"Comprehensible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his esteem, for, though guilty of no banalities, he had a way of silently hovering over the baby-carriage which Stefan found mysteriously irritating. Jamie alone of their masculine friends seemed to adopt a comprehensible attitude, for he backed away in hasty alarm whenever the infant, in arms or carriage, bore down upon him. On several occasions when the Farraday household invaded the Byrdsnest Stefan and Jamie together sneaked away in search of an environment ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... accept your offer in the spirit with which you tender it. Unfortunately, I am a maimed person. My sensibilities have gone. Friendship, in the more intimate sense of the word, I may never hope to feel again. Enmity—well, that is more comprehensible; even enmity," he continued slowly, "which might prompt a woman to disguise herself as her own lady's maid, to seek out a tool to get rid of the man she feared. Pardon me, Lady Ruth, you ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... into the depths where the comprehensible ends in the incomprehensible—where the symbols which may be used with confidence so far begin to ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... it is of great importance to determine it even on this account, in order that reason may not on the one band, to the prejudice of morals, seek about in the world of sense for the supreme motive and an interest comprehensible but empirical; and on the other hand, that it may not impotently flap its wings without being able to move in the (for it) empty space of transcendent concepts which we call the intelligible world, ...
— Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals • Immanuel Kant
... world toward these problematical occurrences is quite comprehensible. Throughout the nineteenth century the attention of scientists has been almost wholly directed toward the investigation of the forms and forces of matter, the phenomena and principles of the visible ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... finite is comprehensible in and by itself, and the infinite is incomprehensible in and by itself, is to make an assertion utterly at variance both with psychology and logic. The finite is no more comprehensible in itself than the infinite. "Relatives are known only in and through each other."[340] ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... no argument left. Of course, I hate to swallow an early and rapid dinner. One did such things in the war, gladly dislocating an elderly digestion in the service of one's country. In peace time one demands a compensating leisure. But this would be comprehensible only to a well-trained married woman. My misery would have been outside Auriol's ken. I meekly said nothing. The world of young women knows nothing of its ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... could feel herself relaxing, slipping down and away, drifting down through her mind ... farther ... deeper ... toward the tiny voice that spoke in such a strange language and still was becoming daily more comprehensible. ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... therefore to matters comprehensible by all understandings: the discourse now turned on the vanity, folly, and misery of the lower world, from which every passenger in the coach expressed the highest satisfaction in being delivered; though it was very remarkable that, notwithstanding the joy we declared at our death, there was not ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... the elements of things, as where we are. What we have not yet mastered, we feel confidently persuaded that the investigators that come after us will reduce to rules not less obvious, familiar and comprehensible, than is to us the rising of the sun, or the progress of animal and vegetable life from the first bud and seed of existence to the last stage of decrepitude ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... was far too indignant to be comprehensible, when she told me on the way home; but there was something about adopting the becoming, and a repetition of—of some insolent praise." And his mother felt his quiver of suppressed wrath. "If Rose ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... condition, and their rhythmic arrangement, corroborate the natural laws already defined:—uniformity of fundamental pulse, uniform recurrence of accent, and sufficient regularity of rhythmic figure to insure a distinct and comprehensible total impression. This also may be verified in the time-values of Ex. 5. Scrutinize also, the melodic and rhythmic conditions of Exs. 1 and 2,—and the examples on later pages,—and endeavor to vindicate their classification as "good" melodies. Ex. 4, though ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... love? Will you think it a foregone conclusion, if I assert the superior likelihoods of the latter, and not of the former? Let us come then to a few of many reasons. First: it was by no means probable to be supposed anteriorly, that the God should be clearly comprehensible: yet he must be one: and oneness is the idea most easily apprehended of all possible ideas. The meanest of intellectual creatures could comprehend his Maker, and in so far top his heights, if God, being truly one in one view, were yet only one in every ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... were living a life absolutely different from what was required by it. It is obvious, too, that even for those by whom it was accepted, it was so absolutely opposed to all their old views that it could not be comprehensible in its ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... really serious, the really convinced, the really important and comprehensible people now alive includes, as most Englishmen would now be prepared to admit, the German Emperor. He is a practical man and a poet. I do not know whether there are still people in existence who think there is some kind of faint antithesis between these two characters; but I incline to think ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... perceptual representation it must put into perceptually comprehensible form everything that it wants to express, even that which is most abstract. The tendency to vividly perceptual or plastic expression that is characteristic of the dream, corresponds accordingly ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... enough for mirth in it to make the reader duly grateful for the patient care and admirable insight which Mr. Bullen has brought to bear upon the really formidable if apparently trivial task of reducing the chaotic corruption and confusion of the text to reasonable form and comprehensible order. William Barkstead, a narrative poet of real merit, and an early minister at the shrine of Shakespeare, has been credited with the authorship of this play: I am inclined to agree with the suggestion of its latest editor—its first editor in any serious sense of the word—that both he and ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Politicals were by no means silent, and the amount of knowledge they possessed of border statistics was something marvellous. Did any step appear to the military sense advisable, there was a much better, though less comprehensible, political reason why it should not be undertaken. The oracle has spoken and the behest must be obeyed. An enemy in sight who became afterwards hostile, must not be kept at a distance; through political glasses they appear as 'children of nature,' while the country out of sight must not ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... hurriedly. In not very carefully chosen phrasing the orchestra was to represent the ocean, and, as far as might be, the ship upon it. A forcible, pathetically yearning and aspiring theme was the only comprehensible idea amid the swirl of enveloping sound. When the whole had been repeated, there was a sudden jump to a different theme in extreme pianissimo, accompanied by the swelling vibrations of the first violins, which was intended to ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... for all, against the error of supposing it exemplary as art,—I use his plates henceforward for general reference; finding also that, following Mr. Gould's practical and natural arrangement, I can at once throw together in groups, easily comprehensible by British children, all they are ever likely to see of British or Britain-visitant birds: which I find fall, with frank casting, into these following divisions, not in any important matters varying from the usual ones, and therefore less offensive, I hope, to the normal ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... not know whether or not I have made this theory very comprehensible, but it seems to me some such theory might explain the facts and at the same time do away with the difficulties. At all events no theory of telepathy which has been advanced to date can be said to be explanatory, when all the facts are taken into ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... France, or at least in England, is founded. There is no more usual deliverance of superficial criticism than that which declares French poetry in general to be either nought—which is still a not uncommon notion—or at least not great enough to be worth the study which alone could make it comprehensible. There are many good people who dare to say this, yet live, audacious, and unconscious of their folly. We have, however, to consider Victor Hugo on a ground which no one ventures to dispute. The great romances—for which ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... statement of a comprehensible fact, Arnold's inattention gave place to a momentary interest. "Is there?" he asked with ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... were writing a romance, if, indeed, I had any reasonable space, I would keep up the excitement of curiosity for some time, describe a variety of terrific adventures unknown to seamen, and wonderful escapes comprehensible only by landsmen, and thus make a subordinate hero of the bold navigator. But I must be content to inform the reader, that he was Paolo, a servant of Giustiniani's mother, who had lived in perfect retirement since her son's ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... became comprehensible to Thor that his father might raise the rent and still not be an instrument of oppression. It was consoling to him to perceive this. It helped to allay certain uncomfortable suspicions that had risen in his mind since coming home, and which were not ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... beaten and confined to a dark cell. No wonder that many committed suicide. Dr. Vrbensk could tell how he used to get excited by the cry of the ill-treated prisoners. Even his nerves could not stand it. It is quite comprehensible, therefore, that Dr. Scheiner (the president of the 'Sokol' Union) in such an atmosphere was physically and mentally broken down in two months. Dr. Kramr and Dr. Rasn also had an opportunity of feeling the brutality of Polatchek and Teszinski. In the winter we suffered from frosts, ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... been made to sit down a moment. Hard they were in line, fixed in expression, and opaque in color, these copies of famous masterpieces,—saints of either sex, ascensions, assumptions, martyrdoms, and what not,—and they were not quite comprehensible till Don Ippolito explained that he had made them from such prints of the subjects as he could get, and had colored them after his own fancy. All this, in a city whose art had been the glory of the ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... of her whole body she rose from the sofa, walked up to the bed, bent toward the face of the mother, and in her dull eyes the mother saw something dear, near, and comprehensible. ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... she sing to the strains of the voluptuous-waltz made vocal? The words mattered not; in Esquimaux they would have been as intelligible from the intonation with which she imbued every note, and the restricted but perfectly comprehensible gestures with which she emphasized the phrases of double meaning—one for the literary censors who had "passed" this corruption, the other for even the more ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... is only an escape from one incomprehensible position to another, cui bono to make a change? Why not stay quietly in the Athanasian Creed as we are? And, after all, the Athanasian Creed is light and comprehensible reading in comparison with much that now passes ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... venture to suggest, should have been made in proper diplomatic form, instead of being, as it was, a mere threat. But if you hold no credentials from Her Majesty, and your authority is self-imposed, the conduct of which I complain is quite comprehensible, and although it may be in the highest degree irregular I am prepared to admit that it is not altogether unjustifiable, since I understand that your own brother was, and indeed still is, a sufferer from the attack upon Admiral Hawkins' ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... what was meant by the watch-word of repeal of the union between Great Britain and Ireland. If those who used it meant a complete separation, or a species of Hibernian republic, their conduct was both comprehensible and consistent; but if, as they asserted, they only meant two separate independent legislatures, under the same monarch, the motion was inconsistent with the first principles of the science of government. After having shown ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... and a jealousy of their power in the Mediterranean; and in this so strange and senseless a manner, that we must join the extremes of imbecility and treachery in the same cabinet, in order to find it comprehensible. Though the very existence of Naples and Sicily, as a nation, depended wholly and exclusively on British support; though the royal family owed their personal safety to the British fleet; though not only their ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... children ought, from the very beginning, to practise and play only fine classical music, in order that the children's ears may not be injured by false progressions, by insignificant finger exercises, and by easily comprehensible Italian airs, and that they themselves may not be ruined body and soul. Gracious heavens! how much pure music, suited to the piano, have not my daughters, as well as many others whom I have brought up to be fine performers, played and studied!—such, ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... the shadows wander. From the other side of the bulkhead he could hear stirrings and a murmur of voices as the starboard watch grew aware that something had happened on deck. Conroy, with his oilskin coat half off, paused to listen for comprehensible words. The opening of the door behind him startled him, and he spun round to see Slade making ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... obviously, to the greater plasticity to ideas of his medium, but may it not be due also to the fact that all other arts demand an apprenticeship, during which the technique is mastered in a rational, comprehensible way? Whereas the poet is apt to forget that he has a technique at all, since he shares his tool, language, with men of all callings whatever. He feels himself, accordingly, to be dependent altogether upon a ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... learned," returned I. Things usually acquire a more comprehensible aspect when you have a few facts by which to measure and weigh them, and I wanted to hear ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... expectations from our revised code of laws, you will be much disappointed. It contains not more than three or four laws which could strike the attention of a foreigner. Had it been a digest of all our laws, it would not have been comprehensible or instructive, but to a native. But it is still less so, as it digests only the British statutes and our own acts of Assembly, which are but a supplementary part of our law. The great basis of it is anterior to the date ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... administrator in the retaining of distinguished counsels, I met with many of the best men at the bar, but never any with such a complete and clarified intellect as William M. Evarts. The mysteries of the most complicated cases seemed simple, the legal difficulties plain, and the solution comprehensible to everybody ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... methods by which Science has arrived at conclusions so strangely in harmony with the ancient thought of the East, may suggest the doubt whether those conclusions could ever be made clearly comprehensible to the mass of Western minds. Certainly it would seem that just as the real doctrines of Buddhism can be taught to the majority of believers through forms only, so the philosophy of science can be communicated to the masses ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... with contempt. Of popular sovereignty he had no conception. His patriotism, like his ambition, was provincial. Yet his perceptions as to eternal necessity in all healthy governments taught him that comprehensible relations between the state and the population were needful to the very existence of a free commonwealth. The United Provinces, he maintained, were not a republic, but a league of seven provinces very loosely hung together, a mere provisional organization for which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... comprehensible and correct; but if, as you are kind enough to inform us, the plunging of the medium into a trance produces perturbations of the spiritual ether, allow me to ask why (as is usually supposed to be the case in spiritualistic ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... high seas. It was not only because she felt still so unprepared to face what New York had in store for her, but because she needed more time to dispose of what the Utopia had already given her. The past was bad enough, but the present and future were worse, because they were less comprehensible, and because, as she grew older, surprises and inconsequences troubled her more than ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... the score, now completed, of the chorus which you were so good as to entrust to me ("The iron is hard, let us strike!"), but unfortunately it is not with music as with painting and poetry: body and soul alone are not enough to make it comprehensible; it has to be performed, and very well performed too, to be understood and felt. Now the performance of a chorus of the size of that is not an easy matter in Paris, and I would not even risk it without myself conducting ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... will discover very quickly that men pictured something semi-human at the back of all things, not because such a thought was natural, but because it was supernatural; not because it made things more comprehensible, but because it made them a hundred times more incomprehensible and mysterious. For a man walking down a lane at night can see the conspicuous fact that as long as nature keeps to her own course, she has no power with us at all. As long as a tree is a tree, it is a top-heavy monster with ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... results of reflection. That evening the Nabob opened a shabby little portfolio, badly worn at the corners, in which for ten years past he had manoeuvred his millions, minuting his profits and his expenses in hieroglyphics comprehensible to himself alone. He calculated for a moment, then turned ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... voluptuous and aristocratic expression of the same consciousness of which Moussorgsky's is the severe, stark, barbaric; the caress as opposed to the pinch. Consequently, Debussy's art was the more readily comprehensible of the two. But, once "Pelleas" produced, the assumption of "Boris" was inevitable. Moussorgsky's generation had arrived. The men who felt as he, who recognized the truth of his spare, metallic style, his sober edifices, had attained majority. A world was able to perceive in the ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... shoulders, and got up and walked about the room, looking out upon the afternoon sunshine and the trees that were turning their shadows to the east. How she longed, with a fervour scarcely explainable, not at all comprehensible to most people, to leave the place, to open her wings in a large ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... me that Leontine went to the prison," Madame d'Espard went on. "The dear Duchess is in despair at such a scandal, for she is so foolish as to be very fond of Madame de Serizy; however, it is comprehensible: they both adored that little fool Lucien at about the same time, and nothing so effectually binds or severs two women as worshiping at the same altar. And our dear friend spent two hours yesterday in Leontine's room. The poor Countess, it seems, says ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... the canals." Jarvis frowned, then resumed his narrative. "I thought the dream-beast and the silicon-monster were the strangest beings conceivable, but I was wrong. These creatures are still more alien, less understandable than either and far less comprehensible than Tweel, with whom friendship is possible, and even, by patience and concentration, ...
— A Martian Odyssey • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... with the studiously neutral expression which befits the artist asked to listen to a rival. Mr. Thornburgh sat pensive, one foot drooped over the other. He was very fond of the Leyburn girls, but music seemed to him, good man, one of the least comprehensible of human pleasures. As for Rose, she had at last arranged herself and her accompanist Agnes, after routing out from her music a couple of Fantasie-Stuecke, which she had wickedly chosen as presenting the most ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the old sailor became the recipient of insults, not only from their tongues,—which he could not understand,—but by acts and gestures which were perfectly comprehensible to him. ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... periods, [Footnote: According to Geddes and Thomson (Evolution of Sex, 1889), the common grass-snake has been induced under artificial conditions to bring forth its young alive.] and the correlation between the retained developing ova and the hypertrophy of the ruptured follicles is comprehensible on my theory of the influence of substances absorbed by the walls of oviduct or ovary from ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... was odd yet comprehensible; for though his desire was unquestionably great, it was not particularly active, probably because he knew that he held her and that no aggressive effort was necessary. Secure in the feeling that she belonged to him, and he to her, he also found that he had little enough ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... the whys and wherefores of the law. "Certain knowledge," this phrase indicates limitation. All that it demands is that you know that which you profess to know. It therefore follows that the word "science" is equally applicable to the comprehensible and incomprehensible. The word is from "scio," I know. As men's knowledge, in the present state, at least, is limited, so science, as presented by man, is also limited; but, as men are progressive beings, science and the sciences may ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... of poetry? Delight, music, subtlety of thought, a world of the heart's desire, fidelity to comprehensible experience, a glimpse through magic casements, profound wisdom? All these things—all different, yet not all contradictory—have been required of poetry. What shall we require of her? The answer comes, it seems, as quick and ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... to create a cultural illumination, but not far enough to create political stability. We have seen before that they touch the artistic creative planes, in their descent, before they reach the more material planes. So her position is perfectly comprehensible. The old European manvantara was dying; elsewhere it was dead. Its forces, when they passed away through Ireland, were nearly exhausted; in no condition whatever to penetrate to the material plane and make political greatnesses and strengths. But they ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Muttering something not very comprehensible about his exertions in the morning, and his inability to drink any more, Paullus arose, delighted to effect his escape on terms so easy, and left the triclinium immediately ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... hitherto, become comprehensible by the aid of the engraphia of the mnemic energies. (Vide above; Semon). The sexual glands, being of undifferentiated origin, contain the energies of both sexes. The ecphoria of one of them provokes ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... of a fertility cult, the ritual of the witches becomes comprehensible. Originally for the promotion of fertility, it became gradually degraded into a method for blasting fertility, and thus the witches who had been once the means of bringing prosperity to the people and the land by driving out all evil influences, in ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... occur to 'Zekiel to be surprised that all the dogs were chatting together in very comprehensible Dorsetshire English. To see them actually living, and moving about, was such an extraordinary thing that it swallowed up every other ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... uneasiness as to what may be our own exploits when we touch upon foreign countries and foreign tongues. It is here that we shall find the famous "first of the fourth," and many English words that may be comprehensible perhaps in Paris. It is here that we learn that "laird" in Scotland is the same title as "lord" in England. Here, also, is an account of a Highland soldier's equipment, which we recommend to the lovers of ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The Valley of the Torrent! Why not the Torrent of the Valley? It is conceivable that a valley might be without a torrent in it; now if they had said the Torrent of the Valley, that would have been something clear, something precise, something definite and comprehensible. But never mind that. Now, how is the drama to take place in a torrent and in a valley? You will tell me that in these days the principal attraction lies in the scenic effect, and the title is a capital advertisement.—And did you enjoy ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... life is scarcely comprehensible. A man seems confessed a weakling in a monastery; he was born to act, to live out a life of work; he is evading a man's destiny in his cell. But what man's strength, blended with pathetic weakness, is ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... in the actual words, but I felt the thoughts that underlay them, unexpressed. I resented the opinion she held of me. It was untrue, and I meant to remove it. I was silent an instant, thinking how to find words passably comprehensible and yet conventionally circumlocutory and euphemistic. After a ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... of the simple, friendly eyed, north-country woman flashed across Esther's mental vision, obscuring the less comprehensible figure of her sister-in-law. She thought for ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... are comprehensible, we have certain Egyptian paintings, and some of these exhibit postures that evidently had even then a settled meaning, and were a phrase in the sentences of the art. Not only were they settled at such an early period (B.C. 3000, fig. 1) but they appear to have been accepted ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... be. Old persons ought to take up the position of audience. They ought, above all things, to give a rest to the minds of young people, who, goodness knows, have enough to worry them, by being easily comprehensible. With mother one knew exactly where one was; one knew everything that had happened to her and how she had felt about it, and there was no question of anything fresh ever happening to her. But from the deep, slow breaths this woman drew, from the warmth ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Toinon, somewhat to Brigit's surprise—for it would have been more like Joyselle to rush downstairs on hearing her motor stop, but the reason was soon plainly comprehensible, for Joyselle was playing. It was evidently earlier than they had expected her. Slipping off her cloak and with a finger to her lips, she went quietly upstairs and stood leaning against the side of ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... commit to our little alembic, and distil as we may; not only from the absurdity of supposing that God has demanded our faith, for statements which are to be received only as they appear perfectly comprehensible by our reason;—or, in other words, only for what it is impossible that we should doubt or deny; not merely because the principle inevitably leaves man to construct the so-called revelation entirely for himself; so that what one ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... Pyramus and Thisbe, performed by the clowns in Shakspeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, is certainly constructed in burlesque of characters in court Masques, which sometimes were as difficult to be made comprehensible to an audience as "the clowns of Athens" found Wall ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... can understand nothing of painting, and that he can best show his appreciation of their works by silence and a cheque-book. It is a grotesque misapprehension which sees in art no more than a craft comprehensible perfectly only to the craftsman: art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand. But I will allow that the critic who has not a practical knowledge of technique is seldom able to say anything on the subject of real value, and my ignorance of painting ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... sought to free myself internally from all that was foreign to me, to regard the external with love, and to allow all beings, from man downwards, as low as they were comprehensible, to act upon me, each after its own kind. Thus arose a wonderful affinity with the single objects of Nature, and a hearty concord, a harmony with the whole, so that every change, whether of place or region, or of the times of the day and year, ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... (which must have only a comparatively limited interest) to the last volume and have replaced them in my first by portions of Zonaras (taken from Melber) which have their origin in Dio and are at the same time clear, comprehensible, ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... to him directly, with a broken entreaty that she might be taken to her father. Again they tried questioning her, but Richard, whether speaking English or Provencal, always succeeded in obtaining readier and more comprehensible replies than did the Princess. Whether she recognized him as her preserver, or whether his language had a familiar tone, she seemed exclusively attracted by him; and he it was who learnt that she lived at home—far off—on the Green near the red ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hand, and Admiral von Tirpitz grudgingly bowed to the chancellor's contentions, on the condition that his acquiescence must be deemed unofficial; but he held out against any formal disavowal by Germany of the sinking of the Arabic. This attitude was comprehensible, for a disavowal meant a repudiation of his submarine policy. Thus the surrender of the extremists did not go very far; it merely helped to relax the friction between the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... exception. There never can be any being, line, circle, or triangle, but according to these rules. These axioms are of all times, or to speak more properly, they exist before all time, and will ever remain after any comprehensible duration. Let the universe be turned topsy-turvy, destroyed, and annihilated; and even let there be no mind to reason about beings, lines, circles, and triangles: yet it will ever be equally true in itself, that the same thing ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... previous day. He paused once, and looked back at Mr. Sandbrook, in response to agitated cries and whistles; but, not being able to explain his precise object in going out in a manner that would have been comprehensible to the merchant, he decided that it would be better to get on with the matter in hand without delay. So he went forward again, and this time at an easy canter which took him out of earshot of Mr. Sandbrook in ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... talk of heaven. The Redskins, now, think it's a splendid country where the weather is always fine, the sun always shining, and the game plentiful. Then the men of the settlement seem to have but a hazy notion about its bein' a place of happiness, but they can't tell why or wherefore in a very comprehensible sort o' way, and, as far as I can see, they're in no hurry to get there. It seems in a muddle somehow, an' that's a thing that surprises me, for the works o' the Almighty—hereaway in the mountains—are plain and onderstandable, so as a child might read 'em; but man's brains don't ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... whole movement around characters. Three eminent literary men were once asked to select the best reviews of a novel which had just appeared. One of the three statements which they rated highest said of the book that it "achieves the true purpose of a novel, which is to make comprehensible the philosophy of life of a whole community or race of men by showing us how that philosophy accords with the impulses and yearnings of typical individuals." Few phrases could be more foreign to Bible phrases than those. But there is valuable ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... and this confirmed bias of his mind, connected as it was, with his inveterate proneness to impose on others, and supported by talents which have scarcely been equalled, reduces the magnified wonder of Rowley, to a plain, comprehensible question. ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... business, and I revel in it. Kedgers, for instance," with the smile which, somehow, suggested Betty, "Kedgers and the Lilium Giganteum, Mrs. Welden and old Doby threaten to develop into quite necessary factors in the scheme of happiness. What Betty has felt is even more comprehensible than it seemed ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... get out of this realm of myths and missions, and general dread and discomfort," said Mr. Rollin, "on to comprehensible soil again, where ordinary sinners are sure of some sort of a footing,—and bad as a fellow is he knows there are plenty more like him,—then I shan't appear to you in such a deucedly poor light as I do now, a doubtful sort of pearl in a setting of isolated cedars, with my beauty ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... it our duty to present this matter in detail and in a form comprehensible to the artist; and we can be the more hopeful of doing something welcome to him, since we shall be concerned only with explaining and tracing to fundamental principles things which he ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... and I can therefore only explain that the defective form and the occasional repetition which the reader cannot fail to mark were forced upon me by the fact that I was speaking—not writing—and that I felt bound to make each address, as far as possible, complete and comprehensible in itself. ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... which accompanied the skepticism of their remote founders, they based their denial of moral accountability—as narrow and vulgar minds naturally do—on a predestination, which is as insulting to GOD as to man, since it is consistently comprehensible only by supposing HIM a slave to destiny. Among such vassals to a worse than earthly tyranny, the man who as 'a Scottish servant regarded not his own life or that of any other save his master,' would find doctrines congenial enough to his grovelling nature. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... It would have been very strange if he had not understood, for though Grant addressed him in English the word grod bawled so frequently into his ear was sufficiently comprehensible. ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... from molesting any party which contained a woman.[29] But the tales relating to Robin Hood differ from those of the Round Table in their entire freedom from affectation and from supernatural machinery. They breathe, too, an open-air spirit of liberty and enjoyment which was pleasing and comprehensible to the dullest intellect, and which made them, in the broadest sense, popular. The good-humored combativeness of the yeoman sympathized with every beating which Robin Hood received, and with every beating which he gave. In Robin's enmity to the ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... only it actually performed what it promises. But how any affection from without can metamorphose itself into perception or will, the materialist has hitherto left, not only as incomprehensible as he found it, but has aggravated it into a comprehensible absurdity. For, grant that an object from without could act upon the conscious self, as on a consubstantial object; yet such an affection could only engender something homogeneous with itself. Motion could only propagate ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... conceals the exactness of the formal conclusion by means of a conversational style. It is possible to conceive of a perfectly methodical treatment of a science which at the same time shall be generally comprehensible if it strives to attain the transparency of real beauty. A scientific work of art may be correctly said to be popular, as e.g. has happened to Herder's Ideas on the Philosophy of ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... altogether. It had that quality of seriousness belonging to every form of open sport where the best man wins under perfectly comprehensible rules. There were no rules for dealing with anarchists. And that was distasteful to the Chief Inspector. It was all foolishness, but that foolishness excited the public mind, affected persons in ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... the colors dance on the screen to picture the four Svant words which might or might not all mean me. They tried to duplicate them. Luis Gofredo and Willi Schallenmacher came closest of anybody. Bennet Fayon was still insisting that the Svants had a perfectly comprehensible language—to other Svants. Anna de Jong had started to veer a little away from the Dorver Hypothesis. There was a difference between event-level sound, which was a series of waves of alternately crowded and rarefied molecules of air, and object-level sound, ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... arm, my child, and nothing more, so far as I can tell at present," were the first comprehensible words. Whittaker tried to move his ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... the word moral for what we used to call morale, and therefore we ought to do the same; and (2) the French use morale to mean something different from what we mean by it. The case against moral is (1) that it is a new word, less comprehensible to ordinary people, even now, after its war-time currency, than the old morale; (2) that it badly needs to be dressed in italics owing to the occasional danger of confusion with the English word ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... regard to the army, for in foreign service, and not in grazing or ploughing, the fine gentleman of the day found a royal road to wealth. [Sidenote: Grievances of the possessors.] On the other hand it is quite comprehensible both that the possessors imagined that they had a great grievance, and that they had some ground for their belief. A possessor, for instance, who had purchased from another in the full faith that his title ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... events as the air collects and holds moisture; it may be that we all do, but only one here and there becomes aware of the fact. As the impalpable moisture in the air changes to palpable rain so does this vague cognisance become a comprehensible revelation by being resolved into a shower of words on occasion by some process psychically analogous to the condensation of moisture in the air. It is a natural phenomenon known to babes like Beth, but ill-observed, and not at all explained, because man has gone such a little way beyond ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... nation. The truth of his art tells with an irresistible force; and he stands excused from the duty of patriotic posturing. He is a Frenchman of Frenchmen beyond question or cavil, and with that he is simple enough to be universally comprehensible. What is wanting to his universal success is the mediocrity of an obvious and appealing tenderness. He neglects to qualify his truth with the drop of facile sweetness; he forgets to strew paper roses over the tombs. The disregard of these common decencies lays him open to the ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... technical, it is put in popular form and made comprehensible from the standpoint of the farmer; it deals largely with those questions which arise in his experience, and will prove an invaluable aid ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... education, to which through coming centuries men can only approximate, must present to the child the precise step in knowledge which he waits for, and upon which he is able to raise himself with that glow of pleasurable activity which God gives to exertion directed to a comprehensible end. The feeblest mind is capable of assimilating knowledge with a satisfaction the same in kind as that which rewarded the maturest labors of Humboldt or Newton. There are sequences of facts every one of which, imparted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... wood and the harder and pointed bit of limb to be used in making the friction. In a time scarcely worth the noting the point was whirling about and burning into the wooden base, twirling with a skill and velocity not comprehensible by us to-day, for the cave people had perfected wonderfully this greatest manual art of the time, and Lightfoot, muscular and enduring, was, as already said, in this thing the cleverest among the clever. Ab, with ready club in hand, ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... put it under a glass case, with all its inhabitants going about their daily business and not suspecting that they were made a show of. And these books are as English as a beefsteak. Have they ever been tried in America? It needs an English residence to make them thoroughly comprehensible; but still I should think that the human nature in them would ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... establish doctrine, etc., etc. Somebody has compiled a straight ahead Prayer-book, and I fancy it will be found very useful—about the same time that we get a royal road to learning—or that services compiled on the most comprehensive and comprehensible system by men of the highest and devoutest intellect for every age, class, sex, and succeeding generations of the Church of a whole country, can be made at the same time to fit the case of every ignoramus who won't take the trouble to do more than lick his ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... of his hand round his throat, completed the sentence in a manner doubtless comprehensible enough to the esquilador. The latter now turned himself about, and supported himself with his breast and arms upon the roof, his legs and the lower part of his body hanging against the side wall of the house. Paco kept his seat behind the chimney, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... they might correspond with the so-called didactic or objective material of the old methods. Their significance, however, is profoundly different. The objective material of the old schools was an aid to the teacher, in making his explanations comprehensible to a collective class listening passively to him. The objects were related solely to the things to be explained, and these were chosen at random, that is to say, without any scientific criterion of their relation to the psychical ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... true that both humanism and rationalism have brought antiquity into the field as an ally; and it is therefore quite comprehensible that the opponents of humanism should direct their attacks against antiquity also. Antiquity, however, has been misunderstood and falsified by humanism . it must rather be considered as a testimony against humanism, against the benign ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Soho—for I am learned in many quarters of London) towards a point which necessarily led me through Tottenham-court-road: I stopped nowhere, and walked fast: yet so it was that in Tottenham-court-road I was not overtaken by (that was comprehensible), but overtook, Walking Stewart. Certainly, as the above writer alleges, there must have been three Walking Stewarts in London. He seemed no ways surprised at this himself, but explained to me that somewhere or other in the neighborhood of Tottenham-court-road there was a little ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... in all that which silenced reproach, which made this monstrous deed comprehensible, even natural. If one was so mad with love, if one felt that one ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... of the speech died away in the distance. Tom and Erica laughed, but the incident set Erica thinking. Here was a man who would not believe what he could not understand, who wanted "pipes and a meter," and for want of comprehensible outward signs pooh-poohed the great ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... is producing something he knows to be wanted, and, though his art has had to fight against the competition of the photograph and has been partially vulgarized by the struggle of the exhibitions, it has yet remained, upon the whole, comprehensible and human; so that much of the soundest art of the past century has gone into portraiture. It is the painters of pictures, landscape or genre, who have most suffered from the misunderstanding between artist and public. Without guidance some of them have hewed a path to deserved success. Others ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... undergoes a simplifying process, and many species of time are done away with altogether. There is, in this particular, no greater contrast than Haydn and Sebastian Bach. Haydn generalizes the rhythms in order to attain the most telling and universally comprehensible effect possible; Bach individualizes them in order to get the most subtle result possible. Haydn and his age were satisfied, in the main, with the four-fourths and two-fourths, three-fourths and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... enabled to understand some of the mysterious sayings of Him who had appeared on earth in the form which to each of them had rendered him comprehensible,—to one Seraphitus, to the other Seraphita,—for they saw that all was homogeneous in the sphere where ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... those nations who have lived under the moulding of Scriptural truth—and comprehending all functions of the Infinite operatively familiar to man. Yes, I affirm that there is no form through which the Infinite reveals itself in a sense comprehensible by man and adequate to man; that there is no sublime agency which compresses the human mind from infancy so as to mingle with the moments of its growth, positively none but has been in its whole origin—in every part—and exclusively ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey |
