"Comprehension" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fell to the ground. He held her wrist; he felt only the magnetic touch, looked into her eyes, and understood. From wonder at his outburst they passed to fear, to appeal, to love. Yes, they shrank from him, sick with shame and self-comprehension, pitifully seeking to hide the wound. But it would not by any means be hid. A light ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Spirit of God. Well, that's enough for me. I know it of myself, and I believe you know it of yourself, and everybody knows it of themselves or himself; and why you can't be satisfied with that, passes my comprehension. As if one hasn't got puzzles enough, and bothers enough, under one's nose, without going a-field after a lot of metaphysical quibbles. No, I'm wrong,—not going a-field,—anything one has to go ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... It was not so much that Dale helped him with his grammar and construing (for Dale thought every boy should make shift to do his own business) as that he liked to talk about his work, even with a younger boy; and so, as he said, clear his head. A great deal that he said was above Hugh's comprehension; and much of his repetitions mere words: but there were other matters which fixed Hugh's attention, and proved to him that study might be interesting out of school. When Dale had a theme to write, the two boys often walked up and down the playground for ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau
... in the man passed comprehension. But so did most of Victor's whims and ways. What riddle more obscure than that portentous business which permeated the atmosphere of the establishment with the taint of stealth and terror?—the famous "research work" that kept Victor closeted with Sturm in his study daily for hours ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... with a quick comprehension of all the other's speech implied, and pushed a chair towards his visitor, who sat down and resumed his watch of the young man at the alcove table. Colwyn bestowed a swift glance on his companion which took in everything. The tall man in glasses looked too human for a lawyer, ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... permit this translation of the Ars Grammaticae to be of use in both these areas of scholarship I have made an effort to reduce to a minimum those places where a knowledge of either Japanese or Latin is required for the comprehension of the translation. It is sincerely hoped that the result is not an effort that is satisfying to neither, and thus to ...
— Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language • Diego Collado
... Zoraida was, managed to appear startled that she should speak so. Then, as he looked from her to Jim and Bruce, he smiled as though in comprehension. ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... is recommended for its convenience, clearness, rapidity, and ease in colloquial use, as well as for its value as an educational instrument in impressing words, phrases, and sentences in their spelled form upon the mind, in testing the comprehension of children, and in affording by easy steps ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... moment he approached the finesse of deportment. He was exactly of that school of elegants who fancy drinking a glass of wine with another, and introducing, are touches of breeding; it being altogether beyond his comprehension that both have especial uses, and are only to be resorted to on especial occasions. Still, the worthy master, who had begun life on the forecastle, without any previous knowledge of usages, and who had imbibed ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... the fundamental reasons and the comprehensive results of the actual practice of the Golden Rule are shot through with such fine insight, such abounding comprehension, that they deserve to become immortal. He was my friend and I would not see them die. I reproduce them here: "As I view it, the Golden Rule is the supreme law of life. It may be paraphrased this way: As you do unto others, others will do unto you. What I give, ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... and "subjective," occupy prominent places, and out of which no man ever has succeeded, or ever will succeed, in extricating an idea. Also, Mr. Gimble, fluently laudatory, with the whole alphabet of Art-Jargon at his fingers' ends, and without the slightest comprehension of the subject to embarrass him in his flow of language. Also, certain respectable families who tried vainly to understand the pictures, opposed by other respectable families who never tried at all, but confined themselves exclusively to the Dowager Countess. Also, the obscure general visitors, who ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... the Mistress's more melodious speech, yet, from puppyhood, he had been talked to by both of them. And, as ever with a highbred collie, such constant conversation had borne ample fruit;—not only in giving the dog a startling comprehension of voice-meanings, but also in teaching him to understand many simple words ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... this ain't enough to dumbfound a codfish," exclaimed Bill. "Here's two total strangers, disguised as undertakers, actually accusin' us of stealin' our own Puddin'. Why, it's outside the bounds of comprehension!" ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... his present discomfort in recalling past happiness, as he described the chateau, the gardens, the burly tutor, and beautiful Madame, or laughed over his childish remembrances of the toad's teeth in Claude Mignon's pocket; whilst Monsieur Crapaud sat well-bred and silent, with a world of comprehension in his fiery eyes. Whoever thinks this puerile must remember that my hero was a Frenchman, and a young Frenchman, with a prescriptive right to chatter for chattering's sake, and also that he had not a very highly cultivated mind of his own to converse with, even if ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... could not understand us, and when they spoke, which was very seldom, their language was utterly beyond our comprehension; but we got on pretty well by signs, after a few weeks when ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... Englishman's proudest boast, and which I fondly hope to bequeath to my children, untarnished and unsullied. Actuated by no personal motives, but moved only by high and great constitutional considerations; which I will not attempt to explain, for they are really beneath the comprehension of those who have not made themselves masters, as I have, of the intricate and arduous study of politics; I would rather keep my seat, and ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... gives me something to think about. He is beyond my comprehension! I may say candidly, that I cannot understand him. What do you think he ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... the housekeeper should be particularly sensitive because the man who had driven him from the station ate peppermint was quite beyond the boy's comprehension. Nor could he thoroughly understand why the suspicion of Mr. Keeler's slight inebriety should cause such a sensation in the Snow household. He was inclined to think the tipsiness rather funny. Of course alcohol was lectured against often enough at ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... people grieving for things that do not call for grief. He, however, that is of foolish understanding, does not see this. He who, casting his eyes on visible things, really seeth them, is said to have eyes and understanding. The faculty called understanding is so called because of the knowledge and comprehension it gives of unknown and incomprehensible things. He who is acquainted with the words of persons that are learned, that are of cleansed souls, and that have attained to a state of Brahma, succeeds in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... shrewd face gained comprehension. "Oh! Well, I ain't boasting, but I could do that job up pretty fine. Failing me, Devlin is the nastiest thing on the place. You couldn't pat his ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... spake—"That is a grave and serious question, maiden, and the answer would be above thy comprehension; yet this much I will explain to thee—if there were no devil and no evil, many attributes of the Almighty God our Lord would have remained for ever hid from you, children of humanity, as well as from us, spirits of heaven. Therefore, from the beginning, hath God permitted such ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... she'd give anything or do anything to get news of him. It's all rot, you know, to say he's run away—it's my impression he's never gone out of Scarnham or the neighbourhood. But where he is, and whether dead or alive, is beyond my comprehension," he concluded, shaking his head. "If he's alive, why don't we hear ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... already seen that the purpose of the word is to fix ideas and to facilitate the elementary comprehension of things. In the same way writing and arithmetic now fix the complex inner acquisitions of the mind, which proceeds henceforward continually to enrich itself ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... the comprehension of the campaign to seize this last point that, at the risk of repetition, I will restate for the reader the main elements of ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... it,—his own utter inability to understand the cause of the sorrow which is literally a thunderbolt out of a clear sky,—plunges him almost into despair. He had endeavored to give the best, but the result is as if he had given the worst; he had come to rely on a perfect and beautiful comprehension and sympathy, but he is confronted with the most inexplicable misapprehension of all his motives, the most complete misunderstanding of all his aspirations and prayers. This, or other combinations and ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... were not under the obligation to France which Germany was under to Austria in 1884, I felt, to use the words of Caprivi himself, when he succeeded Bismarck, and was asked to renew the engagement with Russia, that the arrangement was "too complicated" for my comprehension. It would have been not only wrong to expose a friendly France to the risk of being dismembered by an unjustifiable invasion, while her friend England merely stood looking on, but it would also ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... comprise many famous paintings; and I must acknowledge that I had more enjoyment of them than of those portions of the National Gallery which I had before seen,— including specimens of the grand old masters. My comprehension has not reached their height. I think nothing pleased me more than a picture by Sir David Wilkie,—The Parish Beadle, with a vagrant boy and a monkey in custody; it is exceedingly good and true throughout, and especially the monkey's face is a wonderful production of ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the women of the world. The problems of that time will strike to the roots of many things that we have hitherto questioned, and I for one believe that our safety in those questioning days, as well as our comprehension of matters that touch society to the quick, will depend upon the direct and authoritative participation of women in our counsels. We shall need their moral sense to preserve what is right and fine and worthy in our system of life as well ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... Sands came up to call him to breakfast, and stood looking from the cot to her master's dusty coat, with such a look of delighted comprehension on her face, that the organist felt that no words were needed to prepare her for ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... depth of comprehension that terrified me; and the motor pulled up with a jerk at a spot where hardly a post served to mark where the woods commenced and the wayside grass stopped. We took one of the dim paths which the rabbits had made and forced our ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... sudden anger passed over Father Payne's face—unmistakable and uncompromising wrath. "Come, Rose," he said, "this isn't a political meeting; and even if it were, why proclaim yourself as accepting a definition which is almost within the comprehension ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... who walked first of the little company, and had a look of intelligence and power, addressed himself to the porter at the gate in excellent French—almost too excellent for comprehension. For though French was at that date the Court tongue in England, as now in Belgium, it was Norman French, scarcely intelligible to a Parisian, and still less so to a Provencal. The porter understood only the general scope ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... personality in man is to conform and gain likeness. Environment can act on the digestive and muscular systems through mere material. But how can personality in environment act on personality in man except by personal contact or by symbols easy of comprehension according to its own laws? Some method of attaining acquaintance at least we ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... apprehension, experience, light, scholarship, cognition, information, lore, science, cognizance, intelligence, perception, wisdom. comprehension, intuition, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Lois Boynton listened breathlessly, with parted lips, and with apparent comprehension, to the story Ivory told her. Over and over again he told her gently the story of her husband's death, trying to make it sink into her mind clearly, so that there should be no consequent bewilderment She was calm and silent, though her face ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... things are new and strange, not to be reckoned by our measures. There the sight is not our sight nor the hearing our hearing. I repeat that all things are different, but that difference I cannot describe, and if I could it would prove past comprehension. ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... one year of marriage for even the cleverest Benedict to uproot those weeds of stupidity, denseness, and non-comprehension that seem to grow so riotously in the mental garden of the bachelor; so, said Himself, "We came all together; why shouldn't we go home all together?" (So like a man! Always reasoning from analogy; always, so to speak, 'lugging ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... centuries; and being particularly interested in the study of minerals and different species of rock, he often endeavored to explain to me the various forms of strata which were found below the earth; but my comprehension could not take it in. He was continually poring over fossil remains, and digging in the garden for something curious. He one day ran in with his apron full of stones and other rubbish, and holding up in triumph an object of various hues, through which a slight blue shade ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... reasonably. "Let us not be inconsistent. You say this is something man was not meant to know; yet you, yourself, have devoted your life to gaining a greater comprehension of it." ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... observed with augmenting frequency in the preceding members of the same series the same concupiscence, inflammably transmitted, first with alarm, then with understanding, then with desire, finally with fatigue, with alternating symptoms of epicene comprehension and apprehension. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... it is what people call dancing. I am passionately fond of music; but why people should conceive it necessary to shuffle about in all varieties of awkwardness, in order to enjoy it to their satisfaction, has been, is, and probably will ever be, beyond my comprehension. It is all very well for young ladies on the look-out for husbands to affect a fondness for dancing: in the first place, some women dance gracefully, and even elegantly, and show themselves off undoubtedly to advantage; (if any exhibition on a woman's part be an advantage;) then it gives an excuse ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... great enough incentive to awaken the housewife to the realization that something must be wrong in her present methods. It is in vain that she complains bitterly, on all occasions, of the scarcity of good servants, asserting that it is beyond her comprehension why work in factories, stores, and offices, should be preferred ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... pealed, lilting silvery. She tottered up, clinging to me. She stared. She released me, and to my gladly questing gaze her face was very white, her eyes struggling for comprehension, like those of one ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... distracted organist, fairly kissing the dear remains, and restored to perfect speech and comprehension by the awful shock. "I had one, but it is broken now!—Allie, my long-lost Allie!" he continued, tenderly apostrophizing the skeleton, "do we meet ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... banished from science hypothetical causes and all the entities admitted by the ancients,—such as the creative power of matter, the horror of a vacuum, the esprit recteur, etc. (p. 22),—admits immediately, as necessary to the comprehension of chemical phenomena, a series of entities no less obscure,—vital force, chemical force, electric force, the force of attraction, etc. (pp. 146, 149). One might call it a realization of the properties of bodies, in imitation of the ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... languages, the medium through which such men received their education, the court-language, so to speak, of religion, and the vehicle of all the literature of knowledge which did not directly stoop to the comprehension of the unlearned; but it was indirectly as well as directly, unconsciously as well as consciously, a schoolmaster to bring the vernacular languages to literary accomplishment. They could not have helped imitating it, if they would; and they did not think of avoiding imitation ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... tenderly, and expressed mingled surprise and joy that he felt able to leave his bed so soon. But as her eyes caught Rosendo's meaning glance, and then turned to the child, they seemed to indicate a full comprehension of the situation. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... own, may puzzle you. If so, that is because you are walking either in artificial Darwinian darkness, or to mere stupidity. All genuinely religious people have that consciousness. To them Undershaft the Mystic will be quite intelligible, and his perfect comprehension of his daughter the Salvationist and her lover the Euripidean republican natural and inevitable. That, however, is not new, even on the stage. What is new, as far as I know, is that article in Undershaft's religion which recognizes in Money the first ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... really a perfect harmony. Slavery—so said these logicians of liberticide—has solved the great social problem of the working-classes, comfortably for capital, happily for labor; and has effected this by an ingenious expedient which could have occurred only to minds of the greatest depth and comprehension, the expedient, namely, of enslaving labor. Now doubtless there has always been a struggle between employers and employed, and this struggle will probably continue until the relations between the two are more humane and Christian. But Slavery exhibits this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... comprehension of the necessities which that fame, that career to which you allow she is impelled by the instincts of genius, impose on this girl, young, beautiful, fatherless, motherless? No matter how pure her ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... points in the Christian scheme which are too deep for human comprehension, do not relate to practice. All required, in relation to them, is an assent to their truth, on the credit of God's word. This is ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... disapproving look brought a mocking little smile to the other girl's face; her quick comprehension evidently detected the rebuke, but she ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Sam Brewster was so amazed, that he leaned back in his chair and puffed for breath. To think that Jeb could ever have summoned enough courage to propose to a woman—but let that woman be an Amazon like Sary, was past his comprehension! ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... culture; whereas the drama designed for the people was to cater in its earlier forms to the rude tastes and love of the marvellous which are characteristic of an unlettered people. And, besides, the Roman drama of Plautus and of Terence was not suited to the comprehension of the multitude, in its form and its preservation of the unities. To gratify the taste for shows and excitement, the people already had the high ritual of the Church, but they demanded something more: the Church itself acceded to this demand, and dramatized ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... slightest reflection of her personality upon us, with never a word too much of praise or blame, of too much intimacy or of too much reserve. She was a figure of familiar friendliness, ready with sympathy and comprehension, but wholesome, sound and sane, without trace of sentimentality. Above all, I felt her a singularly honorable spirit, toward whom we always turned our best side, to whom we might never go with talk wanton or idle or unkind or critical, but always with our very precious thoughts on whatsoever ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... Ile St. Louis, and indeed in all the antiquated quarters of Paris. It was reassuring, at all events, to know one was not in Hades, and to feel tolerably certain that a sergeant de ville could not be many yards distant. All this passed into his comprehension like a flash of lightning, for hardly had the bandage left his eyes ere his whole attention was riveted upon ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... comprehension and insight the author shows a terrific contrast between the woman whose love was of the flesh and one whose love was ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... word of an advance of the enemy in the direction of Cincinnati. It was a question whether they would come or not. Thousands did not believe in the impending danger; yet the proclamation was obeyed to the letter, and this, too, when there was not a regiment to enforce it. The secret is easy of comprehension: it was the universal confidence reposed in the man who issued the order; and he was equally confident, not only in his own judgment, but in the people with whom ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... the orifices we call stars, who sees celestial beings in meteor form winging their way across the skies, or who is surrounded by the benevolent spirits which her discriminating education, banishing the terrors of the supernatural world, has permitted to exist for her comprehension, illustrates that readiness of fancy and control of vision by expectation which belongs to humanity in the reverse degree of the reflective habit. Herein childish conceptions and vivacity of feeling represent the human faculty which education ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... a look of sudden comprehension overspreading his features. "No doubt it is the internal constitution of the asteroid which is the cause of the anomaly. We must look into that. Let me see? This gentleman's weight is three and one-half times ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... his previous remark, had thought it likely he should be above his listener's comprehension, looked surprised. What pursuits, too, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... she wandered back most frequently—to stare blankly at it without comprehension—was her husband's appeal to her on his deathbed. To-night she had gone back to it again as to a tottering wall. She had worn a little pathway over heaps of miserable conjectures and twisted ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... pain for her. The father, on the other hand, seemed crushed. So broken was his figure that, after the services, Bob was impelled to lay his hand on the man's shoulder and mutter a few incoherent but encouraging words. The mountaineer looked up dully, but sharpened to comprehension and gratitude as his eyes met those of the tall, vigorous young man ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... phenomena of life; for it certainly lies in the nature of a definition that it can be nothing else but that. Nevertheless, we will state that such a definition of life not only does not lead us any nearer to the comprehension of its processes, and especially of the richness and the organization of its forms and functions, but that it {140} clearly shows us how little the origin of life is explained. For this very definition necessarily and obviously leads ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... the religious view; the aesthetic view; the inward connection of the aesthetic enjoyment of nature with its artistic representation; the scientific view as empirical science and natural philosophy; the relations of the various views of nature to each other; the poetic comprehension of nature among the Indians; the poetic comprehension of nature among the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans; the Christian contemplation of nature; German poetry in the middle ages; Italian poetry; the poetic comprehension of nature in modern times; the representation ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... eyes upon him, but she gave no sign of comprehension; once only she started and winced, when he said his Highness the Duke, otherwise she remained unmoved and unresponding as one deaf. He waited a moment for her to speak, then slowly ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... man who follows the mandate of his State, resuming her sovereign jurisdiction and power, is disloyal to his allegiance to the United States, which allegiance he only owed through his State, is such a confusion of ideas as does not belong to an ordinary comprehension of our Government. It is treason to the principle of community independence. It is to recur to that doctrine of passive obedience which, in England, cost one monarch his head and drove another into exile; a doctrine which, since the Revolution of 1688, has obtained ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... his knowledge and great skill and success in defensive warfare, as shown in his Peninsular campaign, after our defeat at Gaines's Mill, is wanting in the rapidity of comprehension and audacity which are necessary components of the highest military talent. He waits for too many chances, and fears ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... inhale these delicious scents, and dream and dream in this caressing air. She hated the thought of London. The world had no real call for her. She wondered at her submission to the will of a woman who had not the least comprehension of her nature. On Nevis would she stay, live her own life, find happiness in beauty and solitude, since the highest happiness was not for her; and at this point she heard ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... caused many reams of verse to be published, whereof both himself and his bookseller, if lawfully required, can still produce authentic copies, and therefore wonders why the world is pleased to make such a secret of it. There is a third, known by the name of Tom Durfey, a poet of a vast comprehension, an universal genius, and most profound learning. There are also one Mr. Rymer and one Mr. Dennis, most profound critics. There is a person styled Dr. Bentley, who has wrote near a thousand pages of immense erudition, giving a full and true account of a certain squabble ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... well as he could, and perhaps his simple explanation was better adapted to Dick's comprehension than one from an older person would have been. Dick felt more free to ask questions, and the example of his new friend, for whom he was beginning to feel a warm attachment, had considerable effect upon him. When, therefore, Fosdick asked again ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... is about to make under the influence of the laws which govern evolution until it has culminated in man, and these laws still acting on the brain of man, perfecting it, and leading him on to the comprehension of a grander and nobler conception of the ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... satisfaction to answer the numerous and varied questions of our inquisitive little readers; and except in instances where the answer, were it given correctly, would occupy too much space in our columns, or be too scientific for the comprehension of the youthful querist, we have left but two or three ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... father! what's in the wind now? well, it beats my comprehension altogether. But did not you say you wished me ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... having little conception of anything, save what they have been familiar with and surrounded by all their lives, and the appearance of the bicycle is indeed a strange visitation, something entirely beyond their comprehension. The mehana is crowded by a wildly gesticulating and loudly commenting and arguing crowd of Turks and Christians all the evening. Although there seems to be quite a large proportion of native unbelievers in Eski Baba there is not a single female visible ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... only as something quite different from her every-day life. For this reason the unnatural event that was taking place this very day was gradually appearing to her something possible and natural. Because she knew there was such a thing as romance, and that it was something quite beyond her comprehension, she was the more willing to receive this event ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... has avoided the error of slurring over the difficulties of the subject through the desire of making it intelligible and attractive to unlearned readers. The numerous illustrations which accompany every chapter are of unquestionable value in the comprehension of