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More "Incredulity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he was desolated, grieved beyond measure that the necessity of borrowing the motor-car had been forced on him; but he had borrowed it in the service of a lady; and he told briefly the story of the kidnapping. The aggrieved Frenchman listened to it with a face in which amazement battled with incredulity; but fortunately, towards the end of it, Dorothy and her father came into the hotel from walking in the garden of the Casino; and Tinker introduced the Frenchman to them. At the sight of Dorothy's beauty, he forgot his righteous wrath; forgot that it was ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... comrade retorted with greater incredulity. "If both doors were closed and fastenings are all right now, could anybody get the car out? They left the big door open—that's what ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... a daze of incredulity. This was his first serious defeat; and he could not understand it. The case was absolutely open and shut, a mere question of fact to which there were sufficient and competent witnesses. For the moment he ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... under queer circumstances, that her husband wasn't dead at all, and that that dear little puss Sally was Goodness-knows-who's child, we feel certain that the information would have been cross-countered with a blank stare of incredulity. Why, the mere fact that Mrs. Nightingale had refused so many offers of marriage was surely sufficient to refute such a nonsensical idea! Who ever heard of a lady with a soiled record refusing a good offer ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... and ninety, impress one with a kind of awe. "What regions must they be," thought I to myself, "thus sealed up in eternal snows, while the country at their feet lies scorching in the very fire!" A shadow of incredulity mingled itself with my reflections. On the whole, I bought but ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and stared a moment longer. His face showed a gamut of emotions—horror, conviction, then furious incredulity. Suddenly he began hastening hither and thither about the room. He moved the furniture with fierce jerks, turning ever to see the effect upon the shadow on the wall. Not a line of ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... himself. It was in a strange state of mind that he returned to the Close; one thing only he was clear upon, that to Clem and her mother he would breathe no word of what had been told him. After a night passed without a wink of sleep, struggling with the amazement, the incredulity, the confusion of understanding caused by his father's words, he betook himself to a familiar public-house, and there penned a note to Scawthorne, requesting an interview as soon as possible. The meeting took place that evening at the retreat behind ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... it, and then proceeds gradually to bring his marvel within the range of this individual's apprehension. We see the improbable, not too definitely, through the eyes of one who is prepared with the same incredulity as the reader of the story, and as a result the strange phenomenon, whether fallen angel, invisible man, converted beast or invading Martian, takes all the shape of reality. That this shape is convincing is due to the brilliance of Mr Wells' imagination ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... incredulity bordering upon feeble indignation, settled upon the serrated countenance. But Blanchard only shook his head as if he did ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... said significantly to the younger Elsie, "though I know plenty of lovely girls, desirable matches in every way, who would have been delighted with the offer of his hand. Yes, my dear, I am quite sure of it," she added, seeing a slight smile of incredulity on the young girl's face; "only wait till you have seen him. He will ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... with obvious incredulity, for Mr. Tomkins declared that no other chimney-pot in the United Kingdom, broken or unbroken, could be so beautiful as ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... hear," said the lad; and he looked at Dave and John Warren, in whose boat he was, and read incredulity there; and as he gazed over the inundated fen, and thought of fishing, and shooting, and boating there, he felt himself thoroughly on the fen-men's side, while, feeling ashamed of this, he bent over the boat side, scooped up some water in his hand and drank, ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... Peggy announced herself as a candidate for the medal he had promised. It was not till a week later, when the print which chronicled old Bess's display of spirit was exhibited, that he was convinced. He stood with mouth open, and eyes distended, incredulity slowly ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... uncle's well-known secrecy and the unusual precautions taken by him to secure his room from intrusion, looked his incredulity, ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... turned, and came swiftly towards her. He caught her in his arms,—"Polly!" his voice breaking as she had never heard it before. "You aren't hurt at all?" Incredulity was in ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... for welcome?"—So I said. Man after man, the world smiled and pass'd by; A smile of wistful incredulity As though one spake of life unto ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... he answered. "Oh, yes, I am not joking," he continued, seeing my look of incredulity. "I have just been there, and I have taken it out, and I have got it in this Gladstone bag. Come on, my boy, and we shall see whether it will ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... her with blighting incredulity. Ann had been guiltily careless, and yet she expressed no grief over the trouble she had ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... days that followed he watched it all with incredulity. So swiftly had he been tossed, it seemed, from fate to fate, and so easily, also, did he leave behind him the things that had weighed him down. No sign now of that Peter—evident enough in the Brockett days—morose, silent, sometimes oppressed ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... him this morning. Don't you see him?" She could not measure the time that the vision remained; but it was long enough for several questions and answers to pass rapidly between herself and other members of the family. In reply to their persistent incredulity, she said, "It is very strange that you don't see him; for I see him as plainly as I do any of you." She was so obviously awake and in her right mind, that the incident naturally made an impression on those who listened to her. Her mother looked at her watch, and despatched a messenger to inquire ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... interference with the course of Nature is still in being; but the enlightened even of this faith, though they dare not deny a fundamental tenet of their church, will hardly assent to any particular case, without nearly the same evidence which might conquer the incredulity of their neighbours the Protestants. It is alike inconsistent with the common sense of either that fiends should be permitted to work marvels which are no longer exhibited on the part of Heaven, or in ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... McClernand, he sent an order to Colonel Reardon to hold the brigade in readiness for action. Colonel Reardon, being confined to bed by illness, directed Colonel Raith to assume command. There was some delay in getting the brigade formed, owing to the sudden change of commanders and to the incredulity of the officers in some of the regiments as to the reality of an attack. The brigade being at length formed, advanced, and took position, with its right near Waterhouse's battery—its line making an angle with Sherman's line, so as to throw the left of the brigade upon and along Oak ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... number of them came from the damp islands lying between the north Atlantic and the German Ocean. From Erin and England and the land o' cakes they came, had a few days of staring bright-eyed happy incredulity as to the permanency of such conditions, and then settled down to take it as it was, endless days of sunshine and stirring vivacious air—as though they had always known it and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... on MacDonald's face faded in a look of incredulity. He took the pipe from his mouth. ...
— The House from Nowhere • Arthur G. Stangland
... told the earl, with an important air, that he had strictly examined the young captain, and that he had fully convinced himself of the excellence of his family, as well as the rectitude of his morals. Mauleverer listened with a countenance of polite incredulity; he had heard but little of the conversation that had taken place between the pair; but on questioning the squire upon sundry particulars of Clifford's birth, parentage, and property, he found him exactly as ignorant as before. The courtier, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Thucydides assures us the Spartans bore him, by private and pecuniary negotiations with the ephors. At length, however, such decided and unequivocal intelligence of the progress of the walls arrived at Sparta, that the ephors could no longer feel or affect incredulity. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to have more light, and Emily went to the window and opened the shutter. I turned to where Mrs. Drainger sat, the will in my left hand, my fountain pen in the other, and in that attitude I hesitated for a brief moment of incredulity. I thought I was looking at a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... only on the supposition that the earth has had a beginning. I am sure I shall read your conjectures on this subject with great pleasure, though I bespeak, beforehand, a right to indulge my natural incredulity and scepticism. The pain in which I write awakens me here from my reverie, and obliges me to conclude with compliments to Mrs. Thompson, and assurances to yourself of the esteem and affection with which I am sincerely, dear Sir, your friend ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... wind lay—Bruce making love to Mrs. Parker and she presumably betraying her husband's secrets. I thought I saw it all: the note from somebody exposing the scheme, Parker's incredulity, Bruce sitting by him and catching sight of the note, his hurrying out into the ladies' department, and then the shot. But who fired it? After all, I had only picked ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... at great length, without bothering to remove the dead headman. The result was finally a continued respect for Simba, his magic bone, and his ready rifle; but a lingering though polite incredulity as to the matter of Winkleman—Bwana Nyele. It was possible that Simba had killed the latter, of course. But to have taken him alive—and to be ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... which you would impose on me, would only, in the event of success, be attended with sentiments of disapprobation. Such is your artful purpose, that, in attacking me as doubting the existence of Jesus, you might secure to yourself, by surprise, the favor of every Christian sect, although your own incredulity in his divine nature is not less subversive of Christianity than the profane opinion, which does not find in history the proof required by the English law to establish a fact: to say nothing of the extraordinary kind of pride ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... expressed his heavy disappointment, perhaps his incredulity; for she added in the same unsympathetic tone: 'You don't believe it. Still, it is so. As to personal communication: it seems that there was personal communication between him and your mother. And yet you say you believe her declaration that she knows no more ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... terrifying impression on the troops. From that moment prisoners no longer declared themselves sure of success. For a certain time they had been consoled by the announcement of the capture of Warsaw. This pretended success having proved to be fictitious, incredulity became general. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... every one of our friends, as they saw this image of the Sky-Bird II cross the sky overhead and disappear in the mists beyond, was a look of amazement, incredulity, and ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... break. It was to be announced that at his own request Lieutenant Willett stood relieved from duty as aide-de-camp to the department commander, and would proceed to rejoin his regiment in the Department of the Columbia; but even Wickham started with surprise and incredulity when, accompanying this application, at the close of 'Tonio's dramatic trial, Willett gravely handed him another paper—his resignation as an officer of ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... these few moments, measure up his man. He had said nothing. He had let St. Pierre talk. And now St. Pierre stood there, one of the finest men he had ever looked upon, as if honestly overcome by a great wonder. And yet behind that apparent incredulity in his voice and manner David sensed the deep underflow of another thing. St. Pierre was all that Marie-Anne had claimed for him, and more. She had given him assurance of her unlimited confidence that her husband could adjust any situation in the world, and Carrigan ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... girl's incredulity amused him. He understood. To her the Skandinavia Corporation was the beginning and end of all things. In her eyes it was the last word in power and influence and wealth. She knew nothing beyond—the Skandinavia. A man in her place would have received ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... expression, used to express incredulity. It has somewhat the same meaning as the slang phrase heard in the United States—"Over ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... you a rather large order to be asked to believe that Lombardy and Venetia are nothing more than an outspread sheet of deep Alpine mud. Well, there is nothing so good for incredulity, don't you know, as capping the climax. If a man will not swallow an inch of fact, the best remedy is to make him gulp down an ell of it. And, indeed, the Lombard plain is but an insignificant mud flat compared with the vast alluvial plains of Asiatic and American ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... the well-bred insolence of Lady Caroom's stare, the contemplative incredulity which found militant expression in her beautiful eyes and shapely curving lips, and for a moment ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of incredulity, the supernatural element in the story of Sir Roger of Walderne may appear forced or unreal. But the incident is one of a class which has been made common property by writers of fiction in all generations; it occurs at least thrice in the Ingoldsby Legends; ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... Telegraph, giving an account of certain proceedings at the Salpetriere Hospital, and in the same paper there was a long leading article upon the subject. The report of the experiments was to me so amazing that at first I could not bring my mind to believe in it. As you will, I am sure, feel some incredulity, I have cut out the paragraph, and here it is pasted at ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... portion of the palace he had gained control of himself. He walked with chin high and something of a swagger. To the banquet hall he went, knowing that his chiefs awaited him there and as he entered they arose and upon the faces of many were incredulity and amaze, for they had not thought to see O-Tar the jeddak again after what the spies had told them of the horrid sounds issuing from the chamber of O-Mai. Thankful was O-Tar that he had gone alone to that chamber of fright, for now ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of the Institute of France were not alone in their incredulity. In 1803 the Philosophical Society of Rotterdam wrote to the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, for information concerning the development of the steam-engine in the United States. The question was referred to ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... years he had regularly gone down into the valleys in winter to earn money with which to prospect in summer—all to no purpose. For years Margaret Delaney had been his very present help in time of trouble, and now she had broken with him, and under his mask of smiling incredulity he carried a profoundly disturbed conscience. His benefactress was in deadly earnest—she meant every word she said—that he felt, and unless she relented he was lost, for he had returned from the valley this time without a dollar to call his own. He had a big, strong mule and some blankets ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... poems of Ossian is already discovered. I believe they never existed in any other form than that which we have seen. The editor, or author, never could show the original; nor can it be shown by any other. To revenge reasonable incredulity by refusing evidence is a degree of insolence with which the world is not yet acquainted; and stubborn audacity is the last refuge of guilt.' See ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... ago, having published two narratives of voyages in the Pacific, which, in many quarters, were received with incredulity, the thought occurred to me, of indeed writing a romance of Polynesian adventure, and publishing it as such; to see whether, the fiction might not, possibly, be received for a verity: in some degree the ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... puffing and blowing, grampus-like. To whom thus the Viscount, raising his voice: "Oh, by the way, Sling, Beverley wants to go with you." Here the Captain stopped, as it seemed in the very middle of a puff, and when he spoke it was in a tone of hoarse incredulity: ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... story with a look of incredulity, which, little by little, gave way to a broad smile. "Well," he said, "Grand Master, never chide me again! I have heard that Homer sometimes nods; but if I were to tell this to Sillery or Villeroy, they would ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... Connie Girard, and Mrs. Tarbury expressed the same incredulity as she said benevolently: "What a pipe dream, Em—she's lucky if ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... Of this method for wantonly destroying animal life, practised by many of the native African tribes, the hunters had often heard. The many stories which they had been told of the wholesale destruction of game by poison, and which they had treated with incredulity, after all, had not been exaggerated. They estimated the number of dead antelopes lying within a circumference of a mile, at not less than two hundred. One of the water-holes of the chain by which they had halted, had been poisoned. ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... rest, she imbibed readily enough at this time many of the particular views of religious subjects affected by the nuns, at first, indeed, not without a certain incredulity that such things could be, when her father had never spoken to her about them, nor made her aware of their existence; but presently, with more confidence, as she remembered that he was to have told her all about them when she was older. There were the legends and histories ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... remembered both cases very well. To think that he was their author! It was incredible, outrageous, inconceivable. Then my eyes would fall upon the table, twinkling and glittering in a hundred places, and incredulity was at an end. ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... confession. He dared not look at Esther, though she was staring at him, staring hard, with a curious sort of wonderment in her grey eyes. Then all at once she began to laugh, a laugh which held no real mirth, only incredulity. ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... for record, and by bringing my human spirit into manifold accordance with the companions God had assigned me—to learn the secret which was hidden even from themselves"; and this is cited as evidence of "his cold inquisitiveness, his incredulity, his determination to worm out the inmost secrets of all associated with him." Such distortion is amazing. The few poets who search constantly for truth are certainly impelled to get at the inmost of everything. But what, in Heaven's name, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... lips there was the same incredulity when I said good-bye. It was on July 29, and England had not yet picked up the gauntlet which Germany had flung into the face ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... camp from a solitary walk, I saw two wart-hogs before they saw me. I made no attempt to conceal myself, but stood absolutely motionless. They fed slowly nearer and nearer until at last they were not over twenty yards away. When finally they made me out, their indignation and amazement and utter incredulity were very funny. In fact, they did not believe in me at all for some few snorty moments. Finally they departed, their absurd ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... (as readers know) was explicit; incredulity was impossible, and the news itself delightful beyond hope. Each saw in his mind's eye the boat draw in to a trim island with a wharf, coal-sheds, gardens, the Stars and Stripes, and the white cottage of the keeper; saw themselves idle a few weeks in tolerable quarters, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... miracles exhibited by the two missionaries, the pagans imagined that "the gods" had come down to them "in the likeness of men;" and at Lystra the priest of Jupiter "brought oxen and garlands unto the gates, and would have done sacrifice with the people;" [77:2] but the Jews looked on in sullen incredulity, and kept alive an active and implacable opposition. At Cyprus, the apostles had to contend against the craft of a Jewish conjuror; [77:3] at Antioch, "the Jews stirred up the devout and honourable ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... person enough, known to our host from his birth. The other guests were a countess, the widow of a colonel, and a distinguished physician; in all we numbered eight. My friend and I were requested privately, by our host, to conceal our probable incredulity if we desired the favour of the "spirits" in the way of manifestations; and as these were what we came for, besides our own polite desire to do at Rome as the Romans do, we readily assented to the reasonable request. After the usual greetings and small ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... every one knew the word he spoke was "Bessie," for Elizabeth Pierrepoint had long been the object of his affections. No doubt he hoped that he should obtain some encouragement from the water, even while he gave a little laugh of affected incredulity as though only complying with a form to amuse the Queen. Down he went on his knees, bending over the pool, when behold he could not reach it! The streams that fed it were no longer issuing from the rock, the water was ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... single instant accept what happened last night as the manifestation of the disembodied. I cannot think that the phenomena exist. I must rather think they were performed by Clarke, or my sister, or Weissmann, in joke." She looked at him with an expression of horror, of incredulity, and he went on, quickly: "Even if I admitted the fact of direct writing or the movement of the horn, I should not by any means be driven to accept your spirit-hypothesis. There are men, and very great investigators, who would say that your daughter's trances and all phenomena connected therewith ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... old gentleman, whose incredulity was fast taking the form of sarcasm. "Not far, I suppose, from that celebrated island which was the last home and refuge of our famous ancestor, the Spanish pirate, who was distantly related, through a first cousin of his ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... It is absurd to observe the incredulity of Europeans as to the possibility of cutting off a head with the kinjal: it is necessary to live only one week in the East to be quite convinced of the possibility of the feat. In a practiced hand the kinjal is a substitute for the hatchet, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... me, Reverend Father," said Mora, leaning upon the table, her face framed in her hands, and looking with knitted brows at the Bishop; "it almost seems to me that you regard the entire vision with a measure of secret incredulity." ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... enormous size that Richard rubbed his eyes like one in a dream. He had heard of Cornish giants, and certainly here was a habitation fit for the king of them. A lonely church upon the clifftop beyond it, by affording him some measure of the probable size of this edifice, increased his incredulity. He looked again, and saw that it was not a castle, though the sun yet seemed to light up tower and battlement quite vividly, but only one isolated rock of vast size and picturesque proportions; upon the crown of which, however, there were certainly ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... be seen, and some tatters of the paper hangings were to be seen on the walls. Sir G. O. Paul was at Inchkenneth with the same party of which I was a member. [See Lockhart's Scott, ed. 1839, iii. 285.] He seemed to suspect many of the Highland tales which he heard, but he showed most incredulity on the subject of Johnson's having been entertained in the wretched huts of which we saw the ruins. He took me aside, and conjured me to tell him the truth of the matter. 'This Sir Allan,' said he, 'was he a regular baronet, or was his title such a traditional one as you find in Ireland?' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... at the two ludicrous figures that approached him, the policeman first listened to the excited explanation of the boy indifferently, then with incredulity, and ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... words of incredulity. But Chauvelin shrugged his shoulders and looked with unutterable contempt on his colleague. Armand, who was watching him closely, saw that in his hand he held a small piece of paper, which he had crushed ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... received Morgiana's account of her husband's miseries with some incredulity. The latter was now a daily visitor to "Sadler's Wells." His love for Morgiana had become a warm fatherly generous regard for her; it was out of the honest fellow's cellar that the wine used to come which did so much good to Mr. Walker's chest; and he tried a thousand ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said calmly, "that you, without seeing, can really carve anything true to form and line." In her voice was incredulity and unbelief. ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... the commander of the ship, and startled anew by his expression of blank incredulity, the glib flow of words conned so often during the steadfast but dreadful hours spent in the lazarette ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... who do not believe, conceal their incredulity; and as those who believe, display their faith, public opinion pronounces itself in favor of religion: love, support, and honor are bestowed upon it, and it is only by searching the human soul that we can detect the wounds which it has received. The mass of mankind, who ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... possibility of incredulity, I may add that I wrote those words down at the time, added the date and address, and signed them; so ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... Waters, with the cheerful note of incredulity in his voice with which one is apt to respond to others' confession of extremity. "Is it so bad as that? I've just seen Mrs. Bowen, and she told me you ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... brightened. "Oh, they're the best of friends; they're quite like us, you know, even to larks they have together." He stopped and colored at his slip. But Demorest, who had noticed his change of expression, was more concerned at the look of half incredulity and half suspicion with which Stacy, who had re-entered the room in time to hear Barker's speech, was regarding ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... two stood looking at one another. The girl's eyes were wide with incredulity, with hope, with fear. She was the ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... but a sign of the Messianic times, and the Fire that hath burnt thy dwelling-place is but the castigation for thine incredulity." ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Lee still affected incredulity, and was with difficulty brought to order that the whole squadron should be mustered, to see if any of them were missing. This done, there was no longer room for doubt or delay. Champe, the sergeant-major, was gone, and with him his arms, baggage, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... time you have the stock corralled, we'll be practically ready to pull through freight—if not passengers—from Denver to Chicago. Oh, I know what I am talking about," he added, when the general counsel smiled his incredulity. "This is no affair of yesterday with me. I have every mile of these three short roads mapped and cross-sectioned; I have copies of all their terminal and junction-point contracts. I know exactly what we can do, and ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... the door, but General Andre halted them. Still in a tone of incredulity, he demanded: "When did ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... of a far-spreading incredulity about the Bible. It is the higher criticism in its crudest popular form, and men are at the mercy of it. I have known a mess of officers engage in argument about the Bible with a sceptical Scots doctor, cleverer than they. As old-fashioned ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... sense of deep fear to what he had heard about Hilaria. That such things could lie in wait in life, around the path of people one knew—people like oneself.... To others these exotic misfortunes, not to oneself or those near one. He had the sensation of incredulity with which one hears of some intimate friend involved in a train accident or attacked by some freakish fate such as may be read of in the newspapers daily but is never realised as being an actual and possible happening. Polkinghorne's death had made him believe there ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... Paganism; almost inconceivable to us in these days. A bewildering, inextricable jungle of delusions, confusions, falsehoods and absurdities, covering the whole field of Life! A thing that fills us with astonishment, almost, if it were possible, with incredulity,—for truly it is not easy to understand that sane men could ever calmly, with their eyes open, believe and live by such a set of doctrines. That men should have worshipped their poor fellow-man as a God, and ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... supplied deficiencies at the local haberdashers. At Mrs. Downey's there was a low standard for the more slender particulars of the toilette, and Mr. Rickman had compared favourably with his fellow-boarders. Now he looked back with incredulity and horror to his former self. Since his person had been brought into daily contact with Miss Harden he had begun to bestow on it a solemn, almost religious care. In the matter of the pocket handkerchief he practised an extreme ritual, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... lamp he sat down stupidly and looked at them. His face was gaunt and furrowed, and almost blackened by exposure to the frost, his hair was long, and tattered garments of greasy skins hung about him. There was also something that suggested bewildered incredulity in his eyes. ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... several hundred yards. There is something in it so totally dissimilar to everything else in other parts of the world, that our wonder goes on increasing every time we see even a single one take its flight. The incredulity of the old Scotch woman on this head is sufficiently excusable. "You may hae seen rivers o' milk, and mountains o' sugar," said she to her son, returned from a voyage; "but you'll ne'er gar me believe you have seen ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... her sister and me as we rode toward her, and the sun was full on her face, which had the cool glimmer of a pearl in the golden light, and her wide-open eyes never wavered. As she stood there she might have been the portrait of herself, such a look had she of unchanging quiet, and the wonder and incredulity which always seized me at the sight of her to reconcile what I knew with what she seemed, was ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... wisdom of the institution of which he is the disciple, must not be content, with uninquiring credulity, to accept all the traditions that are imparted to him as veritable histories; nor yet, with unphilosophic incredulity, to reject them in a mass, as fabulous inventions. In these extremes there is equal error. "The myth," says Hermann, "is the representation of an idea." It is for that idea that the student must search in the myths of Masonry. Beneath every one of them there is something richer and more spiritual ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... return journey from the Holy Land he was attacked at Pescara by robbers, and at Ancona on a Palm Sunday, according to his own account, he found himself destitute of means. He applied to the papal governor, but his story met with incredulity. Then he appealed to a Jewish merchant, offering him, as a pawn, a gold box made of a piece of the holy cross obtained in Palestine, encircled with diamonds, and bearing on its top the Agnus dei. The Jew advanced one hundred crowns, which sufficed exactly to pay his lodging and attendants. ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... If scorn, or anger, or incredulity had confronted her, she would have held to her intentions; but this alarm and grief at least had the merit of allowing all importance to the affair, and consequently ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... many faces as Walcott's examination was begun. He was morose and silent, and nothing could be elicited from him. When Darrell was called upon, however, and gave his evidence, incredulity gave place to conviction. As he completed his testimony with a description of the scar, which, upon examination, was found correct, the crowd became angry and threats of lynching and personal violence were heard on various sides. The judge ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... inquiry, incredulity, indignation and apoplexy in chronological order; then the garden gate clicked and a young man walked across the lawn. Mary looked down at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... through it all, simply stood there, his eyes wide and his face sharp with curiosity and incredulity, his body twitching now and then from the infection of the excitement which rippled over the room. That excitement had been there, though Bryce had not permitted himself to indulge in it in any visible way. He had showed Pierce a new facet to his operations, one which Pierce could not anticipate ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... by others, till Parpon's face flushed with a sort of pleasurable defiance. The stranger stooped and whispered something in his ear. There was a moment's pause, in which the dwarf looked into the other's eyes with an intense curiosity—or incredulity—and then Medallion lifted the little man on to the railing of the veranda, and over the heads and into the hearts of the people there passed, in a divine voice, a song known to many, yet coming as a new revelation ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to see something which I thought looked like a long procession of black phantoms. I was frightened at first, because of the sudden reflection that I had often wished to see a spirit, and that now, perhaps, I should pay for my incredulity, or rather curiosity. M. de Turenne was all the while calm and resolute. I made two or three leaps towards the procession, upon which the company in the coach, thinking we were fighting with all the devils, cried out most ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... the stand was boldly taken; and open proclamation has been made from that day to this, that such a work would be seen in these United States. With every review of the argument, new features of strength have been discovered in the application; and amid a storm of scornful incredulity, we have watched the progress of events, and waited ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... the most thriving period of that principality; the rapidity of its growth; the benefits it derived from Lanfranc; the encouragement it received from William, had been phenomena too remarkable in the annals of the age, and in the history of literature, to have met with an incredulity which the most moderate amount of information would have sufficed to dispel. Not to refer such sceptics to graver authorities, historical and ecclesiastical, in order to justify my representations of that learning which, under William the Bastard, made the schools of Normandy the popular academies ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... but one step with Mrs. Sheldon from peevish incredulity to frantic alarm; and Diana found it as difficult to tranquillise her newly-awakened fears as it had been to rouse her ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... conditions self-evident, all that good breeding could do was to receive the statement with a vague smile that might pass for good-humored incredulity or courteous acceptation of a simple fact. Indeed, I think we all rather tried to convey the impression that our host, when he WAS a pirate,—if he ever really was one,—was all that a self-respecting pirate should be, and never violated the canons of good society. This idea was, to ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... a day or two, when a conversation overheard at a luncheon table recalled the architect to her mind, a rather perplexing question propounded itself to her. Why had it infuriated him so—why had he glared at her with that air of astounded incredulity, on discovering that she wasn't prepared to take him seriously? There could be only one answer to that question. He could not have expected Rose to be properly impressed and fluttered, unless that were the effect he was ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... him with incredulity. It was as though someone had offered her a ride in a golden chariot up to the gates of heaven. "Why, you can't mean it!" she cried, paling with the intensity of her emotion. Her brother laughed a little uneasily. Even to his careless indifference this joy was ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... reply another "Coo-ee" reached them, followed quickly by some words that were blurred by the distance. Seth started. The voice had a curiously familiar sound. He glanced at Rube, and the old man's face wore a look of grinning incredulity. ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... the continent without encumbering myself with a weapon; for, where all supposed me fully armed, and skilled in the use of weapons by instinct, I found it convenient to go unarmed. Upon the present occasion, I did not wish to raise a smile of incredulity by protesting that I had never fired a pistol in my life, so I quietly consented to play the part ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... can corroborate the view taken by the writer of this article as to the reality of the effects produced on the persons submitting to the process, having seen many who are intimately known to us experimented on with success. The incredulity which still prevails on this subject in London can only be attributed to the necessary rarity, in so large a town, of experiments performed on persons known to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... of my statements, and proving them has also proved that my opponents were of two kinds. Those who had doubted simply because the discoveries were new and strange have been gradually converted, while those whose incredulity was based on personal ill-will to me have shut their eyes to the facts and have endeavoured to asperse my moral ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... obediently, quite as if it were natural for him to be taking charge of her in her own drawing-room. And staring down at her locked hands, she fluttered on with no reference to him, with a kind of frightened incredulity, like a bird ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... of hot sealing-wax on his tongue, to teach him practically the doom of the false tongue. It might have done him good if there had been sufficient encouragement to him to make him try to win a new character, but it only added a fresh terror to his mind; and nurse grew fond of manifesting her incredulity of his assertions by always referring to Griff or to me, or even to little Emily. What was worse, she used to point him out to her congeners in the Square or the Park as ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... miles off the shore, stared at it with amazement till dark. A negro fisherman, living in a lonely hut in a little bay near by, had seen the start and was on the lookout for some sign. He called to his wife just as the sun was about to set. They had watched the strange portent with envy, incredulity, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... do without her," the girl went on as she sat up in her saddle again. "She's a good worker, herself. She's taught me a good deal already. Oh, yes," she smiled at his look of incredulity, "I've begun my lessons. I am learning all I can, preparing for the bigger lessons of this—this"—she gave a comprehensive ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... this confidence in his own work, despite all the struggles borne, was shared likewise by another man than Favre—by Germano Sommeiller, the creator of the Mont Cenis Tunnel. When the work of the first piercing of the Alps was yet in the period of attacks and incredulity, Sommeiller wrote his brother the following letter: "Always keep me posted my dear Leander, as to what the laughers are saying and remember the proverb that 'he will laugh well who laughs last!' The majority of the people, even engineers, are rubbing their hands in expectation ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... the late Dr Johnson is introduced as disputing the authenticity of an apparition, merely because the spirit assumed the shape of a tea-pot, and of a shoulder of mutton. No doubt, a case so much in point, as that we have now quoted, would have removed his incredulity.] ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... way?" the man exploded, his blue eyes widening with incredulity. "Why, the way he's got to look. The way sense lies. That girl and her kiddie have got to come right along here and camp with us till the boy gets back. There's going to be no darn nonsense," he added threateningly, as though Millie were protesting. "She's going to come right here, ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... days after your lesson on coral-reefs, but of the tops of submerged continents. It is all true, but do not flatter yourself that you will be believed till you are growing bald like me, with hard work and vexation at the incredulity of the world." On May 24th, 1837, Lyell wrote to Sir John Herschel as follows:—"I am very full of Darwin's new theory of coral-islands, and have urged Whewell to make him read it at our next meeting. I must give up my volcanic crater forever, though it cost me a pang at first, for it accounted for ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... on Therese's face as incredulity. "Yes, yes," he persisted, "I will build the house myself without any help—a little house like a jewel-case, like those the Wallachians build, lined with beautiful oak; mine shall be of walnut, and fit for a prince. I will drive every nail myself, and it shall be Dodi's ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... later, when Congress restored and extended his patent, Evans felt that better days were ahead, but, as said already, he was too far ahead of his time to be understood and appreciated. Incredulity, prejudice, and opposition were his portion as long as he lived. Nevertheless, he went on building good engines and had the satisfaction of seeing them in extensive use. His life came to an end as the ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... Within certain restrictions, your resolution is good, Edward; but if you can believe nothing but what I, or some friend of mine, can attest from our own observation, your incredulity will deprive you of much valuable information. The great advantage of reading is, that it enables us to gain instruction from the observation of others, on subjects beyond the reach of ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... divinely sent Deliverer's power to 'save' is to accuse God of not knowing our needs and of miscalculating the power of His supply of them. But not a few of us put that same question in various tones of incredulity, scorn or indifference. Sense makes many mistakes when it takes to trying to weigh Christ in its vulgar balances, and to settling whether He looks like a Saviour ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... France was both angered and alarmed by the writings of Voltaire and his friends, and did her feeble best to reply to them. But while strong in her organization and her legal powers, her internal condition was far from vigorous. Incredulity had become fashionable even before the attacks of Voltaire were dangerous. An earlier satirist has put into the mouth of a priest an account of the difficulties which beset the clergy in those days. "Men of the world," he says, "are astonishing. They can ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... specimen of those original and startling calculations to which the House was soon to become accustomed from his lips. They were received at first with astonishment and incredulity; but they were never impugned. The fact is, he was extremely cautious in his data, and no man was more accustomed ever to impress upon his friends the extreme expediency of not over-stating a case. It should also be remarked of Lord George Bentinck, that in his most complicated calculations ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... unimpeachable credentials, it was only natural that the great iron-master should exhibit a certain amount of incredulity, and, being one of the best types of the Lancashire business man, ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... the edge of her bed and looked about her, at her room, at the row of black-covered books and the pig's skull. "I must take them," she said, to help herself over her own incredulity. "How shall I get my luggage ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... eyebrows in mock incredulity; "you don't tell me. I thought you were in a little heaven of your ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... had long ago dropped on to her lap, her ball of wool had rolled unheeded under a chair, and her eyes, round with incredulity and dismay, had been fixed unblinkingly upon ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... every alleged method of help and hope into doubt. Indignation, without any calming faith in justice, and self-contempt, without any curative self-reproach, dull the intelligence, and degrade the conscience, into sullen incredulity of all sunshine outside the dunghill, or breeze beyond the wafting of its impurity; and at last a philosophy develops itself, partly satiric, partly consolatory, concerned only with the regenerative vigour of manure, and the necessary obscurities of fimetic Providence; ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... free grant of the land required for the purpose and freedom from taxation for thirty years, after which the usual tax was to be levied; and in case the cultivation were abandoned, the land was to revert to the Crown. But whether from the disturbed state of the colony at the time or from incredulity on the part of the Government, as to the capability of the colony in this respect, the application was unheeded. A subsequent proposal, emanating from a Swedish gentleman of great ability, skill and enterprise, was defeated by his death, although a company was on the point of formation to carry ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... inquiringly, thinking that he had not heard her, and found him evidently too deeply moved to speak. She was startled, almost frightened, almost shocked by the profundity of his gaze upon her. Her heart stood still and gave a great leap. Chiefly she was aware of an immense astonishment and incredulity. An hour before he had never seen her, had never heard of her—and during that hour she had been barely aware of him, absorbed in herself, indifferent. How could he in that ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... a pushpot. Joe recognized it with incredulity. It was one of those utterly ungainly creations that were built around one half of the sidewall of the Shed. In shape, its upper part was like the top half of a loaf of bread. In motion, here, it rested ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... the manner in which we had regained the possession of the Dawn. The two English officers listened attentively, and I could discern a smile of incredulity on the countenance of Clements; while the captain of the Speedy seemed far from satisfied—though he was not so much disposed to let his real opinion ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... regarding events seemingly incredible. This latter is peculiarly distinguished by its good sense and clear statement. It closes with the memorable saying, "Knowledge of divine things for the most part, as Heraclitus says, is lost to us by incredulity."] ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... letters may have the same bias to incredulity as others to credulity, because they are subject to a wrong association of ideas, as well as other persons ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner
... little; there was incredulity in his great sombre eyes as they continued steadily to regard her. Of M. Binet he ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... Presidio, and said, "She is there!" he received the announcement at first with surprise, then with incredulity. ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... well, Jack returned to the naval camp, where he speedily made himself at home. When he first mentioned to his messmates, two lads about his own age, that he had been a prisoner in Russia, the statement was received with incredulity, and when, at their request, he proceeded to tell some of his adventures, they regarded him with admiration as the most stupendous liar they had ever met. It was long indeed before his statements were in any way believed, and it was only when, upon the occasion ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... young Englishman. And ere Frank returned to Germany he had satiated his soul with all the wonders of that wondrous land. He had talked over the art of sonneteering with Tasso, the art of history with Sarpi; he had listened, between awe and incredulity, to the daring theories of Galileo; he had taken his pupils to Venice, that their portraits might be painted by Paul Veronese; he had seen the palaces of Palladio, and the merchant princes on the Rialto, and the argosies of Ragusa, and all the wonders ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... interest, and perhaps pain you, to know that the incredulity with which you met my story has prevented me from ever opening my mouth upon the subject again. I leave this record after my death, and perhaps strangers may be found to have more confidence ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... adventure had become his ruling passion. After hunting and trapping for several years he returned to St. Louis. Here he told his friends the marvels that he had seen and his adventures with Indians and wild beasts; but his hearers being doubting Thomases, listened with incredulity to his ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... Bessie grew impatient, and wished she could be let alone. Mr. Phipps laughed at her, and asked if she did not enjoy her novel importance. Bessie rejoined with a scorny "No, indeed!" Mr. Phipps retaliated with a grimace of incredulity. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... influences from the West, the indications of history as now read, pointed in 1850 toward the bloodiest of Japan's many civil wars. Could the statistics of the suicides during this long period be collected, their publication would excite in Christendom the utmost incredulity. ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... corrupt, no negligence can lose, and no interest can pervert. I have shewn that the universe bears witness to the inspiration of its historian, by the revolution of its orbs and the succession of its seasons; that the stars in their courses fight against[1083] incredulity, that the works of GOD give hourly confirmation to the law, the prophets, and the gospel, of which one day telleth another, and one night certifieth another[1084]; and that the validity of the sacred writings can never be denied, while the moon shall increase and wane, and the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... accepted the surroundings she found in the city that was to be her home with not a little incredulity. For some days she treated the city as a deep rascal which had disguised its true nature in order to deceive her. She smiled at the ease with which she saw through all disguises. One of these days the cloak of respectability would be thrown off, and the ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... I should never have broken away from Catholicism if I had not formed so narrow a view of it; or if, to put it in another way, my teachers had not given me this narrow view of it. Some people hold St. Sulpice partially responsible for my incredulity, and reproach that establishment upon the one hand with having inspired me with too complete a trust in a scholasticism which implied an exaggerated rationalism, and, upon the other, with having required me to admit as necessary to salvation ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... startled, and her husband frowned. Jane mistook their expressions for incredulity. "They DID, mamma," she protested. "That's just the way they talked to each other. I heard 'em this afternoon, when Willie had ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... yet I suppressed all appearance of interest. A child! Barrymore had said that our unknown was supplied by a boy. It was on his track, and not upon the convict's, that Frankland had stumbled. If I could get his knowledge it might save me a long and weary hunt. But incredulity and indifference ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... odd revival of this old libel was mentioned to me recently by Mr. George Moffatt. When he was at school it was common among the boys to express incredulity by the phrase: "Oh, what ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Bush, W., had been the heroine of divorce proceedings under queer circumstances, that her husband wasn't dead at all, and that that dear little puss Sally was Goodness-knows-who's child, we feel certain that the information would have been cross-countered with a blank stare of incredulity. Why, the mere fact that Mrs. Nightingale had refused so many offers of marriage was surely sufficient to refute such a nonsensical idea! Who ever heard of a lady with a soiled record refusing ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... echoed the words with fluttering incredulity. "Oh, no, of course not—if you really ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... impossible to calculate the number of converts they had made, as to estimate the encouragement and strength their zeal and eloquence had given to abolitionists all over the country. Men were slow to believe the reports of their wives and sisters respecting Angelina's wonderful oratory, and this incredulity produced the itching ears which soon drew to the meetings where the Grimke sisters were to speak more men than women, and gave them the applause and hearty support of some of the ablest minds of New England. The ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... certain others, by putting it upon rode other means of locomotion to Newmarket are excluded, and so on. With the same order of words five interrogative sentences may also be expressed, and a third series of exclamatory sentences expressing anger, incredulity, &c., may be obtained from the same words. It is to be noticed that for these two series a different intonation, a different musical (pitch) accent appears from that which is found in the same words when employed to make a matter-of-fact ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... broke into a slight sneer of incredulity. "My dear brother, you do right to say this—any man in your situation would say the same. But I know that my uncle took every pains to ascertain if the report of a private marriage ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the Gods that, when they do speak sooth, mortals must needs believe them. Elenko hence felt no incredulity at the revelation of Prometheus, or sought other confirmation than the bonds and broken links of chain at his wrists ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... dawn of modern thought the darkness faded amidst which mankind had so long cowered in the abject terrors of superstition. Already in the beginning of the fifteenth century many of the ancient dogmas had begun to awaken incredulity, and sceptics learned to mock at that claim to infallibility upon which the priesthood based their right to command the blind obedience of the Christian world. Between such adversaries compromise was impossible; ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... their audience or readers with new stories about familiar heroes. Such was the condition of the stories themselves. The attitude of the public towards them was, by the middle of the fifteenth century, one of complete incredulity and frivolous amusement; the paladins were as unreal as the heroes of any granny's fairy tale. The people wanted to hear of wonderful battles and adventures, of enchantments and love-makings; but they wanted also to laugh; and, sceptical, practical, democratic, the artizans and shopkeepers ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... clouds of a dreary scepticism. I have sometimes, in looking back on the doubts and questionings of this period, thought, and perhaps even spoken of myself as an infidel. But an infidel I assuredly was not: my belief was at least as real as my incredulity, and had, I am inclined to think, a much deeper seat in my mind. But wavering between the two extremes—now a believer, and anon a sceptic—the belief usually exhibiting itself as a strongly-based instinct,—the scepticism as the result of some intellectual process—I lived on ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... a very strange sort of questioning grunt inarticulate nevertheless expressive of rude wonder and incredulity, as far as it ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... heavy disappointment, perhaps his incredulity; for she added in the same unsympathetic tone: 'You don't believe it. Still, it is so. As to personal communication: it seems that there was personal communication between him and your mother. And yet you say you believe her declaration that she ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... hypothetical form; and because of these expressions of sane and sacred experience I am led to ask my readers to follow me in the consideration of a subject which is seldom mentioned, except with incredulity, by ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... instance of Troy's goodness fell upon Gabriel ears like the thirteenth stroke of crazy clock. It was not only received with utter incredulity as regarded itself, but threw a doubt on all the assurances that had ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... I lacked the necessary conviction. After all I was the average citizen, with the average incredulity of the far-fetched, the melodramatic, the absurd. To connect the head waiter's panic at my departure with the episode in my room, to declare that the floor clerks had been called from their posts ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... that if any man will say he desires before belief to behold such a creature as is the Rukh in Paulus Venetus, for his own part he will not be angry with his incredulity. But M. Pauthier is of more liberal belief; for he considers that, after all, the dimensions which Marco assigns to the wings and quills of the Rukh are not so extravagant that we should ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... of the dear familiar figure, so little changed, must have afforded a brief reprieve, and lent a sense of almost glad incredulity to the distress which had gone before. But the well-meant whisper of one of the attendants of "Ein sanftes ende" destroyed the passing illusion. "Seeing that my presence did not disturb her," the Queen wrote afterwards, "I knelt before her, kissed her dear hand and placed it next ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... the room, and in a state of great agitation announced to us that a message had been received at the Carlton Club stating that the Lord Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary had been assassinated. I cannot describe the mingled amazement, horror, and incredulity with which the news was received, but I remember well the extreme distress shown by Mr. Shaw and the other Irish members. "This is the end of Ireland!" cried Mr. Shaw, with tears in his eyes. For some time most of us steadily refused ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... they tell you, in the presence of the black, whose strong brawny arm and sinewy frame show that in him lies the real strength of the state, that this great empire is to be built on the shoulders of the slave, your smile of incredulity gives way to an expression of pity, and you are tempted to ask if those sinewy machines may not THINK, and some day rise, and topple down the mighty fabric which is to be reared on ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... by the students of the development of the use of metal in prehistoric Europe, when they came to know of it. No doubt their incredulity was partly due to want of appreciation of the Egyptological evidence, partly to disinclination to accept a conclusion which did not at all agree with the knowledge they had derived from their own study of prehistoric Europe. In Southern Europe it was quite certain that iron ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... I selected from the rest to learn the fatal lesson! Unwished, unfortunate distinction! Was I, who am simple and undisguised as the light of day, who know not how to conceal one sentiment of my heart, or arm myself with the shield of vigilance and incredulity, was I fitted by nature for a scene like this? In the mean time have not the Gods encouraged me by the most splendid appearance, and the most animating praises? I would not impeach their venerable ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... old-world rubbish; while the other is abject, and blindly reverent, and full of the old mythic imagination that is in strong contrast with the keen common-sense of the Protestant, who dispels all twilight fantasies with a laugh of utter incredulity. The one sees projected on the outer world his own imaginings, now fair, now gloomy; while the other sees in the world, land to be cut up into corner-lots for speculation, and water for sawmills and cotton-mills, and to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... hurriedly, and the younger people were quick to perceive a slight restraint in her words. It was quite natural. A mother, weighing the actions of others in a matter touching the safety of her son, would hardly make allowance for the incredulity such a messenger as Sobieski would inspire, and Beaumanoir tactfully led the talk to ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... statement!" Jernyngham remarked with ironical incredulity. "May one ask if he gave any reasons for wishing you ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... in the morning to confess. I need not tell you how deeply the Church is touched by such zeal, how thankful she is to those who give her this consolation and who pay her this homage in these sad times of demoralization and incredulity. We are drawn towards young men who set such a good example and who are so willing to do what is right, and we are always ready to give them what help we can and to use any influence that we may have in certain families in ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... the Indian. Peigan Charley's bovine stare changed swiftly as the white chief whom he regarded above all men gave his decision. Its stolidity had given way to incredulity, and Bill found in it a ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... city built by the Chan Santa Cruz Indians which has received this name because the ornamentation of the houses is of silver, and so profuse as to give it the appearance, at a distance, of being a collection of silver buildings. Don't laugh until you hear the whole story," he added, as a smile of incredulity passed over ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... or, "It must require a great deal of faith [25] to make your demonstrations." When it is answered that there is no will-power required, and that something more than faith is necessary, we meet with an expression of incredulity. It is not alone the mission of Christian Science to heal the sick, but to destroy sin ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... thought that the very gods must admire the rectitude of Phocion and Aristides; and those gentlemen themselves were apparently of much the same opinion. Cato's veracity was so impeccable that the extremest incredulity a Roman could express of anything was to say, 'I would not believe it even if Cato had told me.' Good was good, and bad was bad, for these people. Hypocrisy, which church-Christianity brought in, hardly existed; the naturalistic system ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... grief, surprise, and incredulity from Paul interrupted her at this point, but she presently ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... the struggles borne, was shared likewise by another man than Favre—by Germano Sommeiller, the creator of the Mont Cenis Tunnel. When the work of the first piercing of the Alps was yet in the period of attacks and incredulity, Sommeiller wrote his brother the following letter: "Always keep me posted my dear Leander, as to what the laughers are saying and remember the proverb that 'he will laugh well who laughs last!' The majority of the people, even engineers, are rubbing their hands in expectation ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... he had had trial enough, and gave so little credit to him, that he (though he loved the man) silenced him for a time, which our apocalyptical prophet took very ill at his hands, and wondered much at his incredulity. Well, that month and some after that over, our prophet (who had made no little stir in the country by his prophesying) was cast into prison for his obstinacy. After a while Luther visited him, thinking by that time to find him of another mind; but so far was he from acknowledging his ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... hard to believe that after Claude's conduct toward Rosie her father-in-law could have the heart to bring further woe upon a family that had already had enough. Nothing but seeing for herself could coerce her incredulity. ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... two later, Dora, who could not sleep from the effects of fatigue and emotion, was lying in her uncomfortable stretcher-bed, thinking with a sort of incredulity of all that had passed since David's telegram had reached her the day before, or puzzling herself to know how her employers could possibly spare her for another three or four days' holiday, when she was startled by some recurrent sounds from the room beyond her own. David was sleeping ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... add that I have the strongest testimonials to her character for integrity from William H. Seward, Gerritt Smith, Wendell Phillips, Fred. Douglass, and my brother, Prof. S.M. Hopkins, who has known her for many years, I do not fear to brave the incredulity of any reader. ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... Europe. But the lands he discovered, though already fully populated, were soon to fall into disorder, and to be closed to any civilising influences. Nothing for a long time followed from these discoveries, and indeed almost up to the present day his accounts were received with incredulity, and he himself was regarded more as "Marco Millione" ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... that the percentage which this commission represents shall be deducted in advance from the manufacturer's price, that my client may have the benefit of it? If this is denied, can I resist the conclusion that it is a bribe to command future services at my hands? Is not the smile of incredulity with which the dealer receives my assurance that I can only take it for my client and hand it over to him, an insult to the profession, which, as a man of honor, I ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... does not believe!" exclaimed Ardan. "The Chair must be excused for reminding the honorable gentleman that it can not accept his incredulity as a sound and valid argument. These two movements have certainly equal periods now; ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... long, low whistle, and looked in my face with a serio-comic expression. I was not far in my teens, and to talk of setting off alone for Kentucky, to turn hunter, seemed doubtless the idle prattle of a boy. He was little aware of the dogged resolution of my character; and his smile of incredulity but fixed me more obstinately in my purpose. I assured him I was serious in what I said, and would certainly set off for ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... who ventured beneath the shade were officers of the little garrison, the sutler and half a dozen "casuals" of the civilian persuasion, among whom, if not among the members of the court, Nevins' harangue had created undoubted sensation, for glances indicative of surprise if not of incredulity ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... these periods. The crucial experiment is this. Offer a bulky and boggy bun to the suspected individual just ten minutes before dinner. If this is eagerly accepted and devoured, the fact of youth is established. If the subject of the question starts back and expresses surprise and incredulity, as if you could not possibly be in earnest, the fact of maturity is no ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in high praise of the late school master, and recommendations of his widow from the clergyman of the parish where they had lived; and place and name being both in the "Clergy List," even Ermine and Alison began to feel ashamed of their incredulity, whilst as to Grace, she had surrendered herself completely to the eager delight of finding a happy home for the little children in whom she was interested. Grace might laugh a little at Rachel, but in the main her trust in her sister's superiority always led her ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... impression in so good a cause as determined incredulity, seems not only justifiable, but ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... to stammer out her errand; but the sudden pallor, the starting eyes—the whole shocked, almost terrified appearance of the man she was facing, stopped her. She forgot the surprise, the incredulity of mind with which he would naturally hail her presence at his door in a place so remote and of such inaccessibility. She only saw that his hands had gone up and out at sight of her, and to her sensitive soul, this looked like a rebuff which, while ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... look of mingled surprise, chagrin and incredulity the knight reined in his horse, exclaiming as he did so, ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the air with a little movement of incredulity. But her anger had long since been a thing of the past. Good-tempered, she could not cherish resentment very long. But as yet she had greeted Landry only by ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... us, of imparting reality to new phenomena—an idolatrous attachment to the old things which our belief in them did once animate, as if it was in that belief and not in ourselves that the divine spark resided, and as if our present incredulity had a contingent ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... considerable change in the physiognomy of my own auditor. He had heard my story with that half kind of belief that is given to a tale of spirits and supernatural events; but when he was called upon to act officially in consequence, the whole tide of his incredulity returned. He, however, answered mildly, "I would willingly afford you every aid in your pursuit, but the creature of whom you speak appears to have powers which would put all my exertions to defiance. Who can follow an animal ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... began to click again, and the pens and pencils scratched on to the accompaniment of murmurs and whispers and occasional grunts and snorts of incredulity. By a master-stroke of strategy Franklin Marmion had, in placing the three demonstrations of the long-supposed impossible before them in quick succession, kept the learned, but now utterly bewildered mathematicians so busy that they literally had not time to begin "the trouble" which Brenda ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... he saw incredulity in her gaze; "I wasn't to tell you. I reckon Lawler would half kill me if he know'd I was tellin' you. But there ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... will doubtless at first sight cause a smile of incredulity, and will be regarded by many as one of the devices which are sometimes put forward to entrap an unsuspecting public into the ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... if shot. His broad face spelled first blank amazement, then incredulity, then surprised belief. Spreading his legs wide and bending his knees, he rested his hand on one and his hook on the other, shut one eye, and stuck his tongue out at the corner of ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... tell a good story," retorted the foreman with dry incredulity. "It's up to you to come through with an explanation of why Webb's men have just gunned three of our friends. Your story doesn't make any hit with me. I don't believe a ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... reticence as the magistrates. The bigoted believed, the hypocrites pretended to believe; and the worldly-minded, who were numerous, discussed the doctrine of possession in all its phases, and made no secret of their own entire incredulity. They wondered, and not without reason it must be confessed, what had induced the devils to go out of the nuns' bodies for two days only, and then come back and resume possession, to the confusion of the exorcists; further, they wanted to know why the mother superior's devil ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... retorted with greater incredulity. "If both doors were closed and fastenings are all right now, could anybody get the car out? They left the big door open—that's ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... listen to such words unmoved, when her armor of incredulity fell from her as Lesley's armor had fallen. Hitherto she had felt a scornful disbelief in the reality of Oliver's love for her. But now that disbelief had gone. There was a ring of passionate feeling in Oliver's tones which could not be simulated. The coldness, the ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... had to run from Bras-Coupe in de haidge of de swamp be'ine de 'abitation of my cousin Honore, one time? You can hask 'oo you like!" (A Creole always provides against incredulity.) At this point he digressed a moment: "You know my cousin, Honore Grandissime, w'at give two hund' fifty dolla' to de 'ospill laz mont'? An' juz because my cousin Honore give it, somebody helse give de semm. Fo' w'y don't ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... some reason for his incredulity. Jack was a stout, good-looking boy, with a pleasant face; but Ida's beauty was of a delicate, refined type, which argued gentle birth,—her skin of a brilliant whiteness, dashed by a tinge of rose,—exhibiting ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... intermediate forms are examined, a very grotesque notion ... they never realize the fact that by small increments of modification, any amount of modification may in time be generated. That surprise which they feel on finding one whom they last saw as a boy, grown into a man, becomes incredulity when the degree of change is greater. Nevertheless, abundant instances are at hand of the mode in which we may pass to the most diverse forms by ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... proved every one of my statements, and proving them has also proved that my opponents were of two kinds. Those who had doubted simply because the discoveries were new and strange have been gradually converted, while those whose incredulity was based on personal ill-will to me have shut their eyes to the facts and have endeavoured to asperse my moral ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... looked shocked but not surprised. Wrayson, dumb and unnerved, had staggered back, and was leaning against the table. Mrs. Barnes had already taken a step towards the door. She was very pale, but her eyes were ablaze. Incredulity struggled with her passionate desire ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and as if she had a perfect stranger on her hands, though Bertha's high tone was, after all, chiefly from her extremity, and by way of reply to her brother's scornful incredulity of her exalted position. She was the first to speak on leaving the library. 'Pray, Phoebe, how came you to ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... flash of understanding passed from the brown eyes to the grey, which meant that they were on their mettle. They were not going to defend themselves, but henceforth it was a case of die or produce a good photograph, and so oblige Oswald to alter his tone of scornful incredulity. ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... than an Honorary President, as we could not expect you often to come to London. I am anxious that in our records for future reference your Presidency should appear.... Podmore, who is proposed as President, represents the attitude of resolute incredulity, and I consider this line of action has been to some extent injurious to the S.P.R. Crookes supported my proposal, and so did Lodge, and so would Myers if he had lived. All this is ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... city!" interrupts Laura, with both dismay and incredulity in her tone. "My dearest dear, you will not be allowed to leave Grandon Park, except with myself for keeper, to return as soon ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... received this conjecture with astonishment and incredulity, not to be wondered at. The steamboat headed N.W.; right in the wind's eye. Sixteen miles off, at least, a ship was sailing N.E. So that the two courses might ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... faithfulness of narrative, and that, contrary to the practice of other histories, they do not conceal the faults of the persons they describe. The faults of Abraham and Jacob are detailed, as well as their virtues; and the incredulity of Thomas, and the defection of Peter, are not concealed, but faithfully recorded. The apostles, especially, seem everywhere to forget that they are writing of themselves, and appear not at all solicitous about their own reputation, but only that they might represent ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... were told about the new way of being healed, and Grace looked on at first with her usual incredulity, but when she saw Mrs. Hayden getting so well and looking so happy, she began to wonder and then to exclaim. Then she wanted to learn something about this new "doctrine," and Mrs. Hayden had Miss Greening come over and meet the girls one evening so they could hear ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... she had passed through about all the phases described. These phenomena are sometimes very intense and may come late in life, but it is impossible to remember feelings and emotions with definiteness, and these now make up a large part of life. Hence we are prone to look with some incredulity upon the immediate records of the tragic emotions and experiences typical and normal at this time, because development has scored away their ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... upon the prisons and etapes which had been described as hells upon earth, and to either confirm or gainsay the statements made by the American traveller. The evidence of a Russian subject would, for obvious reasons, have met with incredulity, and it came to pass, therefore, that through the agency of Madame de Novikoff, herself a prison Directress, I was selected for a task, which although extremely interesting, subjected me to much unfavourable criticism on my return to England. Some yellow journals even went so far as to ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... to me—so suddenly, so unexpectedly, did it come at last! I admit there is no excuse for my incredulity, except that of thinking your dear father had been so strangely deprived of his well-earned reward through the injustice of man on so many occasions, because, far better things than man could give were in store for him. And although ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... and incredulity. The dark creature claimed her, she declared herself helpless to escape from that dominion into normal life, and yet It never had spoken to her? It spoke to me, a stranger most ignorant, and not to the seeress who was familiar with Its existence and the lore which linked humanity ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... however, of such unwonted incredulity, Map, having once begun by telling this story, proceeds to tell another like it, which he seems to have no difficulty in believing. The second tale concerns a hero of the Welsh border, Wild Edric, of whose historic reality as one of the English rebels against William the Conqueror there is ample ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... laughed. While Sir Purcell was maintaining the fact of his total ignorance of the subject against Madame's incredulity, Emilia left the room. When she came back Madame was pressing her visitor to be explicit with regard to a certain process of cure conducted by an application of cold water. The Neapolitan gave several shudders as she marked him attentively. "Water cold!" she murmured with the deepest ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... several burgesses and aldermen in Mansoul, such as out of whom the town, when it needed, might choose them officers, governors, and magistrates. And these are the names of the chief of them: Mr. Incredulity, Mr. Haughty, Mr. Swearing, Mr. Whoring, Mr. Hard-Heart, Mr. Pitiless, Mr. Fury, Mr. No-Truth, Mr. Stand-to-Lies, Mr. False-Peace, Mr. Drunkenness, Mr. Cheating, Mr. Atheism—thirteen in all. Mr. Incredulity is the eldest, and Mr. Atheism ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... in view. The facts that we have to relate form one of the blackest chapters in the history of human slavery, and slavery brought up to the present time. Our statements if standing merely on our own word would be met at once with incredulity and challenged, and before we could defend them by producing the proof, a prejudice would be created that might prove disastrous to our hopes of arousing our country to the point of exterminating this horrible Oriental brothel slavery by means of which even American men ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... as daring, as resolute as himself; that of his children, some may be deformed, and others vicious; some may disgrace him by their follies, some offend him by their insolence, and some exhaust him by their profusion. He hears all this with obstinate incredulity, and wonders by what malignity old age is influenced, that it cannot forbear to fill his ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... moment he gasped with astonishment. For a moment gloomy incredulity, suspicion, delight, pride, admiration, even affection, struggled for mastery in his sullen, staring eyes and open, twitching mouth. For here was Clarence Brant, handsomer than ever, more superior than ever, in the majesty ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... apocryphal encounter, and wounded in the leg. This was a little too much for the good Bathonians to believe, but Nash silenced their doubts. On one occasion, a lady who was present when he was telling this story, expressed her incredulity. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... succeeded by hours of utter incredulity, in which he lay wide-eyed on the sleeping porch of McLean's domicile and stared into the white cloud of his fly net and questioned ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Mark was cut as deeply by this as the speaker intended; he could give no other answer than a sigh, which was perfectly genuine. Caffyn affected to take this as an expression of incredulity. 'Surely you don't doubt that!' he said; 'why, Holroyd would have been as glad as if he had written the book himself. If he could come back to us again, you would see that I am right. What a meeting it would be, if one could only ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... witty objections and detractions; yet (I hope) my reasons and my deeds will so prevail with some, that I shall not want employment in these affairs to make the most blind see his own senselessness and incredulity; hoping that gain will make them affect that which religion, charity and the common good cannot.... For I am not so simple to think that ever any other motive than wealth will ever erect there a Commonwealth; or draw company ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... beauty. So partial, indeed, are several of the young men of the university to the tawny tribe, that they are frequently observed in their academicals, lounging round the picturesque tents, having their fortunes told; though, it must be remarked, their countenances usually evince a waggish incredulity on those occasions, and they appear much more amused with the novel scene around them than gratified with the favourable predictions of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... spite of all Techne's efforts to restrain him rushes off with the intention of putting an end to his life. Techne, perceiving the ill-success of her plot, tells Cloris of Amyntas' resolve. We here return to the imitation of Tasso: Cloris, like that poet's Silvia, begins by pretending incredulity and indifference, but being at length convinced agrees to accompany Techne in search of the desperate swain. Daniel has produced what is little better than a parody of the scene in his model. Not content with placing in the girl's mouth ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... ridicule has been thrown on the operation of compound interest, because its effects are so amazing as not to be capable of being realized; but, on this subject, two things are to be said,—first of all, it has never been to the operation during the first hundred years that either incredulity or ridicule have applied, and the sinking fund was never meant to continue to operate so long. Secondly, though there are many drawbacks on the employment of large sums laid out at interest, that diminish, ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... were threatened the woful day I mockt the Preachers, put it far away; The Sermons yet upon Record do stand That cri'd destruction to my wicked land; I then believed not, now I feel and see, The plague of stubborn incredulity. ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... involved in the intricacies of their music. After the band came four rather shabby riders on horseback, then some men dressed apparently in admiring imitation of Charles II.; then, to the wonder and whispered incredulity of the crowd, Britannia on her triumphal car. The car—an elaborate cart, with gilt wheels and strange cardboard figures of dolphins and Father Neptune—had in its centre a high seat painted white and perched on ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... of his testimony in which he had told of the motive which induced him to return and give himself up to justice. In doing so his questions, the tone of his voice, and his manner were marked with incredulity. It was as if he were saying to the jury: "Just listen to this impossible story while I take him over it again. Did you ever hear anything like it?" When he had gone in this direction as far as he thought discreet, he asked abruptly: ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... without breaking it; that the houses were as high as mountains, and so large, that he had walked three days in one of them without coming to the end of it. It was evident that Lauri had stretched a little; but Nomahanna had no notion of incredulity. She approved of our inventions for warming the inside of our houses, and thought, that if she were at Petersburg, she would not go out at all during the cold weather, but would drive her carriage about the house. She ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... much at the time it was made, but in these later days, when there were fewer secrets between us, and this one could avail him no more. But I did not put the question out of pique. I put it out of sheer obstinate incredulity. And Raffles looked at me without replying, until I read the ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... in a way that was exceedingly irritating to his vanity, and in a tone of good-natured incredulity, she remarked: "It is easy to ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... the effect that a Professor Roentgen, until then the possessor of only a local fame in the town mentioned, had discovered a new kind of light, which penetrated and photographed through everything. This news was received with a mild interest, some amusement, and much incredulity; and a week passed. Then, by mail and telegraph, came daily clear indications of the stir which the discovery was making in all the great line of universities between Vienna and Berlin. Then Roentgen's own report arrived, so cool, so business-like, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... not the imaginations against thee, let not the incredulity of them trouble thee, ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... in prison for Harietta, before and after her trial, were days of frenzied terror, alternating with incredulity. She would not believe ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... lack confirmation; but he has much, also, which demands respectful consideration. There is a great deal in his books to provoke criticism; those well acquainted with the antiquities and ancient speech of Egypt may reasonably give way to a smile of incredulity while reading what he says in support of the notion that the great civilization of Egypt also came originally from this Atlantic race. Nevertheless, his volumes are important, because they furnish materials which others can use more carefully, and because ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... that of a man who hastened with some express object; his limbs seemed spurred to activity by the gallop of his thoughts. His reason would scarcely accept the evidence of consciousness that he had indeed just heard such things from Emily's lips; it was too monstrous for belief; a resolute incredulity sustained him beneath a blow which, could he have felt it to be meant in very earnest, would have deprived him of his senses. She did not, she could not, know what she had said! Yet she spoke with such cruel appearance ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... a monomaniac in her dream of a Southern empire, she heard in scornful incredulity the rumor of defeat and disaster brought to her by her daughters. All the pride and passion of her strong nature was in arms against the bare thought. But at quarantine papers were received on board, ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... First incredulity, then horror, overspread the haggard face of the sheriff as he read and re-read the dispatch. He staggered back against the wall, putting up his arm to keep ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... replies promptly. When he is told that it is his own, to buy toys with, his eyes open wide with wondering incredulity. By degrees he understands. The father does not. He looks questioningly from one to the other. When told, his respect increases ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... with amazement and incredulity. He might even have flushed or turned pale, but such a possible exhibition of emotion was lost beneath an artificial bloom, painted by his valet. His eyes, however, gleamed like ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Clio upon so many monumental tablets, and almost as indelibly and quite as painfully upon school-boy memory, to be sponged out at a blow, like chalk from a blackboard? We, at least, cling fondly to our Tarquins; we shudder when the abyss of historic incredulity swallows up the familiar form of Mettus Curtius; we refuse to be weaned from the she-wolf of Romulus. Your unbelieving Guy Faux, who approaches the stately superstructures of history, not to gaze upon them with the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... unable to resist the charm of his address or to deny the fascinating beauty of his words, but unable also to admit his claim; they received his predictions with stubborn unbelief. They expressed their incredulity and at the same time explained it by their question, "Is not this Joseph's son?" They were saying in effect: "Is not this man our neighbor, the carpenter, with whom we have all been acquainted; do we not know him and his family? Surely he cannot be ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... was the festival of Corpus Christi, she had been graciously granted the rare treat of a whole hour to spend as she pleased. She had chosen to spend it in hearing the latter half of a sermon preached at Paul's Cross. For, despite Mistress Winter's disdainful incredulity, the assertion was the simple truth; though that lady, being one of the numerous persons who cannot imagine the possibility of anything unpleasant to themselves being delightful to others, had been unable to give credence to the statement. As to the charge of dancing in Finsbury ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... sang out the chaps standing by; but, seeing that the cook appeared as if he would turn rusty if they showed any further incredulity at his statements, they composed their faces—"looking nine ways for Sunday," as the phrase goes; or, like the Carthaginians when the pious Aeneas was spinning that wonderful yarn of his which we read about in Virgil, in the presence of Queen Dido and her court, ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... with an incredulity so open that I felt it to be an insult, and she preserved the same ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... hands folded on her lap to hear the business. Dickson narrated their pre-supper doings, and gave a sketch of Dougal's evidence. His exposition was cautious and colourless, and without conviction. He seemed to expect a robust incredulity in ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... the papers handed him by Nimbus, and read, slowly and with evident difficulty; but as he mastered line after line the look of incredulity vanished, and a glow of solemn joy spread over his face. It was the first positive testimony of actual freedom—the first fruits of self-seeking, self-helping manhood on the part of his race which had come into the ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... the fateful slip of paper on his desk, and silently watched him as he read and then re-read it. I seemed to read his mind in the expressions that raced across his strong features: first, blank amazement; then incredulity that even Germany could be guilty of such perfidy; then gravity and sternness, a sudden grayness of colour, a compression of the lips and the familiar locking of the jaw which always characterized him in ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... possessive. "My chest—broken open! This is a fine state of things!" I hastened to lay the blame where it belonged—on Francois and his wife—and found I had made things worse instead of better. She repeated the names at first with incredulity, then with despair. A while she seemed stunned, next fell to disembowelling the box, piling the goods on the floor, and visibly computing the extent of Francois's ravages; and presently after she was observed in high speech with Taniera, who seemed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... contradictory theories to be met with in books, pamphlets, and reviews concerning St. Patrick's native country are calculated to provoke a spirit of weary incredulity and impatience. However, when presenting this book to the public, we may quote the late Canon O'Hanlon's plea for adventurous writers who still endeavour to solve the problem: "The question of St. Patrick's country," writes the distinguished ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... upon him a look of scornful incredulity, "you have said all this before. I suppose you had something else to ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... when Durbin, joining us, added his incredulity to the air of suspicion assumed by the others. Through all the explanations I now entered into, I found myself inwardly repeating with somewhat forced iteration, "I will not believe her guilty under any circumstances. ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... physique of their regiment was duly lauded by our soldier companions. At length one of them remarked, in that aggravatingly superior tone which some Englishmen assume, that any man in his troop could handle any two of the then present company. This provoked a general laugh of incredulity, and two or three of our college set turned to me with—"What do you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... public mind already possesses and acknowledges, to which the new can be assimilated. A novelty, however true, if there be no received truths with which it can be shewn in harmonious relation, has little chance of a favourable hearing. In fact, as has been often observed, there is a measure of incredulity from our ignorance as well as from our knowledge, and if the most distinguished philosopher three hundred years ago had ventured to develop any striking new fact which only could harmonize with the as yet unknown Copernican solar system, we cannot ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... eye of thousands of spectators of both sexes and all ages, watching from afar every turn of a battle in which the lives of those most dear to them were at hazard. The British soldiery in Boston gazed with astonishment and almost incredulity at the resolute and protracted stand of raw militia whom they had been taught to despise, and at the havoc made among their own veteran troops. Every convoy of wounded brought over to the town increased their consternation, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... and told me all about it. The boy is dead, as you know. Yes, terrible, isn't it?" And she looked at him. His face was almost comic, so wrinkled up with incredulity. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... with amazement, with incredulity, with indignation, she began to realize that he was proposing to go off by himself upon this vague extravagant research, that all this work she had been doing to make a social place for him in London was as nothing to him, that he was thinking of ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... statement that, in the case of the other prisoners included in the verdict, "the law should take its course." No one credited this declaration for an instant, and most persons felt that the Crown officials were indulging in an indecent piece of mockery. Amidst this universal incredulity, however—this disdainful and indignant disbelief—the prisoners' solicitor, Mr. Roberts, vigilant and untiring to the last, took the necessary steps to pray arrest of execution pending decision of the serious law points raised on the trial. Some of the most eminent ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... listened with a sense of growing angry incredulity. The fellow couldn't be as much of a fool as he seemed! Therefore, he had devised this hoax after he realised he would be captured, to cover up his real purpose which could only be that of a spy. Menesee saw that Administrator Bradshaw was ...
— Oneness • James H. Schmitz
... I entertained a kind of apprehension that the tale would be heard by him with incredulity and secret ridicule. I had formerly heard stories that resembled this in some of their mysterious circumstances; but they were commonly heard by me with contempt. I was doubtful whether the same impression would ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... enlightened society of Protestant dissenters of the Baptist denomination, I observed to a doctor of divinity, who was advancing towards his seventieth year, that my time had been delightfully engaged with John Bunyan's commentary on Genesis. "What," said the D.D., with some appearance of incredulity, "Bunyan a commentator—upon Genesis!! Impossible! Well, I never heard of that work of the good Bunyan before. Why, where is it to be found?" Yes, it is true that he has commented on that portion of sacred scripture, containing the cosmogony of creation—the fall of man—the first murder—the deluge—and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the eye." Bill spoke earnestly. "Twenty thousand iron men ain't so bad. It'll buy a lot of doll's clothes. We can have a big party—I ain't kidding!" Then reading amused incredulity in his friend's face he demanded: "How you know I ain't got a rich uncle that raised me from a colt and that broke his heart at me runnin' away and turning out wild, and has had lawyers gunnin' for me ever since he knew he was gettin' old and ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... was related to us immediately, was received without incredulity. The martial air of that monarch, the brilliancy of his chivalrous dress, his reputation, and the novelty of such an action, caused this momentary ascendancy to appear true, in spite of its improbability; for such was Murat, a theatrical monarch by the splendor of ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... in spite of what Mr. Brown's neighbours had said about nearly recognizing Mrs. Manston on her recent visit—which might have meant anything or nothing; in spite of the photograph, and in spite of his previous incredulity; in consequence of the verse, of her silence and backwardness at the visit to Hoxton with Manston, and of her appearance and distress at the present moment, Graye had a conviction that the woman ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... provokes a slight incredulity, it is yet worth while to understand its real meaning; and the explanation is not ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... doubt, of incredulity bordering upon feeble indignation, settled upon the serrated countenance. But Blanchard only shook his head as if he did ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... George had wrought more disastrously upon his temper than P. Sybarite had let him see. His hints, innuendoes, and downright assertions had in reality distilled a subtle poison into the little man's humour. For in spite of his embattled incredulity and the clear reasoning with which he had overborne George's futile insistence, there still lingered in his mind (and always would, until he knew the ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... slowly, frozen incredulity in his eyes; and she, fearing she had gone too far, caught at the hand ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... in again, I'd like to know?" asked Joel, looking at the little red spots on his hands in incredulity; ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
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