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Belief   Listen
noun
Belief  n.  
1.
Assent to a proposition or affirmation, or the acceptance of a fact, opinion, or assertion as real or true, without immediate personal knowledge; reliance upon word or testimony; partial or full assurance without positive knowledge or absolute certainty; persuasion; conviction; confidence; as, belief of a witness; the belief of our senses. "Belief admits of all degrees, from the slightest suspicion to the fullest assurance."
2.
(Theol.) A persuasion of the truths of religion; faith. "No man can attain (to) belief by the bare contemplation of heaven and earth."
3.
The thing believed; the object of belief. "Superstitious prophecies are not only the belief of fools, but the talk sometimes of wise men."
4.
A tenet, or the body of tenets, held by the advocates of any class of views; doctrine; creed. "In the heat of persecution to which Christian belief was subject upon its first promulgation."
Ultimate belief, a first principle incapable of proof; an intuitive truth; an intuition.
Synonyms: Credence; trust; reliance; assurance; opinion.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Belief" Quotes from Famous Books



... yet as to the event that had taken place; for I did not like to abandon myself to belief, until the word was pronounced by some one in whom I could have faith. By chance I met D'O, and I asked him. He answered me clearly that Monseigneur was no more. Thus answered, I tried not to be glad. I know not if I succeeded well, but at least it is certain, that neither joy ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... this notion of necessity with terror, while others do not fear it at all? Has not Carlyle somewhere said that a belief in destiny is the bias of all earnest minds? 'It is not Nature,' says Fichte, 'it is Freedom itself, by which the greatest and most terrible disorders incident to our race are produced. Man is the cruellest enemy of ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... object to be dusted and pushed about with the chairs and tables. And this deepening apathy held her fast at Lyng, in spite of the urgent entreaties of friends and the usual medical recommendation of "change." Her friends supposed that her refusal to move was inspired by the belief that her husband would one day return to the spot from which he had vanished, and a beautiful legend grew up about this imaginary state of waiting. But in reality she had no such belief: the depths of anguish inclosing ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... generally by a collapse and a moral death, alike of virtue and of vice. We should explain this now-a-days, and not ill, by saying that these crises put the human mind into a state of exaltation: but the truest explanation, after all, lies in the old Bible belief, that in these times there goes abroad the unquenchable fire of God, literally kindling up all men's hearts to the highest activity, and showing, by the light of their own strange deeds, the inmost recesses of their spirits, till those ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... considerable Instances, what plainly are the Natural consequences of that Ignorance which they usually are bred in; and which Men think so advantageous to themselves. We will suppose then a Lady bred, as the generality of Men think she should be, in a blind belief concerning Religion; and taught that it is even ridiculous for a Lady to trouble her Head about this matter; since it is so far from being a Science fit for her, that it indeed properly belongs only to Gown-Men: and that ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham

... was not as frightened as the Crow seemed to expect. Because every now and then she had felt sure that she was really safe in her own bed, and that this was a dream. It was not a dream, but the belief that it was made her very brave, and she felt quite sure that she could settle a dragon, if necessary—a dream dragon, that is. And the rest of the time she thought about Foxe's Book of Martyrs and what a heroine she now ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit

... I, 'no such statement will I give belief till it has been proven to me beyond all doubt, and——' I leaned forward, speaking with intensity, 'you have yet to understand that were Jeanette's father doubly a thief, still would Jeanette be Jeanette, and the more obstacles ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... offering. Each of our fair friends received two large copper coins, together equal to nine cents, and were perfectly satisfied, as well they might be—for it was the price of a day's work. Two or three individuals, moreover, "turned double corners," and were paid twice; and it is my private belief that the tall beauty received her ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge

... MINISTER OF TRANSPORT is too much of "a railway man" will, I fear, be confirmed in their belief. In his opinion the practice of the Companies in refusing a refund to the season ticket-holder who has left his ticket behind and has been compelled to pay his fare is "entirely justifiable." He ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various

... vase, Pierre washed his hands and again perceived the mother with her face of ardent entreaty. Then he thought it was for her that, with the charitable leanings of a vow-bound man, he had remained a priest, a priest without belief, feeding the belief of others with the bread of illusion. But this heroic conduct, the haughty spirit of duty in which he imprisoned himself, was not practised by him without growing anguish. Did not elementary probity require that he should cast ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... bilingual dispute was transferred to the Commons, Laurier took the only side consistent with his character and his career. He avowed his belief, as always, in Provincial rights, but he asked Ontario to use its strength with clemency. Even with an element of bitterness he did not lose his dignity. But the fine sparkle of the Laurier we all knew was gone. He was beset with complexities ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... "I incline to that belief myself," said Dick. "You know they're ready to dare anything, and they don't anticipate any great danger, because we don't care to shoot at one another, until the ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler

... good and truth, or of love and wisdom: whence it follows, that without such appearance, as a living appearance, a man would not have conjunction with God, and consequently neither would he have eternal life. But if from this appearance he induces in himself a belief that he wills, thinks, and thence does good from himself, and not from the Lord, although in all appearance as from himself, he turns good into evil with himself, and thereby makes in himself the origin of evil. This was the ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... resistance to this invasion encouraged the belief that, provided the mother country should furnish the necessary means of defense, the island would end by commanding the respect of its enemies and be left unmolested. But the mother country's wars with England, France, and Holland absorbed all its attention in Europe and ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk

... more imperfect development of his faculties, and from the lower state of their cultivation, aims almost solely to convey insulated facts, either those of his scanty experience or his traditional belief; while the educated man chiefly seeks to discover and express those connections of things, or those relative bearings of fact to fact, from which some more or less general law is deducible. For facts ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... same—the most natural explanation of phenomena is the very one that men have most shunned; and, if no middle course was to be found, they have rushed to the wildest hypothesis. It is only thus that the belief in an open polar sea could have arisen and held its ground. Though everywhere ice was met with, people maintained that this open sea must lie behind the ice. Thus the belief in an ice-free northeast and northwest ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... too terrible for belief, viewed at our distance from them; she had passed through scenes of incredible horror and suffering, but her nature had not been chilled, stunted or hardened. In body and in temper her development had been sound and beautiful. It was even thus that our great-grandmothers triumphed ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... Prelacy; and the natural feelings of man must have made him a little sore about Free-Churchism; but at least, he never talked about these views, never grew controversially noisy, and never openly aspersed the belief or practice of anybody. Now all this is not generally characteristic of Scotch piety; Scotch sects being churches militant with a vengeance, and Scotch believers perpetual crusaders the one against the other, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... centred. Exactly fifty Members were present to listen to this epoch-marking discussion, carried on entirely by a few English enthusiasts and the Members from Ulster. They differed profoundly on most of the details of the Council's constitution, but were unanimous in expressing the belief that nothing much mattered since it would never work. Lord WINTERTON indeed prophesied that if it is composed, as seems probable, of a solid bloc of Sinn Feiners from the South and another of Unionists from the North ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various

... certain about are never true. That is the fatality of Faith, and the lesson of Romance. How grave you are! Don't be so serious. What have you or I to do with the superstitions of our age? No: we have given up our belief in the soul. Play me something. Play me a nocturne, Dorian, and, as you play, tell me, in a low voice, how you have kept your youth. You must have some secret. I am only ten years older than you are, and I am wrinkled, ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... of waren: a cholera waren, a sanitary waren, a necromantic waren; and so forth. The last named not only discovers the state of affairs of those who die suddenly, or disappear mysteriously, but pretends to raise the dead; and a story is recorded of an impudent impostor, taking advantage of the belief of the people in the identity of the persons thus raised, and personating so well a prince slain in battle some years before, that not only did his brother swear to his identity, but the widow actually threw off her weeds, and went to live ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various

... achievement. If his faith in the Power within him is large, then great will be the power manifesting in his life. The Power of the Infinite is illimitable and inexhaustible: all that is required is an unquenchable belief and trust in it. The weakest and most timid can make use of this Power. There is the same Power in the timid and weak as in the brave and strong. The weakness of the former is due to a lack of faith and belief in the ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin

... observations, that the state of our fellow-countrymen in the parts I have named is worse than that of any people in the world, let alone Europe. I believe that these people are made as we are, that they are patient beyond belief, loyal, but at the same time broken-spirited and desperate, living on the verge of starvation, in places where we would not keep our cattle.... Our comic prints do an infinity of harm by their caricatures. Firstly, the caricatures are not true, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... while literature and the arts adorn life in the several republics, whose meanest citizen enjoys a security of life and property unknown to the proudest of their ancestors under the rule of Montezuma or the Incas. Belief in the principles of equity and charity forbids us to doubt that these and even nobler results might have been achieved by the methods advocated by Las Casas, but history records no racial expansion along other roads than that opened by ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... science had already say a generation ago, a second's time we might say in the life of humanity, begun to emancipate our ideas of time and evolution, still it is the fact that that increase in breadth of vision has so far applied to every known thing but man himself. The old belief that gave the world 6000 years of life, at least put thinking man at its beginning; the modern nightmare gives us a world for hundreds of millions of years without thought, and makes human civilization an ephemeral episode ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates

... loving the aunt who toiled for us when he deserted us. Poor little mother, she can't really expect it of me. Indeed, I don't think she quite knows what she wants, or whether she likes me to be here or at Bridgefield! My belief is that he bullies her less when I am out of the way, because she just gives way to him, and does not assert any principle. I've tried to back her up, and it is of no use, and I am sure I don't want such a winter as the last. So I am much better here; and as to begging pardon, ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... there to perish in the neighbourhood of Delagoa Bay. Of these sufferings, especially those that were endured by Triechard and his companions, a few brief contemporary records still exist, buried in scarce works of reference. It may be mentioned, also, that it was a common belief among the Boers of that generation that the cruel death of Retief and his companions, and other misfortunes which befell them, were due to the treacherous plottings of an Englishman, or of Englishmen, with ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard

... for the most part, of 'Ch'ih' flowers and orchids; while this mostly of gold-coloured dolichos. That species is the hypericum plant, this the 'Yue Lu' creeper. The red ones are, of course, the purple rue; the green ones consist for certain, of the green 'Chih' plant; and, to the best of my belief, these various plants are mentioned in the 'Li Sao' and 'Wen Hsuan.' These rare plants are, some of them called something or other like 'Huo Na' and 'Chiang Hui;' others again are designated something ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... being brought back to the normal state no recollection of this suggestion is present in his mind. And yet, if the experiment work as truly as it often seemingly has worked, he will endeavor at the time fixed to perform the action indicated, with the full belief that the impulse to do so is his own. We may quote some instances in corroboration ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various

... of its serious concerns,—their paltry prepossessions, their vulgar sequaciousness, their invincible ignorance, their absorption in a petty self. And especially is this phase of thought to be expected in a boy whose heart blindly nourishes the seeds of poetical passion. It was Godwin's sincere belief that he held girls, as girls, in abhorrence. This meant that he dreaded their personal criticism, and that the spectacle of female beauty sometimes overcame him with a despair which he could not analyse. Matrons ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... every mother's son and soul of us belong; the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshipping world; we all belong to that; only some of us cherish some queer crotchets no ways touching the grand belief; in THAT we all ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... think, that when I say believing the Son of God died for the sins of men is essential to salvation and church-communion, that I hereby would exclude all other articles of the Christian creed as not necessary, as the belief of the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment, &c.; which, for want of time, I omit to speak particularly to, and the rather because I understand this great article, of believing the Son of God died for the sins of men, is comprehensive of all others, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... pseudo-haunting comes from County Tipperary, and shows how extraordinarily strong is the countryman's belief in supernatural phenomena. The incidents related occurred only a very short time ago. A farmer in the vicinity of Thurles died leaving behind him a young widow. The latter lived alone after her husband's death, and about three months after the funeral she was startled one night by loud ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour

... South, the signs of exhaustion had not yet become grave. The conscription act, passed in April, 1862, had kept the ranks full. The hope of foreign intervention, though distant, was by no means wholly abandoned. Financial matters had not yet assumed an entirely desperate complexion. Nor had the belief in the royalty of cotton received its coup de grace. The vigor and courage of the Confederacy were unabated, and the unity of parties in the one object of resistance to invasion doubled its effective strength. Perhaps this moment was the flood-tide of Southern enthusiasm and ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... not a PERHAPS; it was a certainty. It was not a form of words repeated once a week at church; it was an assurance entertained on all days and in all places, without any particle of doubt. And the effect of such a belief on life ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... speech motion pleasure patience friendship deceit bravery height width wisdom regularity advice seizure nobility relief death raid honesty judgment belief occupation justice service trail ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell

... come out a little while before. Greeley also asserts that the paragraphs which appeared in the "Evening Journal" were merely designed as gentle reminders to the novelist of the folly of the course he was pursuing. This might find belief in a society in which telling a man that he was an object of universal contempt would be deemed an expression of friendly interest in his welfare. When he says, in addition, that there was no shred, no spice of malice in these ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... brother, in the Cambyses of Ctesias, we find none of the crimes of the Cambyses of Herodotus—and even that fratricide loses its harsher aspect in the account of Ctesias, and Cambyses is represented as betrayed into the crime by a sincere belief ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... according to the common belief, his evil genius had so decreed, that Nigel's adventures were remarkably successful. He was temperate, cautious, cool-headed, had a strong memory, and a ready power of calculation; was besides, of a daring and intrepid character, one upon whom ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... annoying illness, found it highly desirable to turn the activity of his mind towards the heavenly. Grounded as I was in the Bible, all that was wanted was merely the faith to explain as divine that which I had hitherto esteemed in human fashion,—-a belief the easier for me, since I had made my first acquaintance with that book as a divine one. To a sufferer, to one who felt himself delicate, nay, weak, the gospel was therefore welcome; and even though Langer, with all his faith, was at the same time a very sensible ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... I am an old Doctor of Divinity, to this day I have not got beyond the children's learning—the Ten Commandments, the Belief, and the Lord's Prayer; and these I understand not so well as I should, though I study them daily, praying with my son John and my ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds

... that she did not repel him, yet overcome with the belief that it was to be their last embrace, he lost himself for the time in mingled remorse and mad bliss. They clung to each other as so many others have clung in those short moments which are the attar of a lifetime. ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... at this particular moment to ascertain that this, as he had before suspected, was Jaspar's belief, and that this belief had lulled him into security. He was not, however, so candid as to give expression to his sentiments on ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... tongue has no word for religion. Bishop Dordillon had been obliged to translate it, "Te mea e hakatika me te mea e hana mea koaha toitoi i te Etua" which might be rendered, "Belief in the works and love of a just God." Etua, often spelled Atua, was the name of divinity among all Maori peoples, but religion was so associated with natural things, the phenomena of nature, of living things, and of the heavens and sea, that it was part of daily life and needed no word ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... a very favorable impression at Napoleon's court, where his success as a man of the world, as a great nobleman, had been very brilliant. He then, in the lifetime of his father, Prince Metternich, bore only the title of Count. In his desire to attest his belief in the possibility of a reconciliation between Austria and Napoleon, he had left his wife, Countess Metternich, in France during the war. When he came to power, he conceived a political plan which was founded, temporarily at least, if not finally, on a French alliance. But to secure all the ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... the peculiar destiny of the Hebrew race to resist through ages of struggle. It was through the teaching of such mysteries of pantheistic naturalism that, as the unflinching Jewish deists and anthropomorphists believed, man fell, and their belief was set forth in their very first religious tradition—the history of the apple, the serpent, and the Fall. And it is to the very extraordinary nature of the Hebrew race, by which they presented for the first time in history the spectacle of a people ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... their respective orbits. To attain our object, it is necessary that the direct personification of natural phenomena, as well as the indirect personification of metaphor; the infusion of life into a man's own shadow, into reflex images and dreams; the belief in the reality of normal illusions, as well as of the abnormal hallucinations of delirium, of madness, and of all forms of nervous affections; all these things must be resolved into a single generating act which explains ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... plenitude of provisions, and anathematized the lying captain and steward; and Amos had declared his belief that with careful economy in the use of coal they could steam to the American coast with the supply in the bunkers: so they did not take any of the codfish, and the hawsers, valuable as fuel in case of a shortage, were left where they would be more valuable as evidence ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson

... take fresh courage every day. From your strength I make sure of my own strength, from your tenderness I gather compassion, and from your steadfastness I gain the hope that leads me onward, the belief that enables me to face each day bravely and ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... the bystanders loudly expressed their belief in the correctness of Billings' theory, and instantly the greatest excitement prevailed. The group increased in numbers each moment, and Billings took upon himself the office ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis

... was whispering to one of those who sat near her her belief that Jacqueline would never get over her father's loss. "It would not astonish me," she said, "to hear that the child, who has a noble nature, would remain in the convent and take ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... professing to hold one faith, and to believe in the selfsame doctrines! In short, to be as identical as the 20,000 sovereigns, if compared one with the other. But mind is not malleable and ductile, like gold; and all the preparations of tests, creeds, and catechisms will not insure uniformity of belief. No stamp of orthodoxy will produce the same impress on the minds of different men. Variety is manifest, and patent, upon everything mental and material. The Almighty has not created, nor man fashioned, two things alike! How futile, then, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... of remorseful affection. She was appealed to less by the exquisite manipulation with which the phrases strove to say the most and the best, than by the loyal haste to praise she saw behind, them, and she forgave their lack of blame in the happy belief that Elfrida had not the heart for it. She was not in the least angry that her friend should have done her the injustice of what would have been, less adroitly managed, indiscriminate praise; in fact, she hardly thought of the value of the critique at ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

... see n. to 23. No ancient philosopher held more firmiy than Pythagoras to belief in the immortality of the soul; it formed a part of his doctrine of Metempsychosis. He was also noted for his numerical speculations in Astronomy and Music. With him is said to have originated the doctrine of the 'harmony of the ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... we can never know, perhaps could never hope to appreciate, if we did know them, let us pass on, merely recalling the example of Galileo. When the first faint glimpses of the rings of Saturn floated hazily in the field of his imperfect telescope, he was misled into the belief that three large bodies composed the then most distant light of the system,—a conclusion which, in 1610, he communicated to Kepler in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... Tippoo had changed his course, to the southeast, was received with great joy at Arcot. Although confident that this capital would be able to resist any sudden attack, the belief had been general that the whole territory would be laid waste, as it had been by Hyder; and hopes were now entertained that the British army would arrive in time to bar Tippoo's ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty

... inhabitants ... did purchase it a supereminent name above all other towns, whereby grew this common proverb—as fine as Kirton spinning ... which spinning was very fine indeed, which to express, the better to gain your belief, it is very true that 140 threads of woollen yarn spun in that town were drawn together through the eye of a tailor's needle; which needle and threads were, for many years together, to be seen in Watling-street, in London, in the ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... that, in the proper sense of the words, Scotland is an independent nation, even if Edward VII. is the King of Scotland. I believe that, in the proper sense of words, Ireland is an independent nation, even if Edward VII. is King of Ireland. But the fact is that I have an even bolder and wilder belief than either of these. I believe that England is an independent nation. I believe that England also has its independent colour and history, and meaning. I believe that England could produce costumes quite as queer as ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton

... laughed Mr. Sneed, it being one of the few occasions when he did indulge in mirth. "In fact, the earlier forms of manatee were called Sirenia, and were considered to be the origin of the belief in mermaids. For they carried their little ones in their fore-flippers, almost as a human mother might do in her arms, and when swimming along would raise their heads out of water, so that they had a faint resemblance to a ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope

... very foundation of his life. He could not remember a time when he had not loved her; away back to the time when he, a big boy, took her, a little girl, under his care, and devoted himself to her. He had grown into the belief that so strong and so consistent an affection, though he had never spoken it or even hinted at it or inferred it, had become a part of her life as well as of his own. And this was the end of that dreaming! Not only did she not care for him, ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... waistcoat, and was beginning to feel that electric sensation of triumph which only conies to the man who just pulls through, when he heard Mr Kay coming down the corridor towards his room. The burglar-hunter, returning from the dining-room in the full belief that the miscreant had escaped through the open window, had had all his ardour for the chase redoubled by the sight of the cupboard door, which Fenn in his hurry had not remembered to close. Mr ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse

... effects. Some three thousand years ago, it is stated, a Chinese emperor, believing that only they who understood music are capable of governing, distributed administrative functions in accordance with this belief. He acted entirely in accordance with Chinese morality, the texts of Confucianism (see translations in the "Sacred Books of the East Series") show clearly that music and ceremony (or social ritual in a wide sense) are regarded as the two main guiding influences ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... to die, and fearing lest his infant son should be made away with by the lords he had compelled to obedience, Uther Pendragon bade Merlin hide Arthur until he was old enough to reign over Britain. Merlin therefore secretly bore the babe, as soon as born, to Sir Ector, who brought Arthur up in the belief he was the younger brother of ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... new friends to make an old one. My Bible is all the dearer to me, not only because it has pillowed the dying heads of my father and my mother, but because it has been the sure guide of a hundred generations of Christians before them. When the boastful innovators offer me a new system of belief (which is really a congeries of unbeliefs) I say to them: "the old is better." Twenty centuries of experience shared by such intellects as Augustine, Luther, Pascal, Calvin, Newton, Chalmers, Edwards, Wesley and Spurgeon are not to be shaken by the ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... seem principally interested to know why I am travelling without any zaptieh escort; a stranger travelling through these wooded mountains, without guard or guide, and not being able to converse with the natives, seems almost beyond their belief. When they ask me why I have no zaptieh, I tell them I have one, and show them the Smith & Wesson. They seem to regard this as a very witty remark, and say to each other: "He is right; an English effendi and an American revolver don't require any zapliehs to take ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... and precious stones which the navigators and their patrons at home so eagerly desired. Columbus built a fort on the island of Hispaniola, and founded a colony. The name of West Indies was applied to the new lands. Columbus lived and died in the belief that the region which he discovered belonged to India. Of an intermediate continent, and of an ocean beyond it, he did not dream. The Pope granted to Ferdinand and Isabella all the newly discovered regions of America, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... never interchanging a word save with reference to the navigation of the vessel. He seemed, indeed, to have sent us both to Coventry, although Captain Billings made no comment to me on his conduct; but I did not fail to notice—what indeed was the popular belief through the ship— that, if the first mate was paying us out in this way, he did not forget to "take it out of the crew" in another and very practical mode of his own, which was by driving them as hard as a workhouse superintendent ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... Soil Inoculation.—The belief that the right kind of bacteria may be absent from the soil when a new legume is seeded, and that they should be supplied directly to the soil, has failed in ready acceptance because examples of success without such inoculation are not uncommon. ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee

... religion was at one of its lowest ebb-tides, and had sunk almost to the level of heathen morality. If Gatty had been required to give definitions of the greatest words in the language, and had really done it from the bottom of her heart, according to her own honest belief, the list would have run much in ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt

... the purpose that unites them. I only notice this as offering a curious view of human character, which must be quite new to you. We have nothing whatever to do with clairvoyance, or with mesmerism, or with anything else that is hard of belief to a practical man, in the inquiry that we are now pursuing. My object in following the Indian plot, step by step, is to trace results back, by rational means, to natural causes. Have I succeeded ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... Still her friend's strong belief in the efficacy of Providence, and generally his masculine sturdiness, did cheer her up considerably. Even the strongest women, if they have any element that can be called feminine left in them, ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... the space of four months. Sister Fidele, a French nun, shared the fatigue and duty of ministering to the sick man's wants, with the young Saxon sister, whose life I have told you of. She is with us Sister Faith; a name given to her by his Holiness, Pope Pius, her child-like belief and peaceful beauty ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... had, it is true, delayed our advance considerably, but the effort had cost him dear; and the comparative collapse of his resistance during the last few days of the struggle justified the belief that in the long run decisive victory would lie with our troops, who had displayed such fine fighting qualities and such ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various

... know my master after twenty years? Do you think I do not know where his head comes to in the cabinet door, where I saw him every morning of my life? No, Sir, that thing in the mask was never Dr. Jekyll—God knows what it was, but it was never Dr. Jekyll; and it is the belief of my heart that there was ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

... difficult to see why it should have begun at this function. We have here not only a function confined to one sex and, therefore, easily lending itself to a vocabulary confined to one sex; but, what is even of more importance, the belief which existed among the Romans, as elsewhere throughout the world, concerning the specially dangerous and mysterious properties of menstruation, survived throughout mediaeval times. (See e.g., Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, Bd. I, XIV; also Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, fourth ed. Ch. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... rather glad that his visits had ceased, and gave no further attention to the matter, supposing that she would be herself again in a week or two. Bob's continued absence from the cottage—for he used to be there every other day—strengthened them in the belief that they were right in their supposition, and so they let ...
— The Haunted House - A True Ghost Story • Walter Hubbell

... the curse of women that they can't just hold their tongues, and see how things turn. And is this a time to spill good liquor? Look at Sir Charles! why, he is another man; he have got flesh on his bones now, and color into his cheeks, and 'twas you and I made a man of him. It is my belief you'd never have had this other little angel but for us having sense and courage to see what must be done. Knock down our own work, and send him wild again, and give that Richard Bassett a handle? ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... to meet a risen Saviour. The streets, always very clean, receive special attention, even the lamp-posts are carefully washed down and the kerbs sanded. Everything that will clean has brush and soap-and-water applied to it. The reason of this is the belief that our Saviour invisibly walks about the earth for forty days after Easter, that is, until ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... despair and to madness. It is only with difficulty that we have succeeded in keeping the mob out of the palace, and closing the door again. 'Paris shall be laid in ashes!' is the horrible cry which drives all these hearts to rage, and to which they give unconditional belief!" ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... a little after Christmas that we began planning for our spring garden. As commuters, we had once possessed a garden—a bit of ground, thirty-five feet square, but fruitful beyond belief. Now we had broad, enriched spaces that in our fancy we saw luxuriant with vegetable and ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine

... family it is of interest to note that as early as 1798 Barton[41] compared the Cheroki language with that of the Iroquois and stated his belief that there was a connection between them. Gallatin, in the Archologia Americana, refers to the opinion expressed by Barton, and although he states that he is inclined to agree with that author, yet he does not formally refer Cheroki to that family, concluding ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... belief in Terry's true Irish ingenuity, I would have considered the day and the bet both lost before the test had been essayed. But he had justified my faith, and there on the almost obliterated lines of the motor-car, behold ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft, In darkness, and amid the many shapes Of joyless day-light; when the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, Have hung upon the beatings of my heart, How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee O sylvan Wye! ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge

... sins against him had the father been aware, but she was tormented by the belief that she had wounded him. He seemed ever to be looking at her with reproachful eyes. She forgot his ill temper, his unlovableness, his want of consideration for any one but himself, during the ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann

... a moment, under what a terrible shadow the soul of Christian man has lain for these many hundred years! Ever since the doctrine of original sin was forced upon his belief, his soul has come into the world handicapped by millions of thought-currents expecting it to do evil, unless continuously controlled and curtailed and punished into a semblance of good! It cannot be wondered at, then, that sometimes these ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn

... cannot be done except such self-laudation become in excess dishonour; it is praise in appearance, it is infamy in substance. For the words are spoken to prove that of which he has not inward assurance. Hence, he who lauds himself proves his belief that he is not esteemed to be a good man, and this befalls him not unless he have an evil conscience, which he reveals by self-praise, and in so ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri

... inhabitants of Otaheite, our commander collected, from comparing several facts together, that, including women and children, there could not be less, in the whole island, than two hundred and four thousand. This number, at first sight, exceeded his belief. But when he came to reflect on the vast swarms of people that appeared whereever he went, he was convinced, that the estimate was agreeable ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis

... that," rejoined Lucien, "for I hold it to be a science productive of much good, not only on account of its utility in the arts and manufactures, but to the mind of the student himself; for, in my belief, ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... firm belief in the existence of the fabled El Dorado, and of the city of Manoa, with its resplendent house of the sun, its hoards of silver and gold, and its gilded king. Thousands of adventurers had gone forth in search of these wonders, and thousands had perished in ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall

... which may irritate a wound and by trusting to the agency of heat for killing all germs. But Lister himself took enormous pains to keep his antiseptic as remote as possible from the tissues to whose vitality he trusted, and went half-way to meet the aseptic doctrine. If he retained a belief in the need for carbolic and distrusted the elaborate ritual of the modern hospital, with its boiling of everybody and everything connected with an operation, it was not either from blindness or from pettiness of mind. As in the case of abandoning the spray, it was his ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... a more pressing anxiety. Though her father steadfastly refused to entertain it, she shared Prescott's belief that her brother was not dead. For one thing, Cyril was not the man to come badly to grief; he had done many reckless things and somehow escaped the worst results. Illogical as the idea was, she felt that his luck was good. ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... of Christian charity they were not under the power of Christian influences. The very reverse was the case. It was the very earnestness of their Christian convictions, and the intensity of their belief in the directing agency of the Holy Spirit over Christian minds, which made them write with a warmth which human infirmity turned into acrimony. They all felt de vita et sanguine agitur; they all believed that they were directed by the Spirit of God: consequently ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... flood of thought flashed through Guest's brain, and he recalled conversations held with Edie respecting the marriage, and the girl's boldly expressed belief that her cousin would gladly have drawn back but for her ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn

... at all, they demand the decorative treatment of lyric verse,[200] nor is a catalogue of the herbs used by Medea to poison the robe destined for her rival any more excusable.[201] Again, like his contemporaries, he shows a lack of taste and humour which in its worst manifestations passes belief. Not a few of the passages already quoted serve to illustrate the point. But for fatuity it would be hard to surpass the words with which Amphitryon interrupts Theseus' account of the horrors ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... accounts for the coincidence, which also shows how deep-rooted and widely spread the hope of eventually obtaining the desired companionship is. Some will maintain that the desire for such a possibility has created the belief in it, but others claim to have met their partner-souls, and to have become united by a bond so perfect that even distance cannot sever it, there being some inexplicable means of communication between the two, which enables each to know what befalls the ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand

... head. She was about to assure Mr. Sharp of the vanity of his belief, when an exclamation from her governess diverted the attention of both, and before either had time to speak again, Mademoiselle turned to them, and ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... time or other, but that it ought not to be till we found the Crowns of Spain and France together by the eares, the want of which did ruin our war. But then he told me that a great while before the war my Lord Chancellor did speak of a war with some heat as a thing to be desired, and did it upon a belief that he could with his own speeches make the Parliament give what money he pleased, and do what he would, or would make the King desire; but he found himself soon deceived of the Parliament, they having a long time ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... sent him home with a high character for diligence in his studies, and attention to his religious duties, which consisted in a regular attendance at church and at the morning and evening prayers of the family; and his father was happy in the belief that he would do very well in the world as a clergyman, or at the bar, or in any other profession he might select. Still, Mary was undoubtedly his favourite, and on her he bestowed the full affection of a father's heart. She was indeed a most loveable ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston

... that in these two days the boy had almost talked over his mother, too; had parried all her objections one after another with that indignant good sense which is often the perfection of absurdity; and had brought her almost to acquiesce in the belief that if the marriage was doomed in heaven, why doomed it was—that if the young woman was a good person, it was all that she for her part had to ask; and rather to dread the arrival of the guardian uncle who she foresaw would regard Mr. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... gossiping with that lying hussy, sir?" demanded my Uncle, the General Robert, with instant belief in the word of that Gouverneur Faulkner, turning his anger upon me, who stood and took it with such a joy in my heart from the truth that had come into it from those eyes of the night stars, that I did not even feel ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess

... done. Had she lived until the shadows of old age crept on her, and she who had helped others needed help herself, then indeed she would have known how tenderly the people of England had enshrined her in their hearts. They wished it. It is a deeply-seated belief that long life is a blessing, and that to die early is a misfortune. The belief, popular as it is, may be a mistaken one; but it dwells in almost all hearts, and it would have kept Grace Darling here had it ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope

... this sign, for he knew that he had been nearer death than ever before in all his adventurous life, and the sway of his passion had weakened his nervous control. Courage came back to him rapidly, for with all his faults he was, physically at least, no coward. He took hope from his belief that Wade would not now ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... authority of the Editor, who understood Italian, a singular scene. Secure, apparently, in his belief that his language was generally uncomprehended, Tournelli brought a decanter, and, setting it on the table, said, "Traitress!" in an intense whisper. This was followed by the cruets, which he put down with ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... what was so lovely and clear in its reality to her, that which was to her as life-blood, that which was the vital air in which she lived and moved and had her being, could be absolutely nothing to him? Was it really possible, as he said, that God had no existence for him except in a nominal cold belief; that the spiritual world was to him only a land of pale shades and doubtful glooms, from which he shrank with dread, and the least allusion to which was distasteful? and would this always be so? and if so, could she ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... the Man reserves the privilege of spanking. Even so I observe that, while able to agree cordially with Christ on the necessity of becoming as little children as a condition of entering the Kingdom of Heaven, we are not so injudicious as to act upon any such belief; nay, we find ourselves obliged to revise and re-interpret the wisdom of the Gospels when we find it too impracticably childish. When Christ, for instance, forbids oaths of all kinds, we feel sure He cannot be serious, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... thou art compassed about with this vast army, yet dost thou apply thyself in person to battle and adventurest thyself.' Quoth the king, 'Dost thou call thyself a cavalier and a man of learning and deemest that victory is in abundance of troops?' 'Ay,' answered Bekhtzeman; 'that is indeed my belief.' And Khedidan said, 'By Allah, then, thou errest in this thy belief! Woe and again woe to him whose trust is in other than God! Indeed, this army is appointed only for adornment and majesty, and victory is from God alone. I too, O Bekhtzeman, believed aforetime that victory ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... he declared. "Friends exist only to hurt you; it is my belief that men prosper better alone. Have no illusions, trust nobody, feel that every man's hand is against you, and then you will know where you stand. That is my policy. Your soft-hearted cousin, here—his ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs

... I denominate ancientism. Yesterday was better than to-day. The ancients were wiser that we. This belief in a better day and a better people in the elder time is almost universal among mankind. A belief so widely spread, so profoundly entertained, must have for its origin some important facts in the constitution or history of mankind. Let us see ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell

... he pronounced these words, with the easy indifference of one who apologizes to an inferior in order to maintain his own character for politeness, but with perfect indifference whether his excuses are or are not held satisfactory. And as the clergyman gazed, the belief which had so strongly clung to him that the Earl of Etherington and young Valentine Bulmer were the same individual person, melted away like frostwork before the morning sun, and that so completely, that he marvelled at himself for having ever entertained ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... rest of the world with respect to crime? Many people are of opinion that it is, and the idea is at present diligently fostered on the platform and in the press that we have at last found out the secret of dealing successfully with the criminal population. As far as I can ascertain, this belief is based upon the statement that the daily average of persons in prison is constantly going down. Inasmuch, as there was a daily average of over 20,000 persons in prison in 1878, and a daily average of about 15,000 in 1888, many people immediately jump at the conclusion that crime is ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... have the fate of Cassandra," said the man in black; "no one would believe him—yes, the priests would: but they would make no sign of belief. They believe in the Alcoran des Cordeliers—that is, those who have read it; but they make ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... have alluded to as confirming Mary's belief was, that, at some period not very far from midnight, the watchman had specially noticed this stranger; he had observed him continually peeping into the window of Marr's shop; and had thought this act, connected ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... opiniator|, opinator|; stickler, dogmatist; bigot; zealot, enthusiast, fanatic. V. be obstinate &c. adj.; stickle, take no denial, fly in the face of facts; opinionate, be wedded to an opinion, hug a belief; have one's own way &c. (will) 600; persist &c. (persevere) 604a; have the last word, insist on having the last word. die hard, fight against destiny, not yield an inch, stand out. Adj. obstinate, tenacious, stubborn, obdurate, casehardened; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... some of the phenomena carry with them suggestions that do not altogether harmonise with the conventional orthodox theories of future life. The whole question that lies at bottom is whether this world is divine or diabolic. Those who believe it divine are bound by that belief to regard every phenomenon as a window through which man may gain fresh glimpses of the wonder and the glory of the Infinite. In this region, as in all others, faith ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead

... far as feasible toward ending the era of destructive wars. Steady, uninterrupted, pacific development was their common ideal, and they were prepared to give up all that they reasonably could to achieve it. It is my belief, for example, that if Mr. Wilson had persisted in making his League project the cornerstone of the new world structure and in applying his principles without favor, the Italians would have accepted it almost without discussion, ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... see. The H'otel de Carnavalet,(140) near the Place Royale, is worth looking at, even for the fa'cade, as you drive by. But of all earthly things the most worth seeing is the house at Versailles, where the King's pictures, not hung up, are kept. There is a treasure past belief, though in sad order. and piled one against another. Monsieur de Guerchy once carried me thither; and you may certainly get leave. At the Luxembourg are some hung up, and one particularly is worth going ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... with musquets, and bayonets fixd, presuming that they were cloathd with as much authority by the law of the land, as the Posse Comitatus of the country with the high sheriff at their head—How little regard is due to the word fo a m—r, who would fain have flatterd us into a belief that the troops were sent here to aid the civil magistrate, and were never to act without one? And let me observe, how fatal are the effects, the danger of which I long ago mentiond, of posting a standing army ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... every species of story with an avidity that was quite amusing. It seemed also to have been infectious, for even Jacko used to sit hour after hour looking steadily at each successive speaker, with a countenance so full of bright intelligence, and grave surpassing wisdom, as to lead one to the belief that he not only understood all that was said, but turned it over in his mind, and drew from it ideas and conclusions far more bright and philosophical than could have been drawn therefrom by any human being, ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne

... terms of the other nearly one-half! And all this, the monometallist tells us, because there has been an excess of silver produced amounting to less than a quarter of a billion in twenty-three years. Belief in such a proposition would indeed be a triumph of faith over figures. And to add to the trial of our faith, we find, on bringing the figures down to the close of the year 1895—and we cannot bring them later on account of official slowness—the ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter

... which lay before each of us towards ourselves and towards our fellow-creatures, there was scope for spiritual energy and spiritual emotion. I was penetrated by Browning's great idea expressed over and over again—the expansion of Paul's dictum that faith is not certainty, but a belief without sufficient proof, a belief which leads to right action and to self-sacrifice. Of the 70 years of life which one might hope to live and work in, I had no mean idea. I asked in the newspaper, "Is life so short?" and answered. "No." I expanded and spiritualized the idea in a sermon, and I again ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... during the Bronze Age) that the Aegean civilization was indigenous, firmly rooted and strong enough to persist essentially unchanged and dominant in its own geographical area throughout the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. This conclusion can hardly entail less than a belief that, at any rate, the mass of those who possessed this civilization continued racially the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... obliged its rival to study. For everyone wanted to live. The Witch would have got hold of everything: people would for ever have turned their backs on the doctor. And so the Church was fain to suffer, to countenance these crimes. She avowed her belief in good poisons (Grillandus). She found herself driven and constrained to allow of public dissections. In 1306 one woman, in 1315 another, was opened and dissected by the Italian Mondino. Here was a holy revelation, the ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... and appreciate your belief," said Will in his enthusiasm. "Think of it, Pehansan, to be strong and young forever and forever; never to know wounds or weariness; to hunt the game over thousands and tens of thousands of miles; to find buffaloes and ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler

... priests do, and are to receive State pay as popular instructors, shall also receive the best obtainable secular education before being subjected to purely professional training in the theological seminaries. The desperation of the fight made against him by the clergy is due to their well-grounded belief that in order to get a young man in our time to swallow a fair amount of Catholic theology, he must be caught early and kept close. The warfare which is raging in Prussia is one which has broken out in every country in which the government has formal relations ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... mad enough for anything, and their hold over Marcia is beyond belief. The next thing you'll know, they'll persuade her it's against religion to be Caesar's mistress! They're quite capable of sawing off the branch they're sitting on. By Hercules, I hope they do it! Some of us might go ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy

... inclined to the belief that the hunted man might sooner trust the woods than the coast. Moreover he knew himself an indifferent sailor and perceived that the motor boat could not promise a very even keel in the great swell ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts

... as the skilled musician made the words Of momentary meaning still simply His own eternal hope and heart's desire, Without belief, perchance, in Drake's own quest— To Drake's own greater mind the eternal glory Seemed to transfigure his immediate hope. But Doughty only heard a sweet concourse Of sounds. They ceased. And Drake resumed his tale Of that strange flight in boyhood to the sea. Next, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... her child was dead, and this was no other than an impostor whom they had brought to defraud her sorrow. Trunnion was confounded at this unaccountable passion, which had no other foundation than caprice and whim; and Gamaliel himself was so disconcerted and unsettled in his own belief, which began to waver, that he knew not how to behave towards the boy, whom his godfather immediately carried back to the garrison, swearing all the way that Perry should never cross their threshold ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... relatively large way. They have, however, a multitude of associations and societies. They have also the Grange, which is the most successful of all the general organizations of farmers in the country. Contrary to public belief, the Grange is not defunct, but has been growing at a very rapid pace during the last few years and has a large influence especially in the East and Middle West. It has practically no existence in the ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield

... moment's silence. A power quite outside herself kept Billy's eyes on Arkwright's face, and forced her to watch the change there from unbelief to belief, and from belief ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter

... comes the absurd popular belief of the moon passing up and down Mohammed's sleeves. George B. Airy (The Athenum, Nov.29, 1884) justly objects to Sale's translation "The hour of judgment approacheth" and translates "The moon hath been dichotomised" ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... judgment is the outcome of my jealous disappointment; I say the former was the outcome of my loving fascination; and I can not but think something in yourself will speak for me, and tell you that I am speaking honestly. Mr. Sefton considers me worthy of belief; and I know myself worthier of belief than ever before—how much worthier than when I wrote that review! Then I loved you—selfishly; now I love the truth, and would serve you, though I do not love you the same way as before. ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald

... feel already the sympathy and moral support to be derived in this way. I am often asked if I think you can continue to stand firm under the frightful pressure brought to bear upon you. I answer, yes; that my personal knowledge enables me to express the confident belief that nothing will ever induce you to surrender while the oath to support the Constitution of your country and the vow to fulfill the obligations of your ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell

... locksmith. 'Well, that would be the state of things directly. Even Miggs would go. Some black tambourine-player, with a great turban on, would be bearing HER off, and, unless the tambourine-player was proof against kicking and scratching, it's my belief he'd have the worst of it. Ha ha ha! I'd forgive the tambourine-player. I wouldn't have him interfered with on any account, poor fellow.' And here the locksmith laughed again so heartily, that tears came into his eyes—much to Mrs Varden's indignation, who thought the ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... My own belief is, and it is surely simple and rational enough, that Raleigh's 'brains,' as he said, 'were broken'; that he had no distinct plan: but that, loth to leave the New World without a second attempt on Guiana, ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... doctor's mind to-day. When the people about saw the grave and seemly composure with which he went about this dismal business, without those starts and flushes of grievous irritation and shame which the very mention of his brother had once brought upon him, they believed, and honoured him in the belief, that death had awakened the ancient fraternal kindness in Edward Rider's heart. But it was not fraternal kindness that smoothed off the rude edges of that burden; it was the consciousness of doing ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... major, "but it must be by cunning, not force. Now, it's my belief that the captain has intrenched himself in the cabin, and that he will keep the scoundrels at bay till we get ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn

... orator, Csar's merit was so eminent, that, according to the general belief, had he found time to cultivate this department of civil exertion, the precise supremacy of Cicero would have been made questionable, or the honors would have been divided. Cicero himself was of that opinion; and on different occasions applied the epithet Splendidus to Csar, as ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... mineral resources really do not belong in private hands has undoubtedly been an underlying factor in the imposition of heavy taxes. Contributing to this action also are the popular belief in the intrinsic bonanza values in mineral resources, the failure to recognize the large element of value which is put into such resources by human efforts, and the failure to realize that the social surplus in the aggregate is small. To some tax officials an ore is an ore, more or less regardless ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... only furnishes additional evidence relative to the preceding statements, but also, taken in connection with the following belief, shows quite clearly to the native wherein lies the power of his fetiches. It is supposed that the hearts of the great animals of prey are infused with a spirit or medicine of magic influence over the hearts of the animals they prey upon, or the game animals (K'ia-pin-a-ha-i); ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing

... are not fairies? I was three or four times in the thought they were not fairies: and yet the guiltiness of my mind, the sudden surprise of my powers, 120 drove the grossness of the foppery into a received belief, in despite of the teeth of all rhyme and reason, that they were fairies. See now how wit may be made a Jack-a-Lent, when 'tis upon ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... mortality Dare with misty eyes behold And live! Therefore on this mould Slowly do I bend my knee, In worship of thy deity. Deign it, goddess, from my hand To receive whate'er this land, From her fertile womb doth send Of her choice fruits; and but lend Belief to that the Satyr tells: Fairer by the famous wells To this present day ne'er grew, Never better nor more true. Here be grapes whose lusty blood Is the learned poet's good; Sweeter yet did never crown The head of Bacchus; nuts more brown Than the ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford

... in his ears—sick at heart in the belief that not even a life-buoy would avail, for the giant steamship had not stopped her engines throughout the whole transaction, and was now half a mile away, Denman went down to Florrie, obediently waiting, yet nervous ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... contrary, commencing at a remote period of man's history, including Jews, Chinese, Arabs, and Greeks, amongst whose records their memory is preserved—will meet with a cold assent from most; and perhaps few among us would be found bold enough to avow a belief in their reality. We have certainly no warrant for their truth in the powers or effects of our national music, and thus experience directly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... the following case had not the author of 'Des Jacinthes' (11/107. Amsterdam 1768 page 124.) impressed me with the belief not only of his extensive knowledge, but of his truthfulness: he says that bulbs of blue and red hyacinths may be cut in two, and that they will grow together and throw up a united stem (and this I have myself seen) with flowers of the two colours on the opposite ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... natural quickness of sensibility, she suspected nothing, saw nothing in each excuse but what was perfectly reasonable and kind; she was sure that her uncle's friends could not mean to neglect her. In short, she had an undoubting belief in those she loved, and she loved all those who she thought had loved her uncle, or who had ever shown her kindness. Helen had never yet experienced neglect or detected insincerity, and nothing in her own true and warm heart could suggest the possibility of ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... correspond to, or are actual duplicates of, the Apician precepts. They are additions to the stock of authentic Apician recipes. As such, they may not be included but be appended to the traditional text. The excerpta encourage the belief that at the time of Vinidarius (got. Vinithaharjis) about the fifth century there must have been in circulation an Apicius (collection of recipes) much more complete than the one handed down to us through Fulda. It is furthermore interesting to note that the excerpta, ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... to what is evidently framed to engage that assent; and what is it to me that I cannot disprove the bare logical possibility of my whole nature being fallacious? To seek for a certainty above certainty, an evidence beyond necessary belief, is the very lunacy of skepticism: we must trust our own faculties, or we can put no trust in anything, save that moment we call the present, which escapes us while we articulate its name. I am determined ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... "Their belief," says Lander, "that we possessed the power of doing anything we wished, was at first amusing enough, but their importunities went so far that they became annoying. They applied to us for charms to ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... obtained by planting seedlings, rather than by direct seeding. In direct seeding trials during the early thirties the planted nuts were promptly devoured by rodents. Sixteen years of field experience has proven the soundness of this belief. The imported nuts were planted in the Division's nursery at Glenn Dale, Md., and the resulting seedlings distributed as 1- and 2-year-old trees to cooperators ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various

... on the inspector, "that there is strong belief that the young lady may be a foreigner. Upon the tab of her coat she was wearing was the name of a costumier: 'Sartori, Via Roma.' Only the name of the street, and not the town is given. But it must be somewhere in ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux

... was best always to be straightforward and admit the truth—no matter how bitter. And yet he had been kind and helpful to her in a way in which scarce any one else could have been. She clung to the belief that she would be able to do something to make his hour of trial less severe. The hope which insinuates itself into every unrequited love still lingered. He could at least always talk to her about Brigit: that common memory would be a constant link between them. She had earned his esteem, ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes



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