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Ken   Listen
noun
Ken  n.  Cognizance; view; especially, reach of sight or knowledge. "Beyond his ken." "Above the reach and ken of a mortal apprehension." "It was relief to quit the ken And the inquiring looks of men."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ken" Quotes from Famous Books



... exceedingly declaiming against that impiety of their masters prohibiting it, out of a mistaken opinion that they would be ipso facto free; but his Maty persists in his resolution to have them chisten'd, wch piety the Bishop [Ken] blessed him for." Evelyn, ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various

... most delicately beautiful phenomena in the entire realm of nature — a shimmer of silvery gauze stretched across the sky; but studied in the light of its revelations, it is the most stupendous object presented to human ken. Let us consider, first, its appearance to ordinary vision. Its apparent position in the sky shifts according to the season. On a serene, cloudless summer evening, in the absence of the moon, whose light obscures it, one sees the Galaxy spanning the heavens from north to southeast of ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... jackrabbit, kicking up behind it a tiny trail of yellow dust. Stone and dust diminished in size, until some of the party said the stone had stopped. That was because they could not see it any longer. It had vanished into the distance beyond their ken. Others saw it rolling farther on—I know I did; and it is my firm conviction that that stone ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... (to put it lyrically) for this sort of thing, now, had she? She had to come to New York to seek her fortune, not to—to—whatever it was that Michael Daragh wanted her to do. And yet, she was always being drawn, willynilly, into any woe within her ken. Herself a contained creature of radiant health and placid nerves with a positively masculine aversion to scenes and applied emotion of any sort, people were always coming and confiding in her. She had been the ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... 'there's neither truth nor honesty in the leein' buddies, Sir. But here's your Bradbury, an', at onny rate, we hae the eggs, Sir, for I paid for them wi' a label off yin o' they Japaneesy beer bottles. It seemed an awfu' waste to spend guid siller on folk that dinna ken ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various

... was the Savior of the Country; the prying lodger Robespierre was the Chief of State. Of course she never saw them now, her small self would hardly dare address them! Sister Genevieve and the Doctor, who had told her about the Frochards' den, were no longer within her ken. ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon

... entered counsel about our abode and plantation, which was concluded to be in the west part of Elizabeth's island. The north-east thereof running from out our ken. The south and north standeth ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various

... it for rarity." Next, Prince Ali presented to the King his Spying Tube and said, "The mirror of Jamshid[FN330] is as vain and naught beside this pipe, by means whereof all things from East to West and from North to South are made clearly visible to the ken of man." Last of all, Prince Ahmad produced the Magical Apple which wondrously saved the dear life of Nur al-Nihar and said, "By means of this fruit all maladies and grievous distempers are at once made whole." ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... girl, without heeding the rebuff. "It's no' the meestreess' wish that he's keepit here in the wing reserved for married folk, and she's no' sorry for the excuse to pit ye in his place. Ye'll be married yoursel', I'm hearin'. But, I ken ye's nae mair to be lippened tae ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... easy thing to walk up to the trenches. One goes on, and ultimately one arrives, the casual reader will surmise. And with luck the casual reader will be right. But there are certain small points which may have escaped his ken and which render the task of reaching the front line a trifle harder than walking to the club ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... trained eye was keen, As eagle of the wilderness, to scan His path by mountain, lake, or deep ravine, Or ken far friendly huts on good savannas green.' —CAMPBELL: Gertrude ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers

... was an ill thing to see, but he said quietly enough, 'Yes, Allie, my woman, tell him where your brother is,—if ye ken, and where he is like to be soon if he gets his deserts. Speak, lassie. Tell the minister if you are going to draw back from ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson

... wonder how it is I have not seen So-and-so for an age," and one feels that people we used to enjoy meeting, if they do not happen to move in the same orbit of metropolitan existence, are vanishing from our ken. They are being lost in the Limbo of long distances. An hour of Underground in very hot weather may give ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... beyond Andy's ken. He could not even find a petition in his prayer-book suited to that occasion. Mr. Townsend had assured him that it would meet every emergency; but for once Mr. Townsend was at fault, for with the sound of Ethelyn's ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... succeeded by Alexander VIII. The High Church Clergy divided on the Subject of the Oaths Arguments for taking the Oaths Arguments against taking the Oaths A great Majority of the Clergy take the Oaths The Nonjurors; Ken Leslie Sherlock Hickes Collier Dodwell Kettlewell; Fitzwilliam General Character of the Nonjuring Clergy The Plan of Comprehension; Tillotson An Ecclesiastical Commission issued. Proceedings of the Commission The Convocation of the Province of Canterbury summoned; ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Complete Contents of the Five Volumes • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... have been in England so long, you lucky dog, and though no doubt the main plot of our hideous tragedy has reached your ken, you have no cognisance of the actors who play the principal parts on this arena flooded with blood and carpeted with hate. They come and go, these actors, my good St. Just—they come and go. Marat ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... those complex feelings which go to make a man what his secret consciousness knows himself to be? Not even the man himself can tell the why and wherefore of his passions and motives. It is a matter beyond the human ken. It is a matter which neither science nor learning can tell us of. Verner Lablache was possessed of all that prosperity could give him. He was wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice, and no pleasure which money could buy was beyond his reach. He knew, ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... angles. To the ordinary layman this would have meant the beginning of the end. But Captain Richard Nevin and Second-Lieutenant Robert Simpson are made of different stuff. They scorn the easy path. They have stores of deep knowledge to draw upon which place their calculations beyond the ken of ordinary mortals. After they had made a searching examination of the exhumed angle, Bob pulled out a pencil, prostrated himself behind it and then proceeded to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various

... with an air of indifference, as he put the gold into his pocket. "I think I've seed it mysel'. It looks like auld Jamie Brand, but I didna ken him weel." ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne

... govern it; and while with the Transport of a Philosopher he beholds and admires the glorious Work, he is capable of paying at once a more devout and more rational Homage to his Maker. But alas! how narrow is the Prospect even of such a Mind? and how obscure to the Compass that is taken in by the Ken of an Angel; or of a Soul but newly escaped from its Imprisonment in the Body! For my Part, I freely indulge my Soul in the Confidence of its future Grandeur; it pleases me to think that I who know so small a portion of the Works of the Creator, and with slow and painful Steps creep up and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... end my terrours with the sultan's death; Far as futurity's untravell'd waste Lies open to conjecture's dubious ken, On ev'ry side confusion, rage, and death, Perhaps, the phantoms of a woman's fear, Beset the treach'rous way with fatal ambush; Each Turkish bosom burns for thy destruction, Ambitious Cali dreads the statesman's arts, And hot Abdalla hates the ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... style of this buff-ermine moth which at the present instant is buzzing round the lamp. A very little botany will enable you to recognize every flower you are likely to meet in your walks abroad, and to give you a tiny thrill of interest when you chance upon one which is beyond your ken. A very little archaeology will tell you all about yonder British tumulus, or help you to fill in the outline of the broken Roman camp upon the downs. A very little astronomy will cause you to look more intently at the heavens, to pick out your brothers the ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Lesbia!) or be enough or more? I say what mighty sum of Lybian-sands Confine Cyrene's Laserpitium-lands 'Twixt Oracle of Jove the Swelterer 5 And olden Battus' holy Sepulchre, Or stars innumerate through night-stillness ken The stolen Love-delights of mortal men, For that to kiss thee with unending kisses For mad Catullus enough and more be this, 10 Kisses nor curious wight shall count their tale, Nor to bewitch us ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... man. In short, and to put it bluntly, had Little-Faith been a worse sinner, he would have been a better saint. "O felix culpa!" exclaimed a church father; "O happy fault, which found for us sinners such a Redeemer." An apostrophe which Bishop Ken has put ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... became a Bishop, he had maintained the honour of his gown by refusing, when the court was at Winchester, to let Eleanor Gwynn lodge in the house which he occupied there as a prebendary. [218] The King had sense enough to respect so manly a spirit. Of all the prelates he liked Ken the best. It was to no purpose, however, that the good Bishop now put forth all his eloquence. His solemn and pathetic exhortation awed and melted the bystanders to such a degree that some among them believed him to be filled ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... that the fancy seemed to be mutual. Diogenes, sick, was no longer an "imp of the devil", but a normal, appealing little child. It occurred to me that possibly the care of a sick Polydore might develop Silvia's tiny germ of child-ken. ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... off, the oars dipping, as he spoke. How swiftly it shot from his ken, flashing in and out among the yachts, where the lamps were burning dimly in that clear radiance ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... stray pup, on the bench in Washington Square, staggered his imagination. He could never repay it, he told himself, save inadequately, little by little—mostly by gratitude and such consideration as he purposed now to exhibit by removing himself and his distresses from the other's ken. Here was an end to comfort for him, an end to living in Kellogg's rooms, eating his food, busying his servants, spending his money—not so much borrowed as pressed upon him. He stood at the cross-roads, ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... and reported, "We have found in the empire nor ruined site nor rotten brick," the Just King thanked his God and said, "Verily the affairs of the realm are best-conditioned and its ordinance is excellent and its populousness hath reached the pink of perfection." And ken thou, O King, continued Shahrazad, that these olden Kings strave not and toiled not for the peopling of their possessions, but because they knew that the more populous a country is, the more abundant is that which is desired therein; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... Bill Bender and Hank Handcraft vanish for a time from the ken of the Boy Scouts, leaving behind them no regrets, except it be those of their parents who were for many months bowed down with the grief and humiliation ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson

... play; knew nothing of grammar or geography—or of history, except the one history comprising all. He knew nothing of science; but he could shoe a horse as well as any man in the three Eidings, and make his violin talk about things far beyond the ken ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... dashe his backe against a post as oft[en] as they list. After these so rustical despightes s[um]time foloweth an ague or a paine of y^e backe y^t neuer c be remedied. Certes this foolishe play endeth in a drken bket: w^t such beginninges enter they into y^e studies of liberal sciences. But it were mete that after this sorte ther shuld begin a boucher, atorm[en]tour a baud or a bde slaue or a botem, not a child appointed to y^e ...
— The Education of Children • Desiderius Erasmus

... will be known to future times only as a man who overrated and abused his talents—who saw glimpses of that glory which he could not grasp—who presumptuously came forward to officiate as High-Priest at mysteries beyond his ken—and who carried himself as if he had been familiarly admitted into the Penetralia of Nature, when in truth he kept perpetually ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... to scatter and fly, making a wide pathway for the Man of Mystery who now strode through their ranks with that awful gaze which seemed to pierce the veil of mortality and to peer at things ineffable and beyond human ken. And with His eyes refusing to look again upon the familiar scenes of His youth, He departed from Nazareth, forsaking it forever as His home place. Verily, indeed, the Prophet hath no honor in His own land. Those who should have been His staunchest supporters were the first in His own land to threaten ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka

... the cross is too violent. For, where there is a seeming blend of lyricism and naturalism, it will on examination be found, I think, to exist only in plays whose subjects or settings—as in Synge's "Playboy of the Western World," or in Mr. Masefield's "Nan"—are so removed from our ken that we cannot really tell, and therefore do not care, whether an absolute illusion is maintained. The poetry which may and should exist in naturalistic drama, can only be that of perfect rightness of proportion, rhythm, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... and bored, the elderly intellectual virgins who knew nothing of life but what they had read—or written—in "Tendenz" novels, yet sadly rebuked him, more in sorrow than in anger, for this passage or that in his books, about things out of their ken altogether, etc. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... at Lincoln he came a little nearer and almost whispered, "I knowed I wasn't eddicated enough to git the place, but I kinder want to stay where I ken see 'Abe' Lincoln." ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... "wonders of the invisible world;" but they remain "wonders" still. Nothing like a permanent, stable, or distinct science has ever been achieved in this department. Man and God are all that are placed within our ken. Metaphysics and Theology are the names given to the sciences that relate to them. The greater the number of books written by human learning and ingenuity to expound them, the more advanced the intelligence and piety of mankind, the less, it is ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... had been set afloat. The baselessness of the scandal, conjoined with his immense apathy just then as to anything more that the malice of men could do, inclined him to amusement, the more so as he reflected how many months it was since the girl and her wretched history had passed from his ken. He had found her gone on his return from Italy in the spring, leaving no address and but the briefest acknowledgment of his good-will in a note, which stated that she had no longer any excuse for imposing on his kindness—had found ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... like all origination, like the institution of any other natural state or order, is beyond our immediate ken. We see or may learn how things go on; we can only frame hypotheses as ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... my heart, thy ruddy valves,— It is thy master calls: Let me go down, and, curious, trace Thy labyrinthine halls. Open, O heart! and let me view The secrets of thy den: Myself unto myself now show With introspective ken. Expose thyself, thou covered nest Of passions, and be seen: Stir up thy brood, that in unrest Are ever piping keen:— Ah! what a motley multitude, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... cordiality on an equality, not hungrily bowing and smirking for patronage, but interchanging ideas which I am glad to express, and which you listen to as thoughtfully and as kindly as you would to those of any other student, any other man who had won his way into such prominence as to come under the ken of a distinguished institution such as that which I have the honor to address? I do not mince the matter as to my personal position here, because I feel it is a representative one, and marks an epoch in the estimation in which the ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving

... cockneys, some with specs, and some wi' quizzing-glasses, and faces without ae grain o' meaning in them o' ony kind whatsomever, a' glowering, perhaps, at a picture o' ane o' Nature's maist fearfu' or magnificent warks! What, I ask, could a Prince's-Street maister or missy ken o' sic a wark mair than a red deer wad ken o' the inside o' ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... his possession,—as to which the unfortunate man put no impediment in his way, and he managed to have it understood that Mr. Kennedy's cousin should be summoned on the following morning. "Is anybody else coming?" Robert Kennedy asked, when the landlord was about to leave the room. "Naebody as I ken o', yet, laird," said Macpherson, "but likes they will." Nobody, however, did come, and the "laird" had spent the evening by himself in ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... is that he can pull uglier faces than any man in Cumberland. He will not pull them for anybody—only when he is in a good humour and for his cronies in the back parlour. To-night, perchance, we shall see his eyes roll as he roars out the chorus of "D'ye ken John Peel?" Yes, Wastdale shall be to-night's halt. And so over Black Sail, and down the rough mountain side to the inn whose white-washed walls hail us from afar out of the gathering shadows of ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... meeting his master unexpectedly in Australia after many years' absence: "I was quite dung down donnerit when I saw the laird, I canna' conceit what dooned me—I was raal glad to see him, but I dinna ken hoo I couldna' ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... her much-sorrowing sister, and how with the sons of Phrixus she had fled afar from the tyrannous horrors of her father; but she shrank from telling of the murder of Apsyrtus. Yet she escaped not Circe's ken; nevertheless, in spite of all, she pitied the weeping maiden, ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... says Marsile "Guenes, the truth to ken, Minded I am to love you very well. Of Charlemagne I wish to hear you tell, He's very old, his time is nearly spent, Two hundred years he's lived now, as 'tis said. Through many lands his armies he has led, So many ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous

... Johnny. He walked out, carrying the great gold timepiece, bewildered, embarrassed, modest beneath his honors, but little cock of the walk, whether he would or no, for reasons entirely and forever beyond his ken. ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... in the countless ages of the past, or at the present hour in some foreign clime which is far away and beyond our ken, the perfected philosopher is or has been or hereafter shall be compelled by a superior power to have the charge of the State, we are ready to assert to the death, that this our constitution has been, and is—yea, and will be whenever the Muse of Philosophy is queen. There is no ...
— The Republic • Plato

... opposition—extremely irascible men; like farmers. Urbanity was the last note in their gamut, the City—urbs quam dicunt Romam—the last of places in their ken. There was no engaging them in dialectic, an Athenian art which they frankly despised. If you happened to disagree with them, their answer was a sturdy Anglo-Saxon brick. If you politely asked your way to Puddlehampton, and to ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... great traveller," David was wont to begin: "through the length o' Edinburgh, and as far south as Newcastle, is a' that my legs ken about geography. But I've had a good deal o' crooks and thraws, and ups and downs, in the world for a' that. My faither was in the droving line, and lived in the parish o' Coldstream. He did a good deal o' business, baith about the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various

... religious thought and practice in China point to a simple monotheism. There was a Divine Ruler of the universe, abiding on high, beyond the ken of man. This Power was not regarded as the Creator of the human race, but as a Supreme Being to whom wickedness was abhorrent and virtuous conduct a source of joy, and who dealt out rewards and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... painful task. And truly, we have never before undergone such trials in sailing between—but that Charybdis and Scylla allusion has been done to death. Indeed, we love America, and in the course of our present task, which we also love, we had to suffer Khalid's shafts to pass through our ken and sometimes really through our heart. But no more of this. Ay, we would fain set aside our pen from sheer weariness of spirit and bid the Reader, too, farewell. Truly, we would end here this Book of Khalid were it not that the greater part of ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... legionnaire Haunts it for me. Uprises there A mother's form upon my ken, Guiding my infant steps, as when We walked that ancient thoroughfare, ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... forget, The scar of anger's wound to fret, And smile to think of an ancient feud, Which the God of nations turned to good; Then John and Jonathan will be, Abiding friends, o'er land and sea; In their one great purpose, the world will ken, Peace on earth, ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... R.). Do ye ken that ye're defying me? Ye'll die fighting, will ye? Aye, it's a gay, high-sounding sentiment, ma mannie, but ye'll no dae it, do ye hear? Ye'll no slip from me now. I've got ma grip on ye. Ye'll die sober, and ye'll live the longest time ...
— Hobson's Choice • Harold Brighouse

... worse mentally, that no doctor would dream of "vetting" him "sound," that he was not scoundrel enough to come and cause scandal and "talk" at Monksmead, and that he was going to disappear completely from the ken of man, wrestle with himself, and come to her and beg her to marry him directly he was better—sufficiently better to "pass the doctor," that is. If, meanwhile, she met and loved a man worthy of her, such a man as Ormonde Delorme, he implored her to marry ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... and annoyances may have apparently happened in consequence, the end has always been fortunate when I have been able to arrive at the result. The consequence of many of our acts, we must remember, is yet in the eternal future, unfathomed by mortal ken. To that time we must look forward for the reward of any of our acts which may be considered by our beneficent Father worthy of reward; and also to that time (we must not conceal from ourselves) for punishment for our misdeeds, unless our Saviour ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... vast mysterious forest, without village, path, or white inhabitant, stretches inland far and away beyond the utmost ken of man. There the towering pines range themselves in ever-receding colonnades upon a carpet smooth and soft as ever hushed the tread of Sultan's foot. Dripping from their topmost boughs the sunlight's splendor flickers ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... evidence of a defined system of drainage, the crests of snow-topped mountain ranges in the distance were proof of whence these rivers sprang. The native tribes were of higher intelligence, had a partial knowledge of what lay beyond their immediate ken, and could show articles of barter and commerce that they had obtained from more ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... Senator the idea that it might be well to have an eye on both. Mrs. Baker was a silly woman, as he knew, and there were old transactions between Ratcliffe and Baker of which she might be informed, but which Ratcliffe had no wish to see brought within Mrs. Lee's ken. As for the fiction invented to set Keen in motion, it was an innocent one. It harmed nobody. Ratcliffe selected this particular method of inquiry because it was the easiest, safest, and most effectual. If he were always to wait until he could afford to tell the ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... or larnin' uv any kind allowed. You better not be ketched wid a book in yore han's. Dat wus sumptin dey would git you fer. I ken read an' write a little but I learned since de surrender. My mother tole me 'bout dat bein' 'ginst de rules of de white folks. I 'members it while I wus only a little gal. When de ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... talk on the subject of fomentations and bandages. The old woman hesitated to tell, but after a little pressing she said, in half apologetic tone,—"Weel, mem, it was na Ivor's fau't, but the day before yesterday he cam in—fou—ye ken he's fond o' his glass, mem, an' he was swingin' aboot his airms, poor falla, an' withoot the least intention, his haund cam doon wi' sik a ding on my heed that knockit me doon. But he kens na aboot it, so ye'll no speak o't to him—or to ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne

... returned Malcolm. "Mistress Kelpie here 's e'en ower ready to confess her fauts, an' that by giein' a taste o' them; she winna bide to be speired; but for haudin' aff o' them efter the bargain's made—ye ken she's no even responsible for the bargain. An' gien ye expec' me to haud my tongue aboot them—faith, Maister Crathie, I wad as sune think o' sellin' a rotten boat to Blue Peter. Gien the man 'at has her to see tilt dinna ken to luik oot for a storm o' iron shune or lang teeth ony moment, ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... It occupied—that dismal thing!— The path that he was following. Before he'd time to stop and fly, An earthquake trifled with the eye That saw a ghost. He fell as fall the early good; Unmoved that awful vision stood. The stars that danced before his ken He wildly brushed away, and ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... wantonness and ease" is to find the regeneration of his life—the rebaptism of his soul? Of what avail thy meek prudent household virtues to one whom Fortune screens from rough trial?—whose sorrows lie remote from thy ken?—whose spirit, erratic and perturbed, now rising, now falling, needs a vision more subtle than thine to pursue, and a strength that can sustain the reason, when it droops, on the wings of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... ye to gang awa thinking I misdoobtit yer word, Francie! I believe onything ye tell me, as far as I think ye ken, but maybe no sae far as ye think ye ken. I believe ye, but I confess I dinna believe in ye—yet. What hae ye ever dune to gie a body ony richt to believe in ye? Ye're a guid rider, and a guid shot for a laddie, and ye rin middlin fest—I canna say ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald

... and all through the journey to London the Russian had his hands full with Ajax. Each new face of the thousands that came within the anthropoid's ken must be carefully scrutinized, much to the horror of many of his victims; but at last, failing, apparently, to discover whom he sought, the great ape relapsed into morbid indifference, only occasionally evincing interest in ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Fletcher Moulton recently said: "The advance in science takes the workers in science more and more beyond the ken of the ordinary public, and their work grows to be a little understood and much misunderstood; and I have felt that, as in many other cases, the need would come for interpreters between those who are carrying on scientific ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... courtiers drew together in groups, and it seemed that a man's name was being bandied to and fro, dark shuttlecock to this painted throng. Damans Sedley, entering the antechamber by a small side door, swam into the ken of a number of eager players gathered around a gentleman of flushed countenance, who, with much swiftness and dexterity, was wreaking old grudges upon the shuttlecock. One of the audience trod upon the player's toe; each courtier bowed until his sword stood out a straight ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... Bible; whose experiences were antecedent to the formulation of the Gods of Greece; who can link together the Old and the New, Earth and Heaven, and yield to the known worlds of thought and physical existence the mystery of the Unknown—of the Old World in its youth, and of Worlds beyond our ken!" ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... be better so, that Babel noises, Losing all course and ken, And grief that wails and gladness that rejoices Should never wake again To shock a world of ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill

... than those in which he discovered the aptitude of Mary Hutchinson to his own needs. The last stanza is very like her; and her husband's sonnet to the painter of her portrait, in old age, discloses to us how the first stanza might be also, in days beyond the ken of the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... it was not the mediaeval Church, but the primitive Church, the Church of patristic discipline and doctrine, that appealed to the Tractarians. It was the Anglican Church of the seventeenth century, the Church of Andrewes and Herbert and Ken, to which Keble sought to restore the "beauty of holiness"; and those of the Oxford party who remained within the establishment continued true to this ideal. "The Christian Year" is the genuine descendant of George Herbert's "Temple" (1632). What impressed ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... whoop, and wild halloo, No rest Benvoirlich's echoes knew. Far from the tumult fled the roe, Close in her covert cower'd the doe; The falcon, from her cairn on high, Cast on the rout a wondering eye, Till far beyond her piercing ken The hurricane had swept the glen. Faint, and more faint, its failing din Return'd from cavern, cliff, and linn, And silence settled, wide and still, On the lone wood and ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow

... the queerest of rooms, fitted and furnished more like a luxurious amateur tap-room than anything else within the ken of Silas Wegg. There were two wooden settles by the fire, one on either side of it, with a corresponding table before each. On one of these tables, the eight volumes were ranged flat, in a row, like ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... and in every part Of thee the power of motion wrought. Mark then God's might untold, And rouse thyself His wonders to behold. But to Himself concealed Dare not to stretch thy hand, for then Thou seekest, with presumptuous ken, The first and last, the hidden and revealed: Exalted, magnified, Extolled ...
— Hebrew Literature

... to himself he spoke: "Oh, noble is the knotted oak, And sweet the gush of sylvan streams, And good the great sun's gladding beams, The blush of life upon the field, The silent might that mountains wield. Still more I love to mix with men, Meeting the kindly human ken; To feel the force of faithful friends— The thirst ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop

... his father that he is heavily in debt, and, having borrowed money from his tailor, he will disappear from the parental ken, to turn up again, after a week, without his watch, his scarf-pin, or his studs. This freak will be accepted by his relatives as a convincing proof of his fitness for a financial career, and he will shortly be transferred to the City as Clerk to a firm ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various

... time of freshman year). In his lap would be the large green volume ("British Poets of the Nineteenth Century," edited by Professor Curtis Hidden Page) which was the textbook of that sophomore course. He was reading Keats. And his eyes were those of one who has seen a new planet swim into his ken. I don't know how many evenings we spent there together. Probably only a few. I don't recall just how we communed, or imparted to one another our juvenile speculations. But I plainly remember how he would sit beside his desk-lamp and chuckle over the Ode to a Nightingale. He was a quizzical ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... image of what has been the result of our subjecting it to a jet of fervent, though nowise brilliant, thought to-night. It has become luminous, and its clear rays, penetrating the abyss of the remote past, have brought within our ken some stages of the evolution of the earth. And in the shifting "without haste, but without rest" of the land and sea, as in the endless variation of the forms assumed by living beings, we have observed nothing but the natural product of the forces originally ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... eloquent was the debate, Beside the council fire of those red men! With language burning as his sense of hate; With gesture just, with eye of keenest ken; With illustration simple, but profound, Drawn from the sky above him, or the ground Beneath his feet; and with unfalt'ring zeal, He spoke from a warm heart and made e'en ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas

... opulent or the indigent of the same city. They have moreover the busy intelligence (which is the intellect of patois) at its keenest. Their speech keeps them a sequestered place which is Italian, Italian beyond the ken of the traveller, and beyond the reach of alteration. And—what is pretty to observe—the speakers are well conscious of the characters of this intimate language. An Italian countryman who has ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... have let you ken My very thoughts, from heart and pen, 'Tis needless for to conten' Or yet controule, For there's not a word o't I can men'; So ye ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... marked than usual, which fact was not calculated to soften her aunt's irritation, "Poppar had me taught to say a thing and stick to it, no matter how I suffered. I've said I won't go, and I won't—not if all the old ladies in Christendom were to come and howl at the door! You ken tell 'em I've come out in spots, and you reckon I'm going ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... its gold again, And the grey sky bends to an earth as grey; But we who live are silent even as they While the world's heart marks one deep throb; and then, Touched by the gleam of suns beyond our ken, The Stone of Honour crowns the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various

... her name, first one way, then another; once, he approached and came quite near her, but he changed his direction, to pass immediately out of her ken. ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... few spirits in each age who lead humanity to new and higher ideals; he could not understand a Christ or a Mahomet, and it seems as if he took but small interest in Jeanne d'Arc, the noblest being that came within the ken of his art. For even if we admit that he did not write the first part of "Henry VI.," it is certain that it passed through his hands, and that in his youth, at any rate, he saw nothing to correct in that vile and stupid libel on the greatest of women. Even the English ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... talking to myself! The phantoms all about here, in the college archways, and windows. They used to look friendly in the old days, particularly Addison, and Gibbon, and Johnson, and Dr. Browne, and Bishop Ken—" ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... habitual acquiescence, are every now and then interfering, and almost always in the wrong place. The real causes which determine the prosperity or wretchedness, the improvement or deterioration of the Hindoos, are too far off to be within their ken. They have not the knowledge necessary for suspecting the existence of those causes, much less for judging of their operation. The most essential interests of the country may be well administered without obtaining any of their approbation, or mismanaged to almost any excess without attracting their ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... on her way when a violent storm arose. The ferryman and his mate, both Highlanders, held a consultation, and after a short debate the ferryman turned to his passengers and remarked, anxiously: "We'll just tak' your tuppences now, for we dinna ken ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous

... through aether rise the rushing swarms, Gay dancing to the beam their sun-bright forms; And each thin form, still ling'ring on the sight, Trails, as it shoots, a line of silver light. High pois'd on buoyant wing, the thoughtful queen, In gaze attentive, views the varied scene, And soon her far-fetch'd ken discerns below The light laburnum lift her polish'd brow, Wave her green leafy ringlets o'er the glade, And seem to beckon to her friendly shade. Swift as the falcon's sweep, the monarch bends Her flight abrupt; ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... ("Amen in the bark"). In the second vignette, a principal priest (heb) of Osiris, dressed in the sacerdotal leopard's skin, offers incense to the lady Te-bok ("The servant-maid"); below is a row of kneeling figures, namely: two sons, Si-t-mau ("Son of the mother"), Amen-Ken ("Amon the warlike"), and four daughters, Meri-t-ma ("Loving justice"), Amen-Set ("Daughter of Amen"), Souten-mau ("Royal Mother"), and Hui-em-neter ("Food for god"). As there is no indication of relationship between the subjects of the two vignettes, it may be inferred that ...
— Egyptian Literature

... put this question as though he were persuaded that it was morally impossible that I could by any means divine the deep purpose of his visit, and that it must be hidden from all human ken. Therefore, although I was rejoiced to think that I had anticipated his drift, I feigned to be quite ignorant of it, and after a brief ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens

... and explaining to his majesty an immense genealogical chart of the family, the pedigree of which he carried back rather farther than the greatest strength of credulity would allow. "I gude faith, man," says the king, "it may be they are very true, but I did na ken before ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various

... gently but with complete confidence. "Call me Ken," he said, noticing that he was seven feet tall and superbly muscled. He put his free hand on the girl's warm, soft shoulder ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett

... with smaller rivers. Where the stream is stronger, the mud-banks are often formed much farther out at sea; and more often still the river-detritus is carried away and shed over the ocean-bed, beyond the reach of our ken. The powerful rush of water in earth's greater streams bears enormous masses of sand and mud each year far out into the ocean, there dropping quietly the gravel, sand, and earth, layer upon layer at the bottom of the sea. Thus pulling down and building up go on ever side by side; and ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... Nicias, not for us alone Was laughing Eros born, Nor shines alone for us the moon, Nor burns the ruddy morn; Alas! to-morrow lies not in the ken Of us who are, O ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field

... first-beginnings of things are all in motion, yet the sum is seen to rest in supreme repose, unless when a thing exhibits motions with its individual body. For all the nature of first things lies far away from our senses, beneath their ken; and, therefore, since they are themselves beyond what you can see, they must withdraw from sight their motion as well; and the more so, that the things which we can see do yet often conceal their motions when a great distance off. Thus, ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir

... gloomy angle of the corridor, from whence as he watched them he saw their figures seem to glide along the lighted portion, the Comte yielding entirely to his leader's every motion, till they passed quickly out of the sentry's ken. ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn

... deep, and seven miles broad, and he must drain it the next day, or else he would have him for his supper. Nicht Nought Nothing began early next morning and tried to lave the water with his pail, but the loch was never getting any less, and he did no ken what to do; but the giant's dochter called on all the fish in the sea to come and drink the water, and very soon they drank it dry. When the giant saw the work done he was in a rage, and said, 'I've a worse job for ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang

... enough to wash my hands on 't," said Israel. "I shall hanker arter the critter some, but he's a-gettin' too big to be handy; 'n it's one comfort about critters, you ken git rid on 'em somehaow when they're more plague than profit. But folks has got to be let alone, excep' the Lord takes 'em; an' He generally don't see fit."—From ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... thing happened. As they were preparing to leave the school [Cathro having previously run Tommy out by the neck], the door opened a little and there appeared in the aperture the face of Tommy, tear-stained but excited. "I ken the word now," he cried, "it came to me a' at once; it ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... this rigidly exact system of energizing should be found to present all the appearances of universality and of eternity, so that, e.g., the motion of the solar system in space is being determined by some causes beyond human ken, and that we are indebted to billions of cellular unions, each involving billions of separate causes, for our hereditary passage from an invertebrate ancestry,—that such things should be, would surely strike us as the most wonderful fact ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes

... patient lips too well foretold. Yes, this is he who ruled a world of men As might some prophet of the elder day— Brooding above the tempest and the fray With deep-eyed thought and more than mortal ken. A power was his beyond the touch of art Or armed strength—his ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... influence over this strange disciple or servant, for he seemed to be partly both; and that one who so loathed and hated the Norsemen could be made to serve his enemies at a word, seemed to point to a power beyond the ken of ordinary man. Helgi, too, was evidently struck, for he looked askance from one to the other, and then ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston

... now in that the events of the summer of 1915 had left me without heart or desire, the merest spectator of life, passive and, I cynically believed, indifferent. I was nothing to any one, nor was any one anything to me. The desire of my heart had slipped like a laughing ghost away from my ken—men of my slow warmth and cautious suspicion do not easily admit a ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... the property of Saint-Graal had passed to her son, Edmond,—Andre's feu Monsieur le Comte. Edmond rarely lived there, and never asked his sister or her boy there; whence, twenty years ago, at the respective ages of thirteen and eleven, Paul and Helene had vanished from each other's ken. But Edmond never married, either; and when, last winter, he died, he left a will making Paul his heir. Of Helene's later history Paul knew as much as all the world knows, and no more—so much, that is, as one could gather from newspapers and ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... as I have said, the principal householders in the Bazaar, the richest among them being the Brothers Ken-Wat, a firm trading in gutta, gold-dust, and diamonds, with Singapore and China. Borneo has ever been famous for its diamonds, and, although scarce in quantity, I have heard good judges affirm that they are the finest in quality of any in the world. Some large ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt

... sought Thy coming, thou in light descending O'er the wide land which is thine own 2220 Like the Spring whose breath is blending All blasts of fragrance into one, Comest upon the paths of men!— Earth bares her general bosom to thy ken, And all her children here in glory meet 2225 To feed upon thy smiles, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... death of our Lord, there were churches in Jerusalem, Caesarea, Rome, and the Syrian Antioch. In reference to the latter, Bishop Ken beautifully says:— ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... dispose the living to regard the remains of even a malefactor with a certain degree of reverence. All worldly distinctions have ceased; it is thought that the veil has been removed, and that the character and destiny of the departed are now as much beyond human opinions, as they are beyond human ken. In nothing is death more truly a leveller than in this, since, while it may be impossible absolutely to confound the great with the low, the worthy with the unworthy, the mind feels it to be arrogant to ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... opportunity of studying his chief under different auspices. Dartrey, notwithstanding the fact that he was a miracle of punctuality and devotion to duty, both at the offices in Parliament Street and at the House, seemed to have the gift of fading absolutely out of sight from the ken of even his closest friends when the task of the day was accomplished. He excused himself always, courteously but finally, from accepting anything whatever in the way of social entertainment, he belonged to no clubs, and, if pressed, ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... customs and beliefs of different communities were found to diverge sharply from one another. Civil disturbance had become a custom in Athens; the fortunes of the city seemed given over to strife of factions. The increase of leisure coinciding with the broadening of the horizon had brought into ken many new facts of nature and had stimulated curiosity and speculation. The situation tended to raise the question as to the existence of anything constant and universal in the realm of nature and society. Reason was the faculty by which the universal principle and essence ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... Petronelle, tearful but obedient, prepared to leave the room. She was overawed by her mistress' air of aloofness, the pale face rendered ethereally beautiful by the sufferings she had gone through. The eyes glowed large and magnetic, as if in presence of spiritual visions beyond mortal ken; the golden hair looked like a saintly halo above the white, ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... orthodoxy, quoted above, "one incarnate nature of God the Word," passed rapidly into the watchword of heresy. Athanasius had used the word "nature" in a broad sense. The monophysites narrowed it down to its later technical meaning. Thus they exalted Christ into a region beyond the ken of mortal man. The incarnation became a mystery pure and simple, unintelligible, calling for blind acceptance. The monophysites, following Cyril, heightened the mystery, but, in doing so, they eliminated the reality and the ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce

... "Phrazeo nun, mae toi ti theon maenima genomai Aemati to ote ken se Pharis kai phoibus Apollon, Esthlon eont, olesosin ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various

... heaven's gates long since have closed, And our dear Lord in bliss reposed, High above mortal ken, To every ear in every land (Though meek ears only understand) He speaks as he ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... work was over; she communicated with him as across some gulf or from some island of rest that she had already reached, and it made him feel strangely abandoned. Was it—or rather wasn't it—that if for so long she had been watching with him the answer to their question must have swum into her ken and taken on its name, so that her occupation was verily gone? He had as much as charged her with this in saying to her, many months before, that she even then knew something she was keeping from him. It was a point ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James

... all the nations formed of men, So let it be! Hold us beneath thy ken, And bring the wanderers to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... been pleased at the Bullen find, but here was something quite different. When I laid down Mr. De La Mare's MS. — signed Walter Ramal, an anagram of De La Mare—I am proud to say that I fully realised that a new planet had swum into my ken. I had had the good luck to be the literary astronomer first to notice that the Host of Heaven had another recruit. That is an experience as thrilling as it is rare. The story was entitled "A Mote," and I am delighted to think I had the prescience to pass it ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... was Lieutenant Pendleton, of whom, by the way, I have seen very little for some time. For we go very much by platoons, as you have noticed; and he having command of the first is out of my ken. But whenever I have seen him he is always the same, very cool, inscrutable, accurate, and busy. His men are devoted to him. Well, he came walking along, scrutinizing the groups, and when he found me, delivering the summons, returning my ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French

... might think of Shira Glen. Whatever they may say of me or mine, they can never deny but I had the right fond heart for my own countryside, and I have fought men for speaking of its pride and poverty—their ignorance, their folly!—for what did they ken of the Highland spirit? I would be lying in the lap of the night, and my Ferrara sword rolled in my plaid as a pillow for my head, fancying myself—all those long wars over, march, siege, and sack—riding ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... never saw a more beautiful countenance or one more subdued to settled quiet. "Ailie," said James, "this is Maister John, the young doctor; Rab's freend, ye ken. We often speak aboot you, doctor." She smiled, and made a movement, but said nothing; and prepared to come down, putting her plaid aside and rising. Had Solomon, in all his glory, been handing down the Queen of ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... and mango They scamper, they slither and slide In the throes of a tropical tango, In the grip of a Gibbony glide; 'Tis thus in these desolate spaces, Away from humanity's ken, They mimic the civilised races And ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various

... pronouncing on the paramount problem, because the "sagittal ridge in the gorilla," as in the orang, relates to and signifies the dental character which differentiates all Quadrumana from all Bimana that have ever come under the ken of the biologist. And this ridge much more "strikingly suggests" the fierceness of the powerful brute-ape than the part referred to as "large bosses." Frontal prominences, more truly so termed, are even better developed in peaceful, timid, graminivorous quadrupeds than in the skulls of man or of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various

... my mither ken The day she cradled me The land I was to travel in, Or the death I ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... kindness and good-will, one cannot but after a fashion understand the disappointment of the Germans when this towering military figure, this magnificent specimen of perfect physical and mental manhood, vanished from their ken, to be replaced by the slender, pale-faced, somewhat arrogant and despotic young man, who resembled this ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy

... as we ha' gotten to put away these times," said the first speaker. "Not same as the days when a pitman's wife, 'at I ken on, flung a five-pound note in his face and axed him what he thowt she ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... not arrive until just before nightfall. He was very agitated when he came. Ramar Chind, too, was eager. What would happen within the next several hours, he realized, might be beyond his ken, but he still recognized its importance. And, being an opportunist, he would pounce on whatever he found of value ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance

... desire to amuse herself. It does not speak well for fascinating qualities for our Woodvale gallants that Miss Lawrence selected this unknown outsider even as a target on which to practise flirtation archery, but, in common with most men, it is beyond my ken to fathom the caprices ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams

... my song; so, you see, the name of bad luck brings bad luck. Not that there is really such a thing as luck. Everything that occurs has a cause, an infinite line of causes. But a man's success or failure is due partly to causes outside of his control, often outside of his ken. As, for instance, a sudden change of weather may defeat a clever general, and thrust victory upon his incompetent adversary. Now when these outside causes are adverse, and prevail, we say a man has bad luck. When they favor, and prevail, he has good luck. It ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens

... not, Through storm of spears and arrow-shot, For succour toward him from King Lot And all his host of sea-born men, Strong as the strong storm-baffling bird Whose cry round Orkney's headlands heard Is as the sea's own sovereign word That mocks our mortal ken. ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... pang, that she had set foot in the midst of some domestic tragedy, the like of which had never come within her ken before. She was conscious of a little recoil from it, such as is natural to a young girl who has not learnt by experience the meaning of sorrow; but the recoil was followed by a rush of that sympathy for which she had always ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... this beneficent plan was threatened by one individual, and he young, inexperienced, and a new Worthingtonian, Mr. Harrington Surtaine. This unforeseen cloud upon the horizon of peace, prosperity, and happiness rose into the ken of Dr. Surtaine the day after the ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... object to another, traceable backward from point to point till we reach the moment when, in the nursery or in the schoolroom, some little story told, some little object shown, some little operation witnessed, brought the first new object and new interest within our ken by associating it with some one of those primitively there. The interest now suffusing the whole system took its rise in that little event, so insignificant to us now as to be entirely forgotten. As the bees in swarming cling to one ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... again have a law-term apparently so out of the ken of an unprofessional writer, that it would seem to favor the Attorney and Solicitor theory. But let us see if the knowledge which its use implies was confined to Shakespeare among the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... has another air from powerful Master Rollock, and Mess David Black of North Leith, and sic like. Alack-a-day, wha can ken, if it please your lordship, whether sic prayers as the Southrons read out of their auld blethering black mess-book there, may not be as powerful to invite fiends, as a right red-het prayer warm from the heart may be powerful to drive them away; ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... when special respect has been shown to the tombs of worthies of bygone times, with the recent recollection also of what has been so well carried out by MR. MARKLAND in regard to the grave of Bishop Ken, shall we not make an effort to preserve from desecration and oblivion the resting-place of one so eminent as Leighton for his learning and piety, so worthy to be held in honoured remembrance for his high principles and his consistent conduct in an ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various

... the Orleans Guards, "quel chaleur! Is it not a terrib', thad sun!" Hundreds of their blue kepis, hundreds of gray shakos in the Confederate Guards, were lifted to wipe streaming necks and throats, while away down beyond our ladies' ken all the drummers of the double escort, forty by count, silently came back and moved in between the battery and its band to make the last music the very bravest. Was that Kincaid, the crowd asked, one of another; he of the thick black ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... Zaliah, a past master in the art of sorcery, followed this summons, and flew high into the air. Balaam, however, surpassed him, and took a path in the air on which Zaliah could not follow, and after the former had soared through five different layers of air, he had quite vanished from Zaliah's ken, who knew not what to do. Phinehas, however, came to his aid. By means of a magical invocation he dispelled the clouds that covered Balaam, and then Zaliah forced Balaam to descend to earth and appear before Phinehas. [854] He began to implore Phinehas to spare his ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... O Thou Unweariable Launcher of worlds upon bewildered space," Rose in me, "All? or did thy hand grow dull Building this world that bears a piteous race? O was it launched too soon or launched too late? Or can it be a derelict that drifts Beyond thy ken toward some reef of Fate On which Oblivion's sand ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice

... of the stunned astonishment of his Oxford Street experiences may have returned to him, for he had evidently counted on Kemp's co-operation in his brutal dream of a terrorised world. At any rate he vanished from human ken about midday, and no living witness can tell what he did until about half-past two. It was a fortunate thing, perhaps, for humanity, but for him it ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells

... Nestoriani Regem Iohannem: et plus dicebant de ipso in decuplo quam veritas esset. Ita enim faciunt Nestoriani venientes de partibus illis. De nihilo enim faciunt magnos rumores. Vnde disseminauerunt de Sartach quod esset Christianus, et de Mangu Can et Ken can: quia faciunt maiorem reuerentiam Christianis, quam alijs populis, et tamen in veritate Christiani non sunt. Sic ergo exiuit magna fama de illo Rege Iohanne. Et quando ego transiui per pascua eius, nullus aliquid sciebat de eo nisi Nestoriani pauci. [Sidenote: Kencham ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt

... is my lover, My friends are the Oceans four, The Heavens have roofed me over, And the Dawn is my golden door. I would liefer follow a condor, Or the sea-gull soaring from ken, Than bury my Godhead yonder, In the dust ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper

... small state of Chhatarpur lies to the south of the Hamirpur district, between the Dasan and Ken rivers. The town of Chhatarpur, on the military road from Banda to Sagar, is remarkable for the mausoleum and ruined palace of Raja Chhatarsal, after whom the town is named. Khajuraho, the ancient religious capital of the Chandel monarchy, with its magnificent group of mediaeval Hindoo and ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... hours in which he basked in the smiles and blushes of pretty Sarah Hoggins, carrying home her pails of milk, helping her to churn the butter, or telling to her wondering ears stories of the great world outside her ken, while the sunset steeped the orchard trees above their heads ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... hearing (for I had denied Kirsty the courtesy of an inspection). It's sax year syne noo, and he got up and wes traivellin' fell hearty like yersel. But he begood to dwam (sicken) in the end of the year, and soughed awa' in the spring. Ay, ay, when tribble comes ye never ken hoo it 'ill end. A' thocht I wud come up and speir for ye. A body needs comfort ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren

... ate of the best and drank freely and wore rich clothes and lived lavishly, companioning and consorting with youths of my own age, and considering that this course of life would continue for ever and ken no change. Thus did I for a long time, but at last I awoke from my heedlessness and, returning to my senses, I found my wealth had become unwealth and my condition ill-conditioned and all I once hent had left my hand. And ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... where the sun poured down on her in the full force of summer, scorching the sight out of her eyes. From that day she had been sightless, and soon after she was alone, save for the boy she idolized, for her husband had gone to the north to buy store cattle, and had disappeared from the ken of man, till a skeleton, with two broken spears through the ribs, and the remains of a swag and clothes, identified by some friends as Dickson's, were found in the neighbourhood whither he had intended ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... heirs to the first Jonathan Hastings; from him to his son, the long remembered College Steward; from him in the year 1792 to the Reverend Eliphalet Pearson, Professor of Hebrew and other Oriental languages in Harvard College, whose large personality swam into my ken when I was looking forward to my teens; from him the progenitors ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... or suld be. And for eating—what signifies telling a lee? there's just the hinder end of the mutton-ham that has been but three times on the table, and the nearer the bane the sweeter, as your honours weel ken; and—there's the heel of the ewe-milk kebbuck, wi' a bit of nice butter, and—and—that's a' that's to trust to." And with great alacrity he produced his slender stock of provisions, and placed them with much formality upon a small round table betwixt ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... he was, did not think it strange that the wife of a rich notary should wish to inspect a volume costing fifteen francs before deciding on the purchase. Your clever man never condescends to study the middle-class, who escape his ken by this want of attention; and while he is making game of them, they are ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... at ye,' said Jamie, for the Netheraird man let it out; 'yon wes a sermon for young fouk, juist milk, ye ken, tae the ordinar' discoorses. Surely,' as if the thought had just struck him, 'ye werena thinkin' o' callin' ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... aristocratic conveniences were full; and the coal-box—for it looked very like one—was full also, of loafers and luggage; so I despaired of quitting the Falls almost as much, by way of balance, as I rejoiced when they once again met my ken. ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... age of seventeen, Columbine had lived and been educated; but the old schoolmistress had worn out at last, and on her death-bed had sent for Mrs. Peck, as being the girl's only remaining relative, her father having drifted out of her ken ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell

... the journey, Gathered fagots for the lodge-fire, Tanned the skins of bear and beaver, Tanned the hides of moose and red deer; Made him moccasins and leggings, Decked his hood with quills and feathers— Colored quills of Kaug, the thorny, [8] Feathers from Kenw—the eagle. [8] For a warrior brave was Panther; Often had he met the foemen, Met the bold and fierce Dakotas; Westward on the war-path met them; And the scalps he won were numbered, Numbered seven by Kenw-feathers. ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... prone flight Descending down, light sheer upon the coast Of outmost Night. The guard seraphic knows. That power ministrant, —— —— and with quick despatch Unfolds the Stygian doors, that jarring hoarse Slow on their adamantine hinges turn'd, And open'd to their ken the dread abyss, Unfathomably deep, mother of woes. Not mountains pil'd on mountains would close up Th' infernal entrance: they would but increase Its native ruggedness. No path leads down To those abhorred deeps. Close by the gate Impendent ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker

... "But, Ken," Emily Tweksbury followed her companion from the room, "you are like that—you really are! You just take life by the throat and you are sure of yourself in a ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... motionless in the middle of the lawn, heedless of the glances—furtive, discreet, sympathetic, admiring—cast at him from the windows and balconies of the surrounding houses. His quick eye, trained to notice everything within its ken, saw them plainly enough. The houses were not so distant nor the foliage so dense but that kindly, neighborly interest could follow the whole drama taking place at Tory Hill. Ashley could guess with tolerable accuracy that the ladies whom he saw ostensibly ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... lucid, perfect hands that have bound me to the mast of your destiny. I cannot go back, I must go forward: now I must keep on loving you or be shipwrecked. I did not know that this was in me, this tide of love, this current of devotion. Destiny plays me beyond my ken, beyond my dreams. "O Cithoeron!" Turn from me now—or never, O my love! Loose me from the mast, and let the storm and wave wash me out into the sea of your forgetfulness now—or never!... But keep me, keep me, if your love is great ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... again. The half confidences of scandals, borne on whispered breaths. The whole confidences of dormitory and study which she had been privileged to share. All were parts of the new and strange world, the great world which had swum into her ken. ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... Thomas, stroking down his chin in a slee way, "I'm glad the guilty should see the folly o' their ain ways; it's the first step, ye ken, till amendment. And indeed I tell't Maister Wiggie, when he sent me here, that I could almost become guid for your being mair wary of your conduct for ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... although she was strongly invited, both by the Macadams and the Howards, to see their felicity, she ever declined the same, saying—"No! I have been long out of the world, or rather, I have never been in it; my ways are not as theirs; and although I ken their hearts would be glad to be kind to me, I might fash their servants, or their friends might think me unlike other folk, by which, instead of causing pleasure, mortification might ensue; so I will remain in my own house, trusting that, when they can spare the ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt



Words linked to "Ken" :   reach, Ken Kesey, range, sight, cognizance



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