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More "Credible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seem to give a more credible account of the matter, who place "One" among the goods in their double list of goods and bads: which philosophers, in fact, ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... that, on casting up the number of odd—or appendant volumes, (as 2 or 12 more) to the several articles in the catalogue—he found it to amount to four thousand. Now, prima facie, it seems hardly credible that there should have been such a number, in such a library, not deserving of mention as distinct articles: but it must be taken into consideration that Mr. Heber bought many lots for the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... torture if he does not plead guilty, and own the crime that is laid to his charge, without being so much as told what it is; whereas, in all other courts, where tortures are used, the charge is declared to the party accused before he is tortured; nor are they ever inflicted without a credible evidence of his guilt. But in the Inquisition, a man is frequently tortured upon the deposition of a person whose evidence would be admitted in no other court, and in all cases without hearing the charge. As my ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... one; it is scarce credible what dreadful cases happened in particular families every day. People in the rage of the distemper, or in the torment of their swellings, which was indeed intolerable, running out of their own government, ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... caught "a heavy load of the faver." The Irish are particularly apprehensive of contagious maladies. The moment it had been discovered that Jemmy was infected, his schoolfellows avoided him with a feeling of terror scarcely credible, and the inhuman master was delighted at any circumstance, however calamitous, that might afford him a pretext for driving the friendless ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... tell them of the grave as a place where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest, and they will understand. But will they understand if you tell them that we triumph over the grave because God dies with us and yet never dies? I fear it will need something clearer and more credible than this to make the undertaker ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... but they were dealt with in public as if actuated only by the loftiest principles. Behind their ancient shields, ostentatiously emblazoned with fidelity to church and king, they thrust forth their itching palms with the mendicity which would be hardly credible, were it not attested by the monuments more perennial than brass, of their own ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... John Russell, on the 23rd of February, brought the matter of the great unrepresented constituencies before parliament by moving for leave to bring in a bill "to enable Leeds, Manchester, and Birmingham to return members to the House of Commons." It seems scarcely credible to us now-a-days, that this reasonable motion was negatived ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... the name is an English one, and 'tis scarce credible that in America, where our tongue is unknown, any region can be ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... by his peers, and that scenes disgraceful to public justice were enacted in the retiring room. It required all the authority of the court to repress antipathies so openly avowed. The rancour excited by this question is scarcely credible: a gentleman addressed the judge from the box before he was sworn, and asked if he was expected to deliver a verdict with twice convicted felons? Appearances of partiality and corruption were quoted to prove the pernicious effect of their admission. The magistrates, usually hostile ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... it for granted that when one tells a lie, he expects to be believed. There must, then, be some thing or circumstance which can help to make his lies credible. Now, my dear princess, in the present instance, while I was looking you in the face and counting the tears upon your very beautiful cheeks, you deliberately told me that you were not weeping. There was, therefore, not even the shadow of a thing, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... very hard; the rains hindering me many days, nay, sometimes weeks together: but I thought I should never be perfectly secure till this wall was finished; and it is scarce credible what inexpressible labour every thing was done with, especially the bringing piles out of the woods, and driving them into the ground; for I made them much bigger than ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... breast and roars; he does not twist gun-barrels; his domestic habits are much simplified; his appearance here is relatively as unimportant as Mr. Pendennis's in the "Newcomes"; he is a deposed hero; and Mr. Du Chaillu pushes on to Ashango-Land without him. Otherwise, moreover, the narrative is quite credible, and, so far, unattractive, though there is still enough of incident to hold the idle, and enough of information in the appendices concerning the characteristics of the African skulls collected by Du Chaillu, the geographical and astronomical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... a victim to swift vagaries of thought and conflicting emotions. She was riding away with a freebooter, a road-agent, to be held for ransom. The fact was scarcely credible. She could not shake the dread of nameless peril. She tried not to recall Roberts's words, yet they haunted her. If she had not been so handsome, he had said! Joan knew she possessed good looks, but they had never caused her any particular concern. ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... the fire. (This time the Judge did not rule out the word.) Then his rifle had exploded in his hands, the bullet going just past his ear. The charge had scorched his neck. It was a simple story. The thing might have happened. It was entirely credible. There were no contradictions in it. But the manner of Jeffrey Whiting, telling it, gave no feeling of reality. It was not the manner of a man telling one of the most stirring things of his life. He was not telling what he saw and remembered and felt and was now living through. ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... balm to the bodies of holy martyrs; and how according to many of the old stories nothing short of the sword could take the life of God's maidens. These ancient histories rested on a sure foundation. But if such tales had been related of the fifteenth century they might have appeared less credible. And this damsel does not seem to have employed them to adorn her adventure. She was probably content to say that another woman had ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... in a log camp at the carry, and had little fear that his supplies would be molested. It was hardly credible, either, that a man with as extensive property interests as Colonel Ward possessed would dare to destroy wantonly the goods of a railroad company in the strong position of the Poquette road. However, Parker resolved to make a survey at once, in order to put the swampers at work chopping ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... of an Epic Poem should abound in Circumstances that are both credible and astonishing; or as the French Criticks chuse to phrase it, the Fable should be filled with the Probable and the Marvellous. This Rule is as fine and just as any in Aristotle's ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Molares, one of the best and most credible of all the pilots, testified that he saw a sea-chart which Columbus had made of the coast of Paria, and he believed that all governed themselves ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... of these values. Nor does he consider such reasoning admissible; he would, so to speak, trim his values according to his cloth, because to him such values are of no great value. The unbeliever starts from the other end, and as likely as not with the question: Is a case of human parthenogenesis credible? and this he would call going straight to the heart of the matter. Now Pascal's method is, on the whole, the method natural and right for the Christian; and the opposite method is that taken by Voltaire. It is worth while ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... in tears: "Be it known to you that if I knew I had written or preached anything against the law and holy Mother Church, I would humbly recant; may God be my witness to this; but I always desired that they should show me doctrines better and more credible than those I have written and taught. If such be shown ...
— John Hus - A brief story of the life of a martyr • William Dallmann
... same that the women might not touch: in a word, a body quite different from a human body, which we know cannot pass through walls, or appear or disappear at pleasure. What then could their hands or eyes inform them of in this case? Besides, is it credible that God should raise a body imperfectly, with the very wounds in it of which it died? Or, if the wounds were such as destroyed the body before, how could a natural body subsist with ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock
... on the day of his reception into the French Academy, that he had never read. Many protested, some smiled, and a large number of persons refused to believe the assertion. Yet the statement was actually quite credible, for the foundation and basis of M. Loti rest on a naive simplicity which makes him very sensitive to the things of the outside world, and gives him a perfect comprehension of simple souls. He is ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... recorded for the modern student in a kind of shorthand only, or not at all. Even for Pausanias, visiting Greece before its direct part in affairs was quite played out, much had perished or grown dim—of its art, of the truth of its outward history, above all of its religion as a credible or practicable thing. And yet Pausanias visits Greece under conditions as favourable for observation as those under which later travellers, Addison or Eustace, proceed to Italy. For him the impress of life in those old Greek cities is not less vivid and entire than that of medieval Italy to ourselves; ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... to the tales told by the Egyptians, any man may accept them to whom such things appear credible; as for me, it is to be understood throughout the whole of the history 103 that I write by hearsay that which is reported by the people in each place. The Egyptians say that Demeter and Dionysos are rulers of the world below; and the Egyptians are also the first who reported the doctrine that ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... and Letters carried by Mr. Rob[in]son would have been attended with very unhappy if not fatal effects, had not this Town been so attentive as to have Contradicted those false accounts by the depositions of many credible persons under Oath. But it cannot be supposed that a Community will be so Attentive but upon the most Alarming Events: In general Individuals are following their private concerns, while it is to be feared the restless Adversaries are forming the most dangerous Plans for the ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... without an army, without a legion, without a single cohort, to secure his conquest, and that he should sit down contented with an empty glory and the tribute of an indigent people, without any proper means of securing a continuance of that small acquisition? This is not credible. But his conduct here, as well as in Germany, discovers his purpose in both expeditions: for by them he confirmed the Roman dominion in Gaul, he gained time to mature his designs, and he afforded his party in Rome an opportunity of promoting his interest and exaggerating ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and drivel over his own slothful and self-willed prejudices, as to believe that he will make a single convert to the beauty of Legitimacy, that is, of lawless power and savage bigotry, when he himself is obliged to apologize for the horrors he describes, and even render his descriptions credible to the modern reader by referring to the authentic history of these delectable times? He is indeed so besotted as to the moral of his own story, that he has even the blindness to go out of his way to have a fling at flints and dungs (the contemptible ingredients, as he would have us believe, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... beginning to see that no amount of eloquence, or faith, or erudition, or authority, can make the records of barbarism satisfactory to the heart and brain of this century. They have also found that a falsehood in Hebrew in no more credible than in plain English. People at last are beginning to be satisfied that cruel laws were never good laws, no matter whether inspired or uninspired. The Christian religion, like every other religion depending upon inspired writings, is wrecked upon the facts ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... became famous at a comparatively early age, a large crop of stories of his early feats in the subjection and use of horses was cultivated by persons who knew him as a boy. Many of these, doubtless, are entirely credible; few of them are so extraordinary that they might not be true of any clever boy who loved horses and ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... prayer and aspiration after God, in all these emotions and exercises, has the great proof in himself that such emotions, such relationship, can never be put an end to. The roots have gone down through the temporal, and have laid hold of the Eternal. Anything seems