"Conjectural" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... purports to be,—not a collection of elaborate essays devoted to metaphysical analysis or to conjectural emendations of doubtful lines,—but a series of ideal portraits of the women of Shakspeare's plays. The reader may fancy himself led by an intelligent cicerone who pauses before each picture and with well-chosen words tells enough of the story to present the heroine, and then gives ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... Of these conjectural discussions no one was more clearly aware than Coombe himself, and the finished facility—even felicity—of his evasion of any attempt at delicately valued cross examination was ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the cone; in this case, the surface to which the printing-ink adhered would diminish or enlarge, and in this altered state the impression might be retransferred to paper. It must be admitted, that this conjectural explanation is liable to very considerable difficulties; for, although the converse operation of taking an impression from a liquid surface has a parallel in the art of marbling paper, the possibility of transferring the ink from the copper to the ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... future for herself to which she looked forward with trembling hope, and she wanted to wander on in that visionary future without interruption. She walked briskly in the brisk air, the color rose in her cheeks, and her straw bonnet (which our contemporaries might look at with conjectural curiosity as at an obsolete form of basket) fell a little backward. She would perhaps be hardly characterized enough if it were omitted that she wore her brown hair flatly braided and coiled behind so as to expose the outline of her head in a daring manner at a time when ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... few ascertained facts are known to us as to Giorgione's life. The date of his birth is conjectural, there being but Vasari's unsupported testimony that he died in his thirty-fourth year. Now we know from unimpeachable sources that his death happened in October-November 1510,[1] so that, assuming Vasari's statement to be correct, Giorgione will ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... "aforesaidel" corrospondent and agreeing with spelling as in original Sidenote: A petiment in corrupt English. reading "petiment" conjectural Sidenote: Anaglipts are cunning carues and grauers. reading conjectural: beginning of each line is missing naglipts / e cunning / arues and / rauers effected by many seuerall workmen text reads "wookmen" Bagistanus must giue place text reads "geue" although the Obelisk of Iupiter ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... pass—if the interval of sombre gray that comes between the darknesses can be called day. For a week, now, we have not seen the sun. Our ship's position in this waste of storm and sea is conjectural. Once, by dead reckoning, we gained up with the Horn and a hundred miles south of it. And then came another sou'west gale that tore our fore-topsail and brand new spencer out of the belt-ropes and swept us away to a conjectured longitude east of ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... means this way of addressing Him? save that, though He knew that the Son of God was to come, yet he did not think that He had come in the weakness of the flesh?" But afterwards, when he saw Him work miracles, he had a sort of conjectural suspicion that He was the Son of God. Hence on Mk. 1:24, "I know who Thou art, the Holy one of God," Chrysostom [*Victor of Antioch. Cf. Catena Aurea] says that "he had no certain or firm knowledge of God's coming." Yet he knew that He was "the Christ promised in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... with respect to Russia, he does not look upon her force and her ambition with the alarm generally entertained of that encroaching and immense power. He even thinks that, even if she possessed Constantinople, she could not long retain it. As all this is future, and of course conjectural, we may legitimately express our doubts of any authority on the subject. That Russia does not think with the Marquis is evident, for all her real movements for the last fifty years have been but preliminaries ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... sagacity of which he has left us few examples. Now it is remarkable that the majority of the changes proposed by Mr. Collier in the notes to this edition of Shakespeare (8 vols., 8vo., 1842-3) evince a capacity for the apprehension of figurative language and for conjectural emendation of the very calibre indicated by this proposed change of "pregnant hinges" to "begging hinges." He has throughout his literary career, which began, we believe, with the publication of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... consider the mortals we are elbowing, who are of our own stature and our own appetites. I cannot feel sure how my voting will affect the condition of Central Asia in the coming ages, but I have good reason to believe that the future populations there will be none the worse off because I abstain from conjectural vilification of my opponents during the present parliamentary session, and I am very sure that I shall be less injurious to my contemporaries. On the whole, and in the vast majority of instances, the action by which we can do the best for future ages is ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... he lived to quarrel with the Rev. John Cumming, he would in all probability have drawn him as a puppy in gown and band; and no one who knows aught of the painter can doubt that he would have strikingly preserved the likeness. As for ourselves, we merely indulge in a piece of conjectural criticism. The other parts of the article are cast very much into the ordinary type of that side of the controversy to which it belongs: there is rather more than the usual amount of misrepresentation, inconsistency, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... has fixed his canon against self-slaughter,' and, therefore, he prays for natural dissolution, by any wasting disease, which may 'thaw' and dissolve his 'too too solid flesh.' This, perhaps, you will consider merely conjectural criticism: plausible, but not demonstrative. I own it has a higher character in my eyes; and, unless I am greatly mistaken, even the ghost of his own father glances at his adipose tendency, when ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... those at which a copy of the respective works was deposited at the Paris Bibliotheque du Conservatoire de Musique, the dates without an asterisk in parentheses are derived from advertisements in French musical journals; the square brackets [ ] enclose conjectural and approximate dates and additional information; and lastly, the dates without parentheses and without brackets were obtained by me direct from the successors of the original German publishers, and consequently are more exact and trustworthy than the others. In a few ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... cannot well comment upon his meaning, for as you may easily judge, what with cabinet, board, and Oak Farm, I have enough in my head to-day—and the subject is a fine and subtle one. But I may perhaps be able to think upon it to-night, in the meantime I think yours is a very just conjectural sketch. We have not got in cabinet to-day to the really pinching part of the discussion, the Roman catholic religious education. That comes on Monday. My mind does not waver; pray for me, that I may do right. I have an appointment with Peel to-morrow, and I rather think he means ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... found himself, he had fits of impulse to leap out and take the next train back. But, back where? He had the assurance of his colored friend and brother that forward was New York. Backward was the void conjectural. Slowly the dawn whitened at the window. He raised the curtain and saw the rocks and fences and snow of a winter's landscape—saw them with a shock which, lying prone as he was, gave him the sensation of staggering. It was true, then: the thing he had ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... ourselves in the infinite void of the conjectural world, our business is with what is likely to be affected, for the better or the worse, by the wisdom or weakness of our plans. In all speculations upon men and human affairs, it is of no small moment to distinguish ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... nothing of the kind. She tried to sketch her remembrance of both that and the gable of the mullion chamber, and Martyn prowled about in search of some hiding-place. Our antiquarian friend, Mr. Stafford, had made a conjectural drawing of the Chapel restored, and all the portfolios about the house were searched for it, disquieting mamma, who suspected Martyn's Oxford notions of intending to rebuild it, nor would he say that it ought not to be done. However, he with his ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... now see it. I must, however, specially draw your attention to the clearly-marked line which divides the facts which dynamics have taught us from those notions which are to be regarded as more or less conjectural. Interpreting the action of the tides by the principles of dynamics, we are assured that the moon was once—or rather the materials of the moon—in the immediate vicinity of the earth. There, however, dynamics leaves us, and unfortunately ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... chosen occasionally rather for their grandeur and melody than for their exact connexion with the context or bearing upon his meaning. The consequence was a certain gorgeous haziness and bewilderment, which made the task of translating his harangues rather troublesome and conjectural. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... may not be the same as the lady he married in Maidenhead. If one short sweet spell of constancy and heart repose interrupted the plunging torrent of his profligate life, we will not deprive him of that long past possibility. After that conjectural date, alas, he seems to have plunged deeper and deeper into the shaking quagmires of ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... be that things should exchange in proportion to the labour of getting them. If it cost twice as much labour to kill a beaver as to kill a deer, one beaver would be worth two deer. In accepting this bit of what Smith's commentator, Dugald Stewart,[332] calls 'theoretical' or 'conjectural' history, Ricardo did not mean to state a historical fact. He was not thinking of actual Choctaws or Cherokees. The beaver was exchanged for the deer about the time when the primitive man signed the 'social ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... occurs within our reach, of the effects produced in these deposits by the vast number of organized beings that must people them, the deposits of vegetable matter, and the exuviae, of animals. Such discussion would, however, be in a considerable degree purely conjectural, and we therefore shall not enter into it. It is sufficient to say, that formations analogous to those which the elevation of the continents has exposed to our view, must be now taking place in the bed of the ocean, whence they may be in their ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... leagues from the mouth of the strait, if more it was only a little more. The coast of the island then turned north close to that of Spain, and was joined to the island of Cadiz or Gadiz, or Caliz, as it is now called. I affirm this for two reasons, one by authority and the other by conjectural demonstration. The authority is that Plato in his Critias, telling how Neptune distributed the sovereignty of the island among his ten sons, said that the second son was called in the mother tongue "Gadirum," which in Greek we call "Eumelo." To this son he gave the extreme parts of the ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... of 4-warp weaving were found in the miscellaneous fiber collection (139544) and in a group of woven fragments (139554). None was found in connection with the finished articles of the collection, so that their use is purely conjectural. The warp is generally 2-ply, Z-twist, medium- to hard-twist cordage; the weft is the same, but generally lighter in weight ...
— A Burial Cave in Baja California - The Palmer Collection, 1887 • William C. Massey
... a fear which affects only the more ignorant on Earth is not known at all to us, and would be counted blasphemous. Moreover, as I have said, our foresight is limited to our lives on this planet. Any speculation beyond them would be purely conjectural, and our minds are repelled by the slightest taint of uncertainty. To us the conjectural and the unthinkable may be called almost ...
— The Blindman's World - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... the ill-starred colony and the conjectural refuge of its remnants among the Croatan Indians of Virginia—as Raleigh named the whole region, including the present North Carolina—fittingly completes the history of Sir Walter's American enterprise. The failure of the colony has been freely ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... had they been subject to final corruption, some change would have been discerned in so long a time. To this it is answered, that the little change as yet perceived, doth rather prove their newness, and that they have not continued so long; than that they will continue forever as they are. And if conjectural arguments may receive answer by conjectures; it then seemeth that some alteration may be found. For either Aristotle, Pliny, Strabo, Beda, Aquinas, and others, were grossly mistaken; or else those parts of the world lying within the burnt zone, were not in elder times habitable, by reason of ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... in hand the money they are usually anxious to loan, and those engaged in legitimate business are surprised to find that the securities they offer for loans, though heretofore satisfactory, are no longer accepted. Values supposed to be fixed are fast becoming conjectural, and loss and failure have invaded ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... to reconstruct or represent to ourselves with a fair degree of probability the various stages through which this particular phase of religion may be supposed to have passed in the great civilised races before the dawn of history. Of course all such reconstructions must be more or less conjectural. In the absence of historical documents that is inevitable; but our reconstruction will be more or less probable according to the degree in which the corresponding stages of evolution are found to resemble or ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... for several reasons from saying some of these things to Bellegarde. One reason was that before proceeding to any act he was always circumspect, conjectural, contemplative; he had little eagerness, as became a man who felt that whenever he really began to move he walked with long steps. And then, it simply pleased him not to speak—it occupied him, it excited him. But ...
— The American • Henry James
... forms where it cannot be avoided. For instance, in dealing with culverin (p. 38), I connect Fr. couleuvre, adder, with Lat. col[)u]ber, a snake. Every Romance philologist knows that it must represent Vulgar Lat. *colobra; but this form, which, being conjectural, is marked with an asterisk, had better be forgotten ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... which may appear the most extraordinary. These principles we have found to be sufficiently convincing, even with regard to our most certain reasonings from causation: But I shall venture to affirm, that with regard to these conjectural or probable reasonings they still acquire a new ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... is not certainly known by the saints, nor at all believed by her; wherefore her plagues must come unlooked for by her. And as to the saints, their guesses as to the time of her ruin must needs be conjectural and uncertain. For her part, she shall say, and that when she stands where she must suddenly fall, "I shall be a ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... more importance to search out the cure than the cause of this intellectual malady; and he would deserve well of this country, who, instead of amusing himself with conjectural speculations, should find means of persuading the peer to inspect his steward's accounts, or repair the rural mansion of his ancestors; who could replace the tradesman behind his counter, and send back the farmer to the mattock ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... curious little reptiles he was in search of under a root or in a cranny of rock he repeated their many-syllabled names. Curious to know what these names literally meant and whence derived, the writer made inquiry, sometimes hazarding a conjectural etymology. To his astonishment and dismay he found this "scientist," whom he had looked up to, entirely ignorant of the meaning of the terms he employed. They were just arbitrary terms to him. The little hopping and crawling creatures might as well have been numbered, or called ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... to Mr. Chillingworth was not likely to be productive of any results beyond those of a conjectural character. All that that gentleman could do was to express a willingness to be directed by them in any way, rather than suggest any course of conduct himself upon circumstances which he could not be expected to judge of as they who were on the spot, and had ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... And since it hath hitherto been the custome to speak with that laxness of expression; assigning the times of New-moon, Full-moon, and Quadratures, with the Moons comming to South, for, what is neer those times: I did not think myself obliged in my conjectural Hypothesis (while it is yet but a Candidate) to speak more nicely. If the Hypothesis for the maine of it be found Rational; the Niceties of it are to be adjusted, in ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... are, of course, conjectural; but those given are accepted by high authorities. Paul was about forty-four at the time of ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... well. So the name of the city of Timbuctoo is said by some to be derived from the Berber Word teen, "well", and Buktu, the name of the person who on its present site dug a well for the rendezvous or casual supply of passing caravans. But this derivation is merely conjectural. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... of South America, have very tentative forms of social and political association. They wander in loosely constructed groups, which constantly shift in association, being without permanent organization. Yet the purely solitary man is merely conjectural. ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... and it must have been supplied in its lower part with a set of stopcocks, by means of which the water could be drawn off when needed. Representations of the "molten sea" have been given by Mangeant, De Voguee, Thenius, and others; but all of them are, necessarily, conjectural. The design of Mangeant is reproduced in the preceding representation. It is concluded that the oxen must have been of colossal size in order to bear a proper proportion to the basin, and not present the appearance of being crushed under ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... not a work of compromises, or of conjectural interpretations of the Sacred Scriptures, neither is it a paraphrase, but a strict [strictly] literal rendering. It neither adds nor takes away; but aims to express the original with the utmost clearness and force, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... subject have been inserted in the hope that others, more leisured and more competent, may supplement them by further research, and convert those portions of the narrative which are at present largely conjectural from ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... suppose when the facts begin to resolve themselves into groups; when phenomena are no longer isolated experiences, but appear in connection and order; when, after certain antecedents, certain consequences are uniformly seen to follow; when facts enough have been collected to furnish a basis for conjectural explanation; and when conjectures have so far ceased to be utterly vague that it is possible in some degree to foresee the future by ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... tell you the clean truth, As clean as blood of babes, as white as milk: O Merlin, may this earth, if ever I, If these unwitty wandering wits of mine, Even in the jumbled rubbish of a dream, Have tript on such conjectural treachery— May this hard earth cleave to the Nadir hell Down, down, and close again, and nip me flat, If I be such a traitress. Yield my boon, Till which I scarce can yield you all I am; And grant my re-reiterated wish, The great proof of your love: because ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... an obviously corrupt passage in Villani, viii. 41. One of the unlucky Blacks was a Portinari, doubtless a kinsman of Beatrice—a fact which curiously seems to have escaped the conjectural commentators. ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... before Verrall had thought of coupling together the free-thinking and the episode in the play. This is what Verrall did. Ion sees that the oracle can lie, and, therefore, "Delphi is plainly discredited as a fountain of truth." The explanation is, of course, somewhat conjectural. Homer, who was certainly not a free-thinker, made his deities sufficiently ridiculous, and, at times, altogether odious. Mr. Lang says with truth: "When Homer touches on the less lovable humours of women—on the nagging shrew, the ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... hang from a ring carried by the god with the wheel, but the most probable is that which sees in it a thunderbolt.[993] But lacking any old text interpreting these various symbols, all explanations of them must be conjectural. Some of them are not purely Celtic, but are ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... Passing to the south we enter the ambulatory. It is vaulted in stone, and the plain horseshoe arches at the end without any ribs (see illustration), are worthy of notice. In this space several interesting relics of the old abbey, and some conjectural models of the church in its former condition, may be seen. Here, too, is a fifteenth-century walnut wood chest: and here are two stone cressets, possibly used by the builders, which when done with were built by them into the walls, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... names of the people in the waiting-room, named those he wished to see, and conversed with each one. When Corvisart came, he entered without waiting for orders; and the Emperor took pleasure in teasing him by speaking of medicine, which he said was only a conjectural art, that the doctors were charlatans, and cited instances in proof of it, especially in his own experience, the doctor never yielding a point when he thought he was right. During these conversations, the Emperor shaved himself; ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... shown this region traversed from east to west—from the base of the Rocky Mountains to the Bay of San Francisco—by a great river called the Buena Ventura: which may be translated, the Good Chance. Governor McLaughlin believed in the existence of this river, and made out a conjectural manuscript map to show its place and course. Fremont believed in it, and his plan was to reach it before the dead of winter, and then hybernate upon it. As a great river he knew that it must have some rich bottoms, covered with wood and grass, where the wild animals would collect and shelter, when ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... general outline of that text which still survives. First, as to the phrase 'fell headlong,' I do not understand it of any fall from a fig-tree, or from any tree whatever. This fig-tree I regard as a purely fanciful resource; and evidently an innovation to this extent ranks amongst those conjectural audacities which shock the discreet reader, as most unsatisfactory and licentious, because purely gratuitous, when they rest upon no traces that can be indicated as still lurking in the present text. Fell headlong may stand as at present: it needs no change, for it discloses a very good ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... progress of nations, next after the school divinity of the Middle Ages, has occasioned the most copious outpouring of conjectural criticism. The simple mode of research suggested by the works of Verstegan, Camden, and Spelman would, long before this time, have made the early history of the British tribes as clear as it is now obscure. Analogies in the primary sounds of each ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... neighborhood knew it until long afterward—and then only in a conjectural way by piecing together fragments of rumors that floated about—young Oliver Hampden really prevented the duel. He told his father that he loved Lucy Drayton. There was a fierce ...
— The Christmas Peace - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... overthrow of the stern old pile. As he proceeded, the lecturer pointed with his finger at the various features appertaining to the date of his story, which he told with splendid vigour when he had warmed to his work, till his narrative, particularly in the conjectural and romantic parts, where it became coloured rather by the speaker's imagination than by the pigments of history, gathered together the wandering thoughts of all. It was easy for him then to meet those fair concentred eyes, when the sunshades were thrown back, ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... nothing analogous with it; it is pretended that it can act and feel without the assistance of this body; that deprived of this body and robbed of its senses, this soul will be able to live, to enjoy, to suffer, be sensitive of enjoyment or of rigorous torments. Upon such a tissue of conjectural absurdities the wonderful opinion of the immortality of the soul ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... farther than that we are at sea. We have just as little knowledge of the heart as the lungs, we find a hollow fibrinous tank receiving and discharging blood; we are not prepared to say whether the corpuscle is formed in the heart or not; all else is conjectural and speculative on the subject the corpuscle. We see channels leading to and from it, to and from all parts of the body, muscles and glands. We know it moves when we are alive, we know it is ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... would be necessary that they should first have acquired the power of running quickly on the ground, by the aid of their hind legs alone, so as to compete with birds or other ground animals; and for such a change a bat seems singularly ill-fitted. These conjectural remarks have been made merely to show that a transition of structure, with each step beneficial, is a highly complex affair; and that there is nothing strange in a transition not having occurred ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... A conjectural restoration of the Priory buildings, as they stood in Prior Bolton's time, based on the records available in 1893, and the architectural fragments which then remained, shows them to have been bounded on the northern side by the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... "Piccadill" was given to a fashionable collar, according to Gifford, derived from picca, a spearhead, owing to the spiky nature of the folds. Hence it may have been applied as a nickname to the hall and street, but there are numerous other conjectural derivations. The name was originally given to the part extending from the Haymarket to Sackville Street. From that point to Brick Street was styled Portugal Row, from Catharine of Braganza, wife of Charles II. The stone bridge over Tyburn gave its name to the short distance between Brick Street ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... observed, that, though the exportations may appear to exceed the importations, yet may this in part arise from the accounts of the former being of a more certain nature, and those of the latter very conjectural, and always falling short of ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... modestly confessed, "that from this point I shall have to be largely conjectural. Welkin wasn't able to be very definite, except as to moments, and he had his data almost altogether from his wife. Braybridge had told him overnight that he thought of going, and he had said he ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... and misguide at will the turbulent flocks of their mutinous cattle his store of bitter words is inexhaustible; it is a treasure-house of obloquy which can never be drained dry. All this, or nearly all this, we must admit; but it brings us no nearer to any but a floating and conjectural kind of solution. In the earliest form known to us of this play it should seem that we have traces of Shakespeare's handiwork, in the latest that we find evidence of Marlowe's. But it would be something too extravagant for ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in the conduct and character of Hamlet have long exercised the conjectural ingenuity of critics; and, as we are always both to suppose that the cause of defective apprehension is in ourselves, the mystery has been too commonly explained by the very easy process of setting it down as ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... the breast of the unhappy minister, a SCARLET LETTER—the very semblance of that worn by Hester Prynne—imprinted in the flesh. As regarded its origin there were various explanations, all of which must necessarily have been conjectural. Some affirmed that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on the very day when Hester Prynne first wore her ignominious badge, had begun a course of penance—which he afterwards, in so many futile methods, followed out—by inflicting a hideous torture on himself. Others ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... empirical precepts in practical instruction. So far as the written record goes we have no means of answering this question. Neither Tosi nor Mancini mentions the old precepts in any way. The answer can therefore be only conjectural. We may at once dismiss the idea that the old masters used the precepts in the currently accepted manner as rules for the mechanical management of the voice. This application of the empirical precepts followed upon the acceptance of the idea ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... the Bermudas; but it seems much more likely, that he should amuse himself with forming an imaginary scene, than that so important an incident, as a visit to America, should have been left floating in conjectural probability. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... in twelve books. The author John Milton. Second edition, revised and augmented by the same author. London, 1674, 8vo. To this edition are prefixed the commendatory verses of Barrow and Marvell. In another copy in the British Museum conjectural emendations from the quarto edition, 1749, and the octavo edition, 1674, corrected by the quarto edition, 1668, printed on ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... the fairest and most moving spectacle in nature's processional, and saw afar off, in conjectural vision, a formless sort of place which was Seattle. They surveyed its impalpable outlines, its undefined dimensions, with a certain cool glitter of hard-and-fast resolve. There rose before his fancy, out of the chaos of these shapeless imaginings, ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... most of her losses. A sense of satisfaction was distinctly dominant as she took leave of her hostess. St. Michael's gossip, or rather the manner in which it had been received, had given her a clue to the real state of affairs, which, however slender and conjectural, at least pointed in the desired direction. At first she had been horribly afraid lest she should be listening to a definite announcement which would have been the death-blow to her hopes, but as the recitation went on without any of those assured little minor details which ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... climate would prevail over the earth; but, when we struck a cold belt, eternal Winter would mantle a large part of the globe with snow and ice. This, of course, is simply guess-work. No less than seven distinct causes have been urged; most of them either purely conjectural, like the last, or manifestly incompetent to produce the great results which we have seen must be accounted for. But, amongst these, two causes have been advanced—the one astronomical, the other geographical; and, to the one or ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... church in Roman Winchester, and though we may be sure that such a building certainly existed, no excavation has so far laid bare its foundations. Indeed we are almost as ignorant of Roman as we are of Celtic Winchester. Even the lines of its walls are conjectural, we suppose them to be the same as those of the Middle Age, yet such foundations of Roman buildings as have been discovered, lie not only within an area much more restricted than that which the mediaeval walls enclosed, but in certain instances outside them. No discoveries of Roman ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... faith in medicine. He spoke of it as an art entirely conjectural, and his opinion on this subject was fired and incontrovertible. His vigorous mind rejected all but ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... been modernized in spelling, and, to some extent, in algebraical notation; it also seems that conjectural methods of introducing interpolations into the text have been necessary. For all this we are sorry: the scientific value of the collection is little altered, but its literary value is somewhat lowered. But it could not be helped: the printers could not work from the originals, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... are purely conjectural; the least unsatisfactory being Cornill's: The houses ... shall be torn down against which the Chaldeans are coming to fight with mounds and sword and to fill with the corpses of men whom I have smitten in my ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... dealt with the more or less conjectural, prehistoric period of Horncastle's existence in Chapter I, and with the Manor and its ownership in Chapter II, we now proceed to give an account of the town's institutions, its buildings, and so forth. Among these the Parish ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... Alphonso who died in 1312, or as Alphonso IV. who ascended the Portuguese throne in 1325. Were either of these identifications established, the date of composition might be referred with certainty to the beginning of the 14th century or the end of the 13th. But both identifications are conjectural. Nevertheless the passage in the Spanish text undeniably lends some support to the Portuguese claim, and recent critics have inclined to the belief that Areadis de Gaula was written by Joao de Lobeira, a Galician knight who frequented the Portuguese ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... out of the circle, and standing up, Here I stand, unworthy of a seat with the rest of the company, till I have cleared myself. And now, suppose me to be her, let me hear you charge, and do you hear what the poor culprit can say to it in her own defence. And then answering the conjectural and unproved circumstances, by circumstances as fairly to be supposed favourable, she brought off triumphantly the censured lady; and so much to every one's satisfaction, that she was led to her chair, and voted a double rank in the circle, as the reinstated Miss Fanny Darlington, ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... could not be sure when its end was exactly "flush" with the head of the cask. The mistake of an inch—it might be several—would falsify all my computations, and render them of no use. It would not do to proceed upon such a conjectural basis, and for a while I was ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... antiquity, that they are for this purpose scarcely suitable. In some departments the science of the Greeks was remarkable, though it is completely overshadowed by their philosophy; yet it was largely based on what has proved to be a wrong method of procedure, viz the introspective and conjectural, rather than the inductive and experimental methods. They investigated Nature by studying their own minds, by considering the meanings of words, rather than by studying things and recording phenomena. This wrong (though by no means, ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... cells, and is known as the gastrula, to be the ontogenetic recapitulation, maintained by tenacious heredity, of a primitive common progenitor of all the Metazoa, the Gastraea. At a later date (1895) Monticelli discovered that this conjectural ancestral form is still preserved in certain primitive Coelenterata—Pemmatodiscus, Kunstleria, ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... hangings for the old four-post beds were embroidered, as in the inventory of Wolsey's great palace at Hampton Court there is mention of 230 bed-hangings of English embroidery. Nothing of this remains, so that its style is simply conjectural; and we can only suppose these hangings to have been replicas of the magnificent velvet and satin hangings, covered with laid or couched gold and silver threads, such as Catherine of Aragon would bring with her from Spain. This also would account for their absolute disappearance. The value of ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... years of age, or in A. D. 65, companionship would still have been opened to him with St. Peter and St. Paul; or, if his teacher were St. John, his conversion may be brought to A. D. 90, when he would be about 50 years of age. Confessedly all this is conjectural or traditional, as are also any details of episcopal administration.' A 'pitchy darkness' envelopes the life and work of Ignatius, till it is 'at length illumined by a vivid but transient flash of light.' The story of Ignatius begins and ends with the story of his death. 'If his ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... of gravity of the Milky Way.[94] The bright star Alcyone thus became the "central sun," but in a purely passive sense, its headship being determined by its situation at the point of neutralisation of opposing tendencies, and of consequent rest. By an avowedly conjectural method, the solar period of revolution round this point was fixed ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... "no memorial indicates the grave to the pilgrim or the stranger, nor is it possible any longer to identify the spot which received all that was mortal of the delightful writer." The present site is entirely conjectural; but it appears from the following note, communicated to us by T.C. Noble, the well-known City antiquary, that the real site was remembered as late ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... In opposing Mr. Collier's folio, he did not hesitate to insinuate broadly that he believed it to be an imposition. But as he based his suspicion solely upon the very numerous coincidences between the marginal readings in that volume and the conjectural readings of the editors and critics of the last century,—coincidences which, however, affect the character of a very large proportion of the noticeable changes in the folio,—he failed to accomplish his conservative purpose at the expense of Mr. Collier's reputation. But although this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... ports and her commerce, as well as the land communication for the French laborers, who were accustomed annually to gather in the harvest in Spain. Indeed, she must grant a free communication for travellers and traders through her whole country. In that case it is not conjectural, it is certain, the clubs will give law in the provinces; Bourgoing, or some such miscreant, will ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... publication contains a relation of most of the facts which had come under my own inspection at the time it was written, interspersed with some conjectural observations. Since then Dr. G. Pearson has established an inquiry into the validity of my principal assertion, the result of which cannot but be highly flattering to my feelings. It contains not a single case which I think can be called an exception to the fact I was so firmly impressed ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... were both able to escape for an hour into the care-free mood of their earlier travels, when they were so easily taken out of themselves. The time had been when they could have found enough in the conjectural fortunes and characters of their fellow-passengers to occupy them. This phase of their youth had lasted long, and the world was still full of novelty and interest for them; but it required all the charm of the dining-car now to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... is possessed of. Let him strive to keep a free, open sense; cleared from the mists of prejudice, above all from the paralysis of cant; and directed rather to the Book itself than to the Editor of the Book. Who or what such Editor may be, must remain conjectural, and even insignificant:[1] it is a voice publishing tidings of the Philosophy of Clothes; undoubtedly a Spirit addressing Spirits: whoso ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... she must take care not to violate the rights of others. She may use any precautions dictated by the prudence or fears of her officers, either as to delay, or the progress or course of her voyage; but she is not at liberty to inflict injuries upon other innocent parties simply because of conjectural dangers. ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... Brentano and Loeben have made careful study of the matter appear not worth while; the problem was apparently solved. And since Heine never committed himself in this connection, the matter will, in all probability, remain forever conjectural. This much, however, is irrefutable: even if Heine knew in 1823 the five Loreleidichtungen, that had then been written, those by Brentano, Niklas Vogt, Eichendorff, Schreiber, and Loeben, and if he borrowed what he needed from all of them, he ...
— Graf von Loeben and the Legend of Lorelei • Allen Wilson Porterfield
... methods of proof. They thus prepared the way for a more perfect philosophy than that taught by the Ionians, the Pythagoreans, or the Eleatics, since they showed the vagueness of such inquiries, conjectural rather than scientific. They had no doctrines in common. They were the barristers of their age, paid to make the "worse appear the better reason;" yet not teachers of immorality any more than the lawyers of our day,—men of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... critical owner of a Codex considered himself at liberty to assimilate the narratives: another to correct them in order to bring them into (what seemed to himself) greater harmony. Brevity is found to have been a paramount object with some, and Transposition to have amounted to a passion with others. Conjectural Criticism was evidently practised largely: and almost with as little felicity as when Bentley held the pen. Lastly, there can be no question that there was a certain school of Critics who considered themselves competent to improve the ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... being only conjectural, and very improbable, is therefore far from conclusive: It is certain that there never was a more intricate affair than this. We have read the trials of all those who suffered for this murther, chiefly upon the evidence of one Prance, and one ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... he said nervously, "I begin to fear that perhaps after all I am unworthy. Now about those Articles of Religion: I may perhaps have given some of them a conjectural and commentating assent. Possibly I have presumed ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... stock of all descriptions, which they drive over the mountains and sell for cash. This extensive trade, which, from its peculiar character, more easily overcomes the difficulties of transportation than any that can be substituted in its place, is about to be put in jeopardy for the conjectural benefits of this measure. When I say this trade is about to be put in jeopardy, I do not speak unadvisedly. I am perfectly convinced that, if this bill passes, it will have the effect of inducing the people of the South, partly from the feeling and partly ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... rattles appear, are nevertheless intended for rattlers. It may have been that the figures were so well understood that the addition of rattles in the drawings was quite unnecessary. This, however, is quite conjectural. The species of rattlesnake is probably Crotalus basiliscus or C. terrificus of southern Mexico and adjacent regions, not C. horridus or adamanteus as supposed by Stempell since these two species are confined to the United States. Among the figures shown on Pl. 9, it is noteworthy ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... exceed the greatest beings in their numerous Genealogies. But on the other side, if it should be found that these, or any other animate body, have no immediate similar Parent, I have in another place set down a conjectural Hypothesis whereby those Phaenomena may likely enough be solv'd, wherein the infinite wisdom and providence of the Creator is no ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... Nigel, thrusting in his conjectural emendation, with infinite difficulty, betwixt two clauses of the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... hundred persons, yet not one of his particular company was ever brought to trial. As each leader kept to himself the names of his proselytes, and as Monday Gell was the only one of these who turned traitor, any opinion as to the numbers actually engaged must appear altogether conjectural. One witness said nine thousand; another, six thousand six hundred. These statements were probably extravagant, though not more so than Governor Bennett's assertion, on the other side, that "all who were actually concerned had been brought to justice,"—unless by this phrase he designates ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... theme again before I abandoned it, and was so fortunate as to get him to admit a degree of improvement such as led to his desiring to recall his conjectural judgment on my possibilities as a sonnet-writer, but as the letters in which he characterises the advance are neither so terse in criticism, nor so interesting from the exposition of principles, as the ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... he heard nothing. Half that delay sufficed to bring out all the self-tormenting capacities of a nature such as his. To his mother's conjectural explanations he could lend no ear. Doubtless Lady Whitelaw (against whom, for subtle reasons, he was already prejudiced) had taken offence; either she would not reply at all, or presently there would ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... investigated the methods of casting a nativity, but a suspicion, or, indeed, rather more than a suspicion, seems to have crossed his mind as to the value of these astrological predictions, for he says in fine, "I found astrology to give generally strong conjectural hints, not ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... whole attempt to locate accurately any but the chiefest tribes found by the Romans in Britain is too conjectural to be worth the infinite labour that has been expended upon the subject by antiquaries. All we can say with certainty is that forest and fen must have cut up the land into a limited number of fairly recognizable districts, each so far ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... Christ died is plainly distinguishable, but the day of His birth is open to very much question, and, literally, is only conjectural; so that the 25th December must be taken purely as the day on which His birth is celebrated, and not as His absolute natal day. In this matter we can only follow the traditions of the Church, and tradition alone ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... sense of Zimmer's translation, which is only conjectural, of this difficult passage (see Zeitschrift fuer Deutsches Alterthum und Deutsche Litteratur, Bd. xxxii, 1888, S. 275). The idea is probably more clearly expressed in Stowe, H. 1. 13 and YBL. 43a, 41, and may be rendered, 'membrum virile ejus coram viros Hiberniae et testes ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... "There is one performance, ascribed to the pen of the Doctor, where the prostitution is of so singular a nature, that it would be difficult to select an adequate motive for it, out of the mountainous heap of conjectural causes of human passions, or human caprice. It is the speech of the late unhappy Dr. William Dodd, when he was about to hear the sentence of the law pronounced upon him, in consequence of an indictment for forgery. The voice of ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... it is impossible to tell whether these corrections were made by the printer or by a later reader. Unless otherwise noted, text in brackets represents conjectural words ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... Contarini, the Venetian ambassador in Spain, to the Council of Ten. See "Calendar of State Papers &c. in Venice," 1520- 6. Edited by Rawdon Brown. No. 697, London, 1869. Purchas, III. p. 809.] It is evident that the representation of the western sea, upon the map given to the king, was merely conjectural of its existence in connection with the supposed strait, laid down upon the map, according to Hakluyt. This explanation will serve also to account most readily for the partial knowledge which the letter exhibits, in ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... sprung, that he would be caught in its jaws or, to change the metaphor, that he would be like the wheat between the upper and the nether millstone. Still he did not think so, and he did not go into the undertaking blindly. As he had said, in his own case, "War was not a conjectural art," and he had most carefully counted the cost, estimated the probabilities. In short, he looked well before he leaped—yet a man may look well and ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... rendering of Lipsius or Gronovius, on account of Vectius Valens and Plautius Lateranus being two distinguished Romans in the days of Claudius who intrigued with Messalina. For my own part, I prefer the conjectural emendation of the Bipontine editors who, giving up as hopeless the corrupted passage, edit "quod incestae uxoris flagitia dissimu lavisset," which, if not precisely what was written, carries with it the recommendation of being intelligible, and ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... stone coming from the engine, "The Stone Cometh," or what mistake there is in the reading, I cannot tell. The MSS., both Greek and Latin, all agree in this reading; and I cannot approve of any groundless conjectural alteration of the text from ro to lop, that not the son or a stone, but that the arrow or dart cometh; as hath been made by Dr. Hudson, and not corrected by Havercamp. Had Josephus written even his ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... containing title and dedication by Paulus Manutius to Guillaume Pellicier, Bishop of Montpellier, 331 numbered leaves of text, 10 unnumbered leaves of translations of the Greek passages, conjectural emendations which the editor "would not hesitate to adopt it he should ever find an ancient MS. to confirm them" and a final leaf with colophon and anchor. The Scholia, 24 unnumbered leaves, have a separate title, with notice of copyright granted by Paul III. (the fourth pope to ...
— Catalogue of the William Loring Andrews Collection of Early Books in the Library of Yale University • Anonymous
... to the crime, however, were largely conjectural, although they were pretty strongly suggested by the details of the struggle itself. I was thus enabled to supply the missing portions with more or less plausibility. Here, then, is the way I reconstructed the night's ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... in this traveller's brief, lose time in conjectural answers to the questions which every step here will raise from the ravaged shrine. But this is a very solemn one; and must be kept in our hearts, till we may perhaps get clue to it. One thing only we are sure of,—that at least the due honour—alike by the sons ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... employing a phraseology of which every word is a theory; the simplest narrative of the most illiterate observer involves more or less of hypothesis;'—yet both by the observer himself and by most of those who listen to him, each of these conjectural assumptions is treated as respectfully as if it were an established axiom. We are supposed to deny the possibility of a circumstance, when in truth we only deny the evidence alleged for it. We allow the excellence ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 1: On Popular Culture • John Morley
... magic, fetishism, and the lower superstitions may just as well be called primitive science as called primitive religion. The question thus becomes a verbal one again; and our knowledge of all these early stages of thought and feeling is in any case so conjectural and imperfect that farther discussion would not be ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... will you allow me to have the Greek court I mentioned?' she asked tentatively, after a long break in their discourse, as she scanned the green stones along the base of the arcade, with a conjectural ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... to supply his place. It was intended that Jasper should urge on the search after Edwin, and the pursuit of the murderer, thus endeavoring to divert suspicion from himself, the real murderer. As to anything further, it would be purely conjectural." ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... &c. (memory) 505; marvel if, wonder if, wonder whether. Adj. supposing &c. v.; given, mooted, postulatory[obs3]; assumed &c. v.; supposititious, suppositive[obs3], suppositious; gratuitous, speculative, conjectural, hypothetical, theoretical, academic, supposable, presumptive, putative; suppositional. suggestive, allusive. Adv. if, if so be; an; on the supposition &c. n.;ex hypothesi[Lat]; in the case, in the event of; quasi, as if, provided; perhaps &c. (by possibility) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... supposed to find support upon the outlying circle of mountains. But the precise mechanism through which the observed revolution of the heavenly bodies was effected remains here, as with the Egyptian cosmology, somewhat conjectural. The simple fact would appear to be that, for the Chaldeans as for the Egyptians, despite their most careful observations of the tangible phenomena of the heavens, no really satisfactory mechanical conception of the cosmos was attainable. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... popes did with it we know. That is history. What the emperors would have done with it is matter for conjecture. It is very probable that they would have abused the power as badly as the popes did, but conjectural history is idle. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... that conjectural solution of his perplexities when a voice was heard singing, or rather modulated to that kind of chant between recitative and song, which is so pleasingly effective where the intonations are pure and musical. They were so in this instance, and Kenelm's ear caught every word in ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of (partly conjectural) idea of the mechanical structure of marrow, here follows the solitary vital, or mortal, fact in the whole business, given in one ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... flat surfaces of the basic plinths are here shaded; and in the lower corner of the square occupied by each quadrant is put, also shaded, the central profile of each spur, from its root at the roll of the base to its point; those of Nos. 1 and 2 being conjectural, for their spurs were so rude and ugly, that I took no note of their profiles; but they would probably be as here given. As these bases, though here, for the sake of comparison, reduced within squares of equal size, in reality belong to shafts ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... have only resulted occasionally in one that will bear the test of examination after it has been placed aside, and carefully considered when the impression of novelty has worn off. I think we may safely appeal to all critics who occupy themselves much with conjectural criticism, and ask them if TIME does not frequently impair the complacency with which they regard their efforts on ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... ancestors. How they contrived to make the ends meet, surpasses our conjectural powers. What a weary waste must have seemed expanding before their eyes, between morning and night! Don't tell us that the human female never longs for other ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... between those two great divisions of the public. Literary Miscellanies are classed among philological studies. The studies of philology formerly consisted rather of the labours of arid grammarians and conjectural critics, than of that more elegant philosophy which has, within our own time, been introduced into literature, and which, by its graces and investigation, augment the beauties of original genius. This delightful province has been termed in Germany the AEsthetic, from a ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... through consideration of the "means available and opposed", and of the "characteristics of the theater", the limitations of enemy capabilities from the standpoint of feasibility. Because, however, so much of the enemy's situation is usually conjectural, it is important to give the most searching attention to the comparison summary in Section I-B,—in fact, to consider fully every element of weakness and strength, and of advantage and disadvantage. Such a study will disclose every possibility which the enemy might exploit. The commander ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... Mary college, to continue the boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina, which had been begun by Colonel Byrd; and was afterwards employed with the same Mr. Fry, to make the first map of Virginia which had ever been made, that of Captain Smith being merely a conjectural sketch. They possessed excellent materials for so much of the country as is below the Blue Ridge; little being then known beyond that Ridge. He was the third or fourth settler, about the year 1737, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... could by any economy be saved out of the present tolls, it can scarcely be doubted, but that a million might be saved out of them, if they were doubled; and perhaps two millions, if they were tripled {I have now good reason to believe that all these conjectural sums are by much too large.}. This great revenue, too, might be levied without the appointment of a single new officer to collect and receive it. But the turnpike tolls, being continually augmented in this manner, instead of facilitating the inland commerce of the country, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... "muffish" segnis; ... "uffish" egnis. This is a conjectural analogy, but I can ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... justi- fication will be found in the note to the poem. The finished poems from 1 to 51 are ranged chronologically by the years, but in the section 52-74 a fanciful grouping of the fragments was preferred to the inevitable misrepresentations of conjectural dating. G. M. H. dated his poems from their inception, and however much he revised a poem he would date his recast as his first draft. Thus Handsome Heart was written and sent to me in '79; and the recast, which I reject, was ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... overflowing—was still there, mingling with its last emotions! Was I never more to look upon that radiant form? never more behold that face so divinely fair? never more listen to that melodious voice? Never more! The negative answer to these mental interrogatives—though only conjectural—was the bitterest ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Webster's life almost nothing is known. The dates 1580-1625 given for his birth and death are conjectural inferences, about which the best that can be said is that no known ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... Father Absinthe had suddenly passed from unreasoning distrust to unquestioning confidence. Henceforth, he could believe anything for the very same reason that had, at first, made him believe nothing. Having no idea of the bounds of human reasoning and penetration, he saw no limits to the conjectural genius of his companion. With perfect faith, therefore, he inquired: "And what was the accomplice saying to the woman with ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... against the efforts of the Federal Government? Did the Southern leaders prefer the election of a Republican, their open opponent, to Douglas, their friend and half-ally? To such questions as these there can be little more than a conjectural answer. It would be most interesting to know the true thoughts and purposes of the leading delegates. We shall see a little later the interpretation given by one of their defenders. But the strong ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... imbecility either hereditary or constitutional. From the first there had appeared to me something abnormal in it—a suspension of intelligence only, a frost-bite in the brain that presently some April breath of memory might thaw out. This was not merely conjectural, of course. I had the story of his mental collapse from his mother in the early days of my sojourn in Bel-Oiseau; for it came to pass that a fitful caprice induced me to prolong my stay in the swart little village far into ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... gentleman,[15] merely throws into greater prominence the usual harmony between his conception and its embodiment. The task of making prophets was far from simple. Their various personalities, little known in our time, were conjectural in his day: neither would the conventional scroll of the prophet do more than give a generic indication of the kind of person represented. Donatello, however, made a series of figures from which the [Greek: ethos] of the ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... aeronautics, namely, that of ascending to an altitude which, based on the best estimate they were able to make, they calculated to be no less than seven miles. Whatever error may have unavoidably come into the actual estimate, which is to some extent conjectural, is in reality a small matter, not the least affecting the fact that the feat in itself will probably remain without a parallel of its kind. In these days, when aeronauts attempt to reach an exceptionally lofty altitude, ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... before 1259, and for the next sixty-seven years are only important by reason of the defects of our other sources. No unity or colour can be expected in books handed from house to house and kept up to date by jottings by different hands. The ascription of these Flores to a conjectural Matthew of Westminster by earlier editors is groundless. Dr. C. Horstmann, Nova Legenda Anglie, i., pp. xlix. seq.(1901), maintains that John of Tynemouth's Historia Aurea, still in manuscript, is the official St. Alban's history from ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... to offer even a conjectural solution of the problems involved in the differences thus shown to exist between populations that are ethnologically identical, or that stand at nearly the same level of educational culture and economic ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... this conjectural history of the settlement had anything to do with the cheerful mid-winter holiday developments of the community need not be argued at length. An argument would render the truth flat and insipid if it should prove to be in accord with poetic ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis |
