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More "Disbelieve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I know; but I am not at liberty to reveal secrets of State. Let us put that aside, I cannot give you proof; if you wish to disbelieve it, do. But now I come to my main point. There is a side to this question about which you know nothing, but you know that in the State to-day the Church has her enemies. This indiscretion on the part of the Prince, supported by a promise from ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... trained her to disbelieve in its existence. She saw this now. It did not matter. It seemed to her ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... "That is not an answer. Do you believe me, or disbelieve me? Am I a liar and perjurer, or not? In one word; yes, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... to believe that these libels have been got up at your house, and by you, because that fact has been attested by persons who have been in your service, and who have seen them in progress; beyond this no one makes me believe or disbelieve anything." ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... asked. He couldn't fully believe what he'd heard, but there had been too many strange things to let him disbelieve, either. If they had made him a mandrake-man, then by what little he could remember and guess, they ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... and the unconscious and hidden sources, but he writes many a page of vigorous corrective. It is wholesome, he says, to man to look not at Fate, but the other way; the practical view is the other. As Mill says of his wish to disbelieve the doctrine of the formation of character by circumstances—'Remembering the wish of Fox respecting the doctrine of resistance to governments, that it might never be forgotten by Kings nor remembered by subjects, I said that ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... gone my way into the region of shadows. For indeed strange things shall happen, and secret things be known, and many centuries shall pass away, ere these memorials be seen of men. And, when seen, there will be some to disbelieve and some to doubt, and yet a few who will find much to ponder upon in the characters here graven with ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... blindness, and a sudden sweep down under the walls of the Cathedral or the waters of the Tagus, were not, on the whole, a quicker and pleasanter mode of extinction than that social earthquake—"gone to the bad with a crash"? And the Lisbonites did not more disbelieve in, and dream less of their coming ruin than Cecil did his, while he was doing the season, with engagements enough in a night to spread over a month, the best known horses in the town, a dozen rose-notes sent to his clubs or his lodgings in a day, and the newest thing in soups, colts, beauties, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... see you disbelieve my story and make light of the perils that surround me; but who are you to judge? My family share my apprehensions; they help me in secret; and you saw yourself by what an emissary, and in what a place, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... He tried to disbelieve the story that he had been told. He tried hard to think that the man whom Elizabeth loved could not be Brian Luttrell. He strove to convince himself that Elizabeth would be happier with him than with the man she loved. Last of all he struggled desperately with the conviction ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... statement is a fact, because such and such a scientist has claimed to have demonstrated it. "We are not responsible for the fact," says Krauth, "that under the conditions of knowledge we know, or in defect of them do not know; we are responsible if, under the conditions of a well-grounded faith, we disbelieve."[63] ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... looking over the map, there does not seem to be any one to supplant us; all those, who have great advantages, have already gone before, and, till we see the example of a country renewing itself, we have a right to disbelieve that ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... rising again from his seat, and now standing opposite to Ziska, "I disbelieve you. I think that you are lying to me. Despite your Christianity, and despite your gentility—you are a liar. Now, sir, unless you have anything further to say to ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... had to believe that, I should have to disbelieve half of what is best in the human story, and the whole of what we are taught about a guiding Providence and the spiritual influences which we ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... old Greeks or Romans, is a mere assumption, originating in a false idea of what quantity is; and, that Greek or Latin verse was less accentual than is ours, is another assumption, left proofless too, of what many authors disbelieve and contradict. Wells's definition of quantity is similar to mine, and perhaps unexceptionable; and yet his idea of the thing, as he gives us reason to think, was very different, and very erroneous. His examples imply, that, like Walker, he had "no conception of quantity arising from any thing ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the work of that vixen Feng!" old lady Chia laughed. "She has ever been up to tricks like a very imp, so be quick and disbelieve all ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... it remains to notice his zealous activity in the cause of learning. And of this latter who can possibly entertain a doubt? Who that has seen how frequently his name is affixed to Dedications, can disbelieve that Cecil was a LOVER OF BOOKS? Indeed I question whether it is inserted more frequently in a diplomatic document or printed volume. To possess all the presentation copies of this illustrious minister would be to possess an ample and ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the afflicted children, of their cunning evasions, and, in some instances, palpable falsehoods. Then, further, there was solid and substantial evidence before them that ought to have made them pause and consider, if not doubt and disbelieve. We find the following paper among ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Marguerite now told me of her belated conception of the desperate plan to induce von Kufner to bring her to the docks to see us depart, and how she had pretended to disbelieve that I was really going and bargained to marry him within sixty days if she could be assured by her own eyes that I had really departed for ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... living Christianity. It is very possible, as Mr. Lyall says somewhat sarcastically, that "missionaries will even yet hardly agree that the essentials of their religion are not in the creeds, but in love; because they are sent forth to propound scriptures which say clearly that what we believe or disbelieve is literally a burning question." But those who, with Mr. Lyall, consider love of man founded on love of God, nothing but "flat morality," must have forgotten that a Higher One than they declared, that on these two hang all the law and the commandments. By placing ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... judge, Byron, what my feelings must be at Murray's shewing me some beautiful verses of yours. I do implore you for God sake not to publish them. Could I have seen you one moment, I would explain why. I have only time to add that, however those who surround you may make you disbelieve it, you will draw ruin on your own head and hers if at this moment you shew these. I know not from what quarter the report originates. You accused me, and falsely; but if you could hear all that is said at this ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... ever was a painter who exercised what creative and imaginative faculty he had with an absolute gusto, Lebrun did so. He interested his contemporaries immensely; no painter ever ruled more unrivalled. He fails to interest us because we have another point of view. We believe in our point of view and disbelieve in his as a matter of course; and it would be self-contradictory to say, in the interests of critical catholicity, that in our opinion his may be as sound as our own. But to say that he has no point of view whatever—to say, in general, that modern classic art is perfunctory and mere formulary—is ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... not answer him, for, in truth, I only asked with a half hope that he might have some other interpretation of this portent than that of violent death, which seemed the plain meaning of it—that is, if he saw aught, and I had no reason to disbelieve him. I tried to think that his glance had met the sun for a moment before he looked on the king; but I could not think it, for in the hall was no chance thereof. And then he spoke again slowly, with his eyes still on ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... be natural; but, since if all were true that was said upon the subject, the object of their criticism must have been as artificial as Mr Riprapton's left leg, and she must have been nothing more than an animated lay-figure, I began to disbelieve these assertions, the more especially as the lady herself was as easy under them as she was in every gesture and motion. Whenever she made her appearance, so did my old friend Mr R; he entertained a platonic attachment for her, and that ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... a good shot in respect of the Median business, replied in the hexameter rhythm that the issues of victory lay around a wooden wall. Now having this as a proof I will neither refuse to believe in oracles myself nor allow others to disbelieve them. For when the race had begun and the horses had been sent away by the sound of a trumpet, other men were taking part in the contest, and also Pheron the son of Trapezites a Corinthian: this is not the Pheron who, his father having founded ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... men would look gloomy and speak of speedy dissolution. There were those who would always prophesy that the next day would see the snow converted into one dull, dingy river. Such I regarded as seers of tribulation, and endeavored with all my mind to disbelieve their interpretations of the signs. That sleighing was excellent fun. For myself I must own that I hardly saw the best of it at Boston, for the coming of the end was already at hand when I arrived there, and the fresh ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... of his coffee. "We've talked about it," he admitted. "Although I must say the hypothesis Bart has come up with would never have occurred to me. I'm still not sure I credit it, but" ... he shrugged ... "I can't say that I disbelieve it, either." ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... depends on the question whether certain ideas had first been enunciated by the author of Genesis or the author of the Avesta; suppose him subjected to a cross-examination by a brow-beating lawyer, whose business it is to disbelieve and make others disbelieve every assertion that the witness makes, and we are afraid the learned Professor would break down completely. Now it may be said that this is not the spirit in which learned inquiries should be conducted, that authors have a right to a certain respect, and may ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... mysticism, you will come away, as has many a visitor before you, with an impression sufficient to last through an ordinary lifetime." Further on he says "If you do not come away convinced that you have been witness of a spectacle which makes you disbelieve the evidence of your own eyes and your most matter-of-fact judgment, then you are a man of stone." All of which proves nothing more than that Mr. Reid was inclined to make positive statements about subjects in which he knew ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... is, consciously or not, you doubt my honesty; you think I am making faces, and at heart disbelieve my utterances. And this I am disposed to think must spring from your not having had enough of pain, sorrow, and trouble in your existence. It is easy to have too much; easy also or possible to have too little; enough is required that a man may appreciate what elements of consolation ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was not a little disturbed by this communication. Monstrous as was the plot which it purported to disclose, she could not disbelieve it when ascribed to the two men in question. Certain fearful remembrances of the past confirmed her suspicions, and even inspired her in her ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... the sort had ever been thought of before, such proof would have falsified the affidavit. But so far from offering any such evidence, all the evidence adduced confirms the statement in the affidavit; and yet my learned friend still ventures to ask you to disbelieve what Lord Cochrane has sworn, although his oath is unopposed by any testimony, and supported by all the testimony given ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... offensive kind could have passed, as, if it had, Smith could certainly not have afterwards solicited admission to the Club of which Johnson was the leader, to which he was admitted 1st Dec. 1775, and where he and Johnson met frequently on civil terms. I, therefore, disbelieve the whole story. CROKER. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... showed that he felt very much disposed to disbelieve what Bill had told him, or rather, to fancy that ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... contradicted his impossible statements, he refused to keep them in bounds. When people recounted in his hearing the glorious history of Nayanjore with absurd exaggerations he would accept all they said with the utmost gravity, and never doubted, even in his dreams, that any one could disbelieve it. ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... this coast will scarcely be required, we have still stronger to give. One of us asked if they had any human bones with the flesh remaining upon them, and upon their answering us that all had been eaten, we affected to disbelieve that the bones were human, and said that they were the bones of a dog; upon which one of the Indians with some eagerness took hold of his own fore-arm, and thrusting it towards us, said, that the bone which Mr Banks held in his hand had belonged ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... of Zonaras, Suidas, and the Paschal Chronicle, M. de Tillemont (Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v. p. 671) wishes to disbelieve those stories, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... this course, don't read a single play I assign to you, be disrespectful, disbelieve all my contentions. And I shall still be content. But do not, as you are living souls, blind yourself to the fact that there is a world-wide movement to build a wider new world—and that the world needs it—and that in Jamaica Mills, on land owned by a director ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... yard for herself, three quarters for her sister, and gave the remaining half-yard to her daughter, and that at very moment there are two women and a little girl taking their walks abroad under the silken shadows of my veil! And yet there are people who profess to disbelieve in total depravity. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... out to be a very large fortune indeed when he came to inquire into things. That the major rejoiced over his fortune, I do not doubt; but that he would have been other than an honorable husband had he found she had nothing, I entirely disbelieve. When she left him the widowed father of a little girl, he mourned sincerely for her. When the child followed her mother, he was for some time a sad man indeed. Then, as if her money was all he had left of her, and he must lead what was left of his life in its company, ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... she wished to disbelieve it, corroborative evidence, unheeded at the time, now recurred with such startling distinctness that she marvelled at her own previous blindness. Still, Bluebell was not cured. That he cared most for herself she continued to believe, though Cecil's fortune might have tempted ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... shadow of a kiss last night has done as much mischief as half a dozen real kisses. It has convinced Marcia of the truth of that which for weeks she has been vainly struggling to disbelieve, namely, Philip's mad infatuation ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... of another kind, And I've a little altered it, you'll find; Faults some may see, and others disbelieve; 'Tis all the same:—'twill never make me grieve; Alaciel's mem'ry, it is very clear, Can scarcely by it lose; there's naught to fear. Two facts important I have kept in view, In which the author fully I pursue; The one—no less than eight the belle possessed, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... believe that there may be effects of which they do not know, and may never know, the causes—they cannot even see the absolute necessity for supposing that everything is caused. Scientific people tend to trust their senses and disbelieve their emotions when they contradict them; religious people tend to trust emotion even though sensual experience be against it. On the whole, the religious are the more open-minded. Their assumption that the senses may mislead is less arrogant than the assumption that through them alone ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... one will be rude enough to disbelieve her, and, as will be seen, her supernatural powers had limits; but it was odd, though fortunate, that they should have broken down exactly at this important juncture. Who made those rebellious candles take him to that chamber and couch, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... monarchy or a republic; mayors and governors and generals and senators and ex-presidents are nothing to them. How well we know this, and how seldom it finds a distinct expression! Now I tell you truly, I believe in man as man, and I disbelieve in all distinctions except such as follow the natural lines of cleavage in a society which has crystallized according to its own true laws. But the essence of equality is to be able to say the truth; and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... his visitor, quickly, "I don't quite know what you mean. One who professes to be an infidel professes more or less intelligent disbelief in the Bible, yet you admit that you have never studied the book which you profess to disbelieve—much less, I suppose, have you studied the books which give us the evidences ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... agreed Sir Edgar. "Never commit yourself to the statement that you disbelieve anything. To refuse credence simply because one cannot understand, or because to our limited understanding the occurrence seems unlikely or impossible, is an infallible indication of ignorance. The wider our experience, and the deeper our knowledge, the ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... exemplary E-rl of Cr-bs. We repel, with scorn and indignation, the dastardly falsehoods of the malignant slanderer who vilified Mr. De—ce-ce, and beg to offer that gentleman the only reparation in our power for having thus tampered with his unsullied name. We disbelieve the RUFFIAN and HIS STORY, and most sincerely regret that such a tale, or SUCH A WRITER, should ever have been brought forward to the ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... needle. Hence the witch had to be found and burnt. If the corn crops failed, was not witchcraft the cause? for had not old Mother Maggs been heard to threaten Farmer Giles, and had not her black cat been seen running over his fields? Even good Bishop Jewel did not disbelieve in the power of the evil eye. In preaching before Queen Elizabeth he said: "It may please Your Grace to understand that witches and sorcerers are marvellously increased within Your Grace's realm. Your Grace's subjects pine away even unto ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... inherent presumption of corruption in every act. We shall show the presumptions which preceded, we shall show the presumptions which accompanied the proof; and these, with the subsequent presumptions, will make it impossible to disbelieve them. Such a body of proof was never given upon any such occasion: and it is such proof as will prevail against the whole voice of corruption, that amazing, active, diligent, spreading voice, which has been made, by buzzing ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and Hiram Look kept sullenly to their castles, nursing indignant sense of their wrongs. They got an occasional whiff of the scandal that was pursuing their names. Though their respective wives strove with pathetic loyalty to disbelieve all that the seeress had hinted at, and moved in sad silence about their duties, it was plain that the seed of evil had been planted deep in their imaginations. Poor human nature is only what ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... that some people doubt or disbelieve that sin is the cause of all suffering. I have met such. They freely aver that this cannot be so, because the brute creation suffers, which they say is sinless. It is a well conceded fact that brutes are not accountable. They have no future state of existence. They lack that ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... backing of horses on commission. Yet one could see that these two unattractive persons were really attracted by each other. A great and beautiful miracle had been performed; and the power which had performed it was that Love in which some profess to disbelieve. ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... of the development theory. To argue that man evolved from the monkey is an ingenious joke which will not bear the test of examination, and the Scriptural account may still be accepted. I firmly believe in man as an original creation just as much as I disbelieve in any development of the Flying Lemur (Galeopithecus) from the Bat, or that the habits of an animal would in time materially alter its anatomy, as in the case of the abnormal length of the hind toe and nail of the Jacana. It is not that the habit ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... or from the testimony of such as dare do any thing, rather than speak an untruth. And for that part of it which is my own observation or opinion, if I had a power I would not use it to force any mans assent, but leave him a liberty to disbelieve what his own ...
— Waltoniana - Inedited Remains in Verse and Prose of Izaak Walton • Isaak Walton
... UNDERSTANDING.' Both at this interview, and in the evening at Mr. Thrale's where he and Mr. Peter Garrick and I met again, he was vehement on the subject of the Ossian controversy; observing, 'We do not know that there are any ancient Erse manuscripts; and we have no other reason to disbelieve that there are men with three heads, but that we do not know that there are any such men.' He also was outrageous upon his supposition that my countrymen 'loved Scotland better than truth,' saying, 'All of them,—nay not all,—but DROVES of them, would come up, and attest any thing for ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... to salvation, they want to force every teacher they can to acquire and impart its indestructible, inflexible recipes, and they are prepared to enforce this at the price of inefficiency in every other school function. We must all agree—whatever we believe or disbelieve—that religion is the crown of the edifice we build. But it will simply ruin a vital part of the edifice and misuse our religion very greatly if we hand it over to the excavators and bricklayers of the mind, to use as a cheap substitute for ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... of etherization we ought to eliminate all evidence of an ex parte character, unless it is supported circumstantially; but there is no reason why we should disbelieve Mrs. Morton's statement that her husband made experiments with sulphuric ether; that his clothes smelt of it; and that he tried to persuade laboring-men to allow him to experiment upon them with it. As Dr. J. ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... with a woman is a different thing altogether. I had a desire for friendship in regard to those from whom I expected more. I feigned it sometimes, as the fox makes believe to be dead in order to secure the rooks. It does not follow that I disbelieve in friendship between man and woman. I am not a fool who measures the world according to his own standard, or a churl who is for ever suspecting evil; besides, various observations have proved to ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Titus to Hadrian, and the profession of Christ by his countrymen, which must have been very prevalent, since the Christian religion was solely sustained by the Jews of Palestine during the greater part of its first century, it is improbable that any descendants of the Jews of Palestine exist who disbelieve in Christ. After the fall of Jerusalem and the failure of Barchochebas, no doubt some portion of the Jews found refuge in the desert, returning to their original land after such long and strange vicissitudes. This natural movement would account for those Arabian tribes, of whose resistance to Mohammed ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... moment, perhaps the only one who did not disbelieve it was Clerk Gum. Other people said there must be some mistake: it could not be. Kind old Lord Hartledon came down in his carriage to the clerk's house—he was too ill to walk—and sat with the clerk and the weeping mother, and said he was sure it could not be so bad as was ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... no rogue can do. He can understand what it is to condemn roguery, to avoid it, to dislike it, to disbelieve in it;—but he cannot understand what it is to hate it. Cousin George had probably exaggerated the transaction of which he had spoken, but he had little thought that in doing so he had helped to imbue Sir Harry with a true idea of ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... to disbelieve it all, but at the end of the account, as he had written it in his book, ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... hell. And the unjust shall have no protector. Verily GOD knoweth the secrets both of heaven and earth, for he knoweth the innermost parts of the breasts of men. It is he who hath made you to succeed in the earth. Whoever shall disbelieve, on him be his unbelief; and their unbelief shall only gain the unbelievers greater indignation in the sight of their LORD; and their unbelief shall only increase the perdition of the unbelievers. Say, what think ye of your deities which ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... in some degree cleared the ground of difficulties, let us go back to the Lives of the Saints. If Bede tells us lies about St. Cuthbert, we will disbelieve his stories, but we will not call Bede a liar, even though he prefaces his life with a declaration that he has set down nothing but what he has ascertained on the clearest evidence. We are driven to no such ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... whispered to her that he would not suffer more than he had already suffered—and that in the Country Beyond he would find Nada the white girl, and happiness, and peace. Yellow Bird did not disbelieve. Her faith was illimitable. The spirits would not lie. But the unrest of the night was eating at her heart. She tried to lift herself to the whisperings above the tepee top. But they were unintelligible, like many ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... enthusiast, is more fortunate than he; he, Sylvester Blougram, is what he is, and all that he can do is to make the most of the nature allotted to him. That there has been a divine revelation he cannot absolutely believe; but neither can he absolutely disbelieve. Unbelief is sterile; belief is fruitful, certainly for this world, probably for the next, and he elects to believe. Having chosen to believe, he cannot be too pronounced and decisive in his faith; he will never attempt ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... from Zeist's?" demanded the madam. Her voice was quivering with fright. She did not dare believe the girl; she did not dare disbelieve her. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... God! if they only had been enemies! They were people who had not the strength to love or hate, or believe or disbelieve,—in religion, in art, in politics, in daily life; and all their energies were expended in trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. Especially since the German victories they had been striving to make a compromise, a revolting intrigue between their new power and their ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... alliance is concluded between Seward and Stanton. Further, I am told, that Senator Morgan, Thurlow Weed, and a certain Whiting, a new star on the politician's horizon, have been the attorneys of the two contracting powers. I cannot yet detect any signs of such an alliance, and disbelieve the story. A short time will be necessary to see its fruits. Until I see I wait!... But were it true? Who will be taken in? I am sure it will not be Seward. Is Stanton dragged down ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... the way of Praetor Verres and his cruelties. Verres, unfortunately, is in Messana, and soon hears from some of his friends, the Mamertines, what Gavius was saying. He at once orders Gavius to be flogged in public. "Cives Romanus sum!" exclaims Gavius, no doubt truly. It suits Verres to pretend to disbelieve this, and to declare that the man is a runagate slave. The poor wretch still cries "Cives Romanus!" and trusts alone to that appeal. Whereupon Verres puts up a cross on the sea-shore, and has the man crucified in sight of Italy, so ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... cried Sally. "He knows it can't be. And you know it, too. I tell you I shall be found out and disgraced." She was not crying. Her pride was aroused. She was full of scorn for one who could disbelieve what she ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... captured by the French in 1806 (Voyage de Decouvertes 3 430). The Arniston was one of a fleet of ships under convoy of H.M.S. Athenian which was sent to China via Van Diemen's Land and Norfolk Island.) and there is no reason to disbelieve him; but it is quite possible that Flinders did show Freycinet either his own chart of Port Phillip, or one made by Murray, during the stay of the French ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... and did not you find it in the same place, covered in the same manner as when you left it? And if you had put gold in it, you must have found it. You told me it contained olives, and I believed you. This is all I know of the matter: you may disbelieve me if you please; ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... theories are very lamentable. If we would attain to knowledge of anything in God's true Creation, let us disbelieve them wholly! They are the product of an Age of Scepticism; they indicate the saddest spiritual paralysis, and mere death-life of the souls of men: more godless theory, I think, was never promulgated in this Earth. A false man found a religion? Why, a false man cannot build ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... honour to a man for a patriotic high spirit which enabled him to take a conspicuous part in building up the great fabric of the British Empire. But he was also—as all who were taking part in the ceremony believed in their hearts—a 'man of the world' and 'a man of pleasure.' Do we, then, disbelieve in our own creed, or are we engaged in a solemn mockery? Palmerston had not obeyed the conditions under which alone, as every preacher will tell us, heaven can be hoped for. Patriotism, good nature, and so forth are, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... deeps of anguish, from the verge of which the listener drew back with a shudder. "I would have married him without a single glance at the past! Let him but say 'it is untrue—all that you fear and they declare,' and I would disbelieve this tale, instantly and utterly, though a thousand witnesses swore to the truth of it. Or, let him be all that they say, I would marry him to-night, if I had the right to do it. But I promised—and to promise with an Aylett is to fulfil—that I would be ruled by my guardian's will, ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... without doubt, and tell her the truth. My tale will be too circumstantial and consistent to permit her to disbelieve." ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... more satisfactory to the mind of Mrs. Peckaby than this explanation. Had any mysterious vision appeared to herself, showing her that it was false, commanding her to disbelieve it, it could not have shaken her faith. If the white donkey arrived at her door that very night, she would be sure ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Hartley, perhaps," Bobby said. "Carlos says he is here to help me. I've no reason to disbelieve him." ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... of the gods and of the Buddha: it honours the gods, and reveres the Buddha.... The faction of the Bateren* disbelieve in the Way of the Gods, and blaspheme the true Law, —violate right-doing, and injure the good.... They truly are the enemies of the gods and of the Buddha.... If this be not speedily prohibited, the safety of the state will, assuredly hereafter be imperilled; ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... coats. The pretty Bible stories which I had read, or heard read in church, lost their purity and sincerity of impression, and were turned into so many historic or chronologic theses to be defended against whatever impugners. I was not to disbelieve them, but—the next thing to that—I was to be quite sure that some one or other would or had disbelieved them. Next to making a child an infidel, is the letting him know that there are infidels at all. Credulity is the man's weakness, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... of her name Alan's voice was dead, and he made no movement. He could not disbelieve. It was not a mental illusion or a temporary upsetting of his sanity. It was truth. The shock of it was rending every nerve in his body, even as he stood as if carved out of wood. And then a strange relaxation swept over him. Some force seemed ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... entreaties;-indeed I do not wish to resist them; for your friendship and affection will soothe my chagrin. Had it arisen from any other cause, not a moment would I have deferred the communication you ask;-but as it is, I would, were it possible, not only conceal it from all the world, but endeavour to disbelieve it myself. Yet since I must tell you, why trifle with ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... it must not, produce all that it could produce. And it is high time to disbelieve the legend which represents wagedom as the best incentive to productive work. If industry nowadays brings in a hundred times more than it did in the days of our grandfathers, it is due to the sudden awakening of physical and chemical sciences towards the end of last century; not to the ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... man. At any rate, he was wrong; and the commonest knowledge of our wild world suffices to show any reasoning man the gravity of the error propounded in my quotation. As we study the history of the frivolous race of men, it sometimes seems hard to disbelieve the theory of Descartes. The great Frenchman held that man and other animals are automata; and, were it not that such a theory strikes at the root of morals, we might almost be tempted to accept it in moments of weakness, ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... much as I wished. Whenever I knew we were to meet him, I also took care to tell Lizzy that it would be no pleasure to me, and that if it was at dinner, I hoped I should not sit next to him. I said these things to her oftener than I should naturally have done, because I saw that in her wish to disbelieve them she really did so, and I wished to make her understand me, in case either Papa or Mama or the boys should be speaking of it before her. You will say, why did I not speak more to Mama herself?—partly because I was afraid of bringing forward the subject, ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... regard to Philip's father—not on other grounds—it would be unreasonable, it would be wrong, for us to entertain the idea of marriage; and I have given up thinking of him as a lover. I am telling you the truth, and you have no right to disbelieve me; I have kept my word to you, and you have never detected me in a falsehood. I should not only not encourage, I should carefully avoid, any intercourse with Philip on any other footing than of quiet friendship. ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... improbable that, if they were wrought, no evidence could establish them, is another matter. The first allegation involves a curious limitation of omnipotence; and the second affirms in effect, that, if God were to work a miracle, it would be our duty to disbelieve him! ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... who, in thus bowing to the crowd, was expressing his approbation of their proceedings. It was, in fact, a regular miracle. So alleged both padres and cura, and who was there to contradict them? It would have been a dangerous matter to have said nay. In San Ildefonso no man dared to disbelieve the word of the Church. The miracle worked well. The religious enthusiasm boiled up; and when Saint John was returned to his niche, and the little "cofre" placed in front of him, many a "peseta", "real," and "cuartillo," were dropped in, which would otherwise ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... this with such a jovial and robust certainty of scorn, that I am half inclined to distrust the sky's evidence—to disbelieve even in the big drop that so indisputably splashed into my eye just now. "But in case it does rain," continue I, pertinaciously, "I suppose that there is a house near, or some place where ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... without being able to answer the fire. He sees nothing of the corresponding loss of the enemy, and he is apt to take a most desponding view of the situation. Thus Englishmen reading the accounts of men who fought at Waterloo are too ready to disbelieve representations of what was taking place in the rear of the army, and to think Thackeray's life-like picture in Vanity Fair of the state of Brussels must be overdrawn. Indeed, in this very battle of Waterloo, Zieten began ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... the aphorism:—"To predict the Future, to manage the Present, would not be so impossible, had not the Past been so sacrilegiously mishandled; effaced, and what is worse, defaced!"—"Of all Bibles, the frightfulest to disbelieve in is this 'Bible of Universal History'"—"The Leaders of Industry, if Industry is ever to be led, are virtually the Captains of the World." What new meaning that phrase has acquired in these fifty years! "Men of letters may become a 'chivalry,' an actual instead of a virtual Priesthood." Well! ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... flew open, and he stared up into the speaker's face. Twenty years! Somehow it did not occur to him to disbelieve this astounding statement. He struggled hard to realize its implication. Two decades had passed since last he remembered. He had been a youth then. Now ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... the conception of the ancients it would have said that God, to reward or punish his people, gave Napoleon power and directed his will to the fulfillment of the divine ends, and that reply, would have been clear and complete. One might believe or disbelieve in the divine significance of Napoleon, but for anyone believing in it there would have been nothing unintelligible in the history of that period, nor would there have ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... official "still" photographer, and I have been companions in a few strange enterprises in the war, but I doubt whether any have equalled in strangeness, and I might say almost uncanny, adventure that which I am about to record. In cold type it would be pardonable for anyone to disbelieve some of the facts set forth, but, as I have proved for myself the perfect application of the well-known saying that "truth is stranger than fiction," I merely relate the facts in simple language exactly as they happened, and leave them to ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... but I know I feel like a fool. I am sorry, Bathurst, for what I said at dinner; but it really didn't seem to me to be possible what you told us about the girl going up into the air and not coming down again. Well, after I have seen what I have seen this evening, I won't disbelieve anything I hear in ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... abolition of the Parliament, and a practical coronation of himself. The world had ceased to wonder at English democracy giving laws to their quondam rulers, and the democracy was beginning to be a little tired of itself, to disbelieve in its own irksome discipline, and to sigh for the flesh-pots of a modified Presbyterian monarchy. Cromwell, indeed, was at the height of his glory, his honours lie thick upon him, and now, if ever, he is the regal Cromwell that Victor Hugo has portrayed, the uncrowned ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... what, upon the ribbon which fastened the bunch of golden grain. It was—nay, it could have been nothing else—that very spider. The honoured work was not his, but his dead friend's. How the exchange had occurred he could not now understand, but to disbelieve that it had taken place would ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of human history, as our soul wearies even to think of. Mr. Latham disdains any link of philosophy, or any classification, among his "ten thousand facts," as being a fault of the "German School" (whatever that may be) of Ethnology. It seems to him soundly "British" to disbelieve all the best conclusions of modern scholarship, and to urge his own fanciful or shallow theories. He treats all human superstitions and mythologies as if he were standing in the Strand and judging them by the ideas of modern London. His is a Cockney's view of antiquity. He cannot imagine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... Hurlothrumbo[obs3], raw head and bloody bones, fee-faw-fum, bete noire[Fr], enfant terrible[Fr]. alarmist &c. (coward) 862. V. fear, stand in awe of; be afraid &c. adj.; have qualms &c. n.; apprehend, sit upon thorns, eye askance; distrust &c. (disbelieve) 485. hesitate &c. (be irresolute) 605; falter, funk, cower, crouch; skulk &c. (cowardice) 862; "let 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would'"; take fright, take alarm; start, wince, flinch, shy, shrink; fly &c. (avoid) 623. tremble, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... that fertilised and made fragrant her higher self. In her maiden heart she had had a dream of being crowned with bride-flowers, and lo! it was rue, and thyme gone to seed, and dead primroses that garlanded her sad, unspoken love. But she wore them with a sweet, brave submission, not affecting to disbelieve that time would surely heal love's aching pain. For she knew that goodness was omnipotent ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... constant amusement in Court, and everywhere else among the great people; and I let you know it, in order to have it obtain among you, and to teach you a new refinement" (Swift's "Journal"). See the Spectator, Nos. 47, 504: "A Biter is one who tells you a thing you have no reason to disbelieve in itself; and perhaps has given you, before he bit you, no reason to disbelieve it for his saying it; and if you give him credit, laughs in your face, and triumphs that he has deceived you. In a word, a Biter is one who thinks you a fool, ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... to this story, would be no daughter in the eye of the law,—would, at any rate, be no heiress. The Earl would be the undisputed heir to the personal property, as he is to the real property and to the title. But we disbelieve this story utterly,—we intend to offer no evidence to show that the first wife,—for there was such a wife,—was living when the second marriage was contracted. We have no such evidence, and believe that none such can be found. Then that ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... ma'am. When such a respectable lady as you said that you saw the young lady come into the house in the middle of the night, how was they to disbelieve it. They never asked me if I ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... a moment and tried to read his father's face. But Dan's face remained fixed, and as if purposely, which vexed Joseph, who cried: now, Father, you may believe or disbelieve, or be it thou'rt naturally averse from Jesus, but thou knowest as well as I do that two days after the great storm a statue of the goddess Venus fell from her pedestal in the streets of Tiberias and was broken. But, Joseph, when the statue fell I was sick ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... friends and guest-friends of those who have hired them. [But that is not the case, of course. Far from it!] {52} Nay, I call you the hireling, formerly of Philip, and now of Alexander, and so do all who are present. If you disbelieve me, ask them—or rather I will ask them for you. Men of Athens, do you think of Aeschines as the hireling or as the guest-friend of Alexander? You hear what ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... and children. Many a time Abe had tried to induce him to go to the Lord's house and begin to lead a new life; but sin had such a hold upon him that he only made light of everything good, and, in his ignorance and hardihood, professed to disbelieve in God and ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... Even if the old woman had been timid about staying in the house, she had made it clear to Peter that she was entirely unaware of the kind of danger that threatened her employer. Peter had believed her then. He saw no reason to disbelieve her now. She had known as little as Peter about the cause for McGuire's alarm. And here he had found her staring with the same unseeing eyes into the darkness, with the same symptoms of nervous shock as McGuire had shown. What enemy of McGuire's ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... most things," said Mortimer quietly, "but I'm not such a fool as not to believe in Pan when I'm down here. And if you're wise you won't disbelieve in him too boastfully while you're in ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... the traveller, "very likely. I am one who goes sniffing; I am no poet. I believe in a better future for the world; or, at all accounts, I do most potently disbelieve in the present. Rotten eggs is the burthen of my song. But indeed, your Highness, when I meet with any merit, I do not think that I am slow to recognise it. This is a day that I shall still recall with gratitude, for I have found a sovereign with some manly virtues; and for once—old courtier ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the paleographic expert has no difficulty in arriving at whatever conclusion happens to suit his beliefs or disbeliefs; and he never succeeds in convincing the other experts except when they believe or disbelieve exactly as he does. Hence I conclude that the dates of the original narratives cannot be ascertained, and that we must make the best of the evangelists' own accounts of themselves. There is, as we have seen, a very marked difference between ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... to papa to take us away," she thought "Why did I say that? What good would it do? It wouldn't make anybody disbelieve this hateful story. They'd only think I wanted to get away because I was found out. And papa would be so worried and disappointed. It has cost him a great deal to get us ready and send us here, and he wants us to stay a year. If we ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... be asked, until recently did nearly all the most eminent living naturalists and geologists disbelieve in the mutability of species? It cannot be asserted that organic beings in a state of nature are subject to no variation; it cannot be proved that the amount of variation in the course of long ages is a limited quantity; no clear distinction has been, or can be, drawn between species and ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... Dr. Hook, strong Churchman as he was, "called to union on the principles of the English Reformation." But the criticism which had been set afloat by the movement had discovered and realised, what defenders of the English Church had hitherto felt it an act of piety to disbelieve, when put before them by Romanists like Lingard, and radicals like Cobbett. that the Reformers had been accomplices in many indefensible acts, and had been inconsistent and untrustworthy theologians. Providentially, it was felt, the ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... and when Mrs. Haxton, elegant as ever, but very quiet and reserved in manner, was living in a tiny villa at Bath, where Mr. Fenshawe's munificence had established her for the remainder of her days. She said, and there was no reason to disbelieve her, that von Kerber had no knowledge of the identity of the oasis at the Well of Moses. He went that way to the sea by sheer, accident and became half crazy with excitement at the sight of the Seven Hills. It was his fixed intention, she declared, to send word to Fenshawe as soon as he had ascertained, ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... and character are different enough from ours. They are traditionally romantic. But we are apt to disbelieve in the romance which we hear from those concerned. I cannot disbelieve, since I knew this sad, stern Italian woman. Can you disbelieve, who have seen Titian's, and Tintoretto's, and Paolo Veronese's portraits of Venetian women? You, who have floated ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... I was again tempted to disbelieve the faithfulness of the Lord, and though I was not miserable, still, I was not so fully resting upon the Lord that I could triumph with joy. It was but one hour after, when the Lord gave me another proof of his faithful love. A Christian ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... release my brother; and after much debate within myself, my sisterly remorse overcame my virtue, and I did yield to him. But the next morning betimes, Angelo, forfeiting his promise, sent a warrant for my poor brother's head!' The duke affected to disbelieve her story; and Angelo said that grief for her brother's death, who had suffered by the due course of the law, had disordered her senses. And now another suitor approached, which was Mariana; and Mariana said: 'Noble ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... to make confession of his creed he would probably have framed it in some such way as this: "I disbelieve in all Church dogmas, and do not go to church; I have no definite ideas about a future state, and do not want to have; but in a private way I try to identify myself as much as possible with what I see about me, feeling that if I could ever really be at one with the world I live ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... as they did, though they had miracles, and we have not; because there is one cause of it common both to them and us—heartlessness in religious matters, an evil heart of unbelief, both they and we disobey and disbelieve, because ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... at me a moment, as if to ascertain whether I were laughing at him. And then, after a pause, "Perhaps you don't know that I disbelieve in a future life," ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... Further, just as man obeys God in believing the articles of faith, so does he also in keeping the commandments of the Law. Now a man can obey some commandments, and disobey others. Therefore he can believe some articles, and disbelieve others. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... utter a word which would induce you to disbelieve what you know to be right. It is much more important to believe earnestly that something is morally right than that it should be really right, and he who attempts to displace a belief runs a certain risk, because he is not sure ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... went by, and so did many other things, though heavily laden with grief and death; and the one thing we learned was to disbelieve ninety-nine out of every hundred. Letters for the Sawyer were dispatched by me to every likely place for him, and advertisements put into countless newspapers, but none of them seemed to go near him. Old as he was, he avoided feather-beds, and roamed like a true Californian. But at last ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... not tell you how annoyed I was by these exaggerations. In this age of doubt people who do not know me might possibly be led to disbelieve the real facts when they are mixed up with ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... intellectual and a moral man. We find him adorned with all the virtues which Heaven gave him at his birth; his real goodness, which neither injustice nor misfortune could alter; his generosity, which not only made him disbelieve in ingratitude, but actually incited him to render good for evil and obliged him to own that "he could not keep his resentments;" his gratitude for the little that is done for him; his sincerity; his ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... child is certain of its mother's existence before it is capable of knowing God, and the veriest Atheist is certain of his own existence and that of his fellow-men, even when he professes to doubt or to disbelieve the existence of God. It may be true that the essential nature and omniscient knowledge of God is the ultimate and eternal standard of truth and certainty, or, in the words of Fenelon, that "il n'y a qu'une seule verite, et qu'une seule maniere de bien ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... been and continue to be grievously confounded. Balaam and his ass were the passive organs of dictation; but no one, I suppose, will venture to call either of those worthies inspired. It is my profound conviction that St. John and St. Paul were divinely inspired; but I totally disbelieve the dictation of any one word, sentence, or argument throughout their writings. Observe, there was revelation. All religion is revealed;— revealed religion is, in my judgment, a mere pleonasm. Revelations of facts were undoubtedly ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... 150 persons in the oratory of Drumree, and carried off as captives 3,000 persons. If the tree is to be judged by its fruits, this first year's growth of the new faith is rather alarming. It compels us to disbelieve the sincerity of Godfrid, at least, and the fighting men who wrought these outrages and sacrileges. It forces us to rank them with the incorrigible heathens who boasted that they had twenty times received the Sacrament of Baptism, and valued it for the twenty white robes which had been presented ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... his face. It took her a long time to understand that he had actually spoken them. She was not sure at the first that her overstrained senses were not playing her tricks; but he repeated his question, and she could no longer disbelieve ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... twenty years, garden writing for fifteen and being in the mail order garden seed business for seven I have been on the receiving end of countless amazing claims by touters of agricultural snake oils; after testing out dozens of such concoctions I tend to disbelieve mystic contentions of unique ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... of that large class of people who can neither imagine nor disbelieve in immortality. Dimmer and dimmer grew the figure but still it remained visible. As one can continue to see a star at dawn until one turns away. Or one blinks or nods ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... Hindu has come to regard caste observance as the supreme claim of his faith. As we have seen, a man may believe or disbelieve any doctrine he please; that does not affect his status as a Hindu so long as he is loyal to caste rules and observances. As one has aptly remarked, the seat of other religions may be in the mind; the seat of Hinduism is preeminently ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... sincerity of feeling; it gave her root in our earth; she needed it as she pressed a hand on her eyeballs, conscious of acting the invalid, though the reasons she had for languishing under headache were so convincing that her brain refused to disbelieve in it and went some way to produce positive throbs. Otherwise she had no excuse for shutting herself in her room. Vernon Whitford would be sceptical. Headache or none, Colonel De Craye must be thinking strangely of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... torture to me, that scarce grieve thee— That entire death shall null my entire thought; And I feel torture, not that I believe thee, But that I cannot disbelieve thee not. Shall that of me that now contains the stars Be by the very contained stars survived? Thus were Fate all unjust. Yet what truth bars An all unjust Fate's truth from being believed? Conjecture cannot ...
— 35 Sonnets • Fernando Pessoa
... Markham!' said she, with a shocked expression and voice subdued almost to a whisper, 'what do you think of these shocking reports about Mrs. Graham?—can you encourage us to disbelieve them?' ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... expend itself, and then to explain quietly the whole matter of Arthur Mifflin and the bet that had led to his one excursion into burglary; but he doubted it. Things—including his temper—had got beyond the stage of quiet explanations. McEachern would most certainly disbelieve his story. What would happen after that he did not know. A scene, probably: a melodramatic denunciation, at the worst, before the other guests; at the best, before Sir Thomas alone. He saw nothing but chaos beyond that. His story was thin to a degree, unless backed ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... than this, to define and limit God in order to take hold of Him, to detach one's self and parts of the universe from God in some mysterious way in order to reduce life to a dramatic antagonism, is not faith, but infirmity. Excessive strenuous belief is not faith. By faith we disbelieve, and it is the drowning man, and not the strong swimmer, who clutches at the floating straw. It is in the nature of man, it is in the present purpose of things, that the real world of our experience and will should appear to us not only as a progressive existence in ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... ear unto the voice of his servant, while on a certain time the tyrant stood in the middle of his court surrounded by many of his people, suddenly transformed him into a fox; and he, flying from their sight, never more appeared on the earth. And this no one can reasonably disbelieve, who hath read of the wife of Lot who was changed into a pillar of salt, or the ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... disgusted as they well may be with such fables as these, disbelieve generally the existence of the unicorn. Yet there are animals bearing on their heads a bony protuberance more or less like a horn, which may have given rise to the story. The rhinoceros horn, as it is called, is such a protuberance, though it does not exceed a few inches in height, and is ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... heap upon me. But I am alarmed at the effect it may have on, and the advantage the French government may be disposed to make of, the spirit which is at work to cherish a belief in them that the treaty is calculated to favor Great Britain at their expense. Whether they believe or disbelieve these tales, the effect it will have upon the nation will be nearly the same; for, whilst they are at war with that power, or so long as the animosity between the two nations exists, it will, no matter at whose expense, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... the antient is a piece of private history, the truth of which my beloved cares not to own, and indeed affects to disbelieve: as she does also some puisny gallantries of her foolish brother; which, by way of recrimination, I have hinted at, without naming my informant ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... all mysteries, in love With doubt itself, and fond to disbelieve, We ask not, "if realities be real?" With Plato, or with Berkeley; but we know Life comes not of itself, and what hath life,— However insignificant it seem To us, whose noblest standard is ourselves,— Hath been by the Almighty's finger ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... wise or free or happy; that vice, however lavishly it surround itself with luxury and ease and power, is inherently wretched and foolish and slavish;—these are things which are worth saying and worth believing, things, indeed, which the world dare not and cannot permanently disbelieve, however difficult or even impossible it may be to mark men off into two classes, the good and the bad, however strange the irony of circumstance which so often shows the wicked who 'are not troubled as other ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... believe it. He saw that were he to believe it, and to have believed it wrongly, the offence given would be ineffable. He should never dare to look his wife in the face again. It was at any rate infinitely safer for him to disbelieve it. He sat there mute, immovable, without a change of countenance, without even a frown on his brow, for a quarter of an hour; and at the end of that time he got up and shook himself. It was not true. Whatever might be the explanation, it could not be ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... home, but that they staid that they might deliver up John into my power; and when they said this they took their oaths of it, and those such as are most tremendous amongst us, and such as I did not think fit to disbelieve. However, they desired me to lodge some where else, because the next day was the sabbath, and that it was not fit the city of Tiberias should be ...
— The Life of Flavius Josephus • Flavius Josephus
... birthday; and, as he spoke of that street, the wild thought came over her how easily a fever might yet sweep him away. And yet she says, all down the street, she was trying to persuade herself to forget Emily's warning, and to disbelieve in the infection. After all, she thought, even if she had not met Emily, she should have made some excuse for turning back, such a pitiful thought came of the fair, fresh ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of Lord Holland's resignation. The court confidently deny the whole plan, and ascribe it to the fertility of Charles Townshend's brain. However, as they have their Charles Townshends too, I do not totally disbelieve it. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... disgusting to me. I resented everything. It is just as wonderful and radiant a star of hope to read that there is a sure way out of my tangle as if I had consumption and was promised a cure of that. I don't yet exactly believe it, but I don't disbelieve it. All I know is I want to read, read, read all the time. I was just thinking a minute ago that if we had the books here it would be perfect. This is the sort of place where it would be easiest to see that only the good is the ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... absently, and Patricia, watching her hurry down the frosty street, found herself wondering at the subtle barrier that she could feel so keenly, while she yet tried to disbelieve. ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... woman was at least a woman and alive. The touch of her fingers in his as she gave him the medicine was warm. She testified to the existence of a world full of women also alive—the world he was beginning to disbelieve in. He watched her sitting in the sunshine by the window, and counted the light creeping down from bead to bead of the rosary at her waist. They then moved his bed to the window that he might look down upon the stately avenue ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... realize now that day by day you have been ridiculing me.' My patience was exhausted. 'I don't understand why you disbelieve ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... any other settler entered Hunger valley. They found her skeleton then in the weedy garden. The adobe stands tenantless in the new village of Martinez, and the people have so often heard that the ghosts of the Zamaconas haunt the place that they have begun to disbelieve it. ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... any reason for the appearance. And Themistocles replied, that Chrysippus only proposed such things by the by, as instances to correct us, who easily assent and without any reason to what seems likely, and disbelieve everything that seems unlikely at the first sight. But why, sir, are you concerned at this? For if you are speculative and would inquire into the causes of things you need not want subjects in your own profession; but pray ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... bodily examination of the women, under the direction of the eminent Harvey,[20] the king's physician, who was later to discover the circulation of the blood. In the course of this chapter we shall see that Harvey had long cherished misgivings about witchcraft. Probably by this time he had come to disbelieve it. One can but wonder if Charles, already probably aware of Harvey's views, had not intended from his first step in the Lancashire case to give his physician a chance to assert his opinion. In any case his ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... himself, the by-standers told him he need not come for that purpose as he had no longer anything to learn. Although the young musician remarks that these were compliments, he cannot help confessing that he likes to hear them; and of course one who likes to hear them does not wholly disbelieve them, but considers them something more than a mere flatus vocis. "Nobody here," Chopin writes exultingly, "will regard me as a pupil." Indeed, such was the reception he met with that it took him by surprise. "People wonder at me," he remarked soon after ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... brother to the king of Kasson, chief of Tesee. The old man viewed his visitor with great earnestness, having never beheld but one white man before, whom Mr. Park discovered to be Major Houghton. He appeared to disbelieve what Mr. Park asserted, in answer to his inquiries concerning the motives that induced him to explore the country, and told him that he must go to Kooniakary to pay his respects to the king, but desired to see him again before ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... very handsome, and he is an odious puppy. But as to her assignations in the garden, if they are with any one, it is with Gillian, and I see no harm in them, except that we might have been told—-only that would have robbed the entire story of its flavour, I suppose. Besides, I greatly disbelieve the entire story, so don't be worried about it! There—-as if we had not been doing our best to worry you! But come home, dearest old Lily. Gather your chicks under your wing, and when you cluck them together again, all will be well. I don't think you will find Valetta ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... It was impossible to disbelieve her; she was plainly telling the truth. And, too, why should she count the roses? The natural thing would be not to count them, but merely to put them in the vase as she had said. And yet, there was something about those flowers that Elsa knew and wouldn't tell. Could it ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... safe from his visitations, now they are extended hitherto. I dreamt not of danger beforetime, though I have heard sounds, and seen unaccountable things; yet I imagined that in the old chamber only he had power to work mischief; and, even there, I did disbelieve much of thy story, as it respected his freaks and the nature and manner of his visits. The rumblings that I fancied at times in the dead of night were in the end disregarded and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... unhappy, and impenetrable life of his daughter pass by him in mental review, he became painfully aware of the fact that this was the first time in her life that she had ever heard real music. "Is it possible?" he asked. He tried to think of another time that would make him disbelieve the accuracy ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... ventured to declare that he or she was innocent,—and that six human beings should leave the world with the undeserved stain of so odious a charge on them, without attempting to clear themselves, is credible only to those who form opinions by their wills, and believe or disbelieve as they choose. ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... little before the church of God shall be set free from the beast, and all his angels: For these things were writ for our admonition, to show us what shall be done hereafter; yea, and whether we believe or disbelieve hereabout, time will bring it ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... example, throwing themselves enthusiastically into each new movement only to leave it before long. They would all alike find it difficult to give an intelligible reason for these changes. They say that the Spirit guides them, and it would be unfair to disbelieve them, but the historian who should investigate conditions like these would lose his head in the labyrinth unless he made a separate study of each of these Protean movements. They are surely not ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... was some hope that his youth and the manly sincerity with which he clung to his simple story might have some effect. It might be that a single man on that jury would be so struck with his single sturdy tale that he would refuse to disbelieve it altogether. You could never tell what might strike a man on a jury. So ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... "I neither believe nor disbelieve in that and many more modern discoveries of the same kind I do not think it right to reject them or to give blind credence. Not a day passes but some discovery excites our wonder and admiration, and points out to us how little we do know. The great fault is, that when people have made a discovery ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... mysteries. I have chased Mystery for more years than I shall own, and, so far as I can see, whenever you open the door on her secret chamber, she shuts a door on the other side and is gone into a further holy of holies. I've come to disbelieve in those who tell me that they have caged ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... merchants, and men of luxurious life. Every other temptation is at last concentrated into this; pride, and lust, and envy, and anger all give up their strength to avarice. The sin of the whole world is essentially the sin of Judas. Men do not disbelieve their Christ; but ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... is possible to you. There is no reason, I suppose, why you may not have all the happiness I ever dreamed of, for, after all, the beginning and end of it was love. And yet I have advised you never to marry—for I often disbelieve in the existence of the sort of love that I have dreamed of—but how can I tell? I know nothing but my own life, and I tell you that is an intolerable pain. I sit here and say the words and you hear them, but they are words only to you, shut off as you are from all the experiences ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... possessions of others is the act that is directed to be followed. So compassion for all creatures is prescribed; and, lastly, the belief is directed to be entertained that acts have fruits, for the Vedas declare as such. He that does not believe that acts have fruits disbelieve the very Vedas which of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... utterly bewildered: she had never known her father to say anything that was not perfectly true, yet how could she disbelieve the evidence of her ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... am warning him against the humdrum past. That's another point, Mr. Elliot. Impress on your class that many Greeks and most Romans were frightfully stupid, and if they disbelieve you, read Ctesiphon with them, or Valerius Flaccus. Whatever is ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... [1] is one who tells you a thing you have no reason to disbelieve in it self; and perhaps has given you, before he bit you, no reason to disbelieve it for his saying it; and if you give him Credit, laughs in your Face, and triumphs that he has deceiv'd you. In a Word, a Biter is one who thinks you a Fool, because you do not think him a Knave. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... charges will be proved and that the King will be divorced. It is impossible to discover what effect the report may have in the country; it is certain hitherto that all ranks of men have been decidedly favourable to the Queen, and disbelieve the charges against her. The military in London have shown alarming symptoms of dissatisfaction, so much so that it seems doubtful how far the Guards can be counted upon in case of any disturbance arising out of this subject. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... assurance it contained. "We are none of us safe from his visitations, now they are extended hitherto. I dreamt not of danger beforetime, though I have heard sounds, and seen unaccountable things; yet I imagined that in the old chamber only he had power to work mischief; and, even there, I did disbelieve much of thy story, as it respected his freaks and the nature and manner of his visits. The rumblings that I fancied at times in the dead of night were in the end disregarded ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... Then he informed me that he wished me to hunt up certain facts in Herodotus "and elsewhere" confirmatory of his view that the English were the descendants of the Ten Tribes. I promised to do so, swallowing even that comprehensive "elsewhere." It was none of my business to believe or disbelieve: I was paid to get up a case, and I got one up to the best of my ability. I imagine it was at least as good as most other cases in similar matters: at any rate, it pleased the old ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... that you believe with your generation. Your saints lived in an age of faith, when it was practically impossible to disbelieve what ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... that laying their jealousies aside they might be induced to return to their duty. For this purpose he sent two respectable officers to them who had friends among the mutineers, and suspecting that they might disbelieve, or seem not to credit the visit of the caravel under the command of Escobar, he sent them part of the bacon which she had brought. When these two arrived where Porras and his chief confidant resided, he came out to meet them that he might ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... ain't going to say positively that I believe or disbelieve in ghosts, but all I tell you is what I saw. I can't explain it. I don't pretend I can, for I can't. If you can, well and good; I shall be glad, for it will stop tormenting me as it has done and always will otherwise. There ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... been scattered all over the country, south and north; and though multitudes have affected to disbelieve its statements, Kentuckians know the truth of them quite too well to call them in question. The story is fiction or fact—if fiction, why has it not been nailed to the wall? Hundreds of people around the mouth of Cumberland River are ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... something, the proof of which no man can give to another, yet every man may find for himself. If any man say that he cannot find it, I am bound to disbelieve him. I cannot do otherwise without unsettling the foundations of my own moral nature. If he will not find it, he excommunicates himself, forfeits his personal rights, and becomes a thing—i.e., one who may be used against his will and without regard to his interest. If the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... through; wood shuts out light, but magnetic attraction goes through it as sand went through the sieve. No good reasons can be given why the presence of a cat should not betray itself to certain organizations, at a distance, through the walls of a box in which the animal is shut up. We need not disbelieve the stories which allege such an occurrence as a fact and a not very ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the Earths surface; yet I am not at all inclined to admit this as a true Hypothesis, for divers Reasons, which if not demonstrative, are yet so consonant to the general Systeme of the World, as that we have no good ground to disbelieve them. For 1. The Earth being undeniably the greater Body of the two (whereof there is no doubt to be made) it cannot be thought probable, that this should be carried about by the Moon, lesser than it self: The contrary being seen, not onely in the Sun, which is bigger than any of the Planets, ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... it, that he might prosecute his examination in the morning. He was walking on, when a deep groan came from almost beneath his feet, as it seemed. Tom was not altogether free from superstition, but though he did not disbelieve in ghosts and other foolish notions, he was too brave to be frightened by anything, and consequently cool and capable ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... that," said Afy. "If folks tell true, there was love scenes between them before he ever thought of Lady Isabel. I had that from Wilson, and she ought to know, for she lived at the Hares'. Another thing is said—only you must just believe one word of West Lynne talk, and disbelieve ten—that if Lady Isabel had not died, Mr. Carlyle never would have married again; he had scruples. Half a dozen were given him by report; Louisa Dobede for one, and Mary Pinner for another. Such nonsense! Folks might have made sure it would be Barbara ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... had induced her friend to be so, it did seem manifest to him, Dr. Grantly, that Mrs. Proudie absolutely believed the report which she promulgated so diligently. The wish might be father to the thought, no doubt; but that the thought was truly there, Dr. Grantly could not induce himself to disbelieve. His wife was less credulous, and to a certain degree comforted him; but that evening he received a letter which greatly confirmed the suspicions set on foot by Mrs. Proudie, and even shook his wife's faith in Lord Dumbello. It was from a mere acquaintance, who in the ordinary course of things ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... wonderful corridors, the gardens with their revelations of winding walks, labyrinths of evergreens, and grass paths leading into beautiful unexpected places, where one suddenly came upon deep, clear pools where water plants grew and slow carp had dreamed centuries away. The gardens caused Emily to disbelieve in the existence of Mortimer Street, but the house at times caused her to disbelieve in herself. The picture gallery especially had this effect upon her. The men and women, once as alive as her everyday self, now gazing down at her from their picture frames sometimes made her heart beat ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Germans are in that mood now. But as most of us have had to learn, a man may be bitterly ashamed of this or that incident in his country's history—what Englishman, for instance, can be proud of Glencoe?—he may disbelieve in half its institutions and still love his country far too much to suffer the thought of its destruction. I prefer to see my country right, but if it comes to the pinch and my country sins I will fight to save her from ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... can be found which have more abundant internal evidence of authenticity. It always happens, when something important is unexpectedly added to our knowledge of the past, that somebody will blindly disbelieve. Dugald Stewart could see nothing but "frauds of arch-forgers" in what was added to our knowledge of ancient India when the Sanskrit language and literature were discovered. In the same way, here and there a doubter has hesitated ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... famous corsair. Mustafa, however, held a different opinion: the unfortunate Chevalier La Riviere had, before his death, informed the Turkish general that large and powerful succours were expected daily from Sicily. Secretly disquieted by this news, which he had at the time affected to disbelieve, Mustafa now urged immediate action. His opinion was that, in the first instance, they had better attack the castle of St. Elmo. It was a small and insignificant fort which at best would only delay them ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... would have falsified the affidavit. But so far from offering any such evidence, all the evidence adduced confirms the statement in the affidavit; and yet my learned friend still ventures to ask you to disbelieve what Lord Cochrane has sworn, although his oath is unopposed by any testimony, and supported by all the testimony ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... Bain and his school to be the ultimate postulate, the final ground of intellection. It is of the utmost importance, however,—and this Professor Bain fails to do—to distinguish between two kinds of belief. There are men who believe and others who disbelieve the Koran or the Bible; I can accept or reject the historical existence of King Arthur or Napoleon; but, if I understand them, I cannot disbelieve the demonstrations of Euclid, nor the relations of subject ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... it. I never saw anything of the sort. I neither believe nor disbelieve. But you know queer things do happen at times—things you can't account for. At least, people who you know wouldn't lie say so. Of course, they may be mistaken. And I don't think that everybody can see spirits either, provided they are to be seen. It requires ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... criticism, and people have fancied that they saw in it an unworthy attempt to achieve a popular success by means of the scandal; but M. Makart replies that he has respected the truth of history if we are not to disbelieve a contemporary letter of Albert Duerer to Melanchthon. Be this as it may, this great effort receives the applause of the public, notwithstanding the monotonous amber tint which pervades this picture as it did the Catharine Cornaro. Another Austrian, the historical painter ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... state of probation. But, even where the mention made by the Fathers of prayer for the dead does not refer expressly to a place of purgation, it is no more a proof that they did not hold this doctrine than that those modern Catholic authors disbelieve in it, who suppose this middle state of suffering to be admitted by their readers. Or even, which rarely happens, if they be silent altogether upon the subject, it no more infers their ignorance of such a belief ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... "You can hardly disbelieve this, sir, as I have just heard the story from Sergeant Malcolm. There were six in the house, and five have been carried out dead. One has been taken to Cong, and he is as good as dead. Their names ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... wall, and almost immediately disappeared. Then Norbert knew that the door had opened and closed, and that the man had entered the garden. There could be no doubt upon this point, and yet the Duke would have given worlds to be able to disbelieve the evidence of his senses. It might be a burglar, but burglars seldom work alone; or it might be a visitor to one of the servants, but all the servants were absent. He again raised his eyes to the windows of his wife's room. All of a sudden the light grew brighter; either the lamp had been ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... said the optimistic Mr. Tremayne. "If you come back in a few years' time and tell me that you've been appointed an admiral in the Russian Navy, or that you've married the Grand Duchess Irene Yaroslav, I shall not for one moment disbelieve you. At the same time, if you come back from Russia without your ears, the same having been cut off by your peasant neighbours to propitiate the ghost of a martyr who died six hundred years ago, I shall not be surprised either. That is the ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... I answered with sullen resolution, though my eyes belied my words. "I can't disbelieve the evidence of my own senses. I SAW you escape that night. I see you still. I've seen you for years. I KNOW it was you, and ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... compel the water to bubble up? Can you drain away the moor and bid it blossom like a garden? I cannot love you—when you do everything to make me shrink from you. You esteem nothing, no one, that is good. You sneer at everything that is holy; you disbelieve in everything that is honest; you value not the true, and you have no respect for suffering. I do not deny that I have no love for you—that there is much in you that makes me draw away—as from something ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... "We are not responsible for the fact," says Krauth, "that under the conditions of knowledge we know, or in defect of them do not know; we are responsible if, under the conditions of a well-grounded faith, we disbelieve."[63] ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... that the Lancers never spared a wounded man, but ran him through as they galloped past him. I was told this fifty times, and each time told my informant flatly that I declined to believe the assertion, and should continue to disbelieve it until I had undeniable proof, for it would take a good deal to convince me that a British soldier would strike a fallen foe even in the heat and stress of battle. One day they asked me to come and look at the dead body of one of their field cornets, whom they ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... now told me of her belated conception of the desperate plan to induce von Kufner to bring her to the docks to see us depart, and how she had pretended to disbelieve that I was really going and bargained to marry him within sixty days if she could be assured by her own eyes that I had really departed for ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... the Roman Catholic Church? If our investigation of the teachings of the Holy Scriptures convinces us that they teach Transubstantiation, we will be ready to believe and confess that doctrine, no matter who else may believe or disbelieve it. What we want to know, believe, teach and confess, is ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... Scipio both lose their wives; and both disbelieve in reality, though they think proper to accept, the excuses they make on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... human history, as our soul wearies even to think of. Mr. Latham disdains any link of philosophy, or any classification, among his "ten thousand facts," as being a fault of the "German School" (whatever that may be) of Ethnology. It seems to him soundly "British" to disbelieve all the best conclusions of modern scholarship, and to urge his own fanciful or shallow theories. He treats all human superstitions and mythologies as if he were standing in the Strand and judging them by the ideas of modern London. His is a Cockney's view of antiquity. He cannot ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... beheaded its king, the wrath turned next upon the King of kings, by whose grace every tyrant claimed to reign. But eventualities had brought among them a great English and American heart—Thomas Paine. He had pleaded for Louis Caper—"Kill the king but spare the man." Now he pleaded,—"Disbelieve in the King of kings, but do not confuse with that ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... vessel had been stolen while the man was bathing, including a suit of dark blue cloth, in which suit of clothes, or in one of such a nature, a stranger had been seen skulking about the rocks near St. George. All this the governor of the prison affected to disbelieve, but the opinion was becoming very rife in the islands that ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... story which is almost as tough as the animal's hide, but we have no right to disbelieve it, for it is told by very respectable writers. During the war between the East Indian natives and the English, in 1858, there was an Elephant named Kudabar Moll the Second,—his mother having been a noted Elephant named ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... decision might be was personally immaterial to himself. "For I," he concluded, "am but a soldier of fortune, and can make terms for myself with either party." The blunt counsel pleased the Shah. "You are right, Najib," said Ahmad, "and the Nawab is misled by the impulses of youth. I disbelieve in the Mahratta penitence, and I am not going to throw you over whom I have all along regarded as the manager of this affair. Though in my position I must hear every one, yet I promise never to act ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... Thatcher, rising abruptly. "If I stayed here much longer I should begin to disbelieve my ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... believe me, or disbelieve me as your majesty pleases. But I am accustomed to work for those who honor me with their entire confidence. If the Princess Y—— is to be taken into the secret of my work on your majesty's behalf, I must respectfully ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... distrusted in diplomacy," he said, "therefore I may not accompany you. Someone would be sure to see us and report to the Embassy that I had brought you—the natural effect of which would be to make the Marquis disbelieve your tale. For you see, until we have translated the letter, we cannot assume ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... and beauty, would I believe. The quality of the evidence is not equal to sustain the burthen of the fact to be established, and it does not help the matter, that alleged proofs come to me through uncertain historical media. Yet I can't say that I disbelieve. Who can say that there is not within us a religious spiritual faculty, or a set of faculties, that take impressions, and receive communications, not through the ordinary perceptions and convictions of the mere mind—that sees and hears, retains and transmits, loves, hopes ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... miles, without taking them beyond the bounds of Coton Manor. Durant began to disbelieve in the existence of a world beyond. Coton Manor had swallowed up the county; it seemed to have opened its gates and swallowed ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... writing lightly enough, but with a purpose. For, absurd as may seem the fictions we have sported with, are they not types of many other far more serious ones which we cram down the throats of our rising generation, long after we ourselves have begun to disbelieve them? There is a conventional teaching which we decorously administer, and leave our pupils to disavow it when they can. History is still taught in our public and private schools, seasoned with all the exploded ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... A Scylla, with her lair among the rocks, Lying in wait for luckless mariners; Death's dam, against her kin implacably Breathing her venom. What a shout she raised Of exultation, as for battle won! She feigns rejoicing at her lord's return. Believe or disbelieve me; naught I care That which must come, must come. Thou soon shalt see And rue the ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... who had studied them attentively. He tells us, first, that they are "great goddesses to idle men"; then, that they are "mistresses of disputings, and logic, and monstrosities, and noisy chattering"; declares that whoso believes in their divinity must first disbelieve in Jupiter, and place supreme power in the hands of an unknown god "Whirlwind"; and, finally, he displays their influence over the mind of one of their disciples, in his sudden desire "to speak ingeniously ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... faith in my house? Get out of my doors: I will no longer remain under the same roof with a wretch who speaks wantonly of faith and the Scriptures." "Name not the Scriptures," says Adams. "How! not name the Scriptures! Do you disbelieve the Scriptures?" cries Trulliber. "No; but you do," answered Adams, "if I may reason from your practice; for their commands are so explicit, and their rewards and punishments so immense, that it is impossible ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... near to restitution or reparation, as is possible, to those I have wronged or misled. And do ye outwardly, and from a point of false bravery, make as light as ye will of my resolution, as ye are none of ye of the class of abandoned and stupid sots who endeavour to disbelieve the future existence of which ye are afraid, I am sure you will justify me in your hearts, if not by your practices; and one day you will wish you had joined with me in the same resolution, and ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... So far as the simple 'imagination' is concerned, there may be no question of belief or disbelief. The picture of Falstaff or of Lafayette, a horse or a centaur, arises equally, and is put together, let us suppose, by simple association. But as soon as I think about either I believe or disbelieve, and equally whether I judge the object to be a thought or to be a 'real fact,' whether I say that I could have seen Lafayette, or that I could not have seen Falstaff. It is not a question between reality or unreality, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... remained stationary and called for the other. But it by no means follows from the above fact that the rattle may not be of use to these snakes in other ways, as a warning to animals which would otherwise attack them. Nor can I quite disbelieve the several accounts which have appeared of their thus paralysing their prey with fear. Some other snakes also make a distinct noise by rapidly vibrating their tails against the surrounding stalks of plants; and I have myself heard this in the ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... find him there displayed in all his admirable and unique worth as an intellectual and a moral man. We find him adorned with all the virtues which Heaven gave him at his birth; his real goodness, which neither injustice nor misfortune could alter; his generosity, which not only made him disbelieve in ingratitude, but actually incited him to render good for evil and obliged him to own that "he could not keep his resentments;" his gratitude for the little that is done for him; his sincerity; his openness of character; his greatness and disinterestedness. "His very failings ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... have been, until I came here. But you seem almost to disbelieve my word. If you do, you can step into my office and examine the record for yourself. You will find these men sentenced from one year to thirty-eight for ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... another, Mr. Olney chose to disbelieve the stories from Cuba, and tried to throw discredit on General Lee, declaring that his action in the Ruiz matter had been hasty and unwarranted, and that things were not so bad in Cuba as ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... got to my feet on impulse, and then tried to brace myself and control my disordered reason, for, of course, I believed myself delirious. He stopped by the door long enough to throw down his suitcase, and in that instant I struggled fiercely to disbelieve my eyes. I was fighting myself. My legs trembled. But when I fell, his arms were around ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... effects of which they do not know, and may never know, the causes—they cannot even see the absolute necessity for supposing that everything is caused. Scientific people tend to trust their senses and disbelieve their emotions when they contradict them; religious people tend to trust emotion even though sensual experience be against it. On the whole, the religious are the more open-minded. Their assumption that the senses may mislead is ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... [502] Moses allowed himself to be influenced by their talk, and he also liked the idea of sending out spies, but not wishing to act arbitrarily he submitted to God the desire of the people. God answered: "It is not the first time that they disbelieve My promises. Even in Egypt they ridiculed Me, it is now become a habit with them, and I know what their motive in sending spies is. If thou wishest to send spies do so, but do not pretend that I have ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... inclined to disbelieve the story which Galet told him, and to think that there was no cause to fear. He was, however, soon convinced that Galet was right, and that there was reason for alarm. He arose and dressed himself hastily; and, inasmuch as a monarch, in the first moments of the discovery ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... before he achieved a discovery of so extraordinary a nature; one so unlikely, under the circumstances, to have happened; one so calculated to baffle ordinary calculations concerning the course of events, that the reader may well disbelieve what I am going to tell him, and treat it as absurdly improbable. In short, not to keep him in suspense, Gammon positively discovered evidence of the death of Harry Dreddlington in his father's lifetime; ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... minister, CECIL.[330] We have already seen how successfully this great man interposed in matters of religion; it remains to notice his zealous activity in the cause of learning. And of this latter who can possibly entertain a doubt? Who that has seen how frequently his name is affixed to Dedications, can disbelieve that Cecil was a LOVER OF BOOKS? Indeed I question whether it is inserted more frequently in a diplomatic document or printed volume. To possess all the presentation copies of this illustrious minister would be to possess an ample and beautiful library of the literature ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the gravel with her parasol. Owen said there was no meaning in life, that it was no more than an unfortunate accident between two eternal sleeps. But she had never been able to believe that this was so; and if she had sought to disbelieve in God, it was as Monsignor had said, because she wished to lead a sinful life. And if she could not believe in annihilation, there could be no annihilation for her, that was Ulick's theory. The name of her lover brought ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... by a jealous Greekling like Dio Cassius, which do not rest on a tittle of evidence, and seem to be due to a mere spirit of envy and calumny. I shall not again allude to these scandals because I utterly disbelieve them. A man who in his "History" could, as Dio Cassius has done, put into the mouth of a Roman senator such insane falsehoods as he has pretended that Fufius Calenus uttered in full senate against Cicero, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... the teacher must realize that one child may come from a home of faith, confidence, and contentment; whereas, another may come from a home of agitation, doubt, and suspicion. One may have been taught to pray—another may have been led to disbelieve. One may have been stimulated to read over sacred books—another may have been left to peruse cheap, sensational detective stories. To succeed in reaching the hearts of a group of such boys and girls, a teacher ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... 'was not as much as he had really seen, because of the tongues of detractors, who being ready to impose their own lies on others, are over hasty to set down as lies what they in their perversity disbelieve or do not understand. And because there are many great and strange things in that book, which are reckoned past all credence, he was asked by his friends on his death-bed to correct the book, by removing everything that went beyond the facts. To which his reply was that ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... it," he said, slowly, "this something which we all want, and for the greater part never find. He has got it. To see and recognize it early is a great thing," he continued, earnestly. "To disbelieve in it in early life, and cavil at all the caricatures and imitations, and only come to find out its reality comparatively later on, is a great misfortune—a ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... Tillie too? Even if the old woman had been timid about staying in the house, she had made it clear to Peter that she was entirely unaware of the kind of danger that threatened her employer. Peter had believed her then. He saw no reason to disbelieve her now. She had known as little as Peter about the cause for McGuire's alarm. And here he had found her staring with the same unseeing eyes into the darkness, with the same symptoms of nervous shock as McGuire had shown. What enemy of McGuire's could frighten Aunt ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... Stuarts had any other object in his impolitic manoeuvres, than an impracticable scheme to blend the two churches, there is now authority to disbelieve. He certainly was guilty of the offence of sending an envoy openly to Rome, who, by the bye, was received by the Pope with great discourtesy; and her Majesty Queen Victoria, whose Protestantism cannot be doubted, for it is one of her chief titles to our homage, has at this time a ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... do not actually limit the mind as do materialistic denials. Even if I believe in immortality I need not think about it. But if I disbelieve in immortality I must not think about it. In the first case the road is open and I can go as far as I like; in the second the road is shut. But the case is even stronger, and the parallel with madness is yet more strange. ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... devoted couple, and the only cloud on their happiness was caused by Conky's expectations from a mysterious and eccentric uncle. For a long time I was inclined to disbelieve in his existence, as he never "materialised." But I was converted from my scepticism, some three years ago, when, on meeting Conky, I was informed that Uncle Joseph had invited himself on a short visit. My friend betrayed a certain agitation. "You know," he said, "it is twenty years since I saw him ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... were in absolutely no respect alike, they never could meet even for purposes of hostility; there must be some common ground from which the aversion may proceed. Moreover, in this case Aunt Jane utterly disbelieved in Malbone because she had reason to disbelieve in his father, and the better she knew the son the more she disliked ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... believe about the occurrences at the German frontier, the Government who receive all the police reports, or General Beyers? All I can say is that you will weep when General Botha gets shot, for I know what he did for this country. And if you disbelieve the Government, what will be the use of telling you that ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... men, coming with Protests or otherwise, we perceive, the young King is politeness itself; giving clear answer, and promise which will be kept, on the above principle. Nothing angers him except that gentlemen should disbelieve, and run away. That a mansion be found deserted by its owners, is the one evil omen for such mansion. Thus, at the Schloss of Weichau (which is still discoverable on the Map, across the "Black Ochel" and the "White," muddy streams which saunter eastward towards, the Oder there, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Beard. Meg's Nicolas was first to tell us that it was M. Darpent whom they had rescued, and that he had called at the porter's lodge on his way home to inquire for M. le Baron, bruised all over, and evidently seriously hurt. And while still trying to disbelieve this, another report arrived through the maidservants that M. de Solivet and d'Aubepine had soundly cudgeled M. Darpent, and that M. le Baron and M. d'Aubepine had fought a duel on the spot, in which ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the future—in what, to you, seems to be the future. The clothes and the room must have told you that. I planned it that way so the shock would not be too sudden, so you would realize it over the course of several minutes rather than read it here—and quite probably disbelieve what you read. ...
— Hall of Mirrors • Fredric Brown
... of St. Sebastian, at a little greater distance from Rome. In these catacombs the place supposed to be that of St. Cecilia's grave was pointed out, and an inscription set up to mark the spot, by a French archbishop, in the year 1409, still exists. Many indications, however, led De Rossi to disbelieve this tradition and to distrust this authority. It contradicted the brief indications of the itineraries, and could not be reconciled with other established facts. Not far from the place where the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... places, even though hundreds of miles apart, and also that they could heal the sick and work that which would now appear to us miraculous. All this was considered facts but two or three centuries back, as no reader of old books (mostly Persian) is unacquainted with, or will disbelieve a priori unless his mind is irretrievably biassed by modern secular education. The story about the Mobed and Emperor Akbar and of the latter's conversion, is a well-known ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... prove this fact; nobody that examines the matter will find any reason to doubt; and it would be as unreasonable for those to doubt who have not examined, as for those who find no reasonable subject of doubt to disbelieve. ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... settle the affairs of so many millions of the human race; and we may watch exactly the progress of that scheme, concerning which so many contradictory rumours were circulating in Europe. In the month of April a Walsingham could doubt, even in August an ingenuous comptroller could disbelieve, the reality of the great project, and the Pope himself, even while pledging himself to assistance, had been systematically deceived. He had supposed the whole scheme rendered futile by the exploit of Drake at Cadiz, and had declared ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 2nd duke of Buckingham, when the latter was chancellor of the university of Cambridge. Most of his biographers, in their eagerness to prove the ill-treatment which Butler is supposed to have received, disbelieve both these stories, perhaps without sufficient reason. Butler's satire on Buckingham in his Characters (Remains, 1759) shows such an intimate knowledge that it is probable the second story is true. Two years after the publication of the third part of Hudibras he died, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... prince to his father, Tigitty Sego, brother to the king of Kasson, chief of Tesee. The old man viewed his visitor with great earnestness, having never beheld but one white man before, whom Mr. Park discovered to be Major Houghton. He appeared to disbelieve what Mr. Park asserted, in answer to his inquiries concerning the motives that induced him to explore the country, and told him that he must go to Kooniakary to pay his respects to the king, but desired to see him ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... untruthful arts and tricks of the afflicted children, of their cunning evasions, and, in some instances, palpable falsehoods. Then, further, there was solid and substantial evidence before them that ought to have made them pause and consider, if not doubt and disbelieve. We find the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... been stretching the truth more or less, but then Hugh saw no reason to disbelieve what he said. The boy realized that in these modern days those who would succeed in the midst of fierce competition must have something very unusual to offer the fickle public in the way of adventure and novel effects. Why, ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... not, though the main fault was his, and she had a right to insist that he should be sure of his charge before he smacked her in the face with it before the world. In dealing with a woman, a man commonly prudent—put aside chivalry, justice, and the rest—should bind himself to disbelieve what he can't prove. Otherwise, let him expect his whipping, with or without ornament. My opinion is, Lawrence Finchley had no solid foundation for his charge, except his being an imbecile. She wasn't one of the adventurous women to jump the bars,—the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... million imbeciles (You think) aware some dozen men of sense Eye me and know me, whether I believe In the last winking virgin as I vow, And am a fool, or disbelieve in her, ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... corn crops failed, was not witchcraft the cause? for had not old Mother Maggs been heard to threaten Farmer Giles, and had not her black cat been seen running over his fields? Even good Bishop Jewel did not disbelieve in the power of the evil eye. In preaching before Queen Elizabeth he said: "It may please Your Grace to understand that witches and sorcerers are marvellously increased within Your Grace's realm. Your Grace's subjects pine away even ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... I was unable to speak. I was so overcome at this unexpected confirmation of the sight I had seen on that eventful Friday night, though I had afterwards been inclined to disbelieve the evidence of my own senses, as everybody else had done, even the skipper at last joining in with the opinion of Mr Fosset and all the rest, save the boatswain, old Masters. Yes, yes; every one them imagined that ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... enjoyed the "time of their lives" at Orme Castle, and when Mrs. Haxton, elegant as ever, but very quiet and reserved in manner, was living in a tiny villa at Bath, where Mr. Fenshawe's munificence had established her for the remainder of her days. She said, and there was no reason to disbelieve her, that von Kerber had no knowledge of the identity of the oasis at the Well of Moses. He went that way to the sea by sheer, accident and became half crazy with excitement at the sight of the Seven ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... surely do right at last, and go on to the dogheaded worthies, without necks, and long hair hanging down behind, who, as a cacique told Raleigh, that 'they had of late years slain many hundreds of his father's people,' and in whom even Humboldt was not always allowed, he says, to disbelieve (so much for Hume's scoff at Raleigh as a liar), one old cacique boasting to him that he had seen them with his own eyes. Humboldt's explanation is, that the Caribs, being the cleverest and strongest Indians, ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... mistresses; they are the quality, whether in a monarchy or a republic; mayors and governors and generals and senators and ex-presidents are nothing to them. How well we know this, and how seldom it finds a distinct expression! Now I tell you truly, I believe in man as man, and I disbelieve in all distinctions except such as follow the natural lines of cleavage in a society which has crystallized according to its own true laws. But the essence of equality is to be able to say the truth; and there is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... doubt Tode had taken his captives into Atlantis with him. It was impossible to disbelieve Tode's statement that he had been offered the supreme power in the city. Tode's egotism would have compelled him to blurt out that fact. Besides, Tode had certainly not gone back ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... had been educated—that is to say, he had received an average elementary training at an ordinary school,— and on the strength of that, although he had never before given a serious thought to religion, and certainly nothing worthy of the name of study, he held himself competent to judge and to disbelieve! ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... wonder, perhaps, how it is I have allowed myself to be deceived for so long. It was because I believed in him during the first three years, and during the second three I had already lost so much time that I dared not disbelieve in him. It was always: 'Just six months more, Cleo, dear, and then we shall astonish the world.' And then the vision of that vast theatre was too fascinating for me to abandon. His excuses were always plausible. Now he had made some terribly bad investment, now a publisher had gone bankrupt, now ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... official source, that if Gambetta were to send us in an account of a new victory to-morrow, and if all his colleagues here were to swear to its truth, we should be in a wild state of enthusiasm for a few hours, and then disbelieve ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... due to super-intellectualism but to juvenile thinking. The Chinese are just as fit for a republic — an actual republic is still a long way off — as are callow German youths, and notoriety-loving French students, for freedom to disbelieve and to destroy. No country can long survive a majority of women teachers in the public schools, together with no Bible and no religious teaching there. I have no prejudices favoring orthodoxy, but I have a fairly wide experience which has given me one article of ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... that he felt very much disposed to disbelieve what Bill had told him, or rather, to ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... thought of speaking to Count de Tourville, for he had, at all events, full confidence in his honour and discretion; but even he, knowing how much the admiral esteemed Villegagnon, might disbelieve him. He was compelled, therefore, to keep the knowledge he had obtained shut up in his own bosom. His chief satisfaction arose from the thought that Constance de Tourville was on board, and that it would be his joy and pride to defend her from ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... Romans, is a mere assumption, originating in a false idea of what quantity is; and, that Greek or Latin verse was less accentual than is ours, is another assumption, left proofless too, of what many authors disbelieve and contradict. Wells's definition of quantity is similar to mine, and perhaps unexceptionable; and yet his idea of the thing, as he gives us reason to think, was very different, and very erroneous. His examples imply, that, like Walker, he had "no conception of quantity ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Some who disbelieve in the resurrection of Christ assert that Jesus merely swooned, and that pitying hands took Him down from the cross, thinking that He had died. The cool air of the tomb in which He was placed revived Him, so that He came forth from the tomb ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... the truths of God's Word is to be a light in the world. To disbelieve any part, to come short of any part in practical life, is to be to the same extent in darkness. Christ was a light because he was the Word. The early church and apostles were a light because they believed, experienced and practised in life the whole ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... But what is the use of talking to you when you are in such a state? You are determined beforehand to disbelieve me. And I have no wish to justify myself to Miss Byrne, though I am willing to swallow my pride and ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... no crime to revenge himself on me if he ever came to a knowledge of the step I am now taking, and of the means by which I got my information; neither have I time to enter into particulars. I simply warn you of what has happened, and leave you to act on that warning as you please. You may disbelieve this letter, because it is not signed by any name. In that case, if Mr. James Smith should ever venture into your presence, I recommend you to ask him suddenly what he has done with his new wife, and to see if his countenance ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... destroyed the churches of East-Meath in 949, burnt 150 persons in the oratory of Drumree, and carried off as captives 3,000 persons. If the tree is to be judged by its fruits, this first year's growth of the new faith is rather alarming. It compels us to disbelieve the sincerity of Godfrid, at least, and the fighting men who wrought these outrages and sacrileges. It forces us to rank them with the incorrigible heathens who boasted that they had twenty times received the Sacrament of Baptism, and valued it for the twenty white robes which had been presented ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... altogether. I had a desire for friendship in regard to those from whom I expected more. I feigned it sometimes, as the fox makes believe to be dead in order to secure the rooks. It does not follow that I disbelieve in friendship between man and woman. I am not a fool who measures the world according to his own standard, or a churl who is for ever suspecting evil; besides, various observations have proved to me ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... lamentable. If we would attain to knowledge of anything in God's true Creation, let us disbelieve them wholly! They are the product of an Age of Scepticism; they indicate the saddest spiritual paralysis, and mere death-life of the souls of men: more godless theory, I think, was never promulgated in this Earth. A false ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... who it is, and tell them that your mother and I have gone out. If any one is shameless enough to disbelieve a young girl— it must be a creditor—let him ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... happily Zenobia and Hollingsworth are walking together. I call it a delightful spectacle. It truly rejoices me that Hollingsworth has found so fit and affectionate a friend! So many people in the world mistrust him,—so many disbelieve and ridicule, while hardly any do him justice, or acknowledge him for the wonderful man he is,—that it is really a blessed thing for him to have won the sympathy of such a woman as Zenobia. Any man might be proud of that. Any man, even if he be as great as Hollingsworth, might love ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... no, ma'am. When such a respectable lady as you said that you saw the young lady come into the house in the middle of the night, how was they to disbelieve it. They never asked me if ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... not? It might help. Because he certainly began to need help. He had gone quite stale. Querida was right; he ought to lie fallow. No ground could yield eternally without rest. Querida was clever enough to know that; and he had been stupid enough to ignore it—even disbelieve it, contemptuous of precept and proverb and wise saw, buoyed above apprehension by consciousness and faith in ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... subject to fits of cowardice - especially, it was said, with regard to a future state, which she professed to disbelieve in. Mr. Ellice told me that once, in some country house, while a fearful storm was raging, and the claps of thunder made the windows rattle, Lady Holland was so terrified that she changed dresses with her maid, and hid herself ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... land that had no historic past. The knowledge that my individual life is but a span, a breath; that in a little while I too must wither and mingle like one of those fallen yellow leaves with the mould, does not grieve me. I know it and yet disbelieve it; for am I not here alive, where men have inhabited for thousands of years, feeling what I now feel—their oneness with everlasting nature and the undying human family? The very soil and wet carpet of moss on which their feet were set, the standing trees and leaves, ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... finally, pure and simple Inquiry or Search, without any preconceived opinion or feeling whatever. It is, I trust, only in the spirit of the latter, that I have written; therefore I say to the reader, Neither, believe nor disbelieve in anything which I have said, but, as it is an easy thing to try, experiment for yourself, and judge by the result. In fact, as a satisfactory and conclusive experiment will not require more time, and certainly not half the pains which most people would expend on reading a book, I shall be perfectly ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... by their separating to dress for dinner. It left Cecilia in much perplexity; she knew not what wholly to credit, or wholly to disbelieve; but her chief concern arose from the unfortunate change of countenance which Lady Honoria had been ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... conclusion, is the secret of the sympathetic life; to stand on the same moral plane, and that, if possible, a high one; to find satisfaction in different explanations of the purpose and significance of life and the universe, and yet the same satisfaction. It is certainly not less possible to disbelieve religiously than to believe religiously. This accord of mind, this emulation in freedom and loftiness of soul, this kindred sense of the awful depth of the enigma which the one believes to be answered, and the other ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... foundation of the Church to the present time. That such has been the fact is attested by the writings of the Holy Fathers, both Greek and Latin, by daily usage and by the uninterrupted practice of the Church. . . . To doubt it, therefore, is to disbelieve the Christian Church and to brand her as heretical, and with her the prophets, apostles, and Christ Himself, who, in establishing the Church said: 'Behold I am with you all days even to ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... do that from our position with regard to Philip's father—not on other grounds—it would be unreasonable, it would be wrong, for us to entertain the idea of marriage; and I have given up thinking of him as a lover. I am telling you the truth, and you have no right to disbelieve me; I have kept my word to you, and you have never detected me in a falsehood. I should not only not encourage, I should carefully avoid, any intercourse with Philip on any other footing than of quiet friendship. You may think that I am unable to keep my resolutions; but at ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... in Bibles, and disbelieve in them: but of all Bibles the frightfulest to disbelieve in is this 'Bible of Universal History.' This is the Eternal Bible and God's-Book, 'which every born man,' till once the soul and eyesight are extinguished in him, 'can and must, with ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... has too good taste to obtrude it, and I dare say Bently and Rangely have their superstitions. There are probably ten thousand people in this good city of Boston—and for aught I know a hundred thousand—who believe, or, if you like, disbelieve, as ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... to beauty, was Glo'ster, though some of us stoutly maintained that the whiteness of Handsome entitled her to the prize. Then there were about thirty sheep; but with them (in spite of frequent intercourse) we could only make out a general acquaintance—for we disbelieve altogether in the possibility of distinguishing one of the flock from the others. It must be the easiest thing in the world for a sheep to establish an alibi; and we are rather surprised that the impossibility of detection does not encourage some of the bolder of the woolly-sided ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... but himself, authoritatively adopted. What a picture have we now before us! Destroy man's belief in, and reverence for, God and Christ, as they do; lead him to ridicule the atonement, the only remedy for sin; make him disbelieve the Bible; take away from his mind all distinction between right and wrong, and assure him that he is accountable to no one but himself; and how better could one prepare the way to turn men into demons. ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... seeing it, Tamerlank said to himself, 'The Cogia is making game of me,' and was very angry, and demanded, 'How happens it that this goose has but one foot?' Said the Cogia, 'In our country all the geese have only one foot. If you disbelieve me, look at the geese by the side of that fountain.' Now at that time there was a flock of geese by the rim of the fountain, all of whom were standing on one leg. Timour instantly ordered that all the drummers should at once play up; the drummers began to strike with their sticks, and forthwith ...
— The Turkish Jester - or, The Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin Effendi • Nasreddin Hoca
... have received great pleasure in forming this Collection, I would by no means wish it to be imagined, that I am sceptical in my opinions, or entirely disbelieve and set my face against all apparitional record. No; I do believe that, for certain purposes, and on certain and all-wise occasions, such things are, and have been permitted by the Almighty; but by no means do I ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... and he stared up into the speaker's face. Twenty years! Somehow it did not occur to him to disbelieve this astounding statement. He struggled hard to realize its implication. Two decades had passed since last he remembered. He had been a youth then. Now he ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... order to take hold of Him, to detach one's self and parts of the universe from God in some mysterious way in order to reduce life to a dramatic antagonism, is not faith, but infirmity. Excessive strenuous belief is not faith. By faith we disbelieve, and it is the drowning man, and not the strong swimmer, who clutches at the floating straw. It is in the nature of man, it is in the present purpose of things, that the real world of our experience and will should appear to us ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... that, lest they should disbelieve the warning which he gave, a sign would be given, in the heavens that night, of the anger of the great God. They would see that the moon would change its color and would lose its light. They might take this as a token of the punishment ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... will be found, in the Progress of the Collection, that they very often make such Reflections upon each other, and each upon himself, and upon his Actions, as reasonable Beings, who disbelieve not a future State of Rewards and Punishments (and who one day propose to reform) must sometimes make:—One of them actually reforming, and antidoting the Poison which some might otherwise apprehend would ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... and some members of the press in England to disbelieve the sincerity of the Khedive. He was accused of annexation under the pretext of suppressing the vast organization of the White Nile slave-trade. It was freely stated that an Englishman was placed in command because an Egyptian could not be relied upon to succeed, ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
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