"Incredible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and it is not an uncommon thing to catch twenty-hundred weight at a single haul. When H.M.S. Challenger was lying in Cockburn Sound, some of the men with a very large seine-net, caught two thousand fish at a single haul — averaging five pounds a-piece. This is almost incredible, but it is related on ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... and long experience. One gives a hint, and the other improves it; but prejudice and ignorance too often stand in the way: "That cannot be," or "I cannot believe that," has crushed many an useful project. How incredible did the recovery of drowned persons appear at first! When the report reached England, that many abroad had been brought again to life, after laying under water some time, who gave it credit? But experience has since convinced ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... PROPOSITION TO BE PROVED. It is not surprising that a man carried away with excitement or prejudice should make assumptions that he does not even try to substantiate, but that anyone should assume the truth of the very conclusion that he has set out to establish seems incredible. Such a form of begging the question, however, does frequently occur. Sometimes the fallacy is so hidden in a mass of illustration and rhetorical embellishment that at first it is not apparent; but stripped of its verbal finery, ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... is that he is a dangerous monomaniac, and his one idea is to ruin the man who owns him. With this object in view he will display a talent for getting into trouble and a genius for dying that are almost incredible. ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... willingly hear him again; that Lord Eldon has assented to the fact of two and two making four, without shedding tears, or expressing the smallest doubt or scruple; tell me any other thing absurd or incredible, but, for the love of common sense, let me hear no more of the danger to be apprehended from the general diffusion of Popery. It is too absurd to be reasoned upon; every man feels it is nonsense when he hears it stated, and so does every man while ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... With incredible swiftness the money-changers had been driven out and the cleanser of the Temple had mounted the steps of the Beautiful Gate, and thong in hand was looking out on a scene unparalleled. Servants of money-changers were creeping about the floor; ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... its main characteristic a barbaric and ostentatious extravagance, alike in gambling and feasting, in the festivals of the Court or in the scarcely veiled debauchery of its devotees. Baron Loewenstern, who moved in its higher ranks, tells of cases of a license almost incredible to those who have not pried among the garbage of the Court of Catharine II. This recklessness, resulting from the tendency of the Muscovite nature, as of the Muscovite climate, to indulge in extremes, ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... remoteness of scene, and all the incredible things in the world, had been at the disposal of medieval authors long before the French Romantic Schools began to define themselves. The wonders of the East, especially, had very early come into literature; and the Anglo-Saxon Epistle ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... of conscience and intelligence had the people near Cape Lopez, called the Anziques, which M. du Chaillu describes. They had incredible ferocity; for they ate one another, sparing neither friends nor relations. Their butcher-shops were filled with human flesh, instead of that of oxen or sheep, for they ate the enemies they captured in battle. They fattened, slayed, and devoured ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... see that breach in the wall, down there behind the trees? It's the only scratch the place has got. And think of Lennont! It's incredible—simply incredible!" ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... again; he thought that Smallbones' soul was incorporated in a small animal something like a mouse, and that he had to dislodge it from its tenement of clay; but as soon as he drove it from one part of the body it would force its way back again into another; if he forced it out by the mouth after incredible exertions, which made him perspire at every pore, it would run back again into the ear; if forced from thence, through the nostril, then in at the toe, or any other part; in short, he laboured apparently ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the dog was gone. Yes, incredible as it seems, that graceless dog was gone—gone ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... really not to meet again, Vera? That would be incredible. A few days ago there would have been reason in our separation, now it is a useless sacrifice, hard for both of us. We have striven obstinately with one another for a whole year for the prize of happiness; and now that the ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... Indian, with gentle instincts, almost impossible to find; all for metaphysical thought which becomes an instinct and a passion that dominates everything. Add to that a character that one can only compare to Garibaldi. A creature of incredible sanctity and perfection. Immense worth without immediate application in