"Understand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had trodden on a corn he has; and I knew at once it was the face I had looked for and longed for all my life and had found at last; and I loved him from the first and we went out of the crowd and talked. Well, now; I clung to him in all our happy, happy months together, in a way you can never understand, because I loved him, and because I am not the sort that men like because I am only plain, and I knew that if ever he left me I could never get another. Well, now; you have taken him away from me. You could get dozens and dozens ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... should be open; the Parliament in revising the Constitution introduced the ballot. He gave his consent with much reluctance; voting seemed to him to be a public duty, and to perform it in secret was to undermine the roots of political life. He was a man who was constitutionally unable to understand fear. We have then the Council and the Parliament, and we must now enquire as to their duties. In nearly every modern State the popular representative assembly holds the real power; before it, everything else is humbled; the chief occupation of lawgivers ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... thin, prim-looking, rather plain children; but Oliver was the very picture of a father's darling, a boy that any childless man would bitterly covet, any childless woman crave and yearn for, with a longing that women alone can understand; a child who, beautiful as most childhood is, had a beauty you rarely see— bright, frank, merry, bold; half a Bacchus and half a Cupid, he was a perfect image of the Golden Age. Though three years old, he was evidently ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... will go to Marseilles,' said Dantes,—for you understand, I repeat his words just as he uttered ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in the faces o' their families in such matters, an' I told Florence so one day when she had dropped in fer a drink o' buttermilk. She just took my hands in hers, an', lookin' me in the eye, said, 'Mrs. McVeigh, ye do not understand. He is a fine, strong man, an' will take me away to the city, where my sisters can't make my life a burden. They are like ye, and doubt the worth o' him, but I have had more chance than any o' ye to study his character, ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... too young to understand how this is done, but you each have something inside of you, by which you are sending messages almost every minute while ...
— Child's Health Primer For Primary Classes • Jane Andrews
... glad Aunt Alvirah was to see Ruth! Uncle Jabez didn't display his feelings so openly; but Ruth had learned how to take the miller, and how to understand him. She helped him with his accounts, made out his bills for the year, and otherwise made herself ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... "I think I understand; but you are entirely wrong. I have never thought you cared for me. My wildest dreams never left me any confidence. Col. Zane and Wetzel both had some deluded notion that ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... a damned clever chap!" said Tansley incisively. "He'd got brains, my dear sir, and where women—cleverish women, anyhow—are concerned, brains are going to win all the way and come in winners by as many lengths as you please! Mrs. Saumarez, I understand, is a woman who dabbles in politics, and your cousin interested her. And when a woman gets deeply interested in ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... independence; but the political thought which justified state sovereignty had its logical issue in an isolated individuality. Common sense and prudence, to be sure, are always defeating logic; but the logical conception helps us to understand tendencies, and it is not difficult to see that the word independence, which was on every one's lips at the close of the last century, was not the sign of a political thought only, but expressed the habit of mind with which ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... the battle in this preparation. For instance: I have rarely been able to visit, in the proper spirit, the wild and inhospitable places of our own Highlands. I am happier where it is tame and fertile, and not readily pleased without trees. I understand that there are some phases of mental trouble that harmonise well with such surroundings, and that some persons, by the dispensing power of the imagination, can go back several centuries in spirit, and put ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... any one but you. I don't understand very well what this divorcing rightly means. Nor what they will do to me. Will you be thinking of me a little? I wouldn't ask it, for I know you are unhappy and bothered enough, but, ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... dangers which they had just inherited from their predecessors, to send out the peremptory instructions which have been so ably acted upon; and above all, a naval and military force fully adequate for the occasion. This done, China succumbed; and we understand that poor Lord Palmerston is pluming himself on being able to produce, next session, a despatch which he issued to Sir Henry Pottinger, chalking out the very line of operations which was adopted with such supreme success. We, of course, cannot officially know ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... these would moisten to a greater degree my mortal pen with ink; but though I lack culture and erudition, what harm is there, however, in employing fiction and unrecondite language to give utterance to the merits of these characters? And were I also able to induce the inmates of the inner chamber to understand and diffuse them, could I besides break the weariness of even so much as a single moment, or could I open the eyes of my contemporaries, will it not forsooth prove ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... enabled her to shoot ahead of the fugitives and intercept them in one of the narrowest parts of the mountain gorge. Here, instead of using her natural voice, she conceived that the likeliest way of making her terrified friends understand who she was, would be to shout with all the strength of her lungs. Accordingly, she planted herself suddenly in the center of their path, just as the two came tearing blindly round a corner of rock, and set up a series of yells, the nature ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... am at a loss to understand what new scheme you have in hand. Something benevolent, I am sure; something for your ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Addressing these beings, he says:—"Atolwg, lan gynnulleidfa, yr wyf yn deall mai rhai o bell ydych, a gymmerwch chwi Fardd i'ch plith sy'n chwennych trafaelio?" which in English is—"May it please you, comely assembly, as I understand that you come from afar, to take into your company a Bard who wishes ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... without reasoning; that is for those who give them. Eliza, I am sure that you agree with me. Jordas, make this man clearly understand, as you can do when you take the trouble. But you first must clearly understand the whole yourself. I will ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... at a loss to understand what the material of Master Halliday's boots had to do with his own alleged good fortune in falling into the hands of such a guardian; but he said nothing, and, reassured by the good-humoured face of his conductor, followed ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... enormous bills, and with the close of the term found herself strangely enough drawn into this strange medley of character that moved in such different circles, and yet called themselves friends. You are to understand that though the same church received these girls on Sunday, yet the actual circle in which their lives whirled was as unlike as possible. The Erskines were the cream, cultured, traveled, wealthy, aristocratic as to blood and as to manners, literary in the sense that they bought rare books, ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... we had no part in the battle. When we afterward heard how McDowell's army skedaddled back to Washington more rapidly than they came, we thought that the war would end without our firing a gun. So little did we understand the firmness of President Lincoln's mind and the settled purpose ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... did not more than half understand Flint's remarks; but he had a dim impression that he was being lectured, and he did not enjoy ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... of the femoral glands. He had never thought of the sore in this connection, but remembered most distinctly that it followed a flea-bite in an omnibus, and had been caused, as he supposed, by his scratching the place, though he could not understand why it lasted so long. Mr. Hutchinson concludes that all the evidence tends to show that the disease had probably been communicated from the blood of an infected person through the bite of the insect. It thus appears ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... ladies now at land, We men at sea indite; But first would have you understand How hard it is to write; The Muses now, and Neptune too, We must implore to write to you, With a ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Did she understand me? Did her quick mind guess my condition? I could not tell, and yet a strange look of intelligence flashed from ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... my tenants distinctly to understand that they must vote from conviction, and that that will please me. That is my view of being a Liberal," ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... as different from the dancing of ancient times, and from the dancing sanctioned in the Bible, as daylight is from dark, as good is from bad. The modern dance imperils health, it poisons the social nature; it destroys intellectual growth; and it robs men and women of their virtue. Let us understand one another. To attend one dance may not accomplish all of this in any person. One may attend many dances, and he himself not see these results marked in his character, but some one else will see them. For ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... that God exists; he who denies is forced to grant it to me also, since he entertained it before me, every negation implying a previous affirmation; as for him who is in doubt, he needs but to reflect a moment to understand that his doubt necessarily supposes an unknown something, which, sooner or later, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... explains with great clearness and thoroughness that portion of the subject which not only is most difficult to understand, but also underlies and gives meaning to all geographical knowledge. A vast number of facts which are much inquired about, but little known, are taken up and explained. Simple formulas are given so that ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... studied zoological productions in a museum, or become personally aware of the indescribable depression caused by the brown tones of all European products, will understand how the constant sight of these gray, arid plains must have affected the moral nature of the inhabitants, through the desolate sense of utter barrenness which they present to the eye. There, in those dismal regions, is neither coolness nor brightness, nor shade nor contrast,—none of all those ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... supernatural. God, to give sensation to that stone, must break through the natural order of things, because to feel is beyond the native powers of a stone. It is not natural for an animal to reason, it is impossible. God must work a miracle to make it understand. Well, the stone is just as capable of feeling, and the animal of reasoning, as is man capable of saving his soul ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... the angry lady, "you have chosen with dreams and theories to overthrow my schemes for your own aggrandizement; but you shall not do the same by those I have formed for your sister. I but too well understand the fascination you both labour under; since I had the same struggle with your father, to make him cast off the parent of this youth, who hid his evil propensities with the smoothness and subtlety of a viper. In those days ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... renders a democratic government dearer than any other is, that a democracy does not always succeed in moderating its expenditure, because it does not understand the art of being economical. As the designs which it entertains are frequently changed, and the agents of those designs are more frequently removed, its undertakings are often ill-conducted or left unfinished; in the ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... new lord privy counsellor teases me," sighed the princess, and, turning to Lestocq, she continued: "I think you should understand the laws better than I, and should ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... fact that this time it was not a monster belonging to an utterly alien race upon whom we were to experiment, but a beautiful daughter of our common Mother Eve, added zest and interest as well as the most confident hopes of success to the efforts of those who were striving to understand the accents ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... Florentines that we have more of that magnanimous sobriety which abhors a trivial lavishness that it may be grandly open-handed on grand occasions, than can be found in any other city of Italy; for I understand that the Neapolitan and Milanese courtiers laugh at the scarcity of our plate, and think scorn of our great families for borrowing from each other that furniture of the table at their entertainments. But in the vain laughter of folly ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... "I understand," said Deronda. "But there is not really such a separation—deeper down, as Mrs. Meyrick says. Our religion is chiefly a Hebrew religion; and since Jews are men, their religious feelings must have much in common ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Mrs. Upjohn, looking up sharply from her embroidery. She always contradicted, if only for argument's sake, so that even her assents usually took a negative form. "It's enough if he's able to put out a fire in that Church. It doesn't take much of a man, I understand, to fill an Episcopalian pulpit." (Nobody had ever yet been able to teach the good dame the difference between Episcopal and Episcopalian, and she preferred the undivided use of the latter word.) "Any thing ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... Maria, we don't properly understand Master Harry. I am much troubled by what has occurred just now. I fear he is a hypocrite in morals, and without a single atom of honorable principle. Did you observe the expression of his face? Curse me if I think the devil himself has so bad a one. ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... ichthyologists, zoologists and so on, are fearfully uneducated people. They write such a vile jargon that it not only bores one to read it, but one actually has at times to remodel the sentences before one can understand them; on the other hand, they have solemnity and earnestness enough and to spare. ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... Richard's expedition may help us to understand the relative positions of the natives and the naturalized to the English interest in the districts through which he was to march. By this time the banner of Art McMurrogh floated over all the castles and raths, on the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... Foster, why cannot we be friends without—without anything else. I will not pretend that I do not understand your meaning, but I tell you, once and for all, I don't want to be married. Really," and she smiled brightly, "you are as bad ...
— Foster's Letter Of Marque - A Tale Of Old Sydney - 1901 • Louis Becke
... yet so obtuse was I that I had not suspected that the lady herself might be found in this house. In fact, such an event was at once so romantic and so improbable that it did not even suggest itself. But now here was the lady herself. Here she stood. Now I could understand the emotion, the agitation, and all that, of the previous evening. This would at once account for it all. And here she stood—the lady herself —and that lady was ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... and a handkerchief being tied about his head, his appearance excited the curiosity of the natives, who approached him, and inquired, by signs and gestures, the nature of his complaint. Having been satisfied on this point, they made him understand that they could cure him, if he would consent to their method; which he did with great willingness, as he was maddened with pain, and eager to make any experiment to gain relief. They first kindled a fire on the ground ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... As I understand the telegrams, the engineer of your train had never seen a locomotive before. Very well, then, I am once more glad that there is an Ever-watchful Providence to foresee possible results and send Ogdens and McIntyres ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his honour drank vodka every day, and now he's taken to his bed and got very thin. I fancy his honour does not understand anything now. He's ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... admirable things about Browning's admirable career as poet and man is that he wrote not to please the critics, as Tennyson often did, not to please the crowd, as the vast horde of ephemeral writers do, but to please himself. The critics and the crowd professed that they could not understand him; but he had no difficulty in understanding them. He knew exactly what they wanted, and declined to supply it. Instead of giving them what he thought they wanted, he gave them what he thought they needed. That illustrates the difference between the literary caterer and the ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... all was darkness, a darkness so deep and so black that for a moment he thought he had put his head into an inkwell. He listened for a few moments and heard nothing. Once in a while a cold wind blew on his face. At first he could not understand where that wind was coming from, but after a while he understood that it came from the lungs of the monster. I forgot to tell you that the Shark was suffering from asthma, so that whenever he breathed a storm seemed ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... worse and worse, her father, who did not understand such a lingering complaint, imagined his wife was only grown still more whimsical, and that if she could be prevailed on to exert herself, her health would soon be re-established. In general he treated her with indifference; ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... apothecaries, and merchants? men of all ages, the young and strong, and the old and white-headed? those from all parts of the country—men of Jericho, and Gibeon, and Mizpah, side by side with inhabitants of Jerusalem? people of both sexes, men and women? The goldsmith did not say, 'I don't understand building, therefore I cannot help.' The apothecary did not object that it was not his trade, so he must leave it to the bricklayers and masons. Old Shemaiah did not say, 'Surely an old white-headed man like myself cannot ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... parents as to the proper method of dealing with their own brothers and sisters. Kermit said: "Well, I think that was very foolish of Joseph." Ethel chimed in with "So do I, very foolish, and I do not understand how he could have done it." Then, after a pause, Kermit added thoughtfully by way of explanation: "Well, I guess he was simple, like Jane in the Gollywogs": and Ethel ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... crystal: how I like to hear her talk! These people know Paris, as we say in America, "like a book." They have studied it aesthetically, historically, socially. They have studied French people and French literature,—and studied it with enthusiasm, as people ever should, who would truly understand. They are all kindness to me. Whenever I wish to see any thing, I have only to speak; or to know, I have only to ask. At breakfast every morning we compare notes, and make up our list of wants. My ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... or three, of his book, but sometimes he reveals a phase of himself in a single paragraph. Read, for instance, this brief extract from Roosevelt's "Through the Brazilian Wilderness," if you would understand some of the traits which I have just alluded to. It comes at the end of his long and dismaying exploration of the River of Doubt, when the party was safe at last, and the terrible river was about to flow into the broad, lakelike Amazon, and Manaos was almost in sight, where civilization could be ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... of white crepe in the brim of her close hat. Her eyes were red and half-closed with recent crying and she had a piteous face. He knew what it all meant and involuntarily raised his hand in salute. He scarcely knew he did it and for a second she seemed not to understand. But the next second she burst out crying and hurriedly took out her handkerchief and hid her face as she passed. One of the boys lying on the blood-wet mire in Flanders, was Donal's bitter thought, but he had had his kind hours to recall at the last moment—and even now she ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of slavery to become its destroyers. Think you his work was easy? Count the long years of his unequal strife; gather from the winds, which scattered them, the curses of his foes; suffer under all the annoyances and insults which malice and falsehood can invent, and you will then understand how much of heart and hope, of courage and self-relying zeal, were required to make him what he was, and to qualify him to do what he did. And what did he? When the rough hand of war had stripped off the pretexts which enveloped the rebellion, and it became evident that slavery had struck ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... journey from my home to the forester's, for his district was not in our country. The man often gave me proofs of his thorough and many-sided knowledge; but he did not understand the art of conveying his knowledge to others, especially because what he knew he had acquired only by dint of actual experience.[18] Further, some work of timber-floating[19] with which he had been entrusted hindered him from devoting to me the stipulated ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... Anglo-Saxons were establishing and strengthening themselves very rapidly in the part of the island which Vortigern had assigned them—which was, as the reader will understand from what has already been said in respect to the place of their landing, the southeastern part—a region which now constitutes the county of Kent. In addition, too, to the natural increase of their power from the increase ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... married, are you?" Jim Tenny said, with a great laugh, looking at her soberly, with big black eyes. Jim Tenny was a handsome fellow, and much larger and stronger than her father. Ellen liked him; he often brought candies in his pocket for her, and they were great friends, but she could never understand why he stayed in the parlor all alone with her aunt Eva, instead of in the sitting-room ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... he declared. "But of course"—ruefully—"I can quite understand Mrs. Durward's wanting you to go back to them for a time, and I suppose we must resign ourselves to being unselfish. Only you must promise to come back ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... with it on your own account. And I tell you you might as well 'ave made off with a few thousands out of my till. Robbing's wot you've been guilty of in the sight of God; and you can come and talk to me about your conscience. I don't understand your kind of conscience—Keith." There was still a touch of appeal in his ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... "I don't quite understand you," the earl replied, in a disappointed tone. It was evident that five thousand pounds per annum was too small a ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... We do not understand what John Van Dyke meant by his expression "half seaman." It is probable that the sailors among the prisoners pretended to be soldiers in order to be exchanged. There was much more difficulty in exchanging sailors than soldiers, as ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... Understand, please, that this book is rank melodrama. It has scant literary quality. It is not planned to edify. Its only mission is to entertain you and,—if you belong to the action-loving majority, to give ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... do not bring good results to individuals, may, nevertheless, be necessary, and may be a sign of progress. Take the favorite illustration of Mr. Froude and Mr. Ruskin—the condition of the agricultural laborer of England. If I understand them, the civilization of the last century has not helped his position as a man. If I understand them, he was a better man, in a better condition of earthly happiness, and with a better chance of heaven, fifty years ago than now, before the "era ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... come to hand-grips with them ere they can get help from the town,' the burly German answered bluntly. 'I cannot understand what we are here for if it be not to fight. If we win, the town must fall. If we lose, We have had a bold stroke for it, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... bodyguards took very little part in the conversation. Among the others was a tall, affected young man, whom they addressed as baron. He was slender, very elegant, and very strong. When he saw that we did not understand German he spoke to us in English. But Soubise was too timid to answer, and I speak English very badly. He therefore resigned himself ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... it difficult to understand each other's humour. One can well understand this difficulty. No one finds any obstacle—except Puritan prejudice—in understanding French humour; because French humour is universal; the humour of the human spirit contemplating the tragic comedy ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... short of three verra necessary things, flour, tea, and steel traps. I canna get them frae Edmonton. They didna fully honor my fall requisitions, an' it's too late i' the season now. Yet they'll ask why I dinna get the skins next spring, ye understand. If the Indians dinna get fully supplied here, they'll go elsewhere; they can do that since there's a French firm strung a line o' posts to compete ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... bound to recognise that GOODNESS is our safe and only guide. The general direction of our advance in the past we can easily trace, but the purpose of the devious paths through which we were led is too difficult to understand. Our present puzzles us, our future sometimes appals us. Some rush ahead to see what lies before us and come back injured and pass away as pessimists, others hesitate to advance at all. We cannot outstrip our guiding pillar of ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... astonished me. She was no longer the shy Tonine of last night; she had that exultant air which happiness bestows, and the look of pleasure which the delights of love give to a young beauty. I could not understand how I had escaped from doing homage to her beauty when I first saw her at her mother's house. But I was then too deeply in love with C—— C——; I was in too great distress; and, moreover, Tonine was then unformed. I got up, and making her bring me ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... sailor's head to being cut off, that for some seconds he was not quite sure whether it still remained upon his shoulders! He could not understand a word that passed between the contending parties, though there was talk enough to have satisfied a sitting of parliament, and probably with about the same ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... I will go where I please till they boycott the very roads from under my feet. I expect to hear soon that they have boycotted Ada and me, so that no young man shall come and marry us. Of course, I don't understand such things, but it seems to me that the Government should interfere to ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... young fool," said the King of the Mountains. "Were I in your place, my ransom would be paid in two days. Don't you understand? Here you have an opportunity of winning a charming ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... meet this argument, if, which is perhaps more important, we are to understand the true nature of capital, we cannot rest content with saying that it consists of factories and machinery, and that these are essential to the worker. Just as it was well to get behind the money terms, in which we often think of capital, to the ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... the greatest political weight of them all. Each of these great men is perpetually surrounded by an army of retainers, dependants, and slaves; and public affairs are transacted, partly according to some old routine, difficult for a stranger to understand, partly after the fashion of "Arabian Nights," kings meeting casually at the head of great armies in some poetical wilderness. All these chieftains are both pastors and merchants. One of their chief ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... business of Michel's committal was a farce. The Indians are as yet too ignorant and uncivilized to understand the nature of an oath, and even if they did so, there is not one man among them now living who could be brought to bear witness against one of his own race and tribe. When last Michel was heard of, he was under nominal restraint, but conducting himself with ...
— Owindia • Charlotte Selina Bompas
... would not like that, I should judge. I do not understand how she ever made up her mind to let you become that thing which hatches out into a lieutenant. Gentle creatures she and her sister both were.—How was it, Mr. Rossitur? were you a wild ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... city is so simple in its machinery that every voter can easily understand it. No doubt Seth Low and George L. Rives could explain to an intelligent man the charter under which New York City is governed, but they are very, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... thought I was dangerous before, you haven't seen anything like how dangerous I am now. You're going to tell me some things, now, and you're going to tell them straight. You're going to tell me where Harry Dartmouth went with those files, where they are right now. Understand that? I want those files. Because when I have them I'm going to do exactly what I started out to do. I'm going to write a story, the whole rotten story about your precious father and his two-faced life. I'm going to write about Dartmouth ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... a state of nervous tension. All that I wrote to you and Maslov about their acting and attitude to their work must not, of course, go any further. There is much one has to excuse and understand.... It turned out that the actress who was doing the chief part in my play had a daughter lying dangerously ill—how could she feel like acting? Kurepin did ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... in my hand, I prepared to mount, when a good native deacon came forward to help me. The horse's nostrils dilated, and he plunged about almost drawing me off the wall, and was the perfect image of anger. I succeeded in making the good man understand that he must go away, then talked soothingly to the horse, patted his head gently, and finally, as he came near enough, threw myself into the saddle, and had a good ride. Now you see, children, what kindness can do. If I had ever been rough with the horse, or unkind to him, he would not have ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... keep their instruments and knives always at hand for cases requiring immediate treatment, so shouldst thou have thy thoughts ready to understand things divine and human, remembering in thy every act, even the smallest, how close is the bond ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... the religious aspect of his character came to be emphasised. In common acts of life, public and private, the depths of his religious convictions very visibly appeared. And while it is impossible to understand his religious belief except through the knowledge of his life and writings on ordinary subjects, it is impossible on the other hand, to understand his life and writings without bearing in mind how vivid was his realisation of those truths of religion on which he most habitually dwelt. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... understand the problems of accurately classifying and filing fingerprint cards. He knows there is little value in placing a fingerprint card in the FBI's files with only an approximate or ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... room. In the numbness of everything, in the mother's attitude, in the indifference on the doctor's face there was something that attracted and touched the heart, that subtle, almost elusive beauty of human sorrow which men will not for a long time learn to understand and describe, and which it seems only music can convey. There was a feeling of beauty, too, in the austere stillness. Kirilov and his wife were silent and not weeping, as though besides the bitterness of their loss they were conscious, too, of all the tragedy ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... their clothes, while the one took up a position behind the other. After reconnoitring them a short time, I rode up and demanded the fowls, when the one looked at the other, and, in well-feigned astonishment, asked, in Dutch, what I could possibly mean? then gave me to understand that they could not comprehend English; but I immediately said, "Come, come! none of your gammon; you have got my fowls, here's half a dollar for your trouble in catching them, so hand them out." "Oh!" said one of them, in English, "it is de fowl you want," and ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... him; but nobody could laugh at his legacy. The four swaggered around with their slouch-hats pulled down over their faces, and hinted darkly at awful possibilities. The people were troubled and afraid, and showed it. And they were stunned, too; they could not understand it. "Abolitionist" had always been a term of shame and horror; yet here were four young men who were not only not ashamed to bear that name, but were grimly proud of it. Respectable young men they were, too—of good families, and brought up in the church. Ed Smith, the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... once a merchant who was rich in goods and cattle, and he had a wife and children and dwelt in the country and was skilled in husbandry. Now God had gifted him to understand the speech of beasts and birds of every kind, but under pain of death if he divulged his gift to any one; so he kept it secret for fear of death. He had in his byre an ox and an ass, each tied up in his stall, hard by the other. One day, as the merchant was sitting near at hand, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... however, to carry them out, but before doing so he set to work to obtain all the information in his power. On consulting a Jewish astronomer, Zacato, he learned the cause of the ill success many of the expeditions had met with. He could not understand why some of his captains had in certain latitudes encountered storms, while others had passed through them in fine weather. The Jew suggested that as the ocean is very large, in some parts it is summer and in others winter, and that his ships ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... H. Alexander (1887) died in 1894. The third and last graduate, Charles Young (1889) has but recently been returned to active duty. We understand he has attained the rank of Colonel. The Negroes of the United States, to the number of twelve millions, have only one West Point graduate in the regular army. There are however four regiments of ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... To understand this task, to appreciate that mission, he must ask himself the broad questions: What is the aim of history? What are the purposes for which it should be studied ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton
... that the Loyalists be granted amnesty and restitution. This pious resolution proved not worth the paper on which it was written. In State after State the property of the Loyalists was withheld or confiscated anew. Yet this ungenerous treatment of the defeated by the victors is not hard to understand. The struggle had been waged with all the bitterness of civil war. The smallness of the field of combat had intensified personal ill-will. Both sides had practiced cruelties in guerrilla warfare; but ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... suggestions of many teachers who have used the previous work in their classes. The aim of this book has been to increase the emphasis on social, industrial, and cultural topics and to enable the student to understand modern ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... to the door. "This is for Felix and Betty, as well as for myself, father," he said pleadingly. "They feel just as badly as I do about you, but we thought 'twas best for one to speak for the three; and I being the eldest,—you understand?" ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... satisfied, I have nothing to say. Are you happy, Susan?" for a change had come over her, which I did not readily understand. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... the herd instinct, is unsatisfactory because it is too simple, and erroneously undertakes to explain human life in terms of instinct and also carries biological analogies too far. These views, if we understand them, seem to have the characteristic faults ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... gone out of the river. Always does everything do all things in the same way, and the Indian knows and understands. But the white man does not do all things in the same way, and the Indian does not know nor understand. ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... to lose the air at the rate at which it had been hitherto lost. Bad as all this appeared, things were fated to become much more serious. The motion of the water quite sensibly increased, lifting the wreck at times in a way greatly to increase the danger of their situation. The reader will understand this movement did not proceed from the waves of the existing wind, but from what is technically called a ground-swell, or the long, heavy undulations that are left by the tempest that is past, or by some distant gale. The waves of the ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... voice in the wood, in the distance behind them. The voice of Mr. Eager? He shrugged his shoulders. An Italian's ignorance is sometimes more remarkable than his knowledge. She could not make him understand that perhaps they had missed the clergymen. The view was forming at last; she could discern the river, ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... Murray quickly; and he laid his hand upon the one lying close to the edge of the cot. "I understand how hard it must be for you to talk about it, and it's just as hard for me to listen. So look here, Dick. You haven't been yourself, lad; when a fellow's a bit off his head he isn't accountable for what he says. I know; so look here. Am I hurt and annoyed by what you said? ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... made repeated sorties, which inflicted serious damage upon the besiegers. After over three weeks of this sport, the Royalists shot an arrow into the town, September 3, with a message in these words: "These are to let you understand your god Waller hath forsaken you and hath retired himself to the Tower of London; Essex is beaten like a dog: yield to the king's mercy in time; otherwise, if we enter perforce, no quarter for such obstinate traitorly rogues.—From a Well-wisher." ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... try to excuse yourself," said Dino, who caught the words imperfectly, and did not understand that they referred to any crime but the one so nearly accomplished against himself. "God knows all. He saw what you did: He can make it manifest in His own way. Confess to Him now: not to ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... that can understand his own way?" God alone knows both the obstacles and the helps that you are to meet in your way. Cry out, then, with the Royal prophet: "Make the way known to me, wherein I should walk; for I have lifted up my ...
— Vocations Explained - Matrimony, Virginity, The Religious State and The Priesthood • Anonymous
... friend, like all the rest, fail to understand how fine, how extremely sensitive my little ...
— Princess Polly's Gay Winter • Amy Brooks
... avoid treading on them, for Dorothy was a kind-hearted child and did not like to crush the pretty flowers that bloomed in her path. And she was also very fond of all the animals, and learned to know them well, and even to understand their language, which very few people can do. And the animals loved Dorothy in turn, for the word passed around amongst them that she could be trusted to do them no harm. For the horse, whose soft nose Dorothy often gently stroked, told ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... you have obeyed my wishes, and merit your reward,—but not now, not now! Come to my chamber at midnight; I shall expect you,—you understand. Go now—leave me; remove all traces of your crime. I shall take care to have a quantity of plate removed from the house to-night, and destroyed, and when his lordship returns to-morrow, he will imagine that Lagrange, despite his supposed faithfulness ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... to understand the extraordinary consequences of your interview, I should like to have some idea of what took place. I know, my dear Eleanor," I continued as gently as I could, "I know that you went to see her out of the very ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke |
