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Incomprehensible   /ɪŋkˌɑmprəhˈɛnsɪbəl/   Listen
Incomprehensible

adjective
1.
Incapable of being explained or accounted for.  Synonym: inexplicable.  "Left the house at three in the morning for inexplicable reasons"
2.
Difficult to understand.  Synonym: uncomprehensible.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Incomprehensible" Quotes from Famous Books



... pipe, or sing a song. Pat is merry, loves a glass at any time, is handy with the spade, and uses his mother-wit in rounding off a capital story. Jonathan is all these, and something more. He astonishes his trans-atlantic comrades by the incomprehensible manner in which the knave will turn up when he deals the "pictures;" and the neat manner in which he mends the rent in his coat sleeve; is one short of funds, he will generously lend him a safe amount until "next pay day," provided, at that time, fifty per ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... easily and gracefully the fine old French wit might turn the topics of the day, people felt vaguely beneath it all that these latter times were very far removed from the departed era and, in many respects, differed from it to an incomprehensible degree."[8] And the veteran Prince de Ligne remarked to the Comte de la Garde: "From every side come cries of Peace, Justice, Equilibrium, Indemnity.... Who will evolve order from this chaos and set a dam to the stream of claims?" ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... Grigorieff, and succeeded in converting all his fellow-workers. Finally Grigorieff's house was turned into a church for the new sect, and an illiterate woman named Vassilisa became their prophetess. Under the influence of the general excitement, she would fall into trances and give extravagant and incomprehensible discourses, while her listeners laughed, danced and wept ecstatically. By degrees the ceremonial grew more complex, and took forms worthy of a ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... moving in his own room. I knew, however, that the passage between us was locked on both sides. My old patron had said nothing to me on the subject, but I had found the door bolted and the key removed. I never was the man to intrude upon another's privacy, and respected the Vicomte's somewhat incomprehensible humour at this time. ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman

... rector had gazed at old Matthew before, he could only stare now. That the calm, sensible old man should fall into so extraordinary a delusion, was incomprehensible. He might have believed it of Deerham in general, but not of ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... and jealousies of democracy incomprehensible after this? Ambitious and continually thwarted, he could not reproach himself. He had once already tried his fortune by inventing a purgative pill, something like Morrison's, and intrusted the business operations to an old hospital chum, a house-student who afterwards ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... childhood had been hard and disciplinary, and at Cherry's age he had been concerned only with realities, with the need of food and clothes and shelter. That a life could be spoiled simply by contact with an unsympathetic personality was incomprehensible to him. The child, he told himself, had a good husband, a home and health, and undeveloped resources within herself. It was puzzling and painful to him to realize that there was needed something more—and that that something was lacking. He felt a sudden anger at Martin; ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris

... to see how it all went on? Have any deepest scientific individuals yet dived-down to the foundations of the Universe, and gauged everything there? Did the Maker take them into His counsel; that they read His groundplan of the incomprehensible All; and can say, This stands marked therein, and no more than this? Alas, not in anywise! These scientific individuals have been nowhere but where we also are; have seen some handbreadths deeper than we see into ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... Lupin? There was no evidence to that effect. And even if that was so, it did not explain the flight of the prisoner. That still remained a mystery. Amongst twenty theories which sought to explain it, not one was satisfactory. Of the escape itself, there was no doubt; an escape that was incomprehensible, sensational, in which the public, as well as the officers of the law, could detect a carefully prepared plan, a combination of circumstances marvelously dove-tailed, whereof the denouement fully justified the confident prediction ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc

... disturbed night. Shall I tell you how his rest came thus to be invaded? Why, the Nightingale, on his way from the rose-leaf, had, perhaps somewhat inconsiderately, tapped at his door, to inform him that all he could get out of the Dewdrop was (a very incomprehensible sentiment to a sleepy bird), that he was a tear wept by the Sky when it lost the Sun; and he was bound in all sincerity to add, that it seemed rather a dull and uninteresting ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff

... the Church, which those who feel cannot communicate, so is there also in the wonderful creation of sublimity and beauty of which I am speaking. To many men the very names which the Science employs are utterly incomprehensible. To speak of an idea or a subject seems to be fanciful or trifling, to speak of the views which it opens upon us to be childish extravagance; yet is it possible that that inexhaustible evolution and disposition of notes, so rich yet so simple, so intricate yet so ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge

... to torture and torment me? Dost thou not know, canst thou not see, the agony of my suffering, standing close enough to seize thee in my arms, and yet kept at a distance, to listen to what I cannot even understand? I tell thee, I am drunk with thy beauty, and mad with intolerable desire for the incomprehensible fascination of thy charm, and dost thou dream of quenching my fire by talking about friends? I want no friendship from thee. I will be more than a friend to thee, or less: aye! I would give all the friendship in the three worlds for a single drop ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain

... Ball. On my advice, Carrie put on the same dress that she looked so beautiful in at the Mansion House, for it had occurred to me, being a military ball, that Mr. Perkupp, who, I believe, is an officer in the Honorary Artillery Company, would in all probability be present. Lupin, in his usual incomprehensible language, remarked that he had heard it was a "bounders' ball." I didn't ask him what he meant though I didn't understand. Where he gets these expressions from I don't know; he certainly doesn't learn them ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith

... maid, tall, thin, yellow, strictly proper, cold-mannered, a conversationist, and who prided herself upon spirituality. But more wonderful still, after he did marry her, he actually loved her —what an incomprehensible being is man in ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... universe is distinctly anti-human. The term inhuman does not express my meaning, anti-human is better; outre-human, in the sense of beyond, outside, almost grotesque in its attitude towards, would nearly convey it. Everything is anti-human. How extraordinary, strange, and incomprehensible are the creatures captured out of the depths of the sea! The distorted fishes; the ghastly cuttles; the hideous eel-like shapes; the crawling shell-encrusted things; the centipede-like beings; monstrous forms, to see which gives a shock to the brain. They shock ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies

... compared with the love and wisdom of men. It is well known that the wisdom of angels, when thus compared, is ineffable; also it will be seen in what follows that to men who are in natural love, this wisdom is incomprehensible. It appears ineffable and incomprehensible because it is of ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg

... deer meat with incomprehensible swiftness, at the same time arranging the fire so that it rapidly burned down to a firm, strong, level bed of coals, and by the time the bed of coals were ready, the meat was prepared in thick steaks to ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand

... originality in our sense of the word, simply reproducing a familiar circle of figures, and even, when it suits his purpose, making use of the details left him by his predecessors. The excellence which, in spite of all this, can nevertheless be attained, will be the more incomprehensible to people born without the artistic sense, the more learned and intelligent in other respects they are. The artistic aim of Ariosto is brilliant, living action, which he distributes equally through the whole of his great poem. For this ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... establishment was a nine days' wonder in the quartier. It is a busy thoroughfare at its western end, is the avenue de la Grande Armee, crowded with bicyclists and with a multitude of creatures fearfully and wonderfully clad, who do incomprehensible things in connection with motor-carriages. Also there are big cafes in plenty, whose waiters must be smoothly shaven: and moreover, at the time when Hippolyte came into his own, the porte Maillot station of the Metropolitain had already ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various

... human race. This sort of stuff, however, could only appeal to the illiterate; for intellectual and educated persons something more was required. And so it came about that a system, based originally upon the quite incomprehensible Book of Changes, generally regarded as the oldest portion of the Confucian Canon, was gradually elaborated and brought to a finite state during the eleventh and twelfth centuries of our era. According to this system, there was a time, almost beyond the reach of expression in figures, when ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles

... Both of these authorities speak of the vision of comprehension. Hence Dionysius premises immediately before the words cited, "He is universally to all incomprehensible," etc. Chrysostom likewise after the words quoted says: "He says this of the most certain vision of the Father, which is such a perfect consideration and comprehension as the Father has ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... followed us far, gathering the tribes and leading them forward to pilfer; but the ceremony they went through when the others were gone was most incomprehensible, and seemed to express no good intentions. The two old men moving slowly, in opposite directions, made an extensive circuit of our camp; the one waving a green branch over his head and occasionally shaking it violently at us, and throwing dust towards us, now and then sitting down ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... those rights to which as guests and strangers you may feel yourselves entitled, we will furthermore explain that we are here this night, prepared by deep research and accurate investigation, to examine, analyze, and thoroughly determine the indefinable spirit—the incomprehensible qualities and nature—of those inestimable treasures of the palate, the wines, ales, and liqueurs of this goodly metropolis: by so doing to advance not more our own designs than the true welfare of that unearthly sovereign whose reign is over us ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... Skippy refused to take her seriously. There were boys even younger than he who wore girls' jewelry, who wrote and received what were called "mash notes," and who flaunted these sentimentalities openly. He knew such incomprehensible males did exist. There were three on his block and he had thrashed them all soundly and been thrashed for having thrashed them, which of course convinced him in his biblical estimate that women were created for ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... his neighbor, but was scarcely conscious of in himself. At length, when her fit of inspiration came, she spoke, for the first few moments in a low voice and not invariably distinct utterance. Her discourse gave evidence of an imagination hopelessly entangled with her reason; it was a vague and incomprehensible rhapsody, which, however, seemed to spread its own atmosphere round the hearer's soul, and to move his feelings by some influence unconnected with the words. As she proceeded, beautiful but shadowy images would sometimes be seen, ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... been abandoned, and expects better things from the new pair: Firm Government and Voluntary Recruiting. But sceptics are unconvinced that the Government will abandon the leniency prompted by "the insane view of creating an atmosphere in which something incomprehensible ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch

... it is clear that the entire wisdom of the angels in the three heavens has been imparted by the Lord to our Word, and in its inmost there is the wisdom of the angels of the third heaven, which is incomprehensible and ineffable to man, because full of mysteries and treasures of Divine verities. These lie stored up in each particular and in all the particulars of our Word. And as Divine truth is the Lord in the heavens, so the Lord Himself is present, and may be said to dwell in all ...
— Spiritual Life and the Word of God • Emanuel Swedenborg

... approached, all that moved on the horizon of the plains or woods, was the unmistakable enemy.... But to-day you can no longer tell.... You have to acquaint yourself with a civilization of which you disapprove, to appear to understand a thousand incomprehensible things.... Thus, it seems evident that henceforth the whole world no longer belongs to the master, that his property conforms to unintelligible limits.... It becomes necessary, therefore, first of ...
— Our Friend the Dog • Maurice Maeterlinck

... cast a glance upon a few years of my past life, it appears to me mysteriously incomprehensible that I should be where I am now. I confess sincerely that, although I have never labored for it, still, something in me always dreamed of it. Once, when I was lying on the floor, my mother said to my brother John, without ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... stinginess, which he writhed under, he regarded him with mingled reverence and terror. "A strange person, your master," observed I. "Signor," replied the faithful Sancho Panza, "e veramente grand uomo, ma da non potersi comprendere." "He is truly a great man, but quite incomprehensible." It was edifying to observe the awful importance with which Antonio bore the instrument nightly intrusted to his charge to carry to and from the theatre. He considered it an animated something, whether demon or angel he was unable to determine, but this he firmly believed, that it could speak ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... again into the high road. Or, taking the other side, he would walk through the marshes to Gravesend, return by Chalk church, and stop always to have greeting with a comical old monk who for some incomprehensible reason sits carved in stone, cross-legged with a jovial pot, over the porch of that sacred edifice. To another drearier churchyard, itself forming part of the marshes beyond the Medway, he often took friends to show them the dozen small tombstones of various sizes adapted to the respective ages of ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... narrowed. "Until this hour I never knew the name of that officer. I never thought to ask. I never thought of the mistake lying there. The mistake! All these months I have thought of it as a mistake—as one of those misunderstandings, mishappenings, accidental, incomprehensible, that wound and blister human life! I never saw it in a lightning flash for what ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... be misunderstood or not comprehended instantly, they must be defined. At this point the arguer has to exercise considerable judgment both in determining what words to define and in choosing a definition that is accurate and clear. Synonyms are almost always untrustworthy or as incomprehensible as the original word, and other dictionary definitions are usually framed either in too technical language to be easily grasped or in too general language to apply inevitably to the ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee

... December, after the affair at Chickasaw, except a short letter a few days ago, thanking him for the kind manner of his transmitting to me the appointment of brigadier-general. I know that in Washington I am incomprehensible, because at the outset of the war I would not go it blind and rush headlong into a war unprepared and with an utter ignorance of its extent and purpose. I was then construed unsound; and now that I insist on war pure and ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... Journey increased the interest in the incomprehensible Shandy. Lange's new edition of Zckert's translation has been noted, and before long Bode[9] was induced to undertake a German rendering of the earlier and longer novel. This translation was finished in the summer of 1774, the preface being dated "End of August." The foreword is mainly concerned ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer

... bridge, for example at Pesth, which is not demanded from a well-dressed person - nor from the Czigany, who have frequently no dress at all - and whose insouciance stands in striking contrast with the trembling submission of the peasants. The Gypsy, wherever you find him, is an incomprehensible being, but nowhere more than in Hungary, where, in the midst of slavery, he is free, though apparently one step lower than the lowest slave. The habits of the Hungarian Gypsies are abominable; their hovels appear sinks of the vilest ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... which young Tobit holds in his hand. It is rather tawny in color, as if it had been painted on a pine board and the wood had asserted itself from below. It is a charming picture, with all the great Roman's inevitable perfection of design; but it is incomprehensible that critics, M. Viardot among them, should call it the first in rank of Raphael's Virgins in Glory. There are none which can dispute that title with Our Lady of San Sisto, unearthly and supernatural ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... considered her the dull member of his flock. "Poor Fanny!" he often said, until her sudden fame overwhelmed him with surprise as well as exultation. Only his friend, her beloved "Daddy Crisp" of the letters, appreciated her; himself a disappointed dramatic author, soured by what he felt to be an incomprehensible failure, yet of fine critical talent, with kind and wise ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... the southwest (still inhabited sparsely by Hottentot and Bushman tribes) and a few patches of the inner Congo basin" (p. 15). Throughout Africa, north of the Bantu border line, the traveller meets with numerous languages widely different and mutually incomprehensible whereas with a knowledge of one Bantu language it is not difficult to understand the structure and even the vocabulary of others. The importance of this language family in Africa is therefore obvious. The author defines clearly the special and peculiar characteristics of Bantu languages. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... Well, for two of them, I know them to bee as true bred Cowards as euer turn'd backe: and for the third if he fight longer then he sees reason, Ile forswear Armes. The vertue of this Iest will be, the incomprehensible lyes that this fat Rogue will tell vs, when we meete at Supper: how thirty at least he fought with, what Wardes, what blowes, what extremities he endured; and in the reproofe ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... declared that the prophecies of Daniel and the Revelation were incomprehensible mysteries. But Christ directed His disciples to the words of the prophet Daniel concerning events to take place in their time, and said, "Whoso readeth, let him understand."(570) And the assertion that the Revelation is a mystery, not to be understood, is contradicted ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... hours, while I tried in vain to save him, this weird drum filled my ears with its monotonous, intermittent and incomprehensible tone, and I felt lay hold of my bones fear, real fear, hideous fear, in the presence of this beloved corpse, in this hole scorched by the sun, surrounded by four mountains of sand, and two hundred leagues from any French settlement, ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... the vessels of the northern patrol fleet was therefore the first and, as it proved, the only lasting result of Camara's move. What the object was of that singular "vagabondaggio," as it is not inaptly called by an Italian critic, is to the author incomprehensible, to use also the qualifying word of the same foreign writer. That the intention was merely to provoke us to some "eccentric" movement, by playing upon our fears about our forces at Manila, would be perfectly reconcilable with going as far as Port Said, and remaining there for some ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan

... gratification at being a cause, at the perception that so striking a transformation as that of the newspaper into fragments has been effected by means of his own activity. Other occupations of this sort, which are taken up again and again with a persistency incomprehensible to an adult, are the shaking of a bunch of keys, the opening and closing of a box or purse (thirteenth month); the pulling out and emptying, and then the filling and pushing in, of a table-drawer; the heaping up and the strewing about of garden-mold or gravel; the turning ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer

... among these people, of flattening the head, we have already spoken. It is one of those instances of human caprice, like the crippling of the feet of females in China, which are quite incomprehensible. This custom prevails principally among the tribes on the sea-coast, and about the lower parts of the rivers. How far it extends along the coast we are not able to ascertain. Some of the tribes, both north and south of the Columbia, ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... turned pale, and murmured some incomprehensible words. Anna, however, who had up to this time been turned toward the window, suddenly looked at the two speakers, and fixed her great eyes questioningly ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... the meaning of this?" cried Carleton. "I am burning with heat, and yet I have not the slightest moisture on my skin. All these signs are incomprehensible. For God's sake, sound ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... the most popular of all Poe's poems, originally published in the American Whig Review for February, 1845. Sometimes the meaning is more obscure, as in Ulalume, which, to most people, is quite incomprehensible, and yet to all readers of poetic feeling is among the most characteristic, and, therefore, the most fascinating, of its ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... man, who left on record a letter which reads as follows:—"My study of antiquities has kept me in constant thought of the perpetual fluctuation of everything. The whole art is really to live all the days of our life. Admire the Creator and all His works, to us incomprehensible, and do all the good you can on earth; and take the chance ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... this goodly frame, this World, Of Heaven and Earth consisting, and compute Their magnitudes—this Earth, a spot, a grain, An atom, with the Firmament compared And all her numbered stars, that seem to roll Spaces incomprehensible (for such Their distance argues, and their swift return Diurnal) merely to officiate light Round this opacous Earth, this punctual spot, One day and night, in all her vast survey Useless besides—reasoning, I oft admire, How Nature, wise and frugal could commit Such disproportions, with superfluous ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... who does not allow his thought to be determined by experience falls a prey to fancy, that is, thought, which cannot be suppressed, assumes a mythological aspect: superstition takes the place of reason, dull gazing at something incomprehensible is regarded as the highest goal of the spirit's efforts, and every conscious activity of the spirit is subordinated to visionary conditions artificially brought about. But that every conceit may ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... native of Spain. Supposed to be an Aztec epithet, cac-chopina, that is, "prickly shoes," applied to the Spanish conquerors from their wearing spurs, which to the Indians were strange and incomprehensible appendages. ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... frown crept over the beautiful face. "You talk as foolishly as a child," she said with contempt. "You know nothing of the subject you are discussing, therefore anything I might say would sound incomprehensible. The grossness of the flesh stifles and kills the subtle workings of the spirit. To you life is only a pleasure ground, and the more your own personal satisfaction is obtainable, the more you cling to its spurious enjoyments. If you once cut yourself adrift ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)

... cut off his allowance; they had a hundred other plans for his discomfiture. With the mother it was only talk; but the father meant what he said. He was a good but hard man, averse to compromises, and violent in his anger; his son knew it and feared him. It was incomprehensible that the lad should have ventured upon such ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various

... expression than ever. The effect was perfectly startling, and repulsive in the extreme; and after staring at the child for a moment, and all but dropping the flower-pot he held in his hands, he broke forth into a torrent of words, mingling German and broken English in a manner which made them all but incomprehensible to the poor little ones. But they knew well enough what brought them forth, and they had no explanation to offer. It was their secret, and must remain a secret, so they thought, if the sacrifice were to ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews

... John Locke's Constitution for North Carolina, and Jeremy Bentham's conundrums on Legislation, to speak reverently of what we cannot speak irreverently of, a truly great and incomprehensible mind, whose thoughts are problems, and whose words—when they are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... of his face being well concealed by fat and by judicious arrangements of mustache and side-whiskers. By profession he was a lawyer, and had been most successful as adviser to wholesale thieves on depredations bent or in search of immunity for depredations done. It was incomprehensible to him why he was unpopular with the masses. It irritated him that they could not appreciate his purely abstract point of view on life; it irritated him because his unpopularity with them meant that there were limits, and very ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... the common belief of the people. Into this has the mystery of Dharma turned, in the thoughts of the Burmese Buddhists, for no one can believe the incomprehensible. A man has a soul, and it passes from life to life, as a traveller from inn to inn, till at length it is ended in heaven. But not till he has attained heaven in his heart will he attain heaven ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding

... while his feeling towards Miltoun's family was not yet in existence. Having lived from hand to mouth, and in many countries, since he left Westminster School, he had now practically no class feelings. An attitude of hostility to aristocracy because it was aristocracy, was as incomprehensible to him as an attitude ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... attributed much of her own power to supernatural influences. In this respect, at least, she was no farther advanced than the witches of older days, and if her inmost convictions took a shape which would have seemed incomprehensible to those predecessors of hers, this was to be attributed in part to the innate superiority of her nature, and partly, also, to the high degree of cultivation in which her mental faculties ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... the possibility of the universe itself considered as a whole; because in this case the ground of explanation must lie out of and beyond the world, and cannot, therefore, be an object of possible experience. Now, I may admit the existence of an incomprehensible being of this nature—the object of a mere idea, relatively to the world of sense; although I have no ground to admit its existence absolutely and in itself. For if an idea (that of a systematic and complete unity, of which I shall presently speak more particularly) ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... instantly taking his cue from his wife,—for he was really a very nice man,—"we are very glad." To be sure, in his manner there was a certain stiffness, for a man cannot always change completely in a moment, as a woman can; but Mr. Gilton was too perplexed to notice this. In the incomprehensible way that one's mind has of clinging to unimportant things at great crises, while he was fuming with rage and bothered with this strange feeling which was not precisely rage, he was wondering how in the world he was going to sit down with that ridiculous turkey, with its ridiculous legs, ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull

... who, amid the ruins of his country, inaugurated in France an era of licentiousness such as she had never known—an incomprehensible mass of contradictions—a kingly presence with the soul of a Caliban, statesman and sinner, high-minded and low-living, spending his days as a sovereign, a role which he played to perfection, and his nights as a sot ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... personal love, truth, light, holiness, blessedness. These realities, as concentrated in their incomprehensible absoluteness, are the elements of his infinite being. Secondly, these spiritual substances, as diffused through the worlds of the universe and experienced in the souls of moral creatures, are the medium of God's revelation of himself, the direct presence and working of his Logos. Thirdly, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... looked first at the mysterious stranger, who was as quiet and silent as ever, and then at the porters, who were beginning to be irritated by these incomprehensible complications. ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... but in one nature and substance, in one glory and kingdom undivided. He then is in three persons one God, without beginning, and without end, eternal and everlasting, increate, immutable and incorporeal, invisible, infinite, incomprehensible, alone good and righteous, who created all things out of nothing, whether visible or invisible. First, he made the heavenly and invisible powers, countless multitudes, immaterial and bodiless, ministering spirits of the majesty of God. Afterward he created ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... being across the palings. A hand darted through them and caught Pocket's wrist as in a vice. And he looked up over the spikes into a gnarled face tinged with fear and fury, and working spasmodically at the suppression of some incomprehensible emotion. ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... homage to Edward and retaining their lands under his protection and countenance, as being more truly patriotic and farsighted than continuing the old struggle for supremacy among themselves. This was a policy utterly incomprehensible both to the boys and the old man, and stirred the blood of the ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green

... incomprehensible fatality, the arrival of the Spaniards in this new world seems to have been the unhappy epoch of the destruction of all the nations of America, {291} not only by war, but by nature itself. As it is but ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... there could have been no just grounds to fear an invasion of Great Britain or Ireland, especially when other intelligence seemed to point out much more probable scenes of action. But the last resolution is still more incomprehensible to those who know not exactly the basis on which it was raised. The number of ships of war in actual commission amounted to two hundred and fifty, having on board fifty thousand seamen and marines. Intelligence and repeated ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... to view? No—nothing of the kind. This Revelation was concerning "things present, (A.D. 96,) and things to come." We see, then, if this 13th verse, as we are told, does represent the departed saints any where, or time, since A.D. 96, and will be fulfilled at the resurrection, it is yet incomprehensible. Is it not clear that it only has reference to all the righteous saints in these messages from Oct. 1844? How can it mean the literal dead? Is it not clear that the dead know not any thing; therefore the blessing ...
— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates

... land and did a given job. Travel was restricted to a radius of a few miles. There was no money; there was no necessity for it, since the government of the Great Nobles took all produce and portioned it out again according to need. It was communism on a vast and—incomprehensible as it may seem to the modern mind—workable scale. Their minds were as different from ours as their bodies were similar; the concept "freedom" would have ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett

... curious," he replied; "in my case it is incomprehensible. I possess a diploma for modern languages. I won my scholarship purely on the strength of my French and German. The correctness of my construction, the purity of my pronunciation, was considered at my college to be quite remarkable. Yet, when I come abroad hardly anybody understands ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome

... am I saying!" he broke in upon himself. "I never dreamed of this. It is incomprehensible. That I should meet you so, ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton

... qualities of matter, than the words of a language have to the things they denote,) are followed by a perception of the existence and qualities of the bodies by which the impressions are made;—that all the steps of this process are equally incomprehensible."[25] There are at least two points which are well worthy of being attended to in this quotation. First, Mr Stewart says that Reid "exhibited the difficulty of the problem of perception, in all its magnitude, by a plain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... human body is the bicycle. And our individual and incomprehensible self is the rider thereof. And seeing that the universe is another bicycle riding full tilt, we are bound to suppose a rider for that also. But we needn't say what sort of rider. When I see a cockroach ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... in panic terror of that ego which tenanted the shell of functioning, sensitive stuff called Michael Lanyard: he was afraid of the strange, silent, incomprehensible Self lurking occult in him, that masked mysterious Self which in its inscrutable whim could make him fine or make him base, that Self impalpable and elusive as any shadow yet invincibly strong, his master and his fate, in one ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... were the undercurrents and the cross-sections of life that were to be found, amazingly contradictory, amazingly incomprehensible, once one scratched beneath the surface of the poverty and the squalor, and, yes, the crime, amongst the hiving thousands of New York's East Side! In the days—not so very long ago—when, as the ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... prepared to go forward under Bracewell's guidance. Old Bob, his hut-keeper and factotum, dropped behind to drive on the baggage-horse at a greater speed than Toby was inclined to move. I heard him talking to the black in a lingo which was utterly incomprehensible ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston

... leaning out of a window, wanted to know what the Artist was doing. I explained our interest in the arch. Had there been a gate in her grandmother's time? Why, when so much of a former age had disappeared, did this half-arch remain? The woman was puzzled. It was incomprehensible that anyone should be interested in the arch, which had always been there. I thought I would try ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... is as incomprehensible to me as if you'd tattooed yourself; but," he added philosophically, clasping his hands behind his head and staring up into the sky, "every man knows his own fun. There's a friend of mine who knows this ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane

... something that was. Suppose that some day, when married, he again met her? In spite of everything, he did not believe that she had ceased to love him; somewhere she still kept her faith, martyred by the incomprehensible fate which had torn her from his arms. To meet her again would be to forget every tie save that holiest which made one of his spirit ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... that this jeunesse, in spite of the clothes it wore, in spite of the memories these clothes evoked, was wildly gay. This seems incomprehensible, but it is true. Explain if you can that Dance of Death at the beginning of the fifteenth century, which, with all the fury of a modern galop, led by Musard, whirled its chain through the very Cemetery of the Innocents, and left amid its tombs fifty ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... still pass for a young man, though his grave disposition made him feel older than he was. Of the three melancholic men in whose society she chiefly lived, her father was selfish and morose; Griggs was gentle, but silent and incomprehensible, though he exerted an undoubted influence over her; Reanda alone, though naturally melancholy, was at once gentle, companionable, and talkative ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... opponents. That a party whose history was inwoven with the glory of the Republic should now come to its end in a quarrel over the status of the negro in a country where his labor was not wanted, was to many of its members as incomprehensible as it was sorrowful and exasperating. They might have restored the party to harmony, but at the very height of the factional contest, the representatives of both sections were hurried forward to the National Convention of 1860, with principle ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... any conception of what happens in this case, than I can of what takes place when the motion of particles of my nervous matter, caused by the impact of a similar ball gives rise to the state of consciousness I call pain. In ultimate analysis everything is incomprehensible, and the whole object of science is simply to reduce the fundamental incomprehensibilities to ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... with growing interest, and no doubt having some vague expectation of a tale of the Camorra. To him Naples had always seemed of all cities the most elusive and incomprehensible, a laughing, thieving, begging, mandolin-playing, music-and-murder haunted metropolis, about which anything was plausible; and this impression was not unique, as no inconsiderable proportion of Mr. Lindley's fellow-countrymen ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... that I was in danger, away went Peter, very sad about me, but even more distressed lest he should forget what he was sent for. He kept repeating the words over and over as he went, till they became by mere repetition something perfectly incomprehensible, so that when he reached Melazzo nobody could make head or tail of his message. Group after group gathered about and interrogated him, and at last, by means of pantomime, discovered that his master was very ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... years, arithmetic, fortification; but nothing useless of Latin and the like. Spartan training, too, which shall make a soldier of him. Whereas young Fritz has vivacities, a taste for music, finery, and excursions into forbidden realms distasteful and incomprehensible to Friedrich Wilhelm. We perceive the first small cracks of incurable division in the royal household, traceable from Fritz's sixth or seventh year; a divulsion splitting ever wider, new offences super-adding themselves. This Fritz ought to fashion himself according to his father's pattern, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... their tremendous booming and their disastrous power. Shells from the palace walls fell upon us thick and fast. No lightning's flash can accomplish such ruin as the modern ordnance projectile. A few centuries back the thought would have been incomprehensible; even so the visionary and ridiculed idea of to-day may be realised in the future. The shots descended, a veritable storm of lead, and several times the clouds of choking dust they set up enveloped us; but we were undaunted, and continued to work the Maxim, spreading its death-dealing ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... death, will reveal himself to us as clearly as Adam knew him before the fall. God alone, however, can comprehend himself—for the finite spirit, even truth unveiled is mystery, and ecstasy, unresisting devotion to the incomprehensible, the culmination of knowledge. In mediaeval philosophy the subject looks longingly upward to the infinite object of his thought, expecting that the latter will bend down toward him or lift him upward toward itself; ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... vii.) says that the omnipotent, all-creating, and invisible God has fixed truth and the holy, incomprehensible Logos in men's hearts; and this Logos is the architect and creator of the Universe. In the first Apology (c. xxxii.), he says that the seed ([Greek: sperma]) from God is the Logos, which dwells in those who believe in God. So ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

... and cowering wild glances had filled them first with amazement, then with a doubt of his genuineness, as men are wont to suspect the sincerity of every great passion. His Spanish, too, became so mixed up with German that the better half of his statements remained incomprehensible. He tried to propitiate them by calling them hochwohlgeboren herren, which in itself sounded suspicious. When admonished sternly not to trifle he repeated his entreaties and protestations of loyalty and innocence again in German, obstinately, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... and many a sumptuous private mansion which we could not have entered without a formal invitation in incomprehensible Latin, in the olden time, when the owners lived there—and we probably wouldn't have got it. These people built their houses a good deal alike. The floors were laid in fanciful figures wrought in mosaics of many-colored marbles. At the threshold your ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... are in the British Secret Service? No?—Well! I don't profess to understand you English people, and you seem to me more incomprehensible than any I have known. Not that I ever believed that you were a mere tradesman. But what shall I say to M. le Comte de Cambray?" he added, after a slight pause, during which a new and strange train of thought altered the expression ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... what will you have? There are many things in this incomprehensible world which are poisonous, and which, for that reason, are the more alluring. This is peculiarly so with women. He does well who avoids them; they bewilder our reason and make our hearts sick, but we do not flee from them. We pursue them, and the poison ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... as this is incomprehensible, inexplicable, impossible, except in connection with one man! There is only one individual in the world capable of making a dead man seem to be alive after ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... of this remark, overheard by the stool-pigeon, Morgan, and afterwards reported to the prosecution, that Elmer Smith was hailed to prison charged with murder in the first degree. His enemies had been certain all along that his incomprehensible delusion about the law being the same for the poor man as the rich would bring its own punishment. It did; there can no longer be any doubt ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin

... expect me to see it, dear," said Mrs. Hartley, rising from her chair. "It is simply incomprehensible, that you should first agree to wait a month, and then, after a few hours, insist on giving such a pointed refusal. Think, think, my darling!" she went on, laying a caressing hand on Lettice's shoulder. "Suppose that ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... you are certainly the most incomprehensible fellow this afternoon," exclaimed Roy. ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.

... hand. They were all that remained now of his youth, of the past. Not a ghost, not a remembered fragrance nor accent, rose from the delicate paper. They had been the property of a man dead twelve years ago, slain by incomprehensible mischance; and the man in the contracted cabin, vibrating from the elemental and violent forces without, forebore to open them. He burned the packet to a blackish ash ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer

... Von Barwig," and Helene spoke now with less show of wounded dignity, "I do not understand. It is simply incomprehensible, but it amounts to this—you must not refuse this cheque. If you do, I—I shall be compelled to—to refuse to go on with my lessons," and Helene held out the cheque toward him. Von Barwig looked at her; his ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein

... one of the names which we give to that eternal, infinite, and incomprehensible being, the Creator of all things, who preserves and governs everything by his almighty power and wisdom, and is the ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... was just on the point of being attended with the usual consequences, when, taking another peep through a crevice, constructed for putting into effect a more efficient system of examination, he beheld a phenomenon as unlooked for as it was incomprehensible. He rubbed his eyes, strongly persuaded that some rigorous discipline was necessary. He pinched his fingers, shook himself—was he really awake? or—he took another peep, still it was there; nor crossings, ejaculations, nor other established contrivances had any effect. The vision that caused all ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... murdered the captain and attempted to shoot Stephen, with the intention of obtaining possession of the whole of the gold, the latter should have nursed him back to life instead of finishing him at once, seemed to them an incomprehensible ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty

... exceedingly fine and hard, with sharp angles and true surfaces. They were laid with great exactness, without visible mortar or cement, yet somehow fastened together so that the joints are hardly perceptible, and sometimes the two surfaces coalesce in a most incomprehensible manner. Such admirable brick-work I have never seen before or since. There was no sculpture here, but abundance of bold projections and finely-worked mouldings. Traces of buildings exist for many miles in every direction, ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin

... man should have symbolized so harmless a phenomenon as the changes of the moon, by so offensive a one as the dismemberment or castration of the nearest relative. So the nature mythologists also, and Siecke in particular, have thought that primitive man has 'immediately regarded' the (to him) incomprehensible waning of the moon as a dismemberment, while this is psychologically quite unthinkable unless this image, which is taken from earthly life, should have likewise originated in human life ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... everything, although he was entirely free from any assumption of the poetical role. That Browning, with his carefully brushed hat, smart coat, and fine society manners was a poet, always seemed to me far more incomprehensible than his poetry, which I think most people would have taken straightforwardly and read with a fair amount of ease, if certain enthusiasts had not founded societies for making his crooked places plain, and (to me) his plain places ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... his heart of hearts has not been only too well aware that they are nocturnal, exclusively nocturnal. The shadows of evening bring with them visitors; prying, curious visitors; grim and ghastly visitors; grey, esoteric visitors; visitors from a world seemingly inconsequent, wholly incomprehensible. Mrs. Gordon did not believe in ghosts. She scoffed at the idea of ghosts, and, like so many would-be wits, unreasonably brave by day, and the reverse by night, had hitherto attributed banshees and the like to cats and other animals. But now,—now ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell

... sleeved-waistcoat" sped the Reading on with a rapidity quite beyond anticipation, when the time, which had been carefully marked at the commencement of the Reading, came to be notified at its conclusion. That the merest first rehearsal should have run off thus glibly seemed just simply incomprehensible. With the sense of this surprise still fresh upon us, the tentative Reading being at the time only a few seconds completed, everything was explained, however, by a half-whispered remark made, to the present writer, in passing, by the Novelist—made by him half-weariedly, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... the defeat. He spected that, hevin showd hisself through all the Northern States, ther ought to hev ben enthoosiasm enough evolved to hev carried em without trouble. The fault, he remarked, coodent be with his policy. Ther wuz suthin so grand, so sublimely simple in it, that it wuz incomprehensible to him why the people hedn't at once adopted it. "Why, look at it," sed he. "I offer the people uv the North peace, on the simple condishn uv sayin nothin more about the war, or the mutual trouble which ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby

... to play the game of the bitterest enemies of Irish freedom. But so it was, to the bitter sorrow of Ireland; and many a blood-stained chapter has been written because of it. Whether a fatal blindness or an insatiate personal rancour dictated this incomprehensible policy Providence alone knows, but oceans of woe, and misery and malediction have flowed from it as surely as that the sun is ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... incurable antagonism to most of the ideas that Americans hold to be sound. Thus If all between two stools—but it is more comfortable there on the floor than sitting up tightly. I am wholly devoid of public spirit or moral purpose. This is incomprehensible to many men, and they seek to remedy the defect by crediting me with purposes of their own. The only thing I respect is intellectual honesty, of which, of course, intellectual courage is a necessary part. A Socialist ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... plainly. Also, she did not trouble to conceal from me the fact that I was necessary to her, and that she was keeping me for some end which she had in view. Consequently there became established between us relations which, to a large extent, were incomprehensible to me, considering her general pride and aloofness. For example, although she knew that I was madly in love with her, she allowed me to speak to her of my passion (though she could not well have showed her contempt for me more than by permitting me, unhindered and unrebuked, to mention ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... with their vastness and complexity. The hulks are so enormous, the forces are so mighty, the laws are so wide-sweeping, and at times so pitiless, the distances are so over-mastering, even the uses and beauties are so bewildering, that we bow in mute and almost abject submission to the incomprehensible all; of which we hesitate to affirm aught, except what has been manifest to our observant senses and connected by our inseparable associations. We forget what our overmastering thought has done in subjecting this universe ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... mean? I fail to understand again," Miuesov interrupted. "Some sort of dream again. Something shapeless and even incomprehensible. What is excommunication? What sort of exclusion? I suspect you are ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... Monkey, Nuts" business, incomprehensible and startling as it might have been to any outsider, merely emphasised the difference in sound between various letters. B, C, D, E, P, and T; J and K; M and N, among others, are very much alike when pronounced by themselves; but "butter" could not well be mistaken for "Charlie," neither could ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling

... stars. I hold this to be more easily comprehensible than when the mind is confused by an almost endless number of circles, which is necessarily the case with those who keep the earth in the middle of the universe. Although this may appear incomprehensible and contrary to the opinion of many, I shall, if God wills, make it clearer than the sun, at least to those who are ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... could be analyzed. But the investigators learned from the simpler mechanisms, and found themselves able to take the next step forward to more complex ones. However, it still remained a fact that the majority of the devices were as incomprehensible to the investigators as would the function of a transistor have been to James ...
— Dead Giveaway • Gordon Randall Garrett

... Figure is onely knowne to hymselfe, and to one Sonne of man, which hath a humane bodie glorifyed and without sinne: and the brightnes thereof wee see but as in a glasse, and not cleerely as it is, for that it is incomprehensible ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna

... Mr. Lowne believes to be the organ of smell, or of some other, perhaps new, sense. It is quite evident, therefore, that insects may possess senses which give them a knowledge of that which we can never perceive, and enable them to perform acts which to us are incomprehensible. In the midst of this complete ignorance of their faculties and inner nature, is it wise for us to judge so boldly of their powers by a comparison with our own? How can we pretend to fathom the profound mystery of their ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... very sad and grave, and Meg, suddenly opening her eyes, found him regarding her with this incomprehensible expression. ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... ignorance of them has unfortunately wrecked many a man and many a woman, while a little knowledge of a subject generally ignored by the masses would have enabled numbers of people to have understood many things which they believed to be quite incomprehensible, or which were not thought ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana

... Djalma, who for some moments had kept his eye riveted on the fatal mark, was unable to pronounce a word, or make the least movement: his powers of thought seemed to fail him, in presence of this incomprehensible fact. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... truth—this kind of mind did not become vulgar, but very tolerant of vulgarity, even fond of it in some forms; and on the outside, visibly infected by it, deeply enough; the curious result, in its combination of elements, being to most people wholly incomprehensible. It was as if a cable had been woven of blood-crimson silk, and then tarred on the outside. People handled it, and the tar came off on their hands; red gleams were seen through the black, underneath, at the places where it had been strained. Was ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... There was also a telephonic device and occasionally he would discharge a silent signal radiance—a curious intermittent green flare of light. His charts of the topography of New York City were to me incomprehensible hieroglyphics—mathematical formula, no doubt; the co-ordinates of altitudes and contours of our world-space in its relation to the mountainous terrain of his world which stood mingled here with the New York ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings

... fancied that the world had been created without any other purpose than supporting painters, the rest of humanity was made to serve them as models, and he was shocked at this incomprehensible modesty. Ah, where could they find now the beauties of Greece, the calm models of sculptors, the pale Venetian ladies painted by Titian, the graceful Flemish women of Rubens, and the dainty, sprightly beauties of Goya? Beauty was eclipsed forever behind the veils of hypocrisy and ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... open to the charge, however, if the resemblances which I have pointed out in the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, and those disclosed by the following melodies from his Ninth, should turn out through some incomprehensible revelation to ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... to settle down for good; but the fog of London choked lungs used to soft airs; he heard the call of the sun and was away again to seek adventure in the broiling reaches of the Caribbean. A man of restless, wild spirit, breathing inconsistencies incomprehensible to the conventions of Whitehall! And his son had turned a Cromwellian, who, in poverty, sought refuge in America when Charles II. came to the throne; and from him, in the vicissitudes of five generations, ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... allayed with the sweetness of Courtesy and Respect: a deep and stable Resolution founded on Humilitie without any Baseness ... a generous confidence, and a great inclination to Heroical deeds; all these conspire to compleat it, with a severe and mighty expectation of Bliss incomprehensible.... ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... you understand this amazing succession of incidents? To me, it is entirely incomprehensible. If you can explain it, I wish you would ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman

... to a friend," which is printed (in part) in Delgado's Hist. Filipinas, pp. 273-293. He says: "In this research I have been occupied for forty years, and I have only succeeded in learning that the Indians are incomprehensible." The allusion to Solomon is explained by Proverbs, chap. xxx, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... wrote down the pronoun "We," "That Plural"—says Satan—"means him and me, With the Editor added to make up the three Of an Athanasian Trinity, And render the believers in our 'Articles' sensible, How many must combine to form one Incomprehensible"! ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... inciti. Inclination inklino. Incline inklini. Incline (slope) deklivo. Include enhavi. Incoherent sensenca. Income rento. Incommode gxeni. Incomparable nekomparebla. Incompatible nekunigebla. Incompetent nekompetenta. Incomplete neplena. Incomprehensible nekomprenebla. Inconceivable neimagebla. Inconsistent nekonsekvenca. Inconsolable nekonsolebla. Inconstant sxangxema. Incontestable nedisputebla. Inconvenient maloportuna. Incorporeal spirita. Incorrect malkorekta. Incorrigible plimalobea, nerebonigebla. Incorrupt ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... some things related in the narrative which will be sure to appear strange, or perhaps entirely incomprehensible, to the reader; but they cannot appear more so to him than they did to the author at the time. He has stated such matters just as they occurred, and leaves every one to form his own opinion concerning them; trusting that his anxious desire to speak the unvarnished truth will ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... agony of fear having somewhat subsided I ventured to steal a momentary glance at my comrade's face. To my unutterable surprise I discovered a whimsical twinkling at the corners of his eyes and a mirthful expression of mischief in his countenance. This was incomprehensible to me, for I could imagine no more awe-inspiring position than ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard

... wonderful rascality which all the conversationists betray. Miss Neverout and the Colonel, in Swift's famous dialogue, are a thousand times more entertaining and moral; and, besides, we can laugh AT those worthies as well as with them; whereas the "prodigious" French wits are to us quite incomprehensible. Fancy a duchess as old as Lady —— herself, and who should begin to tell us "of what she would do if ever she had a mind to take a lover;" and another duchess, with a fourth lover, tripping modestly among ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... It is incomprehensible, in a human way, that the love of a shepherd for his flock, the love of God for His creatures, should be so extraordinary as to provide the wondrous benefits which Christ in the Eucharist has wrought for us. We simply cannot grasp with our feeble minds the prodigality ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan

... shoulders with the air of a man to whom women's caprices are incomprehensible. But he was silent until dessert was placed upon the table, and Mrs. Romaine's neat ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... as man was only the slave of physical necessity, while he had found no issue to escape from the narrow circle of his appetites, and while he as yet felt none of that superior liberty which connects him with the angels, nature, so far as she is incomprehensible, could not fail to impress him with the insufficiency of his imagination, and again, as far as she is a destructive force, to recall his physical powerlessness. He is forced then to pass timidly towards one, and to turn away with affright from the other. But ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... enough to convince me, without counting the wonders of the earth and our every-day life. How can any one look out of the window, at night, and see those myriad lights on high, without bowing in adoration before the incomprehensible greatness of the Creator? What do we know of the stars, after all? How much has the most profound science discovered? Next to nothing! Not but that I read all that has been written by the late astronomers, for the subject is very fascinating; ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March

... have not got over the difficulty yet, for of all the wonderful truths we are commanded to believe, no one is so wonderful and so incomprehensible as the Love of God to the sinful ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty

... and will not renounce the sublime truths of Scripture. They may be incomprehensible; they may be inconsistent; and some of them may look ridiculous; but still they are sacred and sublime, and I will not renounce them although my reason may not accord with them, because they are the ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest



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