France. The setting of another age or another country is what this hero needs. And now good-night,—O God, what a CALF I am! I leave you the title of COW, which ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... incredible. It is impossible that great and permanent harm should have been done him already. He was too vital and sane a being to be so easily corrupted. For those who knew him in the first years of his return from Paris, he was nothing if not the ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... the tithe of flax and hemp into what the lawyers call a Modus, or a certain sum in lieu of a tenth part of the product. And by this practice of claiming a Modus in many parishes by ancient custom, the Clergy in both kingdoms have been almost incredible sufferers. Thus, in the present case, the tithe of a tolerable acre of flax, which by a medium is worth twelve shillings, is by the present Bill reduced to four shillings. Neither is this the worst part in a Modus; every determinate sum must in process of time sink ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... Lefevre Pontalis merely mentions the inquest of 1476, saying that the impostor of Sermaise (1449-1452) may perhaps have been another impostor, not Jeanne des Armoises. The family of the Maid was not capable, surely, of accepting TWO impostors, 'one down, the other come on'! This is utterly incredible. ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... application of electricity were shown, and many things entirely unknown and unrecognized in works on Electro-Therapeutics. The entire class was placed under a medical influence simultaneously by the agency of electricity—an operation so marvelous that it would be considered incredible in medical colleges. By these and other experiments and numerous illustrations and lucid explanations of the brain and nervous system, the instruction was made deeply interesting, and students have attended more than one course to perfect themselves in the science. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... indigenous to the country, complete a list of some two hundred or more species of edible fruits. In this clime of perennial freshness trees bear nearly the year round, and so productive is the soil that the annual produce is almost incredible. The tax on orchards alone yields to the Crown a revenue of some five millions of dollars per annum, as I was informed by the late "second king" of Siam. It is not unusual to find on a single branch the bud and blossom, together with fruit in several different stages. Thus, at the merest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... clasp her hands, as she had done a few moments before, invoking again the blood of Christ, so venerated in Palma, but suddenly the wrinkles of her brown face broadened, and she burst out laughing. What a jolly master! Just like his grandfather; he used to say the most stupendous and incredible things so seriously that he deceived everybody. "And I, poor fool, was ready to believe your nonsense! Perhaps it was also a joke that you were going to ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... men looked at each other. It seemed incredible that Theodore Racksole, the ineffable Racksole, who owned a thousand miles of railway, several towns, and sixty votes in Congress, should be defied by a waiter, or even by a whole hotel. Yet so it was. When Europe's effete back is against the wall not a regiment of millionaires ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... to begin—events have moved so swiftly, and such incredible things have happened. Even now I am in a daze, for history is being made every hour—history for Mexico, for you, and for me. I bring you good news and bad news; something to startle you and set your brain in a whirl. I planned to send a messenger ahead of me, and then I said: ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... bound them, and part them by the gulf impassable. Tennyson's friend had never wronged him; and to the divineness of Shakspere's love is added that of forgiveness. Such love as this between man and man is rare, and therefore to the mind which is in itself no way rare, incredible, because unintelligible. But though all the commonest things are very divine, yet divine individuality is and will be a rare thing at any given period on the earth. Faith, in its ideal sense, will ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... will seem new and incredible to most Men, yet is not plainly altogether unheard of; for, as I heard, there have been some, who engaged themselves in this cure; but what they effected therein, I must acknowledge is unknown to me; ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman
... go unpunished. The might of Samson woke in that insulted bosom, and lent such incredible weight to the blow that fell on the aggressor's ear, that it took him a long time to believe that the thump proceeded from the beautiful little hand he had so often admired; or, in short, from any thing but a twenty-four pounder. He rubbed the wounded organ with astonishing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... sometimes upon obtaining excellency in some art, or feat of the hand; as Nero for playing on the harp, Domitian for certainty of the hand with the arrow, Commodus for playing at fence, Caracalla for driving chariots, and the like. This seemeth incredible, unto those that know not the principle, that the mind of man, is more cheered and refreshed by profiting in small things, than by standing at a stay, in great. We see also that kings that have been fortunate conquerors, in their first years, it being not possible for ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... of Lords to stop the progress of Reform, reminded him of the conduct of the excellent Mrs. Partington, during the great storm at Sidmouth, in 1824. The tide rose to an incredible height; the waves rushed in upon the houses, and every thing was threatened with destruction. In the midst of the fearful commotion of the elements, Dame Partington, who lived upon the sea beach, was seen at the door of her house, with mop and pattens, trundling her mop and sweeping out the sea ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... Esther's hand was upon the gate but forgot to press the latch. She was a quick brained girl and the insinuation in the minister's words had been patent. Yet that he should be capable of such an idea seemed incredible! Had he been looking at her he would have seen the clear red surge over her face from neck to brow and then recede, but not before it had lighted a danger spark ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... 7, after having pointed to His Omnipotence as affording a guarantee for the fulfilment of a prophecy so great that it might appear almost incredible, the Lord turns to His Servant and addresses Him. He announces to Him that it should be His glorious destination, partly to bring, in His person, the covenant with Israel to its full truth, partly to be the light for the Gentile ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... it was made to be. The beetle, the dragon-fly, the eagle, is as perfect as it can be. But man comes far short of the ideal that presided over his formation. Any way it would be unaccountable, not to say incredible, that God's highest work on earth should fail of its end, fail of realizing its ideal, fail of being what it was made for. But when the process, unlike that in animals, which is all facility and pleasure, is full of difficulty and pain, then for the ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... of the other men went away, but the third, who was Conny Masters, stayed. He talked volubly as ever, telling wonderful and sometimes incredible stories of things he had seen and done in his wanderings. Ramon said nothing. Julia responded less and less. Once she moved to drop the wrap from about her shoulders, and the alert Conny hastened to assist ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... flying leap over the door of the Master's car. He struck ground with a force which crumpled his healing right shoulder under him. Heedless of the pain, he hurled himself forward, on three legs, at an incredible speed; straight for the runabout. His great head low, his formidable teeth agleam beneath drawn-back lips, his soft eyes a-smolder with red flame, ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... incredible from the lips of men became, in the tone, look, and gesture of a woman, a wonderful truth for Bess. With little tremblings of all her slender body she rocked to and fro on her knees. The yearning wistfulness ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... thank you for your kind letter of the 18th on your god-daughter's eighth birthday! It does seem like an incredible dream that Vicky should already be so old! She is very happy with ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... there was a riot of flowers—rich yellow masses of enormous cloth-of-gold roses, delicate pink old-fashioned Castilian roses, which the Senorita carefully gathered each year to make rose-pillows, besides fuchsias as large as young trees, and a thousand other blooms of incredible size and beauty. Loving them all, their little Spanish mistress flitted about among them like a bird, alert, active, bright-eyed, straight as an arrow, and as springy of step as a girl of sixteen, although even then she was ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... the roadside are for him, and the berries, and the spring of water, and the friendly shelter; and if the weather is cold, he eats the frost grapes and the persimmons, or even the white-meated turnip, snatched from the field he passed through, with incredible relish. ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... family and friends are the most numerous, are looked upon as their chiefs, though they are unable to exercise any kind of discipline. Of these chiefs there are at present six principal ones, who have succeeded in sharing the most lucrative branches of the revenue, and what seems almost incredible, they have for the last six years preserved harmony amongst themselves; Hadji Ibrahim Ibn Herbely is at this moment the richest and most potent of ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... after them with an almost foolish expression on her face. She could not take it in. It seemed incredible. Then the two men vanished round the corner, and at the same moment she heard a girl saying in her ear: "Cheer up, Carrie! If Wilf hasn't caught this, he will get ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... younger man now who talked brilliantly and forcibly. Theydon, frankly abandoning the effort to twist the conversation to that enigma which, the more he saw and heard of Forbes the more incredible it became, listened enthralled to one who spoke with the conviction ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... cry of ZOOMZOOMARMA comes almost unheard to that incredible height and then is heard no more, she turns, and with infinite neatness picking up her skirts steps down daintily ...