to me to be more credible than that a man who can look up and say, 'My Father,' shall be crushed by what befalls the mere outside of him; anything seems to me to be more believable than to suppose that the nature which is capable of these elevating emotions ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... Patagonia, covering so many thousand square leagues of surface, and which, if heaped into a ridge, would form a mountain-range almost equal to the Cordillera, that the amount of denudation becomes credible. The valleys within this range often follow anticlinal but rarely synclinal lines; that is, the strata on the two sides more often dip from the line of valley than towards it. On the flanks of the range, the valleys most frequently run neither along anticlinal nor synclinal ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... nourish the seed, the sun must warm it, the rain must moisten it, and man must have the strength to cultivate it, and the organs to eat it, and the stomach to digest it, and the blood-vessels to circulate it, and so on. Is it credible that all these ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... Beddoes' genius was essentially lyrical: he had imagination, the gift of style, the mastery of rhythm, a strange choiceness and curiosity of phrase. But of really dramatic power he had nothing. He could neither conceive a coherent plot, nor develop a credible situation. He had no grasp on human nature, he had no conception of what character might be in men and women, he had no faculty of expressing emotion convincingly. Constantly you find the most beautiful poetry where it is absolutely inappropriate, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... persecution. This can only be determined by an analysis of the evidence. If, upon an impartial review of the cases of outrage which have been collected, it shall appear probable that the conduct of the Friends was sufficiently violent to make it credible that the legislature spoke the truth, when it declared that "the prudence of this court was exercised onely in making provission to secure the peace & order heere established against theire attempts, whose designe ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... to mention here that, according to "Spadacrene Anglica" the Tuewhit Well was not discovered by Captain (or Sir) William Slingsby, it was not discovered near the close of the 16th Century, and Dr. Bright did not write an account of it. It is hardly credible that the history as given in the extract from the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" is actually derived from "Spadacrene Anglica." Yet such is the case. Owing to the great rarity of the first edition of that book, and the fact that the later editions were all, more or less, abridged or incomplete, a series ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... Borneo, and the negroes of the Gold Coast. There must be some reason to account for this widespread tradition. Some of the stars are known to be slightly variable, and one of the fainter stars in the cluster may have shone more brightly in olden time;—the gaseous spectrum of Pleione renders it credible that this star may once have had great brilliancy. Alcyone, now the brightest star in the cluster, was not mentioned by Ptolemy among the four brightest Pleiads of his day. The six now visible to ordinary sight are ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... One, but scarce credible, quality of this Oyl, he affirms to be, that though it be boiling, yet one may run ones hand into it without scalding; to which he adds, that it hath a very healing {13} Vertue for cuttings, lameness, &c., the part affected being anointed therewith. One thing more ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... may be expressed by the arrival of his ghost." Now that Milton (an adorer of Shakespeare's genius, as everyone knows) should have taken so deep an impression from the play that its theme possessed him and he longed to transfer it to Epic, is credible enough. That he, with his classical bent, should choose to attempt in Drama an improvement upon the most "classical" of all Shakespeare's tragedies seems to me scarcely credible. But if the credibility of this be granted, ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... It seems scarcely credible, but the fact is so, that you deny this law so plainly written, and in the face of it have the hardihood to declare that "though slavery is not specifically, yet it is virtually, forbidden in ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... with herself and her own attitude towards existence. She became mentally and imaginatively active to an intense degree. She marvelled at existence as she had never marvelled before, and while seeming suddenly to understand it better she was far more than ever baffled by it. Was it credible that the accident of a lad losing control of a horse could have such huge and awful consequences on two persons utterly unconnected with the lad? A few seconds sooner, a few seconds later—and naught would ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... somewhat full array of statistics in relation to the Peanut. This, however, was soon found to be impracticable. The more we studied the few data at hand, the more were we convinced of their utter unreliability. The fact is, so far as the writer is aware, there are no credible data of this crop existing. No authoritative and systematic attempt to gather and compile the statistics of the Peanut has ever been made, and until this is done we shall never know its full extent and value. The "estimates"—mere guesses—of certain mercantile houses and newspapers, ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones
... even meritorious, if they could increase either the vividness of conception or the sincerity of belief in their readers. A due consideration of that well-known weakness of the popular mind, which renders a statement credible in proportion to the multitude of local and circumstantial details which accompany it, may lead us to look with some indulgence on the errors, however fatal in their issue to the cause they were intended to advance, of those weak teachers, who thought the acceptance of their ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... Baldr is really a hero transformed into a God; (3) that the legend is a solar myth with or without Christian colouring; (4) that it is entirely borrowed from Mediaeval Greek and Christian sources. This last theory is too ingenious to be credible; and with regard to the third, there is nothing essentially Christian in the chief features of the legend, while the solar idea leaves too much unexplained. The references to the myth ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... theory, upon which I will hazard no opinion. But I do not conceive the power would be supernatural. Let me illustrate what I mean from an experiment which Paracelsus describes as not difficult, and which the author of the Curiosities of Literature cites as credible:—A flower perishes; you burn it. Whatever were the elements of that flower while it lived are gone, dispersed, you know not whither; you can never discover nor re-collect them. But you can, by chemistry, out of the burnt dust of that flower, ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... seemed to come from Dare which bore a remarkable resemblance to the words, 'Ho, ho, Havill!' It was hardly credible, and yet, could he be mistaken? Havill turned. Dare's eye was ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... own, that you would not have arrived at the highest Rank of the Profession if you had not been its Scholars; own, that in a few Lessons from it, you learned the most beautiful Expressions, the most refin'd Taste, the most noble Action, and the most exquisite Graces: Own, (though it be hardly credible) that the Heart corrects the Defects of Nature, since it softens a Voice that's harsh, betters an indifferent one, and perfects a good one: Own, when the Heart sings you cannot dissemble, nor has ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... and language: for as to the irruptions of the Goths, Vandals, and Lombards, in the fifth and sixth centuries, besides a profound silence in history concerning any successful attempt of those barbarians upon this spot, it is scarce credible, that any of them should have either wished or endeavoured to settle in a country, perhaps far less hospitable than that which they had just forsaken, especially after they had opened to themselves a way into the fertile plains ...
— Account of the Romansh Language - In a Letter to Sir John Pringle, Bart. P. R. S. • Joseph Planta, Esq. F. R. S.
... ordinances the beauty of the cathedrals and churches was injured to an extent hardly credible; the monuments of the dead were defaced, and brasses torn away, in the iconoclastic fury which then raged; the very tombs were violated; and the havoc made of church ornaments, and destruction of the fine painted glass with which most church windows then abounded, may in some degree ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... that many waters cannot quench. Either would cross all the continents and oceans of the world to-day to find the other; but as they remember how they met for the first time it seems too queer to be credible. And they lie back in their easy chairs and ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... awake? I don't know. I tell you I am puzzled. I have read "The Woman in White," "The Strange Story"—not to mention that story "Stranger than Fiction" in the Cornhill Magazine—that story for which THREE credible witnesses are ready to vouch. I have had messages from the dead; and not only from the dead, but from people who never existed at all. I own I am in a state of much bewilderment: but, if you please, will proceed with my ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... metaphysical abstractions which appealed to the effete Victorian composers, but in plums. And, mind you, not Carlsbad, but honest Worcestershire plums, without any Teutonic taint. Mr. JULIUS HARRISON'S patriotic example is not likely to be lost on his brother composers. Indeed it is asserted on credible authority that Mr. GRANVILLE BANTOCK, who has completely forsworn all Oriental and exotic subjects, is engaged on a gigantic symphony, with choral interludes, entitled "Yorkshire Pudding;" and that Mr. JOSEF HOLBROOKE ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... one credible reading of the situation, but Alford let the summer pass in this pleasant dreaming without waking up till too late to the pleasanter reality. It will seem strange enough, but it is true, that it was no part of his dream to fancy that Mrs. Yarrow was in love with ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... mourning nationwide (see {high moby}). The Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden is maintaining one 'live' ITS site at its computer museum (right next to the only TOPS-10 system still on the Internet), so ITS is still alleged to hold the record for OS in longest continuous use (however, {{WAITS}} is a credible rival for this palm). 2. A mythical image of operating-system perfection worshiped by a bizarre, fervent retro-cult of old-time hackers and ex-users (see {troglodyte}, sense 2). ITS worshipers manage somehow to continue believing that ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... cabman's eating-house on the outer boulevard I got credit for my midday meal. Supper I was supposed not to require, sitting down nightly to the delicate table of some rich acquaintances. This arrangement was extremely ill-considered. My fable, credible enough at first, and so long as my clothes were in good order, must have seemed worse than doubtful after my coat became frayed about the edges, and my boots began to squelch and pipe along the restaurant floors. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that they might have made their way over land to this point, but it seemed scarcely credible—and then, how could they have come into possession of Virginia Maxon, whom every report except this last agreed was still in the hands of Ninaka and Barunda. There was always the possibility that the ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to be disappointed? It did not seem credible that the great man would make a special stop-off on his way to the coast, just ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... not myself the author of what I write but published things digested and drawn up by others. As to the first part of this objection I assure the reader I have taken nothing from any man without mentioning his name, except some very few relations and particular observations received from credible persons who desired not to be named; and these I have always expressly distinguished in my books from what I relate as of my own observing. And as to the latter I think it so far from being a diminution to one of my education and employment to have what I write revised and corrected by ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... Bochartus, whose letter on this subject he has printed at the end of the fourth AEneid, to which I refer your lordship and the reader. Yet the credit of Virgil was so great that he made this fable of his own invention pass for an authentic history, or at least as credible as anything in Homer. Ovid takes it up after him even in the same age, and makes an ancient heroine of Virgil's new-created Dido; dictates a letter for her, just before her death, to the ingrateful fugitive; and, very unluckily for himself, is for measuring ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... that this was extraordinary and hardly credible, yet it happened exactly as I have set it down, and, furthermore, I enjoyed the experience. For three hours the thing and I conversed, and not once during that time did my hair stop pulling away at ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... Felixmartes of late mediaeval romance, that the behaviour of Don Quixote in the Sierra Morena, ever had any serious models in reality? Nay, more difficult still to believe—because the whole madness of individuals is more credible than the half-madness of the whole world—is it possible to believe that, as the poems of innumerable trouveres and troubadours, minnesingers and Italian poets, as the legion of mediaeval romances of the cycles of Charlemagne, Arthur, and Amadis would have it, that during so long a period ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... indeed sat still, for the most part, and interposed very little; sometimes a word or two. But the most discerning opinion was, that he did herein as he rowed for having had his face first to the Conventicle Bill, he turned short to the Lord Ross's. So that, indeed, it is credible, the King, in prospect of diminishing the Duke of York's influence in the Lord's House, in this, or any future matter, resolved, and wisely enough at present, to weigh up and lighten the Duke's efficacy, by coming himself in person. ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... said it," said Amber grimly, "Row on." After all, he considered, it might still be Labertouche. At first blush it had seemed hardly credible that the Englishman could have gained a footing in that vast pile; and yet, it would be like him to seek precisely such a spot—the very heart of the conspiracy of the Gateway, if ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... pillows. A black handkerchief was just twined round his forehead, for his head had been shaved, except a few curls on the side and front, which looked stark and lustreless. He was so thin and pale, and his eyes and cheeks were so wan and hollow, that it was scarcely credible that in so short a space of time a man could have become such a wreck. When he saw Katherine he involuntarily dropped his eyes, but extended his hand to her with some effort of earnestness. She was almost as pale as he, but she took his hand. It was ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... local ailment, had proved thoroughly convincing to a group of women who had become interested in her. Bessie was evidently quite normal mentally and apparently affectionately regarded her only near relatives—this father and brother. Her story appeared thus entirely credible. The judge stated that he had been approached outside of court by these women, who in their righteous indignation were insistent upon the need of dire punishment of the outrageous ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... time when a Bible was very costly, etc., the name of an owner who, by the handwriting and spelling, must have been an illiterate person or a child, followed by the date of the book itself. Accordingly, this uneducated person or young child seemed to be the first owner, which in many cases was not credible. Looking one day at a Barker's[418] Bible of 1599, I saw an {265} inscription in a child's writing, which certainly belonged to a much later date. It was "Martha Taylor, her book, giuen me by Granny Scott to keep for her sake." With this the usual verses, followed ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... to furnish a brigade, say, of the Women's Emergency Corps? She had perceived that Rust was an English officer masquerading as a Frenchman, yet she could not have thought that he was a German spy. Why did she not ask him point blank what he was doing in that galley. She has never supplied me with a credible explanation, She pleads, with obvious insincerity, the instructions of Dawson, which in the most reprehensible way granted to her the vaguest of roving commissions. She parades her duty before me in the most ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... and I went to church, (where we had not been for many years on a week-day,) and, with a very large congregation, were disappointed of the service. But (what will be scarce credible) by the carelessness of a 'prentice, in our absence, we had a piece of fine cambric carried off by a shop-lifter: so little impression was yet made on the minds of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... should follow common law procedure, as before the reign of Edward VI. But by common law one witness was sufficient. The confession of confederates was full proof, even though not subscribed, if it were attested by credible witnesses. Indeed, remarked Popham, echoing Coke, 'of all other proofs the accusation of one, who by his confession first accuseth himself, is the strongest. It hath the force of a verdict of twelve men.' Coke himself later, when, as Mr. ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... The supposition that all these types were rapidly differentiated out of Lacertilia, in the time represented by the passage from the Palaeozoic to the Mesozoic formation, appears to me to be hardly more credible, to say nothing of the indications of the existence of Dinosaurian forms in the Permian rocks ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... It was at least conceivable that a woman who had killed her husband might coolly proceed to pack her trunk, and thereafter fetch the cab which was to remove herself and her effects from the scene of the tragedy. But was it credible that a woman of so much presence of mind, to whom every minute might make the difference between life and death, would, having found her cab, actually drive out of her way to inquire after a sick friend, or even a dying lover, before going home to pick up her luggage and to ascertain ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... the manner of their delivery. Thoroughly natural, impulsive, and seemingly artless, though that manner always appeared at the moment, it is due to the Reader as an artist to assert that it was throughout the result of a scarcely credible amount of forethought and preparation. It is thus invariably indeed with every great proficient in the histrionic art, even with those who are quite erroneously supposed by the outer public to trust nearly everything to the momentary impulses ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... the boy about his adventure, which evidently they did not believe in. The boy accepted their raillery with seriousness, making no reply. He had a sense of the fitness of things and knew that one who professes to have seen a dead man rise from his seat and blow out a candle is not a credible witness. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... perfumer, and a liar to boot. Know that I have never seen anywhere such hideous witches as in Cashmere. The female race is remarkably ugly." Instead of adding to such conflicting evidence, I have endeavoured to subpoena a credible witness to speak for herself; and the right of private judgment being thus reserved to the reader, Gulabie will no doubt be charitably dealt with, and will find her proper position somewhere within the limits of a "hideous witch" and ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... appellation. And as an uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle; nor can such a proof be destroyed, or the miracle rendered credible, but by an opposite proof which is superior. The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention,) 'That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... I was in such a passion, I hardly knew what I said at the moment. The thing's scarce credible; but, that this low fellow is on secret terms with her, is as sure ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... state of society in which it grew has likewise disappeared—the land-sharks, the claim speculators, the town-proprietors, the trappers, and the stage-drivers have emigrated or have undergone metamorphosis. The wild excitement of '56 is a tradition hardly credible to those who did not feel its fever. But the most evanescent things may impress themselves on human beings, and in the results which they thus produce become immortal. There is a last page to all our works, but to the ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... land's divergent parties, loth To grant them speech, they were such idle troops; The friable and the grumous, dizzards both. Men were good sticks his mastery wrought from hoops; Some serviceable, none credible on oath. The silly preference they nursed to die In beds he scorned, and led where they should lie. If magic made them pliable for his use, Magician he could be by planned surprise. For do they see the deuce in human ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... himself that the incredible was credible, the impossible possible—that it was done! done! done! and that he loved a woman in an hour because, in an hour, he had read her innocence as one reads through crystal, and his eyes were opened for the first time upon loveliness ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... issued to Thomas Cromwell, empowering him to hold a general visitation of all churches, monasteries, and collegiate bodies. The evidence gathered of the shocking disorders obtaining in the cloisters of both sexes is on the whole credible and well substantiated. Nevertheless these disorders furnished rather the pretext than the real reason for the dissolutions that followed. Cromwell boasted that he would make his king the richest in Christendom, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... and certain, independently of him. It was, accordingly, the law, in the state where Mary Erskine lived, that there should be three witnesses present, when any person signed a will; and also that when signing the paper, the man should say that he knew that it was his will. If three credible persons thus attested the reality and honesty of the transaction, it was thought sufficient, in all ordinary ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... article in the creed of science, and to disbelieve whatever is at variance with those uniform laws, whatever contradicts a complete induction, is an imperative, intellectual duty. A particular miracle is credible to him alone who already believes in supernatural agency. Its credibility rests on an assumption—the existence of such agency. But our most comprehensive scientific experience has detected no such agency. There is no miracle in nature; ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... "It is scarcely credible, that in a climate like that of Ireland, and at a period so far advanced in civilisation as the end of Elizabeth's reign, the greater part of the natives should go naked. Yet this is rendered certain by ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... hear denying that the blood, aye, the whole mass of the blood, may pass through the substance of the lungs, even as the nutritive juices percolate the liver, asserting such a proposition to be impossible, and by no means to be entertained as credible, I reply, with the poet, that they are of that race of men who, when they will, assent full readily, and when they will not, by no manner of means; who, when their assent is wanted, fear, and when it is not, fear not ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... blossomed into life and talk and clatter. This the Toll House?—with its city throng, its jostling shoulders, its infinity of instant business in the bar? The mind would not receive it! The heartfelt bustle of that hour is hardly credible; the thrill of the great shower of letters from the post- bag, the childish hope and interest with which one gazed in all these strangers' eyes. They paused there but to pass: the blue- clad China-boy, the San Francisco magnate, the mystery in the dust coat, the secret memoirs in tweed, ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... might lead his disciples to believe that he had been miraculously translated; but tradition goes on to say that one of the brazen slippers of the philosopher was thrown up by the volcano, thus revealing his subterfuge. Another tradition of far more credible aspect asserts that Empedocles retreated from Italy, returning to the home of his fathers in Peloponnesus to die there obscurely. It seems odd that the facts regarding the death of so great a man, at so comparatively late a period, should be obscure; but this, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... traffickers continued to fraudulently recruit victims for work as dancers in cabarets and nightclubs on short-term "artiste" visas, for work in pubs and bars on employment visas, or for illegal work on tourist or student visas; there were credible reports of female domestic workers from India, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines forced to work excessively long hours and denied proper compensation tier rating: Tier 2 Watch List - Cyprus does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... the said Act were required on any information being made before them by one or more credible persons, against any person charged with any of the offences aforesaid, to transmit it under their hands and seals to one of his Majesty's principal Secretaries of State, who by the same Act is required to lay such information and return ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... more definite. Pete Lamoury, a French-Canadian, whom Mr. Edwards had hired as a drover, and abruptly discharged, was spreading stories about his former employer which made Blackbeard, the pirate, seem like a babe by comparison. Pete was not a very credible witness; but still, building upon a suspicion that already existed, he succeeded in ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... them for a definite purpose, but because when we come to consider these processes in detail, and view them in the light of the only purposes they suggest, we find them to be such that a God who could deliberately have been guilty of them would be a God too absurd, too monstrous, too mad to be credible. (Religion as a Credible ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... of the verses: fifteen stanzas succeed one another without a single full-stop, or a real pause in sense or sound. The beautiful and significant little poem called The Patriot: an old Story, is a narrative and parable at once, and only too credible and convincing as each. Respectability holds in its three stanzas all that is vital and enviable in the real "Bohemia," and is the first of several poems of escape, which culminate in Fifine at the Fair. Both here and in another short suggestive poem, A Light Woman (which ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... a possible alteration in British neutral policy was increasing. July 11, Adams reported that he had learned "from a credible source" that the British Cabinet might soon "take new ground[903]." This despatch if it reached Seward previous to the Cabinet of July 22, presumably added strength to his conviction of the inadvisability of now issuing the proclamation. In that Cabinet, Seward ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... Douaumont was occupied without resistance and that it was abandoned under orders before there had been a decision to hold Verdun. I do not pretend to know whether this is true or not, although I heard it on authority that was wholly credible, but the fact that the map discloses, that I saw for myself at Verdun, is that, save for Douaumont, none of the old forts have been taken and that the Germans have never been able to advance a foot from Douaumont or reach the other forts ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... but right to remind the reader, that for the sayings here attributed to Lord Byron, however natural and probable they may appear, there is not exactly the same authority of credible witnesses by which all the other details I have given of his ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... let us call in a credible witness of the effects of domestic cats on the bob white. The following is an eye-witness report, by Ernest B. Beardsley, in Outdoor Life for April, 1912. The locality ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... ordination, it plainly suggests that the power of Church rulers is very circumscribed. They have no right to refuse the laying on of hands to those whom God has called to the work of the gospel, and who, by their gifts and graces, give credible evidences of their holy vocation; and they are not at liberty to admit the irreligious or incompetent to ecclesiastical offices. In the sight of the Most High the ordination to the pastorate of an individual morally and mentally disqualified ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... change, is no point of Christian faith. But evill men under pretext that God can do any thing, are so bold as to say any thing when it serves their turn, though they think it untrue; It is the part of a wise man, to believe them no further, than right reason makes that which they say, appear credible. If this superstitious fear of Spirits were taken away, and with it, Prognostiques from Dreams, false Prophecies, and many other things depending thereon, by which, crafty ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be much more fitted than ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... witnesses seemed to them to be speaking the truth, and that they themselves believed the incidents referred to have happened. It is for this reason that we have inserted among the depositions printed in the appendix several cases which we might otherwise have deemed scarcely credible. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... on in the rear or by the side of the houses, and it was said that sometimes the dust of the streets was gathered up and washed to obtain the gold in it. An individual who certainly appeared credible, said that the first brick house ever built in Bendigo was torn down and the bricks crushed in order to obtain the gold in them; this gold amounted to three ounces per ton, and not only the house but its chimney yielded ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... from the first no ulterior political plans whatever. It was asserted at his very first appearance that he had sold himself for a round sum of money to the new burgesses and the coterie of Marius, and the charge looks very credible; but even were it false, it remains nevertheless significant that a suspicion of the sort, such as was never expressed against Saturninus and Sulpicius, attached to Cinna. In fact the movement, at the head of which he put himself, has altogether ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... educated there were better scholars than any brought up elsewhere. There were many English and American girls, besides Poles, Germans and West Indian Creoles. The war of 1860-64 left traces of strange animosity among the Northern and Southern children: it was hardly credible that such a spirit could animate young children so long removed from the immediate home influences that would otherwise have accounted for the feeling. Among the nuns were several English women, clever and deeply read, but softer-hearted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... summer are in the habit of coming thus far to collect and feed on the great grey moths (Bougongs) which are found on the rocks. They used to report that a fine available country lies to the east embosomed in mountains, rendered fertile by perpetual snow-fed streams. This is the more credible, as it is evident that between the Bougong range on the west and the Warragong range on the extreme east, towards us, there is a breadth ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... preserving their Off-spring than fight them; or at least by their mighty Noise, make a shew as if they would. This is but what we may observe in all other Birds. And thus far I think our Geranomachia or Pygmaeomachia looks like a true Story; and there is nothing in Homer about it, but what is credible. He only expresses himself, as a Poet should do; and if Readers will mistake his meaning, ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... symbols that gather round the Trinitarian idea, the image of a council at which mercy pleads as well as justice...." Mr. Chesterton defends what he calls Christianity not so much on the ground that it is credible, but on the ground that it is satisfying, ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... especially would it be impossible in the South. Imprisonment indefinitely and the probable confiscation of all property would no doubt be the sentence if, as in this suspected case, the traitoress were a Southern woman of means. But that seems scarcely credible. I have heard of the affair mentioned, but I refuse to believe any daughter of the ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... toughest steel that was ever made, the pressure would be so great that the metal would be squeezed like a liquid, and the mighty structure would collapse and fall down on the surface of the planet. It is not credible that any materials could exist capable of sustaining a stress so stupendous. The law of gravitation accordingly bids us search for a method by which the intensity of ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... changed to satisfaction. Evidently her straightforward mind accepted the story as perfectly credible. Marcella, with bitterness, knew herself far from comely enough to suggest perils. She looked old enough for the part she was playing, and the glove upon her hand might conceal ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... same time to a mother and her daughters, or several sisters, and in at least one instance to mother, daughter, and granddaughter; and Mormon theology teaches, too, that a man may lawfully marry his own sister. Yet it is not the worst of their crimes; we have it upon the testimony of credible witnesses—Christian citizens of Salt Lake City—that their temples and tithing-houses are 'built up by extortion and cemented with the blood of men, women, and children whose only offence was that they were not in sympathy with the unrighteous decrees of this usurping priesthood.' ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... both houses of parliament." Those living in and around London within a radius of eighty miles were allowed a fortnight; and so great was the enthusiasm displayed for the parliamentary cause that (in the words of Clarendon)(531) "it is hardly credible what a vast proportion of plate was brought in to their treasurers within ten days, there being hardly men enough to receive it or room to lay it in." It was in vain that Charles protested and threatened the citizens with the loss of their ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... life and talk and clatter. This the Toll House?—with its city throng, its jostling shoulders, its infinity of instant business in the bar? The mind would not receive it! The heartfelt bustle of that hour is hardly credible; the thrill of the great shower of letters from the post- bag, the childish hope and interest with which one gazed in all these strangers' eyes. They paused there but to pass: the blue- clad China-boy, the San Francisco magnate, the mystery in the dust coat, the secret memoirs ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this journey would be nearly intolerable, it must go on. He looked at the impassive cow-puncher getting ready to go and tying a rope on Pedro's neck to lead him, then he looked at the mountains where the runaways had vanished, and it did not seem credible to him that he had come into such straits. He was helped stiffly on the mare, and the three horses in single file took up their journey once more, and came slowly among the mountains The perpetual desert was ended, and they crossed a small brook, where they missed the trail. ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... evils of alcohol, that it kills insidiously, as if it were doing no harm, or as if it were doing good, while it is destroying life. Another great evil of it is that it assails so many different parts of the body. It hardly seems credible at first sight that the same agent can give rise to the many different kinds of diseases it does give rise to. In fact, the universality of its action has blinded even learned men as to its potency ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... which characterized England's dealings with Ireland at this time would be hardly credible, were it not on record in the acts passed in the reigns of Charles II. and William III., and embodied in the resolutions of the English parliament during Walpole's term of power. An impartial historian is forced to the conclusion that England had determined ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... Hollander, was taken by the Dunkirke; at seaven yeares end stole away in an English botome; after that saw both the Indies; for all this was taken by a Turks man of warre, put into the Gallies, and for ought I heare by credible report ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... was commissioned to write a biography of the poet, of which he completed 2 vols., but in so singular a fashion that the material with which he had been entrusted was withdrawn. The work, which is probably unique in the annals of biography, while giving a vivid and credible picture of S. externally, shows no true appreciation of him as a poet, and reflects with at least equal prominence the humorously eccentric personality of the author, which renders it entertaining in no common degree. Other works of H. were Memoirs ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... fact that some kind of fittings have been removed from the doors? They may have been removed by the late occupier, and the call to the police depot may have been made with the idea of securing a witness, and a credible one, to the presence of the crate here on the night of ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... England, x. 230. This statement, in itself sufficiently credible in view of Leicester's subsequent career, rests on a passage in a MS. from Simancas, which Mr. Froude ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... it seem credible to them, or even conceivable, that the whole forest region to which they belonged, containing many orders of trees differing altogether from their own tree system, besides plants and shrubs, and flowers and herbs ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... extirpate it, and use in place of it the titles used in England, namely, husbandmen, franklins or yeomen.' 'This was so plausible,' wrote Sir G. Fenton, 'that it was carried throughout the whole realm, in less time than might be thought credible, if expressed.' ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... gives a singular anecdote of a lion, which he says was related to him by very credible persons. About the year 1614 or 1615, two Christian slaves at Morocco made their escape, travelling by night, and hiding themselves in the tops of trees during the day, their Arab pursuers frequently passing by them. One night, ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... the way with Sybaris, many times as much, they say, would have been given to him as to Callias. These then are the evidences which the two sides produce, and we may assent to whichever of them we think credible. ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... in one man's mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era. Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again it will solve the problem of the age. The fact narrated must correspond to something in me to be credible or intelligible. We, as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner; must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... disgusted. It was scarcely credible that a passenger could have penetrated to the engine-room and interfered with the machinery there, yet he more than half believed that this outrageous thing had actually occurred. He got up after a brief silence and stalked stiffly ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... foresee that too! The prematurity of Chatterton's genius is, however, full as wonderful, as that such a prodigy as Rowley should never have been heard of till the eighteenth century. The youth and industry of the former are miracles, too, yet still more credible. There is not a symptom in the poems, but the old words, that savours of Rowley's age—change the old words for modern, and the whole construction is ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... may be said of certain works on cautery and acupuncture, both of which are still practised by Chinese doctors; and also of works on the pulse, the variations of which have been classified and allocated with a minuteness hardly credible. Special treatises on fevers, skin-diseases, diseases of the feet, eyes, heart, &c., are to be found in great quantities, as well as veterinary treatises on the treatment of diseases of the horse and the domestic buffalo. But in the whole range of Chinese medical literature there is nothing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... palpable had happened, there was a sort of vague scare in the house-party. It touched everybody, affecting them in different ways according to their characters, but raising in all an indignant protest against a fact hardly credible and a danger scarcely to be named. Not even Mrs. Baxter, entrenched in placidity and petticoats, quite escaped its influence; even Morewood's cynical humour hesitated to play on a situation so unexpected, possibly ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... ordinary affairs of life. In the present case it would appear that he was even too keen in looking after his own interests. Professor Craik charitably suggests that his poverty 'rather than rapacity may be supposed to have urged whatever of hardness there was in his proceedings.' It is credible enough that these proceedings made him highly unpopular with the native inhabitants of the district, and that they were not forgotten when the day of reckoning came. 'His name,' says Mr. Hardiman, on the authority of Trotter's Walks in Ireland,{3} ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... referring them to optical illusions or a disordered condition of the brain, making them subjective semblances instead of objective realities. But one is continually being puzzled and perplexed with evidence contradicting this hypothesis, which, upon any other subject a priori credible to the reason and judgment, would be received as satisfactory and decisive without a moment's hesitation. In truth, with all the light which science is able to shed upon it, and all the resolute shutting of the eyes at points which no elucidating theory is available ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... for the guilty part he played in the tragedy. He left St. Helena on July 25, 1821, and was presented on the eve of his departure with an address from the inhabitants. It has been said that document was inspired from Plantation House, but that is scarcely credible. Besides, we are not inclined to discount any credit Lowe and his friends and accomplices can derive from it. It does not glow with devotion nor regret at his resigning his command. Indeed, it is nothing more nor less than a cold, polite way of ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... that the things I say are truth: and hereafter have a care of receiving anything by hearsay only, lest you be found a publisher of those lies which are brought to you by others, and so render yourself the less credible; but be ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... seen a voluminous and secret correspondence which had been carried on between Louis XIV. and his favourite physician, De la Chambre, on this science. The faith of the monarch seems to have been great, and the purpose to which this correspondence tended was extraordinary indeed, and perhaps scarcely credible. Who will believe that Louis XIV. was so convinced of that talent which De la Chambre attributed to himself, of deciding merely by the physiognomy of persons, not only on the real bent of their character, but to what employment they were adapted, that the king entered ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and, after all, of most of the news that came to the capital from abroad and afar it was generally safe to disbelieve a full half, to discredit the third quarter, and to be justifiably sceptical as to the remaining portion. But, credible or incredible, all news is blown to Paris, as all roads lead to Rome, and in the fulness of time it got to be known in Paris that the Duke Louis de Nevers, the young, the beautiful, the brilliant, had ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... sir,' continued Dodson, with moral elevation in his air, 'you will consult your own conscience and your own feelings. We, Sir, we, are guided entirely by the statement of our client. That statement, Sir, may be true, or it may be false; it may be credible, or it may be incredible; but, if it be true, and if it be credible, I do not hesitate to say, Sir, that our grounds of action, Sir, are strong, and not to be shaken. You may be an unfortunate man, Sir, or you may be a designing one; but if I were called upon, as a juryman upon my oath, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... his wife little is known: but between him and his daughter there was an affection singularly close and tender. The gentleness of his manners when he was in the company of a few friends was such as seemed hardly credible to those who knew him only by his writings and speeches. The charm of his "softer hour" has been commemorated by one of those friends in imperishable verse. Though Atterbury's classical attainments were not great, his taste in English literature was excellent; and his admiration ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Reformed Congregation in the said Province of Maryland, within three months next before the exhibiting of such certificate, signed by the person administering such Sacrament, and attested by two credible witnesses, in pursuance of an Act of Parliament made in the thirteenth year of the reign of his late Majesty King George the Second, entitled, An Act for naturalizing such foreign Protestants, and others therein mentioned, as are settled or shall settle in any of his Majesty's ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... affliction as in 1712 swept over the house of Louis Quatorze occur less frequently now. But they still occur. We have not got beyond them. They are only bound to occur less and less frequently, till they become no more than matters of scarcely credible record. ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... should have seen him, hang it all! And then is it credible that a man who has committed a murder for the sake of sixty thousand francs should do away with the money in this way? If the hiding-place was such a good one—and it was, because we never discovered ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... name "black death" was given to the disease in the more northern parts of Europe—from the dark spots on the skin above mentioned—while in Italy it was called la mortalega grande ("the great mortality"). From Italy came almost the only credible accounts of the manner of living, and of the ruin caused among the people in their more private life, during the pestilence; and the subjoined account of what was seen in Florence is of special interest as being from no less an ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... is a waterless desert," said the priest, "I know, for I see it, I have sunk in its sands and felt heat in it. That there are countries in which water turns to stone, and steam into white down, I know also, for credible witnesses have ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... more credible than creditable, the Lalugwumps, as they call themselves, deny the immortality of the soul. In all my stay in their country I found only one person who believed in a life "beyond the grave," as we should say, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... the western waters, that the firemen and other hands employed upon the boats spend much of their idle time in playing cards. Of the passion for gaming, thus excited, an instance has been narrated to us upon the most credible authority, which surpasses the highest wrought fictions of the gambler's fate. A colored fireman, on board a steamboat running between Saint Louis and New-Orleans, had lost all his money at poker with his companions. He then staked his ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... little as a whole it takes account of those deep occult truths into touch with which it has come, how little it realises how mighty the possibility that these supreme acts of sacrifice have opened before every one of us, it seems almost too sad to be credible, too pathetic to be expressed; one realises how sometimes Their hearts must be wrung, as the heart of the Christ was wrung when He stood and looked over Jerusalem, and knew that the people to whose race He belonged were driving ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... totally unlike. These same similarities present themselves over such wide areas and between nations so remote and of such different culture, that the theory of a parallelism of development is after all the more credible explanation. ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... existed for three thousand years on the earth without meeting with them, may there not also be "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders," notwithstanding a rather less perfect unanimity of negative testimony from observers? Most persons would answer No; it was more credible that a bird should vary in its color, than that men should vary in the relative position of their principal organs. And there is no doubt that in so saying they would be right: but to say why they are right, would be impossible, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... incline to be captivated by his rare theatrical air of confidence; when it seems as an outside thought striking us, that he may not be altogether deceived in the present instance; when suddenly an expectation of the thing desired is born and swims in a credible featureless vagueness on a misty scene: and when we are being kissed and the blood is warmed. In fine, here as everywhere along our history, when the sensations are spirited up to drown the mind, we become drift-matter of tides, metal to magnets. And if we are women, who ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... left for his own expedition to accomplish; but the two explorers generously gave him information which enabled him, after separating from them, to achieve the discovery of Albert Nyanza, of whose existence credible assurance had already been given to Speke and Grant. Baker first sighted the lake on the 14th of March 1864. After some time spent in the exploration of the neighbourhood, during which Baker demonstrated that the Nile flowed through the Albert Nyanza—of whose size ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... story, rather alters its tone in the fight with Grendel's mother. There are parallels in Grettis Saga, and elsewhere, to encounters like this, with a hag or ogress under water; stories of this sort have been found no less credible than stories of haunting warlocks like Grendel. But this second story is not told in the same way as the first. It has more of the fashion and temper of mythical fable or romance, and less of matter of fact. More particularly, the old sword, the sword ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... he displayed his old activity; and the most credible witnesses assert that his faculties showed no marked decline. Guizot, who saw a good deal of him, writes: "I perceive in the intellect and conduct of Napoleon during the Hundred Days no sign of enfeebling: I find in his judgment ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... supposed, by springs at the bottom. Its water is remarkably clear and pleasant, and is imagined by the natives to be medicinal. We were told, that it is in some places a hundred and forty fathoms deep, a profundity scarcely credible, and which probably those that relate it have never sounded. Its fish ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... all he had said, she scarcely dared to utter the words lest, after all, she might be taking for granted more than it was credible could be true. "Can you mean that if I stayed here with you it would make Temple Barholm seem more like HOME? Is it possible ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... condemned, and hurried off in crowds without a trial, to be shot, drowned or beheaded. At Lyons thirty-one thousand persons were thus slain; at Nantes thirty-two thousand,—and throughout France in proportion. The number thus slain, has been estimated at over one million,—a number hardly credible, and which might well be symbolized by seven thousand—a perfect number. Well might the remnant be affrighted, and hasten to give glory to the GOD of heaven, by the restoration of that book, the setting aside of which had involved them in such ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... the strongest doubts of the man's story. The statement which he made before me, and signed, is bad enough, with a coach-and-four turning into a farm wagon, like Cinderella's coach into a pumpkin, and three people vanishing as though swallowed by the earth. But all this is perfectly reasonable and credible, beside the things he said to me, of ...
— He Walked Around the Horses • Henry Beam Piper
... ascent of the actual hill on foot, climbing, one might say, in the footsteps of the Boers of 1881 when they made the wonderful attack on Colley and turned his men off the top. Right well can we now understand how they did it; it is almost too clear to be credible to us, and one cannot but regret the omission of the English force to hold the spurs of the mountain when occupying the top, seeing that any attacking party, safe from fire from the top of the hill on account ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... gone that in the state of Missouri, in a decision by its supreme court, made some years ago, it was declared that a woman of immoral life was debarred from giving testimony in the courts of that state, as the fact of her immorality prevented her from being a credible witness. It declared at the same time that immorality did not in the same way unfit or debar a man. The difficulty of convicting a person under trial for such a crime as this is largely increased because of this attitude of the public mind. The evidence must be so overwhelming against the person ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... family, but strange in all her ways, and it was conceivable that he should become suddenly jealous of her. Or she might have frightened him with some display of her peculiarities which had filled him with a sudden repugnance in the place of love. Any of these things were credible, and would make a probable story enough,—so thought Dick over to himself with the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... miles from the camp, a huge hole was discovered in the ground,—as if blasting operations, on an enormous scale, had recently been carried on. In the hole itself, and round about it, were found fragments of what seemed bodies; credible witnesses have assured me that they were bodies neither of men nor women, but of creatures of some monstrous growth. I prefer to believe, since no scientific examination of the remains took place, that these witnesses ignorantly, ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... perhaps you will scarce think credible) that about three thousand years ago, or somewhat more, the navigation of the world, (especially for remote voyages,) was greater than at this day. Do not think with yourselves, that I know not how much it is increased with you, within ...
— The New Atlantis • Francis Bacon
... his career he has been a credible witness in the Court of Public Works to the truth of the strong language of the New Testament Parable where it says, "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, 'Remove hence to yonder place,' ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... even, have a kind of coarseness or crudeness, . . . 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' has the plausibility, the perfect adaptation to reason and life, which belongs to the marvellous, when actually presented as part of a credible experience in our dreams. . . . The spectral object, so crude, so impossible, has become plausible, as 'the spot upon the brain that will show itself without,' and is understood to be but a condition of one's own mind, for which—according to the scepticism latent at least ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... less unworthy prayer and aspiration after God, in all these emotions and exercises, has the great proof in himself that such emotions, such relationship, can never be put an end to. The roots have gone down through the temporal, and have laid hold of the Eternal. Anything seems to me to be more credible than that a man who can look up and say, 'My Father,' shall be crushed by what befalls the mere outside of him; anything seems to me to be more believable than to suppose that the nature which is capable of these elevating emotions and aspirations of confidence and hope, which can know ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... bounds," she said. "What, is it credible that the Duke of Burgundy and the king's son, the Duke of Aquitaine, can hand over to this murderous mob of ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... than what it is at any given moment, and there will be little secret left in any other change. One is not in its ultimate essence more miraculous that another; it may be more striking—a greater congeries of shocks, it may be more credible or more incredible, but not more miraculous; all change is qua us absolutely incomprehensible and miraculous; the smallest change baffles the greatest intellect if its essence, as apart from its phenomena, be ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... But, nevertheless, last night's triumph is officially and very genuinely Villedo's. While as for Morenita and Diaz, the mere idea of these golden stars waiting on me, the librettist, effacing themselves, rendering themselves subordinate at such a moment, was fantastic. It passed the credible.... A Diaz standing silent and deferential, while an idolized prima donna stepped down from her throne to flatter me in her own temple! All that I had previously achieved of renown seemed ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... features were novel, and its consequences more dreadful than the common plague of Turkey, or that of Syria, or Egypt. Let every one freely declare his own sentiments about it; let him assign any credible account of its rise, or the causes that introduced so terrible a scene. I shall relate only what its symptoms were, what it actually was, and how it terminated, having been an eye-witness of its dreadful effects, and having seen ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... believed. This opinion, which perhaps prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth; those that never heard of one another would not have agreed in a tale which nothing but experience can make credible. That it is doubted by single cavillers, can very little weaken the general evidence; and some, who deny it with their tongues, confess it with their fears."—Rasselas, chap. xxx., Works, ed. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... distinguished family, and who was the consul-designate. According to them, for the pleasure of shocking the imperial city with the sacrilege of a bigamous union, she actually did marry him in Rome, with the most solemn religious rites, while Claudius was at Ostia! But is this credible, at least without admitting that Messalina had suddenly gone insane? To what end and for what reason would she have committed such a sacrilege, which struck at the very heart of popular sentiment? Dissolute, cruel, and avaricious Messalina certainly ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... maintained that he was an officer returned from the front to receive the Victoria Cross at the hands of the King, although he was in fact a mechanic, nobody thinks of treating him as afflicted with a delusion. He is punished for false pretences, because his assertion is credible and therefore misleading. Just so, the claim to divinity made by Jesus was to the High Priest, who looked forward to the coming of a Messiah, one that might conceivably have been true, and might therefore have misled the ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... sympathetic study of mankind, shall we believe in these emanations of genius. Occasionally, under the urge and surplusage of his comic force, he went too far and made a Quilp: but the vast majority even of his drolls are as credible as ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... a secret temple in the shadow of the distant Himalayas. Was it credible that this quiet country house, so typical of rural England, harboured that same dread secret which he had believed to be locked away in those Indian hills? Could he believe that the dark and death-dealing power which he had ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... developed the notion that he was despised by those from whom first of all he looked for the appreciation after which his soul thirsted—his own family. He grew therefore yet more moody, and his moodiness and distrust developed suspicion. It is scarce credible what a crushing influence the judgment he pretended to scorn, thus exercised upon him. It was not that he acknowledged in it the smallest justice; neither was it that he cared altogether for what such a fanatical fool as the chief might think; but he reflected that if one could so despise ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... at hand and ever credible to Easterns, makes this the most satisfactory version of the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... had been guilty with each and all of them of indecent practices...." My heart seemed to stop. My worst forebodings were more than justified. Vaguely I heard Clarke's voice, "grave responsibility ... serious allegations ... credible witnesses ... Mr. Oscar Wilde was the son of Sir William Wilde ..." the voice droned on and I awoke to feverish clearness of brain. Queensberry had turned the defence into a prosecution. Why had he taken the risk? Who had given him the new and precise information? I felt that there was ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... gibbeting alive, and exposing the delinquents to perish by the gradual effects of hunger, thirst, and parching sun; in which situation they were known to suffer for nine days, with a fortitude scarcely credible, never uttering a single groan. But horrible as the excesses might have been, which occasioned these punishments, it must be remembered, that they were committed by ignorant savages, who had been dragged from all they held most dear; whose patience had been exhausted by a cruel and ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... change, and a love that many waters cannot quench. Either would cross all the continents and oceans of the world to-day to find the other; but as they remember how they met for the first time it seems too queer to be credible. And they lie back in their easy chairs and ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... the retreat we lost less men than any text-book of war would have given as a credible number in such conditions. Many who were wounded as they tramped through woods splintered by bursting shells and ripped with bullets, bandaged themselves as best they could and limped on, or were carried by loyal comrades who would not leave ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... I follow thy reasonings, I am deeply impressed with their truth; but if I turn to the common convictions of men, I find few who will even listen to such arguments, let alone admit them to be credible.' ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... (Bk. vi. ch. 24.) Now Origen was born a few years (at the most twenty) after the death of Justin; and we have seen how the author of "Supernatural Religion" evidently considers the works of Justin to be anterior to the Fourth Gospel. Is it credible, or oven conceivable, that a man of Origen's intellect, learning, and research should write twenty or thirty books of commentaries on a false Gospel which was forged shortly before ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... 