the text, and come next to actual experiment as an aid to the ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... cigar assisted his comprehension considerably—just as a second bottle of wine not only helps men through their difficulties, but shows them the way to unbounded wealth. Many of the bright railway schemes of former days, we make no ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... Sorgue, and gathered Laura's roses to adorn their buttonholes, and stripped the consecrated laurel of its leaves to make garlands for their own dull heads, and poured forth international compliments, and glorified one another, and hugged themselves for delight at their fine comprehension of the poet, and fell on their knees before him, and immolated their individual hearts and souls at the shrine of his genius; and, lo! there was not a true appreciater of Petrarch among them all! The right appraiser of Petrarch has been there before and since, but he was not there ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... of two persons whose lives were spent in solitude and self-denial, it is somewhat difficult to understand; and how the dull, dreary, desolate, and ruined town can ever be made to wear a brilliant aspect, is equally difficult of comprehension; but such is said to be the case. On the morning of the fete, great honours were paid, formerly, to St. Eustelle, which are not even yet altogether discontinued. An image of the holy Virgin is suspended in the grotto near the miraculous well, and there ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... place before the reader a short and rapid outline of the state and circumstances of that city in which the principal scenes of this story are laid;—an outline necessary, perhaps, to many, for a full comprehension of the motives of the actors, and the vicissitudes ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... struggle for the rights of conscience. Their wish was to bring the great body of the Protestant Dissenters within the pale of the Church by judicious alterations in the Liturgy and the Articles, and to grant to those who still remained without that pale the most ample toleration. They framed a plan of comprehension which would have satisfied a great majority of the seceders; and they proposed the complete abolition of that absurd and odious test which, after having been, during a century and a half, a scandal to the pious and a laughing-stock to the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... obtain a character little indeed awakening our sympathy, but yet not wholly at variance with our judgment; and although we may be astonished at, and recoil from the motives which prompted his crime, they will not be altogether of a class which sets our comprehension ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... finds little difficulty in stirring up multitudes to violence. * * Add to all this the invasions of the rights of speech and of the press by lawless force, the extent and toleration of which oblige us to believe that a considerable portion of our citizens have no comprehension of the first principles of liberty. It is an undeniable fact that, in consequence of these and other symptoms, the confidence of many reflecting men in our free institutions is very much impaired. Some despair. That main pillar of public liberty—mutual trust ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... Sixty-nine years seem impossible when I see his single, slimpsy garments pressed like fleshings against his form and bulged by heavy bone and huge muscle. A splendid figure of a man! What he must have been in the hey-day of youth two score years and more ago passes comprehension. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... estimate of Whitman, as for a clear comprehension of the symbolism contained in Leaves of Grass, a few blades of the latter will not suffice. It must be all, or none. The two poems here given should be taken, therefore, not as representative of the whole, but as types of ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... can't be trusted to behave rationally without restraining rules. It's rather a dismaying conclusion when it's dragged out in the open like that, and it seems to horrify him. An ordinary kid learns by experience and accepts the rules with sporadic rebellion, but our boy acts as if they were beyond comprehension. And I think they are ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... philosophy of the world and of life is possible to a person only on the basis of a knowledge of one's self and of one's relation to surrounding nature." Diesterweg says: "No one can afford to neglect a knowledge of nature who desires to get a comprehension of the world and of God according to human possibility, or who desires to find his proper relation to Him and to real things. He who knows nothing of human history is an ignoramus, likewise he who knows nothing of natural science. To know nothing of either is a pure ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... learn the very complex rules by which your army is now regulated, and those by which it was regulated a very short time since. Unhappily for me I have found it in a state of transition, and nothing is so difficult to a stranger's comprehension as a transition state of affairs. But this I can see plainly; that every improvement which is made is received by those whom it most concerns with a horror which amounts almost to madness. So lovely to the ancient British, well-born, feudal instinct is a state of unreason, that the very absence ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... did not know. As long as the sheet rose and fell he was alive at all events, still with her. But she was too exhausted for any sustained effort of will; and her glance wandered back to, and followed with agonised comprehension, the formless, motionless elevation and depression of that same sheet towards the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Golightly, save us both," she whispers. And Golightly tosses up his head with a little whinny of comprehension, and, bracing up every nerve, prepares for a rush through that ominous path blocked as it ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... for the scene we have presented to the reader at the roadside inn on the Apennines, we must now go back with him to the night on which Carlton delivered his letter of arrangement to Florinda, and thus render our tale plain to the comprehension of all. ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... such a work (however elementary) at once accurate as well as interesting, would require sound scientific knowledge; and, however skilfully and popularly written, there would still be portions somewhat difficult of comprehension to the ordinary reader; but curiosity would be stimulated by the very occurrence of difficulty, and thus an impulse might be given to the acquisition of rudimentary botany, which would eventually enable the inquirer to contribute his quota ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... brochure solves the problem of combined cylinders in all its aspects, and in a manner simple enough for the comprehension of the average student of ophthalmology. The author is to be congratulated upon the success that has crowned his labors, for nowhere is there to be found so simple and yet so complete an explanation as is contained in these ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... is a vast comprehension, and hath not hapned in many Ages. Be it then remembred to the Glory of our owne, that all these are Demonstrative and met in BEAUMONT & FLETCHER, whom but to mention is to throw a cloude upon all former names and benight ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... Hegel, the philosopher of the present, himself dimorphous, for both a 'left'-minded and a 'right'-minded Hegel can always be quoted, has best explained the contradictions of life, of history and of the spirit, with his own magic formula. Thesis: affirmation; Antithesis: negation; Synthesis: comprehension! Young man, or rather, comparatively young man! You began life by accepting everything, then went on to denying everything on principle. Now end your life by comprehending everything. Be exclusive no longer. Do not say: either—or, but: not ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the woman works because she has told the man to work and he hasn't obeyed. I do not affirm that this is the whole truth, but I do affirm that we have too little comprehension of the souls of savages to know how far it is untrue. It is the same with the relations of our hasty and surface science, with the problem of sexual dignity and modesty. Professors find all over the world fragmentary ceremonies in which the bride affects some sort of reluctance, ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... he was conscious that he came nearer a feeling of affection for her than for any living person. Well, not affection, precisely, he corrected. It was rather that he relished, with a quizzical amusement, the completeness of their mutual comprehension. She was growing to be more like their mother, too. Decidedly, this was the type of woman he should have married, not someone soft and eager and full of silly sentiment like Rose. Why didn't she hold her own as Nellie did? Have more snap and stamina? ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... they are made acquainted with evil for the first time, to go at once too far, beyond reason. When he was once convinced of the treachery of Georges and Sidonie, Risler's degradation seemed to the cashier less impossible of comprehension. On what other theory could his indifference, in the face of his ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... soon assimilates to them in manners, and conforms to their religious practices. The love of novelty, the vanity of learning, the fascination of ceremony, the contagion of example, veneration for what appears above his immediate comprehension, and the innate activity of man's intellectual faculties, which, spurred by curiosity, prompts him to the acquisition of knowledge, whether true or false—all conspire to make him embrace a system ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... different case from the antecedent ones. So it had been sworn to them too frequently before. He was as a man with mighty tidings, and no language: intensely communicative, but inarticulate. Good round oaths had formerly compassed and expounded his noble emotions. They were now quite beyond the comprehension of blasphemy, even when emphasized, and by this the poor lord divinely felt the case was different. There is something impressive in a great human hulk writhing under the unutterable torments of a mastery he cannot contend with, or account for, or explain by means of intelligible words. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... essential criminality of any man-of-war's-man; and Christianity has taught me that, at the last day, man-of-war's-men will not be judged by the Articles of War, nor by the United States Statutes at Large, but by immutable laws, ineffably beyond the comprehension of the honourable Board of Commodores and Navy Commissioners. But though I will stand by even a man-of-war thief, and defend him from being seized up at the gangway, if I can—remembering that my Saviour once hung between two thieves, promising one life-eternal—yet I would not, after the ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... out to see whether any one else was coming, addressed them in words a little too fine for their comprehension, and then read a few prayers, after which he and Mrs Carbonel went away, taking the unwilling Sophy to her lessons, but leaving Dora to follow when she had heard the names called over, and inaugurated the work; and their ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... men whom I have ever met. I believe that he would have talked all day and all night, for days together, to any officer who could instruct him, until his companion, at least, fell asleep exhausted. His comprehension of the whole problem of Slavery was more thorough and far-reaching than that of any Abolitionist, so far as its social and military aspects went; in that direction I could teach him nothing, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... subjected; for Oshasqua—the fierce warrior to whom Girty had consigned her, in the expectation, probably, that she would long ere this have been knocked on the head and scalped—had, by one of those strange mysterious phenomena of nature, (so difficult of comprehension, and which have been known to link the rough and bloody with the gentle and innocent,) already begun to feel towards her a sort of affection, and to treat her with great kindness whenever he could do so unobserved by the others. The apparel of which he had at first ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... Lady Halifax's drawing-room in Paris six months earlier it would have filled him with the purest, amusement. He would have added the circumstance to his conception of the type of young woman who enacted it, and turned away without stopping to consider whether it flattered her or not. His comprehension of human nature was too catholic very readily to permit him impressions either of wonder or contempt—it would have been a matter of registration and a smile. Realizing this, Kendal was the more at a loss to explain to himself the feeling of ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... intelligence superior to that of man." In reading such expressions we are strongly reminded of the poem on the "rationalistic chicken," which would not admit that it ever came out of an egg. When the wisdom shown in the universe is so immensely beyond the comprehension of man, how can he assume his own ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... heaven. They are simply unspeakable, because they are beyond our present powers of comprehension. Eye hath not seen them, ear hath not heard them, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive them. We shall, therefore, make no further attempt to express what no human tongue can utter. But we may say that, as a pure and mutual love produces the greatest happiness we know of in this ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... no effort to simplify language. Children always observe this, and are always displeased with it, unless they are very young; and it is not necessary. They can understand ordinary language well enough, if the subject is within their comprehension, and treated in a manner adapted to their powers. If you doubt whether children can understand language, tell such a story as this, with ardor of tone and proper gesticulation, to a child only ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... her with an expression that was never intended to be worn in a public conveyance, and the thin-faced Polish woman on whose toes they were all but standing looked at them with such lively comprehension that Eleanor felt called upon to assume her most haughty and dignified manner for the rest ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... which she distinguishes herself, separated from her by something like the gulf that separated Caliban from Ariel. He has his hands in his pockets, his head poked forward; what is going on is quite beyond his comprehension. He vaguely wonders what his wife will do next; her manoeuvres quite transcend him. Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns always succeeds. She is never at fault; she is as quick as the instinct of self-preservation. She is the little London lady who is determined to be a greater one—she pushes, ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... point of time and influence. She is their best teacher at home and in the school. And her share in this ever-expanding work is becoming vaster every day. Woman as mother, sister, teacher, has an intelligence, a comprehension of the educational needs of our youth, and an interest in their development, far in advance of the other sex. She can organize, control and teach the most difficult school in the State; yet she has no vote in the selection of teachers, the building, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... while, he found himself at the Theatre Royal. Still raging against Maggie, he paid for a seat in the pit. He had forgotten that he was in mourning, and he remembered only that he was a jilted lover, a MacDermott cast aside for a policeman. He sat through the first act of the play, without much comprehension of its theme. Then in the middle of the second act, he heard the heroine vowing that she loved the hero, and he got up and walked ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... acquiescence than of comprehension went up in chorus from all but one of the revelers; he held his glass silently a moment, disposed to put ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... if they had never been. The past is to him as yesterday, and the future scarcely more than to-morrow. Ancestral monuments, he has none; written documents fraught with cogitations of other times, he has none; and any instrumentality calculated to awaken and expound the intellectual activity and comprehension of a present or approaching generation, he has none. His condition is that of the leopard of his own native Africa. It lives, it propagates its kind; but never does it indicate a movement towards that all but angelic intelligence of man. The slave eats, drinks, and sleeps—all ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... hast!—like a frightened child! I know not if I shall reach thy comprehension, were I to answer thee—but I, being only daughter to my father, Gualtier of Montferrat, who had no son—plead with my mother to send me hither when I came of age, to do homage loyally to King Janus, and claim ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... her, as a girl in ordinary circumstances has the new developments of life to think of, and how to be a wife and mother. And the news brought by every passer-by would prove doubly interesting, doubly important to Jeanne, in her daily growing comprehension of what she was called upon to do. As she felt the current more and more catching her feet, sweeping her on, overcoming all resistance in her own mind, she must have been more and more anxious to know what was going on in the distracted ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant |
