"Incredulity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as we know 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 ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... a respect for Micky's prowess, incontinently fled, surveying Micky from a safe distance, with a look in which surprise seemed to mingle with incredulity. ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... is beyond experience, it could not be. It is not a wise deduction, as I think Bickley would admit today, because without doubt many things are which surpass our extremely limited experience. However, those who draw the veil from the Unknown and reveal the New, must expect incredulity, and accept it without grumbling. Was that not the fate, for instance, of those who in the Middle Ages, a few hundred years ago, discovered, or rather rediscovered the mighty movements of those constellations which served ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... light out of darkness, order out of confusion, life out of death: and finally, that this is He that calleth things that are not, even as if they were, as before we have heard. And if in the day of our temptation, which in my judgment approaches fast, we are thus armed, if our incredulity cannot utterly be removed, yet shall it so be corrected, that damnable despair oppress us not. But now let us hear how ...
— The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. • John Welch, Bishop Latimer and John Knox
... of amazed incredulity was truly comical. What ought I to do? I queried. On the whole, I decided to do ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... his tone of dismay, incredulity, rage, sent me off into gales of unscrupulous laughter. He was striding in, candle in hand, ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... a certain section of rich ore in which there were several millions of dollars had been walled up by some designing person for his own purpose and the mine was easily worth $40 per share. I had heard stories of this kind before and frankly professed incredulity. The son-in-law agreed to reveal the ore to any one we might send to the mine, and so one of our most trusted engineers was despatched with him to Butte on the agreement that if he were convinced that the walled-up values ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... 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 ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... did not get that scholarship. What the school would say! the tempest that would arise! They would ask a holiday, and the head master would grant it. Compton a lord! Philip could hear the roar and rustle among the boys, the scornful incredulity, the asseverations of those who knew it was true. And a flush that was pleasure had come over his musing face. It would have been strange if in the wonder of it there had not ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... 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 character and to ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... bitter, told the story of her life. I cannot tell it as she did, for she was able to bring tears to the eyes of her listeners. It is only for me to relate the bare facts, putting them into her words as closely as possible. Rosalie Gray, faint with astonishment and incredulity, a lump in her throat that would not go down, and tears in her eyes, leaned back in an easy-chair and watched her ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... spirit of faith enables us to see through all unsatisfactory outward forms and ceremonies, to the actual divine mysteries which they symbolise;—and heretics perceive incongruities, where we, by the grace of God, see nothing but harmony! And though you, Mr. Leigh, receive the information with incredulity and a somewhat blameable indifference, it is a matter of rejoicing to us that Cardinal Bonpre has performed this miracle of healing at Rouen. It would have raised him to a very high place indeed in the Holy Father's estimation, had it not ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... natives of that town had received the news of the victory of El-Teb with absolute incredulity, but the arrival of the Tokar fugitives convinced them that the Arabs had really been defeated. One of the prisoners taken at Sinkat came in a day or two later, having made his escape from Osman Digma's camp. He reported that the news of the battle of El-Teb had ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... 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 was ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... Christ and painted apostle are not beings that ever did or could exist; and this fatal sense of fair fabulousness, and well-composed impossibility, steals gradually from the picture into the history, until we find ourselves reading St. Mark or St. Luke with the same admiring, but uninterested, incredulity, with ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... with incredulity a statement of the number of birds that annually visit our climate. Very few even are aware of half the number that spend the summer in their own immediate vicinity. We little suspect, when we walk in the woods, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... Murmurs of amused incredulity all round the table interrupted the General; and while they lasted he stroked his ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... 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 ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... sniff the scorn with more evident approval than then. He apprehended more thoroughly the character of the man before him, saw more clearly the nature of his business, and wondered with contemptuous incredulity that Balfour had ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... following narrative will be received: with entire incredulity, but I think it well that the public should be put in possession of the facts narrated in "An Antarctic Mystery." The public is free to believe them or not, at ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... until a month ago she had never seen a city, she had never seen a telephone, a railway train, an automobile, a lift, a paved street. She was almost tempted to tell him, if only to see the cracks of surprise and incredulity break the immobility ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... 