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More "Certainty" Quotes from Famous Books



... was Monday. Arthur thought it was Wednesday, and added that he had memoranda, from which he had no doubt he could fix the day with certainty. ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... grandmother, the certainty of living with her in comfort soothed Pierrette's mind as the sleeping draught soothed her body. The old woman watched her darling, kissing her forehead, hair, and hands, as the holy women of old kissed the hands of Jesus when they laid him ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... honourable and suitable resting-place, in a manner that he rightly deserves to be called the king of sculptors, the prince of painters, and the most excellent of architects, nay rather, of architecture the true master. And indeed we can affirm with certainty that those do in no way err who call him divine, seeing that he has within his own self embraced the three arts most worthy of praise and most ingenious that are to be found among mortal men, and that with these, after the manner of a God, he can give us infinite delight. And let this suffice for ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari

... don't understand. That's just why I can't let you go on. And, because I'm a fool, I can't play out this hand, where every card is mine. I'll despise myself, always, for this, I suppose. And it's a certainty that I'll be despised. It means an end to a career I found tremendously interesting. I didn't need the ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... bombed dug-out is the last word in 'unhealthiness.' It ranks next to a rammed submarine or burning aeroplane. For several minutes I awaited death or wounds with a degree of certainty no soldier ever felt in an attack. But in such emergencies instinct, which, more than the artificial training of the mind, asserts itself, arms human beings with a natural cunning for which civilization provides no scope. Life proverbially is ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose

... such indulgence by the ceaseless activity of my own mind, I can say that I have never pursued any course of investigation, or study, without a positive certainty of its beneficence and value. No other course would be compatible with the demands of duty; but it is obvious on the face of a large portion of our literature that the ethical sentiments were dormant when it was written. Pre-eminent above all other studies in practical value is the science of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... desire to know the certainty Of your dear father's death, is't writ in your revenge That, sweepstake, you will draw both friend and foe, Winner ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... notwithstanding the most diligent inquiry, the letters never were found. With respect to the arrival of the vessel, opinions differed, some giving credit to, while others disputed the fact. To venture on a voyage of such length without any certainty, and preparatory thereto to arrange all family affairs, and part with her furniture, was what Madame Godin could not, without much risk and imprudence, resolve upon. She determined on the commendable medium of despatching a ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard

... rubies. All this is true; but none the less the superintendents of asylums have a right to expect not only that their services shall be adequately remunerated when in harness, but that they may count with certainty upon a fair provision in the ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... unfortunately for the investigator, the soil has been so well cultivated by the hands of thrifty farmers that little remains to indicate the outlines of the old fortifications. It is impossible to determine with absolute certainty the position of the stockade, or of the large wigwam, or council chamber, and other features commonly found in Indian towns of that period. The only place where the old breast-work is visible is along the south and east sides of the burial ground, where it is about two feet high. ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... once in the front of temptation. And wars, 'wounds without cause,' hot heads, shaking hands, delay and bad shearing, would be the inevitable results of spirits A LA DISCRETION. So much is this a matter of certainty from experience that a clause is inserted, and cheerfully signed, in most shearing agreements, "that any man getting drunk or bringing spirits on to the station during shearing, LOSES THE WHOLE OF the money earned by him." The men know that the restriction is for their benefit, ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood

... sufficient to secure the return of any one candidate. The votes given to Mr. Barr in excess of this number were wasted, and thus, although with the cumulative vote minorities can secure representation, neither majorities nor minorities secure with any degree of certainty representation in ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys

... my series of buoys, and indicated in figures the exact measurements in yards from the lines which they marked to a number of points ashore, and a copy of this chart had been handed to each captain; they were therefore now in a position to steam in and open fire forthwith, with the absolute certainty of landing their shots upon the spots ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood

... was anonymous: but Mabel writhed under the criticism. There was the crushing disappointment of expectations that had soared high as the topmost throne on Parnassus. She had a long way to descend. And then there was the sickening certainty that in the eyes of her own small circle she had made herself ridiculous. Her mother took those cruel reviews to heart, and wept over them. The Duke, a coarse-minded man, at best, with a soul hardly above guano ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon

... embarkation and kept the King and his people back. Among the messengers who came was John, that trusty man, for he would never be a witness or messenger of any news which was not true, and which he did not know for a certainty. The messengers were high born men of Greece, who came in search for Cliges. They made inquiry and asked for him, until they found him at the King's court, when they said to him: "God save you, sire! Greece is made over to ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... 17th, 1841.—Three weeks the Royalist has now been absent, and I begin, in spite of my determination to the contrary, to be somewhat uneasy about her. Suspense is certainly more difficult to bear than misfortune, for the certainty of an event arouses within us some of our best feelings to resist it; but suspense lets loose our imagination, and gives rise to that sickening feeling of 'hope deferred,' so ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... to settle his mind as to the certainty of their return at the time they had promised, had assured him, that no financial difficulties should stand in the way; which is what he means by sending to Charing-cross (to Drummond his banker), No ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... have taken place which I consider of importance. I am happy to report that after years of uncertainty, culminating in the collapse of the spring of 1933, we are bringing order out of the old chaos with a greater certainty of the employment of labor at a reasonable wage and of more business at a fair profit. These governmental and industrial developments hold promise of new achievements for ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt

... he cried, "this all comes of his being unable to hold his tongue. He has clearly blabbed, otherwise we should not have had any thing better than a row-boat in our wake. He will be captured to a certainty. Well, he will find the comfort of being a cabin-boy or a foremast-man on board the fleet for the rest of his days. I would not trust him with a Thames lighter, if ever he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... How significant too is the fact that nearly all the great Spanish poets in the latter half of their lives retired into the Church, and that then, after complete ideal subjugation of life they could depict that very life with certainty, purity, warmth, and clearness, as they never could before when actively engaged in it. Their most graceful, most whimsical creations are from the time of their clerical retirement. Beside this paramount phenomenon all ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight

... address you by letter," he wrote a few days later, "in the hope that you may be persuaded instantly to take measures to save your country from the ruin which protracted deliberations must at the present moment entail—ay, with as much certainty as a continuance of those dissensions which have hitherto so unhappily prevailed; and I follow this course the more readily in order that, as I have ever advocated liberal forms of government, my advice, that your Assembly shall bring its labours to a close, shall not be misrepresented to ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... here too long—till escape will be impossible; and then who may predict with any degree of certainty the chances of war? That Dr. Bryant will do all that a friend or brother would, I doubt not; but he may be powerless to help when danger assails; and even if he should not, to travel from here in stormy times would not be so ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... delighted as much as it astonished her. The fear lest her consent to wed Frederic and leave Ridgeley might be the occasion of discomfort and sadness to her forsaken brother had shadowed all her visions of future bliss. She ought to have hailed with unmixed satisfaction the certainty that he would not miss her sisterly ministrations, or feel the need of her companionship in that of one nearer and dearer than was his child-ward. She had striven not to resent even in her own mind, his cavalier treatment ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... as all this is true it is true of woman. It has long been asserted that woman is less variable than man; but the certainty of that statement has lately lost its edge. It is probably untrue. There is no real reason to suppose that woman is less complex or less variable than man. She has the same title as he has to those conditions in which her particular characters, whatever they be, shall find their most ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby

... xxii. 28-38 (cf. 2 Ohron. xviii. 28-34), with interpolations in verses 35 and 38. It is impossible to establish the chronology of this period with any certainty, so entirely do the Hebrew accounts of it differ from the Assyrian. The latter mention Ahab as alive at the time of the battle of Qarqar in 854 B.C. and Jehu on the throne in 842 B.C. We must, therefore, place in the intervening twelve ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... will enable any man to ascertain with tolerable certainty the age of any horse. Every horse has six teeth above and six below; before he arrives at the age of three he sheds his two middle teeth by the young teeth rising and shoving the old ones out of their place. When he arrives at the age of three, he sheds one more on each side ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young

... his head as he reflected on the instability of human affairs. "There's no certainty about anything," he said, slowly. "Only yesterday I was walking down the Commercial Road, and I slipped orf the curb into the road before you ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs

... presence of very mind. I loved you, David, and I love, and ever— Because my mind, even in one day's passing, Has learnt you as no years could better learn— My love is fixed upon you. And, moreover, Since from this hour I must for ever know Some element of me lodged sole in you, Some certainty in you alone to be Among my weeds the patient husbandman, I must in your love prosper or not at all. Now therefore, David, let a covenant be Between us from this day, ...
— Preludes 1921-1922 • John Drinkwater

... Even Cook, who certainly was both careful and just, was treacherously attacked in Erromanga, for the Melanesian is bloodthirsty, especially when he thinks himself the stronger. But to-day it may be stated as a certainty that no attack on a recruiting-ship or on any white man occurs without some past brutality on the part of a European to account for it. As one of the Governments does nothing to abolish kidnapping, and as the plantations go to ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... reasonable. Genius is not a degree of other qualities, nor is it a particular way or extent of displaying such qualities; it is a faculty by itself; it is a manner, of which we may judge with the same certainty from one exhibition, as from many. The praise of a poet, therefore, is to be determined not by the nature of the work which he undertakes, but by the kind of mastery which he shows; not by the breadth of surface over ...
— Poems • George P. Morris

... half-seen figure had entirely disappeared amid the gloom; yet had the wary eye of the conspirator, in the one momentary glance he had obtained, been able to detect with something very near to certainty the spot wherein the spy, if such he were, lay hidden. As he approached the place—whereat a heap of rubbish, the relics of a building not long ago as it would seem consumed by fire, projected far into the street—seeing no sign whatever ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... when I wished to have her society of an evening, I must let him know, because he would then dine at his club. Not knowing the grounds of his offence, there was little other argument I could use than the reiteration of my certainty that he must have misunderstood her. 'Not in the least,' he said. 'I have no doubt she is to you every thing amiable; but she has taken some unaccountable aversion to me, and loses no opportunity of showing it. And I don't think I deserve it.' I told him ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... with certainty, but thy affair stands well. Look at these two hawks with the chain on their feet. They take their food from no one but me. The one that is moulting, with closed, grey eyelids, is Rameses; the smart, smooth one, with shining eyes, is thyself. It comes to this—which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... evidential school, of their habit of coupling ecclesiastical with Scripture miracles, and of their doctrine that it is the function of faith to supply the missing links of imperfect evidence and to impart the character of certainty to propositions which in reason rest only on probabilities. He himself was of the school of Grotius and Paley, and believed that simple historical evidence established supernatural facts. This subject long held a foremost place in my thoughts and ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... grooms, and exclaimed, "O misera Lusitania, beati qui non viderunt."[276] All civilization was confined to the few large cities, to reach which one was obliged to traverse tedious, hot, barren, and unprofitable wastes, in imminent danger of robbers, and in certainty of the customs officers, who taxed people for everything, even the clothes they had on. None escaped. Henry the Eighth's Ambassador complained loudly and frantically of the outrage to a person in his office.[277] ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard

... out of the valley of Leaping Creek. Once away from the starting point, their movements, their figures became elusive and shadowy. They passed out from among the trees, on to the wide plains above, and each couple split up, taking their individual ways with a certainty which ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... whole process of my inquiries, it has been my endeavour, from some plain and determinate principles, to open the way to many interesting truths. And as I have shewn the certainty of an universal Deluge from the evidences of most nations, to which we can gain access, I come now to give an history of the persons who survived that event; and of the families which were immediately ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant

... with music. Blondel touched his harp; the prisoner heard and was silent: upon this the minstrel played the first part of a tune, or lay, known to the captive; who instantly played the second part; and thus, the faithful servant obtained the certainty that the inmate of the castle was no other than his royal master."—Tales of a Grandfather, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various

... sir," he said to the Marquis, "that absolute certainty in this matter is impossible. I have made the most careful search without the smallest success, though I had no ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina

... time that Joseph of Arimathea appears on the stage of the gospel history; and of his previous life very little is known. Even the town from which he derives his appellation is not known with certainty. The fact that he owned a garden and burying-place in the environs of Jerusalem does not necessarily indicate that he was a resident there; for pious Jews had all a desire to be buried in the precincts of the sacred city; and, indeed, the whole neighbourhood ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker

... of sensitiveness of the more sensitive kinds, it was shown in the last chapter that seedlings of several species, placed before a north-east window protected by several blinds, and exposed in the rear to the diffused light of the room, moved with unerring certainty towards the window, although [page 455] it was impossible to judge, excepting by the shadow cast by an upright pencil on a white card, on which side most light entered, so that the excess on one side ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin

... They depend upon you as much as you do upon them. But if they happen to be short of something you want in a hurry, please remember that our product is as good as theirs. You can depend upon it with as much certainty." ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney

... went on many a sweet and bitter found its way to that stream whose course did never yet run smooth; and could the pages before him have presented one tithe of these varied emotions, Reuben's sober nature would have rejoiced in the certainty that such an excess of sensitiveness needed but time and opportunity to wear ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... morning, on awakening from a heavy sleep, he was seized by a fear lest Louise should have died in the night. Through brooding on it, the fear became a certainty, and he went early to Madeleine, making a detour through the BRUDERSTRASSE, where his suspicions were confirmed by the lowered blinds. He had almost two hours to wait; it was eleven o'clock before Madeleine returned. Her face was so grave that his heart seemed to stop beating. But ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... "Hush!" but it was an unnecessary precaution, for I was too stunned to articulate. I peered at her in the darkness and then, unable to control my desire for certainty I flashed my little pocket light on her ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells

... the "tar-tree," and is subject to shrill denunciations. The fleshy stalk beneath the fruit is, however, quite wholesome either raw or cooked, but the oily pericarp contains a caustic principle actually poisonous, so that unwary children would of a certainty eat the worst part. The tree, which belongs to the same order as the mango, has a limited range, and there are those who would like to see it exterminated, forgetful that in other parts of the world ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... To her surprise, father and mother looked coldly upon the project, and so far from admiring her industry thought it a pity to introduce work into the holidays. It needed a hard struggle to induce them to consent to three lessons a week instead of six, and she had to face the certainty that private study would be made as difficult as possible. Even Harold elevated his eyebrows and enquired, "Why this tremendous hurry?" as if he had never been to a public school himself and ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... slept the sleep of intoxication." Then thus spake Elphin. "With thy leave, mighty king, I cannot deny my ring, for it is known of many; but verily I assert strongly that the finger around which it is, was never attached to the hand of my wife, for in truth and certainty there are three notable things pertaining to it, none of which ever belonged to any of my wife's fingers. The first of the three is, that it is certain, by your grace's leave, that wheresoever my wife is at this present hour, ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest

... established there." He replied, that the Lord had made him know that He wanted not my worldly substance but myself. At the very same time with this letter I received one from Father La Combe, who wrote to me that the Lord had given him a certainty, as he had done to several of his good and faithful servants and handmaids, that he wanted me at Geneva. The writers of these two letters lived above a hundred and fifty leagues from each other; yet both wrote the same thing. I could not but be somewhat surprised to receive ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon

... carry on the fight to the bitter end, counting on a final and hard-wrung victory. The sanguine confidence which had possessed him about the time of the second reading was gone. He did not, Tressady knew, reckon with any certainty on turning out the Government in this coming division. The miserable majority with which they had carried the workshops clause would fall again—it would hardly be altogether effaced. That final wiping-out would come—if indeed it were attained—in ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... him precipitately. I sat for a long time calling to mind every incident which could tell one way or the other. Alas! it all went to confirm me in my first horrible suspicion, and to turn it into a certainty. My brother had ordered the packs from Ledbury's, in Bond Street. They had been for some hours in his chambers. He had played throughout with a decision which had surprised us at the time. Above all, I could not conceal from myself that his past life was ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Ryan's words, and the implacable certainty which forced itself into every heart, that he spoke but the truth, did not, however, make the company less inclined to oppose the utilitarian view he ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... requested would have no bad effect; upon which I listened to what he had to say. He shewed me several memorials, containing accusations of M. de Choiseul, and revealed some curious circumstances relative to the secret functions of the Comte de Broglie. These, however, led rather to conjectures than to certainty, as to the nature of the services he rendered to the King. Lastly, he shewed me several letters in the King's handwriting. "I request," said he, "that the Marquise de Pompadour will procure for me the place of Receiver-General of Finances; I will give ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... passionate ardour of affection now clung again, lying at death's door; his wife sinking under her exertions;—these were the least of the sorrows, though each cough seemed to rend her heart, and that sleeping mother was like a part of her life. The misery was in that mystery—nay, in the certainty, that up to the last moment of health Arthur had been engaged in his reckless, selfish courses! If he were repentant, there was neither space nor power to express it, far less for reparation. He was snatched at once from thoughtless pleasure and disregard of religion—nay, even of the ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... published, doubts were expressed as to their authenticity, first by Ugo Foscolo (in the Westminster Review, 1827), then by Querard, supposed to be an authority in regard to anonymous and pseudonymous writings, finally by Paul Lacroix, 'le bibliophile Jacob', who suggested, or rather expressed his 'certainty,' that the real author of the Memoirs was Stendhal, whose 'mind, character, ideas and style' he seemed to recognise on every page. This theory, as foolish and as unsupported as the Baconian theory of Shakespeare, has ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... Prince played a dominating part. Everybody recognised that he was the real centre of the negotiations—the actual controller of the forces and the functions of the Crown. The process by which this result was reached had been so gradual as to be almost imperceptible; but it may be said with certainty that, by the close of Peel's administration, Albert had become, in effect, the ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... them, Cunningham remained for some time on the site of his new discovery, fully impressed with the certainty of its immense importance in the future settlement of Australia. Peel's Plains and Canning Downs were named by him, and to the north-west "beyond Peel's Plains an immeasurable extent of flat country met the eye, on which not the slightest eminence could be observed to interrupt ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc

... be only one; for with people dropping in at all hours and wanting to talk to you, how are you to get on with your life, I should like to know, and read your books, and dream your dreams to your satisfaction? Besides, there is always the certainty that either you or the dropper-in will say something that would have been better left unsaid, and I have a holy horror of gossip and mischief-making. A woman's tongue is a deadly weapon and the most difficult thing in the world to keep ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp

... should abandon this generous enterprise? Even your majesty would lose that esteem you have conceived for me. If I perish, I shall die with the satisfaction of not having forfeited your good opinion. I beseech your majesty therefore to keep me no longer from displaying the certainty of my art, by the proof I ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... to the last the face upon the shore, so his last seeing gaze rested yearningly upon the dear face that was to pass forever from his vision. And when the end had come, when hungering eyes turned to the face they could not see, and he knew with the certainty of encountered reality that he would never again see the love lights in her eyes, that others would respond to the smile that was gone from him forever, others read in her face the things from which he was shut out, when he knew he would never again watch the laughter ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell

... mutations connected with each, as inflection, number, contraction, accents, position in the sentence; then we begin to read and write, at first in syllables and slowly, but when we have attained the necessary certainty, easily and quickly." (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De Compos. ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... defence? Was he going to rely upon the title having remained so long unquestioned? Did he build his hopes upon a possible break in the chain of Pennroyal's evidence? The on-lookers could only conjecture. And now the time when conjectures would be exchanged for certainty was at hand. ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne

... perdition. Be merciful and benignant to those dependent upon thee. Confide the government of thy cities and provinces to men of worth and experience; punish without compassion those ministers who oppress thy people with exorbitant exactions. Pay thy troops punctually; teach them to feel a certainty in thy promises; command them with gentleness but firmness, and make them in truth the defenders of the state, not its destroyers. Cultivate unceasingly the affections of thy people, for in their good-will consists ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... attributed with much certainty to Theocritus, and is found in but a small proportion ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang

... certain of it when she heard Calumet cross the porch with a rapid step, and if in her certainty there had been the slightest doubt, it disappeared when he opened ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer

... on him, in the event of the pope's continued obstinacy, to put his threat in execution, and unite with England in a common schism. All this is plain and straightforward—Henry concealed nothing, and, in fact, had nothing to conceal. In his threats, his promises, and his entreaties, we feel entire certainty that he ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... was peace in the heart of the Prioress. Her long vigil, her hours of prayer, had won for her the sense of a calm certainty of coming victory. ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... limitations I agree with Dr. Behm:—"Taking everything into consideration, in the present state of our knowledge, there is the strongest probability that the Lualaba is the head stream of the Congo, and the absolute certainty that it has no connection with the Nile or any other river (system) of the northern hemisphere." And again: "As surely as the sun stands over the southern hemisphere in our winter and the northern in our summer, bringing ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... well to remind me. Though Mr Neverbend has named a Fixed Period for human life, and has perhaps chosen that at which its energies may usually be found to diminish, who can say that he has even approached the certainty of that death which the Lord sends upon us all at His own period? The poor fellow to whom nature has been unkind, departs from us decrepit and worn out at forty; whereas another at seventy is still hale and strong in performing the daily work of ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope

... mark that told me he belonged to our Brotherhood. He knows that if he betrays us he will die within twenty-four hours, and that there is no power on earth could save him; if he fled to the uttermost ends of the earth his doom would overtake him with the certainty of fate. So have no uneasiness. We are as safe here as if a standing army of a hundred thousand of our defenders ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... go to the valley's head. I could see Ahuna casting glances to all the peaks, and I knew he was taking bearings, known to him alone, from natural objects. When he halted at the last, it was with abrupt certainty. His bearings had crossed. He threw down the portion of food and outfit he had carried. It was the place. I looked on either hand at the hard, implacable walls, naked of vegetation, and could dream of no burial-place ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London

... of simple conviction about my friend's words, such a despairing certainty based on experience, that I shuddered as I listened. While he was speaking I felt a strong desire to go to my mistress, or to write to her to come to me. I was so weak that I could not leave my bed and that saved me from the shame ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... to take her to his wife, when he was relieved, after the term of so many minutes. Emilia stood at a distance, speculating on the possible choice he would make of a tune to accompany his monotonous walk to and fro, and on the certainty of his wearing any tune ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the spot, and with such certainty pass upon it in relation to a former period, proved he ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... concealed it from Overbury, the two men still being fast friends. Indeed, it may have been Overbury who pointed out the need there would be for the Countess to undergo physical examination, and it may have been on the certainty that her ladyship could not do so that Overbury rested so securely—as he most apparently did, beyond the point of safety—in the idea that the suit was bound to fail. It is legitimate enough to suppose, along this hypothesis, that this substitution plot was the very ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... The third point to determine in the syntax of conjunctions is the certainty or uncertainty in the mind of the speaker as to the facts expressed by the propositions which ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham

... depended upon. If another dynasty offered him more advantageous terms, there was not, and there could not be, any security against his changing sides; whereas a wife, whose interests were bound up inseparably with those of her husband, might be relied upon with absolute certainty to be faithful and true to her husband in every ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... immediately, there was somebody else whose just suspicions had been changed into certainty, who only awaited his opportunity ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... shouted. Nesbit sprang up, released. But Heywood, by some desperate sleight, had parried the certainty, and even tried a riposte. Still afoot and fighting, he complained testily ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... Townson, and Mr. Young, and Mr. Hudson abowt the N.W. voyage." Concerning a Christopher Hudson—who was in the service of the Muscovy Company as its agent and factor at Moscow from about the year 1553 until about the year 1576—the only certainty is that he was not a son of the Alderman. There is a record of the year 1560 that "Christopher Hudson hath written to come home ... considering the death of his father and mother"; and, as the Alderman died in the ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier

... betook himself to the study, and there remained with his London newspaper in his hand. A dozen times he began a leading article, in which the law was laid down with great perspicuity and certainty as to the present state of Ireland; but had the writer been treating of the Sandwich Islands he could not have attracted less of his attention. He found it impossible to read. On that evening he would have to reveal to Herbert Fitzgerald what was to ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... for a sailor to pick his way with certainty, and the two men went rapidly forward. The gate in the fence stood ajar, and Dan went first to spy out the land. The front window was heavily shuttered, an unusual precaution to take on a fine night. Putting his eye to a chink, the sailor ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... demonstration by syllogism, as acting too confusedly, and letting nature slip out of its hands. For although no one can doubt that things which agree in a middle term agree with one another (which is a proposition of mathematical certainty), yet it leaves an opening for deception; which is this. The syllogism consists of propositions; propositions of words; and words are the tokens and signs of notions. Now if the very notions of the mind (which are as the soul of words and the basis ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... while the noises from below ceased and everything, save for the faint stir of the growing vegetation, was very still. Then abruptly there began an uproar, louder, more vehement, and nearer than any we had so far heard. Of a certainty it came from below. Instinctively we crouched as flat as we could, ready for a prompt plunge into the thicket beside us. Each knock and throb seemed to vibrate through our bodies. Louder grew this throbbing and beating, and that irregular vibration increased until ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells

... sensation was one of utter and uncontrollable rage. I was tempted to fling myself against the door, to shout, to roar until some one should come to release me. Then as suddenly came over me the miserable certainty that I was helpless, and that anything I did would be but labour lost, and injure no one but myself. And, Smith, too! It was all up with our precious secret parleys; perhaps we should not even be allowed to see one another any more. In my misery I sat down on the floor in a corner of my ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... painful interest in the opera faded away out of her. She was concentrated upon the purely human things. Her imagination of a possibility, which her jealousy already proclaimed a certainty, blotted out even the opera. Woman, man—the intentness of the heart came upon her, like a wave creeping all ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... bring to General Grant's main army the seven thousand five hundred men of the Sixteenth Corps now with you. Having faith in your sound judgment and experience, I confide this important and delicate command to you, with certainty that you will harmonize perfectly with Admiral Porter and General Banks, with whom you are to act, and ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... in a way that left no room for doubt. "You needn't be afraid of being fond of Baby." Even passion had to own that the words had the ring of remorse, of insight, of certainty, and, above all, of haste. Such haste as precluded all deliberation. Evidently it was an afterthought. It had come to her, inopportunely, in the last moment before flight, and she had given it the place and the importance she would naturally give to a subject in which she herself was ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... never be possible to say with certainty that any individual did not see a space ship, an enemy missile, or ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe

... yet they stared, for she had spoken with a strange certainty like one who knew the god, and was she not named Star of Amen, and were there not wondrous tales as to her birth, and had not a lotus-bloom seemed to turn to gold and jewels in the hand of this young, anointed Queen who bore the Cross of Life upon her breast? No, nothing would ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard

... befell him. In 1802 he received an order from the king to proceed to St. Petersburg as envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary at the court of Russia. Even from this bitter proof of devotion to his sovereign he did not shrink. He had to tear himself from his wife and children, without any certainty when so cruel a separation would be likely to end; to take up new functions which the circumstances of the time rendered excessively difficult; while the petty importance of the power he represented, and its mendicant attitude in Europe, robbed ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley

... may be diagnosed by the changes which occur in the fetal membranes, and also in the expelled feces. In order, however, to substantiate a diagnosis with certainty, demonstration of the germ by microscopical examination is necessary. The occurrence of frequent abortions among the mares in a stable is also an additional evidence of the contagious character of the malady. It must be considered ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... a part of the trade as the sugar itself, and it should be the chief object of every workman to try and excel in these two important features; if you do not use good flavors, it is a moral certainty you cannot produce good candies. Flavors for boiled sugars should be specially prepared, those bought at an ordinary chemist shop may do very well for flavoring custards and pastry, but are of no use for boiled sugars, in fact better use no essence at ...
— The Candy Maker's Guide - A Collection of Choice Recipes for Sugar Boiling • Fletcher Manufacturing Company

... tooth to that of a mistress there's no pang that is not bearable. The apprehension is much more cruel than the certainty; and we make up our mind to the misfortune when 'tis irremediable, part with the tormentor, and mumble our crust on t'other side of the jaws. I think Colonel Esmond was relieved when a ducal coach and six came and whisked his charmer away out of his reach, and placed her in a higher sphere. ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... than suspected the truth. He was sure of it, and the certainty made him desperate. He had risked so much upon the game! He had been so confident! As he half ran along the street he passed many things rapidly in his mind. He was like a seaman in doubtful waters, and the breeze ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... entirely on the man. He may be a bear, but he may also have his redeeming qualities. This man had redeeming qualities. I cannot positively say that he was either handsome or ugly, young or old, well or ill dressed. But I can speak with certainty to the personal attractions which recommended him to notice. For instance, the tone of his voice was persuasive. (Did you ever read a story, written by one of us, in which we failed to dwell on our hero's voice?) Then, again, his hair was reasonably long. (Are you ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... extremely expert in fishing. They are also admirable divers, and Rutherford states that they will bring up live fish from the deepest waters, with the greatest certainty. ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik

... possible—oh no, it is nearly five now! but a word written on Sunday would be with me early on Monday morning, and I know you will let me have it, to save some of the anxious thoughts ... to break them in their course with some sort of certainty! May God bless you dearest of all!—I thought of you on Thursday, but did not speak of you, not even when Miss Mitford called Hood the greatest poet of the age ... she had been depreciating Carlyle, so I let you lie and wait on the same level, ... that shelf of the rock which is above ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... sad things is it to see two once very dear friends employing all that peculiar knowledge of each other which love had given them only to harass and provoke,—thrusting and piercing with a certainty of aim that only past habits of confidence and affection could have put in their power, wounding their own hearts with every deadly thrust they make at one another, and all for such inexpressibly miserable trifles as usually form ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... life—life had finally yielded to him what he fought for; and it must yield now; and in the end it would surely give him the loyalty and sympathy of his family. Which meant that Valerie would listen to him; and, in the certainty of his family's ultimate acquiescence, she would wear his ring and face with him the problems and the sorrows that must come ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... continuity of human effort and the imperfect command of its direction. The difficulty of maintaining a small, even, accurate pressure, or a precise repetition of the same movement, is rather a qualitative than a purely quantitative limit. The superior certainty and regularity of machinery enables certain work to be done which man alone could not do or could do less perfectly. The work of the printing machine could not be achieved by man. Machinery has improved the texture and quality of certain woollen goods;[62] recent improvements in milling ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... but a certainty. Yet since I see you fearful, that neither my coat, integrity, nor persuasion, can with ease attempt you, I will go further than I meant, to pluck all fears out of you. Look you, sir, here is the hand and seal of the duke. You know the character, I ...
— Measure for Measure • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... would come to any certainty in this point, we must go other wayes to work; and as I have here examined the height and refractive property of the Air by other wayes then are usual, so must we find the Parallax of the Planets by wayes not yet practiced; and to this end, I cannot imagine any better way, then the Observations ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... know you'd like to hear me say I was a scoundrel. But that would seem to me like boasting. It would imply a certainty about myself ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg

... failure of Eldridge's hypothesis immediately threw public confidence into a profound reaction. Certainty gave place to complete distrust. Rumor gained ground. The exodus increased. Where formerly only those who could do so without great sacrifice or inconvenience had left town, now people were beginning ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White

... four of the leading betting men "turn over" on the average about half a million each per annum; one firm who bet on commission receive an average of five thousand pounds per day to invest, and the vouchers of all these speculators and agents are as good as bank notes. Mark that I grant the certainty of the bookmakers winning; they can remain idle in their mansions for months in the year, and the great gambling public supply the means; but I do not find fault with the bookmakers because they use their opportunities, or else I might rave about the iniquity of a godly man who ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... last he rose to go, "I can go ahead now with more certainty. You fellows have done better than I expected." Which from Hendricks was ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield

... ten. Our head was then put off the land, and we hove to, to wait for the tug. This is a process which to the old salt seems a pleasure nearly equal to that of going ashore, at all events to dropping anchor in a well-sheltered harbour. Though I certainty cannot call myself an inexperienced sailor, it appears to me to be the acme of discomfort. Even in a heavy gale it affords but slight relief from the storm-tossed motion of the ship. On the present occasion it was a change ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... about Joy's love-affairs. For the moment, watching his grace of movement lovingly, she was back in the days that had seemed so happy then, but were so much less happy than these, when they had had their first glad certainty that he would entirely recover. It had taken less than six months from the time he first stood, before he could walk easily, and another six before he could go back to horseback—tennis and swimming had been later still. It seemed sometimes to them ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer

... secret rites, ere the ceremony was performed in the sight of the whole Catholic world. The intermarriages of first cousins had been so common an occurrence in his family, that Ferdinand, in spite of some tremblings, as a lover, had regarded his final union with Marie with almost as much certainty, and as a thing of ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... should record my idle talk, to the prejudice of the most paltry law, opinion, or custom of his parish, would do himself a great deal of wrong, and me too; for, in what I say, I warrant no other certainty, but 'tis what I had then in my thought, a thought tumultuous and wavering. ["I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet," says the offended king. "These words are not mine." Hamlet: "Nor mine now."] All I say is by way of discourse. I should not speak so boldly, if it were ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... there is now more certainty as to the MSS. belonging to the University of Alcala. Dr. James Thompson has published (Biblical Review, March, 1847), the result of inquiries made thirty years ago by Dr. Bowring, and more recently by himself. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various

... to judge whether any proposed railway will pay, it is only necessary to inquire at what cost per mile, all expenses included, it is to be produced. If the charge be anything under L.5000 per mile, there is a certainty of its doing well, even if the line be carried through a poorly-populated district; and up to L.20,000 per mile is allowable in great trunk-thoroughfares; but when the outlay reaches L.50,000 or L.100,000 per mile, as it has done in some instances, scarcely any amount of traffic will be remunerative. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various

... session. He remarked to one of his colleagues in a low tone that he had just returned from where the sessions of the commission were being held, and that while there the important and valuable information had been imparted to him that on a most vital point the Democrats could with absolute certainty depend upon the ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch

... is often no more than an analysis of character, and while a novel of Zola's is a massive epic of human endeavor, a novel of Daudet's is a gallery of pictures, brushed in with the sweep and certainty of a master-hand,—portraits, landscapes with figures, marines, battlepieces pieces, bits of genre, views of Paris. And the views of Paris outnumber the others, and almost outvalue them also. Mr. Henry James has noted that "The Nabob" ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... which he found himself there were so many sympathetic faces that he felt more than ever convinced of the certainty of ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... she made so amazingly swift a recovery that improvement was visible from hour to hour; she rallied like a wilted flower under a refreshing rain. It was O'Reilly's presence as much as the nourishing diet provided by his money which effected this marvel, although the certainty that Esteban was alive and safe put added force into her determination to live. Rosa found hope springing up in her breast, and one day she caught herself laughing. The marvel of it was unbelievable. O'Reilly was sitting beside her bed of leaves at the time; impulsively she pressed his ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... liberty to absent himself for as many hours without question or reproach—he would have contrived, by hook or crook, to dive to the very bottom of Mr Chester's mystery, and to come at his purpose with as much certainty as though he had been his confidential adviser. In that fortunate case, the lovers would have had quick warning of the ills that threatened them, and the aid of various timely and wise suggestions to boot; for all Joe's readiness of thought and action, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... offer of peace, on the part of Great-Britain, to United America, whereof the petitioners made mention in their former request, having at present become a full certainty by the revolution arrived since in the British ministry, they have not learned without uneasiness the attempt made, at the same time, by the new ministers of the court of London, to involve this state in a ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams

... could, without further difficulty, sail round by the coast of New Guinea, and so back again to the East Indies. It is therefore extremely probable that he was directed by his instructions to coast round that great southern continent already discovered, in order to arrive at a certainty whether it was joined to any other part of the world, or whether, notwithstanding its vast extent, viz., from the equator to 43 degrees of south latitude, and from the longitude of 123 degrees to near 190 degrees, ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton

... natural differences at all; or, supposing all artificial causes of difference to be withdrawn, what natural character would be revealed. I am not about to attempt what I have pronounced impossible: but doubt does not forbid conjecture, and where certainty is unattainable, there may yet be the means of arriving at some degree of probability. The first point, the origin of the differences actually observed, is the one most accessible to speculation; and I shall attempt to approach ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill

... that you have seen, tell me all, I entreat. Any certainty will be better than the possibilities I shall ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell

... any other was as of a large animal throwing itself violently against the bottom of his door, outside. A third noise which he had heard was of ordinary raps, of the kind called "spirit-raps." He mentioned a fourth sound, the nature of which Lord Bute does not remember with the same certainty as the others, but believes it was a shriek or scream. Such a sound is described by other witnesses during the subsequent occupation of the house by the H—— family. The fact that the sounds appear to have been inaudible to every one except Father H—— is a strong argument in favour of their ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various

... their subjugation. Therefore I say that by the reconstruction some men desire you render secession certain, bankruptcy throughout the North certain. The repudiation of the Public Debt is not a matter of expectation or fear, it is a matter of certainty, if you assent to any reconstruction of this Union through the instrumentality of Jefferson Davis and his associates. You must either drive them into exile or exterminate them. Break down the military ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell

... help would come by the time the sun was really up, and it was partly this certainty, and partly because he was a little too dazed to realise the seriousness of the situation, that prevented his giving way to a fit of fear and weeping. Yet a feeling of vague terror lay only a little way below the surface, and when, a few moments later, he saw that he was ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood

... others worked one watched, and the boats of the Indians were seen again at the edge of the far forest. The last time they saw them they were so far down that they were almost opposite the point where the Spaniards lay, which indicated two things to them, first the certainty that Alvarez had not moved, and second that "The Galleon" and her crew were absolutely safe for the time being, ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler

... tackle, were packed, and on the first train Tuesday morning he started, all traces of ill-humor having vanished, for a cruise on a steam yacht promised quite as great pleasure as had the stay in the woods, with not so much certainty of hard work. Neal met him at the depot, and after going to the former's home only long enough to leave the baggage, the two set out to view the yacht which, in all the bravery of glistening paint and polished metal, lay at ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis

... their height; when the Committee was zealously watching to catch him in any sort of mistake; when the House was within four votes of a majority for emancipation by act of Congress;(4) when there was no certainty whether the country was with him or with the Vindictives. Perhaps that new courage which definitely revealed itself the next month, may be first glimpsed ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... in any direction; no sound echoed across the dark waste of water. Far above, barely visible through a floating veil of haze, I was able to detect the faint gleam of stars, and was sailor enough to determine through their guidance some certainty as to the points of compass; yet possessed no means by which to ascertain the time of night, or the position of the boat. With this handicap it was clearly impossible for me to attempt any return to the wharf through the impenetrable black curtain which shut ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

... case, implies His authority over every corner of the universe, His immortal life, and the sufficiency of His presence to make a heaven. Nor can we fail to notice the blending of another pair of opposites: His certainty of His impending death, and His certainty, notwithstanding and thereby, of His continual work and His final return, are inseparably interlaced here. How comes it that, in all His premonitions of His death, Jesus Christ never spoke about it as failure or as the interruption or end ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... should be made at S. Maria Novella to get into the old cloisters, which are very large and indicate what a vast convent it once was. But there is no certainty. The way is to go through to the Palaestra and hope for the best. Here, as I have said in the second chapter, were lodged Pope Eugenius and his suite, when they came to the Council of Florence in 1439. These large and beautiful ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... will determine," returned Imlac, "against that which he knows, because there may be something, which he knows not; he that can set hypothetical possibility against acknowledged certainty, is not to be admitted among reasonable beings. All that we know of matter is, that matter is inert, senseless, and lifeless; and, if this conviction cannot be opposed but by referring us to something that ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... country do not—this thing; but I do it. Of a certainty Nels has accomplished that I could not, though I would. This night two cheetahs remain not—the gods witness—to destroy little tender children of men. And when the so-insignificant cuts of Nels shall be presently ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... indubitable proof of the supernatural origin of this chorus. Thus the spectators are unable to decide, whether they actually see the Eumenides or only a chorus impersonating them. This is the meaning of 145 and 146. This doubt yields to certainty as the action ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various

... wretchedness appeared on every hand; but the population swarmed, and habit seemed to have hardened them to the power of existing where it appeared to be a certainty that some pestilence must rise ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn

... English captains. The tall round tower of Talbot, a model of the military masonry of its time, goes far to share the attention of the visitor with the massive keep of the ancient Dukes. Thence we leap back to the earliest great historical event which we can connect, with any certainty, with any part of the existing building. It was here, in a land beyond the borders of the Isle of Britain, but in a comparatively neighbouring portion of the wide dominions of the House of Anjou, that the fullest homage was paid which ever was paid by a King of Scots to a King of England. Here ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman

... on solid stone, and he stood wholly in the dark. Yet the uproar came clearly to his ears. It was a certainty now that more soldiers would ascend the pyramid looking for him, but he believed that ignorance and superstition would keep them from ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Although for certainty, vse, and commodity, the manner of grafting already prescribed is of sufficiency inough to satisfie any constant or reasonable vnderstanding, yet for nouelty sake, to which our nation is infinitly addicted, and to satisfie the curious, who thinke their iudgements disparaged if they heare any authorised ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham

... the disease yet," he said. "There is no certainty until the eruption appears. But, of course, there is every likelihood that it is the smallpox. It is very unfortunate. I am afraid that it will be difficult to get a nurse. All the nurses in town who will take smallpox cases are overbusy now, for the epidemic is still raging there. ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... up the hill, I found I had passed the dogs, and so I turned and went to them. I found, when I got there, they had treed the bear in a large forked poplar, and it was setting in the fork. I could see the lump, but not plain enough to shoot with any certainty, as there was no moonlight; and so I set in to hunting for some dry brush to make me a light; but I could ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... be expected, has reappeared in England again; and England, as was to be expected, has taken no sufficient steps towards meeting it; so that if, as seems but too probable, the plague should spread next summer, we may count with tolerable certainty upon a loss of some ten ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... times we checked in those great lonely valleys beyond the village, but I began to have inspirations, I felt a strange certainty within me that this fox was going on straight up-wind till he died or until night came and we could hunt no longer, so I reversed ordinary methods and only cast straight ahead and always we picked up the scent again at once. I believe that this fox was the last one left in the villa-haunted ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany

... spark, darting from Heaven knows where, which can never be explained, which some strong minds deny, but the sympathetic stroke of which has been felt by many men and many women. It is at once a light which lightens the darkness of the future, a presentiment of the sacred joys of a shared love, the certainty of mutual comprehension. Above all, it is like the touch of a firm and able hand on the keyboard of the senses. The eyes are fascinated by an irresistible attraction; the heart is stirred; the melodies of happiness echo in the soul and in the ears; a voice ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... Germany would swing into line. There were plans to hold a third conference in 1914 or 1915. As we look back upon the years between 1907 and 1914, it seems hard to understand the general blindness of the world to the certainty of the coming struggle. Armaments were piled up at a faster rate than ever. Naval armaments also entered into the race. From the point of view of bringing about permanent peace in the world we must view the conferences at The Hague as ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson

... Peter Bines at this season of the year was a feat never lightly to be undertaken, nor for any trivial end. It being now the 10th of June, it could be known with certainty only that in one of four States he was prowling through some wooded canon, toiling over a windy pass, or scaling a mountain sheerly, in his ancient and best loved sport of prospecting. Knowing his habits, the rashest guesser ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... waking to the frightful certainty that all was real—that the ways of the household were going on just as usual—that she must rouse up, no matter staggering under what burden of misery, and go through her daily part, as if nothing had happened, and ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... significant fact!) so he sets himself to steal Mr. Cazalette's pocket-book, theorizing that Mr. Cazalette probably has a copy of the enlarged photograph within it. And, this morning, while Mr. Cazalette is bathing, he gets it! Gentlemen!—what does this show? One thing as a certainty—the murderer is close ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... men," he said coldly, "had better go on ahead and warn the police and the public generally about the certainty of The Master's death if any attempt is ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various

... over several sorts of hemp, and did fall upon my great survey of seeing the working and experiments of the strength and the charge in the dressing of every sort; and I do think have brought it to so great a certainty, as I have done the King some service in it; and do purpose to get it ready against the Duke's coming to towne to present to him. I see it is impossible for the King to have things done ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... in fact, in a great measure raised and organized himself, and he fought at the head of it with great energy and success against the enemies of Sylla. At length he was hemmed in on the eastern coast of Italy by three separate armies, which were gradually advancing against him, with a certainty, as they thought, of effecting his destruction. Sylla, hearing of Pompey's danger, made great efforts to march to his rescue. Before he reached the place, however, Pompey had met and defeated one after another of the armies of his enemies, so that, ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott

... have sustained in the death of my dear Dall, you exclaim, "How difficult it is to realize that life has become eternity, hope is become certainty! How strange, how impossible, it seems to conceive a state of existence without expectation, and where all is fulfillment!" I have marked under the word "impossible," because such a belief is literally impossible to my mind; the sense of activity, of desire for, and ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... conspiracy in which her father, standing now behind her on the leaky Antoine, had been a tool, and an evil tool. Here in Jean Jacques was the same ruddy brown face, black restless eye, and young, silken, brown beard. Also there was an air of certainty and universal comprehension, and though assertion and vanity were apparent, there was no self-consciousness. The girl's dead and gone conspirator had not the same honesty of face, the same curve of the ideal in the broad forehead, the same ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... development of more suitable. methods than are known to-day. The semiarid area, which is the special consideration of present-day dry-farming represents an area of over 725,000,000 acres of land. Moreover, it must be remarked that the full certainty of crops in the sub-humid regions will come only with the adoption of dry-farming methods; and that results already obtained on the edge of the "deserts" lead to the belief that a large portion of the area receiving less than 10 inches of rainfall, annually, ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe

... a monk at Prague, who, when any thing was brought him, distinguished, by its smell, with as much certainty as the best nosed dog, to whom it belonged, or by whom it had been handled. It was also said of him, that he could accurately distinguish, in this manner, the virtuous from the vicious. He was much devoted to the study of natural philosophy; and, among other things, had ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various

... were three banks, and the cipher telegrams which I have laid before the reader, beyond a doubt referred to one of them, but it was impossible to fix with certainty upon the right one. As a matter of prudence, therefore, it was determined to keep the three under surveillance. The Mechanics' Bank, as it was called before it adopted the national system, stood on the corner, and the general impression ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis

... because a jill-flirt had opened my eyes so that they saw too much, I had lost faith in the importance of my own actions, too. There was a little time of which the passing might be made endurable; beyond gaped unpredictable darkness: and that was all there was of certainty anywhere. Now tell me, Heart's Desire, but was not that a foolish dream? For these things never happened. Why, it would not be fair if these ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... the servant of Philemon; under a relation which it is difficult with accuracy and certainty to define. His condition, though servile, could not have been like that of an American slave; as, in that case, however he might have "wronged" Philemon, he could not also have "owed him ought."[31] The American slave is, according to ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... of Men; but before I went away I gave orders that if Tootaha came either to the Ship or the Fort he was not to be detain'd, for I found he had no hand in taking away the Quadrant, and that there was almost a Certainty of getting it again. I met Mr. Banks and Mr. Green about 4 miles from the Fort, returning with the Quadrant. This was about Sun set, and we all got back to the Fort about 8 o'Clock, where I found ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook

... the standard required, he is free to go. There is no compulsion to stay, no stigma on going. As a matter of fact, very few monks there are but have left the monastery at one time or another. It is impossible to over-estimate the value of this safety-valve. What with the certainty of detection and punishment from his people, and the knowledge that he can leave the monastery if he will at the end of his time without any reproach, a monk is almost always able to keep within ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding

... in the least prepared to pose as a poet, and my only idea was to write a real plot for an opera. As to the precise manner, however, in which such a book had to be written, I already had a very definite and instinctive notion, and I was strengthened in the certainty of my own feelings in the matter when Laube now explained the nature of his plot to me. He told me that he wanted to arrange nothing less than Kosziusko into a libretto for grand opera! Once again I had qualms, for I felt at once that Laube had a mistaken idea about the character of a dramatic ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... and the label on its front door; it looked very well outside, but she feared that it was poorly furnished within, though she dropped all her own money into it with great regularity. This fear became certainty soon, for Dickie came to her one day with a penny clasped in her ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton

... absence accumulates my work. I had a pleasant visit of three days, to Lynchburg, attending the Episcopal Convention, and I have not yet brought up my correspondence, etc. I fear, too, I shall have to go to Richmond next week, as everything seems to portend the certainty of Mr. Davis's trial. God grant that, like the impeachment of Mr. Johnson, it may be dismissed. If I do go, I fear I shall have no time to visit you. The examinations of the senior classes of the ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son

... Geology get on, if its professors talked only of what they knew? Planting their feet firmly on facts, they feel about in all directions for theories. By carefully noting, publishing, comparing, discussing their uncertainties, they presently arrive at a certainty. Horace might advocate nine years' delay. He was building for himself a monument that should defy the rolling years. He was setting to work in cool blood to compass immortality, and a little time, more or less, made no difference. Apollo ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... the cases must be known for a perfect induction; there is no unknown to argue to. This, then, is only a short statement of many individual truths, and has but little of value. Induction that is imperfect is more valuable; for with many cases the probability becomes so strong that it is a practical certainty. It is the ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... impossible, and if at bottom he feels it to be so, and inclines sadly to the view that political servitude is but the least of two evils, I would only venture to suggest this: Is it not a finer course to stake something on a risk run in every white community but Ireland rather than to face the certainty of half achievement? And is it not, after all, a sound risk to trust the very men who now respond to the appeal for self-reliance, mutual tolerance, and united effort in their private affairs, not to renounce these qualities and abuse ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... probably take up Physiology, although not so necessarily, because the area of plant Physiology is very limited, and has little bearing on descriptive Botany, so that anything like a familiarity with Physiology might be evaded. But he that took up Zoology, would to a certainty take up Physiology; and very probably also the antecedent members of the fundamental group. As to Geology, it is usually coupled with Mineralogy, although involving also a slight knowledge of Botany and Zoology. A competent mineralogist would ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain

... Perviz, "I know whom you speak of; he was my elder brother, and I am informed of the certainty of his death, but know not the cause." "I can tell you," replied the dervish; "he was changed into a black stone, as all I speak of have been; and you must expect the same transformation, unless you observe more exactly than he has done the advice I gave him, in case ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown

... perceptions of the ablest men in the community. Upon all those subjects that are of moral apprehension, society seems to possess an intelligence of its own, infinitely sensitive in its delicacy, and almost conclusive in the certainty of its determinations; indirect, and unconscious in its operation, yet unshunnable in sagacity, and as strong and confident as nature itself. The highest and finest qualities of human judgment seem to be in commission among the nation, or the race. It is by such ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various

... the conditions, the pillars or essentials, and the traditional statutes of prayer?" "The conditions are five: (1) purification of the members; (2) covering of the privy parts; (3) observing the proper hours, either of certainty or to the best of one's belief; (4) fronting the Kiblah; and (5) standing on a clean place. The pillars or essentials number twelve: (1) intent; (2) the Takbr or magnification of prohibition; (3) standing when able to stand[FN312]; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... Among all the works of Pushkin there is not one which exhibits so high a degree of artistic skill, or so vigorous and powerful a genius, as this drama, in which every word, every dialogue, seems to unite the certainty of study and meditation with the fire and naturalness of a happy improvisation, and in which there is not a character nor an allusion which destroys the truth and vigour of the composition, viewed as a faithful mirror of Russian nationality, Russian history, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... little conception. Indeed, as early as 1539, alaw, according to Dupont, in his "Histoire de l'Imprimerie," was passed by which these marks or arms of printers and booksellers were protected. Unfortunately the designs were very rarely signed, and it is now impossible to name with any degree of certainty either the artist or engraver, both offices probably in the majority of cases being performed by one man. There is no doubt whatever that Hans Holbein designed some of the very graceful borders and title-pages of Froben, at Basle, ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts

... soon as a female child was born, this husband, who was never again seen, was put to death. Then the female child grew up and took the place of the Queen when its mother died, and had been buried in the great caves. But of these matters none could speak with certainty. Only She was obeyed throughout the length and breadth of the land, and to question her command was instant death. She kept a guard, but had no regular army, and to disobey her ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... beginning, were eye witnesses and ministers of the word, [1:3]it seemed good to me also, having traced all things accurately from the first, to write in order to you, most excellent Theophilus, [1:4]that you may know the certainty of the words concerning which you have ...
— The New Testament • Various

... defiant shout from a little hill among the trees close by apprised us that we were not the only occupants of the river bank; and worse still, that whoever the strangers were, they must have been witnesses of our recent misfortunes—a certainty which made us ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed

... Either the customer is obdurate, and staggers to his feet at last and gropes his way out of the shop with the knowledge that he is a wrinkled, prematurely senile man, whose wicked life is stamped upon his face, and whose unstopped hair-ends and failing follicles menace him with the certainty of complete baldness within twenty-four hours—or else, as in nearly all instances, he succumbs. In the latter case, immediately on his saying "yes" there is a shout of exultation from the barber, a roar of steaming water, and within ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock

... Cleek, a trifle hastily, but the grim look did not leave his face. "But if anything as curious as all this affair turns up in the evidence it won't help the boy any, that is a certainty.... ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew

... listen to her for hours. It was so good to come back to life, to feel younger than my worries, to forget for a little while that stark heavy certainty that poor old Dad would soon be a burden in spite of himself, and that with a family on my hands I'd have to spend the best years of my life ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole

... the pair passed out of the chapel, Blanche in a very drooping and shamefaced condition, but Denis strutting and ruffling in the consciousness of a mission, and a boyish certainty of accomplishing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... presentment, indictment, or written pleading shall be required, but it shall be sufficient to put the party accused upon his or her trial, that the offense and facts are plainly set forth with reasonable certainty in the warrant of arrest." It was further provided that when fines were imposed and the party was unable to pay them, "the county commissioner may hire out, at public outcry, the said party to any person who will take him or her ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... by the ceaseless activity of my own mind, I can say that I have never pursued any course of investigation, or study, without a positive certainty of its beneficence and value. No other course would be compatible with the demands of duty; but it is obvious on the face of a large portion of our literature that the ethical sentiments were dormant when it was written. Pre-eminent above all other studies in practical ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... the only authority we have for supposing Indians poison their bullets, although we have read of poisoned arrows, and hence infer such a proceeding to be rather a supposition with her than a certainty.] ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett

... additions in the course of ages. There are several prayers extracted from the liturgy of Chrysostom, and actually ascribed to him" Vol. 1, Liturgy of Armenia. "The liturgy of Basil can be traced with tolerable certainty to the 4th century. Striking as are some of the features, in which it differs from that of Antioch, it is nevertheless evidently a superstructure raised on that basis: the composition of both is the same, i.e. the parts, which they ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs

... torture with as much intrepid resignation as the savage whose glory consists in despising pain, Rodin gathered his strength and courage from the hope—we had almost said the certainty—of life. Such was the make of this dauntless character, such the energy of this powerful mind, that, in the midst of indescribable torments, his one fixed idea never left him. During the rare intervals of suffering—for pain is equal even at ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... accused Nelson of being jealous of the naval reputation of Caracciolo! The explanation of Torrington's conduct is this:— He had a fleet so much weaker than Tourville's that he could not fight a general action with the latter without a practical certainty of getting a crushing defeat. Such a result would have laid the kingdom open: a defeat of the allied fleet, says Mahan, 'if sufficiently severe, might involve the fall of William's throne in England.' Given certain movements of the French fleet, Torrington might have manoeuvred ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge

... of a portion of the Woman of Thirty Years Old to his Eve, she insisted on his expunging the offending name, while the sheets were in the press. Whether her fretting over his transferred allegiance hastened her end it is impossible to say with any certainty; yet one cannot help being struck by the fact that the serious phase of the malady that killed her almost coincided with the beginning ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... books he pleased from any of the royal palaces and libraries; 'howbeit,' said Bodley, 'for that the place at Whitehall is over the Queen's chamber, I must needs attend her departure from thence, whereof at present there is no certainty known: how I shall proceed for other places ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton

... Ralegh, with the certainty of a legal declaration of the forfeiture of the fee, had reluctantly assented to the compromise. He was weary and sick. He would be glad, he wrote, never to hear the place named thenceforth. Not so easily could he divorce himself from it. There was his old bailiff, whose insolent persecution ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... Sugar opened with a wild rush: "25,000 shares from 140 to 152." That is the way it came on the tape, which meant that the crowd around the Sugar-pole was a mob and that the transactions were so heavy, quick, and tangled that no one could tell to a certainty just what the first or opening price was; but after the first lull, after the gong, there were officially reported transactions aggregating 25,000 shares and at prices varying from 140 to 152. I was over on the floor to see the scramble, ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson

... out the secret of this distinction myself ever since the first day I came to the island; but so reticent are all the natives about it, and so deep is the taboo by which the mystery is guarded, that even now I, who am myself Tula, can tell you but very little with certainty on the subject. All I can say for sure is this—that gods called Tula retain their godship in permanency for a very long time, although at the end some violent fate, which I do not clearly understand, is destined to befall them. That is my condition as King of the Birds—for no doubt they have ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen

... war came, Avros, Farmans, and Bleriots were ordered to the full capacity of the factories that produced them. Vickers fighters were also ordered in numbers, though the latest model of the machine was untried, and though there was no certainty that the necessary 100 horse-power Monosoupape-Gnome engine could be obtained, or that when obtained it would run reliably. On the advice of the superintendent of the Royal Aircraft Factory it was decided to choose B.E. 2c for production in bulk rather than the earlier variants of the same type. ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... that the minister of police believed that a man calling himself Vautrin, who lived with them in the Maison Vauquer, was an escaped convict from Toulon galleys, Jacques Collin, but known by the nickname of Trompe-la-Mort, and one of the most dangerous criminals in all France. In order to obtain certainty as to the identity of Vautrin with Collin he offered a bribe of three thousand francs if mademoiselle would administer a potion in his coffee or wine, which would affect him as if he were stricken with apoplexy. During his insensibility they could easily discover whether Vautrin ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... minutes went by," Allan continued, after an interval, "that terrible dread grew upon me, and my sense of danger changed from fear to certainty. Something was going to attack me through that door! I raised my gun and took careful aim. I saw the blanket swing a little; then I saw the fingers of a man's ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead

... of him, that he walked out with an intention to do a generous action; but, turning the corner of a street, he met with the ghost of a half-penny, which frightened him.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, that is very true, too; for I never knew a man of whom it could be said with less certainty to-day, what he will do to-morrow, than Garrick; it depends so much on his humour at the time.' SCOTT. 'I am glad to hear of his liberality. He has been represented as very saving.' JOHNSON. 'With his domestick saving we have nothing to ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... he had barely escaped from the enemy, he bade them take courage thenceforth and look with contempt upon the barbarians; for he knew well, he said, that he would conquer them decisively. Now the manner in which he had come to know this with certainty will be told in the following narrative.[95] At length, when it was well on in the night, Belisarius, who had been fasting up to this time, was with difficulty compelled by his wife and those of his friends who were present to taste a very little bread. Thus, ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius

... sufficiently accurate to prevent you from striking on the solid earth. But how is the longitude of the port to be determined? Certainly, as has been properly said, by astronomical observations, which can only be made with certainty on the earth. Consequently, it seemed to him that it is absolutely essential for fixing an initial meridian for the determination of longitude that it should be placed at an astronomical observatory which can be connected with other places ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various

... once this winter, and that on the first snow. It was thought at Bettles that we might possibly procure some supplies at a newly established mission of the Society of Friends about half-way down the Kobuk River, but there was no certainty about it, and we must carry with us enough man-food to take us to salt water. Our supply of dog fish we might safely count upon replenishing from the natives on the Kobuk. Another thing that caused some thought was the supply of small money. There was no silver and no currency except large ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... because of the certainty of its long life, and the bell and spigot pipe was selected on the basis of comparative costs for pipe laid. The standard lead joint was chosen on the result of tests. This cast-iron pumping main has a diameter of 12 ...
— The Water Supply of the El Paso and Southwestern Railway from Carrizozo to Santa Rosa, N. Mex. • J. L. Campbell

... Some certainty as to Lady Jane Selby's feelings came on the second evening of Paul's illness. Mrs. Crabbe, the housekeeper, was seen with infinite trouble and disgust getting her large person over the stiles across the path fields. A call from her was almost a greater event ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge

... is "a time to keep silence," and when men wrangle by the mouth with no certainty that they mean the same thing while using the same word, it perhaps were as well ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... to itself down the ages the ardour of their battle-cries, falls in all the splendour of a new hope about the path of England now. For this these men have died, from the first battle of the war to that fought yesterday. And it is this knowledge, this certainty, which gives us heart to acquiesce, as each of us is compelled to acquiesce, in the presence of that army in South Africa. They have fallen, fighting for all that has made our race great in the past, for this, the mandate of destiny to our race in the future. They have fallen, those ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... of Parliaments in England is agreed by several writers to be owing to this King, so the date of the first hath been assigned by some to the fifteenth year of his reign; which however is not to be affirmed with any certainty: for great councils were convoked not only in the two preceding reigns, but for time immemorial by the Saxon princes, who first introduced them into this island, from the same original with the other Gothic ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... theory at all, it's a dead certainty," insisted Clark. "Your fireman and that gang of hoodlums hitch together in some way, you mark my words. Well, let it slide for a bit. I'm hungry as a ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman

... to seem, in the glow of fancy, more like truth, past, present, or to come, than purely fiction. The prospective sinner, on the other hand, weaves his plot of crime, but seldom or never feels a perfect certainty that it will be executed. There is a dreaminess diffused about his thoughts; in a dream, as it were, he strikes the death-blow into his victim's heart, and starts to find an indelible blood-stain on his hand. Thus a novel-writer, or a dramatist, in creating a villain of romance, and ...
— Fancy's Show-Box (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... effort at rejoicing and certainty of Mary's present bliss and probability of future happiness, it was the loss of a sister, and not the gain of a brother, and Mr. Cheviot did his utmost to render the absence of repining a great effort of unselfishness. And even with ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... bankers subscribed five thousand dollars, and I think the other one subscribed half as much, but I do not remember with certainty now whether that was the figure or not. We got designs made—some ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... and Bevagna. We might hazard a conjecture that the Lombards, when they ruled the Duchy of Spoleto, following their usual policy of opposing new military centres to the ancient Roman municipia, encouraged Fulginium at the expense of her two neighbours. But of this there is no certainty to build upon. All that can be affirmed with accuracy is that in the Middle Ages, while Spello and Bevagna declined into the inferiority of dependent burghs, Foligno grew in power and became the chief commune of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... the instrument to the hand which wielded it. Nor does he seem to have been at all astonished at his deliverance. His moment of bewilderment, when he did not know whether he was dreaming or awake, soon passed, and as soon as 'the sober certainty of his waking bliss' settled on his mind, his deliverance seemed to him perfectly natural. What else was it to be expected that 'the Lord' would do? Was it not just like Him? There was nothing to be astonished at, there was everything to be thankful for. That is how Christian hearts should ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... by polo and games, these English ladies who had no thought beyond little social devices to relieve the monotony of the frontier, all seemed to make a mockery of his task. He had fondly imagined himself going to a certainty of toil and danger; to his vexation this certainty seemed to be changing into the most conventional of visits to the most normal of places. But to-morrow he should see Marker; and his hope revived at ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... comitia: the accused don't wish it, and especially Memmius, because he hopes that Caesar's approach[643] may secure him the consulship. But he is at a very low ebb. Domitius, with Messalla as his colleague, I think is a certainty. Scaurus has lost his chance. Appius declares that he will relieve Lentulus even without a curiate law,[644] and, indeed, he distinguished himself amazingly that day (I almost forgot to mention it) in an attack upon Gabinius. He accused him of lese majeste, and gave the names of his witnesses ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... deserved rebuke to any who desponded, along with myself, and finally prophetic. No doubt there were thousands of Americans who could, even in those dark days, with equal conviction have pronounced that "Certainly," and whose very certainty was the one thing needed and able to make ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... carried further and junction with a third detachment be effected. By this step we should preserve, if not a numerical superiority over the enemy, at least so near an equality of force as to render his defeat probable and his serious maltreatment, even if undefeated, a certainty. The strategic problem before our navy was, however, not quite so easy as this might make it seem. The enemy's concentration might be attempted either towards Brest or towards Toulon. In the latter case, a ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge

... beside our own, which would be twelve or fifteen thousand; and hides were said to be growing scarcer. Then, too, this ship, which had been to us a worse phantom than any flying Dutchman, was no phantom, or ideal thing, but had been reduced to a certainty; so much so that a name was given her, and it was said that she was to be the Alert, a well-known India-man, which was expected in Boston in a few months, when we sailed. There could be no doubt, and all looked black enough. Hints were thrown ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... moments I doubted whether I should tell Wynnie, for I could not know with any certainty that Percivale was in the schooner. But presently I recalled former conclusions to the effect that we have no right to modify God's facts for fear of what may be to come. A little hope founded on a present appearance, even if that hope should never be realised, may be the very means of enabling a ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... Sainte-Croix was not known: according to one tale, he was the natural son of a great lord; another account declared that he was the offspring of poor people, but that, disgusted with his obscure birth, he preferred a splendid disgrace, and therefore chose to pass for what he was not. The only certainty is that he was born at Montauban, and in actual rank and position he was captain of the Tracy regiment. At the time when this narrative opens, towards the end of 1665, Sainte-Croix was about twenty-eight or thirty, a fine young man of cheerful and lively appearance, a merry comrade at a banquet, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... thought of these words of her father's. In a sense, they had been ever present with her. Just why they should come at this time, bringing such a sense of certainty about them to her very soul that all this was truth, God's solemn, real, unchangeable truth, and force this conviction upon her in such a way that she was moved to say, "Whereas I was blind, now I ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy

... Catholicism, viz. the critical one. Or I should rather say that he had the critical faculty very highly developed in every point not touching religious belief; but that possessed in his view such a co-efficient of certainty, that nothing could counterbalance it. His piety was in truth, like the mother o'pearl shells of Francois de Sales, "which live in the sea without tasting a drop of salt water." The knowledge of error which he possessed ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... forbidden to go there, it was probably the very road he had taken. The sun beat on her head and she put up the parasol, which through all her trouble she had grasped firmly in her hand. Even under these dreadful circumstances, with the children lost, and the certainty of her step-mother's wrath before her, there was joy in carrying a parasol ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... gone?" he asked himself. "Was it possible that he was left alone, absolutely alone on that burning wreck, thousands of miles from the nearest land, drifting he knew not whither at the mercy of wind and wave, with no hope of rescue and with the certainty that in a day or two at most the fabric which bore him would be so completely enveloped in the flames kindled by his own clumsiness that it would no longer be tenable, and the only alternative open to him would be that of perishing in ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

... for Parliamentary reputation. The senior member for the county means to retire, and Sir Peter has been urged to allow his son to be brought forward,—from what I hear, with the certainty of success." ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... owing to the insecurity of the ice; but it might also have been owing to the severity of the weather. Black enough, at any rate, the scene appeared; and I looked forth upon it from my temporary shelter with the certainty that this river before me was a particularly hard ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... she was looking on the ground, and walking slowly as if searching for something that had been lost, her course being precisely that of Mr. Melbury's gig. Fitzpiers by a sort of divination jumped to the idea that the figure was Grace's; her nearer approach made the guess a certainty. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... two seasons,* the dry and the rainy. From personal observation and other sources of information, it would appear that the limits and duration of these admit of so much variation that it is impossible to determine with certainty, even within a month, when one ceases and the other begins. It would appear however that the dry season, characterised by the prevalence of the south-east trade, usually terminates in November, the change having for some time previous been ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... our biographer cannot be traced with any degree of certainty, owing to the loss of the first part of his manuscript. It is, however, pretty clear that he was not a Pomeranian, as he says he was in Silesia in his youth, and mentions relations scattered far ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold

... a company necessarily encourages adventurers. Their monopoly secures them against all competitors in the home market, and they have the same chance for foreign markets with the traders of other nations. Their monopoly shows them the certainty of a great profit upon a considerable quantity of goods, and the chance of a considerable profit upon a great quantity. Without such extraordinary encouragement, the poor traders of such poor countries would ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... was formerly used as an active verb, but now is only used as a neuter verb; the meaning is 'to fill them with the certainty of the knowledge.' ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... was the supposition that O'Dowd may have been perfectly sincere in his declarations over the telephone. Opposed to it, however, was the absolute certainty that Roon and Paul were waylaid and killed at widely separated points, and not while actively employed in raiding the house. That was the rock over which all of his ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... establish the due relation between well-being and right action. This, the moral argument, is the only possible proof for the existence of God. Theology is not possible as speculative, but only as moral theology. The certitude of faith, moreover, is only different from, not less than, the certainty of knowledge, in so far as it brings with it not an objective, but a subjective, although universally valid, necessity. Hence it is better to speak of belief in God as a need of the reason than as a duty; while a logical error, not a moral one, should be charged against the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... vivacious, enterprising, and daring even to rashness, ready to undertake any enterprise which offered the smallest hope of success. Marshal Horn, on the other hand, although a good general, was slow, over cautious and hesitating, and would never move until his plans appeared to promise almost a certainty of success. Besides this, Horn, a Swede, was a little jealous that Duke Bernhard, a German, should be placed in the position of general-in-chief, and this feeling no doubt tended to increase his caution and ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... inbound journey, we should again get plenty—all we should need, in fact—and our safety seemed assured. We admitted we had felt doubts as to the outcome, which we had not expressed out of consideration for one another. But now we felt we could look forward to reaching home as a certainty. And, feeling freer to indulge our fancies, our talk at once returned to the good things ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace

... separated from the child, even for a night and it was in her battles with croup and other nocturnal enemies that her maternal love was tested to the full. I do not assume to know what she felt as a wife, but of her devotion as a mother I am able to write with certainty. On her fell the burden of those hours of sickness in the city, and when the time came for us to go back to the birds and trees of our beloved valley she rejoiced as openly as her daughter. "Now we shall be free of ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... capacity as delicatessen vender, Jokubas Szedvilas had many acquaintances. Among these was one of the special policemen employed by Durham, whose duty it frequently was to pick out men for employment. Jokubas had never tried it, but he expressed a certainty that he could get some of his friends a job through this man. It was agreed, after consultation, that he should make the effort with old Antanas and with Jonas. Jurgis was confident of his ability to get work for himself, unassisted by any one. As we have said ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... problems of life. Men educated in it cannot be stampeded by stump orators and are never deceived by dithyrambic oratory. They are slow to believe. They can hold things as possible or probable in all degrees, without certainty and without pain. They can wait for evidence and weigh evidence, uninfluenced by the emphasis or confidence with which assertions are made on one side or the other. They can resist appeals to their dearest prejudices and all kinds of cajolery. Education in the critical ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... Did they find any footmarks in the grounds below that torn creeper? Not a sign! You saw how he can jump; he won ten pounds from me that same evening betting on what he knew was a certainty. That's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... away,—slowly, but creeping on with unfailing certainty, the Shadow returned. It fell like a brooding storm over the fireside of home; he fancied a like shadow following his mother's steps, darkening his baby-sister's smile; and as if in revenge for so long an absence, the Shadow forced itself upon him more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... impulse was to wake the sleepers with a yell and shepherd them to refuge in the tree—for the gigantic woolly rhinoceros, with his armor of impenetrable hide, was a foe whom Man had not yet learned to handle with any certainty. But a deeper instinct held Grom motionless. He knew that the monster, whose eyesight was always dim and feeble, could not see him distinctly, and was in all probability staring in stupid wonder at ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... that the pamphlet in his hand was the "Auditor's Report of Receipts and Expenditures for the Financial Year Ending February 10, 1875, for the Town of Andover." Where, he asked, with absolute certainty, was the town of Andover here referred to? He examined the printer's imprint, which was explicit—personally: "Printed by Warren F. Draper, 1875." There was something very friendly about this. Printers of public documents seem to be an amiable, neighbourly lot: "Printed ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday

... been taken in laying and pointing, in accordance with the rules of theory and practice, absolute certainty of hitting the same spot every time is unattainable, as causes of error exist which cannot be eliminated, such as variations in the air and in the muzzle-velocity, and also in the steadiness of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... only a little boy, it wouldn't be quite so silly!" she exclaimed. "But an old man, with only a few years more on the earth, to behave so, is all out of character. Think of the shortness of life, Joseph, and the certainty of death." ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... 'I came, I saw, I conquered,' it has been at the end of patient practice. Genius, at first, is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline. Singing and acting, like the fine dexterity of the juggler with his cup and balls, require a shaping of the organs toward a finer and finer certainty of effect. Your muscles, your whole frame, must go like a watch,—true, true, true, to a hair. This is the work of the springtime of life before the ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... continued the judge, "there were most singular rumors. During the evening and the night, rumor, as is often the case, led to evidence, and evidence has led to confession and to certainty. And the district attorney now desires me to say to you that the chief officer of the bank—who held the second key to the safe—is now under arrest for a heavy defalcation, which a sham robbery was to conceal, and that you may find the prisoner at the bar—not guilty. I congratulate you, gentlemen, ...
— Eli - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin

... farce had cost General Kitchener we could not tell with certainty. An English officer told me afterwards he had been in the fight, and that their loss there had been 52 dead and wounded, including some officers. He also informed me that their object that day had been to dislodge us. If that is so, I pity ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen

... his. The shrewd guesses which he was making, and the terrible mosaic that he was piecing together out of such stray fragments as he could pick up—and he was always picking them up—were hidden from her; and she understood nothing of the mingled surmise and certainty which made his interest in her partly retrospective and partly prophetic, as he fitted in bit by bit that hidden thing in the past or foresaw the discovery that must come in the future. She only thought him ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... which grow out of the deepest sentiments, be reached? How, save by conjecture, can forces be estimated which seem to defy all measurement? On this dark and uncertain ground, where one has to grope one's way, Napoleon moves with almost absolute certainty; he moves promptly. First of all, he studies himself; indeed, to find one's way into another's soul requires, preliminarily, that one should dive deep into ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... point of attainment of complete satisfaction, and certainty, all who have experienced the consciousness we are considering seem to agree, according to ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad

... whose political polemics had created such a stir. Once started, the rumour flew;—some disbelieved it;—others listened, with ears stretched wide, greedy for more detail,—but presently the scattered threads of gossip became woven into a consecutive web of certainty so far as one point, at least, was concerned,—and this was, that the King would personally address his Parliament during the ensuing week on matters of national safety and importance. Such an announcement was altogether unprecedented, and excited the whole country's attention. Plenty of ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... in two burros and a prospector's outfit and roved until summer came again and the heat drove him back to the range once more. He was very happy, for the future was always rose-tinted and he had definitely located two lost mines. That is to say, he could say almost for a certainty that they lay within five miles of certain points. Somehow, his water had a habit of always giving out just when he got to those certain points, and when he had gone back after more water something had ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... which one can feel any certainty of their being genuine, are those I have mentioned bearing the name of Neb-Ka incised on the under surface. This pharaoh was of the IIIrd Dynasty and was living according to Brugsch-Bey, (3933-3900 B.C.)[49] That would make 5,826 years past according to Brugsch. Auguste Mariette ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer

... the sea air, and I am content," answered Dr. Woddle. "How long have we slept? It must be four-and-twenty hours, at least, for I am hungry again; I cannot tell to a certainty, for my ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood

... English (whom they may abuse, if they think it honorable to revile the absent) can, as things now stand, neither be provoked at our railing or bettered by our instruction. All communication is cut off between us. But this we know with certainty, that, though we cannot reclaim them, we may reform ourselves. If measures of peace are necessary, they must begin somewhere; and a conciliatory temper must precede and prepare every plan of reconciliation. Nor do I conceive ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... repentance, never regretting a single thought, word, or deed, never needing or asking divine pardon, never concerned about the salvation of his own soul, and boldly facing all his present and future enemies in the absolute certainty of his spotless ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... seek his happiness in evil does merely prove thereby that he is less happy than the other who watches, and disapproves. And yet his object is identical with that of the upright man. He too is in search of happiness, of some sort of peace and certainty. Of what avail to punish him? We do not blame the poor because their home is not a palace; it is sad enough to be compelled to live in a hovel. He whose eyes can see the invisible, knows that in the soul of the most unjust man there is justice ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck

... carefully governed as those of the sea-birds, and though many days in the open water he never forgets the direct course to his favorite haunts. How marvelous the instinct that guides with unerring certainty over the ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... cases, where very early printed or MS. copies exist, we not only do not know that these are the originals, we have every reasonable reason for being pretty certain that they are not. In the case of ballads taken down from repetition, we know as a matter of certainty that, according to the ordinary laws of human nature, the reciter has altered the text which he or she heard, that that text was in its day and way altered by someone else, and so on almost ad infinitum. 'Mrs. Brown's version,' therefore, or Mr. Smith's, or ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... certain class of modern philosophers, Dinah perfectly scorned logic and reason in every shape, and always took refuge in intuitive certainty; and here she was perfectly impregnable. No possible amount of talent, or authority, or explanation, could ever make her believe that any other way was better than her own, or that the course she had pursued in the smallest matter could be in the least modified. This had been a conceded point ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... for halting. The mare must be caught before she could reach the cliffs, or to a certainty she and ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed

... on the safe ground of certainty. Whatever is doubtful is dangerous, and had best be left alone. If we go skating, and have a suspicion that the ice in a certain spot is weak, that is sufficient to make us avoid it. Possibly we might pass over ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees

... considerable thickness have been formed by the growth of coral, may be inferred with certainty from the following facts. In the deep lagoons of Peros Banhos and of the Great Chagos Bank, there are, as already described, small steep-sided knolls covered with living coral. There are similar knolls in the southern Maldiva atolls, some of which, as Captain ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin

... night-birds are not often seen in a blue sky, and luckily so, for the safety of your father's ricks and byres. After all, there is no certainty in the matter; Garth is stupid enough betimes for one of his own boars, and there was a christening-party at the barracks last night. You know what that means—the can clinking until the tap ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... to quarrel with his companions, appeared to give in; but he secretly consoled himself by a hope which he had been entertaining for some time, and which now looked like assuming the appearance of a certainty. The Projectile had been lately approaching the Moon's surface so rapidly that it at last seemed actually impossible not to finally touch it somewhere in the neighborhood of the north pole, whose dazzling ridges now presented themselves in sharp and strong relief against the black ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... he said, "that is just the point over which I thought you were hovering?"—But the certainty had changed his tone. And rising up quick and suddenly, he drew her off to the sofa and seated her there, keeping his arm still about her as if ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... can only wonder that a position fraught with such imminent danger to its possessor, and bringing upon him such incessant trouble and responsibility, should be so eagerly sought, when it entails the almost absolute certainty of a violent death. With us moral courage is an indispensable quality for a prime minister; in Nepaul, physical courage is no less needed. If he is a good shot, and expert with his kukri and kora, so much the better for him. As regards both these accomplishments ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant

... to give to the French bishoprics Apostolic founders. They supposed that Galatia was a slip of the pen for Gallia, and argued, if to Gallia, then to Vienne, the most ancient and important city therein, q.e.d. But no bishop of Vienne appears fixed with any certainty before Verus, who attended the Council of Arles in A.D. 314. It is, however, quite certain that the Church was founded there before A.D. 150; for one of the most precious and authentic records of the ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... the expression; and during the days and nights that followed, the remembrance of the words came back, sometimes as a dream, sometimes as a certainty. Had she been asleep, or was it true that she must be a cripple all her life? Must she henceforth be helpless and dependent, when her help was so much and in so many ways needed? Had her terrible sufferings been all in vain? Were all these restless days and nights only to have ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson

... to the artifacts of vegetable origin that can be identified with certainty, there are several fragments and whole specimens ...
— A Burial Cave in Baja California - The Palmer Collection, 1887 • William C. Massey

... McPherson, whom we had ascertained to be the guard most likely to be employed upon a special train. Smith, the stoker, was also in our employ. John Slater, the engine-driver, had been approached, but had been found to be obstinate and dangerous, so we desisted. We had no certainty that Monsieur Caratal would take a special, but we thought it very probable, for it was of the utmost importance to him that he should reach Paris without delay. It was for this contingency, therefore, that we made special preparations—preparations ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... observe the Turn of their Minds tends only to Novelty, and not Satisfaction in any thing. It would be Disappointment to them, to come to Certainty in any thing, for that would gravel them, and put an end to their Enquiries, which dull Fellows do not make for Information, but for Exercise. I do not know but this may be a very good way of accounting ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... millions, who formed the population of the Thirteen States that set the British empire at defiance, have grown up into a nation of nearly, if not quite, ten times that strength, within the duration of active lives not yet finished. And in freedom from unmanageable debt, in abundance and certainty of revenue, in the materials for naval armaments, in the elements of which armies are made up, in everything that goes to form national wealth, power, and strength, the United States, it would seem, even as they are now, might ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... arbitrary points of view. It is out of the question, in a book so brief as this must necessarily be, to meet all these demands or to alter these points of view. Interests that are purely local, events that did not with certainty contribute to the final outcome, gossip, as well as the mere caprice of the scholar—these must obviously ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... the people of Cornwall spoke of Tshey-houses, or Dshyi-houses, is it so very extraordinary that this hybrid word should at last have been interpreted as Jew-houses or Jews' houses? I do not say that the history of the word can be traced through all its phases with the same certainty as that of Marazion; all I maintain is that, in explaining its history, no step has been admitted that cannot be proved by sufficient evidence to be in strict keeping with the well-known movements, or, if it is respectful to say so, the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... accumulations were immense is well known. I took it for granted, therefore, that the earth still held them; and you will scarcely be surprised when I tell you that I felt a hope, nearly amounting to certainty, that the parchment so strangely found involved a lost record of the ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... hours with Bessy Bell. Then he tried to be a teacher. But he learned more than he thought. He no longer concentrated his vigilance on his sister. Having failed to force that issue, he bided his time, sensing with melancholy portent the certainty that he would soon be confronted with the stark and hateful actuality. Thus he wore somewhat away from his grim resolve to kill Swann. That adventure on the country road, when he had discovered ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... the loaf with a sixpence; for then you are only changing the point of the inquiry; and you must first have BOUGHT THE SIXPENCE. Service for service: how have you bought your sixpences? A man of spirit desires certainty in a thing of such a nature; he must see to it that there is some reciprocity between him and mankind; that he pays his expenditure in service; that he has not a lion's share in profit and a drone's in labour; and is not a sleeping ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... conditions. Being a professed republican, he could announce himself as the regenerator of society, and the liberator of a people. If, as has been supposed, he already dreamed of a throne, where could one be so easily founded with the certainty of its endurance? As a conqueror he would have a divided, helpless, and wealthy people at his feet. If the old flame of Corsican ambition were not yet extinguished, he felt perhaps that he could wreak the vengeance of a defeated and angry people upon Genoa, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... Keith a new thrill. He read the note again. It was a definite thing stating a certainty and not a guess. Shan Tung had not shot at random. He knew. He knew that he was not Derwent Conniston but John Keith. And he believed that he had killed the Englishman to steal his identity. In the face of these things he had not gone to McDowell! Keith's eyes fell upon the card again. ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood

... Irish hospitality I have heard so much of—the cordial welcome the stranger may reckon on as a certainty, and make all his plans with the full confidence ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... boy declared, with all the vigour and certainty of long experience. "If only Aunt Ernestine had known you half as well as I do, she would have been quite content to have trusted you and to have believed that what you did was for the best. But I say, ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... their mark, and he could see his man reloading as he rode. Rathburn now cut across, racing for the point where he thought the other would reach the hills. His horse rose to the emergency with a tremendous burst of speed. He was close enough now to shoot with a reasonable certainty of scoring a hit on his flying target. But he had no desire to kill, and he could not be certain, at that distance, of merely wounding his quarry. He also recoiled from the thought that he might accidently hit ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts

... his actual situation. He was a prisoner on the narrow tongue of land, vigilantly watched beyond a question, and with no other means of escape than that of swimming. He, again, thought of this last expedient, but the certainty that the canoe would be sent in chase, and the desperate nature of the chances of success deterred him from the undertaking. While on the strand, he came to a spot where the bushes had been cut, and thrust into a small ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... known even in the botanic gardens of this country; however, the plant has a name, and that's enough for the versatile Parisian perfumer, and if the mixture he makes "takes" with the fashionable world—the plant which christens it has a fine perfume for a certainty! ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse

... it related for a certainty among our fashionable ladies, that the Empress of the French also intends to institute a new order of female knighthood, not of honour, but of confidence; of which all our Court ladies, all the wives of our generals, public functionaries, etc., are to be members. The Imperial Princesses ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... being refused leave to go to the Khan, they had licence that same night, and were sent over to treat with him at Gambroon. I could never know the certainty of the proposed treaty, but shall here insert what I heard reported on the subject. They proposed, in the first place, to the Khan, to raise the siege, and permit them to enjoy their city and castle ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... the slightest imputation on their honesty, may arise on the part of the appraisers in favor of their respective ports of entry. I recommend this whole subject to the consideration of Congress with a single additional remark. Certainty and permanency in any system of governmental policy are in all respects eminently desirable, but more particularly is this true in all that affects trade and commerce, the operations of which depend much more on the certainty ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... white, that reminds you of a little pug dog's black one, her solemn mouth, her shapely but too delicate chin, her cheeks a shade too pale. I recognize her. Oh yes! I recognize her with that instinctive certainty that is stronger than all convictions supported by all the proofs imaginable. Oh yes, 'tis she, 'tis indeed she and all that remains of the most charming of women. I try to hasten away but I cannot leave her. That hair of living ...
— Marguerite - 1921 • Anatole France

... Seghed, (Rambler, No. 204, 205,) will be triumphantly quoted by the detractors of human life. Their expectations are commonly immoderate, their estimates are seldom impartial. If I may speak of myself, (the only person of whom I can speak with certainty,) my happy hours have far exceeded, and far exceed, the scanty numbers of the caliph of Spain; and I shall not scruple to add, that many of them are due to the pleasing labor of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... same steady, even pace under a ceaseless shower of bullets. It was here that Adam Colfax best showed his courage, tenacity, and judgment. Although his men were being slain or wounded, he would not yet let them return the fire, because there was no certainty that they could do any damage among the warriors in the forest. He might have fired the brass twelve pounders, and they would have made a great noise, but it would have been a waste of powder and ball ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler

... distinct. To this life and variety of character, we must add the wonderful preservation of it; which is such throughout his plays, that had all the speeches been printed without the very names of the persons, I believe one might have applied them with certainty to every speaker.' ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... whom both the Greek and the Latin nations are thought to have come. The Cabiri afterward figured as the "elder gods" of Greece, the inventors of religion, and of the human race in fact, and were kept so very dark that it is not even known, with any certainty, who they were. The ancient heathen gods, like modern thieves, very usually objected to pass by their real names. The Cabiri were particularly at home in ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... runner rush by, and who now moved a little further in towards the shore, so as to stop her egress by the way she went in; and the other vessels closing round by a pre-arranged plan, the capture or destruction of the blockade-runner was a certainty. ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... see him breathe, one felt his body stretching, relaxing, in the perfect abandonment of his whole being. And how diligently the young mother stitched while she was absorbed in prayers, her nose in her book! Never, certainly, was life more closely apprehended, or expressed with greater certainty and truth to life caught in the act, at the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... to him in a white surplice, like a Cathedral Singing Boy." The quotation of the story from Glanvil already used by the prophet's original biographer, and the keen interest in questions of the supernatural displayed by the writer, make the attribution of this piece to Defoe a practical certainty. Evidently, then, Eliza Haywood was not the only one to profit by keeping alive the celebrity ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... fellow! We lose a vote for Fellington—we shall, to a certainty," he added, with an air of chagrin visibly stealing over ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... creature.[602] The seventh is called the understanding; and the eighth is the soul.[603] The senses are for perceiving; the mind (unable to deal with those perceptions) produces uncertainty. The understanding reduces all perceptions to certainty. The Soul exists as a witness (without acting). All that is above the two feet, all that is behind, and all that is above, are seen by the Soul. Know that the Soul pervades the entire being without any space being ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... to take its course, and, in order to place her conduct above every suspicion of a mercenary motive, allowed his estates, which might legally have been confiscated to the crown, to descend to his natural heirs. Nothing contributed more to re-establish the supremacy of law in this reign, than the certainty of its execution, without respect to wealth or rank; for the insubordination, prevalent throughout Castile, was chiefly imputable to persons of this description, who, if they failed to defeat justice by force, were sure of doing so by the ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... doubly Agonising is Death when you are in doubt as to whence that Full Suit of Black needed on the Funeral Night will arrive! What a tremor comes over you when you remember that this Day Week you are to be Married, and that your Wedding Garment is by no means a certainty! What a dreadful Shipwreck to your Fortune menaces you when you are bidden to wait on a Great Man who has Places to give away, and you find that your Velvet Coat shows the Cord! 'Tis in these Emergencies that the brave Confidence ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... shall sometimes find, by their conversation towards the end of their days, that they are filled with hope, and peace, and joy; which, like those refreshing gales and reviving odours to the seaman, are breathed forth from Paradise upon their souls; and give them to understand with certainty, that God is bringing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various

... to affix any precise date to the period at which the chalk sea began, or ended, its existence, is baffled by difficulties of the same kind. But the relative age of the cretaceous epoch may be determined with as great ease and certainty as the ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... of the lead produced no other result than the certainty that bottom was not to be found with four hundred fathoms of line out. No one, however, not even the muzzy Hillson, attached much importance to this fact, inasmuch as it was known that the coral reefs often rise like perpendicular walls, in the ocean, having ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... between the inmates? Most men's experience would seem to justify them in declaring that, throughout the inhabited world, no such house exists. I, knowing at all events of one, admit the possibility that there may be more; yet I feel that it is to hazard a conjecture; I cannot point with certainty to any other instance, nor in all my secular life (I speak as one who has quitted the world) could I ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing









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