— Plays of Near & Far • Lord Dunsany
... had yet realised. That Mrs. Hannaford, a woman whom she had for many years regarded as elderly, should be possessed and overcome by the passion of love, was a thing so strange, so at conflict with her fixed ideas, as to be all but incredible. In her aunt's presence, she scarcely reflected upon it; she saw only a woman bound to her by natural affection, who had fallen into dire misfortune and wretchedness. Little by little the story grew upon ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... their noses were to be trusted. "It's a very heavy scent to-day," he would say, "because Gaylap carries it over the plough. It's only a catching scent because the drops don't hang on the bushes." His lore on all such matters was incredible, but he would never listen to any argument. A man had a right to his own opinion; but then the man who differed from him knew nothing. He gave out his little laws to favoured individuals; not by way of conversation, for which he cared nothing, but because ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... confederates, commanded by Barberigo, had been sorely pressed by the Turks, as we have seen, at the beginning of the fight. Barberigo himself had been mortally wounded. His line had been turned. Several of his galleys had been sunk. But the Venetians gathered courage from despair. By incredible efforts they succeeded in beating off their enemies. They became the assailants in their turn. Sword in hand, they carried one vessel after another. The Capuchin, with uplifted crucifix, was seen to head the attack, and to lead the boarders to the assault. The Christian galley-slaves, in some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... presume, not without probability, there would be found in that case nations enough who will be jealous of acquiring, after the example of France, the earliest right to commerce with a country, which already peopled by several millions of inhabitants, augments every day in population, in a manner incredible; but, as a new people, unprovided as yet with several necessary articles, will procure a rich, even an immense outlet, for the fabricks and ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... would faint. "You—you must obey your father," she quavered. Until her son should marry Nan Brent she could not force herself to the belief that he could possibly commit such an incredible offense. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... in Cleveland were very good, as, indeed, they are in most Northern towns; but some of them have been erected with an amount of bad taste that is almost incredible. It is not uncommon to see in front of a square brick house a wooden quasi-Greek portico, with a pediment and Ionic columns, equally high with the house itself. Wooden columns with Greek capitals attached to the doorways, and wooden pediments ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... "It's incredible," cried Dyce, "that you should harp on that paltry matter! Who, in our time, is an original thinker? Ideas are in the air. Every man uses his mind—if he has any—on any suggestion which recommends itself to him. If it were worth while, I could point out most important differences between the ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... brought sobering influences to bear on Pyotr Petrovitch. Intensely unpleasant as it was, he was forced little by little to accept as a fact beyond recall what had seemed to him only the day before fantastic and incredible. The black snake of wounded vanity had been gnawing at his heart all night. When he got out of bed, Pyotr Petrovitch immediately looked in the looking-glass. He was afraid that he had jaundice. However his health ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... heavens, accompanied by subterranean thunders, and all the other symptoms which precede volcanic disturbances. Then a coronet of flame encircled the crater; masses of red rock, pumice, and magnetic stones were flung out with tremendous violence to an incredible distance, and in such continuous multitudes as to resemble a swarm of bees clustering over the mountain. One boulder of pumice six feet in circumference was pitched twenty miies away; another of magnetic iron fell at a distance of fifteen. The surface of the earth was covered, for a circuit of ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... is soft glass, and of the poor, woven brass; the land is very rich in brass, which they work like wool after steeping it in water. It is with some hesitation that I describe their eyes, the thing being incredible enough to bring doubt upon my veracity. But the fact is that these organs are removable; any one can take out his eyes and do without till he wants them; then he has merely to put them in; I have known many cases of people losing their own and borrowing at need; and some—the rich, naturally—keep ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... cowardice was manifest—rampant, if one may use such a term; yet he had ventured into the fog the night before; not only so, but upon a deck which was filled in his eyes with horrid enemies, prowling in search of victims. How had he achieved that spirited action? It seemed incredible, yet I had come upon him at the foot of the bridge stairs, and I had his explanation. What induced the timid rabbit to venture out of his hutch upon such a night and in such circumstances? Frankly the riddle beat me, and I should ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... had "stood up for prayers" went through Bruceton and the surrounding country like wildfire. Scarcely anyone believed it, no matter by whom he was told: the informer might be a person of undoubted character, but the information was simply incredible. People would not believe such a thing unless they could see it with their own eyes and hear it with their own ears: so the special meetings became at once so largely attended that they were held in the body of the church instead of the little basement called ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... amount of contraband trade really carried on is here surcharged by not far short of one-half; that it cannot in any case exceed six millions sterling—certainly still a bulk of illegitimate values sufficiently monstrous, and almost incredible. We shall proceed to deal conclusively, however, with that special branch of the traffic for which the materials are most accessible and irrecusable, and the verification of truth therefore scarcely left to the chances ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... more: we must surely suppose that the chieftains of the Paeonians and Illyrians, and in fact all such personages— would prefer freedom to slavery; for they are not accustomed to obey orders, and the man, they say, is a bully. Heaven knows, there is nothing incredible in the statement. Unmerited success is to foolish minds a fountain-head of perversity, so that it is often harder for men to keep the good they have, than it was to obtain it. {24} It is for you then, men of Athens, to regard his difficulty as your opportunity, ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... splendor the lovers and admirers of vanity!" This happened towards the latter part of the year 500, when that king made his first entry into Rome. Fulgentius returned home in a short time after, and was received with incredible joy. He built a spacious monastery in Byzacena, but retired to a cell himself, which was situate on the sea-shore. Here his time was employed in writing, reading, prayer, mortification, and the manual labor of making mats and umbrellas of ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... order came that we must proceed, so the next morning our guard prepared to start us again towards the Lumpiya. Then we three semi-corpses collected what little strength remained in us, and suddenly made an attack on them with stones; whereupon, incredible as it may seem, our cowardly guard turned tail and bolted! We went on in the direction of Taklakot, followed at a distance by these ruffians, who were entreating us to make no further resistance and to go with them where they wanted us to go. If we did not, they ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... caused her prejudice and injury by detaining her a couple of months in the waters of Cadiz. The persons who instituted this action forget that the Spanish courts have no jurisdiction in the matter of libels published in England. And as for the prejudice caused to the vessel, it is incredible that the British Government should be so weak as to wait for letters from Lloyd's agent before opening an inquiry into the deaths of some three hundred of its subjects and the identity of the dastardly scoundrel who was the cause of their deaths, who disabled the ship that held ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... "'Incredible!' I exclaimed. 'When he wrote you that, he did not know, he could not have known, your birth, your race, the taint in your blood. I will never ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... Northwestern States there are large forests of it, and the amount of honey reported stored by strong swarms in this section during the time the tree is in bloom is quite incredible. As a shade and ornamental tree the linden is fully equal to the maple, and, if it were as extensively planted and cared for, our supplies of virgin honey would be greatly increased. The famous honey of Lithuania in Russia is the product ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... 1960s, South Korea has achieved an incredible record of growth and integration into the high-tech modern world economy. Four decades ago, GDP per capita was comparable with levels in the poorer countries of Africa and Asia. In 2004, South Korea joined the trillion ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... pearl, as told by the Persians, is worth recounting, for perhaps to some it may not seem altogether incredible. For they say that it was lodged in its oyster in the sea which washes the Persian coast, and that the oyster was swimming not far from the shore; both its valves were standing open and the pearl lay between them, a wonderful sight and notable, for no pearl in all history could ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... The black spiral of smoke had become an enveloping cloud, spreading rapidly in both directions from its original starting-point, and already he could distinguish the red glare of angry flames leaping beneath, fanned by the wind into great sheets of fire, and sweeping forward with incredible swiftness. These might not succeed in reaching the imprisoned men, but the stifling vapor, the suffocating smoke held captive by that overhanging rock, would prove a most ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... the market square under the leafless trees presents a lively scene. There are stalls sacred to poultry, to butter, eggs, and cheese; but the vegetable kingdom predominates. Flanked by bulwarks of greens and bundles of leeks of incredible whiteness and thickness of stem, sit the saleswomen, their heads swathed in gay cotton kerchiefs, and the ground before them temptingly spread with little heaps of corn salad, of chicory, and of yellow endive ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... the catch and clear the stage for the next day's operations. Till long after midnight the work goes merrily on in the huts or shelters over the stages, for the hard work then means no starvation next winter in the Newfoundland homes, and the fish are split, cleaned, headed, salted and packed with incredible rapidity. ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... was not wanting. Some of her old friends, and several women who paid court to her, came to join the group, and Lucien soon became the hero of the circle. The Countess drew him out on the subject of life in Paris; his satirical talk flowed with spontaneous and incredible spirit; he told anecdotes of celebrities, those conversational luxuries which the provincial devours with such avidity. His wit was as much admired as his good looks. And Mme. la Comtesse Sixte du Chatelet, preparing Lucien's triumph so patiently, sat like ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... those of France and Portugal. The Clarets of the London market, are principally prepared for the purpose, and, in the transit, lose much of the pure nature of the original production: and the quantity of adulterated Port that is sold in England is almost incredible. It is also a well known fact, that there is more Tokay[2] sold on the Continent and in England, in one year, than the limited space where it is grown, on the mountains of Hungary, ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... he told her, "for your dear sake, my angel. The fatigues, the affairs of a Ruler of State are incredible. I will never let you bear them. The signori may pluck their beards out by the roots. I am resolved." ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... thought of being ushered into his presence by a respectable butler, and making my excuses for having called at such an unreasonable hour. I pictured to myself how he would look as I gradually dropped my assumed voice, and very slowly the almost incredible truth began ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... It seemed incredible that keen intelligence and silly superstition could be such close neighbors in the same brain, for I knew Kishimoto San to be an honest man. He not only lived what he believed, he insisted on others believing ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... exultantly. She dared to exult, but she did not dare to express to herself the hopes, the wild, incredible hopes, which the very thought of freedom set to quivering deep down in her, as the first warmth makes the life toss in its slumber ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... feeling for the gaskets or lines which bound the sail to the spar, I cut and hacked as fast as I could ply my arms. In a flash the gale, whipping into a liberated fold of the canvas, blew the whole sail out; the bowsprit reeled and quivered under me; I danced off it with incredible despatch, shouting to the men to hoist away. The head of the staysail mounted in thunder, and the slatting of its folds and the thrashing of its sheet was like the rattling of heavy field-pieces whisked at full gallop over ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... started back, searing couplets forming with incredible swiftness in her brain. How she would flay Johnny Jewel with the keen blade of her wit! If he thought he was the only person at the Rolling R ranch who could write poetry, it would be a real kindness to ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... few years later than this, used, it is true, to be dirty to an extent appalling to an Englishman; but their provender was usually far from contemptible. There is more sense of Breton scenery in another letter a little later. Both here and, presently, in Gascony he notes truly enough "the incredible degree to which the Revolution has cleared the feudal ages out of the minds of the country people"; but if he reflected on the bad national effect of this breach with the past, he does not say so. ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... sermon joyeux was commonly interposed between the sottie and the Morality or miracle which followed. The sermon parodied in verse the pulpit discourses of the time, with text duly announced, the customary scholastic divisions, and an incredible licence in matter and in phrase. Among the dramatic monologues of the fifteenth century is found at least one little masterpiece, which has been ascribed on insufficient grounds to Villon, and which would do no discredit to that poet's genius—the Franc-Archer ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... lie dispersed amid great riches: Such gold, such arrogance, so many bold hearts! All the sunken armadas pressed to powder By weight of incredible seas! That mingled wrack No livening sun shall visit till the crust Of earth be riven, or this rolling planet Reel on its axis; till the moon-chained tides, Unloosed, deliver up that white Atlantis Whose naked peaks ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... the Forum in robes of a material as soft as that worn by women and almost transparent in its thinness. Since all these instruments of pleasure, and the luxury that appealed to ambition even more keenly than to taste, were pursued with a ruinous competition, prices were forced up to an incredible degree. An amphora of Falernian wine cost one hundred denarii, a jar of Pontic salt-fish four hundred; a young Roman would often give a talent for a favourite, and boys who ranked in the highest class for beauty of face and elegance of form fetched even a higher price than this.[43] Few could have ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... council with each other, for they shouted and gesticulated at a great rate. Glenarvan determined to go up to them; but he had no sooner moved forward than the whole band wheeled round, and disappeared with incredible speed. It would have been useless for the travelers to attempt to overtake ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... so fast. To Carter their conduct seemed outrageous. It was incredible that in so short a time, at a pace so reckless, they would decide a question of such moment. They came bunched together, shifting and changing, with, through the dust, flashes of blue and gold and scarlet. A jacket of ...
— The Man Who Could Not Lose • Richard Harding Davis
... called Biscaina went up the river, and the Indians came presently on board to barter away such things as they had, especially fish, which at certain times of the year come up these rivers from the sea in such quantities as would seem incredible to those who had not seen it. They likewise exchanged some gold for pins, and what they most valued they gave for beads, or hawks-bells. Next day the other two ships came in, having to wait for the flood, which does not rise above half a fathom in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... and Talmudists have enveloped it in a host of mystical superstitions, most of which are as absurd as they are incredible, but all of them tending to show the great veneration that has always been paid to it.[127] Thus they say that it is possessed of unlimited powers, and that he who pronounces it shakes heaven and earth, and inspires the very angels with ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... their parishes, and that they had rather endure anything in the hope of some manufacturing revival, than return to the condition of farm labourers from which they had emerged. This was a fact perfectly new to me, and at the first blush, truly incredible, but I asked the neighbours in two of the instances quoted ... and they not only confirmed the story, but seemed to consider any appearance of scepticism a mark of prejudice ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... one. The position of the Atheist is a clear and a reasonable one: I know nothing about 'God,' and therefore I do not believe in Him or in it; what you tell me about your God is self-contradictory, and is therefore incredible. I do not deny 'God,' which is an unknown tongue to me; I do deny your God, who is an impossibility. I am without God."[5] Up to 1887 I find myself writing on the same lines: "No man can rationally affirm 'There is no God,' until the word 'God' has for him a definite meaning, and ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... woman recognized her—looked from the furs to the eager little face above them and smiled. It seemed incredible to Mary that she should have been remembered out of all the hundreds of customers who must pass through the shop every day, but she did not know that the sight of her delight over her gift had been the one bright spot ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... began his march in the beginning of July from Philadelphia for the river Ohio, a prodigious tract of country very little known, destitute of military roads, incumbered with mountains, morasses, and woods, that were almost impenetrable. It was not without incredible exertion of industry, that he procured provisions and carriages for this expedition, formed new roads, extended scouting parties, secured camps, and surmounted many other difficulties in the course of his tedious march, during which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... eye-witness of its incredible fatality in Florence, the seat of the revival of science, gives a more lively description of the attack of the disease than ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... but if they had the sense of a turnip they would know that you were incapable of squashing a flea, let alone destroying five eminent brothers in science! You, jealous, guilty of five crimes passionel! Pour le science! Credulous Earthlings! Incredible Earthlings! And here are you, a hunted man with ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... have been a sad muddler if he had not made his story intriguing; but, anyhow, he happens to be a sound craftsman with a considerable sense of style and construction. And he has a convincing way of handling his facts that compels belief in the most incredible of stories. Lieutenant JONES was a prisoner in the hands of the Turks at Zozgad, and to amuse himself and his fellow-prisoners he raised a "spook" which in time gained such a reputation that it had the Turkish officials almost hopelessly at its mercy. From being merely a joke his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... fire as he had hoped it would. He dodged quickly behind the shelter of the barricade. A beam of dazzling fire penciled the rock wall. It crackled, spread, flaring to incredible heat and light. It exploded, deluging the gallery with ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... crimes unexampled, it is said, in Western history. The deeds of Bonnot and his confederates were so reckless, daring, and openly defiant, their escapes so miraculous, and the audacity of their assaults so incredible, that the people of Paris were put in a state bordering on frenzy. Just before the previous Christmas, in broad daylight, on a busy street, the band fell upon a bank messenger. They shot him and took from his wallet $25,000. They then jumped in an automobile and ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... Incredible it seems to some And to myself a mystery, That such weak flesh and blood as we, Armed with no other shield or sword, Or other weapon than the Word, Should combat and should overcome A spirit powerful as he! He summons ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... navigating can be made so that without rowers great ships can be guided by one pilot on river or sea more swiftly than if they were full of oarsmen. Likewise vehicles are possible which without draught-animals can be propelled with incredible speed, like the scythed chariots, as we picture them, in which antiquity fought. Likewise a flying machine is possible in the middle of which a man may sit, using some ingenious device by which artificial wings will beat the air like those of a flying bird. Also ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... more could have been pressed in, half a dozen had found room. The feat must have been accomplished by main strength and awkwardness, as the old phrase is. It was no place indeed for skill to evince itself; but people pushed about in the most incredible way when they tried to move, though mostly they did not try; they let their boats lie still, and sway with the common movement when the water rose and sank, or fluctuated unseen beneath them. There were more and more people of the ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... just at the nick of time, in which ghosts walk, in which anything can be changed into anything, a hero going through half a dozen transformations to escape from so many dangers,—these are to the savage not incredible nor foolish tales, to him they are very real, and very serious matters. He lives, in fact, we are told by the authorities on the subject, in the myth-making period of the world; in the period when such incidents as occur ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... incredible, the thing which had befallen Leesville. Full of hatred for the system as Jimmie Higgins was, he could not but be thrilled by what he saw. Thousands of men pouring into the once commonplace little city—men of a score of races and creeds, ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... sensational. He stepped quickly forward, and, taking Blake who was still talking, all unconscious of those behind him, by the collar of his coat, he interrupted him in the middle of an impassioned period, wrenched him backwards off his feet, and dashed him with a force almost incredible into a heap in a corner of the room. There for some moments the baronet lay half dazed by the shock ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... any more," said Marie gently. "But one always has a feeling that one must return whence one has come, do you not think? It is only that. It seems incredible that I, alone out of our struggling thousands, should be let to come away and live serenely in a cloud cote, does it not? And the struggle in Mexico ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... fatuous as this, quite so sublimely unhumorous. If he had, what under heaven had she been about? That she could have believed this smug cockscomb to have loved her—to have been capable of anything but hunger and thirst for her—incredible! It made her out precisely as fatuous as he. And yet she said nothing. With the likes of him nothing seemed worth doing except ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... conceived a devotion worthy her great love. To put into practice this heroic design she became still more amorous, took extreme care of her charms, and made use of learned precepts to maintain her bodily perfection, which threw out an incredible lustre. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... in Sparta, there is no other race of men which will await thy onset, O king, or will raise hands against thee: for now thou art about to fight against the noblest kingdom and city of those which are among the Hellenes, and the best men." To Xerxes that which was said seemed to be utterly incredible, and he asked again a second time in what manner being so few they would fight with his host. He said; "O king, deal with me as with a liar, if thou find not that these things come to pass as ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus |