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 incredulity of Mr Timms (who had a nodding acquaintance with Mr Dunning) was greatly modified on the following day by what the latter could tell and show him; and any bad mark that might have been attached to the names of William and George was not suffered to remain on ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... the keen eyes of the Chief. And what angered him most was the look in the Chief's eyes. It was not incredulity; it was ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... crowd itself. Attitudes and expression are made to reflect the spirit of what has gone before, while the actual occurrence suffices to show the final issue of the story. Thus we have all the ideas of which others would have made a series of subordinate scenes: incredulity, fear, surprise, mockery, apathy and worship. The crowd shows everything which has already passed, and the composition of the bas-reliefs thus secures a striking homogeneity. It is difficult to ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... is certain to encounter incredulity, just as it is certain to raise other questions. Both results will be gratifying as showing an awakening of interest, which is the most and the best that the present discussion can possibly hope to accomplish. Very many, perhaps most, teachers in the traditional school do their teaching with ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... hearts are made dark with infidelity, care not what antic distortions they make in interpreting Scripture, so they bring it to any show of compliance with their own fancy and incredulity. ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... Britannic book is (not that it is not extant now, but) that the historians of the next generation never saw it. Geoffrey's History at once created a tremendous stir in the literary world—nor was it accepted on trust—but received with suspicion and incredulity. Thus William of Newburgh, in the latter part of the twelfth century, calls Geoffrey roundly, "a saucy and shameless liar." William, of course, did not know Welsh, and could not have made anything out of the Britannic book, even if he had seen it. This objection does not apply to Giraldus ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... an uneasy pang of incredulity. After all, was this Englishman playing with him? So he asked: "You are quite ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... absolutely impossible pathway to China and the East Indies, and from which there could not be any hope of return. A model of these caravels was exhibited in the Columbian Exposition at Chicago, in 1893, at the sight of which wonder grew to incredulity that, under such circumstances as surrounded this first voyage of Columbus, any one should have risked his ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... 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
... by an adversary of the Church,—a hater of its Prelacy,—an advocate of universal liberty of thought and license of crime: whereas the sentence is really written in the conviction (I might say knowledge, if I spoke without deference to the reader's incredulity) that the Pastoral Office must forever be the highest, for good or evil, in every Christian land; and that when it fails in vigilance, faith, or courage, the sheep must be scattered, and neither King ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... playing Hoylake, St. Andrews, Westward Ho, Hanger Hill, Mid-Surrey, Walton Heath, Garden City, and the Engineers' Club at Roslyn, L. I., when the light ceased to shine through the crack under the door, and he awoke with a sense of dull incredulity to the realisation that the occupants of the drawing-room had called it a day and ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... artillery; this he communicated in an excited manner to the others, and they, disposed to believe, also thought the clouds looked "very like a whale." But Morton, old Harmar, Mr. Jackson Harmar, Smith, and Higgins, brought their argumentative batteries to bear upon the explanation and incredulity of Wilson, and silenced, if they did not convince him. He admitted that a man of General Washington's strength of mind could not easily be deceived, and said, that if it was a fact that he had seen and mentioned the phenomenon, he could think it true; but no one was prepared ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... didn't pear to hab no hoofs nor horns, an' I always did hear dat he had both. Umme! ter think o' seein' dat ole debbil heself, an' livin' arterward!" groaned old mammy, while every one listened eagerly, Mrs. Ellsworth alone giving little sniffs of incredulity. ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... the first centuries, would come with a shock of surprise on those of their modern successors, and, if spoken as denoting a special and definite institution in the Early Church, would cause a smile of incredulity. It has actually been made a matter of boast that Christianity has no secrets, that whatever it has to say it says to all, and whatever it has to teach it teaches to all. Its truths are supposed to be so simple, that "a way-faring man, though a fool, may not err therein," ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... savoured good, but evil'—was chosen for the new Lord Mayor. Mr. Forget Good was appointed Recorder. There were new burgesses and aldermen, all with appropriate names, for which Bunyan was never at a loss—Mr. Incredulity, Mr. Haughty, Mr. Swearing, Mr. Hardheart, Mr. Pitiless, Mr. Fury, Mr. No Truth, Mr. Stand to Lies, Mr. Falsepeace, Mr. Drunkenness, Mr. Cheating, Mr. Atheism, and another; thirteen of them in all. Mr. Incredulity was the eldest, Mr. Atheism the ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... 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
... been devoting his time and his fortune, with rare perseverance, to the investigation of certain antiquities in the later geological deposits in the North of France. His first work, "Les Antiquites Celtiques and Antediluviennes," published in 1847, was received with much incredulity and opposition; a second, under the same title, in 1857, met with a scarce better reception, and it was with the greatest difficulty that he could induce even the savans of his own country to look at the mass of evidence he had collected ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... the whole the most skilful physician of his age. He likewise foreshadowed the system of deaf mute instruction. A certain Georgius Agricola, a physician of Heidelberg who died in 1485, makes mention of a deaf mute who had learnt to read and write, but this statement was received with incredulity. Cardan, taking a more philosophic view, declared that people thus afflicted might easily be taught to hear by reading, and to speak by writing; writing was associated with speech, and speech with thought, but written characters ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... confute the tradition in learned books; but his work not only will not succeed in persuading the ignorant multitude, but must also contend against the multiplied objections offered by the instinctive incredulity of people of culture. ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... look within her eyes? How plainly I saw it, although she stood half hidden beneath the shadow of the vines. Amazement, incredulity, scorn were expressed there, yet even as I marked them all became merged into proud unconsciousness. She would have turned away without a word, but ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... Government ought to have known all about it long before—how the Bolshevists were stirring up trouble. "They did," said we; "we told them." There was a silence at this, but a smile on the face of the audience which we at first mistook for incredulity. We referred darkly to our private information, derived, as I told you in my last, from the Italian juggler. "Did he do juggling tricks with your ink-pots too?" asked the French element. "How much money did you give him?" asked all the other elements. "And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... volume over to the other without a word. Tarzan ran through the pages quickly looking for a certain date—the date that the horror had been committed—and when he found it he read rapidly. Suddenly a gasp of incredulity burst from his lips. ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... American does not!—the first rumor of it. I remember the startling sensation. I remember at first the universal incredulity. I remember how the post-offices were thronged for successive days by anxious thousands; how collections of citizens rode out for miles on the highway, accosting the mail to catch something by anticipation. ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... man, and I glanced at Smith significantly. Inspector Weymouth was stroking his mustache, and his mingled expression of incredulity and curiosity was singular ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... a false impression in so good a cause as determined incredulity, seems not only justifiable, but actually ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... Well, you shall have it to satisfy your incredulity," and he wrote a few lines. "Stephen Battiscombe, sentenced to death, punishment commuted to ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... 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 high heaven ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... 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
... doubt if I have ever been really attached since. Be that as it may, hearing of her marriage several years after was like a thunder-stroke—it nearly choked me—to the horror of my mother and the astonishment and almost incredulity of every body. And it is a phenomenon in my existence (for I was not eight years old) which has puzzled, and will puzzle me to the latest hour of it; and lately, I know not why, the recollection (not the attachment) ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... stop the building of the walls of Quebec, and to pull down what we have done by virtue of the King's corvee!—did I hear your Excellency right?" repeated he in a tone of utmost incredulity. "The King is surely mad to think ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... 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 ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... he peered out across the hall, and for a moment the key almost dropped from his fingers. There, facing him, sat Grace, his wife, whom he had supposed to be safely in Paris. The sight for a moment completely upset him—he paused, gazing at her with an expression of incredulity. ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... The 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 prompt and biting retort. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... told it you before," he said, "but you would not have believed it. Soon—in a very few moments—the news will be known. You will see it break away in waves from that building down there, so I will bear with your incredulity. The German and British fleets have met, and the ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... were made to me in language clear, precise, terrible; and many of her phrases and sentences I could repeat at this day, word for word. But if I had reproduced them at first, as 'The Times' suggests, word for word, the public horror and incredulity would have been doubled. It was necessary that the brutality of the story should, in some degree, be ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... learned enough to make him renounce the ancient religion, but not enough to found a new faith that could satisfy both the intellect and the heart. "Wherefore we are not to be surprised that the grand philosophic period should be followed by one of incredulity and moral collapse, inaugurating the long and universal decadence which was, perhaps, as necessary to the work of preparation, as was the period of ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... all the particulars of the revelations made by the pirate to his fellow-prisoner, much as they had been given by Daggett to himself. The young man listened to this account at first with incredulity, then with interest; and finally with a feeling that induced him to believe that there might be more truth in the narrative than he had originally supposed possible. This change was produced by the earnest manner of the deacon as much as by the narrative itself; for he had become graphic ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... move his eyes from Lot's face. He looked as if he were reading something there writ in startling characters, against which his whole soul leaped up in incredulity. "My God, I see!" he groaned out slowly, at length. And then he said, sharply, "But—you were going to marry her. Why did you ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... importance to the family of Stuart, but which, according to their usual ill-fortune, helped to precipitate their ruin, next called forth the public gratulation of the poet-laureate. This was the birth of that "son of prayers" prophesied in the dedication to Xavier, whom the English, with obstinate incredulity, long chose to consider as an impostor, grafted upon the royal line to the prejudice of the Protestant succession. Dryden's "Britannia Rediviva" hailed, with the enthusiasm of a Catholic and a poet, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 subsiding rapidly. The farther ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... extravagant and marvellous, and has long been established in the hunter's vocabulary as a perfect synonym for liar, and is bandied about as a familiar proverb. If a hunter or warrior, in telling his exploits, undertakes to embellish them; to overrate his merits, or in any other way to excite the incredulity of his hearers, he is liable to be rebuked with the remark, "So here we have Iagoo come again." And he seems to hold the relative rank in oral narration which our written literature awards to Baron Munchausen, Jack Falstaff, and Captain ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... 'fo' you wuz bomed, honey, en 'fo' Mars John er Miss Sally wuz bomed—way back yander 'fo' enny un us wuz bomed, de animils en de creeturs sorter 'lecshuneer roun' 'mong deyselves, twel at las' dey 'greed fer ter have a 'sembly. In dem days," continued the old man, observing a look of incredulity on the little boy's face, "in dem days creeturs had lots mo' sense dan dey got now; let 'lone dat, dey had sense same like folks. Hit was tech en go wid um, too, mon, en w'en dey make up der mines w'at ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... report 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. ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... the coffee-room had been of ghosts and apparitions, and nearly everybody present had contributed his mite to the stock of information upon a hazy and somewhat thread-bare subject. Opinions ranged from rank incredulity to childlike faith, one believer going so far as to denounce unbelief as impious, with a reference to the Witch of Endor, which was somewhat marred by being complicated in an inexplicable fashion ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... in a low whistle, but his companion could not tell whether it was an expression of regret or incredulity. If they had stood on an equality, Tom would probably have suggested that the figures should be interpreted "over the left"—an idiosyncrasy in language which he had imported from Pinchbrook, but which may not be wholly unintelligible ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... Dauphin of France, providentially rescued from the Temple in the days of the Terror.' For this deliverance, somewhat to the consternation of the others, he offered up a short prayer of thanksgiving over his plate. He had, he said, encountered incredulity. He had his proofs. He who had never been on the soil of France since early boyhood, spoke French with a pure accent: he had the physical and moral constitution of the Family: owing to events attending his infant ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... irregularities and youthful vices, and subsequent reformation,) never allude to any story of the sort, and apparently had no knowledge even of any tradition respecting it; the charge either of partiality or incredulity does not seem to lie at the door of any one who might doubt the reality of the whole. It is not as though the deed were regarded as having fixed an indelible stain on the Prince's memory, and therefore his partial biographers would gladly have buried ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... his 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
... himself was there; the Gratcher-eye could not tell if his hat was on his head or off. But this by no means proved that the Gratcher-eye did not exercise its magic function when a Gratcher actually approached, and Allan knew it. He would stand staunchly, with a fine incredulity, while the little boy called off the strides, perhaps, until he announced "Now he's just passed the well-curb—now he's—" but here, scoffing over an anxious shoulder, Allan would go in where Clytie was baking, ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... of the intended movement kept that the French court, which was at Meaux, had no idea of the danger that threatened; and when a report of the intentions of the Huguenots came from the Netherlands, it was received with incredulity. A spy was, however, sent to Chatillon to report upon what the Admiral was doing; and he returned with the news that he was at home, and was busily ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... that this incredulity is uncalled for. It is known that at the close of each of their larger divisions of time (the so-called "katuns,") a "chilan," or inspired diviner, uttered a prediction of the character of the year or epoch which was about to begin. Like other would-be prophets, he had doubtless ...
— The Books of Chilan Balam, the Prophetic and Historic Records of the Mayas of Yucatan • Daniel G. Brinton
... awakened in every true Frenchman's breast a feeling of shame and disgust.[679] Henry himself manifested embarrassment when attempting to justify his course.[680] Abroad the improbable tidings were received with incredulity.[681] ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... woman, who is as strong as she is sweet, comes into the fullness of her womanhood's estate of love. Her joy overflows on all; currents of infinite compassion set towards those who must miss that by which she is thrilled; her incredulity of her own bliss is forever questioning humbly; she feels herself forever in presence of her lover, at once rich and free and a queen, and poor and chained and a vassal. So her largess is perpetual, involuntary, unconscious, and her ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... as an object which it would be unpardonable not to see—the Felix meritus, a sort of Lecture room with some wretched museums attached. I found nothing to interest me but a capital figure of a Dutchman, who came also to see the wonders. Nothing could exceed his attitudes as he looked with an eye of incredulity whilst they explained a planetarium, examined with an air of conscious safety a snake corked up in a bottle, and ogled with terror a skeleton which grinned at him out of his case. I walked round and tried his perspective in all directions, and rather blushed ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... Emerson received my assertion with open incredulity. He is determined to write to Maurice and inform him of his discovery, and also to commence legal proceedings ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... big window, his hands deep in his pockets. Susan took advantage of his back to give way to her own feelings of utter amazement and incredulity. She certainly was not dreaming. And the man gazing out at the window was certainly flesh and blood—a great man, if voluble and eccentric. Perhaps to act and speak as one pleased was one of the signs of greatness, one of its perquisites. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... hear or I relate, That with high hand I still did perpetrate; For these 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
... is yet 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 I did not doubt, if any naval Peers were ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... greatest opportunity for that divine justification. We showed no fervour for peace. There was no passion in us; nothing but scepticism, incredulity, and the base appetite for revenge. We might have led the world into a new epoch if at that moment we had laid down our sword, taken up our cross, and followed the Prince of Peace. But we were cold, cold. We had no idealism. We were poor sceptics trusting to economics—the economics ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... and delight one anew at each hearing; but being mostly an imitator, he never approaches the serene beauty and sublimity of the hermit thrush. The word that best expresses my feelings, on hearing the mockingbird, is admiration, though the first emotion is one of surprise and incredulity. That so many and such various notes should proceed from one throat is a marvel, and we regard the performance with feelings akin to those we experience on witnessing the astounding feats of the athlete or gymnast,—and this, notwithstanding many of the notes ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... beauties in the market. The first thing the wicked sisters did was to flourish these invitations triumphantly before the eyes of Pollimariar, who declared she did not believe a word of it; indeed, she professed such aggressive incredulity that she had to be severely beaten. But she denied the invitations to the last. She thought it was best ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... 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 secluded country ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... it is well to shy around this terrible international question; but I remember that when I was a lad I was told that there was a whole nation that said luggage instead of baggage, and my boyish mind was filled at the time with incredulity and scorn. In the present case it was a thing that I understood to involve the most hideous confessions of imbecility on my part, because I had evidently to go out to some obscure point and espy it and ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... obvious incredulity, for Mr. Tomkins declared that no other chimney-pot in the United Kingdom, broken or unbroken, could be so beautiful as the one ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... incredulity at this figure which had pursued him down the platform at Wyck and now ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... along the new line for its protection, and further the right to garrison Port Arthur, use it as a naval station, and occupy the adjacent territory. When the first rumours of the Russo-Chinese Treaty reached Europe they were treated with incredulity. It was said that it was impossible that Russia could cynically claim a position which she had just declared was incompatible with the independence of China, and which she had argued the nations of Europe could not permit ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... 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, and awe. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... few things more annoying than to find one's positive convictions met with incredulity. I could not help feeling impatience at the turn that affairs had taken. I was not proof against the civil sarcasm of the chairman's manner. Most intolerable of all, however, was the quiet smile lurking about the corners of Benjamin Somers's mouth, and the half-triumphant, ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... almost to the minute after the Zeppelin and its crew had been brought down. Suddenly Eagle opened his eyes and fixed them on the nurse. At first he stared as if dazed by what he saw; then came a flash of recognition which changed to incredulity. ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... put you into the financial saddle. Then I'll get out on the line, and by the 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 what ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... 