"Certainty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this small TREATISE may put some Persons upon a previous Examination of Robust Females, that they may be at a certainty with respect to mutual Enjoyment; but I would not have them rashly conclude from large Appurtenances only, that they are unnatural, but, on ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob
... enthusiast—in his mind he called him the young fool—in order to weigh in the balance the mighty possibilities that would accrue from the present sequence of events. The fixed idea ever working in the man's scheming brain had already transformed a vague belief into a certainty. That the Scarlet Pimpernel was in Paris at the present moment Chauvelin had now become convinced. How far he could turn the capture of Armand St. Just to the triumph of his own ends remained to ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... on him, just as Jessie, three days before, had placed a value on him; and it disturbed Bull. For so many years, he had been mocked and scorned by his uncle and cousins that deep in his mind was engraved the certainty that he was useless. He decided to hurry on before the girl found out ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... that, now they were beaten in war, he feared they would betake themselves to it, and so do by their devilish wisdom what they could not do by force; and verily this did look much like the beginning of their enchantments. "That the Devil helpeth the heathen in this matter, I do myself know for a certainty," said Caleb Powell; "for when I was at Port Royal, many years ago, I did see with mine eyes the burning of an old negro wizard, who had done to death many of the whites, as well as his own people, by a charm which ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... of it! Not only the break with eight centuries of history—nay, more, for when had not every king his council of notables?—not only the loss of picturesqueness and sentiment and lofty mien, but the certainty, the appalling certainty, that, when an aristocracy of birth falls, it is not an aristocracy of character or intellect, but an aristocracy—save the mark—of money, which is bound to take ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... microscope cannot be overestimated, at least in the examination of the sputa of a human being, and thus being able to state positively whether or not the man is suffering from consumption (Tuberculosis). How important it is to be able to state with certainty at an early date whether or not the patient is suffering from cancer of the stomach, by examining the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... very quickly at Croker's Hall, but not so quickly but that Mary knew well what was going on in Mr Whittlestaff's mind. How is it that a girl understands to a certainty the state of a man's heart in regard to her,—or rather, not his heart, but his purpose? A girl may believe that a man loves her, and may be deceived; but she will not be deceived as to whether he wishes to marry her. Gradually came the conviction on Miss ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... certainty, if I had the necessary materials, which can only be procured with money. I truly believe Sewatis and I could do very nearly the whole ...
— Neal, the Miller - A Son of Liberty • James Otis
... is asserted that within the Green Dragon tavern, a favorite meeting-place of the Whigs, were finally decided the means by which the workmen of the town should carry out the plans of the leaders. But of these meetings nothing is positively known; all we can say with certainty is that the plans worked perfectly, and that Sam Adams must have had a hand ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... reference to a question of Masonic procedure in America. So far as I am aware the existence of either of the Bodies you refer to is unknown to any of the Masonic Body in Ireland, and I can, with almost certainty, make the same statement in reference to the English and Scotch Masons. Having been for nearly twenty-seven years the Acting Head of the Order in Ireland, I can speak with authority, and you are at liberty in my name to give the most emphatic contradiction to the statements quoted from the book. ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... process is fatally vicious, first, if any material circumstance from which we seek to deduce the conclusion depends itself on conjecture; and, second, if the known facts are not such as to exclude to a reasonable degree of certainty every other hypothesis." ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... found only in this procedure a satisfactory method of bestowing presents upon his two friends ... I would I could see that long hand once more, the sensitive fingers poised upon a half-camembert; the bodiless arm swinging gently and surely with a derrick-like grace and certainty in my direction.... ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... strolling on the quay, I came across a man I believed I recognized, though I could not place him with certainty. I instinctively went more slowly, ready to pause. The stranger saw my impulse, looked at me, and fell ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... understood the physical reason for his perfect poise. The wiry, sinuous muscles, packed compactly without obtrusion, played beneath the skin like those of a panther. He walked as softly and as easily as one, with something of the rippling, unconscious grace of that jungle lord. It was this certainty of himself that vivified the steel-gray eyes which looked forth unafraid, and yet amiably, upon a world primitive enough to demand proof of every man who would hold the ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... to hear the melancholy captive soothing his imprisonment with music. Blondel touched his harp; the prisoner heard and was silent: upon this the minstrel played the first part of a tune, or lay, known to the captive; who instantly played the second part; and thus, the faithful servant obtained the certainty that the inmate of the castle was no other than his royal master."—Tales of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... thirty thousand pesos were not intended for the fleet, for the fleet did not sail, nor is it expected that it will ever sail during the governor's life. Neither was it used as a means of help for the infantry, who go complaining through the streets. Indeed I cannot tell whether any one can say with certainty what has been done with that sum; although it is said that another very large sum, which the governor obtained from the citizens almost by a forced loan, was spent in the preparation of the ships in the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... impossible, at this time, to recover with complete certainty the antiquity of the bed. We may presume that the Neanderthal man had a wife (as wives were then understood) and maintained a kind of housekeeping that may have gone no further than pawing some leaves together to sleep on; but this probably was a late development. Earlier ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... colony of ants, the generations had crowded one on another, now swept away by the stamp of a conqueror's heel and now succeeded by another toiling swarm, building anew each time out of ruin, undaunted by the certainty of destruction, taught nothing by the fate of their precursors. From the profound sense of despair which the contemplation of the uselessness of human effort, and the waste of human life, produces on the scholar's mind, it was a relief to ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... that in the eternal rightness of things such mornings ought to be theirs till the youth in them was quenched in sober age. He had looked into the eyes of this slim young Diana, and he had throbbed to the certainty that she too in that moment of tangled glances knew a sweet confusion of the blood. In her cheeks there had been a quick flame of flying color. Their talk had fallen from them, and they had ridden in a shy, exquisite silence from which ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... legal services can be bought, but I never thought for an instant that you could secure zeal such as his for anything less than I offered him. And he's been so superb! He's given himself up to the thing absolutely. He's followed every trail with a scent—- with a certainty—your other men, your Kilcup and Warren, would never have been capable of. I've seen that; I'm sure of it. He has a wonderful mind, and in his way he has the kindest heart in the world. I'm very, very fond of him, and I'm deeply grateful. Next to seeing you ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... this thought became almost a certainty. His head began again to ache terribly, his eyes seemed to swim in pools of liquid fire. Bright flashes of light darted through his brain, and at times it seemed almost on fire. The pain which the constant effort to turn his head caused, ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... History records that the widow of Spalding sent the manuscript to Conneaut, where it was publicly compared with the printed book and the fraud exposed. Soon afterward the manuscript was spirited away from Mrs. Spalding, probably to avoid the certainty of a still more convincing disclosure. Major Gilbert testified that Rigdon dogged Smith's footsteps about Palmyra for nearly two years before the Bible was printed. He is of opinion that Rigdon was among those who listened ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... geodetically, and it accords with calculation, but the observations are extremely delicate; in Newton's time the size was only barely known, the shape was not observed till long after; but on the principles of mechanics, combined with a little common-sense reasoning, it could be calculated with certainty and accuracy. ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... national unity and integrity against a rebellion which, probably, no other people could have survived, gives reasonable assurance for their future. The leaders of the rebellion, than whom none better knew or more nicely calculated the strength and resources of the Union, counted with certainty on success, and the ablest, the most experienced, and best informed statesmen of the Old World felt sure that the Republic was gone, and spoke of it as the late United States. Not a few, even in the loyal States, who had no sympathy with the rebellion, believed it idle to think of suppressing ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... of a classic type, without spot or blemish, but her joints looked too heavy and her neck was thrust without grace between her large shoulders. Anyone who looked into the future would have been able to predict for her, with some certainty, an honourable career as a tragedian ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... thought I might lippen him awee to try his hand in the shaping line, especially with the clothes of such of our customers as I knew were not very nice, provided they got enough of cutting from the Manchester manufacture, and room to shake themselves in. The upshot, however, proved to a moral certainty, that such a length of tether is not chancey for youth, and that a master cannot be too much on the head of ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... queries, but cannot answer them with any certainty. For the Malays I should say Yes to 1, 3, 8, 9, 10 and 17, and No to 12, 13 and 16; but I cannot be certain in any one. But do you think these things are of much importance? I am inclined to think that if you could get good direct observations you would find some of them often ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... certainty of the impending collision, Apries sought to strengthen his power for resistance by attaching to his own empire the Phoenician towns of the Syrian coast, whose adhesion to his side would secure him, at any rate, the maritime superiority. ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... these lines he wept with shame and humiliation. Two battles had been already won, and his name had remained dark and unknown; two battles, and none of those heroic deeds which his beloved expected from him with such certainty, had come in his path. He had performed his duty as a brave soldier, but he had not accomplished such an heroic act as that of Krauel, in the past year, which had raised the common soldier to the title of Baron Krauel von Ziskaberg, and had given to the unknown ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... Mallet while he accumulated his observations with feverish activity and subjected them to the first rough examination even if one cannot share his confidence that he had succeeded in measuring the depth "in miles and yards with the certainty that belongs ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... in talk and ramble, in friendly fight and brotherly aid. I would not forge for myself armour of heavy mail like theirs, for I was not so powerful as they, and depended more for any success I might secure, upon nimbleness of motion, certainty of eye, and ready response of hand. Therefore I began to make for myself a shirt of steel plates and rings; which work, while more troublesome, was better suited to me than the heavier labour. Much assistance did the brothers give me, even after, by their instructions, ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... scorching sand; who leaves intaglio impressions of his mortal coil on the wet ground, at every camp from the Murray to the Gulf; and whose only satisfaction in the cold which curls him up like cinnamon bark—making him nearly break his back in the effort to hold his shoulders together—is the certainty that in six months he will scrape away the hot surface sand, in order to sleep comfortably on the more temperate stratum beneath; he is the man who, with some incoherent protest and becoming invective, metaphorically makes a Raleigh-cloak of himself, to afford free and pleasant passage ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... of the immediately useful and practically attainable. In both these departments, I have acquired more from her teaching than from all other sources taken together. And, to say truth, it is in these two extremes principally, that real certainty lies. My own strength lay wholly in the uncertain and slippery intermediate region, that of theory, or moral and political science; respecting the conclusions of which, in any of the forms in which I have received or originated them, whether as political economy, analytic psychology, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... great nature's or our own abyss Of thought we could but snatch a certainty, Perhaps mankind might find the path they miss— But then 't would spoil much good philosophy. One system eats another up, and this Much as old Saturn ate his progeny; For when his pious consort gave him stones In lieu of sons, of these ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... manifold application of given artistic forms in useful common objects is able to account for that very slow, gradual and unconscious alteration of them which constitutes the spontaneous evolution of artistic form; and only such manifold application could have given that almost automatic certainty of taste which allowed the great art of the past to continue perpetually changing, through centuries and centuries, and adapting itself over immense geographical areas to every variation of climate, topography, mode of life, or religion. Unless the ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... you might think. The entreaties were prompted by Gerald's growing certainty that whatever was the matter was somehow the fault of that ring. And in this Gerald was ("once more, as he ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... could feel the air rushing past me, making my hair stream out by the force of the unwholesome blast. Then the paroxysm sometimes ceased for a few moments, and I would sink back on my pallet, drenched with perspiration, utterly exhausted, and feeling a dreadful certainty of the renewal of ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... an impulse to knock the man down, and then fight the whole party until death should end the matter; but the good-humoured look on his jailer's face, the fact that the man had saved his life the day before, and the certainty of defeat with such odds against him, induced him to quell the evil spirit and ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... with the picturesque characteristics of a mountain region; the climate admirably suited, thence to the summit, for Europeans, and capable of producing most European and tropical plants to perfection. Coffee plantations on these hills might be undertaken with certainty of success, and there is much in the character of the natives which would facilitate the operation. To the westward of Lokar, and somewhat lower, is a fine extensive plain, which we just skirted coming down; it was cultivated in every part, apparently ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... of strength. Pelle was no longer the poor journeyman shoemaker, who found it difficult enough to make his way. He became one, as he stood there, with that vast being; he felt its strength swelling within him; the little finger shares in the strength of the whole body. A blind certainty of irresistibility went out from this mighty gathering, a spur to ride the storm with. His limbs swelled; he became a vast, monstrous being that only needed to go trampling onward in order to conquer everything. His brain was whirling with energy, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... thirty-three or thirty-four years could be explained on the supposition of five widely different periods, combined with varying degrees of extension in the revolving group. Professor Newton himself gave the preference to the shortest—of 354-1/2 days, but indicated the means of deciding with certainty upon the true one. It was furnished by the advancing motion of the node, or that day's delay of the November shower every seventy years, which the old chronicles had supplied data for detecting. For this is a strictly measurable effect of gravitational disturbance by the various planets, ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... however had disappeared 93 on the day after the battle, taken by whom I am not able with certainty to say, but I have heard the names of many men of various cities who are said to have buried Mardonios, and I know that many received gifts from Artontes the son of Mardonios for having done this: who he was however who took up and buried the body of Mardonios I am not able ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... joy and triumph. All those past letters had been kept by him, and were now lying under lock and key in his desk, tied together with green silk, ready to be returned when the absolute fact of that other marriage should have become a certainty. He half made up his mind to return the present missive unopened. He knew that good could not arise from a renewed correspondence. Nevertheless, he tore asunder the envelope, and the words which met his eye ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... one piece of music contains so many points of harmony and orchestration that had never been written before, and yet none of them have the air of experiment, but seem all to have been written with certainty ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... was no longer fear that possessed him. It was the horrible, overwhelming certainty of the thing. The years fell from him, and he sobbed—sobbed like a boy stricken by some great childish grief, as he searched along the edge of the shore. Over and over again he cried and ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... argument of the alchemists may be rendered by some such form as the foregoing. A careful examination of the alchemical argument shows that it rests on a (supposed) intimate knowledge of nature's plan of working, and the certainty that simplicity is the essential ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... would rather help. I would rather be present. I would rather see, for then I should know to a certainty that it ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... during the sordid drama over the dying man? What kept him from alluding to the matter in any way? Yes, he must have encouraged her to go on. She had been his tool, and he the passive spectator. The blind certainty of a woman made the thing assured, settled. She picked up the faint yellow rose he had laid by her plate, and tore it slowly into fine bits. On the whole, ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... perseverance, professional enthusiasm and rectitude. He is one of the very best friends a young lawyer like me could have; he puts me in the way I should go, and keeps me in it by showing that it is not a matter of chance, but of certainty, that this is the right road to fortune and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... attendant at the lectures of Dr. Spenser, who had never from the first disguised his dislike and contempt for Hyacinth. This gentleman was one day explaining to his class the difference between evidence which leads to a high degree of probability and a demonstration which produces absolute certainty. The subject was a dry one, and quite unsuited to Dr. Spenser, whose heart was set on maintaining a reputation for caustic wit. He cast about for an illustration which would at once make clear the distinction and enliven his lecture. His eye lit upon Hyacinth, upon whose cheek there ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... amusement, but of penury or riches, honor or shame. Suitors were content, not only to make large sacrifices for the assured advantage of his advocacy, but for the bare chance— the distant hope— of having some little part (like that which Phormio desires to retain in Thais) of his faculties, with the certainty of preventing their opposition. There was no just ground, in his case, for the complaint that he received large fees for services he did not render; for the chances were understood by those who adventured in his lottery; in which after all there were comparatively few blanks. His ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... one; for with people dropping in at all hours and wanting to talk to you, how are you to get on with your life, I should like to know, and read your books, and dream your dreams to your satisfaction? Besides, there is always the certainty that either you or the dropper-in will say something that would have been better left unsaid, and I have a holy horror of gossip and mischief-making. A woman's tongue is a deadly weapon and the most difficult thing in the world to keep in order, and things ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... may be foretold with considerable certainty, for a short time, from many hygrometric plants, and the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... truly when he had told Miss Farwell, as they parted, that he had lost something. And now, as he walked the country road, he sought earnestly to regain it; to find again his certainty of mind; to steady his shaken confidence in the work to which ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... able to be jealous of his wife's getting on better than did he. But, if he had been so disposed, he would have found it hard to indulge such feelings because of Madelene. She had put their married life on the right basis. She made him feel, with a certainty which no morbid imagining could have shaken, that she loved and respected him for qualities which could not be measured by any of the world's standards of success. He knew that in her eyes he was already an arrived success, that she was absolutely indifferent whether others ever recognized ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... himself with the eye of an expert. "Pretty well!" he said;—"not so much fallen off as I expected." Then he set up his bolster in a very knowing sort of way, and delivered two or three blows straight as rulers and swift as winks. "That will do," he said. Then, as if determined to make a certainty of his condition, he took a dynamometer from one of the drawers in his old veneered bureau. First he squeezed it with his two hands. Then he placed it on the floor and lifted, steadily, strongly. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... told nothing," I hastily returned, answering the last and most important question first. "Nor must she be; at least not till certainty replaces doubt. She is in a critical state, I am told. To rouse her hopes to-night only to dash them again to-morrow would be ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... already reached a figure which only a short while ago would have been considered utterly unthinkable. (Cheers.) But there is a tendency, perhaps, to overlook the fact that these larger armies require still larger reserves, to make good the wastage at the front. And one cannot ignore the certainty that our requirements in this respect will be large, continuous, and persistent; for one feels that our gallant soldiers in the fighting line are beckoning, with an urgency at once imperious and pathetic, to those who remain at home to come out ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... believed, had kept his secret well. Arrived in sight of the locality, he strained his vision to make out his prize lodged against the fence at the foot of the hill. Approaching nearer, the surface was unbroken, and doubt usurped the place of certainty in his mind. A slight mound marked the site of the porker, but there was no footprint near it. Looking up the hill, he saw where Reynard had walked leisurely down toward his wonted bacon till within a few yards of it, when he had wheeled, and with prodigious strides disappeared in the woods. The ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... Popes elected by cardinals (and too often amid flagrant abuses) cannot truly be said to hold apostolic office direct from the Lord. No, I cannot see that point as others do. But let that pass. What I do maintain, and will hold to with certainty, is that in this land the Catholic Church has never forbidden men to read the Scriptures for themselves in any tongue that pleases them. I have searched statutes and records without end, and held disputations ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... expression of physical sensation becomes imperative, in order to recover evidence of one's physical existence; and thrice welcome, like the violence offered to the half-drowned, is any kind of buffet which breaks the dream, and sets the nerves tingling in the certainty of contact with men ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... country was already warned. There was but this one chance; and on it Amyas, the first and last time in his life, waxed eloquent, and set forth the glory of the enterprise, the service to the queen, the salvation of heathens, and the certainty that, if successful, they should win honor and wealth and everlasting fame, beyond that of Cortez or Pizarro, till the men, sulky at first, warmed every moment; and one old ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... is not only political reasons that oppose a separation; geography, the positions of places force the United States to form a single nation. Strabo, meditating on this vast country now called France, said, with the certainty of genius, that, to look at the nature of the territory, and the course of the waters, it was evident that the forests of Gaul, inhabited by a thinly scattered people, would become the abode of a great people. Nature has disposed our territory to be the theatre of a great civilization. This is also ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... back rather crestfallen on to the bank. It was getting dark, and the rain came down ceaselessly, yet so strong was his certainty that here he should discover the evidence he was looking for, that for another half-hour he plied his trowel diligently. Sometimes when it struck on a stone or the roots of a bramble, he trembled with ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... persons forbidden, under pain of death, to intrude upon their dismal solitude. Yet neither the mandate of the monarch, nor the huge barriers erected at the entrances of the streets, nor the prospect of that loathsome death which, with almost absolute certainty, overwhelmed the wretch whom no peril could deter from the adventure, prevented the unfurnished and untenanted dwellings from being stripped, by the hand of nightly rapine, of every article, such as iron, brass, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... infinite or perfect—that is, of God. For inasmuch as his essence excludes all imperfection, and involves absolute perfection, all cause for doubt concerning his existence is done away, and the utmost certainty on the question is given. This, I think, will be evident to every moderately ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... Fanny did not scruple to ask them all three to meet one another. That was her way. Some day she would carry it too far. Straker, making his dilatory entrance, became aware of the distance to which his hostess had carried it already. It had time to grow on him, from wonder to the extreme of certainty, in his passage down the terrace to the southwest corner. There, on the outskirts of the group, brilliantly and conspicuously disposed, in postures of intimate communion, were young Laurence Furnival and Mrs. Viveash. Straker ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... worthy of the cause. Frank does not shrink from the task: though it is but too evident that he has not changed his opinion! I know not why, but so it is, those two particular sentences continually reverberate in my ear—I feel a certainty of conviction, that you act from mistaken principles—To the end of time I shall persist in thinking you ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... of apprehension scampered up and down Mr. Wordsley's spine. "You killed him." It was a statement of certainty. ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... with which the water surged hither and thither with the rolling and pitching of the little vessel, a wild fear seized upon me that I might find all the provisions in the pantry spoiled. A moment later and my surmise was changed to certainty, for as I opened the door of the small, cupboard- like apartment, a recoiling wave surged out through the doorway, its surface bestrewed with the hard, coarse biscuits that sailors speak of as "bread." The water had risen ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... Carpentaria in the Investigator, I had remarked what appeared to be a considerable error in the relative positions of Booby Isle and the flat-topped York Island, as they are laid down by captain Cook; and to obtain more certainty, the longitude of the flat top had been observed this morning from the time keeper, and I anchored here this afternoon to do the same by Booby Isle. The result showed the difference of longitude between them to be 431/2', differing less ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... or from the jackal, or from an unknown and extinct species. Others again believe, and this of late has been the favourite tenet, that they have descended from several species, extinct and recent, more or less commingled together. We shall probably never be able to ascertain their origin with certainty. Palaeontology[5] does not throw much light on the question, owing, on the one hand, to the close similarity of the skulls of extinct as well as living wolves and jackals, and owing on the other hand to the great dissimilarity ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... that the rival captains shook hands and parted. Each leader would fight tooth and nail to capture the impending game, using all legitimate means to further his ends; but there would be no hard feelings between the opposing players. Harmony's fine act had rendered this a certainty. ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... confronted with one of the great states from which he had been separated by these buffer communities; then it was that the men and money he had appropriated in his conquests would embolden him to provoke or accept battle with some tolerable certainty of victory. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... story we have been able to make out but little; it seems to be mythological, and probably relates to the loves of Diana and Endymion; but of this, as the scope of the work has altogether escaped us, we cannot speak with any degree of certainty; and must therefore content ourselves with giving some instances of its diction and versification:—and here again we are perplexed and puzzled.—At first it appeared to us, that Mr. Keats had been amusing himself and wearying his readers with an immeasurable game at bouts-rimes; but, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... would not marry Le Gardeur was plain enough to De Pean, who knew her ambitious views regarding the Intendant; and that the Intendant would not marry her was equally a certainty to him, although it did not prevent De Pean's entertaining an intense ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... person has an opportunity to quietly witness the whole of a considerable battle. From my position I could see between the lines of the opposing forces; I could note the manoeuvres of each separate organization; and I could almost anticipate to a certainty the result of the attacks and counter attacks. It was at first plainly evident that each commander knew little of what he had to meet. Lieutenant- General Hill's formation, as described by him in his report, was arranged with reference to a supposed force north ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... side, till I have become liable to the character of stupid and insensible. Would it were possible for me to be deceived! But no, the delusion is vanished. I doubt, I hesitate, no longer. All without is certainty, and all within is ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... post have been so unfortunate, and the subject of the present hour is so important, that I have waited all this day for the certainty of a courier, and I am now promised that one shall be dispatched immediately. I was in the country when I received from Mr. Fox an express with the news of Lord Rockingham's death, and an earnest entreaty to come to town; which I did, and found him anxious for the future ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... relation opens up an endless vista of boundless potentialities which can never be exhausted. This is the true nature of the Bible Promises; they were not made by some external Deity about whose ideas we can never have any certainty, but by the Indwelling God, who is at once the Life, the Law, and the Substance of all things, and therefore they are Promises according to Law, containing in themselves the principle ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... then, and is certified for us all now, by the Christ risen from the dead, is all-important. Our gospel is all built upon facts, and this is the earliest fact in man's history which made man's subsistence in other conditions than that of earthly life a certainty. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... straight, and that the National Sentiment was one which ought to find practical expression. I rejoiced over every election that took away one seat from the Unionists and added another vote to the Home Rulers; and I shut my eyes to the dismemberment of our glorious Empire and the certainty of civil war in Ireland, should the Home Rule demanded by the Parnellites and advocated by the Gladstonians become an accomplished fact. In a word I committed the mistakes inevitable to all ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... towards it—all recoiled, as soon as they discovered that it was the lifeless body of Luke Rookwood. His limbs were stiff, like those of a corpse which has for hours been such; his eyes protruded from their sockets; his face was livid and blotched. All bespoke, with terrible certainty, the efficacy of the poison, and the full ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... time a suspicion has now become practically a certainty. Spectrum-analysis yields results wholly irreconcilable with the assumption that the conventionally-named simple substances are really simple. Each yields a spectrum having lines varying in number ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... start on our quest for Life with the happy certainty that God is on our side. But people will meet us with the objection that though God wills Life to us, He does not will it just yet, but only in some dim far-off future. How do we know this? Certainly not from the Bible. In the Bible Jesus speaks of two classes ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... not come, and the Father's fears, born as he listened to Jose's story, grew into angry certainty as hours passed and no Pio appeared. Examination of Jose's bundle had revealed the altar-cloth, the ink, the sugar, the onionseed, some books, and a few of the articles of clothing he expected, but the umbrella and part of the ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... to seek shelter in your carriage, and suffer me to journey a little way with you. Quick, Madame! Your coachman is drawing rein, and I shall of a certainty be murdered under your very nose unless you bid him change his mind. To be murdered in itself is a trifling matter, I avow, but it is not nice to behold, and I would not, for all the world, offend your eyes with the spectacle ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... the last line of the sixteen runs thus: "Said unto the Nun as ye shall hear;" and six lines more evidently forged, are given to introduce the Nun's Tale. All this confusion and doubt only strengthen the certainty, and deepen the regret, that "The Canterbury Tales" were left at Chaucer's, death not merely very imperfect as a whole, but destitute of many finishing touches that would have made them complete so far as the conception had actually ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... originates mutual trust, mere poverty is scarcely worth a passing fear. If they have plucked out the stings of pride and selfishness, and purified their vision by faith, what is there to dread? What is their case? They have life, without certainty how it is to be nourished. They do without certainty, like "the young ravens which cry," and work for and enjoy the subsistence of the day, leaving the morrow to take care of what concerns it. If living in ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... we used to pad Our deeds with words of certainty; Alas! that now the office lad Is qualified to grant in fee! Lost is our old supremacy, Lost is the delicate display Of learning on pur autre vie; Too quickly ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... du Marechal de Richelieu' appeared. He had left his note-books, his library, and his correspondence to Soulavie. The 'Memoires' are undoubtedly authentic, and have, if not certainty, at least a strong moral presumption in their favour, and gained the belief of men holding diverse opinions. But before placing under the eyes of our readers extracts from them relating to the Iron Mask, let us refresh our memory by recalling ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... people were poor, and always anxious to convince travellers of the fact. The men, unlike those on the plains, spend a good deal of their time in hunting; this may be because they have but little ground on the hill-sides suitable for gardens, and but little certainty of reaping what may be sown in the valleys. No women came forward in the hamlet, east of Chiperiziwa, where we halted for the night. Two shots had been fired at guinea-fowl a little way off in the valley; the women fled into the woods, and the men came to know if war ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... its alleviations, and chief among these was the pleasure of anticipating our week in reserve. We could look forward to this with certainty. During the long stalemate on the western front, British military organization has been perfected until, in times of quiet, it works with the monotonous smoothness of a machine. (Even during periods of prolonged and heavy fighting there is but little confusion. ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... and the wailing of the Queen and her ladies in Falkland Palace, when the torches guide the cavalcade into the palace court, and the strange tale of slaughter is variously told, 'the reports so fighting together that no man could have any certainty'? Where lay ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... contentment. The prolonged and thousand-times repeated glorification of Unconsciousness, Silence, Renunciation, all comes to this: We are to leave the region of things unknowable, and hold fast to the duty that lies nearest. Here is the Everlasting Yea. In action only can we have certainty. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... times with that over-fantastic imagery which is at once a characteristic fault and excellence of the writing of the time, they never lose the one merit above all others of lyric poetry, the merit of sincerity. The note is struck with certainty and power in the first ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... Kearny seized New Mexico and set out with a troop of three hundred men to take California. But Commodore John Drake Sloat had been sent to the Pacific with a squadron of the navy to prevent the seizure of Monterey by the English. And to make certainty more certain, Consul Thomas O. Larkin at Monterey had been instructed, about the time of Slidell's appointment to Mexico, to be in readiness for any emergency. Before Kearny could cross the mountains, Larkin and Sloat had taken possession of ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... natives will never attack without provocation. Even Cook, who certainly was both careful and just, was treacherously attacked in Erromanga, for the Melanesian is bloodthirsty, especially when he thinks himself the stronger. But to-day it may be stated as a certainty that no attack on a recruiting-ship or on any white man occurs without some past brutality on the part of a European to account for it. As one of the Governments does nothing to abolish kidnapping, and as the plantations go to ruin for want of labour, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... only say that so far as my own knowledge extends—bearing in mind that the farmer has not the business man's habit of cheerfully setting off a bad year against a good (for the business man knows that trade must improve some time, and then he will make profits, while the farmer has no certainty that things will improve)—things might well have been worse. There has been a good deal of mutual consideration and desire to make the best of difficult circumstances. I have, however, little doubt that it would ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... are absolutely reliable. He instances the case of two gentlemen of Merrimac, Massachusetts, named Prescott, who for several years have given displays of this rare faculty. As an illustration of the certainty with which the Prescott brothers could indicate the location of electrical attraction, Mr. Jenks gives a well-authenticated incident which took place at Amesbury not long ago. Several old citizens were sceptical as to the accuracy of the conclusions supposed to have been reached, and determined ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... hard upon their own sex, men are never so in earnest. They realize more profoundly than women the depth of affection and self-denial in the womanly soul; and they feel also, with crushing certainty, the real significance of the obstacles they have ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska |
