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More "Comprehensible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are the same. If you had formed any considerable expectations from our revised code of laws, you will be much disappointed. It contains not more than three or four laws which could strike the attention of a foreigner. Had it been a digest of all our laws, it would not have been comprehensible or instructive, but to a native. But it is still less so, as it digests only the British statutes and our own acts of Assembly, which are but a supplementary part of our law. The great basis of it is anterior to the date of the Magna Charta, which is the oldest statute extant. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... criticism than that which declares French poetry in general to be either nought—which is still a not uncommon notion—or at least not great enough to be worth the study which alone could make it comprehensible. There are many good people who dare to say this, yet live, audacious, and unconscious of their folly. We have, however, to consider Victor Hugo on a ground which no one ventures to dispute. The great romances—for which we should like to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... Jamaica Blake caught an Atlas liner for Colon. And at Colon he found himself once more among his own kind. Scattered up and down the Isthmus he found an occasional Northerner to whom he was not unknown, engineers and construction men who could talk of things that were comprehensible to him, gamblers and adventurers who took him poignantly back to the life he had left so far behind him. Along that crowded and shifting half-way house for the tropic-loving American he found more than ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... dislike. That the latter should miscal the holy ecstacies of religion enthusiastic and rhapsodical, we do not wonder; since they cannot understand them by that medium through which alone they become comprehensible, the medium of experience: nor need we feel much astonishment at the occasional mistakes of the former, when it is recollected, that the external indications of the ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... Shakespeare could find a place in libraries and could be intimately known by hundreds who had hitherto known him only in the theater. Tonson's business acumen made Shakespeare available to the general reader in the reign of Anne; Rowe's editorial, biographical, and critical work helped to make him comprehensible within the framework ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe
... worsteds on a white ground, in the elaborate Persian pattern so popular among industrious ladies of leisure in the reign of good Queen Anne. It may be questioned whether the parable, wrought out with such patience of innumerable stitches, was closely comprehensible or sympathetic to the said ladies; since a particularly wide interval, both of philosophy and practice, would seem to divide the temper of the early eighteenth century from that of the mystic East. Still the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... quite in the vein of her great original. If Mrs. Browning can talk about "broken sentiency" and "elemental strategies," why should not Mrs. Aitken aspire to hear the silences bend? To do her justice, she does not use such expressions very often—her style is usually simple and comprehensible—but she does sometimes make the mistake of confounding incomprehensibility and power. She has some pretty descriptions of Nature here and there, and one or two of her ballads are very good, especially that called "A Story of Tours;" but her sonnets ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... coupe reached the curb in front of the Graydon, Millard had fixed in his mind the first move in his campaign, and had scribbled a little note as he stood at the clerk's counter in the office. Handing the driver a dollar as a comprehensible hint that speed was required, and, taking Robert with him, he was soon bowling along the yet rather empty Fifth Avenue. He alighted in front of a rather broad, low-stoop, brownstone house, with a plain sign upon it, which read "Dr. Augustine Gunstone." What ills and misfortunes had crossed ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... a very sketchy statement of the ground-work of "Fors," but to most readers nowadays as comprehensible as, at the time of its publication, it was incomprehensible. For when, long after "Fors" had been written, Ruskin found other writers advocating the same principles and calling themselves Socialists, he said that he ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... infinite variety of expression with ease and certainty. In two things he might be said to be profoundly versed—the spirit of the Scriptures, and the workings of the human heart. With regard to these his powers of expression were commensurate with his knowledge. The Psalms of David were more comprehensible to him than the simplest formulas ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... it our duty to present this matter in detail and in a form comprehensible to the artist; and we can be the more hopeful of doing something welcome to him, since we shall be concerned only with explaining and tracing to fundamental principles things which he has ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... as many more wounded to care for, and be unable to transport them. Moreover, with so many hostiles on every side, was he justified in stripping the post of its defenders? It was no pleasant situation. It was more than perplexing. Presently he turned and, using such signs as he thought might be comprehensible, asked the impassive runner if he knew where the first fight took place, and the Hualpai, as would almost any Indian partially gathering the drift of a question, began a rambling reply, pointing as he spoke, with shifting finger, all over the range ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... is quite comprehensible and correct; but if, as you are kind enough to inform us, the plunging of the medium into a trance produces perturbations of the spiritual ether, allow me to ask why (as is usually supposed to be the case in spiritualistic sances) these perturbations result in an activity on the ...
— Fruits of Culture • Leo Tolstoy
... incapable of producing a multitude of forms and beings, of which your eyes, even by the aid of the microscope, see but the least part; finally, this will prove, that not being able to know the sensible and comprehensible agents, you find it easier to have recourse to a word, by which you designate an agent, of whom it will always be impossible for you to form ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... associated with her tragedy, or subsequent to it. In her madness she, too, protected herself against pain by living in expectation of the lover's return. Because that expectation was restricted to her girlhood, she remained a girl in appearance for over fifty years. Fifty years, that is comprehensible!" ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... myself disagreeable," said Mr Wentworth; "if I had remonstrated with him, as Leonora urged me to do; if I had put a stop to the surplice and so forth, and interfered with his decorations or his saints' days, or anything, it might have been comprehensible. But I never said a syllable on the subject. I give you my word, I never did. Why couldn't he have sent down for Louisa now, and dined at the Hall, as usual, when any of my sons come home? I suppose a man may change his religion, sir, without getting rid of his natural affections," said the Squire, ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... learned specialists, to whom he listened with clever discernment. He knew how to forget at once explanations that were too technical or were useless to him, remembered the others very well, and lent to the information thus gleaned an easy, clear, and good-natured rendering that made them as readily comprehensible as the popular presentation of scientific facts. He gave the impression of being a veritable storehouse of ideas, one of those vast places wherein one never finds rare objects but discovers a multiplicity of cheap productions ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... leaf from a historical laurel wreath, or even to cut a signature or a title-page from a precious volume; but with me the feeling has never taken this turn, else I should never have confessed to the possession of it. Whatever may be said or believed, however, I must refer to it in more or less comprehensible terms, because it may explain the conditions, although it will not unveil the causes, of the incidents I am about to describe ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... Display Warning of Copyright shall be printed on heavy paper or other durable material in type at least 18 points in size, and shall be displayed prominently, in such manner and location as to be clearly visible, legible, and comprehensible to a casual observer within the immediate vicinity of the place ...
— Reproduction of Copyrighted Works By Educators and Librarians • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... only stones and dust? What is the significance of the words "to earn a livelihood in the city," which are in such constant use, both by those who earn the livelihood, and by those who furnish it, as though it were something perfectly clear and comprehensible? ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... artificially whitened face grimaced hideously; the shrill whistling voice made no comprehensible sound. But in some manner Rawson gathered a dim realization ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... cultural illumination, but not far enough to create political stability. We have seen before that they touch the artistic creative planes, in their descent, before they reach the more material planes. So her position is perfectly comprehensible. The old European manvantara was dying; elsewhere it was dead. Its forces, when they passed away through Ireland, were nearly exhausted; in no condition whatever to penetrate to the material plane and ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... service but devotion to them, no pleasure like the enjoyment of them,—a selfish life made up of impersonal delights, such as music, which is emotion made audible, painting, which is emotion made visible, and poetry, which is emotion made comprehensible;—and such a life could not have been anything but grateful to one like Beth, who had the capacity for so many interests of the kind. She was debarred from all that, however, by grace of nature. Beth could not have lived for herself had she tried. So that now, when ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Balthasar of the kingdom the king was coming to establish. A kingdom of souls, if not intolerable to his Sadducean faith, seemed to him but an abstraction drawn from the depths of a devotion too fond and dreamy. A kingdom of Judea, on the other hand, was more than comprehensible: such had been, and, if only for that reason, might be again. And it suited his pride to think of a new kingdom broader of domain, richer in power, and of a more unapproachable splendor than the old one; of a new king wiser and mightier than Solomon—a ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... and they will then thoroughly appreciate the quite marvellous ingenuity and beautiful skill with which M. Mace has brought the great leading anatomical and physical facts of life out of the depths of scientific learning, and made them literally comprehensible by a child. ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... speak, and he speaks frequently. But not one word of all he says is comprehensible either to me or to any other living being. His tongue is that of a forgotten nation. The islanders understand him no more than I do. He has a very long sermon or poem, which he knows by heart, in some unknown language, and he repeats it often at ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... something in all that which silenced reproach, which made this monstrous deed comprehensible, even natural. If one was so mad with love, if one felt that one could die ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... of the nation. The truth of his art tells with an irresistible force; and he stands excused from the duty of patriotic posturing. He is a Frenchman of Frenchmen beyond question or cavil, and with that he is simple enough to be universally comprehensible. What is wanting to his universal success is the mediocrity of an obvious and appealing tenderness. He neglects to qualify his truth with the drop of facile sweetness; he forgets to strew paper roses over the tombs. The disregard ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... approaching the general validity of the physical sciences, is ever to be hoped for—at least upon the metaphysical assumptions of this paper. With that conceded, we may go on to consider the more hopeful ways in which that great Being may be presented in a comprehensible manner. Essentially this presentation must involve an element of self-expression must partake quite as much of the nature of art as of science. One finds in the first conference of the Sociological Society, Professor Stein, speaking, indeed a very ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... something he knows to be wanted, and, though his art has had to fight against the competition of the photograph and has been partially vulgarized by the struggle of the exhibitions, it has yet remained, upon the whole, comprehensible and human; so that much of the soundest art of the past century has gone into portraiture. It is the painters of pictures, landscape or genre, who have most suffered from the misunderstanding between artist and ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... Hard they were in line, fixed in expression, and opaque in color, these copies of famous masterpieces,—saints of either sex, ascensions, assumptions, martyrdoms, and what not,—and they were not quite comprehensible till Don Ippolito explained that he had made them from such prints of the subjects as he could get, and had colored them after his own fancy. All this, in a city whose art had been the glory of the world for nigh half a thousand years, struck Ferris as yet more comically ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... she felt still so unprepared to face what New York had in store for her, but because she needed more time to dispose of what the Utopia had already given her. The past was bad enough, but the present and future were worse, because they were less comprehensible, and because, as she grew older, surprises and inconsequences troubled her more ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... world toward these problematical occurrences is quite comprehensible. Throughout the nineteenth century the attention of scientists has been almost wholly directed toward the investigation of the forms and forces of matter, the phenomena and principles of the visible universe. In this they entered, at the opening of the ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... indeterminate but large portion of falsities, errors, and absurdities and which we are to commit to our little alembic, and distil as we may; not only from the absurdity of supposing that God has demanded our faith, for statements which are to be received only as they appear perfectly comprehensible by our reason;—or, in other words, only for what it is impossible that we should doubt or deny; not merely because the principle inevitably leaves man to construct the so-called revelation entirely for himself; so that what one man receives as genuine communication from heaven, ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... right angle: all these truths admit of no exception. There never can be any being, line, circle, or triangle, but according to these rules. These axioms are of all times, or to speak more properly, they exist before all time, and will ever remain after any comprehensible duration. Let the universe be turned topsy-turvy, destroyed, and annihilated; and even let there be no mind to reason about beings, lines, circles, and triangles: yet it will ever be equally true in itself, that the same thing cannot ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... their death in 1616. It is doubtful if the plays of the elder dramatists were allowed her, though there are hints in her poems of some knowledge of Shakespeare, but by the time girlhood was reached, the feeling against them had increased to a degree hardly comprehensible save in the light of contemporaneous history. The worst spirit of the time was incorporated in the later plays, and the Puritans made no discrimination. The players in turn hated them, and Mrs. Hutchinson wrote: "Every stage and every table, and every puppet- play, belched forth profane scoffs ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... of respecting it becomes marked. In the arrangement of predicate and subject, for example, we are at once shown that as the predicate determines the aspect under which the subject is to be conceived, it should be placed first; and the striking effect produced by so placing it becomes comprehensible. Take the often-quoted contrast between "Great is Diana of the Ephesians," and "Diana of the Ephesians is great." When the first arrangement is used, the utterance of the word "great" arouses those vague associations of an impressive nature with which ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... particularly sympathized with the Granger legislation; they already had great difficulty in competing with the large Western farms, and a reduction in rates to the seaboard would have made their position even less endurable. This attitude was unquestionably selfish but entirely comprehensible. The agitation for railroad reform in the East came chiefly from the manufacturing and commercial classes. Here the main burden of the complaint was the railroad rebate. This was a method of giving lower rates to large shippers than to small—charging the favored shipper ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... not go out until nearly noon the next day. In terms comprehensible to any low-grade submoron, it was emphasized that all this meant was that slaves should henceforth be called freedmen, that they could have money just like Lords-Master, and that if they worked faithfully and obeyed orders they would be given everything ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... opened by Toinon, somewhat to Brigit's surprise—for it would have been more like Joyselle to rush downstairs on hearing her motor stop, but the reason was soon plainly comprehensible, for Joyselle was playing. It was evidently earlier than they had expected her. Slipping off her cloak and with a finger to her lips, she went quietly upstairs and stood leaning against the side ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... discussion inclining her to undue severity, 'she is as straight as any other good fellow, and she pays up if she has lost at bridge, and would as soon think of picking a pocket as of cheating at croquet; but she is not mysterious—she is absolutely comprehensible.' ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... is to walk down a lane at night. Any one who does so will discover very quickly that men pictured something semi-human at the back of all things, not because such a thought was natural, but because it was supernatural; not because it made things more comprehensible, but because it made them a hundred times more incomprehensible and mysterious. For a man walking down a lane at night can see the conspicuous fact that as long as nature keeps to her own course, she has no power with us ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... people that their pride was touched and that in spite of "their lack of experience and knowledge in political affairs" they suddenly displayed a remarkable patriotic feeling, the history of China during the past two decades being only comprehensible when this capital contention, namely the reality of Chinese patriotism, ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... those willing to subscribe to it. I refer only to the impression on the mind of the man in the street; and to the man in the street God, as he understands Him, is neither a very friendly nor a very comprehensible element in life. Instead of mitigating fear He adds to it, not in the Biblical sense of "fearing God," but in ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... suggested, rather, potentialities of feeling, of suffering, perhaps, in a blind rudimentary way, on which Julia's sensibilities naturally declined to linger. She so fully understood her own reasons for leaving him that she disliked to think they were not as comprehensible to her husband. She was haunted, in her analytic moments, by the look of perplexity, too inarticulate for words, with which he ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... people of those days might possess, we may remember that those comparatively few who could read were just those who would have access to the necessarily rare copies then existing of the Word of God, and that to them also the Latin version would be more comprehensible than any other. Again, with regard to Latin services, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to translate the devotions of the Church into any of the slowly-forming dialects of the different European nations; whilst ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... I sitting alone, when a succession of shrieks arose, even more awful than those which alarmed us last night. At the same time the old galopina, her daughter, and a French girl who lives here, rushed shouting along the gallery; not a word they said comprehensible, but something concerning "a robber in black, with men at his back, who had burst open the door." At the noise the whole household had assembled. One ran this way, one ran that. A little French teinturier, who it appeared ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... about half past five, I could hear the rapid tread of horses' feet, and in another moment my father and Aleck cantered up to the door. Frisk was flourishing about in his usual style, and found me out in a moment, jumping up upon my shoulders, and licking my hands, and expressing in perfectly comprehensible language his regret that I had not been of the party, and his pleasure in seeing ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... came up alone and manifested a desire for a little conversation. He, too, if not so mysterious as the captain, was not very comprehensible to Mr Powell's uninformed candour. He often favoured thus the second officer. His talk alluded somewhat enigmatically and often without visible connection to Mr Powell's friendliness towards himself and his daughter. "For I am well ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... are comprehensible, we have certain Egyptian paintings, and some of these exhibit postures that evidently had even then a settled meaning, and were a phrase in the sentences of the art. Not only were they settled at such an early period (B.C. 3000, fig. 1) but they appear to have been accepted and ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... or donkeys, or the straw under children's feet in the Ark (Noah's or anybody else's does not matter),—in the Huguenot and his mistress, or the ivy behind them,—in the face of Ophelia, or in the flowers floating over it as it sank;—much more, so far as he saw what instantly comprehensible nobleness of passion might be in the binding of a handkerchief,—in the utterance of two words, "Trust me" or the like: he prevailed, and rightly prevailed, over all prejudice and opposition; to that extent he will in what he has done, or may yet do, take, as a standard-bearer, an honorable ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... development. Unfortunately I worked it out rather hurriedly. In not very carefully chosen phrasing the orchestra was to represent the ocean, and, as far as might be, the ship upon it. A forcible, pathetically yearning and aspiring theme was the only comprehensible idea amid the swirl of enveloping sound. When the whole had been repeated, there was a sudden jump to a different theme in extreme pianissimo, accompanied by the swelling vibrations of the first violins, which ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... mysterious spiriting away of property in that; and as nobody on the face of the earth could be more incapable of explaining any single item in the heap of confusion than the debtor himself, nothing comprehensible could be made of his case. To question him in detail, and endeavour to reconcile his answers; to closet him with accountants and sharp practitioners, learned in the wiles of insolvency and bankruptcy; was only to put the case out at compound interest and incomprehensibility. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... possible to procure his signature to a contract that his daughter, when of age, should be married to me, on this security money might be raised by us to any amount. Now, my good father, am I comprehensible? ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... says, "encumber geological literature with a mass of undigested facts of little value." Geology has enough of such meaningless reports. As it is, we follow him with confidence, and he gives us a story that is plain and comprehensible. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... felt herself indeed in a mood not comprehensible to her. Her blood raced. She wanted to be furious with Slone, but somehow she could not wholly be so. There was something about him that made her feel small and thoughtless and selfish. Slone had hurt her pride. But the thing that she feared and resented and could not understand was the ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... themselves enough to place such a Mind in a category sui generis, wholly different from anything which the analogy furnished by our own mind enables us even dimly to conceive. And this, of course, is no more than theologians admit. God's thoughts are above our thoughts, and a God who would be comprehensible to our intelligence would be no God at all, they say. Which may be true enough, only we must remember that in whatever measure we are thus precluded from understanding the Divine Mind, in that measure ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... same manner, in varying degree, I hold all religions to be in a measure true. Least comprehensible to me are the Indian formulae, because they seem to stand not on common experience but on those intellectual assumptions my metaphysical analysis destroys. Transmigration of souls without a continuing memory is to my mind utter foolishness, ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... was delighted to meet them, talked as few men ever talked before or since, and probably drank too much with those "poor unhappy brains for drinking" which his Cassius deplored. Thus fanned, the weak flame of his life wasted quickly and guttered out. It is all comprehensible enough, and more than likely, that the greatest man in the world, after the boredom of solitary years spent in Stratford, died through a merry meeting with his friends; in his joy and excitement he drank a glass or so of wine, ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... to fire the fury of the Turks and win as many of the Arabs to their side as possible. The Arab thoroughly disliked both sides. The Turk oppressed him, but did so in an Oriental, and hence more or less comprehensible, manner. The English gave him justice, but it was an Occidental justice that he couldn't at first understand or appreciate, and he was distinctly inclined to mistrust it. In course of time he would come to realize its advantages. Under Turkish ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... rather too fond of novelties in the furniture of temples; and I have observed that new sects are apt to warp, crack, and split, under the heat they generate. Our homely old religion has run into fewer quarrels, ever since the Centaurs and Lapiths (whose controversy was on a subject quite comprehensible), than yours has ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... render my narrative of the final assault more readily comprehensible if I begin by saying that, the Malakoff being now considered the key of the Russian position, it was determined that all other attacks should be considered subsidiary to that which was to be ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... the appearance of watching from her point of vantage the other's upset. He made a series of inquiries about Julia's doings in the country, to two or three of which she gave answers monosyllabic and scarcely comprehensible, only turning her eyes round and round the room as in search of something she couldn't find—of an escape, of something that was not Miriam. At last she said—it was at the end of a ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... partly on account of the traditions respecting this bit of family history that I am so often asked if I am a spiritualist. I am sometimes tempted to reply in grammar comprehensible to the writers of certain letters which ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... new fashion, of gems and gem minerals, their nature and history, comprehensible to every reader, and of prime value ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... the reader by attempting to describe in detail my plan of operations, for it involved a mathematical problem of some complexity, only interesting to and comprehensible by a mathematician. Suffice it to say that what I had undertaken to do was to make three separate sets of observations from as many chosen points, consisting of carefully observed compass bearings, and angles taken with my pocket sextant; and the taking of these observations, ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... to comprehend the whys and wherefores of the law. "Certain knowledge," this phrase indicates limitation. All that it demands is that you know that which you profess to know. It therefore follows that the word "science" is equally applicable to the comprehensible and incomprehensible. The word is from "scio," I know. As men's knowledge, in the present state, at least, is limited, so science, as presented by man, is also limited; but, as men are progressive beings, ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... said Dr. Latrobe, "is perfectly comprehensible to me. The only way to get along with him is to let him know his place, ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... of him, people in Iping, on the whole, agreed in disliking him. His irritability, though it might have been comprehensible to an urban brain-worker, was an amazing thing to these quiet Sussex villagers. The frantic gesticulations they surprised now and then, the headlong pace after nightfall that swept him upon them round quiet corners, the inhuman bludgeoning of all tentative advances ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... step of the horse; but the young Indians walked at his side, chattering in high good humour; though, as their stock of English extended only to the single phrase, "Bozhoo, brudder," which was not in itself very comprehensible, though repeated at least twice every minute, it may be supposed their conversation had no very ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... must describe briefly the characteristics of the scenery, without which a part of my tale would be hardly comprehensible, while the remarkable effect produced by the coincidence, if I may so express myself, between the nature of the deed, and the nature of the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... Mueller is familiar to American students as that of a man who, learned in the high German fashion, has the pleasant faculty, unhappily too rare among Germans, of communicating his erudition in a way not only comprehensible, but agreeable to the laity. The Teutonic Gelehrte, gallantly devoting a half-century to his pipe and his locative case, fencing the result of his labors with a bristling hedge of abbreviations, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... which are yet to bloom, and the birds whose song still sleeps with the hours it shall set to music. The unbroken repose of Nature, born not of idleness but of the perfect adjustment of immeasurable forces to their task, becomes more real and comprehensible when the darkness hides the infinitude of details, and leaves only the great massive effects for the eye to rest upon. While men sleep, the world sweeps silently onward under the watchful stars, in a flight which makes no sound and leaves no trace. Through the deep shadows ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... a slight tone of bitterness, which indeed was comprehensible enough: for she had suffered much in her day from the fact that no such production had been possible to her. Had it been so, her nephew who stood by her would not (she could scarcely help reflecting with some grudge against Providence) have been ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... on the assumption that all religions are products of thought, commenced and continued in accordance with the laws of the human mind, and, therefore, comprehensible to the extent to which these laws are known. No one disputes this, except in reference to his own religion. This, he is apt to assert, had something "supernatural" about its origin. If this word be ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... for the human mind to grasp. They impress one, they almost frighten one, but give no reposeful, real pleasure in gazing upon them such as less disturbed scenery does. The contrasts in colour and shape are too violent, too crude to please the eye: the freaks too numerous to be comprehensible at a glance. Here we have a ditch with sides perfectly black-baked, evidently by lava or some other hot substance which has flowed through; further on big splashes of violent red and a great variety of warm browns. The eye roams ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... species that it cannot be taken in any plural sense, must naturally be named by a word which is singular only: as, perry, cider, coffee, flax, hemp, fennel, tallow, pitch, gold, sloth, pride, meekness, eloquence. But there are some things, which have in fact neither a comprehensible unity, nor any distinguishable plurality, and which may therefore be spoken of in either number; for the distinction of unity and plurality is, in such instances, merely verbal; and, whichever number we take, the word will be apt to want the other: as, dregs, or sediment; riches, or wealth; ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... of the causes of his agitation was apparently more comprehensible to Lessingham than it was to me. I had to piece this and that together under considerable difficulties. By degrees I did arrive at something like a clear notion of what had actually ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... matters his aims were generous, if his methods were perniciously mistaken. In his theory of Free Love alone, borrowed like the rest from the Revolution, his aim was as mischievous as his method. At the same time he was at least logical. His theory was repulsive, but comprehensible. Whereas from our present via media—facilitation of divorce—can only result the era when the young lady in reduced circumstances will no longer turn governess but will be open to engagement as wife at ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... Czar makes the whole situation in northern Europe and Austria easily comprehensible; it is necessary to examine from the same standpoint, also, what occurred in the southern states of Europe, remote as they were; otherwise the course of affairs at the opposite extremities of Europe seems utterly mysterious. If the path followed ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... earnest and brightened by a soft light which followed him hither and thither, and he was not alone. He moved with others through the old familiar streets of the city, clothed in a fashion of other times, speaking in accents comprehensible but unlike the speech of to-day, acting in a dim and far-off ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... Pegasi and Hippogriffs, and of flying chariots, from that of Phaeton downwards to Astolfo's,[3] were evidently intended by their authors as mythical; not so, however, with Bishop Wilkins;—he boldly avers, for several reasons which he keeps to himself, and for others not very comprehensible to us, which he details "seriously and on good grounds," "that it is possible to make a flying chariot, in which a man may sit, and give such a motion unto it, as shall convey him through the air; and this perhaps might be made large enough to carry divers men at the same time, together ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... tone, he began a story without decoration of verbiage—straightforward and tense in its simplicity. As the painter listened, he began to understand; the gall that had crept into this lad's blood before his weaning became comprehensible.... Killing Hollmans was not murder.... It was duty. He seemed to see the smoke- blackened cabin and the mother of the boy sitting, with drawn face, in dread of the hours. He felt the racking nerve-tension of a life in which the father went forth each day leaving his family in fear that ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... European, monarchs, his new brothers, and to remove the memory of the venerable titles of the Bourbons, this former officer of the armies of Louis XVI., the former second-lieutenant of artillery, who had suddenly become a Caesar, a Charlemagne, could make this sudden and strange transformation comprehensible only through unprecedented fame and splendor. He desired to have a feudal, majestic court, surrounded by all the pomp and ceremony of the Middle Ages. He saw how hard was the part he had to play, and he ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... corporeal being in the fulness of time, assumes another corpus. It arises and perishes in due order. And there are present the five elementary substances of which all the mobile and immobile world is composed. Whatever is perceptible by the senses, is called vyakta (knowable or comprehensible) and whatever is beyond the reach of the senses and can only be perceived by guesses, is known to be avyakta (not vyakta). When a person engages in the discipline of self-examination, after having subdued the senses which have ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... is, their metric condition, and their rhythmic arrangement, corroborate the natural laws already defined:—uniformity of fundamental pulse, uniform recurrence of accent, and sufficient regularity of rhythmic figure to insure a distinct and comprehensible total impression. This also may be verified in the time-values of Ex. 5. Scrutinize also, the melodic and rhythmic conditions of Exs. 1 and 2,—and the examples on later pages,—and endeavor to vindicate their ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... molesting any party which contained a woman.[29] But the tales relating to Robin Hood differ from those of the Round Table in their entire freedom from affectation and from supernatural machinery. They breathe, too, an open-air spirit of liberty and enjoyment which was pleasing and comprehensible to the dullest intellect, and which made them, in the broadest sense, popular. The good-humored combativeness of the yeoman sympathized with every beating which Robin Hood received, and with every beating which he gave. In Robin's enmity to the clergy, ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... rolling about in a calm, lying to in a gale, or beating against a head-wind. She seems to belong to the sea, with her tall tapering masts, her cloud of moving canvas, and her buoyant motion over the rolling waves. Her movements are all comprehensible, and above-board she is invariably clean, and her crew are connected in one's mind with nautical stories which charmed one in the long-past days of youth. A steamer is very much the reverse. "Sam Slick," with his usual force and aptitude of illustration, says that "she goes through the water ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... went to the prison," Madame d'Espard went on. "The dear Duchess is in despair at such a scandal, for she is so foolish as to be very fond of Madame de Serizy; however, it is comprehensible: they both adored that little fool Lucien at about the same time, and nothing so effectually binds or severs two women as worshiping at the same altar. And our dear friend spent two hours yesterday in Leontine's room. The poor Countess, it seems, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... this terrible man was no ignorant clod, such as one would inevitably suppose him to be from his exhibitions of brutality. At once he became an enigma. One side or the other of his nature was perfectly comprehensible; but both sides together were bewildering. I had already remarked that his language was excellent, marred with an occasional slight inaccuracy. Of course, in common speech with the sailors and hunters, it sometimes fairly bristled with ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... not she, but once or twice she raised her napkin to her face and coughed slightly. For the rest, she sat demurely, with her eyes on her plate, a model of propriety. Nick's sufferings became more comprehensible. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Valedolmo is stupid for a man; but why don't you try mountain-climbing? Everybody finds that diverting. There's a guide here who speaks English—really comprehensible English. He's engaged for to-morrow, but after that I dare say he'll be free. Gustavo can tell you ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... to say a word concerning the name which the anti-teleological view of the world gives to itself: the name "monism." The view of the world which monism gives us, seems hardly comprehensible; and {178} just as little does the name which ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... that Johnson would be the King's Indian agent had an electric effect upon the Mohawks. Whether he talked English or Iroquois he talked a language they understood, and his acts were comprehensible by them. He had their faith and he never ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... magnitude are scarcely comprehensible. That men by the million should die for a cause is a ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... asked, what was meant by the watch-word of repeal of the union between Great Britain and Ireland. If those who used it meant a complete separation, or a species of Hibernian republic, their conduct was both comprehensible and consistent; but if, as they asserted, they only meant two separate independent legislatures, under the same monarch, the motion was inconsistent with the first principles of the science of government. After having shown this inconsistency ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... double dislike, both as an independent person and a man of business, of giving a monopoly of his work to one publisher, and by his constant fancy for trying experiments on the public—a fancy itself not wholly, though partially, comprehensible. As a matter of fact, Old Mortality and the Black Dwarf were offered to and pretty eagerly accepted by Murray and Blackwood, on the terms of half profits and the inevitable batch of 'old stock.' The story of the unlucky quarrel with Blackwood in consequence ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... elementary type of symmetry is characteristic of the vegetable kingdom. A leaf in its general contour is symmetrical: here the symmetry is about a line—the midrib. This type of symmetry is readily comprehensible, for it involves simply a revolution through 180 degrees. Write a word on a piece of paper and quickly fold it along the line of writing so that the wet ink repeats the pattern, and you have achieved the kind of symmetry represented in ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... new, dealing with some fresh aspect of the subject, or whether they should be arranged in a single series to be repeated without substantial alteration in each of the cities visited by me. The latter plan was ultimately adopted, as tending to render the discussion of the subject more generally comprehensible to each local audience. A series of five lectures, substantially the same, was accordingly delivered by me in New York, Cambridge, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. But whilst this plan secured continuity of treatment, it secured it at the ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... of the really serious, the really convinced, the really important and comprehensible people now alive includes, as most Englishmen would now be prepared to admit, the German Emperor. He is a practical man and a poet. I do not know whether there are still people in existence who ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... trankviligi. Compose one's self kvietigxi. Composer verkisto. Composition (music) kompozicio. Composition (mixture) kunmeto. Compositor (printer) kompostisto. Compound kunmeti. Comprehend kompreni. Comprehensible komprenebla. Comprehension kompreneco. Compress kunpremi. Compressible kunpremebla. Comprise enhavi. Compromise kompromiti. Compromise kompromiso. Compulsion devigo. Compunction memriprocxo. Computation kalkulo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... wide. "The first and the last," she said, "are comprehensible as travelling companions, but ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... centuries men can only approximate, must present to the child the precise step in knowledge which he waits for, and upon which he is able to raise himself with that glow of pleasurable activity which God gives to exertion directed to a comprehensible end. The feeblest mind is capable of assimilating knowledge with a satisfaction the same in kind as that which rewarded the maturest labors of Humboldt or Newton. There are sequences of facts every one of which, imparted in its natural order, brings an immediate interest. It is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... not very comprehensible about his exertions in the morning, and his inability to drink any more, Paullus arose, delighted to effect his escape on terms so easy, and left the triclinium immediately in quest of ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... she must keep her voice low to keep it steady, "after all, Aunt Jo, aren't there lots of women who do this sort of thing year in and year out and DON'T achieve anything? As a means to an end," said Susan, groping for words, "as a road—this is comprehensible, but—but one hates to think of it ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... were eager for news as to recent military operations, for they had only read in the morning papers—as they always did during this frightful siege—enigmatical despatches and bulletins purposely bristling with strategic expressions not comprehensible to the outsider. But all, or nearly all, had kept their patriotic hopes intact, or, to speak more plainly, their blind fanatical patriotism, and were certain against all reason of a definite victory; they walked along the road in little groups, and drew ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... envisage his own plight in definite and comprehensible terms. Things happened to him so much of late, his own efforts had counted for so little, that he had become passive and planless. His last scheme had been to go round the coast of England as a Desert Dervish giving refined entertainment to his fellow-creatures. Fate had ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... economic necessity was perfectly comprehensible to him, but it was difficult for him to conceive of anybody indulging in it simply as a matter of sentiment. That April afternoon was so far away now that it had ceased to exist even as ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... all the nations upon earth. The changeling superstition and the classic stories of children and adults beloved by gods of high and low degree are consistent with this belief, and inseparable from it. The motive is so far comprehensible: what is wanted is to know whether any special relations, such as are pointed at by the Greek epithet Drakos, were held to exist between the mysterious world and newly-born babes which would ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... mellow, almost plaintive accents,—what wild words leaped to his lips and what an effort it cost him to keep them hack. The heat and impetuosity of Romeo,—whom up to the present he had been inclined to consider a particularly stupid youth,—was now quite comprehensible to his mind, and he, the cool, self-possessed Englishman, was ready at that moment to outrival Juliet's lover, in his utmost excesses of amorous folly. In spite of his self-restraint, his voice quivered a little ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... it. Kedgers, for instance," with the smile which, somehow, suggested Betty, "Kedgers and the Lilium Giganteum, Mrs. Welden and old Doby threaten to develop into quite necessary factors in the scheme of happiness. What Betty has felt is even more comprehensible ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the sensation, yet with it a perfectly comprehensible alarm. And instinctively the thought stirred in him: "What should I—could I, do—if anything happened and he did ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... be In reason comprehensible a mother Should for a stranger blurr her daughters fame, Were it untruth. I am confirmd; this favor Transcends requitall: if a man misled By error gainst the diety, gross enough For his damnation, owe a gratitude To his converter, ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... into the matter; we must endeavour to look into the foundations of living Nature, if I may so say, and discover the principles involved in some of her most secret operations. I propose, therefore, in the first place, to take some ordinary animal with which you are all familiar, and, by easily comprehensible and obvious examples drawn from it, to show what are the kind of problems which living beings in general lay before us; and I shall then show you that the same problems are laid open to us by all kinds of living beings. But first, let me say in what sense I have used ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... means by which we were made competent witnesses. They are the bed-rock of evidence. We know facts and truths, both comprehensible and incomprehensible, by the same means. We are as competent to testify of that which we do not comprehend as we are to testify of the most ordinary fact. As competent to bear testimony to the fact of a sweeping ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880
... birth, some by training, and some by fate, but I have never met an Englishman yet who hated Islam and its people as I have met Englishmen who hated some other faiths. Musalmani awadani, as the saying goes—where there are Mohammedans, there is a comprehensible civilisation. ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... in her mind, the parrot becoming sanctified through the neighbourhood of the Holy Ghost, and the latter becoming more lifelike in her eyes, and more comprehensible. In all probability the Father had never chosen as messenger a dove, as the latter has no voice, but rather one of Loulou's ancestors. And Felicite said her prayers in front of the coloured picture, though from time to time she turned ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... in the school of life. In ultimate importance it outranks the arithmetic, the grammar, the geography, the manuals of science; for without the aid of the imagination none of these books is really comprehensible. ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... there not here a human world created by us, unforeseen and unknown by Eternal destinies, comprehensible by our minds alone, a sensual and intellectual distraction, which has been invented solely by and for that discontented and restless little animal ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... to me a comprehensible reason why I should not accept that scholarship? I don't understand your objection in the least. But anyway, it won't do the slightest good for you to object, for I've already accepted it and I am not going to change! That ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... to explain in articles of this character the mysteries of intrenchment and fortification, so that they will be comprehensible. A few notes, however, on some of the principal terms constantly employed, may be ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... way in which Melissa received the felicitations which the old woman poured out in honor of the future empress, and her tear-reddened eyes, seemed at any rate quite comprehensible. The child was thinking, no doubt, of her handsome Diodoros. Among the splendors of the palace she would soon forget. And how truly magnificent were the dress and jewels in which the damsel had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that the bulls have the better time. Their sufferings in life are certainly brief, and their careless days are very long drawn out. But I would not give the impression that the spectators here are assembled for amusement, or that my view of some of their proceedings would be comprehensible to them. However I may feel, the other occupants of this place are here in the ordinary course of business, and are certainly animated by no such fierce passions as thrill through the air of a plaza de toros. I am in the ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... comprehensible, and the charioteer, assiduously obliging, fell to posture of checking none too ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... hand in hand staring at her. She flew to him directly, with a broken entreaty that she might be taken to her father. Again they tried questioning her, but Richard, whether speaking English or Provencal, always succeeded in obtaining readier and more comprehensible replies than did the Princess. Whether she recognized him as her preserver, or whether his language had a familiar tone, she seemed exclusively attracted by him; and he it was who learnt that she lived at home—far off—on the Green near the red monks, ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... studiously neutral expression which befits the artist asked to listen to a rival. Mr. Thornburgh sat pensive, one foot drooped over the other. He was very fond of the Leyburn girls, but music seemed to him, good man, one of the least comprehensible of human pleasures. As for Rose, she had at last arranged herself and her accompanist Agnes, after routing out from her music a couple of Fantasie-Stuecke, which she had wickedly chosen as presenting the most severely classical ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Judas, after each conversation, would go to the women and weep. They heard him gladly. The tender womanly element, that there was in his love for Jesus, drew him near to them, and made him simple, comprehensible, and even handsome in their eyes, although, as before, a certain amount of disdain was perceptible in his ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... past life, a dreary chronicle which must be given if Lucien's position with regard to the lady is to be comprehensible. Lucien's introduction came about oddly enough. In the previous winter a newcomer had brought some interest into Mme. de Bargeton's monotonous life. The place of controller of excise fell vacant, and M. de Barante appointed a man whose adventurous life was a sufficient passport to the ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... ecstasy—both elements which, in minds that are laden with all the influences of the East, produce a facile and dangerous excitement. On the other hand there survives in the Italian population the hatred against the Croatian supremacy, a hatred which is comprehensible but which in time must give place to other sentiments, rendering possible a fair coexistence of the two populations, whose aim should be common—the prosperity and development of Dalmatia, in the prosperity and for the ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... that, being careful and gentle, you can take easy grasp of it and all that it contains; a thing given into your hand henceforth to have and to hold. Comprehensible, not a mass that both your arms cannot get round; tenable, not a confused pebble heap of which you can only lift one pebble at ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... canals." Jarvis frowned, then resumed his narrative. "I thought the dream-beast and the silicon-monster were the strangest beings conceivable, but I was wrong. These creatures are still more alien, less understandable than either and far less comprehensible than Tweel, with whom friendship is possible, and even, by patience and ...
— A Martian Odyssey • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... of his life to clerkship. Lamb at any rate is not provincial. His perceptions are never at fault. Every sentence of Lamb proves his taste and his powerful intelligence. Coleridge—well, Coleridge has his comprehensible moments, but they are few; Matthew Arnold, with study and discipline, might perhaps have been a great critic, only his passion for literature was not strong enough to make him give up school-inspecting—and there you are! Moreover, Matthew Arnold could never have written of women ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... to fourteen hundred credits, while Alan watched; the fine points of the game became more comprehensible to him with each passing moment, and he longed to sit down at the table himself. That was impossible, he knew; this was a Class A parlor, and a rank beginner such ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... be a part of that family. Nor was she a mere snob and deserving of what she got in the way of ill treatment because she submitted to it; Elizabeth was a young girl of artistic temperament, craving beauty, and longing for the companionship of those who talked in terms comprehensible to her at the same time that they advanced her aesthetic education and possibilities. In proportion as she valued this thing was she to pay ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... by the way, inevitably had the knack of annoying him. In a year, working night and day, he could only make of all his rhymes, one single volume which never sold, I said to him: "Ah! you see," just in a reasoning spirit, to bring him to something more comprehensible, more remunerative, He got into a frightful rage, and afterwards sank into a state of gloomy depression which made me very unhappy. My friends advised me as well as they could: "You see, my dear, it is the ennui and bad temper of an unoccupied man. If he worked a little ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... patronized by the philosopher, if only it actually performed what it promises. But how any affection from without can metamorphose itself into perception or will, the materialist has hitherto left, not only as incomprehensible as he found it, but has aggravated it into a comprehensible absurdity. For, grant that an object from without could act upon the conscious self, as on a consubstantial object; yet such an affection could only engender something homogeneous with itself. Motion could only propagate motion. Matter has no Inward. We remove ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... a spiritualist, and so for all phenomena in nature, comprehensible or incomprehensible, she had a ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Rembrandt's portraits. This ascent of the spirit of man out of the mysterious depths of its own consciousness to these sublime heights of achievement is the true history of the race; the history which silently unfolds itself through and behind events, and makes events comprehensible. In the sweat of his brow man has protected and fed himself; but this has been but the beginning of that continuous miracle which has not only turned deserts into gardens and water into wine, but has transformed the uncouth rock into images ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... understood he had already entered upon, and awarded the arm and head of his iron Chancellor the title of arm and head connatural with the Caesarian institution. I know of no statesman in history who has given, under analogous circumstances, such proof of want of foresight as was given by Bismarck, comprehensible only if the body could assume the authority of the will, as did his, and if the intelligence could disappear, as did his, in an hydropic and unquenchable desire for power. Frederick, holding progressive ideas opposed to those of Bismarck and of William, would have greatly considered public ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... Captain Pedolsky opened the pouch on his belt and took out the false palate and tongue-clicker without which no Terran could do more than mouth a crude and barely comprehensible pidgin-Ulleran. Stuffing the gadget into his mouth, he turned ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... not constitutionally enthusiastic about seeing battlefields, I must admit that I found the field of Vicksburg engrossing. The siege of a small city presents a comparatively simple and compact military problem which is, therefore, comprehensible to the civilian mind, and in addition to this the Vicksburg battlefield is splendidly preserved and marked, so that the visitor may ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... an antiquarian, would dwell with loving interest on the lays of Vafthrudnis, Grimner, Skirner and Hymer (as Cottle spells them). Besides, they are difficult to read, and must be abundantly annotated to make them comprehensible. In such works as this of Cottle, a Scott might find wherewith to lend color to a story or a poem, but the common man would borrow Walpole's words, used in characterizing Gray's "Odes": "They are not ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... does not bid for converts, but discourages them by imposition of hard conditions, and the Moslem True Believer's simple, forthright method of reducing error is to cut off the head holding it. I don't say that this is right; I say only that, being practical and comprehensible, it commands a certain respect from the impartial observer not conversant with scriptural justification of the ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... the time I was able to give in preparation—was altogether too limited for any exhaustive finish of presentation; but I think on the whole I have got the main lines of this sketch map of my mental basis true. Whether I have made myself comprehensible is a different question altogether. It is for you rather than me to say how this sketch map of mine lies with regard to your own ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... which they were suffering? Could anything be more legal and citizen-like and law-respecting than their attitude as expressed by their Manifesto? No. Those things were perfectly clear, perfectly comprehensible. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... continued, "that is no reason why we should not talk of things that are comprehensible. ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... known about the nature of this indefinite except its character as indefinite. That all the phenomena of the world, the fixed order of events, the infinite variety of world-forms and names, all these are originated by this avidya, ajnana or maya is indeed hardly comprehensible. If it is indefinite nescience, how can all these well-defined forms of world-existence come out of it? It is said to exist only relatively, and to have only a temporary existence beside the permanent infinite reality. To take such a principle and to derive from it the mind, matter, and ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... observer this state of mind might be more comprehensible if Bessie had appeared in Mrs. Corporation's box on a gala night at the Metropolitan, or in the Duchess of Thatshire's box at Covent Garden. But the strange fact of democracy is that instead of discouraging social desires it has multiplied them ten thousand fold. Every ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... wherever Baucher was led into argument with his opponents, the mere force of his philosophical reasonings was sufficient to put them down. His book has gone through nine editions in France, and as many in Russia, Germany, Belgium and Holland. The present translation is well executed, in clear comprehensible English; its only defect, if that can be considered one, is, that it is somewhat too idiomatically precise. So little does it smell of the usual vulgarity of the stable, that we are led to believe Baucher has fallen ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... it became comprehensible to Thor that his father might raise the rent and still not be an instrument of oppression. It was consoling to him to perceive this. It helped to allay certain uncomfortable suspicions that had risen in his mind since coming home, and which ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... Thomson (Evolution of Sex, 1889), the common grass-snake has been induced under artificial conditions to bring forth its young alive.] and the correlation between the retained developing ova and the hypertrophy of the ruptured follicles is comprehensible on my theory of the influence of substances absorbed by the walls of oviduct or ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... I could accept your offer in the spirit with which you tender it. Unfortunately, I am a maimed person. My sensibilities have gone. Friendship, in the more intimate sense of the word, I may never hope to feel again. Enmity—well, that is more comprehensible; even enmity," he continued slowly, "which might prompt a woman to disguise herself as her own lady's maid, to seek out a tool to get rid of the man she feared. Pardon me, Lady ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in the swiftly emerging champion and lover is comprehensible to us of a later day—that, and the joy she feels in watching him impatiently submit to be armed. Even so might one of us watch and listen to and keep for ever in memory the stamp of the foot, the sound of the "ringing gauntlets"—reproduced ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... descending from His heavenly seat, and not quitting the glory of His Father, begotten in a new order by a new nativity. In a new order: because He who was invisible in His own nature, was made visible in ours; He who was incomprehensible [could not be contained], became comprehensible in ours; remaining before all times, He began to be in time; the Lord of all, He took upon Him the form of a servant, having obscured His immeasurable majesty. He who was God, incapable of suffering, did not ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... for Luther's success in defying pope and emperor and for the rapid acceptance of his new theology hard to understand. The movement was essentially popular and national. It appealed to the pious-minded who desired a simplification of Christian dogma and a comprehensible method of salvation. It also appealed to the worldly minded who longed to seize ecclesiastical lands and revenues. Above all, it appealed to the patriots who were tired of foreign despotism and of abuses ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... of all the forces which have hitherto operated upon mankind. The more similar, the more ordinary people, have always had and are still having the advantage; the more select, more refined, more unique, and difficultly comprehensible, are liable to stand alone; they succumb to accidents in their isolation, and seldom propagate themselves. One must appeal to immense opposing forces, in order to thwart this natural, all-too-natural PROGRESSUS IN SIMILE, the evolution of man to the similar, the ordinary, the average, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... style. In the air, slightly colored by the brightly stained-glass, hovered something archaic and exotic—hoary antiquity reigned—and a critical spirit with the odor of mysticism might be felt floating around there. But all this seemed quite comprehensible and natural to anyone who knew Baron Emil, the owner of that dwelling—a trained and exacting aesthete—moreover, the baron was of that school called Mediaeval; and as a Mediaevalist he professed homage for Middle Ages romances and ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... usual deliverance of superficial criticism than that which declares French poetry in general to be either nought—which is still a not uncommon notion—or at least not great enough to be worth the study which alone could make it comprehensible. There are many good people who dare to say this, yet live, audacious, and unconscious of their folly. We have, however, to consider Victor Hugo on a ground which no one ventures to dispute. The great romances—for ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... quivering flesh among them, and the vulgar young fellows running around, knife in hand, eager for an opportunity to use them, their once white smocks smeared and spattered with blood, brought back the picture of the savage old priests of the religion of Montezuma. The scene made more comprehensible the preconquest customs of the land, as the antithesis of the drunken and excited Indian to the almost effeminate fear of the same being sober makes more clear that inexplicable piece of romance, the ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... about their daily business and not suspecting that they were made a show of. And these books are as English as a beefsteak. Have they ever been tried in America? It needs an English residence to make them thoroughly comprehensible; but still I should think that the human nature in them would ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... not know whether or not I have made this theory very comprehensible, but it seems to me some such theory might explain the facts and at the same time do away with the difficulties. At all events no theory of telepathy which has been advanced to date can be said to be explanatory, when all the facts are taken into consideration; ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... never found fault with me, but his criticisms on my Latin grammar were frequent and severe. "It is strange," he would mutter, "that men cannot do things properly. There is no necessity for this rule; it only confuses the pupil. That note is absurd; this, unintelligible. Grammars should be made more comprehensible." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... even land, and only stones and dust? What is the significance of the words "to earn a livelihood in the city," which are in such constant use, both by those who earn the livelihood, and by those who furnish it, as though it were something perfectly clear and comprehensible? ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... Were it possible to procure his signature to a contract that his daughter, when of age, should be married to me, on this security money might be raised by us to any amount. Now, my good father, am I comprehensible? ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... a daughter, and she was ignorant of the pleasant everyday amenities of a father's love. As there is undoubtedly such a thing as love at first sight, so must there be sympathy at first sight. For Jocelyn it was comprehensible—nay, it was most natural. This was Jack's father. In his manner, in everything about him, there were suggestions of Jack. This seemed to be a creature hewn, as it were, from the same material, moulded on the same lines, with slightly divergent tools. And for him—who can ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... understand the meaning of those aspirations towards moral perfection and the service of mankind, which once constituted her life, and put them down to ambition and the wish to show off; that being the only explanation comprehensible to him. ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... have just said will become more comprehensible if I apply to Delsarte those more especially Christian words: The spirit and ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... while Palus played an adversary, ever yelled for a prompt finish to the bout, as almost always happened at the first sign of delay in the case of any other fighter. So comprehensible, so unmistakable, so manifest, so fascinating were the fine points of the swordsmanship displayed by Palus that even the rearmost spectator, even the most brutish lout could and did relish them and enjoy them and crave the ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... "that is no reason why we should not talk of things that are comprehensible. Let us turn ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... rules for ancestral sacrifice, social deportment, family duties, cultivation, finance, punishment, and so on, but endeavoured to bring all human actions whatsoever into practical harmony with supposed natural laws; that is to say, to make them as regular, as comprehensible, as beneficent, and as workable, as the perfectly manifest but totally unexplained celestial movements were; as were the rotation of seasons, the balancing of forces, the growth and waning of matter, male and female reproduction, light and darkness; and, in short, to make ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... so to read its play of features that it disclosed to him the archetypal forms of cloud-formation underlying all change. To these he gave the now well-known names (in Latin, so that they might be internationally comprehensible): ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... this conception of man's activities infinitely more wonderful, and infinitely more comprehensible than is the conception that his activities may be accounted for by the existence of an unknown, unimaginable, and intangible ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... surface, are never so utterly blind, so deluded as to resist the wise results of reflection. That evening the Nabob opened a shabby little portfolio, badly worn at the corners, in which for ten years past he had manoeuvred his millions, minuting his profits and his expenses in hieroglyphics comprehensible to himself alone. He calculated for a moment, then turned to ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... word was comprehensible to Dick; nor could he think of a word to say in reply. He made an uncouth, half-irritated, half-despairing gesture towards the wood he had quitted, as if to indicate his helpless horse, but he knew it was meaningless to ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... the crucifix had been fastened had come out of its hole. A flake of plaster had been detached, perhaps some days ago, and the hole had become too large to retain the nail. The explanation of the matter was perfect, simple and comprehensible. Yet the priest felt as if a catastrophe had just taken place. As he stared at the cross he heard a little noise near him. The acolyte ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... that all the multifarious and complicated activities of man are comprehensible under three categories. Either they are immediately directed towards the maintenance and development of the body, or they effect transitory changes in the relative positions of parts of the body, or they tend towards the continuance of the species. Even those ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... unwieldy bulk, its heterogeneous population, and its complex government. Therefore, I submit, that an hour may not be quite wasted which is passed in considering some of the recent phenomena which have appeared about us, in order to ascertain if they can be grouped together in any comprehensible relation. ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... especially those in Webster, are fitter for a child's scrap-book than for a volume intended to go into a student's library. Such adjuncts seem to us allowable only, if at all, somewhat as they were introduced by Blunt in his "Glossographia," to make terms of heraldry more easily comprehensible. They might be admitted to save trouble in describing geometrical figures, or in explaining certain of the more frequently occurring terms in architecture and mechanics, but beyond this they are childish. The publishers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... was coming to establish. A kingdom of souls, if not intolerable to his Sadducean faith, seemed to him but an abstraction drawn from the depths of a devotion too fond and dreamy. A kingdom of Judea, on the other hand, was more than comprehensible: such had been, and, if only for that reason, might be again. And it suited his pride to think of a new kingdom broader of domain, richer in power, and of a more unapproachable splendor than the old one; of a new king wiser and mightier than Solomon—a new king under whom, especially, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... saw that the establishment of those compound reflex actions which we call instincts is comprehensible on the principle that inner relations are, by perpetual repetition, organised into correspondence with outer relations; so the establishment of those consolidated, those indissoluble, those instinctive mental relations constituting ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... written in terms that are comprehensible to the layman. The step-by-step instructions should afford the reader a means of acquiring self-hypnosis. The necessary material is here. The reader need only follow the instructions as they ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... labour—labour which, I hope, will not remain uncompensated. The view there taken, which goes somewhat deeply into the subject, has two sides, The one relates to the objects of the pure understanding, and is intended to demonstrate and to render comprehensible the objective validity of its a priori conceptions; and it forms for this reason an essential part of the Critique. The other considers the pure understanding itself, its possibility and its powers of cognition—that is, from a subjective ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... answered the man. It would have been very strange if he had not understood, for though Grant addressed him in English the word grod bawled so frequently into his ear was sufficiently comprehensible. ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... Vasari, that Botticelli may have laid out his money at higher interest than you know of; meantime, he is advancing in life and thought, and becoming less and less comprehensible to his biographer. And at length, having got rid, somehow, of the money he received from the Pope; and finished the work he had to do, and uncovered it,—free in conscience, and empty in purse, he returned to Florence, where, "being a sophistical person, he made a comment on a part of Dante, and ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... Englishmen was the finest fighting force in the world, combined with an inner conviction that of that army his kindred Highlanders were the most intrepid and leading cohort. This was a far more attractive and comprehensible personality than the other revealed in later days, of the Biblical pedant seeking to reconcile passing events with ancient Jewish prophecies, and to see in the most ordinary occurrences the workings of a resistless and unalterable fate. ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... first, facts secondary;—with the Pre-Raphaelites it is the reverse; it is far less important to them that their facts should be broadly stated and in keeping in their pictures, than that they should be there and comprehensible. To him a fact that was out of keeping was a nuisance, and he treated it as such; while any falsehood that was in keeping was as unhesitatingly admitted, if he needed it to strengthen the impression ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... large main sense-channel instead of through the five divisions known as sight, smell, touch, and so forth. You will, I know, understand me when I tell you that I heard sights and saw sounds. No language can make this comprehensible, of course, and I can only say, for instance, that the striking of the clock I saw as a visible picture in the air before me. I saw the sounds of the tinkling bell. And in precisely the same way I heard the colours in the ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... facts the author came to the opinion that if a course of instruction were prepared which would demonstrate clearly the many abstruse details of the art in an interesting and comprehensible way, it would be appreciated by those who are desirous to learn. Acting upon this impulse, he began the preparation ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... that Aaron received from Sophie's hand. I cannot divine why all this new world of being should fancy to unroll itself, an endless panorama of pansophical mysteries, before my eyes. I do not appreciate it in the least. Philip Bailey's "Mystic" is more comprehensible to me. This is a practical, matter-of-fact world; I know it is. Sophie Percival, my sister, is the wife of Aaron Wilton, country-clergyman in Redleaf,—nothing more; and I thought of my untasted cup of tea, in which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... interpreted by this rule; whereas, on the contrary, by following our own method, we can explain many questions of this nature, and discuss them on a sure basis, as we have already shown, by reason and example. (184) Those matters which are by their nature comprehensible we can easily explain, as has been pointed out, simply ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... procured the requisite form, told her the cost, which led to a condensed version of the original draft, smoothed away the slight hindrance of foreign money tendered in payment, and arranged the due delivery of a reply. Perhaps he smiled when he read what she had written. The words were comprehensible even to one ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... fat, jolly old padre, who thought he could speak English, tried to tell us about the Santo Nino in that language. As his enthusiasm and interest increased, he often forgot to use his newly acquired tongue and lapsed into Spanish, which was far more comprehensible to us than was his sublime disregard of syntax when attempting Anglo-Saxon, notwithstanding the fact that he tried to better his linguistic efforts by shouting out each English sentence like a phonograph gone mad. It was from him we first heard the legend of the Santo Nino—how it was an idol ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... these religions of the past have adapted their teaching to the multitude through parable and allegory. Nothing in literature can be found more beautiful and inspiring, and at the same time comprehensible to the commonest intelligence, than ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... maxim. As an experiment in this direction, Dr. Zasse selected the statistical investigations of all the wars recorded in history, as a subject which lends itself more easily to scientific verification than any other. To illustrate his subject in the simplest and most easily comprehensible manner, Dr. Zasse represents the periods of war and the periods of peace in the shape of small and large wave-lines running over the area of the Old World. The idea is not a new one, for the image was used for similar illustrations by more than one ancient and medieval mystic, whether in words ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... show that he was struggling to see in the origin of species a process just as scientifically comprehensible as the birth of individuals. They show, I think, that he recognised the two things not merely as similar but ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... then that, in his usual midday guardianship of the old book-shop, he was struck by the appearance of Deronda, and it is perhaps comprehensible now why Mordecai's glance took on a sudden eager interest as he looked at the new-comer: he saw a face and frame which seemed to him to realize the long-conceived type. But the disclaimer of Jewish birth was for the moment a backward thrust ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... state territories and the Roman domain. Vexed questions of boundaries might everywhere be raised, and the government of an Italian community would probably find as much difficulty as a private possessor in furnishing documentary evidence of title. The fears of the Latin communities are far more comprehensible, and it was probably in these centres that the Italian revolt against the proceedings of the commission chiefly originated. The interests of the Latins in this matter were almost precisely similar ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... turpentine-tree whose deep shade harbored birds of every hue. To me, sitting there, the island's old Carib name of Aye-Aye seemed the eternal consent of God to some seraph asking for this ocean pearl. All that poet or prophet had ever said of heaven became comprehensible in its daily transfigurations of light and color scintillated between wave, landscape, and cloud—its sea like unto crystal, and the trees bearing all manner of fruits. Grace and fragrance everywhere: fruits crimson, gold, and purple; fishes blue, ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... Interned.—Some of the women express a wish to see their husbands more often, at least once a month; others wish to see their sons or brothers who are prisoners at Maadi or at Sidi Bishr. This being a legitimate and comprehensible desire, the English Government has several times already allowed the husbands to come from these camps (4 hours distant by train) to spend three or four days with their wives in the Citadel. A part of the ...
— Turkish Prisoners in Egypt - A Report By The Delegates Of The International Committee - Of The Red Cross • Various
... of it—yes, sir." How small a part she did not mention. "The rest was made comprehensible by Mr. ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... could feel herself relaxing, slipping down and away, drifting down through her mind ... farther ... deeper ... toward the tiny voice that spoke in such a strange language and still was becoming daily more comprehensible. ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... Jack he himself seemed odd, both anatomically and in other ways. His fine gray fur and his four-fingered hands set him apart from them—he would never be mistaken for an Earthman, even in the densest fog. But these were comprehensible differences. His close attachment to Fuzzy was something else, and still seemed beyond their ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... that the finite is comprehensible in and by itself, and the infinite is incomprehensible in and by itself, is to make an assertion utterly at variance both with psychology and logic. The finite is no more comprehensible in itself than the infinite. "Relatives are known only ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... unless you are pleased to be more explicit, it is impossible for me either to answer or understand you," said the lady; "you speak too seriously for a masquerade pleasantry, and yet not clearly enough to make your earnest comprehensible." ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... given to him. Then the primordial necessity of the Mediator or Word was borne in upon his mind. It is the Word which has created the world. It is through the Word that the world, and God, and all things, including ourselves, become comprehensible to us. What an astonishment! Plato corresponded with St. John! "In the beginning was the Word"—in principio erat verbum—said the fourth Gospel. But it was not only an Evangelist that Augustin discovered in the Platonist dialogues, it was almost ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... with the developement of the elements of things, as where we are. What we have not yet mastered, we feel confidently persuaded that the investigators that come after us will reduce to rules not less obvious, familiar and comprehensible, than is to us the rising of the sun, or the progress of animal and vegetable life from the first bud and seed of existence to the last stage of ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... Alice's condition, as given by her maid, although hideously unlike the beautiful object they were meant to call up to her father's mind, were sufficiently expressive and comprehensible. ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... would not go back to Paris of the open arms and the comprehensible behaviour without coming to conclusions with Craven. To do so would be to retreat practically beaten from the field, and she had never ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... occur to 'Zekiel to be surprised that all the dogs were chatting together in very comprehensible Dorsetshire English. To see them actually living, and moving about, was such an extraordinary thing that it swallowed up every other ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... game say, 'Let us leave off; I am tired of playing now.' English capitalists feel themselves in a safe position. Nothing can easily go wrong at present. The thing is, therefore, to secure what they have got and to diminish the heavy burdens. This desire is comprehensible—only the other Powers will probably not ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... foot of ordinary superstitions, as given in the reasons assigned to Labienus for passing the oracle of the Lybian Jupiter unconsulted, are in a style to which there is nothing corresponding in the whole Grecian literature, nor would they have been comprehensible to an Athenian. The famous line—'Jupiter est quodcunque vides, quodcunque moveris,' and the brief review of such questions as might be worthy of an oracular god, with the summary declaration, that ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... globe, which led to the drawing of those isothermal lines so important in their influence in shaping physical geography, and giving accuracy to the mode of representing natural phenomena. Before Humboldt we had no graphic representation of complex natural phenomena which made them easily comprehensible, even to minds of moderate cultivation. He has done that in a way which has circulated information more extensively, and brought it to the apprehension more clearly than it could have been done ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... least effort. Still, he pursued, and he had once told her with smiling candour that if she did not mind the pursuit, he did not mind the chase. Only, he never urged it into the presence of Mrs. Falconer, of whom alone he stood in speechless, easily comprehensible awe. Perhaps to-night—as Amy had never seen him in ball-dress—she might begin to succumb; he had just placed her under obligation to him by an unexpected stroke of good fortune; and finally he had executed one neat stratagem at the expense of ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... nothing real in the {183} universe but has its form, its "signature," its figure, its body-aspect: "There is not anything but has its soul and its body, and each soul is as it were an inner kernel, or seed, to a visible and comprehensible body,"[29] and, as we shall see, the supreme achievement of the universe is the visible appearance of the Word of God, the eternal Son, in flesh like ours—a visible realization in time of the eternal Heart of God. The glory of God appears ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... now. Her eyes narrowed; the dark line of her lips thinned. At last something comprehensible had touched ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... with the plastic sheet in it. One of the boys, very composed, operated it. On request, he opened it up. There was nothing in the case but a few curiously shaped bits of metal. The thing was too simple to be comprehensible when one did not know the principle by ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... still actuated by hatred to the English, and a jealousy of their power in the Mediterranean; and in this so strange and senseless a manner, that we must join the extremes of imbecility and treachery in the same cabinet, in order to find it comprehensible. Though the very existence of Naples and Sicily, as a nation, depended wholly and exclusively on British support; though the royal family owed their personal safety to the British fleet; though not only their dominions and their rank, but the liberty and even the lives of ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... known before on any Navy List. Some were as they were born, others had been converted, and a multitude have been designed for special cases. The Navy prepares against all contingencies by land, sea, and air. It was a relief to meet a batch of comprehensible destroyers and to drop again into the little mouse-trap ward-rooms, which are as large-hearted as all Our oceans. The men one used to know as destroyer-lieutenants ("born stealing") are serious ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... what New York had in store for her, but because she needed more time to dispose of what the Utopia had already given her. The past was bad enough, but the present and future were worse, because they were less comprehensible, and because, as she grew older, surprises and inconsequences troubled her ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... having ventured to bring the question of repeal before the house. He asked, what was meant by the watch-word of repeal of the union between Great Britain and Ireland. If those who used it meant a complete separation, or a species of Hibernian republic, their conduct was both comprehensible and consistent; but if, as they asserted, they only meant two separate independent legislatures, under the same monarch, the motion was inconsistent with the first principles of the science of government. After having shown this inconsistency by a chain ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... matter of great satisfaction to know that there is nothing further of greater importance to learn about the sexual activity of the child after the impulse of one erogenous zone has become comprehensible to us. The most pronounced differences are found in the action necessary for the gratification, which consists in sucking for the lip zone and which must be replaced by other muscular actions according to the situation and nature ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... internal secretion stimulating the organism as a whole. Though the isolation in pure form of the substance or substances involved has never been scientifically achieved, their inference is entirely justified. It is indeed the only comprehensible mechanism conceivable that will fit all the known facts about the matter. And even though the assertions of Brown-Sequard were only the exaggerations of a semi-charlatan, it is certain that some day in the near future ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... Drayton to Stratford. No doubt Shakespeare was delighted to meet them, talked as few men ever talked before or since, and probably drank too much with those "poor unhappy brains for drinking" which his Cassius deplored. Thus fanned, the weak flame of his life wasted quickly and guttered out. It is all comprehensible enough, and more than likely, that the greatest man in the world, after the boredom of solitary years spent in Stratford, died through a merry meeting with his friends; in his joy and excitement he drank a glass or so of wine, which brought on a fever. It is all ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... authors are frequently amusing but rarely edifying, and this hatred of Bowring that possessed the soul of poor Borrow in his later years is of the same texture as the rest. We shall never know the facts, but the position is comprehensible enough. Let us turn to the extant correspondence[87] which, as far as we know, opened when Borrow paid what was probably his third ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... in themselves some knowledge of contemporary events as the air collects and holds moisture; it may be that we all do, but only one here and there becomes aware of the fact. As the impalpable moisture in the air changes to palpable rain so does this vague cognisance become a comprehensible revelation by being resolved into a shower of words on occasion by some process psychically analogous to the condensation of moisture in the air. It is a natural phenomenon known to babes like Beth, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... after Cicero's death, in the imagination of the greatest of Roman poets, Jupiter was once more brought before the Roman world, and now in a form comprehensible by all educated men, whether or no they had dabbled in philosophy. What are we to say of the Jupiter of the Aeneid? We do not need to read far in the first book of the poem to find him spoken of in terms which remind us of Varro: "O qui res hominumque deumque Aeternis ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... mile from the city we came upon the country turnpike; and of this, as I now viewed it for the first time, any comprehensible description is out of the question, since I am possessed of no means of illustrating its condition to English senses;—a Cumberland fell, ploughed up at the end of a very wet November, would be the Bath road compared with this the only turnpike leading from one of the chief sea-board ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... fixed by Aristotle for the right amount of action to be contained in an heroic poem. They are too hurried, they are wanting in the classical breadth and ease of narrative; but at any rate they are comprehensible, they observe an epic unity. They do not, like certain of the endless French poetical histories, remind one of the picture of incomprehensible bulk in Aristotle's Poetics, the animal 10,000 ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... already excited by the submarine campaign. If the contention of certain naval authorities that the observance of the Declaration of London by our enemies would have brought us no important material advantage is correct, the issue of our Note of February 16th becomes even less comprehensible. Having admitted in this Note that the declaration of the barred zones was caused by the fact that all was not well with us, we could hardly expect England would fall in with the proposal made at our suggestion by Mr. Wilson, and thus allow us so easy a diplomatic ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... very comprehensible that worlds which appear more and more stable as they cool could become so unstable as to afterward dissociate entirely. To explain this phenomenon, we will inquire whether astronomical observations do not allow ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... but Jacqueline came on, softly moving nearer and nearer to the easel, looking from the canvas to Max and back again to the canvas in an amused, secret fashion comprehensible ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... philosophy made in Great Britain for many years. The present volume contains his Course of Lectures, forty-six in number, which he delivered as Professor of Metaphysics; and being intended for young students, they are, as compared with his other works, more comprehensible without being less comprehensive. The most conclusive proof of the excellence of these Lectures is to be found in their influence on the successive classes of students before whom they were pronounced. The universal testimony of the young men who were fortunate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... will make myself comprehensible, my dear sister-in-law. I am the worker of the miracle for which you are thanking Heaven; to me therefore belongs your gratitude. Heaven is rich enough not ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... this direction, and of mysterious spiriting away of property in that; and as nobody on the face of the earth could be more incapable of explaining any single item in the heap of confusion than the debtor himself, nothing comprehensible could be made of his case. To question him in detail, and endeavour to reconcile his answers; to closet him with accountants and sharp practitioners, learned in the wiles of insolvency and bankruptcy; was only to put the case out at compound interest and incomprehensibility. The irresolute ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... they would be timed by water-clocks, as they are said to have been at one period. The limit, however, set by the actual nature of the thing is this: the longer the story, consistently with its being comprehensible as a whole, the finer it is by reason of its magnitude. As a rough general formula, 'a length which allows of the hero passing by a series of probable or necessary stages from misfortune to happiness, or from happiness to ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... the scientific world toward these problematical occurrences is quite comprehensible. Throughout the nineteenth century the attention of scientists has been almost wholly directed toward the investigation of the forms and forces of matter, the phenomena and principles of the visible universe. In ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... was a retyr'd man) to tell the Reader that I heard him say, he had not made the English so short, or few words, as the originall; because in that, the Author had exprest himself so enigmatically, that though he indevour'd to translate it plainly; yet, he thought it was not made comprehensible enough for common Readers, therefore he declar'd to me, that he intended to make it so by a coment on the margent; which he had begun, but (be it spoke with sorrow) he and those thoughts are now buried in the silent ...
— Waltoniana - Inedited Remains in Verse and Prose of Izaak Walton • Isaak Walton
... of his agitation was apparently more comprehensible to Lessingham than it was to me. I had to piece this and that together under considerable difficulties. By degrees I did arrive at something like a clear notion of what had ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... discussion of the tree itself; it seems that a few specimens were spared for study, isolated on a peninsula of one of the continents, and turned over to Dival for observation and dissection. All I can say for the book is that it is probably accurate. Certainly it is neither interesting nor comprehensible. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... Rabbi Jochanan explained many laws and rendered them comprehensible, when they seemed obscure or extraordinary. Rabbi Jochanan's view of piety corresponded with his teaching that Job's piety was not based on the love of God, but on the fear of God. To love God; to serve ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... him with a sadly wondering shake of his head, and went back to his more comprehensible pots ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... and well-understood laws of cause and effect. They were not what we call "men of destiny." They were "men of the time." They were men whose careers had a beginning, a middle and an end, rounding off lives with histories, full it may be of interesting and exciting event, but comprehensive and comprehensible; simple, clear, complete. ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... who undertook to tell the story, and he told it in the coarse, uncouth language of the forecastle, embellishing and emphasising it here and there, after the manner of the shellback, by the introduction of words and phrases comprehensible enough to me but confusing and quite unintelligible to a landsman. I shall therefore take the liberty of translating the narrative into plain, simple English for the benefit of my readers. Thus translated, it ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... probably the most interesting of the two. Elinor beat her foot upon the carpet, out of sheer impatience, while John lingered alone in the dining-room. What did he stay there for? When there are several men together, and they drink wine, the thing is comprehensible; but one man alone who takes his claret with his dinner, and cares for nothing more, why should he stay behind when there was so much to say to him, and not one minute too much time till Monday morning, should the house be given ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... not bother you with my experiments. In brief, let me give you only results, so as to be just comprehensible. Given my law, I had to find, first, the manner exactly in which snails manifest their sympathy, the one for the other,—c'est a dire, how Snail A tells you that something is happening to his comrade, Snail B. There was a constant ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... considered, or held in subordinate regard, Language; the prominent criterion, by which a human being is proudly elevated above the rest of the animated creation. Speech, and its representation by characters, are exclusively comprehensible by man; and these have been the sources of his vast attainments and rapid progression. The ear receives the various intonations that convey intelligence, and the characters or symbols of these significant sounds are detected by the human eye. Some of the ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... globes, and both globes and chains observe the rule of descending into matter and then rising out of it again. In order to make this comprehensible let us take as an example the chain to which our Earth belongs. At the present time it is in its fourth or most material incarnation, and therefore three of its globes belong to the physical world, two to the astral world, and two to the lower part of the mental world. The wave of ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... Pierre reckoned himself and others like him, seeking and vacillating, who had not yet found in Freemasonry a straight and comprehensible path, but hoped to ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... life had I boasted a brother. The stuff was surely liquid folly, for the poignant regret for that lost brother still clung to me. Along Portland Road the madness took another turn. I began to recall vanished shops, and to compare the street with what it used to be. Confused, troubled thinking is comprehensible enough after the drink I had taken, but what puzzled me were these curiously vivid phantasm memories that had crept into my mind, and not only the memories that had crept in, but also the memories that had slipped out. I stopped opposite ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... asked to select the best reviews of a novel which had just appeared. One of the three statements which they rated highest said of the book that it "achieves the true purpose of a novel, which is to make comprehensible the philosophy of life of a whole community or race of men by showing us how that philosophy accords with the impulses and yearnings of typical individuals." Few phrases could be more foreign to Bible phrases than those. But there is valuable suggestion in it for more than the literature ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... correspond at all to the supposititious standard of 71,250 pyramidal cubic inches; but in order to make it appear to do so he has now struck a "mean" between the measurement of the interior of the vessel and some of the measurements of its exterior, in a way that was not easily comprehensible in his demonstration. But what other hollow vessel in the world, and with unequal walls too (see p. 233), had the capacity of its interior ever before attempted to be altered and rectified by any measurements of the ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... when within hearing, Anders shouted a peaceful message, and there was much hallooing and gesticulation among the natives, but nothing comprehensible came of it. After a time Anders thought he recognised words of a dialect with which he was acquainted, and to his satisfaction found ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... matter; and as is the custom of Moslems setting out on a voyage I say of our venture, 'In the name of God be its courses and its moorings.' That settled, hearken further. What you have given me is not all comprehensible. As I understand you, I am to find the surpassing glory in a field of war. Tell me, lies the field far or near? Where is it? And who is he I am to challenge? There will be room and occasion for combat around me ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... neutral expression which befits the artist asked to listen to a rival. Mr. Thornburgh sat pensive, one foot drooped over the other. He was very fond of the Leyburn girls, but music seemed to him, good man, one of the least comprehensible of human pleasures. As for Rose, she had at last arranged herself and her accompanist Agnes, after routing out from her music a couple of Fantasie-Stuecke, which she had wickedly chosen as presenting the most severely classical contrast to the 'rubbish' played by the preceding performers. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
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