its object and purpose were altogether beyond his comprehension. The only solution that occurred to him of the mystery which ran through it, was that it must have been written under some misconception or delusion for which he could not account. Another key to the difficulty—one equally replete with distress and alarm—was that his brother's ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Lachlan was trying for the same period to have the minister removed from Drumtochty. Donald, deprived by one stroke of both his friends, fell back on me, and told me many things I loved to hear, although they were beyond my comprehension. ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... which he published the first volume in 1655, and completed it in a fourth in 1662. It is rather a vast collection of the materials for a history, than a history itself. He is a Cudworth in magnitude and learning, but not in strength and comprehension, and is destitute of precision and clearness of style. Stanley also wrote some poems, which discover powers that might have been better employed in original composition than in translation. His style, rich of itself, is enriched to repletion by conceits, and sometimes by voluptuous sentiments ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... too, about Mr. Sloane. His attitude toward the bonhomme quite passes my comprehension. It's the queerest jumble of contraries. He penetrates him, disapproves of him—yet respects and admires him. It all comes of the poor boy's shrinking New England conscience. He's afraid to give his perceptions a fair chance, lest, forsooth, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... seen the precipice in summer, and knew it was more than a thousand feet to the bottom! Down I tumbled, carrying a large fragment of the snow-cornice with me. I could see nothing, and I was entirely helpless. Then, just as the full comprehension of the awful thing that was happening swept over me, the snow falling beneath me suddenly stopped. I plunged into it, completely burying myself. Then I, too, no longer moved downward; my mind gradually admitted the knowledge that my body, together with a considerable ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... be the most fitting time to place before the reader a short and rapid outline of the state and circumstances of that city in which the principal scenes of this story are laid;—an outline necessary, perhaps, to many, for a full comprehension of the motives of the actors, and ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... . . . The best critique which has yet appeared is in the Revue des deux Mondes, a sort of European Cosmopolitan periodical, whose head- quarters are at Paris. Comparatively few reviewers, even in their praise, evince a just comprehension of the author's meaning. Eugene Forcarde, the reviewer in question, follows Currer Bell through every winding, discerns every point, discriminates every shade, proves himself master of the subject, and lord of the aim. With ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... were Fox and Sheridan, the English Demosthenes and the English Hyperides. There was Burke—ignorant indeed, or negligent, of the art of adapting his reasonings and his style to the capacity and taste of his hearers, but in amplitude of comprehension and richness of imagination superior to every orator, ancient or modern. There, with eyes reverentially fixt on Burke, appeared the finest gentleman of the age, his form developed by every manly exercise, his face beaming with intelligence ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... generally brought then about them on the Sunday nights where the sermons were talked over, and every one women as well as men, were desired to speak their sense and their experience, and by these means they had a comprehension of matters of religion, greater than I have seen among people of that sort anywhere. The preachers went all in one track, of raising observations on points of doctrine out of their text, and proving these by reasons, and then ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... Ida. Her "accomplishments" were talked of far and near in our country circles. Few, if any, of the people, however, who applauded her playing and singing, who admired her water-color drawings, who were delighted at her fluency when she spoke French, and amazed at her ready comprehension when she read German, knew how little of all this elegant mental cultivation and nimble manual dexterity she owed to her governess and masters, and how much to her elder sister. It was Ida who really found out the means of stimulating her when she was idle; Ida who helped her through all her ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... source of all other knowledge. The curious question as to the constitution of the body of Jesus occupies only a subordinate place. The monk, as shown in the whole proceedings, was evidently more of a speculative dreamer than a heretic—a man fond of disputation about matters beyond his comprehension. It is mentioned by the three youthful zealots, in the récit bearing their signature, that as they were about to part with him, “after the accustomed civilities,” he was careful to let them know that ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... forgiven, but to have such a lamentably meagre intellectual equipment as to be hopelessly inadequate as companions. Even the eldest, almost her own age, could only read with difficulty words of two syllables; and taste in dress was beyond their comprehension. In the long vista of future years she saw nothing but dreary drudgery at her detested old trade without prospect ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Established Church of England great and powerful; I wish to see her foundations laid low and deep, that she may crush the giant powers of rebellious darkness; I would have her head raised up to that heaven to which she conducts us. I would have her open wide her hospitable gates by a noble and liberal comprehension, but I would have no breaches in her wall; I would have her cherish all those who are within, and pity all those who are without; I would have her a common blessing to the world, an example, if not an instructor, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Pembrook can perform the experiments successfully. In other words, to come down to your comprehension, he succeeds in living so pure and careful a Christian life that he has the respect and confidence of everybody. What if he can't preach? He can practice. However, I am willing to admit that the dear old man would be more edifying if ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... was. In my mental survey of the situation from Boyce's point of view I had not taken into account the best and finest in the man. His reason rang true against my exceptional knowledge of him. I had worked myself into so sympathetic a comprehension that I KNEW he would be facing something unknown and terrible in the proposed ceremony; I KNEW that for his own sake he would have unequivocably declined. But, ad ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... comprehended the meaning of the oracle. He came forward before them all and addressed them, saying: "Why, Romans, convict the revelation of obscurity or ourselves of ignorance? We are the thing sought and debated. For nothing lifeless may be counted better than what has life, nor shall that which has comprehension and prudence and the adornment of speech fail of preference before what is uncomprehending, speechless and senseless. What should any one deem superior to Man to be cast into the earth-fissure, that therewith we might contract it? [Sidenote: FRAG. 28^2] THERE IS NO MORTAL CREATURE EITHER ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... of the legacy a hundred-fold. As the apothecary, however, found the manuscripts, in which he conjectured there was a treatise on the subject of these shrubs, mostly illegible, and quite beyond his comprehension in such passages as he succeeded in puzzling out, (partly, perhaps, owing to his very imperfect knowledge of Latin, in which language they were written,) he had never derived from them any of the promised benefit. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... resents the air of superiority assumed toward them by the people of the United States. In our newspapers there is a seeming disregard for the real evidences of their national development. Revolutions and boundary disputes have been exaggerated. In general, citizens of the United States have no comprehension of the advancement of these countries within recent times and appreciate but slightly that their economic future is as fully assured as our own. Argentina constitutes an excellent example of this progress. This country has an area of 1,135,840 square miles. Splendid rivers water the immense plains. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... looking round the class. Once more her gaze lingered on Susan's downcast face, but there was no response in its immovable lines. The other girls vouchsafed strained, uneasy smiles. Only from Dreda's ecstatic eyes there flashed back a joyful comprehension. How beautiful the girl looked! Her vivid colouring, all pink, and white, and gold, made an almost startling contrast to the duller tints of the ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... delicate figures are lost in these wide robes, which float around what might be little marionnettes without bodies at all, and which would slip to the ground of themselves were they not kept together midway, about where a waist should be, by the wide silken sashes,—a very different comprehension of the art of dressing to ours, which endeavors as much as possible to bring into relief the curves, real ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... then the classical work on the subject, the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, is as the play of Hamlet with the character of Hamlet left out: for in that work there is no analysis of moral obligation, no attempt to "fix the comprehension of the idea I ought" (ib.). The system there exposed is a system of Eudaemonism, not of Deontology. It is not a treatise on Duty, but on Happiness: it tells us what Happiness, or rational well-being, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... curtains and shook the boy gently by the shoulder. Frank's eyes opened and looked at the ranger with that lack of comprehension peculiar to one ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... proportion of this material is to all practical intents inaccessible to the general reading public, being scattered here and there through old and long-forgotten newspapers, blue-books, pamphlets and unedited manuscripts. Yet some acquaintance with it is absolutely necessary to a clear comprehension of the deplorable state of things which existed in this Province during the regime of Sir Peregrine Maitland and his successor. No one who is ignorant of it is capable of expressing an intelligent opinion as to the merits or demerits of the Rebellion and those who took part therein. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... in dispelling some of the absurd ideas which are now current about Russia, I shall be content. If I win a little comprehension and kindly sympathy for them, I shall ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... other sounds of the storm, Winn now began to distinguish that of waves plashing on the deck of the raft. Certainly his surroundings had undergone some extraordinary change since he turned in for the night, but what it was passed the boy's comprehension. ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... is sometimes called the "solidus,'' but in more complex cases the solidus is often curved. At temperatures between the solidus and the liquidus a mixture is partly solid and partly liquid. This general case has been discussed at length because a careful study of it will much facilitate the comprehension or the similar but more complicated cases that occur in the examination of alloys. A great many mixtures of metals have been examined in the above-mentioned ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... unlucky angler had been fairly pulled into the water, and soused over head and ears. How his valet contrived to reinstate his coeffure, unless, indeed, he travelled with a change of wigs, is one of those mysteries of an old beau's toilet which pass female comprehension. ...
— The London Visitor • Mary Russell Mitford
... in like manner a distinction which cannot safely be lost sight of, how important the difference, the existence of which is asserted by our possession of the two words, 'to apprehend' and 'to comprehend' with their substantives 'apprehension' and 'comprehension.' For indeed we 'apprehend' many truths, which we do not 'comprehend.' The great mysteries of our faith—the doctrine, for instance, of the Holy Trinity, we lay hold upon it, we hang on it, our souls ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... Comprehension overwhelming, overmastering, flashed into Mary's eyes. But her promise held her silent and in her chair. Again it was as though she ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... strange, not to be reckoned by our measures. There the sight is not our sight nor the hearing our hearing. I repeat that all things are different, but that difference I cannot describe, and if I could it would prove past comprehension. ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... culture imparts is beyond the comprehension of a child, and yet it is something so definite and engaging that a child may recognise its presence and feel its attraction. One of the special pieces of good fortune which fell to my boyhood was companionship with a man whose note of distinction, ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... just now,' I answered. 'I want a chart, Lee Fu. I want to see what you did. How you did it is quite beyond my comprehension.' ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... "treasures of knowledge:"—thus, he injected into the brain of his neophytes dates by the dozen and proper names—geographical ones in particular—by the score, impressing them on stubborn memories through the aid of some easily-learnt rhyme, or comic association, that made even the dullest comprehension retentive ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... ain't enough to dumbfound a codfish," exclaimed Bill. "Here's two total strangers, disguised as undertakers, actually accusin' us of stealin' our own Puddin'. Why, it's outside the bounds of comprehension!" ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... performance Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest," Bernard Shaw's "Man and Superman," John Galsworthy's "Justice," or Granville Barker's "The Voysey Inheritance"? Nobody! These plays are unthinkable for a State performance, because their distinction is utterly beyond the average comprehension of the ruling classes—and State performances are for the ruling classes. These plays are simply too good. Yet if you don't choose an old play you must choose one of these four plays, or make the worst of both worlds. ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... attraction for him; it simply did not repel him, when with it there was a flavor of humor or a useful point. Apparently it simply meant nothing to him; a mental attitude which is not difficult of comprehension ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... little boys so deluged with wisdom beyond their power of comprehension, but this was a special occasion, and as the general effect of the widow's remarks was to stir up in all a determination to do their best just where they were, her aim had been accomplished. Pat, in particular, was encouraged. Perhaps he was in line of promotion. ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... to understand the rapidity with which large numbers are assembled in Afghanistan for fighting purposes, so the dispersing of an Afghan army together with its attendant masses of tribal levies in flight is almost beyond comprehension; men who have been actually engaged in hand-to-hand combat dispose of their arms in the villages they pass through, and meet their pursuers with melons or other fruit in their hands, While they adopt the ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... seemed able to understand that all these infirmities were directly caused by the want of proper exercise and from the gluttonous habit of overloading their stomachs with foods of many kinds and meat especially. Apparently it was beyond their comprehension that nature commanded them to improve their physiques for the benefit of coming generations. Men who professed to be athletes when they were past the age of thirty were considered childish, while the ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... man so surprisingly addressed half started from the thwart in his amazement. His face bent into an incredulous frown, scarce carrying comprehension, even as he approached the shore. As he left the boat, for an instant Pembroke's hand was half extended in greeting, yet a swift change came over his ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... rhetorician's rules—if they are rules—teach him not only to name his tools, but to use his tools, the capacity of his tools—their extent—their limit; and from an examination of the nature of the tools—(an examination forced on him by their constant presence)—force him, also, into scrutiny and comprehension of the material on which the tools are employed, and thus, finally, suggest and give birth to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... given us one of the best examples of popular scientific exposition that we remember seeing. His aim has been to produce an account of the chief modern applications of electricity without using technical language or making any statements which are beyond the comprehension of any reader of ordinary intelligence. In this he has succeeded to admiration, and his book may be strongly commended to all who wish to realise what electricity means and does in our daily ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... they would probably have been self-constrained to take them off, under the unusual circumstance of being permitted to hold conversation with well-dressed persons. It is my belief that not a single bumpkin of them all (the moustached soldier always excepted) had the remotest comprehension of what they had been fighting for, or how they had deserved to be shut up in that dreary hole; nor, possibly, did they care to inquire into this latter mystery, but took it as a godsend to be suffered to lie here in a heap ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a generous principle. It is a principle that gives men local duties to discharge, and invests them at the same time with general supervision, and excites a healthy sense of responsibility and comprehension. It is a principle that has produced a wise and true spirit of statesmanship in all countries in which it has ever been applied. It is a principle eminently favourable to liberty, because local affairs are left to be dealt with by local bodies, and cannot be interfered ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... told why she did as she was asked. Perhaps the very strangeness of the girl made her uncomfortable in her presence; perhaps in her sour and withered heart there was yet some little soundness of pity and comprehension; or perhaps it was only that she had said her say, and was anxious to get to her friends below, and shake from her soul the dust of any possible complicity with circumstance in moulding the destinies of ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... and made him hasten home. At table at home they had secret signs that referred to their secret world. They were living in the first love of youth with all its sweet secrecy, and smiled at one another in youthful, stealthy comprehension, as though the whole world were watching them and must learn nothing. If their feet touched under the table, their eyes met and Ellen would blush like a young girl. Her affection was so great that she could not bear it ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... secured by Act of Parliament. Nay, many Churchmen, who had hitherto been distinguished by their inflexible attachment to every gesture and every word prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer, now declared themselves favourable, not only to toleration, but even to comprehension. The dispute, they said, about surplices and attitudes, had too long divided those who were agreed as to the essentials of religion. When the struggle for life and death against the common enemy was over, it would be found that the Anglican ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... signified comprehension, for the struggle between the great range-holders across the frontier and the smaller settlers who with legal right invaded their cattle runs was just over. It had been fought out bitterly with dynamite and rifles, and when at last with the aid of the United ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... legends, which in themselves indicate no faith whatever in anything deeply seated. It would be difficult, I think, for any highly civilised man, who had not studied Thought deeply, and in a liberal spirit, to approach in the least to a rational comprehension of a real Gipsy mind. During my life it has been my fortune to become intimate with men who were "absolutely" or "positively" free-thinkers—men who had, by long study and mere logic, completely freed themselves from any mental tie whatever. Such men are rare; it requires ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... of a torrent as being broken by pebbles in its bed. There were momentary hesitancies, and a few easy French words, such as pardon? pourquoi donc? c'est permis? alors, were introduced to flatter the comprehension of the audience; but for the rest his fluency—and at all junctures, even the most unlikely—was simply astounding. Few people, speaking in their native tongue, can ever have commanded so facile an eloquence. What chance had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... years), Clarendon's post-Restoration policy itself would not have been the failure that it was. But it is certain that on the events of his own middle age he looked with the keenest discernment, and with the widest comprehension. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... whose special studies lie in other directions. And the adoption of this course may be the more advisable, because, notwithstanding its great deserts, and indeed partly on account of them, the 'Origin of Species' is by no means an easy book to read—if by reading is implied the full comprehension of an author's meaning. ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... idea of a young and beautiful girl throwing her affections away upon a faded widower like himself, was absurd." However, as the days went on, Milverton began to be extremely attentive to Blanche; asked her opinion about things quite beyond her comprehension; took long walks with her, and assured Dunsford privately that "Blanche had a great deal more in her than most people supposed, and that she was becoming an excellent companion." Who does not recognize the process by which clever men persuade themselves into ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... into the story of his desires and the details of conditions which outside influences had been powerless to remedy— because they were outside influences. Some man of sufficient vigor and comprehension, acting from the center of disturbance, must be armed with the power to undertake the housecleaning, and for a while must do work that would not be pretty. As far as he was personally concerned, a pardon after trial would be a matter of ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... SPECTATOR says there's none. I am going on with a lot of island work, exulting in the knowledge of a new world, 'a new created world' and new men; and I am sure my income will DECLINE and FALL off; for the effort of comprehension is death to the intelligent public, and sickness ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that all things are predetermined by God, not through his free will or absolute fiat, but from the very nature of God or infinite power. I have further, where occasion afforded, taken care to remove the prejudices, which might impede the comprehension of my demonstrations. Yet there still remain misconceptions not a few, which might and may prove very grave hindrances to the understanding of the concatenation of things, as I have explained it above. I have therefore thought it worth while to bring these ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... Frank aided comprehension by touching the top of his own head when speaking about the loss of hair on the part of the noted scientist; and then made rings with his fingers and thumbs which he clapped to his eyes as though looking through a pair ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... his nearest foot kicked Sandusky. The big fellow looked up and around. Either by chance or in following the sound of the last voice, his glance fell on de Spain. He scrutinized for a suspicious instant the burning eyes and the red mark low on the cheek. While he did so—comprehension dawning on him—his enormous hands, forsaking the pile of chips with which both had been for a moment busy, flattened out, palms down, on the faro-table. Logan tried to rise. Scott's hand rested heavily on him. ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... verbiage which retard, rather than facilitate, human thought and progress. They have grown up anyhow; but what we now want is a made language, constructed on scientific principles, and so easy of comprehension that any intelligent person can acquire ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... years, been formulated into certain established rules, consecrated by cruel necessity, the adherents of the old system have completely lost the natural conception of private property, the conception which is inherent in the nature of things. It passes their comprehension that, though force can possess and make use of whom it pleases, yet the free and untrammelled use of one's own powers is the inalienable property of everyone, and that consequently any political or social system which overrides this inalienable personal ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
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