15,000 golden crowns with which she hoped to bribe her jailors, she was finally beheaded. Thus did a vulgar and infamous Messalina, distinguished only by rare beauty, furnish Luini with a S. Catherine for this masterpiece of pious art! The thing seems scarcely credible. Yet Bandello lived in Milan while the Church of S. Maurizio was being painted; nor does he show the slightest sign of disgust at the discord between the Contessa's life and her artistic presentation in the person ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... give some account of the country which the king of the Franks was about to invade, and particularly to describe the extraordinary defences and interior conditions with which it is credited by the gossipy old Monk of St. Gall, the most entertaining, though hardly the most credible, writer of that period. All authors admit that the country of the Avars was defended by an ingenious and singular system of fortifications. The account we propose to give, the Monk of St. Gall declares that he wrote down from the words of an eye-witness, Adelbart by name, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... silence in the cabin, the men gazing at each other with consternation on their faces. Then Bulla yelled: "Copped, by heck!" and with an agility hardly credible in a man of his years, whipped out a revolver, and sprang out of the cabin. Instantly he was seized by three constables, and the four went swinging and lurching across the deck, Bulla fighting desperately to turn his weapon on his ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... of the English navy was such that he might reasonably promise himself success. We have credible information according to which Buckingham had made it half as large again as it had been in the time of Elizabeth. He had increased it from 14,000 tons burden to 22,000: he had put the dockyards and magazines at Chatham, Deptford, Woolwich, and Portsmouth ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... mendacious and philosophy erroneous. Theology abounded in pious frauds. Monks and minstrels vied with each other in the invention of lying legends to adorn the lives of heroes and saints. All classes of the community shared in the general delusion, and the supernatural seemed more credible than the natural. In tracing the progress of learning, in England, I propose, during the remainder of the present paper to discuss one inconsiderable yet important element of modern civilization, which is often entirely overlooked. I refer ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... the country. But it is observed that though their seats are not so frequent here, their estates are; and the pleasure of West Suffolk is much of it supported by the wealth of High Suffolk, for the richness of the lands and application of the people to all kinds of improvement is scarce credible; also the farmers are so very considerable and their farms and dairies so large that it is very frequent for a farmer to have 1,000 pounds stock upon his farm in ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... secure his conquest, and that he should sit down contented with an empty glory and the tribute of an indigent people, without any proper means of securing a continuance of that small acquisition? This is not credible. But his conduct here, as well as in Germany, discovers his purpose in both expeditions: for by them he confirmed the Roman dominion in Gaul, he gained time to mature his designs, and he afforded his party ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... possibility of a Mekinese space-cruiser lying in fifty fathoms off Cape Farnell. He did not say where the information came from. Even to men as desperate as these, Talents, Incorporated information would not seem credible without painstaking explanation. Bors was by no means sure that he believed it himself, but he wanted to so fiercely that he sounded as if some Mekinese spy or traitor ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... and well aimed shooting, Buts made them perfect in the one, and rouing in the othe: for prickes, the first corrupter of Archery, through too much precisenesse, were then scarcely knowne, and little practised. And in particular, I haue heard by credible report of those, who professed and protested themselues to haue bene eye-witnesses, that one Robert Bone of Antony shot at a little bird, sitting upon his cowes back, and killed it, the bird (I meane) not the cowe; which ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... man in for a certainty this time." "What—in the brook!" replied the turncoat, with a glance at the stream, and not without humour, his face purple with emotion. This was somewhat damping; but the hold of the paid social agitator is very great in these country places, and it is scarcely credible what extraordinary stories are circulated on the eve of an election to influence the voters. At such times even loyalty is at a discount At a Tory meeting a lecturer was showing a picture of Gibraltar, and expatiating on the English victory in 1704, when Sir George Rooke won this important stronghold ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... northwards with a sham Scotch heiress, or your daughter been married at Charicombe, by private license, to a pinchbeck Irish peer. For all these things—however painful the admission—were, according to the most credible chroniclers, the by-no-means infrequent accompaniment or sequel of an unguarded sojourn at the old jigging, card-playing, scandal-loving, pleasure-seeking city in the loop of "the ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... and not mere decoration, in the spoiled brain of this kind, loving and will-less woman. She suffers, and is pitifully unaware of it, there before you, the very soul naked and shameless with an innocence beyond innocence. She makes the rage and tenderness of Hamlet towards her a credible thing. ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... between their reanimation and their resurrection? The Evangelist appears to state that they rose from death to life at the moment of the earthquake, but did not emerge from the tomb till the third day afterwards, when Christ had risen. Is this credible? or is it an apocryphal marvel, which has been interpolated in the text of St. Matthew? The other Evangelists, while, along with St. Matthew, narrating the rending of the veil, do not touch on this incident at all. The whole representation, it is argued, lacks the sobriety which ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... these vagabonds, and it appears unfeeling to refuse assistance to a poor seaman who has lost his all: even the cottager offers his mite, and thus do they levy upon the public to an extent which is scarcely credible; but it should be known that, in all cases of shipwreck, sailors are now invariably relieved and decently clothed, and supplied with the means of travelling to obtain employment; and whenever a man appeals for charity ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... the smallness of the terrestrial ball, which is contained many million times in the former, and then think of the rapidity of the motion which completes a whole rotation in one day and night, I cannot persuade myself how any one can hold it to be more reasonable and credible that it is the heavenly sphere which rotates, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... how it could have been. However, I do not place very much value upon it as standing alone, but considered in connection with the performances of Eusapia, it becomes a little more nearly credible." ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... the accident, and then died. Afterwards his body was opened, and an oval lump of lead, which weighed upwards of seven ounces, was found in his stomach. This extraordinary fact is authenticated by the credible testimony of a respectable medical man ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... mandatory against the removal of his bones to the adjacent charnel-house.[20] His name, often written with a hyphen, indicates that he came of English fighting stock. When the Sonnets were written he was in the full tide of success. It is not credible that such a man at thirty or thirty-five, of buoyant and abounding life, could have so bewailed the loss of ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... for Mr. Cutwater, who stood forth—a weak, stooping, half-halting, little man, with a limp necktie, and trousers puffy at the knees—but with honest use of them, let me say. It is quite credible that if Dr. Watts's ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... myself the author of what I write but published things digested and drawn up by others. As to the first part of this objection I assure the reader I have taken nothing from any man without mentioning his name, except some very few relations and particular observations received from credible persons who desired not to be named; and these I have always expressly distinguished in my books from what I relate as of my own observing. And as to the latter I think it so far from being a diminution to one of my education and employment ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... abstractions which appealed to the effete Victorian composers, but in plums. And, mind you, not Carlsbad, but honest Worcestershire plums, without any Teutonic taint. Mr. JULIUS HARRISON'S patriotic example is not likely to be lost on his brother composers. Indeed it is asserted on credible authority that Mr. GRANVILLE BANTOCK, who has completely forsworn all Oriental and exotic subjects, is engaged on a gigantic symphony, with choral interludes, entitled "Yorkshire Pudding;" and that Mr. JOSEF HOLBROOKE is collaborating with Lord HOWARD DE WALDEN in a romantic historical ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... found so situated in geological ways, and so constructed anatomically, that the zooelogist is justified in denoting them "missing links," because they seem to have been intermediate between groups that have diverged so widely during recent epochs as to render their common ancestry scarcely credible. ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... then—and as suddenly as it was characteristic of these impulsive and tender-hearted men. In thinking over their action long afterwards the Girl recalled how for an instant she could believe neither her ears nor her eyes. With Sonora it was credible, at least; but with Rance—it seemed wonderful to her even when observed through the vista of many years. And yet, men like Rance more often than not exhibit to the world the worst side of their nature. ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... credible that, when it was afterwards decided to raise this detachment to fourteen ships-of-the-line, sufficient to cope with the enemy, both St. Vincent and Nelson wished to remove Saumarez, with his antecedents of brilliant service, so as to allow ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... speech, for well I know that my brother is dead. I should rejoice, indeed, to learn that he was still alive. But I shall not believe the news until I have seen him with my eyes. He died some time ago, alas! What thou sayest is not credible. And if he lives, why does he not come? He need never fear that I will not bestow on him some lands. He is a fool to hold aloof from me, for in serving me he will find profit. But no one shall possess the crown ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... come to you with the old message, 'Oh! taste,' and thus you will 'see that the Lord is good.' There must be the faith first, and then there will be the experience, which will make anything seem to you more credible than that He whom you have loved and trusted, and who has answered your love and your trust, should be anything else than the Son of God, the Saviour of mankind. Come to Him and you will see. The impregnable argument will be put into your mouth—'Whether ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... What does this mean? Surely that they have done her to death in some way which has deceived the doctor and simulated a natural end—poisoning, perhaps. And yet how strange that they should ever let a doctor approach her unless he were a confederate, which is hardly a credible proposition." ...
— The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax • Arthur Conan Doyle
... definite purpose, but because when we come to consider these processes in detail, and view them in the light of the only purposes they suggest, we find them to be such that a God who could deliberately have been guilty of them would be a God too absurd, too monstrous, too mad to be credible. (Religion as a Credible ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... AND STOUGHTON) is one of those which hover agreeably between low comedy and refined farce, in a world which, being frankly to the last degree improbable, makes no urgent demand for belief. Sometimes indeed (as I have observed before with Mr. J.E. BUCKROSE) the characters themselves are more credible than the way in which they carry on. Thus while Mr. Tubbs, the middle-aged and high-principled champion of distress, is both human and likeable, I was never persuaded that any more real motive than regard for an amusing situation would compel him to saddle himself with the continued ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... without feare as I accustomed to do, it was a signe that I was whole, and in mine Assie wits, where contrary if I did flie and abhorre the tast of the water, it was evident proofe of my madness, which thing he said that he had read in ancient and credible books, whereupon they tooke a bason of cleere water, and presented it before me: but I as soone as I perceived the wholesome water of my life, ran incontinently, thrusting my head into the bason, drank as though I had beene ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... 'veridical apparitions,' 'movements of objects without physical contact,' 'rappings,' 'hauntings,' persist as matters of belief, in full modern civilisation, and are attested by many otherwise sane, credible, and even scientifically trained modern witnesses. In this persistence, and in these testimonies, the alleged abnormal phenomena differ from such matters as nature-myths, customs like Suttee, Taboo, Couvade, ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... proof, and long afterwards he made frank admission to me of the fact that this incident proved that I was "not going to be put upon." Very soon I found that he was not only a kind-hearted but a very able man. He had begun life, at the age of six, in a cotton factory. The statement to-day is hardly credible, but such is the fact. In those cruel times, when no Lord Ashley had as yet arisen to open the door of the workman's prison-house and set the children free, this poor child had been shut up from six in the ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... accused by most credible witnesses of holding in disrespect many of the principal articles of our most holy faith. What have you to answer ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... reduction or the coinage, which in this case would have involved a lowering of the class-rates by more than the half. Grave doubts may be raised in opposition to either hypothesis; but the former appears the more credible, for so exorbitant an advance in democratic development is not probable either for the end of the fifth century or as an incidental consequence of a mere administrative measure, and besides it would scarce have disappeared wholly from tradition. 100,000 light -asses-, or 40,000 sesterces, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... to Bloomington, I went over and over the man's story, in memory. The facts were tolerably clear and coherent: his narrative was simple and credible enough, after my own personal experience of the mysterious noises, and the secret, whatever it was, must be sought for in Rachel Emmons. She was still living in Toledo, Ohio, he said, and earned her living as a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... thoughtless trust in the Company's honor and protection, are utterly ruined: the first of these women, a person of princely rank, and once of correspondent fortune, who paid above two hundred thousand a year quit-rent to the state, is, according to very credible information, so completely beggared as to stand in need of the relief of alms. Mahomed Reza Khan, the second Mussulman in Bengal, for having been distinguished by the ill-omened honor of the countenance and protection of the Court of Directors, was, without the pretence of any inquiry whatsoever ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... tenants sat at easy rents; but for some years past, they have been, generally speaking, more terribly racked by the dexterity of merciless agents from England, than even those held under the severest landlords here. I was assured upon the place, by great numbers of credible people, that a prodigious estate in the county of Cork, being let upon leases for lives, and great fines paid; the rent was so high, that the tenants begged leave to surrender their leases, and were content to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... that you would not have arrived at the highest Rank of the Profession if you had not been its Scholars; own, that in a few Lessons from it, you learned the most beautiful Expressions, the most refin'd Taste, the most noble Action, and the most exquisite Graces: Own, (though it be hardly credible) that the Heart corrects the Defects of Nature, since it softens a Voice that's harsh, betters an indifferent one, and perfects a good one: Own, when the Heart sings you cannot dissemble, nor has Truth a greater Power of persuading: And, lastly, do you convince the ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... Dolittle seems to extend his hand from the page and grasp that of his reader, and I can see him going down the centuries a kind of Pied Piper with thousands of children at his heels. But not only is he a darling and alive and credible but his creator has also managed to invest everybody else in the book with the same ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... unsupported in this statement save by Bassompierre, who also says: "The King presented Madame de Verneuil to her, who was graciously received" (Memoires, p. 25). Every other authority, however, contradicts this assertion, which is indeed too monstrous to be credible. ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... knowledge, an implicit criticism of the Paracelsian endeavour to let in upon men the searing splendour of the unclouded day. To Karshish, however, these very embarrassments—so unlike the knowing cleverness of the spiritual charlatan—make it credible that Lazarus is indeed no oriental Sludge, but one who has verily seen God. But then came the terrible crux,—the pretension, intolerable to Semitic monotheism, that God had been embodied in a man. The words scorch the paper as he writes, and, like Ferishtah, he will not repeat them. Yet he ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... met and wooed Miss Charpentier, was like the company at St. Ronan's? Lockhart vouches for the snobbishness, "the mean admiration of mean things," the devotion to the slimmest appearances of rank. All this is credible enough, but, if there existed a society as dull and base as that which we meet in the pages of "Mr. Soapy Sponge," and Surtees's other novels, assuredly it was no theme for the great and generous spirit of Sir Walter. The worst kind ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... others, I was greatly surprised when the fact of Sarah's having declined the hand of Eaverson became known. The selection of her by one like him seemed so high a preference, and such a marked tribute to her worth and virtue, that it was scarcely credible that she could have remained indifferent to his love. But she saw deeper than ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... Metropolisville gone, but the unsettled state of society in which it grew has likewise disappeared—the land-sharks, the claim speculators, the town-proprietors, the trappers, and the stage-drivers have emigrated or have undergone metamorphosis. The wild excitement of '56 is a tradition hardly credible to those who did not feel its fever. But the most evanescent things may impress themselves on human beings, and in the results which they thus produce become immortal. There is a last page to all our works, but to the history of the ever-unfolding human ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... deposited with her before the bill was drawn; or you can examine the unfortunate young man implicated in this affair, and he in his confusion may remember nothing and commit himself. You will decide which is the more credible—a slip of memory on the part of a woman in her ignorance of business, or a forgery committed ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... Carta provides that "No bailiff (balivus) shall hereafter put any man to his law, (put him on trial,) on his single testimony, without credible witnesses brought to support it." Coke thinks "that under this word balivus, in this act, is comprehended every justice, minister of the king, steward of the king, steward and bailiff." (2 Inst. 44.) And in support of this idea he ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... same direction, none but cold winds could reach the mouth of the grotto. Moreover, the soil above was so thickly covered with trees and brushwood, that the rays of the sun could not reach the earth, much less the rock below. Credible persons asserted that since some of the trees had been felled, there had not been so ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... then, at twelve years of age, left without a guide, without means of support, without any one to advise me, and without money, more than a hundred leagues from my home, and already accustomed to the comforts of a luxurious life. It is hardly credible that in this state of affairs I was regarded almost as a suspect, and was required each day to present myself before the city authorities for the greater safety of the Republic. I remember well that whenever the Emperor was pleased to make me relate these tribulations of my childhood, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... Peregrine was fond of his own opinion; but nevertheless he was a man whom it was by no means difficult to lead. In the first place he was singularly devoid of suspicion. The word of a man or of a woman was to him always credible, until full proof had come home to him that it was utterly unworthy of credit. After that such a man or woman might as well spare all speech as regards the hope of any effect on the mind of Sir Peregrine Orme. He did not easily believe a fellow-creature to be ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... as he was exchanged, Mosby made all haste for Lee's headquarters to report what he had discovered. Lee, remembering Mosby as the man who had scouted ahead of Stuart's Ride Around MacClellan, knew that he had a hot bit of information from a credible source. A dispatch rider was started off at once for Jackson, and Jackson struck Pope at Cedar Mountain before he could be re-enforced. Mosby returned to Stuart's headquarters, losing no time in promoting a pair of .44's to replace the ones ...
— Rebel Raider • H. Beam Piper
... letter asked only what is granted in reading every other historian. When Livy and Siculus, for example, tell us things which coincide with our experience of the order of nature, we credit them on their word, and place their narrations among the records of credible history. But when they tell us of calves speaking, of statues sweating blood, and other things against the course of nature, we reject these as fables not belonging to history. In like manner, when an historian, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... step in a criminal prosecution, is to obtain a warrant for the apprehension of the accused party. In ordinary cases, a warrant is granted by any justice of the peace upon information, on the oath of some credible witness, of facts from which it appears that a crime has been committed, and that the person against whom the warrant is sought to be obtained, is probably the guilty party, and is a document under the hand and seal of the justice, directed generally ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... recollection of some man whom he had long esteemed and honoured, but he could not clearly call to mind who it was. For this reason he granted the young man's request on the spot, only enjoining upon him to produce at the earliest opportunity the needful credible trade attestations. ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... it is an essential part of their function to do so, provided they plainly mark them as such. Shakespeare speaks of rumors as "stuffing the ears of men with false reports," yet if so this is not the fault of the rumor itself, but of the too credible listener. The prosperity of a rumor is in the ear that hears it. The sagacious listener will take the trouble to sift and winnow his rumors, set them in perspective with what he knows of the facts and from them he will then deduce exceedingly valuable considerations. ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... respects so faithful a transcript of "the truth as it is in Nature" came as a surprise and to me at least as a rebuke. How, under the rigid necessity of incorporating in its system much that seemed nearly unintelligible, and much that was barely credible, Theology has succeeded so perfectly in adhering through good report and ill to what in the main are truly the lines of Nature, awakens a new admiration for those who constructed and kept this faith. ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... to anything, of course this certificate is valueless, and the presumption of law prevails, viz., "that all property found under the enemy's flag is enemy's property," until the contrary be shown by competent and credible testimony under oath, duly certified to by a Consul or another ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... assassinated in Egypt, because he was jealous of his influence; and I have been assured by persons worthy of credit, that the duel in which General D'Estaing was killed by General Regnier was provoked by a discussion on this point. It appears to me, however, scarcely credible that Bonaparte should have had the means of arming a Turk against the life of a French general, at a moment when he was far removed from the theatre of the crime. Nothing ought to be said against him of which there are not proofs; the discovery of a single error of this kind among ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... until Kendal, the chauffeur, turned up, also in khaki and with a Red Cross brassard on his right arm. Kendal was credible enough; he looked as if he had been going to the war all his life. It was evident that he was keen on the adventure. It was also evident that he adored Jevons more than ever. By watching Kendal in the act of adoration and keeping ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... memory of Boston, and even now the colour stood for the word, impenetrable. That was extraordinary. Even now! Well, they were going to Boston; if Ditmar had said they were going to Bagdad it would have been quite as credible—and incredible. Wherever they were going, it was into the larger, larger life, and walls were to crumble before them, walls through which they would pass, even as they rent the white veil of the storm, into regions ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... with a certain hesitation, which she would have ascribed to shyness had that been at all credible of her father when addressing her, "I wish you never to postpone ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... the exercise of their imagination innocent, and even meritorious, if they could increase either the vividness of conception or the sincerity of belief in their readers. A due consideration of that well-known weakness of the popular mind, which renders a statement credible in proportion to the multitude of local and circumstantial details which accompany it, may lead us to look with some indulgence on the errors, however fatal in their issue to the cause they were intended to advance, of those weak teachers, who thought ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... both make different statements equally credible, but without proof, and the case will go against me, because thou ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
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