"Incertitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Camp of Instruction, if the detail were not renewed. To-day Mr. Memminger addresses a note to Mr. Seddon, inquiring if it was his purpose to hold his clerks liable to perform military duty after the expiration of the thirty days, and declaring that the incertitude and inconvenience of constantly applying for renewal of details, deranged and obstructed the business of his department. I know not yet what answer Mr. S. made, but doubtless a breach exists through which one or both may pass out of the cabinet. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... enter, and his gaze stole over the top of his book. This person was a woman, and her eyes traveled from object to object with a curiosity tinged with that incertitude which attacks us all when we enter an unfamiliar room. She was dressed in black, showing the white arms and neck. Her hair was like ripe wheat after a rain-storm: oh, but he knew well the color of her eyes, blue as the Adriatic. She was a ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... after suffering during a whole month, and after the most cruel incertitude, it seemed that the poison had passed into my breast. I could not sleep for an instant; and, in spite of me, dead and painful cries came forth from my breast, which was on fire. My eyes were veiled—I could not see; a burning sweat covered my face; my blood was on ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... and it reappeared more distinctly; it was indeed a barge, and now the horse could be seen towing it against the current. Again it was lost at a bend of the river shaded by willows, and they had to resign themselves to incertitude for several minutes. Then a white handkerchief was waved on the prow of the boat, and Monsieur de Lamotte uttered a ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... The incertitude which existed as to whether the strange vessel was an enemy or not created great excitement. My duty, as signal midshipman, placed me abaft on the quarter-deck, and Bob Cross, who was really a quarter-master, although doing duty as captain's coxswain, ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... anxiously awaiting orders and developments, listened intently to the desultory firing of the carbineers and the occasional boom of the cannon in front. There was a growing feeling of uneasiness and incertitude which began to frame our minds for doubts and fears ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... was returned by his companion, since none could be given; and when Venn left, a few minutes later, Clym had passed from the dullness of sorrow to the fluctuation of carking incertitude. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... were about to enter, the consciousness they entertained of the goodness of their parents, and the happiness of the state they were quitting, held the young ladies for some time in a state of apparent suspense, and almost incertitude. This was neither the effect of want of confidence in the men they loved, nor of that spirit of coquetry by which the vain and frivolous part of the sex seek to prolong what they consider the day of their power. Far different ideas pervaded their minds and influenced their conduct; ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... absorbing but that he took his resolution without any incertitude. He went up to the door too, and ascended the steps too. His friend looked at him with a braggart ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... o'clock Nejdanov gave Kolia his first lesson before Valentina Mihailovna, who had asked him if she might be present, and sat very quietly the whole time. Kolia proved an intelligent boy; after the inevitable moments of incertitude and discomfort, the lesson went off very well, and Valentina Mihailovna was evidently satisfied with Nejdanov, and spoke to him several times kindly. He tried to hold aloof a little—but not too much so. Valentina Mihailovna was also present at the second lesson, ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... his personal well-being were not the most absorbing and important in his eyes. Oak meditatively looked upon the horizon of circumstances without any special regard to his own standpoint in the midst. That was how she would wish to be. But then Oak was not racked by incertitude upon the inmost matter of his bosom, as she was at this moment. Oak knew all about Fanny that he wished to know—she felt convinced of that. If she were to go to him now at once and say no more than these few words, "What is the ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... of Hawthorne's mind was the incertitude—I use this vile word in lack of a better at the moment—that seemed at times to invest his reasoning powers with a ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... way to the Capitol or to the Gemoniae? The solution of this question became, for the moment, of greater importance to Willis than the "to be or not to be" of Hamlet to the State of Denmark. This incertitude was all the more painful, that it was accompanied by myriads of insects, created by the recent rains; these swarmed in the air to such an extent, that it was utterly impossible to inhale the one without swallowing ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... blotted o'er With tales of bloodshed. Not a single nation Exists, but spent its greater life in war. And in each Power's restless fluctuation From might to weakness, and from servitude To might, is shown the sword's incertitude. ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... if this headgear became her, now that the swelling of her lip had subsided. And again did Pierre feel astonished at sight of that sore, which was certainly healing, if not already healed—that face, so lately a monster's face, which one could now look at without feeling horrified. The sea of incertitude stretched before him once more. Was it even a real lupus? Might it not rather be some unknown form of ulcer of hysterical origin? Or ought one to admit that certain forms of lupus, as yet but imperfectly studied and arising from faulty nutrition ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... built on experience itself, on the incertitude of our sensations and observations, on everything that can cheat us and cause us illusion in order to display how relative and how miserably partial is human knowledge. Such was Aenesidemus, whom it might be thought Pascal had read, so much does the latter give ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... a table, and expounded the gun. Absorbed in his explanation he lost the drowsy incertitude of his speech and the dreaminess of his eyes. He spoke with rapidity, sureness, and a note of enthusiasm rang oddly in his voice. On the margins he sketched illustrations of the Gatling, the Maxim, and the Hotchkiss and other guns, and demonstrated the superior delicate deadliness ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... doubt, in certain cases, incertitude reappears, sometimes even decided objections. The reader, who at first was under a magic spell, corrects his thought, or at least hesitates. What he has seen is still at bottom so new, so unexpected, so far removed from familiar ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... called with the militia of his country, wherein he bore an eminent commission, to oppose the enemy; and this was not unfrequent, as in his country's defence he took a very conspicuous part. Then would anxiety, incertitude, and disconsolation possess the bosom of Melissa, until dissipated by his safe return. But the happy termination of the war soon removed all cause of ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... scarcely convalescent, when, unable to support the state of incertitude in which I found my affairs, I resolved on escaping, and to escape by the door, although that may appear a difficult step. Some particular observations made me choose this method in preference to any other. The wicket-keeper ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various
... awakened to consciousness. His mind was one of that cast with which to know, to think, and to act, are simultaneous. Of ready decision, he was never at a loss, and seldom surprised into even momentary incertitude. With the first intimation of the attack upon himself, his pistol had been drawn, and while the prostrate ruffian was endeavoring to rise, and before he had well regained his feet, the unerring ball was driven through his head, and without word or effort he fell ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... self-possession of our soldiers at last threw the Ashantees into confusion. Their wild exultations gave way to universal despair, a panic seized upon their irregular masses, which now filled the valley in a state of fearful commotion, and exhibited a terrific picture of savage desperation. Perceiving the incertitude of his army, the King descended from the hill for the purpose of animating the troops by his presence. The royal cortege, as it swept down the height, and mixed with the heaving crowds below, was singularly imposing. The King advanced with a gaudy umbrella held over his head, followed ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... we here?—Our friend Sparkle, gazing about him with an eye of inquisitive incertitude, as if in search of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Friend was slaughtering friend ere the error was detected. While all was yet in doubt, confusion, and dismay, rushed full into the centre Edward himself, with his knights and riders; and his tossing banners added to the general incertitude ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... the Sacrament. Everything here furnishes matter for the imagination—a park with hundred-year-old trees, precipices, walls of the castle in ruins, endless passages with numberless old ancestors—there is even a certain Red-cowl which walks there at midnight. I walk there my incertitude. [II y a meme un certain bonnet rouge, qui s'y promene a minuit. J'y ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... which made him angry because he did not want to think of Haldin, but he justified it to himself by physiological and psychological reasons. The fellow had hardly slept for weeks on his own confession, and now every incertitude was at an end for him. No doubt he was looking forward to the consummation of his martyrdom. A man who resigns himself to kill need not go very far for resignation to die. Haldin slept perhaps more soundly than General T—-, whose ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... that Francis II. was acquainted with his project. He likewise saw with pleasure the assurances which the Emperor gave his brother of his love of peace, as well as the wavering of the imperial resolves, and the incertitude respecting the fate of the Italian princes, which the Emperor easily perceived to depend on Bonaparte. The Emperor's letter was ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... a day of steady tramping over broken ground during which he had seen very few people, and had been unable to obtain the slightest intelligence of Tom Corbin's passage. "On! on! I must push on," he had been saying to himself through the hours of solitary effort, spurred more by incertitude than by any ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... N. Y., where an employe of the "profit-sharing" concern of Alfred Dolge—at whose annual dinners Professor, now President George Gunton was regularly a star guest, and orator to the "dined" workingmen on the beauties of "profit-sharing,"—one of the workingmen, driven by the pinching poverty and incertitude inflicted upon him by the "profit-sharing" practice, killed his wife, four children and himself, and left a letter describing his plight. (See "The People," April 8, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... take the first summer plunge into a deep, dark river and when you are at the bottom, and the water is roaring in your ears, to think of dead bodies and crocodiles; it is almost worse to make that frightful journey down a steep beach, in a bathing machine, with a vague incertitude as to where you will find yourself when the doors open again: but nothing can come up to what I suffered in my last extremity, in this Constantinople bath. Thoughts of Turkish cruelty and the sacks of the Bosphorus; of home, and friends, and my childhood's bowers—of the sadness of being ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... for the time being at least, for after a moment's incertitude, in which she seemed to battle with herself, she turned her humid brown eyes ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... that saved them from their fogged incertitude was a Belgian doctor, a military Red Cross worker. The first flash of him was of a small silent man, not significant. But when you had been with him, you felt reserves of force. That small person had a will ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... evidently knew his way blindfold: though motives of prudence made him refrain from using his flash-lamp, he betrayed not the least incertitude in ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... take no notice of me, I might quietly retire. And that, believe me, will not be very slowlv ! They cannot find me in this house without knowing who I am, and therefore they can be at no loss whether to speak to me or not, from incertitude. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... of his captive was as much due to this preoccupation as to a selfish consideration of her relations to the result. He hated the prisoner for his infelicitous and untimely crime, yet he could not make up his mind to his death. He paced the ground before his lodge in dishonorable incertitude. The small eyes of the submissive Wachita watched him ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... she heard you coming back that time, she ran like a kildee." The narrator checked a laugh. "How's mom-a? Oh, she's well or you'd have told me. I just can't imagine mom-a any way but well." But again the tone betrayed incertitude. ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... They were a great nuisance, but they were also a source of profit that could not be disdained. He needed every penny of profit the Sofala could make. Little enough it was, in all conscience! The incertitude of chance gave him no concern, since he had somehow arrived at the conviction that, in the course of years, every number was bound to have his winning turn. It was simply a matter of time and of taking as many tickets as he could ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... of mental obliquity which the French term folie du doute. It is characterized by an incertitude in thought cooerdination, and often leads its victims into the perpetration of nonsensical and useless acts. Men of genius are very frequently afflicted with this form of mental disorder. Dr. Johnson, who was a sufferer from folie du doute, had to touch every post he passed. ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... result of much revision from F of F—A. Some of the revisions are in S-R fr. In general the text of Mathilda is improved in style. Mary adds concrete, specific words and phrases; e.g., at the end of the first paragraph of Mathilda's speech, the words "of incertitude" appear in Mathilda for the first time. She cancels, even in this final draft, an over-elaborate figure of speech after the words in the father's reply, "implicated in my destruction"; the cancelled passage is too flowery to be appropriate here: "as ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... contradiction, an essential imbecility. 'Quelle chimere,' he exclaims, 'est-ce donc que l'homme! quelle nouveaute, quel monstre, quel chaos, quel sujet de contradiction, quel prodige! Juge de toutes choses, imbecile ver de terre, depositaire du vrai, cloaque d'incertitude et d'erreur, gloire et rebut de l'univers!' In words of imperishable intensity, he dwells upon the omnipotence of Death: 'Nous sommes plaisants de nous reposer dans la societe de nos semblables. Miserables comme nous, impuissants comme nous, ils ne nous ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... the place where the boat had been left the previous day, and he was now face to face with the thought that he might over-run the spot during the dark hours, or, when full daylight came, be in the troublous position of incertitude as to whether they had rowed too far or not ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... subject which would instantly have transferred the triumph from her adversary to herself. When the marquis, on hearing her determination to retire, earnestly enquired for the motive of her conduct, she forbore to acquaint him with the real one, and left him to incertitude and disappointment. ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... clad in flowing white robes, and advanced towards me with a wavering gait, which could be readily converted into a tottering walk, if I should perchance ask if it were my great-grandmother, or could be interpreted as the feeble incertitude of a first materialization, if I should perchance descend the family tree and ask for a more youthful scion. I arose as it approached and asked: 'Is this Rosamund?' 'Yes!' replied the Spirit, still wobbling ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission |
