"Understandable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... educational medium of no mean order. Its progress in the past century has been the means of teaching to millions of people a great number of facts which had perhaps otherwise been lost to them. How many are there who have had brought home to them in an understandable manner by stage-plays the costumes, habits, manners, and customs of countries and ages other than their own; what insight have they thus obtained into facts and vicissitudes of life—of passions and sorrows and ambitions outside the narrow scope of their own lives, and which ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... Perhaps I should not exclude Quoin, who still persisted, on every occasion, that there was a stowaway aboard. As for the Second Mate, I have very little doubt now, but that he was beginning to realise there was something deeper and less understandable than he had at first dreamed of. Yet, all the same, I know he had to keep his guesses and half-formed opinions pretty well to himself; for the Old Man and the First Mate chaffed him unmercifully about his "bogy." This, I got from Tammy, who had heard them both ragging ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... compassion to his brother-in-law. Mr Verloc was sorry. The brother of Winnie had never before felt himself in such close communion with the mystery of that man's goodness. It was an understandable sorrow. And Stevie himself was sorry. He was very sorry. The same sort of sorrow. And his attention being drawn to this unpleasant state, Stevie shuffled his feet. His feelings were habitually manifested by ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... the time of the World's Fair quite a lot of people still favored the simpler and more understandable forms of art expression. We went to Chicago and religiously visited the Art Building, and in our nice new creaky shoes we walked past miles and miles of brought-on paintings by foreign artists, whose names we could not pronounce, in order to find some sentimental domestic subject. After we had ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... my desire to make the subject easily understandable and at the same time entertaining, and to appeal less to the memory of my readers than to their common sense and intelligence. I hope in that way not to have strayed too far from the ideal I had in mind when writing ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker
... women and children. There was no panic, but naturally, there was a considerable amount of excitement and rush and much confusion, and, as the increasing list rendered ineffective the lowering of the boats on the port side, the passengers, as is readily understandable, crowded over ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... art, trying to find some obscure foundation on which to build for themselves a theory of aesthetics. To such, and to all others who have any wish to reason connectedly on art matters, Mr. Marshall's little book will be interesting and instructive reading. It is remarkably clear and understandable even to a reader with no special training in metaphysical reasoning, and in point of literary style and carefully considered use of language it is a genuine treat. Its object is to explain, in as direct and simple ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 06, June 1895 - Renaissance Panels from Perugia • Various
... most typical representative of petty bourgeois socialism. Now the "fate" of the petty bourgeois—in so far as he does not adopt the proletarian standpoint—is to constantly oscillate between Radicalism and Conservatism. To make more understandable what we have said, we must bear in mind what the plan of social ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... It is not that. The truth is I was never clever at putting things on paper, and somehow, while the facts are clear enough in my mind, I feel a great difficulty in relating those facts in a way that is clear and understandable. You see I have lived an open-air life, and have spent more hours with the bridle-reins in my hands than the pen, and although I had a fair amount of schooling I was never considered a ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... understandable dialect that he thought the boys might have escaped into the inner cavern and started to make their ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... position to receive the track, and here the foreman's badge of office and scepter was a pick-handle. Above all the clamor and the shoutings Virginia could hear the bull-bellow of this foreman roaring out his commands—in terms happily not understandable to her; and once she drew back with a little cry of womanly shrinking when the pick-handle thwacked upon the shoulders ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... juneco : youth. opinio : opinion. reto : net. vocxo : voice. ideo : idea. prezid- : preside. gajno : gain. alpren- : adopt. tauxg- : be fit, suitable. stranga : strange, curious. fart- : be, fare (as to health). komprenebla : understandable. subita : sudden. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... replied. "Don't you see, these people have a language all to themselves, a language they've invented just to cause despair in decent people who ask for a little dinner! Why, in every country on earth, when you open your mouth, snap your jaws, smack your lips and teeth, isn't that the world's most understandable message? From Quebec to the Tuamotu Islands, from Paris to the Antipodes, doesn't it mean: I'm hungry, give ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... which regard he was excessively unlike ninety per cent of the younger officers. Among them it was an uncommon thing in my experience to find one who did not know at least a smattering of English and considerably more than a smattering of understandable French. Even that marvelous organism, the German private soldier, was apt to astonish you at unexpected moments by answering in fair-enough English the questions you put to him in ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... been accomplished and the purpose of a classification to assemble the things most nearly alike and separate them from other things will have been partially achieved. Unless these numerous groups are arranged in some definite understandable relation to each other, or are placed in definite known positions where they can be found, the mere formation of the groups, on however good a basis, is not a complete classification. Furthermore, unless the position of each group with respect to those other groups that resemble it in whole or ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... involved would have been willing to help her to this. It looked like putting in another character, just for that purpose, and of course he could not be put in without taking the time to make him plausible, human, understandable ... and I had just left out that charming widower for sheer lack of space. Well, why not make it a first person story, and have the narrator be the one who takes Mrs. Purdon to her sister's? The narrator of the ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... But I imagine that Flora de Barral's religion under the care of the distinguished governess could have been nothing but outward formality. Remorse in the sense of gnawing shame and unavailing regret is only understandable to me when some wrong had been done to a fellow-creature. But why she, that girl who existed on sufferance, so to speak—why she should writhe inwardly with remorse because she had once thought of getting rid of a life which ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... he will have a deeficulty in making his escape, as the house is surrounded with water. What weapon would he choose? You would say the most silent in the world. Then he could hope when the deed was done to slip quickly from the window, to wade the moat, and to get away at his leisure. That's understandable. But is it understandable that he should go out of his way to bring with him the most noisy weapon he could select, knowing well that it will fetch every human being in the house to the spot as quick as they can run, and that it is all odds that he will be seen ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... natural process, intelligently comprehended. It is neither mysterious nor hard. It is one of the preliminary, understandable ways to make success not only sure, but ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... as it explains an insect alighting on colored paper. But perhaps if people didn't like clear, bright, healthy eyes—which is biologically understandable—they couldn't like precious stones. One thing may be a necessary collateral of the others. And, after all, a fine clear sky of bright colors is the signal to come out of hiding and rejoice ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... think," Mollie said impatiently. "Try and think. Your head might just as well be a football. What I think is that if two un-understandable things are discovered about the same time they must belong to each ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... crossed the room, and before she could draw away seized and crushed her in his arms without a word. She lay there, inert, bewildered as in the grip of an unknown force, until presently she was aware of the beating of his heart, and a glimmering of what he felt came to her. Nor was it an understandable thing, except to the woman who loved him. And yet and yet she feared it even in that instant ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an altogether other dimension of existence from the sensible and merely "understandable" world. Name it the mystical region, or the supernatural region, whichever you choose. So far as our ideal impulses originate in this region (and most of them do originate in it, for we find them possessing us in a way for which we cannot articulately ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... alone for their cues. Very often a word may fail to carry out of doors; but a gesture can always be seen. Therefore, gesture cues can be used at many of the climaxes. These cues can be quite simple and natural, and while perfectly understandable to the players themselves, need not be at all obvious to the audience. The players and their director can decide upon the cues, and will find them of immense help. Thus, by an upraised arm, or by ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... processed thereafter. And the most dangerous misdigetion comes from the sad fact that cooked proteins are relatively indigestible no matter how strong the constitution, no matter how concentrated the stomach acid or how many enzymes present. It is quite understandable to me that people do not wish to accept this fact. After all, cooked proteins are so delicious, especially cooked red meats and the ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... Mystic Teachings regarding the Divine Incarnation of the Spirit in the mortal body of Jesus—a subject of the greatest importance to all who are troubled with this difficult point. We hope to be able to shed the Mystic light of Truth upon this corner which so many have found dark, non-understandable, and contrary to reason, natural law and science. The Mystic Teachings are the great Reconciler of Faith ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... is an admirably complete and explicit handbook for boys who fall under the spell of experimenting and "tinkering" with electrical apparatus. Simple explanations of the principles involved make the operation readily understandable." ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... and snaky cables leading to relays outside—all were clear as print to Hoddan. He moved confidently toward an especially understandable panel, pulling out his stun-pistol and briskly breaking back the butt for charging. He shoved the pistol butt to contact with two terminals devised for another purpose, and the pistol slipped for an instant and a ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... is not all as he is pictured. At a cursory glance he might appear to be a physiological, psychological, and political anachronism. At least he is sufficiently different from his colleagues to be, if not actually mysterious, not easily understandable. There is something fundamental about him. He inspires a certain awe which may not be magnetic but has the same effect upon those who surround him; where he sits is the head ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... regarded as in the nature of an autobiography, since Balzac, like his mouthpiece, Louis, viewed everything from an inner sense—from intuition, or the soul faculties, rather than from the standard of mere intellectual observation, analysis and synthesis. This inner sense, so real and so thoroughly understandable to those possessing it, is almost, if not quite, impossible of description to the complete comprehension of those who have no intimate relationship with this inner vision. To the person who views life from the inner sense, the soul sense (which is the approach to, and is included ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... woman whom they called Catalina. She broke into speech. It was cacique to cacique. She was from Boriquen—she would return in a canoe if she were free! Better drown than live with the utterly un-understandable—only that they ate and drank and laid hold of women whether these would or would not, and were understandable that far! Gods! At first she thought them gods; now she doubted. They were magicians. If she ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... the doctor. "It was a sudden shock. Yes; it's quite understandable—long weeks of suspense and agony, and then this on the top of it!" He did not ask any further questions, for Dr. White was a wise man. He knew the whole circumstances of Paul's arrest, and was therefore able to estimate ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... are particularly glad to learn the truth about Mrs. Jackson, after so many years of slander and misunderstanding, and to find something really touching and noble, instead of ludicrous, in the grim General's devotion to his first and only love. We get also for the first time an understandable account of the Battle of New Orleans, made up with praiseworthy impartiality from the accounts of both sides. Nor is it only here that the author gives us new light. He enables us to judge fairly of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... MacPhairson—but he was so intensely Scotch that in every ship he had sailed in men called him Scotty. He had a face like a harvest-moon, with a sorrowful expression of the eyes, a frame like a gladiator's, a brogue modified from its original consistency to an understandable dialect, and the soul of a Scotchman—which means that he was possessed by two dominant and conflicting passions, love of God and love of Mammon. Add to these attributes a masterful knowledge of seamanship and an acquaintance with navigation, and you have a rough sketch of him as he stood ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... special bearing upon the central topic. While I have diverged occasionally from the thread of the narrative, my purpose has been merely to give where possible more background to the story, that the account as a whole might be more understandable in its relation to the general ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... cubicle was a camouflaged food locker, containing fifty-pound slabs of sea beef, each of which represented a meal for the Hlat. The recess made it possible to feed it without allowing it to be seen, or, possibly, attempting to emerge. Kinmarten's nervousness, as reported by his wife, seemed understandable. Any rest warden might get disturbed ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz
... lies between conduct and ideals; children have always accepted the supernatural quite readily and it is not to be wondered at, for all the world is new and therefore supernatural to them. Magic is done daily in children's eyes, and there is no line between what is understandable and what is not, until adults try to interpret it ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... gave the task of reforming legal procedure and of pruning down the existing laws, both State and National, cutting out the obsolete and useless ones and rewriting those recommended to be retained, in plain and direct language free from useless legal verbiage and understandable to ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... like spangles. The slender acacias murmured. The pines hush-hushed. The bronhaha of the cafes was like a considered counterpoint. Everywhere was harmony; beauty. And there would be no depression. It would last. There would be no ghosts. They were exorcised. For now there was Fenzile. How understandable everything was! It must have been under a moon like this, under these Syrian stars, to the hush-hush-hush of the pine and the rustle of willow branches, that Solomon the king sang his love-song. And it must have been ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... people," and, on the whole, lived up to their reputation. But in Malvina, side by side with much that is commendable, there appears to have existed a most reprehensible spirit of mischief, displaying itself in pranks that, excusable, or at all events understandable, in, say, a pixy or a pigwidgeon, strike one as altogether unworthy of a well-principled White Lady, posing as the friend and benefactress of mankind. For merely refusing to dance with her—at midnight, by the shores of a mountain lake; neither the ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... and working of a Government department; and that in order to diminish the litigation under the gold law, and to make that fearful and wonderful agglomeration of erratic, experimental, crude, involved, contradictory and truly incomprehensible enactments at all understandable, the Chamber had to codify it at its own expense and on its own initiative, illustrate both the indispensable character of the organization, and the ignorance and ineptitude of ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... over the mind of the crowd that he could persuade it that it saw what it did not see." Here, as always, we have the power of the hypnotiser over the hypnotised. Moreover, when this power is seen in action on minds of a superior order and previously invited to be suspicious, it is understandable how easy it is ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... a sinister silence. No silence is sinister until it acquires a background of understandable menace. Here there was only the night quiet of Maternity, the silence of noiseless rubber heels on the hospital corridor floor, the faint brush of starched white skirts brushing through doorways into darkened ...
— I'll Kill You Tomorrow • Helen Huber
... back, his white teeth flashed, and he shouted with laughter. The boys broke down, too, and in a moment the entire patronage of the coffee shop was staring at the three idiots who roared with unrestrained laughter in public. Such behavior in Americans was to be deplored, perhaps, but understandable. But ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... they shook hands, our host with an obvious reluctance that turned to a less understandable dismay as I also prepared to take my leave ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... account of the Battle of Sedgemoor is rendered singularly picturesque and understandable by the personal observation and local tradition which he has brought to bear upon it. Might not his account of the capture of Monmouth derive some few additional life-giving touches, from the same invaluable ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... the country. Sociology sought a surer basis for the solution of the problems from a study of the facts of city life. Statistics of population by governmental departments provide figures upon conditions and tendencies. Community surveys have translated into understandable form a mass of information about the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... his friends," he said in a soft musical voice. He gave the words a most curious accent and inflexion, yet they were quite understandable to his listeners. ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... solace, and he read much of it, finding his greatest joy in the simpler poets, who were more understandable. He loved beauty, and there he found beauty. Poetry, like music, stirred him profoundly, and, though he did not know it, he was preparing his mind for the heavier work that was to come. The pages of his mind were blank, and, without effort, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... for rites and history what he had blamed Tsz-ch'an for doing with the law: he popularized it. He also attempted with persistent study to master the Changes, to which incomprehensible work he added features of his own—very little more understandable than the original texts. As to the Odes, 3000 in number, he used the pruning knife much more vigorously, and nine-tenths of them were rejected as unsuitable for the purposes of good didactic lessons or conservative precedents. ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... an eagerness that contrasted strangely with his cynical composure, "that is the first thing, and the most understandable." And she went dancing off with him as gay as a lark, and leaning on him at an angle of forty-five; whilst he went erect and cold, like a stone ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... at Kenny and shook his head. A heavy hand with the truth, that Irishman; and about as understandable in these splendid, tender days of his idiocy and bliss, as March wind, comets or star-dust. His passion for truth was literally a passion, relentless and exact. He worked harder. His steadiness, as Jan said, was grim and conscious and a thing of terror to anything in his path. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... be possible that he should stoop to so unworthy an action, the girl asked herself? And yet it was as understandable as any of his behavior during the last fortnight. Suddenly it seemed that a hand had awakened the Viking blood which slumbered in her veins; it fired her cheeks and flashed from under her lashes. She answered clearly, "I hope it is not, ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... glad to say it behind me. This magnificent chapter,* a portion of which I read as our lesson this morning, gives precisely the same idea of faith as that which I am going to outline. What is faith? Faith is a purely rational faculty. It is not irrational, but it is perfectly understandable. Suppose there is a man suddenly accused of a crime, and I never saw him before, I do not even know his name; but I go into court when he is brought up for trial, and I say that I have faith in that man, and I do not believe that he ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... "Quite understandable, I should say," declared the professor. "Unable to cope with Von Ullrich themselves, they think perhaps ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... certainly wide-spread and which leads to the disparagement of the practical doctor and medical layman, and then further to the disparagement of the craft of nature healers. The practical doctor and the nature healer on the one hand tend towards an understandable disparagement of medical science and analysis and, on the other hand, tend towards superficiality. The superficiality of the opponents of science is, however, as unhappy an affair as the pride of the so-called scientists, ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... qualm of distaste; with the perversity which seemed inseparable from his doings, Comus had always flung away a portion of his borrowings in some ostentatious piece of glaring and utterly profitless extravagance, which outraged all the canons of her upbringing without bringing him an atom of understandable satisfaction. Under these repeated discouragements it was not surprising that some small part of her affection should have slipped away, but she had come to the Park that morning with an unconfessed expectation of being gently wooed back to the mood of gracious forgetfulness that she ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... During this time he wrote and published (1851) his novel, "The House of the Seven Gables," the study of an inherited curse, made pleasing as a story by means of its realistic portrayal of ordinary life. He also put many of the stories of classical mythology into a form understandable by children, publishing the results in "A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys" (1852) and "Tanglewood Tales for Girls and Boys" (1853). In 1852 appeared "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales," containing hitherto uncollected contributions ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... blushed as Tom explained what had happened. Realizing Chow's embarrassment, Tom tried to make his mistake sound understandable. ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... eyes peered abstractedly into the distance between the almost shut lids. That Nahoum should seek David, who had displaced him from his high office, was scarcely Oriental, when his every cue was to have revenge on his rival. This was a natural sequence to his downfall. It was understandable. But here was David safe and sound. Was it, then, some deeper scheme of future vengeance? The Oriental instinctively pierced the mind of the Oriental. He could have realised fully the fierce, blinding passion for revenge which had almost overcome Nahoum's calculating mind in the dark night, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... truth, it is my duty to set down quite frankly that I believe the Urchin showed more enthusiasm over the stone and the robin than over any of the amazements that succeeded them. I suppose the reason for that is plain. These two objects had some understandable relation with his daily life. His small mind—we call a child's mind "small" simply by habit; perhaps it is larger than ours, for it can take in almost anything without effort—possessed well-known classifications into which the big stone and the robin fitted comfortably ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... there to return in reverse order through the second half of the drama, thus symbolising life's continuous repetition of itself, Kierkegaard's Gentagelse. The first part of The Road to Damascus is the one most frequently produced on the stage. This is understandable, having regard to its firm structure and the consistency of its faith in a Providence directing the fortunes and misfortunes of man, whether the individual rages in revolt or submits in ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... description. Indeed it had been working for weeks like a yeast in the minds of sundry black folk before their Caucasian neighbors began to sense it at all, and for this there was a reason easily understandable by anyone born and reared in any sizable town in any one of the older states lying below Mason and Dixon's Line. For in each such community there are two separate and distinct worlds—a black one and a white one—interrelated by ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... Thermometer.—It must be candidly acknowledged by every unprejudiced mind, that the thermometer question has been most shamefully handled by the scientific world. It is made an exclusive matter; they keep it all to themselves; they talk about Fahrenheit with the utmost coolness; of Raumur in un-understandable jargon, and fire whole volleys of words concerning the centigrade scale, till one's head spins round with their inexplicable dissertations. What is the use of these interminable technicalities to the world at large? Do they enlighten ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... chamber door open and fragments of this conversation came up the staircase. It was Primmie's voice which he heard most frequently and whatever words he caught were hers. There was a masculine grumble at intervals but this was not understandable ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sounds and motions by which animals communicate with each other, though to man these symbols of language may not always be understandable. Dogs give barks indicating surprise, pleasure and all other emotions. Cows will bellow for days when mourning for their dead. The mother bear will bury her dead cub and silently guard its grave for ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... attention to such talk. You see, it took our ancestors almost a million years to learn how to walk on their hind legs. Other centuries had to go by before their animal-like grunts developed into an understandable language. Writing—the art of preserving our ideas for the benefit of future generations, without which no progress is possible was invented only four thousand years ago. The idea of turning the forces of nature into the obedient servants of man was quite new in the days of your own grandfather. ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... other deity, was a much more understandable personage, but no less admirable, as a companion and protector. In the two years and five months of island life he had grown nearly three inches. He was as strong as a boy of twelve, and could scull the boat almost as well as Paddy himself, and light a fire. Indeed, during the last ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... him a cigarette, grinning. There was no sense in picking a quarrel. No man likes to discover that a perfect stranger has overheard his intimate confessions. His annoyance was understandable. But he hadn't nice manners. He knocked the cigarette case out of my hand and kicked it across the room. So I got into one of the deep armchairs and laughed at him in self- defense, to preserve my own temper from boiling up over ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... to be an unknown tongue to Mars. The leader, however, seeing that the strangers had arrived at the end of their resources, called to some persons in the crowd, and these, coming forward, addressed the world-dwellers in different dialects. But they were no more understandable than had been the first speech of the man with the ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... matter plainly, sir," he said, "in what I call an understandable, straightforward way. I'm a poor man—I've been a poor man all my life—and I've never seed a chance before of getting away from it. I see ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the first time he had demanded a revolution but, as the depression hit our country and Big Business seemed less and less capable of coping with it, the demand became more understandable and the fight against Monopoly ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the power-cartridge plant was airtight and had its own oxygen-generator. The air-analyzer reported the oxygen insufficient to support life. That was understandable; there were a lot of furnaces which had evidently been hot when the power was cut off; they had burned up the oxygen before cooling. They put on their oxygen equipment when they got out of ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... of thousands of our citizens who feel the understandable satisfaction of those who have taken part in democracy and seen their hopes fulfilled. But my thoughts have been turning the past few days to those who would be watching at home, to an older fellow who will throw ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... beginning to believe the unbelievable and to understand the un- understandable. All of a sudden I understand the Germanic virtue of woman, and German philosophy, and I am no longer surprised that you of the North do not know how to love, haven't even an idea of ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... afflicted with the spiritual blindness of his class. Quite genuinely, quite seriously, he was unconscious of the human significance of beings and institutions belonging to a foreign country or even to a class other than his own. His own kind he treated as complete and understandable human creatures. All others were merely objective. As we, to a certain extent, happened to fall in the former category, he was as pleasant to us as possible—that is, he was pleasant to us in his way, but had not insight enough to guess at how ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... the layman, is another problem for the writer of popular articles. A narrative-descriptive presentation that enables the reader to visualize and follow the process, step by step, as though it were taking place before his eyes, is usually the best means of making it both understandable ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... situation during Cleveland's second administration is understandable only in the light of a series of acts which were passed between 1878 and 1893. It will be remembered that in the former year the Bland-Allison act had provided for the purchase and coinage of two million to four million dollars' worth of silver ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... lad continued to shout and yell, waving his hat, and there was no fusillade of shots from the ring of horsemen. Then, for the first time Bud made himself understandable, ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... communications from all over the Fatherland could not make clear: just why the blunt, impetuous, shocked, and astounded Kaiser dared give utterance to that disgraceful "scrap of paper" remark—inexcusable but also very understandable in the light of his knowledge of and confidence in a more astute miscreant; why France and Germany have always considered England more or less of a Tartuffe and a "Scheinheilige" (one who seems holy); and why every German—man, woman and child—so execrates ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... suffering, in affliction, went up as it were to skies of brass, yet he knew a loving Savior stood ready to pour forth his healing love, a Divine Spirit waited only the means, to lay a healing touch on sore hearts. What was needed was a simple, practical, real way to make it understandable to men, to bring them into the right environment, to make their hearts and minds receptive, to point the way to peace, joy and eternal life. He brought to bear on this problem all the practical, trained skill of the lawyer, the keen insight and common sense, the knowledge of ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... result was that while there was always a certain dainty equity about Stevenson's judgments, even when he was wrong, Henley seemed to think that on the right side the wronger you were the better. There was much that was feminine in him; and he is most understandable when surprised in those little solitary poems which speak of emotions mellowed, of sunset and a quiet end. Henley hurled himself into the new fashion of praising Colonial adventure at the expense both of the Christian and the republican traditions; but the sentiment ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... towards spiritualism demanding no real evidence whatsoever, bringing to it a kind of passionate yearning to find therein some kind of illusion that their loved ones, who are dead, still live on waiting for reunion in another world. Such a yearning is very human, very understandable, very forgivable; but these people are the enemies of true spiritualism as a new branch of scientific speculation. I would not rob them of the glamour of their faith, since, as I have just written, I have reached that time of life ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... said Thorndyke. "The opposite condition would be quite understandable, but one doesn't see exactly how this can have happened, unless there was ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... horror wrested from me was strangled by realization. And so acute was my relief, so reassuring was it to have in the midst of these mysteries some sane, understandable thing ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... (I shall continue to use my own designation for them, as clearer and more understandable than Mercer's) did not need connecting wires; they conveyed their impulses by Hertzian waves to a master receiver on the Santa Maria, which amplified them and re-broadcast them so that each of us could both send ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... thought Jack was inclined to believe that it was merely a coincidence that placing together every fourth word of the jumbled message made a dispatch having a perfectly understandable bearing on the jewel theft. It was impossible to believe that Professor Dusenberry, mild and self-effacing, could have had a hand in the attack on the diamond merchant. ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... a simple and understandable policy—without complicated or misleading clauses. You know exactly what every word means—and every word means exactly what ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... said that every theater retains its own peculiar smell. The scientific investigation of the psychology of odors is too subtle to be understandable. The question of analyzing the exudations of a nervous crowd seems interesting, but the remembrance of an anxious humanity is always present. In former times the attendant placed a small bunch of herbs and aromatic flowers on the judge's desk, and glasses ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... she saw the foot she said "Upon my word!" and when, by slow and heavy degrees, the whole of Robert's enormous bulk was at last disclosed, she drew a long breath and began to say many things, compared with which "balmy" and "crumpet" seemed quite ordinary. She dropped into understandable ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... he ought!" agreed Dan Ridley—"Where's there's fog he'd a made it foggier, and where's there's no understandin' he'd a made it less understandable. I daresay he'd a bin Prime Minister in no time- -he's just the sort. They likes a good old muddler for that work— someone as has the knack o' addlin' the people's brains an' makin' them see a straight line as though'twere ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... does, as you say, make it more understandable. Bring them to me, Doctor; let me look my ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... "It is not understandable," muttered the giant as he took up his new position and gazed with feelings of awe upon the grand scene. "I wonder if the pale-faced men in the floating islands think much about these things. Perhaps they dwell in a land which is still more wonderful than this, ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... like a person bent on making every statement perfectly clear and understandable. There was no intimation that she was so communicative because she thought she was obliged to talk. On the contrary, she welcomed the chance to give him ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... lecturer. He took possession of the platform and audience in an easy, unassuming manner, and delivered an address amusing and learned, yet understandable. And well he might, for he was not a mere painter, but one who had lectured on art to select audiences, and had sold pictures at fabulous prices. At this very moment London was asking, "Where is Custance?" and here he ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... ALL CAPS in PG e-texts, but since the meaning of German words can depend on their capitalization (e.g. 'arm' and 'Arm' mean different things) I have added commas instead to make the vocabulary more easily understandable. Short vowels are marked with [s], long vowels with [l]. '-"' is my rendering for a change of a vowel to ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... one day when her roommate was out, and demanded a show down. Well, I found out that Maggie—Margaret Louise had just repeated to Stevie every living thing that I ever said about her, just as I said it, only without the explanations and foot-notes that make any kind of conversation more understandable. ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... understand he never took at all kindly to Dickens. Yet he liked Lever and Thackeray's "Catherine," and all Dumas until he got to the Vicomte de Bragelonne. I am puzzled by his insensibility to Dickens, and I record it as a good historian should, with an admission of my perplexity. It is much more understandable that he had no love for Scott. And I suppose it was because of his ignorance of the proper pronunciation of words that he infinitely preferred any prose to ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... described as "this direction on the part of the chief executive for the destruction of 'irrelevant documents'". And one serious complaint made by the applicants about the Royal Commission Report is that what could be an understandable direction for the retention of one copy on a master file of all relevant documents has become an unacceptable instruction that irrelevant documents (related to the Antarctic flights nonetheless) should be destroyed. We ...
— Judgments of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand on Proceedings to Review Aspects of the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Mount Erebus Aircraft Disaster • Sir Owen Woodhouse, R. B. Cooke, Ivor L. M. Richardson, Duncan
... certain secret episodes which, as is the way of such things, return to find her out and bring her happiness to ruin. The character of this Janet is well and vigorously drawn, though there is perhaps little in her personality as shown here to make understandable the passion of her past. All the details of life on the land in the autumn of 1918 are given with a skill that brings into the book not only the scent of the wheat-field but the stress, emotional and economic, of those unforgettable months. Because it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... an understandable mistake on your part.' The saint regarded me kindly. 'Run along, and don't reproach yourself. The Beloved Mother is taking care of me.' He pushed his dangling arm into its stump and lo! it adhered; the blood inexplicably ceased ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... I do begin to see why you take this man as your ideal," she said, one day, to Charles Osmond, "I can not, of course, accept a great deal that He is said to have taught. When He speaks of love to men, that is understandable, one can try to obey; but when he speaks about God, then, of course, I can only think that He was deluded. You may admire Joan of Arc, and see the great beauty of her character, yet at the same time believe that ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... looked around him. The room was totally unfamiliar. For a moment, that seemed perfectly understandable. Why shouldn't the room look odd, after he ...
— Viewpoint • Gordon Randall Garrett
... suspiciously, as the two approached. Bridge saluted him in fairly understandable Spanish, asking for food, and telling the man that they had money with which to pay for a little—not much, ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... longer has to justify its pains, its susceptibility to suffering, by interpreting these things in terms of sin—it simply says, as it simply thinks, "I suffer." To the barbarian, however, suffering in itself is scarcely understandable: what he needs, first of all, is an explanation as to why he suffers. (His mere instinct prompts him to deny his suffering altogether, or to endure it in silence.) Here the word "devil" was a blessing: man had to have an omnipotent ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... thoughts, created pleasant places for her in what, to Elsie, seemed a desolate life; it made Millville not only a bearable but even a happy place to live in. Millville understood Patience and loved her; Elsie, being less understandable, was ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... do? I mean, what do they hire you for?" asked Donahue with understandable confusion and ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... then talked about them as if anyone would have done the same thing. I had complained about this oddity to Mr. Spardleton when I first came to work for him; I was used to inventions that were made in understandable ways. He had smiled and asked me to quote the last sentence of 35 U.S.C. 103, the statute that set forth the conditions for patentability. It was a good thing I had memorized the statute. I recited the last sentence, "Patentability shall ...
— The Professional Approach • Charles Leonard Harness
... religion; perhaps it does; I don't know enough about religion to say, but it seems near enough for a first shot. And when you say it doesn't take you that way, that you haven't "got" it, I can see that that expresses a fairly understandable state of mind. Of course, I know it isn't funk. If you'd happened to think of the Ultimatum first, instead of the Government, you'd have been in at the start, ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... understandable the ins and outs of this matter, I must pause a moment to describe the situation of our ranch; for it is upon the peculiarity of its situation that ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... now centred on Olive and the strange volte face in her feelings towards him. The change in her was scarcely understandable. Yet it was entirely a normal outcome of her essential character. Olive had never appreciated Clifford's value to herself until that day at Wiesbaden when she had realised his value to the woman who was ready to sacrifice her reputation ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... that all sounds are in the form of letters, or are understandable as combinations of letters. The constituent letters of a word however cannot yield any meaning, and are thus to be regarded as elements of auditory perception which serve as a means for understanding ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... the late '70s had a contribution by the then British Consul, Mr. Palgreave, on "Malay Life in the Philippines," that makes more understandable the reputation of the islands, which before the opening of the Suez were a health resort for Japan, the China coast and India. It also shows a fairness to the people uncommon in the Spanish-inspired writings of ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... shall we do to make our tariff changes strengthen business instead of weakening business? Rival protective tariff nations have answered that question. Common sense has answered it. Next to our need to make the Sherman law modern, understandable and just, our greatest fiscal need is a genuine, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... light of their meaning sublime." In a word we are growing into the Good. The Bad is not the ultimate, but is none the less real. This is better than Manicheism, the Miltonian contest between the Good Spirit and the Bad, which Wells also in his Invisible King presents; a simple theory, understandable but not to my mind subject to careful scrutiny. There is but one God, one Force, one Principle, one Spirit, and it is working its way through, expressing itself as best it can. And Evil is a partial view, one phase of undevelopment, the muck through which, by God's own law, we must come; ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... until it now stood almost opposite him, and only a few feet from shore. Thus it was that, as Mr. Fulton backed water with his left-hand oar and rammed the nose of the boat toward the shelving beach, he heard one complete sentence, distinct and understandable. ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... men, holding drag-ropes, transport their own personal belongings, upset a few books. You would have recognized their popular covers; and the anxiety, instantly shown, to recover those treasures, broke up the formation there for a few moments into something human and understandable. The wind took a few escaped leaves and blew them to me. ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... "An understandable ambition," said Cochrane. He frowned, waiting to talk to Bell, who was taking an infernally long time to focus a camera ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... which leads to viewing the parents in a new light, may enter in. It may be easily made permanent, however, if parents do not do two things: first, adjust themselves and their methods to the new social freedom of the youth, and, secondly, fling open the doors into their true selves now fully understandable by these ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... objects, like the superficial chit-chat of Lloyd's Conversation, toward trivial quarrels, like Churchill's Rosciad, toward broadly unimpeachable morals, like Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes. It is understandable that many writers, such as Joseph Warton and Christopher Smart, abandoned satire for various ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... standpoint of pathological lying. Our acquaintance with some professional criminals, particularly of the sneak-thief or pick-pocket class, has taught us that living conditions for the individual may be founded on whole careers of misrepresentation and lies—for very understandable reasons. Self-accusations may sometimes be evolved with the idea of gaining directly practical results, as when a lover or a comrade is shielded, or when there is danger of a larger crime being ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... You read the names, and the descriptions that went with them, and the whole thing—although breathtaking in concept, of course, when you really stopped to meditate on it—became rather ordinary and prosaic and somehow more understandable. ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... Presently a station was reached. The language spoken there was not her vernacular, but she understood enough to know something was being said about the baby. Then an official appeared, and there was a cry quite understandable to her: "A Brahman baby! That Christian there is kidnapping a Brahman baby!" The official stopped at the carriage door. She was pushed towards him amidst a confused chatter, a crowd gathered at the door in a moment, and someone shouted ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... He ran out a string of unprintable and almost un-understandable words. "I'll kill you! I'll do it yet! You ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... I may have to refer to them again in matters of comprehension or comparison. The whole thing is so vastly strange and abnormal that the least thing may afterwards give some guiding light or clue to something otherwise not understandable. I have always found that in recondite matters first impressions are of more real value than later conclusions. We humans place far too little reliance on instinct as against reason; and yet instinct is the great gift of Nature to all animals ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... and tended, sitting beside a wood fire in an inner chamber richly flavoured by humanity and listening to a discourse in evil but understandable German. It was a discourse upon the wrongs and the greatness of the Jewish people—and it was delivered by a compact middle-aged man with a big black beard and long-lashed but animated eyes. Beside him a very old man dozed and nodded ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... thousand instead of ten thousand. One would have thought, on the face of it, that he would have been glad; as Nelda's husband, he would share in the higher price being paid for the collection. But when you realize that Rivers was buying the collection out of Dunmore's pocket, his reaction becomes quite understandable. I daresay I signed Arnold ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... reason that the people haven't risen up and demanded a reform along these lines is because so few of them really give a hang what the inscription says. If the American Antiquarian Turn-Verein doesn't care about stating in understandable figures the date on which the cornerstone of their building was laid, the average citizen is perfectly willing to let ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... all understandable enough; but when that inquisitive tombstone artificer deliberately affirmed, in spite of many attempts to shake his memory, that the spoiling of the Talayot had taken place on the night immediately preceding our arrival in Mahon and the arrival of his most Catholic Majesty's ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... wide felt need for a worthy book of sound hygienic and medical facts for the non-medical people. The Ideal Book for this mission should be compact in form, but large enough to give the salient facts, and give these in understandable language; it must not be "loaded" with obsolete and useless junk of odds and ends which have long ceased to be even interesting; it must carry with it the stamp of genuine reliability; it should treat all the ordinary and most common forms of ailments and accidents; it must be ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... Christian Stage, the Johannine writings, are fully understandable only as posterior to St. Paul—the most enthusiastic and influential, indeed, of all our Lord's early disciples, but a convert, from the activity of a strict persecuting Pharisee, not to the earthly Jesus, of soul and body, ...
— Progress and History • Various
... the ordinary Christian usually means everlasting; why should punishment be everlasting? The worst sin that was ever sinned does not deserve everlasting punishment, and I have never yet met the Christian who would really and truly be willing to see a fellow-creature undergo it. There is no understandable sense in which justice could demand such a terrible sentence, even if it involved no more than everlasting unhappiness; how much more unthinkable it becomes if the punishment is to be everlasting, fiendish torment! ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... fights which had stirred the Indian princes out of their melancholy indifference, and tiger hunts which had, by their duration and magnificence, threatened to disrupt the efficiency of the British military service,—whimsical excesses, not understandable by his intimate acquaintances who cynically arraigned him as the ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... common—unintelligibility. Good literature is lucid to the average mind. In fact, that is its distinguishing feature. We understand what the man means. No able writer uses the same word over and over with varying sense. Alfred Henry Lewis and William Marion Reedy use the mortal mind, and their work is understandable. You can sit in judgment on their conclusions and weigh, sift and decide for yourself. They make an appeal ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... wary prowler circling at long range the twinkling embers; the crash of a far-off buck; the lumbering of some bear down to the lake to drink. The almost moveless sharp air carried a myriad fascinating scents which human nostrils were too gross to register; but which were acutely plain and understandable to ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... together in favoring its pronounced and immediate success. Aknowledge of Sterne existed among the more intelligent lovers of English literature in Germany, the leaders of thought, whose voice compelled attention for the understandable, but was powerless to create appreciation for the unintelligible among the lower ranks of readers. This knowledge and appreciation of Yorick were immediately available for the furtherance of Sterne's fame as soon as a work of popular appeal was published. The then prevailing interest ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... and quiet enough now. I don't suppose we shall be disturbed before daylight, for the enemy got more than they expected, so I may just as well sit and rest. I can watch over him just the same, and—" Serge's next utterance was not understandable if treated as words, but perfectly plain if considered as a snore, for he had sunk sideways till his head rested on the hard edge of the car, while at regular intervals he gave vent to a series of deep gruff tones which sounded as if his neck were bent at such a severe angle that there ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... "It's understandable," agreed Captain Barber, "but it's orkard. Instead o' being a mild, amiable sort o' woman, all smiles, the fear o' losing me has changed 'er into a determined, jealous woman. She told me herself it was love of me ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... follow the history. Perhaps, reported, it would not seem very lucid. There were blanks, unsaid things, twists of phrase, eloquent nothings which, wonderfully understandable in themselves, do not report well. Somehow he must have made it plain, for Esther understood it and understood him, too, in a way which we, who have never sailed with him under the moon, cannot hope to do. Faults of expression ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay |