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 himself ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... expressed incredulity. "You must be wrong. Why, the young woman wouldn't even accept the reward. And it was not a ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... reverting with a 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 was such a thing ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... turned pale, and gazed as if to make sure he did not behold a ghost or a vampire—gazed like one startled out of his self possession, and the first emotion which succeeded was sheer incredulity; there was small trace of the once fair-haired English boy in the sunburnt, storm-beaten warrior of ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... to indicate this: Since we call that disposition of mind which leads some men to deny the above fundamental truths (or affect to deny them), not by a word which indicates the opposite of reason, but the opposite of faith,—Scepticism, Unbelief, Incredulity. ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... 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 doubt that it would have been universally ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... competition purely and simply as so many items for sale. The reason for the step is immaterial, more especially as there is a proneness to receive the one tendered, if not with indifference, with incredulity. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... of incredulity on Henshaw's face manifestly deepened. "By his own hand?" he echoed. "Suicide? Clement commit ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... laughing, but obviously looked for explanations. Zametov had been sitting in the corner, but he rose at the visitors' entrance and was standing in expectation with a smile on his lips, though he looked with surprise and even it seemed incredulity at the whole scene and at Raskolnikov with a certain embarrassment. Zametov's unexpected presence struck ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... now be made to what is perhaps the most sensational alleged event in Home's mediumistic career, the one which is most frequently spoken of by the general public, with more or less forcible expressions of scornful incredulity; his "levitation" out of the window of a room at a great height from the ground, and in at a window of the next room on the same story. In the Report by Professor Barrett and Mr. Myers, no detailed account of this is given. The Report says: "Lords Lindsay ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... word for it," repeated Cervera, with incredulity bright in her sensuous eyes. "You know what I told you, Rufe. I'll not tamely permit that pale-faced nightingale to come between you and me. You know what I told you. I would kill her as ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... truth I always loved Wilson, he had much nobleness of heart, and many traits of noble genius, but the central tie-beam seemed always wanting; very long ago I perceived in him the most irreconcilable contradictions—Toryism with Sansculottism, Methodism of a sort with total incredulity, etc.... Wilson seemed to me always by far the most gifted of our literary men, either then or still: and yet intrinsically he has written nothing that ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... 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 an international matter, another instance ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... humorous fugitive tract, 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
... paper from his desk, cramming it into my hand, and continuing his promenade. Such observations on my part in response to the invitation as seemed to meet the case would be acknowledged with a grunt—dissent, concurrence, incredulity, or a desire for further information being communicated by modulations in the grunt. Once, when the document under survey elaborated one of Mr. Churchill's virgin plans of revolutionizing the conduct of the war as a whole, ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... the mutual attachment between Raoul and Madame de Vandenesse circulated in the world after this, but not without exciting denials and incredulity. The countess, however, was defended by her friends, Lady Dudley, and Mesdames d'Espard and de Manerville, with an unnecessary warmth that gave a certain color ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... you for your incredulity; no one does believe it; no one can; and yet it is quite true. Our gardener gave it up in despair. I wonder what ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... three mids made known their thoughts to one another. Harry Blount no longer doubted the truth of Colin's statements; and O'Connor had become equally converted from his incredulity. The conduct of the women towards the unfortunate castaway—which all three witnessed—told like the tongue of a trumpet. It was cruel beyond question. What, when exercised, must be that of ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... by the maiden sister and the family divine), Borrow dared to substitute the genus homo of natural history. Perhaps it was only to be expected that, like the discoveries of another Du Chaillu, his revelations should be received with a howl of incredulity. ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... to it, the idea would be staggering. No wonder it was received with incredulity. But the difficulties of the conception are not only physical, they are still more felt from the speculative and theological points of view. With this last, indeed, the reconcilement cannot be considered complete even yet. Theologians do not, indeed, now deny the ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... correspondence, in my opinion, leaves the story exactly as it found it. We only learn from it that Jenkins made a complaint about his ear to the English naval commander at Port Royal, who received the tale with a certain incredulity, but nevertheless sent formal report of it to the Admiralty, and addressed a remonstrance to the Spanish authorities. But as Jenkins told his story to every one he met, it is not very surprising that he should have ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... believing, but a direct incompatibility. It may be said roughly that the less we know the more we believe, and the more we know the less we believe. The credulity of the child, the savage, and the less educated classes in society, is in sharp contrast with the relative incredulity of the adult civilized human, and ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... at first had listened with mystification, and then dawning incredulity, changing into a look of relief that was almost triumph, lapsed again into severity. "Silas Lapham, if you was to die the next minute, is this what you started to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and parody. Error and folly have had their hecatombs of martyrs. Reduce the grandest type of man hitherto known to an abstract statement of his qualities and efforts, and he appears in dangerous company: say that, like Copernicus and Galileo, he was immovably convinced in the face of hissing incredulity; but so is the contriver of perpetual motion. We cannot fairly try the spirits by this sort of test. If we want to avoid giving the dose of hemlock or the sentence of banishment in the wrong case, nothing will do but a capacity to understand the subject-matter on which the immovable man ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... incredulity which most persons show in these matters, the events which followed the scene we have narrated confirmed ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... request was taken up 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 ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his master was telling a party of ladies and gentlemen, at dinner, some conversation he had had in Palestine, with King Richard I., of England, whom he described as a very particular friend of his. Signs of astonishment and incredulity were visible on the faces of the company, upon which Saint-Germain very coolly turned to his servant, who stood behind his chair, and asked him if he had not spoken the truth. 'I really cannot say,' replied the man, without moving a muscle; 'you forget, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the imaginations against thee, let not the incredulity of them trouble thee, that ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... passive obedience to the laws, though they declined the active cares of war and government. If, on the other hand, we recollect the universal toleration of Polytheism, as it was invariably maintained by the faith of the people, the incredulity of philosophers, and the policy of the Roman senate and emperors, we are at a loss to discover what new offence the Christians had committed, what new provocation could exasperate the mild indifference of antiquity, and what new motives could urge the Roman ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... filled the room for a moment made speech impossible. But every eye was turned on Peter now, some in incredulity, some in malevolence, and some in awe. He saw that it was now useless to deny his identity even if he had wished to do so, and so he stood squarely on his feet, staring at Yakimov, who still leaned forward menacingly, shrieking above the tumult, ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... 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 the bottom of ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... was designed to teach them a practical charity, the art of knowing the needs, the miseries of the lower classes, and to heal these heart-rending evils by a nostrum of kind words and ecclesiastical maxims. To console, to evangelize the masses by the help of childhood, to disarm religious incredulity by the youth and naivete of the apostles, such was the aim of this little society; an aim entirely missed, moreover. The children, healthy, well-dressed, well-fed, calling only at addresses previously selected, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... the cairnside, and he spoke to her, with chattering teeth, so that his words were lost. He pursued Rob Todd (if any one could have believed Robbie) for the space of half a mile with pitiful entreaties. But the age is one of incredulity; these superstitious decorations speedily fell off; and the facts of the story itself, like the bones of a giant buried there and half dug up, survived, naked and imperfect, in the memory of the scattered ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rumors and accounts had, of course, also reached Sue's ears. At first she took up an attitude of aggressive incredulity when her former friend was accused: nothing but the plain facts as set forth in the Public Advertiser of August the 5th would convince her that Richard Lambert could be so base and mean as ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... 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 ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... without giving himself any further concern about the Jew's incredulity, the captain gave orders for the Hansa to be shifted round to the harbor of the Shelif. Hakkabut raised no objection, not only because he was aware that the move insured the immediate safety of his tartan, but because he was secretly entertaining the hope that he might ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... Baths of Bourbonne, in order to be ready to cross the frontier at the first hint of a warrant being out against him.[136] Diderot has recorded his admiration of his friend's work. "I am disgusted," he said, "with the modern fashion of mixing up incredulity and superstition. What I like is a philosophy that is clear, definite, and frank, such as you have in the System of Nature. The author is not an atheist in one page, and a deist in another. His philosophy is ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... suggest that the ghosts must to a certainty have had something to do with it. When he replied that he did not believe in such things, she answered that they had evidently carried off his daughter to punish him for his incredulity, and to prove their existence to him. He hurried round from cottage to cottage, but the people only opened their eyes and mouths wide with astonishment, and gave him no information likely to be of the slightest use. Disappointed, he returned to the Tower. ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... effort Harcourt threw off his bewildered incredulity and grasped the situation. He would have to contend with his enemy in the flesh and blood, but that flesh and blood would be very weak in the hands of the impassive girl beside ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... seems to 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 ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... a dozen English politicians. But Dreiser makes no such compromise. He bangs into the difficulties of his problem head on, and if he does not solve it absolutely, he at least makes an extraordinarily close approach to a solution. In "The Financier" a certain incredulity still hangs about Cowperwood; in "The Titan" he suddenly comes unquestionably real. If you want to get the true measure of this feat, put it beside the failure of Frank Norris with Curtis ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... struck our self-complacency in its most vital spot. Nothing in our own experience had prepared us for the hideous savagery and vandalism of German warfare, the first accounts of which we received with blank amazement and incredulity. Then, when disbelief was no longer possible, there awoke within us a sense of fear for our homes and women and children—feeling to which modern civilised man had long been a stranger. We had not supposed that the non-combatant population of any European country would ever again be exposed ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... and private houses, the faith that was to shake and transform the world. They had handled the Lord of Life, seen the empty sepulchre, grasped the pierced hands of Him Who was their brother and their God. It was radiantly true, though not a man believed it; the huge superincumbent weight of incredulity could not disturb a fact that was as the sun in heaven. Moreover, the very desperateness of the cause was their inspiration. There was no temptation to lean upon the arm of flesh, for there was none that fought for them but God. Their nakedness was their armour, their slow ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... eloquence. 'My chest!' it cried, with a stress on the 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 ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Old Chester smiled. How could it help it? Gussie worried so that she took frequent occasion to point out possibilities; and after the first gasp of incredulity, one could hear a faint echo of the giggles of forty-eight years before. Mary North heard it, and her heart burned ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... ter the mountings!" she cried; "I be a-goin' ter marry a town man ez hev got position, an' eddication, an' place." She paused, stung by the fancied incredulity in his eyes. "Why not? Ain't I ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... his visit to the camp of Memotas and what he had heard and witnessed. They gathered around him and, Indianlike, patiently listened in silence until he had told them his story. Unfortunately it was not only received with incredulity, but with scorn. The men were astounded, and indignantly exclaimed: "So he lets his wife eat with him, does he? and cuts the wood himself, and carries the water and prays to the Kissa-Manito to bless his enemies, instead of trying to poison or shoot them! ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... feebly. "I've heard about it," he said. He drew up to the table with a subdued air and took his chowder in gulps, glancing now and then at the smiling face and supple hands on the opposite side of the table. It was a look of awe tinged with incredulity, and a little resentment ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... is to put other people's happiness before one's own?" said Elizabeth with a mixed expression of incredulity and discontent. ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... of 400,000 people on this side of the river heard of a projected suspension bridge with incredulity. The span was so long, the height so great, and the enterprise likely to be so costly, that few thought of it as something begun in earnest. The irresistible demands of commerce enforced these hard conditions. But Science said, "It is possible," and Courage said, "It shall ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... very willing to take whatever papa chooses to give me," returned Lulu. "You see," she added laughing at Rosie's look of mingled surprise and incredulity, "there have been several times he has let me have my own way and I didn't find it at all nice; so now I've really grown willing to be ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... original study (like an artist's drawing) of the unfinished romance which was published in 1883 under the title of "Doctor Grimshawe's Secret." Long lost sight of in the mass of Hawthorne's manuscripts, this last of his posthumous works was reviewed by the critics with some incredulity, and Lathrop had the hardihood to publicly assert that no such romance by Hawthorne's pen existed, thereby casting a gratuitous slander on his own brother-in-law. We may have our doubts in regard to the authorship of Shakespeare's ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... 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
... subordinated youth to the councils of the old, gazed at their niece with perplexity and anger. With the simpler of the two the perplexity was the greater, with the other anger. A fear was knocking at Major Churchill's heart. He would not admit it, strove not to listen to it, or to listen with contemptuous incredulity. "It's not possible," he said to himself. "Not a thousand summers at Jane Selden's would make her so forget herself! Jacqueline in love with that damned Jacobin demagogue upstairs! Pshaw!" But the fear ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... friendship with our official lecturer, a Colchester man whose strong point was pre-scientific agriculture, I often discharged his duties for him in a manner which, I am persuaded, laid the foundation of Mr. Edison's London reputation: my sole reward being my boyish delight in the half-concealed incredulity of our visitors (who were convinced by the hoarsely startling utterances of the telephone that the speaker, alleged by me to be twenty miles away, was really using a speaking-trumpet in the next room), and their obvious uncertainty, when the demonstration was over, as to whether ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... victory and death followed, and then the mortifying retreat of General Yule. Upon the 30th day of the month eight hundred and fifty officers and men were isolated and captured. Who does not remember the wave of passionate incredulity that swept across the kingdom when the evil tidings flashed over-seas? But Buller and his staff were on the Dunottar Castle, and all Harrovians believed devoutly that within a month of landing the Commander-in-Chief would drive the invaders back ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell |
