"Unbelievable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from the high, clear, windswept waste of the New Forest. I tell you it was amazing to arrive there from Waterbury. And it came into my head—for Teddy Ashburnham, you remember, had cabled to me to "come and have a talk" with him—that it was unbelievable that anything essentially calamitous could happen to that place and those people. I tell you it was the very spirit of peace. And Leonora, beautiful and smiling, with her coils of yellow hair, stood ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... his first excursion my baggage from the Ritz. I was clothed again, in my right mind; except for my swathed head, I looked highly civilized. The day when I had raced hither and yon, and fought an unbelievable battle in a dark hall, and insanely masqueraded first in a leather coat, then in a pale-blue uniform, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... in this way that the adult wins the battle of religious education. In the deeper and more far-seeing sense he has lost it. Religion has become, not a charming privilege, but a lesson, a lesson about unbelievable things, a meaningless task to be learnt by heart, a drudgery. It may be said that even if that is so, religious lessons merely share the inevitable fate of all subjects which become school tasks. But that is not the case. Every other subject which is likely to become a school task is apt to ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... the deserted streets of a great city, after midnight has hushed all the roar and tumult to rest, is an almost unbelievable thing. The stillness in the depths of a forest or on a mountain top is not so strange. A few hours ago, the tumult was rushing past; in a few hours more, it will ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the sleeping child more closely, and commencing at the moment when the soldiers broke down the door, she told her brother the thrilling and almost unbelievable story of their adventure. Finally she reached the end. Warren had made no comments, but the stern and anxious expression of his face betrayed ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... since that memorable luncheon at The Three Wolves. Our little pavilion over the emerald pool will never see us reunited, I fear. A cloud has fallen over my good friend the cure, a cloud so unbelievable, and yet so dense, if it be true, and so filled with ominous mutterings of thunder and lightning, crime, defalcation, banishment, and the like, that I go about my work dazed at the ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... was arranged that Colonel Mallett should spend every summer abroad with his wife to watch the incubation of Duane's Titianesque genius and Naida's unbelievable talent for music; and when the children came to bid good-bye to the Seagrave twins, they seized each other with frantic embraces, vowing lifelong fidelity. Alas! it is those who depart who forget first; and at the end of a year, Geraldine's ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... unbelievable of any man but Leigh Hunt that he placidly remarks in reference to this impertinence that "he had not the pleasure of Lady Blessington's acquaintance," as if that did not make things ten times worse. He had laid the foundation of not a few ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... case, he ceased not to ask himself how came a slip of papyrus to be found in such a situation,—on the bed of a dead Berlinerin of the poorest class? The story of its being taken from the mouth of the woman was, of course, unbelievable. The whole incident seemed to puzzle, while it amused him; seemed to appeal to the instinct—so strong in him—to investigate, to probe. For days, he declared, he had been endeavouring, in vain, to make anything of the figures. Dr. Hofmeier, too, examined the slip, but inclined to believe that the ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... delicious produce from the Torrid Zones ripens all year round, and Malaysians, who give them the name "pisang," eat them without bothering to cook them. In addition to bananas, we gathered some enormous jackfruit with a very tangy flavor, some tasty mangoes, and some pineapples of unbelievable size. But this foraging took up a good deal of our time, which, even so, we had no cause ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... and claimed that their families were the originals of the Forsytes that one has been almost encouraged to believe in the typicality of an imagined species. Manners change and modes evolve, and "Timothy's on the Bayswater Road" becomes a nest of the unbelievable in all except essentials; we shall not look upon its like again, nor perhaps on such a one as James or Old Jolyon. And yet the figures of Insurance Societies and the utterances of Judges reassure ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... huge figure on the bed became again his good-natured corporal. The mouth closed, the glassy jellies were once more seeing, intelligent human eyes. The face lost its swollen, brutish look and was again the face of a friend. It was almost unbelievable that anything so far gone could come back. He looked up wistfully at his Lieutenant as if to ask him something. His eyes filled with tears, and he turned his ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... quasi-genteel working class, of whom our modern complex life supports hundreds of thousands—telephone operators, stenographers, and the like—greedily devour the newspaper accounts of the American aristocracy and model themselves, so far as possible, after it. It is almost unbelievable how intimate a knowledge these young women possess of the domestic life, manner of speech and dress of the conspicuous people in ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... the stifling interior straggled the unhappy inmates. They looked again upon the unbelievable: a smiling, dancing sea of blue under a canopy clean and spotless. It was unbelievable. Even the stouthearted Captain and the faithful mate, blear-eyed and haggard from loss of ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... I do? I won't give up. I've been robbed. Can't the people help me? Must I meekly sit with my hands crossed while that half-breed thief—Oh, it's unbelievable!" ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... slowly and, coming forward into the circle of the firelight, stared down at him incredulously. It was unbelievable! She had been giving him all the best that was in her—the work of her brain, the interpretation of her hands—baring her very heart to him during the last half-hour. And he had slept through ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... the date of the production was set. It gave Bambi unbelievable pleasure to read the announcements on the billboards, and to stand in front of the three-sheets in the foyer of ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... appear resigned, saddened, compelled against his will to reveal the distressing truth. Further, he counted on Anstruther's quick temper as an active agent. Such a man would be the first to rebel against an assumption of pitying tolerance. He would bring bitter charges of conspiracy, of unbelievable compact to secure his ruin. All this must recoil on his own head when the facts were laid bare. Not even the hero of the island could prevail against the terrible indictment of the court-martial. Finally, at Singapore, three days distant, ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... ship with infinite care. Presently there came the gentlest of impacts and then a clanking sound. The appearance out the vision-port became stationary, but still unbelievable. The Med Ship was grappled magnetically to a vast ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... be doing here?" Tom wondered. "Is he, too, one of the conspirators? It is unbelievable! Yet with what speed he obeyed Evarts's summons to come and bail him out! It makes me feel like a sneak to be here spying on the president of the company that employs me—-and yet there's something here that certainly ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... started, and nearer and nearer came the terrible curve. The train was now running at fifteen miles an hour, a speed almost unbelievable to the simple souls of that time. Round the curve it went in safety, increasing its velocity to eighteen miles an hour. The railroad officials who were Cooper's guests were frantic with enthusiasm. One man produced ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... planned, and Lucia liked his pleasant face at once. He was full of enthusiasm for the country, loved the outdoor life. "Mr. Jones has had hard luck, though," he said, as they whirled along the road on an afternoon of unbelievable heat. ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... supreme test of his life, Zaidos found himself fit. As the work went on and on, endlessly as it seemed, Zaidos found that his brain commenced to work independently of his hands. The unbelievable wounds of war no longer shocked his deadened nerves. His hands worked more and more accurately and rapidly, but on the inside of his brain was a sort of screen on which flashed the ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... it more than forty years ago? The gold! The gold that for nearly half a century had lain with the bones of its dead, alone with its terrible secret, alone until Donald MacDonald had found it again! He had not told Joanne the story of it, the appalling and almost unbelievable tragedy of it. He had meant to do so. But they had talked of other things. He had meant to tell her that it was not the gold itself that was luring him far to the north—that it was not the gold alone that was taking ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... her age—why, he was even a little bald—a man who had travelled, who knew people of title, knew books, and manners, and languages—that he should marry an undertaker's daughter in Los Lobos! It was unbelievable. Clara's only misgiving during her short engagement was that he would disappear like a dream. She agreed with everything he said; even carrying her new allegiance to the point of laughing a little at her own people: the layer cakes her mother ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... Child.—There are on record fabulous cases of children crying in the uterus during pregnancy, and all sorts of unbelievable stories have been constructed from these reported occurrences. Quite possible, however, and worthy of belief are the cases in which the child has been heard to cry during the progress of parturition—that is, during delivery. Jonston speaks of infants crying in the womb, and attempts a scientific ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... freezing cold. He called at a bleak two o'clock and as they shook hands he wondered confusedly whether he had ever kissed her; it was almost unbelievable—he seriously doubted if ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... come to her—wrote it to him in a letter. It brought him a rude awakening from his dream of bliss. That such a charge should be brought against him at all was bitter enough, but that it could be repeated to him by "Helen" seemed unbelievable. ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... municipality gave a reception to the members. The shady gardens and sunny terrace were the scene of many social gatherings.[228] The congress opened with a roll call of the suffrage victories and the responses showed the almost unbelievable record that twenty countries had enfranchised their women during the years of the war! The Official Report was edited by Miss Chrystal Macmillan, recording secretary of the International Alliance, and the Introduction was a graphic ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... Cantwell prided himself on his strength and stamina, therefore the truth was unbelievable. He and Mort had long been partners, they had given and taken much at each other's hands, but this was something altogether different. Grant had saved his life, at risk of his own; the older man's endurance had been the greater ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... fact that any one in creation should not know what an archaeologist was seemed unbelievable, but a fact it evidently was. So he explained and the explanation, under questioning, became lengthy. Primmie's exclamations, "My savin' soul" and "My Lord of Isrul" became more and more frequent. Mr. Bloomer interjected a remark here and there. At length a sound ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... entered into all the work of the nursery school and helped the children for months to retain a breath of the country in their London surroundings. They realised much from that visit. Cows now have horns, wasps have wings and fly—alas they sting also. Hens sit on eggs, an almost unbelievable thing. Fishes, newts, tadpoles, were all met with and greeted as friends. Children and helpers alike returned home full of health and vigour and longing for the next time. One little maid wept bitterly, ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... over with exuberant happiness. The unbelievable had come to pass. She and Mary were once more chums. She longed to tell Mary all that was in her heart, but refrained. For to-day it was better to live on the surface of things. Later there would be plenty of time for confidences. After breakfast she mentioned rather timidly ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... Keston was about to interrupt once more, to tell the Council of the thought coil, the most unbelievable part of the miracle he had wrought. But something seemed to warn me that he should not speak. Standing behind him I nudged him, while I myself replied: "Yes, Your Excellency." The chief flung me a startled look, ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... a fireplace in that bungalow, and a fairly large living-room surrounding the fireplace. The Happy Family extravagantly indulged themselves in wood, even at the unbelievable price they must pay for it; and after supper they would light the fire and hunt up chairs enough, and roll cigarettes, and talk themselves quite away from the present and into ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... astonishing, almost unbelievable fact that, although nearly all industrial and trade pursuits have come under some sort of public regulation, licensing, or supervision—even such minor trades as shoeblacking, fruit peddling, and mere popcorn and peanut selling—land dealing, one of the ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... had laid in the grass-tussocks, the men going forth with the tailing-mob—and at intervals the scorching recollection of that hinted scandal concerning Colin and Mrs Hensor of which Maule had told her.... Horrible... unbelievable... and yet.... ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... from the Wescott house and from Willow Springs, Iowa, feeling that life was essentially ugly. In a way she hated life and people. In Chicago sometimes it was unbelievable how ugly the world had become. She tried to shake off the feeling but it clung to her. She walked through the crowded streets and the buildings were ugly. A sea of faces floated up to her. They were the faces of dead people. The dull death that was in them was in her ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... we found trees that we had not found in our islands, and of an unbelievable height and girth. Upon the boughs sat parrots, and we were used to them, but we were not used to monkeys which now appeared, to our mariners' delight. We met footprints of some great animal, and presently, being beside a stream, we made out ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... of disappointment. She had expected something quite different. The adjective "astonishing" seemed strangely cold and unlike Ronnie. She had thought he would say "wonderful," or "unbelievable," or "glorious." ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... with some surprise his head was right down through the neck ring and inside the suit proper, his arms half withdrawn from the sleeves, knees buckled to an almost unbelievable angle considering the dimensions of ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... of events, startling, almost unbelievable and utterly unexpected, such as only take place in real life. Had this story been the outcome of my own imagination, I should never dare to relate them; but because I have undertaken the task of writing what actually took place I ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... was called for camping, as the early winter darkness set in, the unbelievable thing happened. Jan, the first dog to be loosed, took one long, ardent sniff at the trail before him and then loped on ahead with never a backward ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... is none to tell us. That which is actually happening were unbelievable if we did not see it, from hour to hour, from day to day. Horror succeeding horror has in some sort blunted our sensibilities. Not only are our sympathies numbed by the immensity of the slaughter and the sorrow, but patriotism itself is chilled by the selfish thought ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... information in his way, and Blake could think of no better plan than to try once more to sound Caesar Maruffi. If Caesar had really written the letters, it would be strange if he could not be induced to go farther, despite his obvious fear of Cardi. It was unbelievable that a man who knew so much about the Mafia was really in ignorance of its leader's identity, and Blake was convinced that if he acted diplomatically and seized the right occasion he could bring the fellow ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... every brave man in the world was lamenting the death of Scott, the English Arctic explorer, one German paper intimated that he had committed suicide to avoid the bankruptcy forced upon him by England's lack of generosity toward his expedition. It is almost unbelievable that such a cur should have escaped unthrashed, even among the German journalists. These two examples of lack of fine feeling mark them for what they are. Among gentlemen no comment is necessary. The mark of breeding is more often discovered in ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... changes, but as I go about the streets day in and day out, it hardly seems as though Paris were conscious of the war. It is quite unbelievable." ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... appealed to me. There was suddenly something fantastic, unbelievable, in the events ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... successive crashes were like the shock and reverberation of undermined buildings toppling to their ruin. An important bank had suspended payment, and hundreds of depositors had found their little fortunes swept away. The ramifications of the catastrophe were unbelievable. The whole tone of financial affairs seemed changed. Money was "tight" again, credit was withdrawn. The business world began to speak of hard times, ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... on stone, by the hand of man. But in spite of crossing and the clearing of his eyes, Eltz Castle remained firmly seated on its stool of rock, and, when his first astonishment had somewhat abated, Von Richenbach, who was a most practical man, began to realise that here, purely by a piece of unbelievable good luck, the very secret he had been sent to unravel had been stumbled upon, the solving of which he had given up in despair, returning empty-handed to his grim master, the redoubtable Archbishop ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... clear of the jagged ledges when the full force of the tumbling waves was felt. It seemed to the boys that the stern of the little vessel was hurled to an unbelievable height only to drop so far they ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... her, carrying the books. Five. Five. And when you had finished them there would be five more. It was unbelievable. ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... flat purplish acreage of back, forested with endless rows of fins and spines and enigmatic tendrils. The Scoop, he saw, and only half believed it, had wallowed into the shallows alongside his dock. It had reversed its unbelievable length to keep the head submerged, and at the same time had backed out of the water until its leviathan tail spanned the hundred-odd yards of sloping beach from ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee
... they were engaged cutting the ice in order to clear the water. It was already spring tide, and the ice-cakes were drifting toward the sea, but with unbelievable slowness. After all, that's the work for you, he told himself as he turned away. He was conscious of that which lay beneath the surface, but he would not let ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... was indulging his baser nature among the questionable attractions of the Inferno, she'd shot three hundred of her Precol credits on a formal black gown ... on what, yesterday, she would have considered a rather unbelievable gown. Even at an Ermetyne dinner she couldn't actually look dowdy in it. And then, accompanied by Gaya, who had turned out to be a very pleasant but not very communicative companion, she'd headed for a gambling room to make back the ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... come to Madrid from a hamlet of Lugo, at the age of fifteen, in search of a living. Within twenty years, by dint of unbelievable economies, he had hoarded up from his wages in a bakery some three or four thousand pesetas, and with this capital he established a little grocery. His wife stood behind the counter while he continued to work in the bakery and hoard his earnings. When his son grew up he assigned ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... movement has arisen in response to actual material needs, it is now a very great and material actuality. The workingmen of the world are, as we have seen, uniting at a pace so rapid as to be almost unbelievable. There are to-day not only great national organizations of labor in nearly every country, but these national movements are bound closely together into one unified international power. The great world-wide movement of labor, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... seemed as though they had ceased to flow. He sat at the head of his table, and his eyes never left those pencilled words. His mind fought with them, discarded them, only to find them still there hammering at his brain, traced in letters of scarlet upon the distant walls. War! The great, unbelievable tragedy, the one thousand-to-one chance in life which he had ever taken! His hand almost fell to his side. There was a queer little silence. No one liked to ask him a question; no one liked to speak. It was the Duchess at last who murmured ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... any dinner, Susan," said Mrs. Blythe wildly. "Oh, this thing is unbelievable—it must ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... being renovated. She would take him there as soon as he could be moved. When he was strong again he would start his newspaper. Holt and Lacey were as overjoyed at the prospect of being his assistant editors as at the almost unbelievable rescue of ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... idiot, you! You young idiot!" he said in a tone of such affection that it was unbelievable to my ears. And as I heard it, I knew that all my trials and disgraces and puzzlings were over, and I turned my head upon Roxanne's back hair and wept tears, the first time in my life—and ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and so it is among the junior commands, down to the semi-isolated posts where boy-Napoleons live on their own, through unbelievable adventures. They are inventive young devils, these veterans of 21, possessed of the single ideal—to kill—which they follow with men as single-minded as themselves. Battlefield tactics do not exist; when a whole nation goes to ground there can be none of the "victories" of the ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... coverings were unruffled. Sighard lifted its hangings and peered under and behind them in a sort of frantic hope; for though there was no sound, and no answer to his whispering of the well-loved name of his master, it seemed unbelievable that from this little chamber a man should have gone utterly and without a sound during these few minutes. Yet ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... Paul Droulde, a man of thought, of purpose, and of action, the idea of being false to the thing loved, of hate and love being interchangeable, was absolutely foreign and unbelievable. He had never hated the thing he loved or loved the thing he hated. A man's feelings in these respects are so much less complex, so ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... in this strain on one occasion, and the effect upon him was unbelievable. Everything seemed different to him. The golden furniture in the finest room in the castle no longer seemed to be of gold. It was merely painted yellow, he thought. Even the Sleeping Beauty seemed changed in his eyes. Her face did not seem so perfect, after all! There were moments ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... a curious, crablike motion. Upon its face were stamped countless wrinkles and its blackness seemed less that of pigmentation than the weathering of unbelievable years, the very stain of ancientness. And about neither face nor figure was there anything to show whether ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... domestic use. I also doubt that the majority of Israelites are inclined to outrage the holy wafers. To accuse them of doing so would be to believe that they are as deeply convinced of the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ as we are ourselves. Sacrilege without faith is unbelievable, and the Jew who stabbed a host rendered by that very deed a sincere homage to the truth of transubstantiation. These are fables, my boy, to be left to the ignorant and, if I throw them in the face of that ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... seriously, judging by their looks. But the maples and some more of them, particularly the maples, with daredevil recklessness, have resolved, as it were, to die with their boots on, and flame out in such violent and unbelievable colors that we feel obliged to take testimony in certain outrageous cases, and file away the exhibits in the Family Bible where nobody will bother them. The harvest is past, the summer is ended. Rainy days you can see ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... ferocity of the tempest, nor was there indication of any. She could only guess at the distance she had been carried for she could not believe in the correctness of the high figures that had been piled upon the record of her odometer. They seemed unbelievable and yet, had she known it, they were quite true—in twelve hours she had flown and been carried by the storm full seven thousand haads. Just before dark she was carried over one of the deserted cities ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that all his surmises were correct. The news of Donelson produced for a little while a sort of paralysis at Richmond, and when it reached Nashville, where the army of Johnston was gathering, it was at first unbelievable. It produced so much excitement and confusion that a small brigade sent to the relief of Donelson was not called back, and marched blindly into the little town of Dover, where it found itself surrounded by the whole triumphant Union ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... bodies of the trunks; of troops of cavalry ridden on the prostrate trees. No one but has heard of the dancing-floor or the dinner-table cut from a single cross-section; and probably few but have seen some of the fibrous bark of unbelievable thickness. The Mariposa, Calaveras, and Santa Cruz groves have ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... amazement when Jack read aloud the letter from Captain Martin. It seemed almost unbelievable to some of the boys. Others who always made it a practice to glean all the baseball news in the city papers that came to certain Chester homes, may have known that such evil practices had been attempted occasionally, especially where unprincipled ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... upon firm ground after crossing the morasses he realized why it was that for perhaps countless ages this territory had defied the courage and hardihood of the heroic races of the outer world that had, after innumerable reverses and unbelievable suffering penetrated to practically every other region, from ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... The fulfilled vision of the learned scholar he had come so far to see capped with nicety the climax of this absurd adventure. What an utter fool, what an unbelievable idiot he had made of himself! For the moment he saw clear and all normal reactions proved inadequate. ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... embroidered in wool and silk on canvas in solid, ugly frames. When one remembers that all those objects were standing in the same places and precisely in the same order when I was a little child, and used to come here to name-day parties with my mother, it is simply unbelievable that they could ever ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... sky behind the foaming wake of the packet was a blaze of glory. The sinking sun wove a cloth of gold on the halo of cloud about it, and circled the horizon with a belt of rose and opal. Gradually the gold faded into fiery purple, with arms of unbelievable green stretching out to clasp the round cup of ocean; the purple died away reluctantly like the drums of a triumphant march receding to a distance; night took sea and sky into her arms, and crooned to them a mother-song ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... (provided we remain humble) is the humorous discovery of the ordinariness of the extraordinary. Here was this disrupter of society, this man of the red flag—here he was with his mild spectacled eyes and his furry ears wagging as he walked. It was unbelievable!—and the sun shining on him quite as impartially as it shone ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... health. Of course, if a member of your family is seriously ill, your doctor will come with all haste when summoned. But he is a busy man who often works from before breakfast until nearly midnight covering unbelievable distances in his automobile. So, if you can report illness clearly, give exact symptoms, and have a stock of the simple medicines that you can administer as he directs, both the sick person and the physician gain. Present-day country doctors show their appreciation for such cooperation by the ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... It does exactly the same for a human being, burns him out and fills him with clinkers. Many people think that it is a hardship to be moderate in eating and drinking, but it is not. It brings such a feeling of well-being and comfort that it is unbelievable to those who ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... looked straight into my eyes, as if she doubted that she saw aright. Then, an unbelievable thing happened. Her eyes grew cold as glass. Her lips tightened into a line which I had not dreamed their soft curves could take. Her youth and beauty froze under my gaze. With a haughty lifting ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... said Baker, recovering with a smile now. "But it's hardly an accurate or applicable one. The human mind is not a piece of precious metal found in a mountain of ore. Rather, it's an intricate device capable of producing computations of unbelievable complexity. And we know how such devices that are superior in function are produced, and we know what their characteristics are. We also know that such a device does not 'play out'. If it is superior in function, it can remain so ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... unbelievable thing to happen in Egypt, the land of veiled and secluded women. It was wonderful enough to know that the great Hahmed was taking unto himself a wife, but that that wife should suddenly appear from out of the desert unknown, unseen—well, it took one's ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... as would have mining operations and perhaps even a trade to Cathay. Such was the general prospect to which so many adventurers had responded in 1609. To the modern student all this seems so unrealistic as to be almost unbelievable, but unless one grasps the reality of the original dream he cannot hope to comprehend the extent of a ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven
... man on your Earth was in harmony with his Creator. This was in the Golden Age when man and the angels of God walked hand in hand; when man communed with God, and when the Christ spirit was abiding in the hearts of the people. In this age man was spiritually developed to a degree almost unbelievable by you. ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... thing sounds impossible!" he burst forth, finally. "Are you telling me that you, alone and unprotected, managed to inveigle this murderer into confessing his crime to you? Gee, it's—it's unbelievable! The four of you would be a great help to me in my profession," he added, ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... the belief of thousands of parents, and the results were appalling. Bok pursued his investigations from books direct into the "Homes of Refuge," "Doors of Hope," and similar institutions, and unearthed a condition, the direct results of the false modesty of parents, that was almost unbelievable. ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... back now. I was merely walking to the gate with Mr. Glenarm. It is so fine to have him back again, so unbelievable!” ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... matter, the whole transaction had been characterised by almost unbelievable rapidity. And that square opening of the window-port was hardly vacant when Lanyard sprang to his feet; the fugitive had barely time to find his own upon the outer deck before Lanyard leaped after him; the first thumps upon the panels of his door were ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... braids over her extraordinary cloak; and her big eyes were child's eyes. What her figure was like, except that she was a tall, long-legged, upstanding young creature, no one could judge, not even an anatomist, because of that weird wrap. As a cloak it was a shocking production—a hideous, unbelievable contribution to cloakhood from the hands of a mantle-making vandal—but it caught the man's interest, because before his eyes danced the hunting tartan of the MacDonalds of Dhrum. Once that particular combination of green, blue, ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... expected me to react from that and set things afire overseas. I didn't. I didn't begin to come up to your expectations at all. But if I didn't split Germans with a sword or do any heroics I did get some horse sense knocked into me—unbelievable as that may appear to you. I learned that there was a sort of satisfaction in doing things. I'm having a try at that now. And you needn't imagine I'm going to be wet-nursed along ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... illustrations of present needs and opportunities for service in this respect in the smaller communities. One of the first tasks of the church is the introduction of correct thought in regard to religious beliefs. It is almost unbelievable the amount of actual superstition and positively harmful beliefs that prevail under the guise of religion not only in rural but in urban communities. An example of this is the widespread belief in the second coming of Christ at an early date. Educational institutions of national ...
— Church Cooperation in Community Life • Paul L. Vogt
... silence—minutes during all of which the Master remained calmly waiting, with grave confidence. Bohannan shuddered a little. His Celtic imagination was at work, again. Uncanny the attack seemed to him, unreal and ghostlike. So, perhaps, might strange, unbelievable creatures from some other planet attack and conquer ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... testimony? The babblings of a half-witted herder! He had asked the men of Heart's Desire to hear both sides of his own case. The men of Heart's Desire had heard both sides of the railroad's case. But he had condemned without trial the woman whom he loved—her—Constance! It was impossible, unbelievable of ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... historic period, thus bringing deified men and women down to earth again. Such persons accept the records of Jimmu-Tenno's origin as essentially accurate in so far as they state what is human and reasonable, rejecting them only when they set forth what is supernatural, and, to them, unbelievable. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... unbelievable that after three whole days so little of the actual affair should be known. The sensation caused was a big one, but it remained in the nature of an enigma. Rumour in several quarters had it that Lady Clifford had simply committed suicide ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... in his supposition about the world's governess. Braybrooke had gone away from the Club that evening firmly persuaded that his young friend had done the almost unbelievable thing, had fallen in love with Adela Sellingworth. He was really perturbed about it. A tremulous sense of the fitness of things governed his whole life, presided as it were over all his actions and ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... to find the waters higher than ever appeared before, with a property loss that two days before would have been unbelievable. It was hard to bring the full realization of the damage to the people, who had no thought of a flood from streams that ordinarily are unimportant, aiding only in beautifying the ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... however the human heart cried out against the argument of desecrated flesh, the spirit could call mightily upon God, challenging Him to grant the chrism of fulfilment in return for this wild sacrifice of blood, as the horror of life when peace was exercising her rights in unbelievable ways. This he was going to explain to Dick, if he could manage it, while he set forth also his need of retreating from the active scene and leaving some of his formerly accepted duties on Dick's shoulders. As he sat there, gaunt, long, lean ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... sceptical. incredulous as to, skeptical as to; distrustful as to, shy as to, suspicious of; doubting &c v.. doubtful &c (uncertain) 475; disputable; unworthy of, undeserving of belief &c 484; questionable; suspect, suspicious; open to suspicion, open to doubt; staggering, hard to believe, incredible, unbelievable, not to be believed, inconceivable; impossible &c 471. fallible &c (uncertain) 475; undemonstrable; controvertible &c (untrue) 495. Adv. cum grano salis [Lat.], with a grain of salt; with grains of allowance. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of every sort and kind, in print, speech, and writing, will roll unceasingly over their civilized realms, involving an unbelievable waste in labor and time, and sapping the intelligence talk is supposed to upbuild. In a simian civilization, great halls will be erected for lectures, and great throngs will actually pay to go inside at night to hear some ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... concerned. He prepares the nourishment. He cooks eternally, imperturbably, suspended in the chaos of which the Master interprets the meaning. Tinsley, bowed down with the laurels of both hemispheres, raises himself to yet nobler heights in his capacity of a devoted chef. It is almost unbelievable! And yet men write of the Master as cold, aloof, self-contained. Such characters do not elicit the joyous and unswerving devotion which Lavalle commanded throughout life. Truly, we have changed very little in the course of the ages! The secrets of earth ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... sir, and unbelievable. Not rustling any more, but just wholesale herd-stealing, in which some big cattlemen, supposed to be honest, are equally guilty with the outlaws. On this border, you know, the rustler has always been able to steal cattle in any numbers. ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... that some unpleasant incident must have occurred, we did not press her for the story of it. Then, you came, and without mincing your words you told the whole brutal truth; and you uttered it with a spirit of brutality and bravado that would be unbelievable under any other circumstances. And when, in your own self-abasement for what you had done, you confessed to the acts of which you were guilty toward Miss Langdon, you received, at Duncan's hands, the blow you ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... not been referred to between them until the third evening, when they took counsel of their tobacco apart from the other men, sprawling on the grass in a friendly intimacy that Archie found flattering. A plain, hard-fisted farmer liked him and showed a preference for his society; the thing was unbelievable. ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... contestants. Yet each student felt no compulsion. Rather he felt that he was initiating an individual or class effort to win. The literary societies vied with each other in their programs and in getting new members, going every term to unbelievable efforts to win over the others. They would go miles out on the trains to intercept new students, even to their homes in other states. Each old student pledged new students in his home country. The military companies turned the school into a military camp for weeks each year, scarcely ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... of a fortnight in close proximity to Angela—it was magnificent, unbelievable! He strove to control ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... are wide of the truth—what they told me up at the Treasury Department set me thinking and I found some papers aboard that sloop we captured that opened up a startling line of action that might be unbelievable if it were any other man than the eccentric ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... people— drummed out of the towns on the other side of the Marne, that is to say, the near-by towns, like those in the plain, and on the hilltops from which the Germans were driven before the 10th—began to return on that night; less than a fortnight after they fled. It was unbelievable to me when I saw ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... plan of campaign. The lions had now disappeared over the brow of the hill. I looked at my watch and the hour was not yet nine o'clock. We were still in sight of the distant house-tops of Nairobi. It seemed unbelievable. ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... that the rest hummed a little first, then shouted in a rousing chorus. Then they drank more, amid a perfect fracas of talk and laughter. Ivan Petrovitch and Athanase Georgevitch walked across and kissed the general. Rouletabille saw all around him great children who amused themselves with unbelievable naivete and who drank in a fashion more unbelievable still. Matrena Petrovna smoked cigarettes of yellow tobacco incessantly, rising almost continually to make a hurried round of the rooms, and after having prompted the servants to greater watchfulness, ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... "Organizer"! It was unbelievable! The thought gave him a sickening feeling at the pit of his stomach and actually made ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... was my first intimation. Somehow it came absolutely unexpectedly: of course, one lives in the middle of these awful sights and happenings, but he was so strong and so full of energy that it seemed unbelievable that he should be taken. He has been a friend of mine, and a very real one, for a good many years now. I saw him not long ago. He would have been sure to have got a Brigade soon if this terrible thing had not happened. I have ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... an unbelievable thing. The mountaineer upon whose coolness and courage he had absolutely relied had not ventured the crossing at all! He had wheeled after firing and kicked his mount into wild flight, making for the protection of the turn about which they had ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... poor little spirit I had wronged With life that was no life. What had befallen Since yesterday? No need to stop and ask! Back there in the dark places of my mind Where I had thrust it, fearing to believe An unbelievable mercy, shone the news Told by the village neighbors coming home Last night from the great city, of a man Arisen, like the first evangelists, With power to heal the bodies of the sick, In testimony of his master Christ, Who heals the soul when it is sick with sin. Could such a thing be true ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... from her. The waiter looked on sardonically. At another table were two derelicts from one of the Garden side shows. A truculent and beady-eyed dwarf whose face hardly showed above the boards was brow-beating a cringing giant of unbelievable immensity. "You crabbed my act, you big stiff," shrilled the midget truculently—and his huge vis-a-vis fell into a volume of excuse ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... should remember that human beings are fundamentally resilient and resourceful. Children's springs of life and vitality are powerful. Their need to affirm themselves as persons is undeniable, and any experience of love that they have is reinforcing. Experiences of unlove are to them unbelievable and point, fundamentally and finally, to the necessity and believability of love. While our children are dependent upon us for their personal environment in which to grow up, they bring powers and resources to their growing up which are independent of us. They bring something to the ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... the draw is timed is not the sport of even good shots, and when Tex made sixty points out of a possible hundred, he felt that he had shot well. When Hopalong went to the line his friends knew that they would now see shooting such as would be almost unbelievable, that the best draw-and-shoot marksman in their State was the man who limped slightly as he advanced and who chewed reflectively on his fifty-cent cigar. He wore two guns and he stepped with confidence before the marshal of the town, who was also ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... ground with involuntary gestures, helping ourselves sometimes with the rifle. Mechanically the eye fastens on some detail of the declivity, of the ruined ground, on the sparse and shattered stakes pricking up, at the wreckage in the holes. It is unbelievable that we are upright in full daylight on this slope where several survivors remember sliding along in the darkness with such care, and where the others have only hazarded furtive glances through the loopholes. No, there is no firing against us. The wide exodus of the battalion out of the ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse |
