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More "Incredible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... With incredible swiftness the money-changers had been driven out and the cleanser of the Temple had mounted the steps of the Beautiful Gate, and thong in hand was looking out on a scene unparalleled. Servants of money-changers were creeping about the floor; ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... its main characteristic a barbaric and ostentatious extravagance, alike in gambling and feasting, in the festivals of the Court or in the scarcely veiled debauchery of its devotees. Baron Loewenstern, who moved in its higher ranks, tells of cases of a license almost incredible to those who have not pried among the garbage of the Court of Catharine II. This recklessness, resulting from the tendency of the Muscovite nature, as of the Muscovite climate, to indulge in extremes, ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... remoteness of scene, and all the incredible things in the world, had been at the disposal of medieval authors long before the French Romantic Schools began to define themselves. The wonders of the East, especially, had very early come into literature; and the Anglo-Saxon Epistle ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... of conscience and intelligence had the people near Cape Lopez, called the Anziques, which M. du Chaillu describes. They had incredible ferocity; for they ate one another, sparing neither friends nor relations. Their butcher-shops were filled with human flesh, instead of that of oxen or sheep, for they ate the enemies they captured in battle. They fattened, slayed, and devoured ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... see that breach in the wall, down there behind the trees? It's the only scratch the place has got. And think of Lennont! It's incredible—simply incredible!" ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... again; he thought that Smallbones' soul was incorporated in a small animal something like a mouse, and that he had to dislodge it from its tenement of clay; but as soon as he drove it from one part of the body it would force its way back again into another; if he forced it out by the mouth after incredible exertions, which made him perspire at every pore, it would run back again into the ear; if forced from thence, through the nostril, then in at the toe, or any other part; in short, he laboured apparently ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the dog was gone. Yes, incredible as it seems, that graceless dog was gone—gone ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... really not to meet again, Vera? That would be incredible. A few days ago there would have been reason in our separation, now it is a useless sacrifice, hard for both of us. We have striven obstinately with one another for a whole year for the prize of happiness; and now that the ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... Indian, with gentle instincts, almost impossible to find; all for metaphysical thought which becomes an instinct and a passion that dominates everything. Add to that a character that one can only compare to Garibaldi. A creature of incredible sanctity and perfection. Immense worth without immediate application in France. The setting of another age or another country is what this hero needs. And now good-night,—O God, what a CALF I am! I leave you the title of COW, which ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... incredible. It is impossible that great and permanent harm should have been done him already. He was too vital and sane a being to be so easily corrupted. For those who knew him in the first years of his return from Paris, he was nothing if not the ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... the tithe of flax and hemp into what the lawyers call a Modus, or a certain sum in lieu of a tenth part of the product. And by this practice of claiming a Modus in many parishes by ancient custom, the Clergy in both kingdoms have been almost incredible sufferers. Thus, in the present case, the tithe of a tolerable acre of flax, which by a medium is worth twelve shillings, is by the present Bill reduced to four shillings. Neither is this the worst part in a Modus; every determinate sum must in process of time sink ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... Lefevre Pontalis merely mentions the inquest of 1476, saying that the impostor of Sermaise (1449-1452) may perhaps have been another impostor, not Jeanne des Armoises. The family of the Maid was not capable, surely, of accepting TWO impostors, 'one down, the other come on'! This is utterly incredible. ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... application of electricity were shown, and many things entirely unknown and unrecognized in works on Electro-Therapeutics. The entire class was placed under a medical influence simultaneously by the agency of electricity—an operation so marvelous that it would be considered incredible in medical colleges. By these and other experiments and numerous illustrations and lucid explanations of the brain and nervous system, the instruction was made deeply interesting, and students have attended more than one course to perfect themselves in the science. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... indigenous to the country, complete a list of some two hundred or more species of edible fruits. In this clime of perennial freshness trees bear nearly the year round, and so productive is the soil that the annual produce is almost incredible. The tax on orchards alone yields to the Crown a revenue of some five millions of dollars per annum, as I was informed by the late "second king" of Siam. It is not unusual to find on a single branch the bud and blossom, together with fruit in several different stages. Thus, at the merest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... clasp her hands, as she had done a few moments before, invoking again the blood of Christ, so venerated in Palma, but suddenly the wrinkles of her brown face broadened, and she burst out laughing. What a jolly master! Just like his grandfather; he used to say the most stupendous and incredible things so seriously that he deceived everybody. "And I, poor fool, was ready to believe your nonsense! Perhaps it was also a joke that you were going to ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... men looked at each other. It seemed incredible that Theodore Racksole, the ineffable Racksole, who owned a thousand miles of railway, several towns, and sixty votes in Congress, should be defied by a waiter, or even by a whole hotel. Yet so it was. When Europe's effete back is against the wall not a regiment of millionaires ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... to begin—events have moved so swiftly, and such incredible things have happened. Even now I am in a daze, for history is being made every hour—history for Mexico, for you, and for me. I bring you good news and bad news; something to startle you and set your brain in a whirl. I planned to send a messenger ahead of me, and then I said: ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... bound them, and part them by the gulf impassable. Tennyson's friend had never wronged him; and to the divineness of Shakspere's love is added that of forgiveness. Such love as this between man and man is rare, and therefore to the mind which is in itself no way rare, incredible, because unintelligible. But though all the commonest things are very divine, yet divine individuality is and will be a rare thing at any given period on the earth. Faith, in its ideal sense, will ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... will seem new and incredible to most Men, yet is not plainly altogether unheard of; for, as I heard, there have been some, who engaged themselves in this cure; but what they effected therein, I must acknowledge is unknown to me; ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman
... go unpunished. The might of Samson woke in that insulted bosom, and lent such incredible weight to the blow that fell on the aggressor's ear, that it took him a long time to believe that the thump proceeded from the beautiful little hand he had so often admired; or, in short, from any thing but a twenty-four pounder. He rubbed the wounded organ with astonishing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... sometimes upon obtaining excellency in some art, or feat of the hand; as Nero for playing on the harp, Domitian for certainty of the hand with the arrow, Commodus for playing at fence, Caracalla for driving chariots, and the like. This seemeth incredible, unto those that know not the principle, that the mind of man, is more cheered and refreshed by profiting in small things, than by standing at a stay, in great. We see also that kings that have been fortunate conquerors, in their first years, it being not possible for ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... of Lords to stop the progress of Reform, reminded him of the conduct of the excellent Mrs. Partington, during the great storm at Sidmouth, in 1824. The tide rose to an incredible height; the waves rushed in upon the houses, and every thing was threatened with destruction. In the midst of the fearful commotion of the elements, Dame Partington, who lived upon the sea beach, was seen at the door of her house, with mop and pattens, trundling her mop and sweeping out the sea ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... Esther's hand was upon the gate but forgot to press the latch. She was a quick brained girl and the insinuation in the minister's words had been patent. Yet that he should be capable of such an idea seemed incredible! Had he been looking at her he would have seen the clear red surge over her face from neck to brow and then recede, but not before it had lighted a danger spark ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... 7, after having pointed to His Omnipotence as affording a guarantee for the fulfilment of a prophecy so great that it might appear almost incredible, the Lord turns to His Servant and addresses Him. He announces to Him that it should be His glorious destination, partly to bring, in His person, the covenant with Israel to its full truth, partly to be the light for the Gentile ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... it was made to be. The beetle, the dragon-fly, the eagle, is as perfect as it can be. But man comes far short of the ideal that presided over his formation. Any way it would be unaccountable, not to say incredible, that God's highest work on earth should fail of its end, fail of realizing its ideal, fail of being what it was made for. But when the process, unlike that in animals, which is all facility and pleasure, is full of difficulty and pain, then for the ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... of the other men went away, but the third, who was Conny Masters, stayed. He talked volubly as ever, telling wonderful and sometimes incredible stories of things he had seen and done in his wanderings. Ramon said nothing. Julia responded less and less. Once she moved to drop the wrap from about her shoulders, and the alert Conny hastened to assist ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... flying leap over the door of the Master's car. He struck ground with a force which crumpled his healing right shoulder under him. Heedless of the pain, he hurled himself forward, on three legs, at an incredible speed; straight for the runabout. His great head low, his formidable teeth agleam beneath drawn-back lips, his soft eyes a-smolder with red flame, ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... thank you for your kind letter of the 18th on your god-daughter's eighth birthday! It does seem like an incredible dream that Vicky should already be so old! She is very happy with ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... there was a riot of flowers—rich yellow masses of enormous cloth-of-gold roses, delicate pink old-fashioned Castilian roses, which the Senorita carefully gathered each year to make rose-pillows, besides fuchsias as large as young trees, and a thousand other blooms of incredible size and beauty. Loving them all, their little Spanish mistress flitted about among them like a bird, alert, active, bright-eyed, straight as an arrow, and as springy of step as a girl of sixteen, although even then she was ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... the roadside are for him, and the berries, and the spring of water, and the friendly shelter; and if the weather is cold, he eats the frost grapes and the persimmons, or even the white-meated turnip, snatched from the field he passed through, with incredible relish. ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... family and friends are the most numerous, are looked upon as their chiefs, though they are unable to exercise any kind of discipline. Of these chiefs there are at present six principal ones, who have succeeded in sharing the most lucrative branches of the revenue, and what seems almost incredible, they have for the last six years preserved harmony amongst themselves; Hadji Ibrahim Ibn Herbely is at this moment the richest and most potent of ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... after them with an almost foolish expression on her face. She could not take it in. It seemed incredible. Then the two men vanished round the corner, and at the same moment she heard a girl saying in her ear: "Cheer up, Carrie! If Wilf hasn't caught this, he will get ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... younger man now who talked brilliantly and forcibly. Theydon, frankly abandoning the effort to twist the conversation to that enigma which, the more he saw and heard of Forbes the more incredible it became, listened enthralled to one who spoke with the conviction ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... cry of ZOOMZOOMARMA comes almost unheard to that incredible height and then is heard no more, she turns, and with infinite neatness picking up her skirts steps down daintily ...
— Plays of Near & Far • Lord Dunsany
... had yet realised. That Mrs. Hannaford, a woman whom she had for many years regarded as elderly, should be possessed and overcome by the passion of love, was a thing so strange, so at conflict with her fixed ideas, as to be all but incredible. In her aunt's presence, she scarcely reflected upon it; she saw only a woman bound to her by natural affection, who had fallen into dire misfortune and wretchedness. Little by little the story grew upon ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... their noses were to be trusted. "It's a very heavy scent to-day," he would say, "because Gaylap carries it over the plough. It's only a catching scent because the drops don't hang on the bushes." His lore on all such matters was incredible, but he would never listen to any argument. A man had a right to his own opinion; but then the man who differed from him knew nothing. He gave out his little laws to favoured individuals; not by way of conversation, for which he cared nothing, but because ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... confederates, commanded by Barberigo, had been sorely pressed by the Turks, as we have seen, at the beginning of the fight. Barberigo himself had been mortally wounded. His line had been turned. Several of his galleys had been sunk. But the Venetians gathered courage from despair. By incredible efforts they succeeded in beating off their enemies. They became the assailants in their turn. Sword in hand, they carried one vessel after another. The Capuchin, with uplifted crucifix, was seen to head the attack, and to lead the boarders to the assault. The Christian galley-slaves, in some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... presume, not without probability, there would be found in that case nations enough who will be jealous of acquiring, after the example of France, the earliest right to commerce with a country, which already peopled by several millions of inhabitants, augments every day in population, in a manner incredible; but, as a new people, unprovided as yet with several necessary articles, will procure a rich, even an immense outlet, for the fabricks and ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... would faint. "You—you must obey your father," she quavered. Until her son should marry Nan Brent she could not force herself to the belief that he could possibly commit such an incredible offense. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... in Cleveland were very good, as, indeed, they are in most Northern towns; but some of them have been erected with an amount of bad taste that is almost incredible. It is not uncommon to see in front of a square brick house a wooden quasi-Greek portico, with a pediment and Ionic columns, equally high with the house itself. Wooden columns with Greek capitals attached to the doorways, and wooden pediments ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... "It's incredible," cried Dyce, "that you should harp on that paltry matter! Who, in our time, is an original thinker? Ideas are in the air. Every man uses his mind—if he has any—on any suggestion which recommends itself to him. If it were worth while, I could point out most important differences between the ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... brought sobering influences to bear on Pyotr Petrovitch. Intensely unpleasant as it was, he was forced little by little to accept as a fact beyond recall what had seemed to him only the day before fantastic and incredible. The black snake of wounded vanity had been gnawing at his heart all night. When he got out of bed, Pyotr Petrovitch immediately looked in the looking-glass. He was afraid that he had jaundice. However his health ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... heavens, accompanied by subterranean thunders, and all the other symptoms which precede volcanic disturbances. Then a coronet of flame encircled the crater; masses of red rock, pumice, and magnetic stones were flung out with tremendous violence to an incredible distance, and in such continuous multitudes as to resemble a swarm of bees clustering over the mountain. One boulder of pumice six feet in circumference was pitched twenty miies away; another of magnetic iron fell at a distance of fifteen. The surface of the earth was covered, for a circuit of ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... is soft glass, and of the poor, woven brass; the land is very rich in brass, which they work like wool after steeping it in water. It is with some hesitation that I describe their eyes, the thing being incredible enough to bring doubt upon my veracity. But the fact is that these organs are removable; any one can take out his eyes and do without till he wants them; then he has merely to put them in; I have known many cases of people losing their own and borrowing at need; and some—the rich, naturally—keep ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... cowardice was manifest—rampant, if one may use such a term; yet he had ventured into the fog the night before; not only so, but upon a deck which was filled in his eyes with horrid enemies, prowling in search of victims. How had he achieved that spirited action? It seemed incredible, yet I had come upon him at the foot of the bridge stairs, and I had his explanation. What induced the timid rabbit to venture out of his hutch upon such a night and in such circumstances? Frankly the riddle beat me, and I should ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... had "stood up for prayers" went through Bruceton and the surrounding country like wildfire. Scarcely anyone believed it, no matter by whom he was told: the informer might be a person of undoubted character, but the information was simply incredible. People would not believe such a thing unless they could see it with their own eyes and hear it with their own ears: so the special meetings became at once so largely attended that they were held in the body of the church instead of the little basement called ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... amount of contraband trade really carried on is here surcharged by not far short of one-half; that it cannot in any case exceed six millions sterling—certainly still a bulk of illegitimate values sufficiently monstrous, and almost incredible. We shall proceed to deal conclusively, however, with that special branch of the traffic for which the materials are most accessible and irrecusable, and the verification of truth therefore scarcely left to the chances ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... more: we must surely suppose that the chieftains of the Paeonians and Illyrians, and in fact all such personages— would prefer freedom to slavery; for they are not accustomed to obey orders, and the man, they say, is a bully. Heaven knows, there is nothing incredible in the statement. Unmerited success is to foolish minds a fountain-head of perversity, so that it is often harder for men to keep the good they have, than it was to obtain it. {24} It is for you then, men of Athens, to regard his difficulty as your opportunity, ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... splendor the lovers and admirers of vanity!" This happened towards the latter part of the year 500, when that king made his first entry into Rome. Fulgentius returned home in a short time after, and was received with incredible joy. He built a spacious monastery in Byzacena, but retired to a cell himself, which was situate on the sea-shore. Here his time was employed in writing, reading, prayer, mortification, and the manual labor of making mats and umbrellas of ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... order came that we must proceed, so the next morning our guard prepared to start us again towards the Lumpiya. Then we three semi-corpses collected what little strength remained in us, and suddenly made an attack on them with stones; whereupon, incredible as it may seem, our cowardly guard turned tail and bolted! We went on in the direction of Taklakot, followed at a distance by these ruffians, who were entreating us to make no further resistance and to go with them where they wanted us to go. If we did not, they ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... caused her prejudice and injury by detaining her a couple of months in the waters of Cadiz. The persons who instituted this action forget that the Spanish courts have no jurisdiction in the matter of libels published in England. And as for the prejudice caused to the vessel, it is incredible that the British Government should be so weak as to wait for letters from Lloyd's agent before opening an inquiry into the deaths of some three hundred of its subjects and the identity of the dastardly scoundrel who was the cause of their deaths, who disabled the ship that held ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... "'Incredible!' I exclaimed. 'When he wrote you that, he did not know, he could not have known, your birth, your race, the taint in your blood. I will never ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... Northwestern States there are large forests of it, and the amount of honey reported stored by strong swarms in this section during the time the tree is in bloom is quite incredible. As a shade and ornamental tree the linden is fully equal to the maple, and, if it were as extensively planted and cared for, our supplies of virgin honey would be greatly increased. The famous honey of Lithuania in Russia is the product ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... 1960s, South Korea has achieved an incredible record of growth and integration into the high-tech modern world economy. Four decades ago, GDP per capita was comparable with levels in the poorer countries of Africa and Asia. In 2004, South Korea joined the trillion ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... pearl, as told by the Persians, is worth recounting, for perhaps to some it may not seem altogether incredible. For they say that it was lodged in its oyster in the sea which washes the Persian coast, and that the oyster was swimming not far from the shore; both its valves were standing open and the pearl lay between them, a wonderful sight and notable, for no pearl in all history could ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... The black spiral of smoke had become an enveloping cloud, spreading rapidly in both directions from its original starting-point, and already he could distinguish the red glare of angry flames leaping beneath, fanned by the wind into great sheets of fire, and sweeping forward with incredible swiftness. These might not succeed in reaching the imprisoned men, but the stifling vapor, the suffocating smoke held captive by that overhanging rock, would prove a most ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... the market square under the leafless trees presents a lively scene. There are stalls sacred to poultry, to butter, eggs, and cheese; but the vegetable kingdom predominates. Flanked by bulwarks of greens and bundles of leeks of incredible whiteness and thickness of stem, sit the saleswomen, their heads swathed in gay cotton kerchiefs, and the ground before them temptingly spread with little heaps of corn salad, of chicory, and of yellow endive ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... the catch and clear the stage for the next day's operations. Till long after midnight the work goes merrily on in the huts or shelters over the stages, for the hard work then means no starvation next winter in the Newfoundland homes, and the fish are split, cleaned, headed, salted and packed with incredible rapidity. ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... was not wanting. Some of her old friends, and several women who paid court to her, came to join the group, and Lucien soon became the hero of the circle. The Countess drew him out on the subject of life in Paris; his satirical talk flowed with spontaneous and incredible spirit; he told anecdotes of celebrities, those conversational luxuries which the provincial devours with such avidity. His wit was as much admired as his good looks. And Mme. la Comtesse Sixte du Chatelet, preparing Lucien's triumph so patiently, sat like ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... those of France and Portugal. The Clarets of the London market, are principally prepared for the purpose, and, in the transit, lose much of the pure nature of the original production: and the quantity of adulterated Port that is sold in England is almost incredible. It is also a well known fact, that there is more Tokay[2] sold on the Continent and in England, in one year, than the limited space where it is grown, on the mountains of Hungary, ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... he told her, "for your dear sake, my angel. The fatigues, the affairs of a Ruler of State are incredible. I will never let you bear them. The signori may pluck their beards out by the roots. I am resolved." ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... thought of being ushered into his presence by a respectable butler, and making my excuses for having called at such an unreasonable hour. I pictured to myself how he would look as I gradually dropped my assumed voice, and very slowly the almost incredible truth began ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... It seemed incredible that keen intelligence and silly superstition could be such close neighbors in the same brain, for I knew Kishimoto San to be an honest man. He not only lived what he believed, he insisted on others believing ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... exultantly. She dared to exult, but she did not dare to express to herself the hopes, the wild, incredible hopes, which the very thought of freedom set to quivering deep down in her, as the first warmth makes the life toss in its slumber ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... feeling for the gaskets or lines which bound the sail to the spar, I cut and hacked as fast as I could ply my arms. In a flash the gale, whipping into a liberated fold of the canvas, blew the whole sail out; the bowsprit reeled and quivered under me; I danced off it with incredible despatch, shouting to the men to hoist away. The head of the staysail mounted in thunder, and the slatting of its folds and the thrashing of its sheet was like the rattling of heavy field-pieces whisked at full gallop over ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... started back, searing couplets forming with incredible swiftness in her brain. How she would flay Johnny Jewel with the keen blade of her wit! If he thought he was the only person at the Rolling R ranch who could write poetry, it would be a real kindness to ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... few years later than this, used, it is true, to be dirty to an extent appalling to an Englishman; but their provender was usually far from contemptible. There is more sense of Breton scenery in another letter a little later. Both here and, presently, in Gascony he notes truly enough "the incredible degree to which the Revolution has cleared the feudal ages out of the minds of the country people"; but if he reflected on the bad national effect of this breach with the past, he does not say so. ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... sermon joyeux was commonly interposed between the sottie and the Morality or miracle which followed. The sermon parodied in verse the pulpit discourses of the time, with text duly announced, the customary scholastic divisions, and an incredible licence in matter and in phrase. Among the dramatic monologues of the fifteenth century is found at least one little masterpiece, which has been ascribed on insufficient grounds to Villon, and which would do no discredit to that poet's genius—the Franc-Archer ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... lie dispersed amid great riches: Such gold, such arrogance, so many bold hearts! All the sunken armadas pressed to powder By weight of incredible seas! That mingled wrack No livening sun shall visit till the crust Of earth be riven, or this rolling planet Reel on its axis; till the moon-chained tides, Unloosed, deliver up that white Atlantis Whose naked peaks ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... the Forum in robes of a material as soft as that worn by women and almost transparent in its thinness. Since all these instruments of pleasure, and the luxury that appealed to ambition even more keenly than to taste, were pursued with a ruinous competition, prices were forced up to an incredible degree. An amphora of Falernian wine cost one hundred denarii, a jar of Pontic salt-fish four hundred; a young Roman would often give a talent for a favourite, and boys who ranked in the highest class for beauty of face and elegance of form fetched even a higher price than this.[43] Few could have ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... council with each other, for they shouted and gesticulated at a great rate. Glenarvan determined to go up to them; but he had no sooner moved forward than the whole band wheeled round, and disappeared with incredible speed. It would have been useless for the travelers to attempt to overtake ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... so fast. To Carter their conduct seemed outrageous. It was incredible that in so short a time, at a pace so reckless, they would decide a question of such moment. They came bunched together, shifting and changing, with, through the dust, flashes of blue and gold and scarlet. A jacket of ...
— The Man Who Could Not Lose • Richard Harding Davis
... called Biscaina went up the river, and the Indians came presently on board to barter away such things as they had, especially fish, which at certain times of the year come up these rivers from the sea in such quantities as would seem incredible to those who had not seen it. They likewise exchanged some gold for pins, and what they most valued they gave for beads, or hawks-bells. Next day the other two ships came in, having to wait for the flood, which does not rise above half a fathom in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... and Talmudists have enveloped it in a host of mystical superstitions, most of which are as absurd as they are incredible, but all of them tending to show the great veneration that has always been paid to it.[127] Thus they say that it is possessed of unlimited powers, and that he who pronounces it shakes heaven and earth, and inspires the very angels with ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... their parishes, and that they had rather endure anything in the hope of some manufacturing revival, than return to the condition of farm labourers from which they had emerged. This was a fact perfectly new to me, and at the first blush, truly incredible, but I asked the neighbours in two of the instances quoted ... and they not only confirmed the story, but seemed to consider any appearance of scepticism a mark of prejudice ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... one. The position of the Atheist is a clear and a reasonable one: I know nothing about 'God,' and therefore I do not believe in Him or in it; what you tell me about your God is self-contradictory, and is therefore incredible. I do not deny 'God,' which is an unknown tongue to me; I do deny your God, who is an impossibility. I am without God."[5] Up to 1887 I find myself writing on the same lines: "No man can rationally affirm 'There is no God,' until the word 'God' has for him a definite meaning, and ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... woman recognized her—looked from the furs to the eager little face above them and smiled. It seemed incredible to Mary that she should have been remembered out of all the hundreds of customers who must pass through the shop every day, but she did not know that the sight of her delight over her gift had been the one bright spot ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... began his march in the beginning of July from Philadelphia for the river Ohio, a prodigious tract of country very little known, destitute of military roads, incumbered with mountains, morasses, and woods, that were almost impenetrable. It was not without incredible exertion of industry, that he procured provisions and carriages for this expedition, formed new roads, extended scouting parties, secured camps, and surmounted many other difficulties in the course of his tedious march, during which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... eye-witness of its incredible fatality in Florence, the seat of the revival of science, gives a more lively description of the attack of the disease than ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... but if they had the sense of a turnip they would know that you were incapable of squashing a flea, let alone destroying five eminent brothers in science! You, jealous, guilty of five crimes passionel! Pour le science! Credulous Earthlings! Incredible Earthlings! And here are you, a hunted man with ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... have been a sad muddler if he had not made his story intriguing; but, anyhow, he happens to be a sound craftsman with a considerable sense of style and construction. And he has a convincing way of handling his facts that compels belief in the most incredible of stories. Lieutenant JONES was a prisoner in the hands of the Turks at Zozgad, and to amuse himself and his fellow-prisoners he raised a "spook" which in time gained such a reputation that it had the Turkish officials almost hopelessly at its mercy. From being merely a joke his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... fire as he had hoped it would. He dodged quickly behind the shelter of the barricade. A beam of dazzling fire penciled the rock wall. It crackled, spread, flaring to incredible heat and light. It exploded, deluging the gallery with ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... crimes unexampled, it is said, in Western history. The deeds of Bonnot and his confederates were so reckless, daring, and openly defiant, their escapes so miraculous, and the audacity of their assaults so incredible, that the people of Paris were put in a state bordering on frenzy. Just before the previous Christmas, in broad daylight, on a busy street, the band fell upon a bank messenger. They shot him and took from his wallet $25,000. They then jumped in an automobile and ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... Incredible it seems to some And to myself a mystery, That such weak flesh and blood as we, Armed with no other shield or sword, Or other weapon than the Word, Should combat and should overcome A spirit powerful as he! He summons ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... navigating can be made so that without rowers great ships can be guided by one pilot on river or sea more swiftly than if they were full of oarsmen. Likewise vehicles are possible which without draught-animals can be propelled with incredible speed, like the scythed chariots, as we picture them, in which antiquity fought. Likewise a flying machine is possible in the middle of which a man may sit, using some ingenious device by which artificial wings will beat the air like those of a flying bird. Also ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... more could have been pressed in, half a dozen had found room. The feat must have been accomplished by main strength and awkwardness, as the old phrase is. It was no place indeed for skill to evince itself; but people pushed about in the most incredible way when they tried to move, though mostly they did not try; they let their boats lie still, and sway with the common movement when the water rose and sank, or fluctuated unseen beneath them. There were more and more people of the ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... just at the nick of time, in which ghosts walk, in which anything can be changed into anything, a hero going through half a dozen transformations to escape from so many dangers,—these are to the savage not incredible nor foolish tales, to him they are very real, and very serious matters. He lives, in fact, we are told by the authorities on the subject, in the myth-making period of the world; in the period when such incidents as occur ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... sensational. He stepped quickly forward, and, taking Blake who was still talking, all unconscious of those behind him, by the collar of his coat, he interrupted him in the middle of an impassioned period, wrenched him backwards off his feet, and dashed him with a force almost incredible into a heap in a corner of the room. There for some moments the baronet lay half dazed by the shock ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... any more," said Marie gently. "But one always has a feeling that one must return whence one has come, do you not think? It is only that. It seems incredible that I, alone out of our struggling thousands, should be let to come away and live serenely in a cloud cote, does it not? And the struggle in Mexico ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... fatuous as this, quite so sublimely unhumorous. If he had, what under heaven had she been about? That she could have believed this smug cockscomb to have loved her—to have been capable of anything but hunger and thirst for her—incredible! It made her out precisely as fatuous as he. And yet she said nothing. With the likes of him nothing seemed worth doing except ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... conceived a devotion worthy her great love. To put into practice this heroic design she became still more amorous, took extreme care of her charms, and made use of learned precepts to maintain her bodily perfection, which threw out an incredible lustre. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... in Sparta, there is no other race of men which will await thy onset, O king, or will raise hands against thee: for now thou art about to fight against the noblest kingdom and city of those which are among the Hellenes, and the best men." To Xerxes that which was said seemed to be utterly incredible, and he asked again a second time in what manner being so few they would fight with his host. He said; "O king, deal with me as with a liar, if thou find not that these things come to pass as ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... of the port of Boston, a general in the regular army, a veteran colonel of volunteers, several officers of railway companies, and, most of all, Mr. Charles Carleton Coffin. He and they thought the statements given of the slaughter of young men on railroads in the United States must be incredible. Even Carleton had not then informed himself concerning that great field of blood extending from ocean to ocean, and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, which every year was strewn with the corpses or mangled limbs of twenty-five ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... James Orlebar Cloyster a fool; I have called him a villain. I will never cease to call him a genius. For by some marvellous capacity for introspection, by some incredible projection of his own mind into other people's matters, he was able to tax me to my face with an attempt to win his former fiance's affections. I tried to choke him off. I used every ounce of bluff I possessed. In vain. I left Walpole Street in a ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... standard in Ireland was interrupted by the young King's appearance in Scotland. Cromwell transported himself to that kingdom with incredible dispatch, and assumed the command of that division of the army which had been nominally retained by Fairfax, who, tired of his guilty employment, had, since the murder of the King, been evidently indisposed to ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... for agitation; brain and heart seemed to mingle in chaotic confusion. Anger strove with unbelief, and indignation at his mother with the sense of bitter wrong from Letty. It was all incredible and shameful, yet not the less utterly miserable. The girl whose Idea lay in the innermost chamber of his heart like the sleeping beauty in her palace! while he loved and ministered to her outward dream-shape which ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... this precocity seems to be hereditary, being transmitted from mother to daughter, bringing about an almost incredible state of affairs, in which a girl is a grandmother about the ordinary age of maternity. Kay says that he had reported to him, on "pretty good" authority, an instance of a Damascus Jewess who became a grandmother at twenty-one ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... "It seems incredible that the plain teachings of Jesus could have been so warped and twisted as they have been by orthodox theology. Christianity is so simple! Why should even the preachers themselves condemn the one who seeks to obey Christ? Mr. Moore, the real man is God's highest ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... persons, and had liberty to beat and abuse the other children of the school, who were certain of being most unmercifully flogged, if they even dared to prefer a complaint against the favorites. Indeed the instances of atrocious cruelty in hedge schools were almost incredible, and such as in the present enlightened time, would not be permitted. As to the state of the "poor, scholar," it exceeded belief; for he was friendless and unprotected. But though legal prosecutions ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... the Four Dragons of East Asia, South Korea has achieved an incredible record of growth. Three decades ago its GDP per capita was comparable with levels in the poorer countries of Africa and Asia. Today its GDP per capita is seven times India's, 13 times North Korea's, and already near the lesser economies of the European Union. This success through the late 1980s ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... sergeant, named Baklanov, who spoke French. "But you have a highly developed capitalist class? Then the capitalist class must control the legislatures and the courts. How then can the people change things? I am open to conviction, for I do not know your country; but to me it is incredible...." ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... self-respecting in them at Versailles, and even in Paris, because there I was a singing teacher; in other words, nobody. But in London I'm supposed to be an heiress. And here, at the Ritz, such beautiful beings come to lunch, in dresses which they have evidently been poured into with consummate skill and incredible expense. ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... duck ion thunder. wonderful, wondrous; surprising &c v.; unexpected &c 508; unheard of; mysterious &c (inexplicable) 519; miraculous. indescribable, inexpressible, inaffable^; unutterable, unspeakable. monstrous, prodigious, stupendous, marvelous; inconceivable, incredible; inimaginable^, unimaginable; strange &c (uncommon) 83; passing strange. striking &c v.; overwhelming; wonder-working. Adv. wonderfully, &c adj.; fearfully; for a wonder, in the name of wonder; strange to say; mirabile dictu ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... view the marriage, though hazardous, was practicable by the end of the summer of 1846. A second obstacle lay in the nature and opinions of Miss Barrett's father, who governed even his grown-up children by "an incredible system of patriarchal absolutism." By what was variously termed an obliquity of the will, an eccentricity, a monomania, he had decided that none of his children should marry, and on this point he demanded "passive obedience." It was perfectly ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... cheerer, "because thou hast strength to see and hate a foul thing done within thy gate," and so, after a little more dallying, she wrote and sent over the Western seas what all may read, but it appears only Kate Field, out of all Florence, can understand. It seems incredible. How did you find out, beside, the meaning of all these puzzling passages which I quote in the exact words of the poem? In short, you are not only the delightful Kate Field which I always knew you to be, but the sole understander of ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... a wagon, a cart, was an object of greater envy than he who counted his treasures by millions. Incredible prices were offered and received for the roughest of conveyances. Before every house stood vehicles of every kind, crowded with fugitives, upon whom the poorer classes gazed with longing eyes; many of them, by dint of tears and prayers, obtaining liberty to hang on the wagons ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... brothers; they were in the prime of life, aged forty-two and thirty-nine respectively, and in complete possession of all their faculties. It was due simply to the fact that they had quarrelled, and would not speak to each other. The history of their quarrel would be incredible were it not full of that ridiculous pathetic quality known as human nature, and did not similar things happen frequently in the manufacturing Midlands, where the general temperament is a fearful and strange compound of pride, obstinacy, unconquerableness, ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... avert the dangers: every one shuts his eyes to them, or opens them only to take measures to avert an assessment; and meanwhile crime advances with the steps of a giant, sweeping whole classes of society into its vortex, and threatening to spread corruption and vice, in an incredible manner, through the densest and most dangerous classes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... to bring the guide down into the pattern and move it about the circumference and through the centre of it, the cutting tool imitating precisely the motions of the guide, entering the wood and cutting its way In the most perfect manner and with incredible rapidity, forming an exact duplicate of the cavity in the pattern. It is on this principle, substantially, that all the machines of the stocking-shop are constructed,—every process, of course, requiring its own peculiar mechanism. The next machine cuts for the guards and bores for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... to own one of these luxurious couches gets his friends to cut down the tree (which is necessarily of very large size), to haul the log, and to carve out the couch, feeding them the while. Considering the lack of tools, trails, and animals, the labor must be incredible and the cost enormous. However, wealth will have its way in Kiangan as ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... his watch, and his wife seemed to take this for a sign that the incident was closed, for the present at least. He seldom talked, but there came times when he would not even listen. One of these was the time after he had wound his watch. A minute later he had undressed, with an agility incredible of his years, and was in bed, as effectively blind and deaf to his wife's appeals as if he ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... that when he is once married and settled, instead of being angry with your majesty, he will be grateful to you, for every one tries his utmost to please him; even the Duke of Buckingham, whose brilliancy, which is incredible, seems to pale before that of this ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... apprehension. The number of police officers was very great, and they were all low born, clever, unprincipled men, perfectly fitted for their situations. The extent and accuracy of the information possessed by them was almost incredible. Indeed, we regard the system of espionage, by which this information was procured, as the most complete and damning proof of the general selfishness and immorality of the French people, of which we ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... multitude to covet the possessions of others than to preserve their own, and so much more easily are they led by the hope of acquisition than by the fear of loss. The suggestions of the latter appear incredible till they are verified; and the pleasing anticipations of the former are cherished as facts, even while the advantages are very problematical, or at best, remote. The people of Florence were inspired with hope, by the acquisitions which Niccolo Fortebraccio had made, and ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... she never could have enough of the sweet wind; each breath gave her all the boundless region whence it blew; she gazed as if she would fill her soul with the sparkling gray of the water, the sun melted blue of the sky, and the incredible green of the flat shores. For minutes she would be silent, her parted lips revealing her absorbed delight, then break out in a volley of questions, now addressing Malcolm, now Travers. She tried Davy too, but Davy knew nothing except his duty here. The ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... two feet of water, and the same depth of slimy, bubble-charged mud, was the nearest cover; and in the midst of this I cowered, hardening my heart against society, and watching Jim herself as she tripped blithely past the end of the stack, and looked into my recess. It seemed incredible; and yet, in spite of the cold and misery and difficulty of the situation, I could n't wake up to find myself ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... laboured against truth with the utmost obstinacy. I sometimes suspected myself of madness, and should not have dared to impart this secret but to a man like you, capable of distinguishing the wonderful from the impossible, and the incredible from the false.' ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... the whole herd stand still, till the goatherd comes up and takes it out of her mouth? There are other properties that have connection and communication, and that transfer themselves from one thing to another with incredible[848] quickness and over immense distances. But we marvel more at intervals of time than place. And yet is it more wonderful that Athens should have been smitten with a plague[849] that started in Arabia, and of which Pericles died and Thucydides fell sick, than that, when ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... water," he said, "instantly." And the helpful hand and light foot of Alice, with the ready-witted tenderness which never stagnates in vain lamentations while there is any room for hope, provided with incredible celerity all that ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... the low morale and lack of discipline in their units, instigated the violence. Whoever the culprits, the Army's files are replete with cases of discrimination charged, investigations launched, and exonerations issued or reforms ordered.[2-55] An incredible amount of time and effort went into handling these cases during the darkest days of the war—cases growing out of a policy (p. 039) created in ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... midshipman was correct, and the whole party congregated on the taffrail to witness the struggle which had already commenced. The blows of the thrasher, a large fish, of the same species as the whale, given with incredible force and noise on the back of the whale, were now answered by his more unwieldy antagonist, who lashed the sea with fury in his attempts to retaliate upon his more active assailant; and while the contention lasted, the water ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... makes no summer," says Mr. Desmond, hardily. "Because my uncle refused to succor a distressed damosel is no reason why I should so far forget myself. Besides, the whole thing seems incredible. Report says, and," with an expressive glance at her, "I can well believe it, your mother was the most beautiful woman of her time in all the countryside; while my uncle, bless him, is one of the very ugliest men I ever met in my life. He might ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... British ships arrived and departed and presently arrived again,—the same ships she had seen depart coming back unharmed, unhindered by her country's submarines. Only the two German ladies, once more ignoring their American allegiance, looked angry. It was incredible to them, simply unfassbar as they said in their thoughts, that any nation should dare inconvenience Germans, should dare lay a finger, even the merest friendliest detaining one, on anything belonging to the mighty, the inviolable Empire. ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... begun to rig upon it, was just what had let him in. He had in the judgment of his family done everything that could be expected of him; he had made—Mrs. Meldrum had herself seen the letter—a "handsome" offer of pecuniary compensation. Oh, if Flora, with her incredible buoyancy, was in a manner on her feet again now, it was not that she had not for weeks and weeks been prone in the dust. Strange were the humiliations, the prostrations it was given to some natures to survive. That Flora had survived was perhaps after all a sort of sign ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... was true to the end. Jimbo felt his heart swell within him. She was mounting, mounting behind him with incredible swiftness. The sound of his own name in these terrible regions recalled to him some degree of concentration, and he strove hard to fight against the drawing power ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... on the front seat stood up, laid her sleeping infant on the floor with careful deliberation, took off her black calico bonnet, stepped into the aisle, slapped her hands together and began to spin around and around upon her toes with incredible celerity. Her homespun skirt ballooned about her, the ruffle of her collar stood out like a little frill of white neck feathers. She had a fixed, foolish expression, maintained an energy of motion that was persistent and amazing, and gave out at regular intervals a short, ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... protected it. An ambuscade of five hundred men, under Sir John Norris, was held sufficient to intercept the convoy. About fifty young officers volunteered to add their services. This gallant band was composed of the flower of the English army.... It was indeed "an incredible extravagance to send a handful of such heroes against such an army," but Leicester can scarcely be blamed for failing to restrain the impulsive ardor which animated his entire staff. Sidney's characteristic magnanimity betrayed him that day into a fatal excess. He had risen at the first sound ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... and I could hardly believe, as I gazed around me, that there could be any land beyond, or any place like Europe or England or Liverpool in the great wide world. It seemed too strange, and wonderful, and altogether incredible, that there could really be cities and towns and villages and green fields and hedges and farm-yards and orchards, away over that wide blank of sea, and away beyond the place where the sky came down to the water. And to think of steering right ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... mother prostrated herself a second time; and when she arose, said: "Monarch of monarchs, before I tell your majesty the extraordinary and incredible business which brings me before your high throne, I beg of you to pardon the boldness of the demand I am going to make, which is so uncommon, that I tremble, and am ashamed to propose it to my sovereign." In order to give her the more freedom to explain herself, the sultan ordered all ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... blowing, and imparted to things around him a sort of lugubrious life. The bushes shook their thin little arms with incredible fury. One would have said that they were threatening and pursuing ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... night and day with incredible zeal and toil, were sufficiently completed; and disguise, no longer possible, was no longer useful. Themistocles demanded the audience he had hitherto deferred, and boldly avowed that Athens was now so far fortified as to protect its citizens. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... another solace of a sinister kind. After a severe illness during his second year of medicine his mother, says his biographer, presented him with a copy of De Quincey's "Confessions of an Opium Eater." It is incredible that a helluo librorum, like Thompson, should have reached the age of twenty without ever having read a book which is one of the first to attract every bright school-boy. This would be particularly ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... inference, however, is, that the pyramid base is not now in a condition to be satisfactorily measured; and assuredly no such reliance can be placed on the mean value 9140 inches that, on the strength of it, we should believe what otherwise would be utterly incredible, viz. that the builders of the great pyramid knew 'both the size and shape of the earth exactly.' 'Humanly, or by human science, finding it out in that age was, of course, utterly impossible,' says Professor Smyth. But he is so confident of the average value derived from ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... asked Ku Hsi whether it was conceivable that the wife of a prince did herself what is here related, and he replied that the poet said so. Another has observed that if the lady ordered and employed others, it was still her own doing. But that the lady did it herself is not incredible, when we consider the simplicity of those early times, in the twelfth ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... to consider that the older woman could have known Nona's mother years before in their own country. Her story was too incredible ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... conducted the defence of Saragossa; but what was indeed of interest was to find that of Palafox [6] they spoke but slightingly, and seemed to consider him merely as the nominal commander. All this was so new, so incredible to me, that I could not help openly expressing my doubts on the subject; these, however, were met by an argument to which it was impossible not to attach considerable weight—that Palafox was at that moment on parole in a town in France. 'Do you really think,' asked ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... very early broached by individuals. St. Augustine, 398, speaks of it as a thing which "possibly may be found so, and possibly never;" the Venerable Bede says it is "not altogether incredible." Origen, in the 3rd century, is by some thought to have been the first to teach distinctly the doctrine of Purgatory, but his view differs altogether from the Roman. Article xxii. gives the view of the Church of England on this subject. "Purgatory... is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... but that Hendall's, traditionally the oldest store in Deepdale, should have been treated to such insult, and by a band of roving gypsies, too—for every one suspected them from the first—why, it was unheard of! incredible! ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... myself for the suffering which my love had brought upon him through the baseness of the deception I had practiced, I went to him to entreat his forgiveness, promising to make any amends that he himself might decree. I pointed out that what had happened could not seem incredible to any one who had ever felt the power of love, or who remembered how, from the very beginning of the human race, women had cast down even the noblest men to utter ruin. And in order to make amends even beyond his extremest ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... armies and the resources of the army of Chalons, advised, or rather ordered, an immediate forward movement, regardless of all considerations, in spite of everything, with a heat and fury that seemed incredible. ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... 'That which thou tellest me, O Suta, about the battle, fierce and terrible, between the one and the many, and the victory of that illustrious one, that story of the prowess of Subhadra's son is highly wonderful and almost incredible. I do not, however, regard it as a marvel that is absolutely beyond belief in the case of those that have righteousness for their refuge. After Duryodhana was beaten back and a hundred princes slain, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... bravest sincerity to look into a countenance of eager love, and change it to one of bitter disappointment by the utterance of a monosyllable. To Sylvia it was doubly hard, for now her blindness seemed as incredible as cruel; her past frankness unjustifiable; her pleasure selfish; her refusal the blackest ingratitude, and her dream of friendship forever marred. In the brief pause that fell, every little service he had rendered her, rose freshly in her memory; every hour of real ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... reading public and the friends of Johnny Bellchambers have ceased to marvel at his sudden and unexplained disappearance nearly a year ago. This particular mystery has now been cleared up, but the solution is so strange and incredible to the mind of the average man that only a select few who were in close touch with Bellchambers ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... presenting rich offerings to their favourite places of worship; and when it is remembered that this practice had been going on from time immemorial, it need be no matter for wonder that the man who first violently despoiled the sacred buildings departed from the country laden with an almost incredible amount of booty. Colonel Dow, in his translation of the works of Firishtah (i. 307), computes the value of the gold carried off by Malik Kafur at a hundred millions sterling ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... but theology. Theology alone is the one true science, and its dogmas alone may be taught as certain. Of course! for it proceeds directly from revelation, and only divine revelation can be "quite certain;" it alone can never err. Yes, incredible as it sounds, Virchow, the sceptical opponent of dogma, the leader of the fight for "liberty of science," Virchow now finds the only sure basis for instruction in the dogmas of the Church. After all that has gone before, the ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... Munchausen, and nobody in Rome thought of crediting his stories. But Mosier's statement shows on its face signs of internal weakness. When he says that Count D'Ossoli in attempting to model a foot placed the big-toe on the wrong side, he states what is altogether incredible, and discloses his own splenetic humor. Neither is it more likely that Margaret Fuller permitted him to examine her manuscripts so that she might obtain his assistance in regard to their publication. Whatever may be said of her, she was not a fool, and was better acquainted with ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... in France had gained a wilder impetus. The abolition of the nobility, the flight and capture of the King, his enforced declaration of war against Austria, the massacres of Avignon, the sack of the Tuileries—such events seemed incredible enough till the next had crowded them out of mind. The new year rose in blood and mounted to a bloodier noon. All the old defences were falling. Religion, monarchy, law, were sucked down into the whirlpool of liberated passions. Across ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the bridge—had been identified with sports and pastimes. On Sundays, holidays, and other festive occasions, the citizens, their wives, and their apprentices were accustomed to seek outdoor entertainment across the river, going thither in boats (of which there was an incredible number, converting "the silver sliding Thames" almost into a Venetian Grand Canal), or strolling on foot over old London Bridge. On the Bankside the visitors could find maypoles for dancing, butts for the practice of archery, and broad fields for athletic games; or, ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... Suddenly there was a grand excitement; part of the scaffolding gave way. Mademoiselle de Salves in her fright dropped my arm and began to run. I saw a great timber falling and believed she was lost. I could not reach her. A man emerged from the crowd, and with incredible strength seized this timber and eased it to the ground. She fainted, and when the crowd permitted me to reach her side, this young man was holding her in his arms. She opened her eyes, and I am certain that this man was no stranger to her. When, however, ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... efforts, were mostly equipped with such haste and ignorance, and with so little choice, that ruinous delays, shipwrecks, and final discomfiture, were naturally to be expected. Still, the effect of such incredible numbers of people betaking themselves to foreign countries, advanced civilization, although vast means of forwarding its cause were buried in the East; and those who assert that no benefit actually resulted, cannot deny that at least some evils were thereby removed. ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... Foreign Secretary, in a statement made September 16th said: "It is incredible that anything can come of this proposal.... This cynical proposal of the Austrian Government is not a genuine attempt to obtain peace. It is an attempt to divide the Allies." Premier Clemenceau in France ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... suicidal impulse of avowal. His very soul was parched for sympathy; he thirsted for a voice of pity and comprehension. But would his wife pity? Would she understand? Again he found himself brought up abruptly against his incredible ignorance of her nature. The fact that he knew well enough how she would behave in the ordinary emergencies of life, that he could count, in such contingencies, on the kind of high courage and directness he had always divined in her, made him the more hopeless of her entering into the ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... London he had wondered just why Eugenia had settled there in preference to her own country. It was not her wont to do things without an object, yet until this moment he had been unable to fathom her motives. Even now it seemed almost incredible. And yet what meaning would her words have other than the monstrous one which had smitten him ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... cunning scoundrel, the true leader of the cattle rustlers, yet keep that beautiful and innocent girl out on the frontier and let her give parties to sons and daughters of a community he had robbed? To any but remorseless Rangers the idea was incredible. ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... knowledge was, in Jack's mind, absolutely corroborated by the display. His marvellous parrying of Acton's attentions; his short step inwards, which invariably followed a mis-hit by Acton; his baits to lure his opponent to deliver himself a gift into his hands; his incredible ducking and lightning returns, held Bourne fascinated. Everything was done so easily, so lithely, so lightly, and so surely, that Jack gasped in admiration. Acton in the hands of the nigger ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... a kind-hearted woman. Indeed she was very cold, but Jonas was her only son, and to him she was as much attached as it was possible for her to be to any one. Formerly he had returned her affection in a slight degree, but since he had figured as a rich man's son and heir he had begun, incredible as it may appear, to look down upon his own mother. She was not wholly ignorant of this change in his feelings, and it made her unhappy. He was all she had to live for. But for him she would not have stooped to take part in the conspiracy in which she was now a participant. It ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... morning, I remember, when I first went out into those squalid streets and saw everywhere the evidences of poverty, dirt, and ignorance—and the sweet, clean country not two miles away—the thought of my own home among the hills (with Harriet there in the doorway) came upon me with incredible longing. ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... Father! thou art merciful' he would render, 'O Father! the Father is merciful.'" Borrow protested, but Lipovzoff, who was "a gentleman, whom the slightest contradiction never fails to incense to a most incredible degree," told him that he talked nonsense, and refused to concede anything. {138a} Lipovzoff, who had on his side the Chinese scholars and unlimited powers as official censor (from whose decree there was no appeal) over his own work, carried his point. He urged that "amongst ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... a severe inquiry into the conduct of the war. Next, in spite of the Governor-General's remonstrances, they proceeded to exercise, in the most indiscreet manner, their new authority over the subordinate presidencies; threw all the affairs of Bombay into confusion; and interfered, with an incredible union of rashness and feebleness, in the intestine disputes of the Mahratta Government. At the same time, they fell on the internal administration of Bengal, and attacked the whole fiscal and judicial system, a system which was undoubtedly defective, but which ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of Augustus Caesar, and is known chiefly for the parallel that has been drawn by ancient and modern writers between his supposed miracles and those of the Saviour. His doings as described by Philostratus are extraordinary and incredible, and he was put forward by the Eclectics in opposition to the unique powers claimed by Christ and believed in by His followers. Apollonius is said to have studied the philosophy of the Platonic, Sceptic, Epicurean, Peripatetic and Pythagorean schools, and to have adopted that of Pythagoras. ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... difficult," Ont said. "In our own minds we tend to become absolute rather than relative in our conceptions. Some other entity might, for example, think much more slowly than we, or with incredible rapidity, so that our thoughts would be sluggish to him, or so swift that he would never be able to grasp them until long ...
— The Unthinking Destroyer • Roger Phillips
... him the walls of his confinement were not of stone and mortar. In his lonely prison, awaiting his fate, and with horrid visions of death haunting him, he summons up his muscular strength and courage, and with incredible exertion he broke through the jail by night, and once more enjoyed the sweets of liberty. Having thus made his escape he soon found his way to the fair partner of his joys and sorrows. It needs hardly be said that her astonishment was only equalled ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... was not asleep. An incredible thing had happened to him. A fortune lay under his pillow. He was sure it was there, for ever since it came his hot ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... explaining the incredible complexities of the situation to the president, and was torn between relief that he hadn't been there and a curious wish to have heard the scrambled conversation that must have taken place. "The way it seems to me," he said cautiously, ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... miles altogether were traversed by the different parties. Mr Penny made every effort to ascend Wellington Channel; but his success was trifling compared to his unwearied endeavours. When his sledge was stopped by open water, and after incredible labours a boat was brought to the spot, thick-ribbed ice had collected to impede its progress. All the efforts of the heroic explorers were in vain. Lieutenant De Haven's ships returned to the United States, after enduring many hardships; and Captain Austin, Sir John Ross, and Mr Penny came ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... provinces, not owing to a failure of the rice, as I had understood, but of the millet, which is used by the poor instead of rice. Some writers estimate that five millions of people must die from starvation before the next crop can be gathered; but this seems incredible. And now America comes to the rescue, so that at this moment, while from its Eastern shores it pours forth its inexhaustible stores to feed Europe, it sends from the West of its surplus to the older races of the far East. Thus from all sides, fabled Ceres ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... the Devil, when that belief is carried out fully into its practical effects. The Christian doctrine had relapsed into a system almost identical with Manicheism. Wierus thus describes Satan, as he was regarded in the prevalent theology: "He possesses great courage, incredible cunning, superhuman wisdom, the most acute penetration, consummate prudence, an incomparable skill in veiling the most pernicious artifices under a specious disguise, and a malicious and infinite hatred towards the human race, implacable and incurable." ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... ended, the Ionian commences, the first shore of which is in the neighbourhood of Epidamnus and Apollonia." When Venice conquered Durazzo the limits of the Adriatic were extended, and it was thenceforth called the Gulf of Venice. In 1859 the almost incredible fact is recorded that it ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... religious or political enemies, to the private bickerings and petty jealousies that must necessarily occur in a combination of ignorant and bigoted men, whose passions are guided by no principle but one of practical cruelty. This explains, as we have just put it, and justly put it, the incredible number of murders which are committed in this unhappy country, under the name of way-layings and midnight attacks, where the offence that caused them cannot be traced by society at large, although it is an incontrovertible fact, that to all those who are connected with ribbonism, in its varied ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... were the means he took to excite the King's suspicious; for it is incredible that Frederic, considering his well- known professions of public justice, should treat me in the manner he did, without a hearing, without examination, and without a court-martial. This to me has ever remained a mystery, which the King alone was able to explain; he afterwards was ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... you have a soft spot in your heart for this COX AND CO., never failing in courtesy and attention and ever heaped with abuse? So, to be frank, have I. Let us turn round and blackguard the other fellow. The sequel is incredible. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... If it had been Anna or Flora or Hilda gone off with the pump, she would have been easily caught. Not Robert. Wonderful and mysterious Robert, wonderfully and mysteriously pedalling at incredible speed, is not caught. The hunt dejectedly trails back. The business of pushing Harold out of the ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... covered, many fathoms deep, with frozen snow, but more especially the S.W. coast? The very sides and craggy summits of the lofty mountains were cased with snow and ice; but the quantity which lay in the valleys is incredible; and at the bottom of the bays the coast was terminated by a wall of ice of considerable height. It can hardly be doubted that a great deal of ice is formed here in the water, which in the spring is broken off, and dispersed over the sea; but this island cannot produce ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... something of the terribly-brutalising effects of the Reign of Terror, but the conversation of these wretches gave me such a vivid insight of the incredible depths of depravity of which the human mind is sometimes capable as I could certainly not otherwise have gained, unless indeed by associating with the ruffians who gathered daily round the guillotine to insult and exult over the ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... marvellously; for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you;' i. 5. The French king is slain by the hands of a friar. For unto this it may be compared, though the prophet spake of our Lord's incarnation. This is a memorable and almost incredible thing, not accomplished without the particular providence of God. A friar has killed a king. That the king is dead, is credible; but that he is killed in such a manner is hardly credible: even as we assert that Christ is born of a woman; but if we add of a virgin; then, according to human reason, ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... same length, so that these became incapable of intercrossing freely; but that such sterility was eliminated in the case of the individuals which differed in the length of their pistils and stamens. It is, however, incredible that so peculiar a form of mutual infertility should have been specially acquired unless it were highly beneficial to the species; and although it may be beneficial to an individual plant to be sterile with its own pollen, cross-fertilisation being ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... strict tests. Clairvoyance also was part of Dr. Gregory's faith, and, to be fair, phenomena were exhibited at his house, in the presence of a learned and distinguished witness known to the writer, which could only be accounted for either by thought transference, or by an almost, or quite incredible combination of astuteness, and imposture on the side of Dr. Gregory himself. In presence of the clairvoyants the nobleman of whom we speak thought not of his own house, but of a room in the house of a ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... whose past career had been a truly heroic one, was loudly relating in his deep voice, strange and amusing tales of his travels by sea and land, Colonel Mulder often interrupted him, and at every somewhat incredible story, smilingly told a similar, but perfectly impossible adventure of his own. Captain Van Duivenvoorde soothingly interposed, when Van der Laen, who was conscious of never deviating far from the truth, angrily repelled the old man's jesting insinuations. Captain ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... devotion lies in that cruel little head. There is only one idea there; and if any unwary insect were to come along, those devotional arms would be thrust out with incredible rapidity, and the unfortunate insect ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... wary held it safer, at all hazards, not to leave him unemployed, and to command his services in an expedition that would remove him from the neighbourhood of his brother, should the latter land, as was expected, on the coast of Norfolk, Edward, with a blindness of conceit that seems almost incredible, believed firmly in the infatuated loyalty of the man whom he had slighted and impoverished, and whom, by his offer of his daughter to the Lancastrian prince, he had yet more recently cozened and deluded. Montagu was hastily summoned, and received orders to march at ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and Jurgis had the man-doctor, according to his whim, and she was safely delivered of a fine baby. It was an enormous big boy, and Ona was such a tiny creature herself, that it seemed quite incredible. Jurgis would stand and gaze at the stranger by the hour, unable to believe that it ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... routes,—above all, the Yang-Tse-Kiang, "the greatest stream in the world, like an arm of the sea, flowing above one hundred days' journey from its source into the ocean, and into which flow countless others, making it so great that incredible quantities of merchandise are brought by this river. It flows," exclaims Marco, "through sixteen provinces, past the quays of two hundred cities, at one of which I saw at one time five thousand vessels, and there are ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... intestines differ little in calibre, and many of them (i.e. the family) can diffuse at will a disgusting stench." This last peculiarity is a specialty of the American members of the family, notably the skunk, of the power of which almost incredible stories are told. I remember reading not long ago an account of a train passing over a skunk, and for a time the majority of the passengers suffered from nausea in consequence. Sir John Richardson writes: "I have known a dead skunk thrown over the stockades of a trading port produce instant ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... informed that a 2oz. glove is an evasion by which they dodge the law, and make it difficult for the police to interfere. They contend for a sum of money. It seems dreadful and almost incredible—does it not?—to think that such scenes can be enacted within a few miles of our peaceful home. But you will realise, Mr. Montgomery, that while there are such influences for us to counteract, it is very necessary that we should ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... region between the tropics, produces an incredible profusion of climbing plants, of which the flora of the Antilles alone presents us with forty different species. Among the most graceful of these shrubs is the passion-flower, which, according to Descourtiz, grows with such luxuriance in the Antilles, as to climb trees by means of the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... is extremely injurious to the health; and, in former times, thousands of mariners lost their lives for the want of fresh aliments during long voyages. We are sorry to say that the preserved meats are sometimes carelessly prepared, and, though the statement seems incredible, sometimes adulterated. Dr. Lankester, who has done so much to expose the frauds of trade, that he ought to be regarded as a public benefactor, says that he has seen things which were utterly unfit for food, shipped as preserved meats. Surely, as he observes, there ought to be some superintendent ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... "Incredible carelessness!—And you cannot shoe a horse, or cut his mane and tail; or worm a dog, or crop his ears, or cut his dew-claws; or reclaim a hawk, or give him his casting-stones, or direct his diet when ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... [FN464] For the incredible amount of torture which Eastern obstinacy will sometimes endure, see Al-Mas'udi's tale of the miserable little old man who stole the ten purses, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... upon this kingdom in many places, but cheefly in this cittie, with his judgmente of y^e plague. The last weeks bill was 1200. & odd, I fear this will be more; and it is much feared it will be a winter sicknes. By reason wherof it is incredible y^e number of people y^t are gone into y^e cuntry & left y^e citie. I am perswaded many more then went out y^e last sicknes; so as here is no trading, carriers from most places put downe; nor no receiving of any money, though long due. M^r. Hall ows ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... moment, Lisbeth Fischer had become the Mohican whose snares none can escape, whose dissimulation is inscrutable, whose swift decisiveness is the outcome of the incredible perfection of every organ of sense. She was Hatred and Revenge, as implacable as they are in Italy, Spain, and the East. These two feelings, the obverse of friendship and love carried to the utmost, are known only in lands scorched by ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... hearing the horrible crashing in the forest, abandoned their flocks to run and see the cause of this unwonted uproar. By their evil star, or for their sins, they were led thither. When they saw the furious state the Count was in, and his incredible force, they would fain have fled out of his reach, but in their fears lost their presence of mind. The madman pursued them, seized one and rent him limb from limb, as easily as one would pull ripe apples from a tree. He took another ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... Of thy prodigious might and feats perform'd, Incredible to me, in this displeas'd, That I was never present in the place Of those encounters, where we might have tried Each other's force in camp or listed fields; And now am come to see of whom such noise Hath walk'd about, and each limb to survey, If ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... no other example of a genius so universal as Leonardo's, so creative, so incapable of self- contentment, so athirst for the infinite, so naturally refined, so far in advance of his own and subsequent ages. His pictures express incredible sensibility and mental power; they overflow with unexpressed ideas and emotions. Alongside of his portraits Michelangelo's personages are simply heroic athletes; Raphael's virgins are only placid children whose souls are still asleep. His ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... to believe before," replied my Sage, "O wounded soul, what he has seen only in my verse,[1] he would not upon thee have stretched his hand. But the incredible thing made me prompt him to an act which grieves my very self. But tell him who thou wast, so that, by way of some amends, he may refresh thy fame in the world above, whereto it is ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... to the frail wall was not ridiculous, nor her dark vision of the mine, nor her tremendous indignation when, after disobeying her, he forgot that she was a queen. To her the scene was sublimely tragic. Soon she had recrossed the bridge, but not the same she! So this was the end of the incredible adventure! ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... Agatha, eagerly. "Yes, let us dine! It may sound incredible to you, Mr. Cleggett, that the daughter of an English peer and the widow of a baronet should confess that, except for your tea, she has scarcely eaten for ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... He heard of it indirectly through one of his Parisian correspondents who happened to mention the new crash, without ever dreaming that Jeannin was one of the victims: for the banker had not said a word to anybody: with incredible irresponsibility, he had not taken the trouble—even avoided—asking the advice of men who were in a position to give him information: he had done the whole thing secretly, in the infatuated belief in his infallible common ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... napkin, visibly perturbed. "Yes, but what can we do?" he demanded. "What is the good of flinging a handful of troops overseas, even if we can? It's incredible—English troops in Flanders in this century. In my opinion—in my opinion, I say—we should do better to hold ourselves in readiness. Germany would never really dare antagonise us. They know what it involves. Why, there's hundreds of millions of pounds at stake. Grey has ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... the dead bodies. Indeed, this was by far the greatest disaster that befell any one Hellenic city in an equal number of days during this war; and I have not set down the number of the dead, because the amount stated seems so out of proportion to the size of the city as to be incredible. In any case I know that if the Acarnanians and Amphilochians had wished to take Ambracia as the Athenians and Demosthenes advised, they would have done so without a blow; as it was, they feared that if the Athenians ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... amusing to read now. Teachers of the deaf proved a priori that what Miss Sullivan had done could not be, and some discredit was reflected on her statements, because they were surrounded by the vague eloquence of Mr. Anagnos. Thus the story of Helen Keller, incredible when told with moderation, had the misfortune to be heralded by exaggerated announcements, and naturally met either an ignorant credulity or ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... the late expedition in the rear of Lee's army, surpasses any thing ever achieved on this continent. Especially are the adventures of the Second New York (Harris Light Cavalry) and the Twelfth Illinois almost incredible. But they bear with them trophies that fully confirm the record of ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... Strauss. The joke is carried out with remarkable ingenuity, and with the most whimsical resources of learning. The good doctor finds, a la Strauss, a nucleus, for here and there a great tradition, but remorselessly wipes out as altogether incredible many of the most striking and familiar facts in ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... a loss to understand this confession of Paul and feel obliged to save his honor. That the chosen vessel of Christ should have had the law of sin in his members seems to them incredible and absurd. They circumvent the plain-spoken statement of the Apostle by saying that he was speaking for the wicked. But the wicked never complain of inner conflicts, or of the captivity of sin. Sin has its unrestricted way with them. This is Paul's very own complaint ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... Where it swerved out into the lower plain, stood Johnstown, and there he was to cross the flight of Pete Reeve, if Pete were indeed flying. But it was incredible that the man who had struck down Uncle Bill Campbell should flee from any man or ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... from recent newspapers, published in the slave states. Most of those papers will be deposited at the office of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 143 Nassau street, New York City. Those who think the atrocities, which they describe, incredible, are invited to call and read for themselves. We regret that all of the original papers are not in our possession. The idea of preserving them on file for the inspection of the incredulous, and the curious, did not occur to us until after the preparation of the work was ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... yesterday had caused a mental shock greater than she had yet realised. That Mrs. Hannaford, a woman whom she had for many years regarded as elderly, should be possessed and overcome by the passion of love, was a thing so strange, so at conflict with her fixed ideas, as to be all but incredible. In her aunt's presence, she scarcely reflected upon it; she saw only a woman bound to her by natural affection, who had fallen into dire misfortune and wretchedness. Little by little the story grew upon her understanding; the words in which it had ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... his barrels; and Davy stood up in the boat and gave a cooee that might have been heard at Sunday Island, for when anything excited him on the water he could be heard shouting and swearing at an incredible distance. He yelled at the fishermen, "Boat ahoy! up anchor, you lubbers, and scatter. Don't you ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... them then. It had been an incredible risk that Roger Hunter had taken, but the decision had been his. The plan was simple: to involve Jupiter Equilateral in a case of claim-jumping and piracy that would hold up in court, pressed by a man who would not be intimidated and could not be bought ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... insensible, it was discovered that the Countess was not quite dead. A surgeon was soon obtained, and on examination it was discovered that though her wound was a terrible one—three buck-shot and one large bullet having entered her breast—yet there was some hope for her. After incredible suffering and long confinement, she recovered; though to the day of her death she will feel the effects of the terrible wound, to which was added the mutilation of her ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of the darkness could she consent to go anywhere in company with the village reprobate. Every tongue in the place would be set wagging were she seen walking with Copernicus Droop. She had not herself known how strong was the curiosity which his startling theories and incredible story had awakened in her. She looked up at her visitor ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... sank back on the bench, Krass, quintus, rose with an expression on his face as if he had become personally involved in a particularly incredible miracle. ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... discussion by the Dallas Pastors' Association," he said wearily. "They permitted me to sweep out the room and stand down in the hall. It may appear incredible; but there are just a few things that the Dallas Pastors' Association doesn't know. Of course you couldn't make those gentlemen believe it; but it is a lamentable fact. The world is young; it must run its course. Our Heavenly Father did not create it as the Chinese make ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... appeared upon the scene; and that, dazzled by my appearance of superior wealth, she had in the most heartless and cruel manner thrown him overboard; and, with a cunning and artfulness which even then seemed incredible to me, laid herself out only too successfully to ensnare me, and by becoming my wife to secure for herself those comforts and luxuries which Merlani—poor shiftless scamp that he was—could ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... It seemed quite incredible that the dependent and affectionate man opposite her was the one who had filled her with fear and resentment such a short time ago. She found herself actually laughing aloud once at the absurdity of it all. Had her dread of him been fortuitous, his tyranny a mere sham? Had he really liked her ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... I once fell in love—incredible as it may seem to you—nine years ago last January. I was too poor then to aspire to any young lady's hand—therefore I did not tell my love, but 'let concealment,' et cetera, et cetera. She went away with her mamma to complete her education on the Continent. I remained 'Patience ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... town in Euboea on the strait of the Euripus which separates the island of Euboea from the mainland. The smallness of the Roman loss is incredible. Appian considerately add one to the number, and makes it fifteen (Mithridatic War, c. 42, &c.) Sulla was a braggart, though ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... such conditions of inhumanity and neglect as no intelligent farmer would tolerate for his swine, we could avoid some unpleasant details; but the statement would be ineffective because it would seem incredible. At the almshouse in Danvers, confined in a remote, low, outbuilding, she found a young woman, once respectable, industrious and worthy, whose mind had been deranged by disappointments and trials. "There she stood," says Miss Dix, ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... Kermit, and their camaradas brought the five canoes that were left down to camp. They had in four days accomplished a work of incredible labor and of the utmost importance; for at the first glance it had seemed an absolute impossibility to avoid abandoning the canoes when we found that the river sank into a cataract broken torrent at the bottom of a canyon-like gorge between steep mountains. On April 2 we once more started, wondering ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... satirical views of literature at this moment; recounted the incredible sums paid in one year by the great booksellers for puffing. Hence it comes that no newspaper is trusted now, no books are bought, and the booksellers are on the ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... modern converts have a better time of it than our predecessors! The Bishop tells me the most incredible things about the old feeling towards them in this Vicariate. And wherever I go I seem to hear the tale of the old priest who thanked God that he had never received anyone into the Church. Everybody has met someone who knew that old fellow! He may be ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Texel. It merely proves that you have never seen a British Jury exercising itself upon a question relating to the fine arts. If you had you would not be certain, for you would know that twelve tradesmen so occupied are capable of accomplishing the most incredible marvels. Supposing you don't ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... way to youthful follies or run into excess, now see a million thrown at my head. This is contrary to the ideas of the romancing novelist, who as a rule reforms and rewards the wildest youth. I almost knocked over the lamp on opening the letter which contained this incredible news; fortunately my landlady caught it, for she was waiting for the eighteenpence which the messenger demanded for his services, and she has since confessed to me she thought that it was a case of "baliffs." I got rid of her as quickly as possible and bolted the door behind ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... at the first shot and killed at the second. The crowd retreated, but bullets rained upon the house, Charles all the while keeping watch in every direction from four different windows. Every now and then he thrust his rifle through one of the shattered windowpanes and fired, working with incredible rapidity. He succeeded in killing two more of his assailants and wounding two. At last he realized that the house was on fire, and knowing that the end had come he rushed forth upon his foes, fired one shot more and fell dead. He had killed eight men and mortally wounded two or three more. His body ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... dead, were naturally no parties to the suit, which was fought against the Saint-Geran family by la Pigoreau and Mesdames du Lude and de Ventadour. These ladies no doubt acted in good faith, at first at any rate, in refusing to believe the crime; for if they had originally known the truth it is incredible that they could have fought the case so long ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... historian computes, that his annual fixed income, besides escheats, fines, reliefs, and other casual profits to a great value, amounted to near four hundred thousand pounds a year [t]; a sum which, if all circumstances be attended to, will appear wholly incredible. A pound in that age, as we have already observed, contained three times the weight of silver that it does at present; and the same weight of silver, by the most probable computation, would purchase near ten times more of the necessaries of life, though not in the same proportion ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... the "History of the House of Brunswick," already mentioned, the "Accessiones Histori," the "Scriptores Rerum Brunsvicensium Illustrationi inservientes," and the "Codex Juris Gentium Diplomaticus";— works involving an incredible amount of labor and research, but adding little to his posthumous fame. His philosophical studies, after entering the Hanoverian service, which he did in his thirtieth year, were pursued, as he tells his correspondent Placcius, by stealth,—that is, at odd moments ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... boy. Later her sister persuaded her to dye her hair and dress fashionably. Charity began to fear for her saint, but was reassured to find that already at sixteen she was a nun and had commenced that "life of almost incredible austerity," freeing herself from all dependence on food and sleep and resting on ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... laugh from the guerillas replied to his menace. With incredible hardihood, he opened the wicket and looked out. The Mochuelo had forbidden his men to fire, but nevertheless, at the sight of Baltasar, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... Sauverand. "I never used to read them. What! Is that incredible? Are we under an obligation, an inevitable necessity, to waste half an hour a day in skimming through the futilities of politics and the piffle of the news columns? Is your imagination incapable of conceiving a man who reads nothing but reviews ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... haunting uneasiness in the expression of a hope that the ordered character of the conversation I have just set down may not render it incredible to my reader. I record the result alone. The talk itself was far more desultory, and in consequence of questions, objections, and explanations, divaricated much from the comparatively direct line I have endeavoured to give it here. In the hope of making my reader ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
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