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Conviction   Listen
noun
Conviction  n.  
1.
The act of convicting; the act of proving, finding, or adjudging, guilty of an offense. "The greater certainty of conviction and the greater certainty of punishment."
2.
(Law) A judgment of condemnation entered by a court having jurisdiction; the act or process of finding guilty, or the state of being found guilty of any crime by a legal tribunal. "Conviction may accrue two ways."
3.
The act of convincing of error, or of compelling the admission of a truth; confutation. "For all his tedious talk is but vain boast, Or subtle shifts conviction to evade."
4.
The state of being convinced or convicted; strong persuasion or belief; especially, the state of being convicted of sin, or by one's conscience. "To call good evil, and evil good, against the conviction of their own consciences." "And did you presently fall under the power of this conviction?"
Synonyms: Conviction; persuasion. Conviction respects soley matters of belief or faith; persuasion respects matters of belief or practice. Conviction respects our most important duties; persuasion is frequently applied to matters of indifference. Conviction is the result of the (operation of the) understanding; persuasion, of the will. Conviction is a necessity of the mind, persuasion an acquiescence of the inclination. Persuasion often induces men to act in opposition to their conviction of duty.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Conviction" Quotes from Famous Books



... was a man to make happy, here was a heart to rest upon, here was a slave of his own passions to set free. Why should she continue to live with Mr. St. George for her haughty master, when here was this man at her feet? Why, but that suddenly the conviction smote her that she loved the one and despised the other, that she adored the master and despised the slave? And she snatched away ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... the ploughman's back, he said, as if she had been an ill-filled sack of wool; and when, on reaching the opposite side of the streamlet, she leaped down as slightly as she had mounted, and he turned fearfully round to catch a second glimpse of her, it was in the conviction that she was a creature considerably less earthly in her texture than himself. She had opened, with two pale, thin arms, the enveloping hood, exhibiting a face equally pale and thin, which seemed marked, however, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... your glorious triumph over war!' From John such advice was valuable. Acknowledging the joys and comforts of peace, we shook hands,—I wished John well with his fighting, and we parted. I could not however, resist the conviction that John knew not for what he fought so bravely, and might have maintained his position as the greatest cock of the dunghill without sorrow to the homes of his people, and desolation into the land of his long tried and most dependable friend. Who can foretell the ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... a passage that cannot fail to have been remarked, where, in speaking of his admiration of some lady, whose name he has himself left blank, the noble writer says—"a wife would be the salvation of me." It was under this conviction, which not only himself but some of his friends entertained, of the prudence of his taking timely refuge in matrimony from those perplexities which form the sequel of all less regular ties, that he had been induced, about a year before, to turn his thoughts seriously to marriage,—at ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... to walk in these woods any more," said Kathleen with sudden conviction. "Please come ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... his eyes; a flood of understanding had suddenly poured its miraculous waters over her. Incidents unimportant in themselves, utterances which seemed to have no veiled intent at the time, rushed in upon her with overwhelming conviction. Christobal suspected her of flirting with Courtenay, and disapproved of it as strongly as she herself had condemned Isobel's admitted efforts in the same direction. Though not a little dismayed, she resolved to carry the war ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... he was still in the throes, conviction battling with common-sense, his own apprehension. He rose at once to his feet and turned a white face ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... were carefully noted as malignants. In the famous Conspiracy Case, the official Assistant Procurator, in urging the conviction of one of the men, said: "He was head teacher of the Sin-an School, Chong-ju, and was a notorious man of anti-Japanese sentiments. He was the very obstinate member of the Society who, at a meeting on the first anniversary of the birthday of the Emperor of Japan after the ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie

... men in the audience that night to see the force of his argument. The majority, however, were in favor of a general strike to gain their point in regard to the scale of wages. When Philip went home he carried with him the conviction that a general strike in the mills was pending. In spite of the fact that it was the worst possible season of the year for such action, and in spite of the fact that the difference demanded by the men was a trifle, compared with their loss ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon

... and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... in the ideal but in the difficulty of making the ideal such a dominant part of our being that it shall consistently direct our activities under every circumstance. One of the essential conditions of human progress is the conviction that such ideals are vital to the highest attainments and that these should be the aim of all our strivings. Unfortunately such a standard of life is far from being realized. Policy rules largely in the world of practical life; either high ideals are considered impracticable, ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... lawful place and condition is apt to throw him off his guard. There is but one safeguard under grace, and that is habitual watchfulness. Without this the strongest may fall—with it, the feeblest may stand firm. O for such a deep and abiding conviction of the keenness of temptation and the dreadful evil of sin as to lead all to cry mightily unto God, and at the same time be strenuous in effort themselves—to ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... her hand; he held its cool silken softness for a moment and would have raised it to his lips but for this new humility of his. Then, with a friendly but almost careless little nod, she was gone, leaving him with the conviction that it was indifferent to her whether they ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... he had assurance that he was especially competent to write the history of these events, if for no other reason, because it fell to his lot, when appointed adviser to the general Belisarius, to be an eye-witness of practically all the events to be described. It was his conviction that while cleverness is appropriate to rhetoric, and inventiveness to poetry, truth alone is appropriate to history. In accordance with this principle he has not concealed the failures of even his most intimate acquaintances, but has written down with complete accuracy everything which ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius

... and who loved the place because they knew how much those fathers had suffered for it, although they never troubled themselves with the reason why they left the parish church; of a few shopkeepers, far more thoughtful and reasoning, who were Dissenters from conviction, unmixed with old ancestral association; and of one or two families of still higher worldly station. With many poor, who were drawn there by love for Mr Benson's character, and by a feeling that the faith which made him what he was could not be far wrong, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... own island a class should have been thus forgotten. Even the educated and intelligent, who hold our own opinions and speak in our own words, yet seem to hold them with a difference or from another reason, and to speak on all things with less interest and conviction. The first shock of English society is like a cold plunge. It is possible that the Scot comes looking for too much, and to be sure his first experiment will be in the wrong direction. Yet surely his complaint is grounded; surely the speech of Englishmen is too often lacking in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... in a few weeks. They could do a great deal of harm under their dangerous leaders, but, if need be, the courts, the state, the federal government, would be invoked for aid. Law and order and private rights must be respected. The men said these things ponderously, with the conviction that they were reciting a holy creed of eternal right. They were men of experience, who had never questioned the worth of the society in which they were privileged to live. They knew each other, and they knew life, and at the bottom it was as useless to kick against the laws of society as ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... rhetoric of Morris and fluent grace of Livingston must have singularly contrasted with the reserve, seriousness, and quietude of Jay; yet were they akin in the normal basis of character—in the love of knowledge, in loyalty to conviction, and that heart of courtesy which harmonizes the most diverse gifts of mind and traits of manner; even then no common mutual respect must have existed between them, and difference of opinion elicited both wit and wisdom. In a letter ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... small, trembling hand groping for his, immediately grasped it, and gave a squeeze that must have carried conviction to ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach

... they two had played—at the expense of the British Treasury—was beyond any other means of expression. Rust, who began to grasp something of the truth, also broke into a laugh, and the amusement of the principals brought instant conviction to the audience. The repentance of those who had thirsted for Rust's blood a moment since was very pleasant to witness. The women begged permission to kiss his brave hands, which had slain the foul Boches, and the patron cast his burly person ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... of the fidelity of the ear in preference to the uncertainty of the eye; but if the mind receives conviction, it is certainly of very little importance through what medium, or by which of the senses it is conveyed. The impressions left on the imagination may possibly be thought less durable than the deposits of the memory, but it may very well admit of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... is that convinceth us of the evil of our unbelief, and that shows us the necessity of our believing in Christ; without the conviction of this we should ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... an abomination. If he clatters on an indifferent subject, you can do well enough for fifteen minutes, buoyed up by the hope that he will presently have a fit, or be sent for, or come to some kind of an end. But when you gradually open to the conviction that vis inertiae rules the hour, and the thing which has been is that which shall be, you wax listless; your chariot-wheels drive heavily; your end of the pole drags in the mud, and you speedily wallow in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... her sense of justice. But she was gravely and quite dispassionately interested in the terror of Mary Kitson. In later life a bull fight was to appear to her a tiresome affair, but the domination of one human being over another, absorbing. She had, too, at the very earliest age, that conviction that it was pleasant to combat all sentiment, all appeals to be "good," all soft emotions of pity, anything that could suggest that Right was of ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole

... He'll have to be at the court-house, tell him, to-morrow morning at ten, when the justices meet. He'll watch the case for you; and then he'll give you his opinion, and tell you what to do. You can't do better than follow his advice. I must do all I can to collect evidence for a conviction, you know.' ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... declaration of their honest belief. A Northern man can give them an answer appealing to their reason, if not to their conviction. He can say, "You are accustomed to dealing with slaves, and you doubtless tell the truth when declaring you cannot manage the negroes under the new system. We are accustomed to dealing with freemen, and ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox

... relating to the consulship brought forward alone, the debtors and the homeless citizens would have given the bill too little help with hands or hearts to secure its passage as a law. The great encouragement therefore to Licinius and Sextius must have been their conviction that they had devised their reform on a sufficiently expanded scale. As soon as the bills were brought forward every one of their eight colleagues vetoed their reading. Nothing could be done by the two tribunes except to be resolute and watch for an opportunity for retaliation. At ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson

... on the antislavery question from 1830 to the present time. I am well aware of the extent of the claim I make. I recognize, as fully as any one can, the ability of the new laborers, the eloquence and genius with which they have recommended this cause to the nation, and flashed conviction home on the conscience of the community. I do not mean, either, to assert that they have in every instance borrowed from our treasury their facts and arguments. Left to themselves, they would probably have looked up the one and originated the other. As a matter of fact, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... from her seat, then slowly subsided into the depths of the easy chair, whence she fairly gaped at her former ward. When, finally, she spoke, it was slowly, with full conviction. ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan

... the preservation of the Union hangs upon the nation's appreciation of its value. Then only can we be intensely, ardently zealous; full of courage and motive force; full of hope and determination that it shall be preserved at whatever cost of life or treasure. But without the deep conviction of the untold blessings that lie yet undeveloped in the Union and its Constitution, without the hearty belief that this Union is a gift of God, to be ours only while we continue fit to hold it, and to be ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... laws. The greatest difficulties are experienced in the rural districts. Using child labor in farming is a deep-rooted tradition. The children are looked upon by their parents as their economic asset. Moreover, it is a hard-headed conviction among the rural population that child labor is beneficial to the children themselves; they learn to work, their bodies are strengthened, they acquire good habits of life, etc. That the children are deprived of the opportunity ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek

... But such a conviction as this was not sufficient for Mr. Smirkie. He was alive to the fact,—uncomfortably alive to the fact,—that the ordinary life of gentle-folk in England does not admit of direct clerical interference. As a country clergyman, he ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... have once arrived at the conviction that the nummulitic formation occupies a middle place in the Eocene series, we are struck with the comparatively modern date to which some of the greatest revolutions in the physical geography of Europe, Asia, and northern ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... the situation. The obvious solution came to him: she had been at one time reduced to the necessity of posing, a circumstance evidently known to but few and least of all to Sara Wrandall, from whom the girl plainly meant to keep the truth. This conviction distressed him, but not in the way that might have been expected. He had no scruples about sharing the secret or in keeping it inviolate; his real distress lay in the fear that Mrs. Wrandall might hear of all this from other ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... that the only agitation she had evinced was, when threatened with a visit from Father Francis—who, finding nothing in the mansion of Don Ferdinand Morales to confirm the truth of her confession, had declared his conviction that there must be some secret chamber destined for her especial use. As if shrinking from the interview he demanded, Marie had said to the Senora, to whose care she had been intrusted—"He need not seek me ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... having been occupied with thoughts of her when he painted his picture, he had lent a portion of her beauty to the fallen archangel; and hence the pain her looks had occasionally inflicted on him. While this conviction darted into his mind, he was already falling over the precipice; but he still grappled at the rock, and made desperate efforts to recover himself. Beatrice, also, finding that he was going and drawing her after him, for she still held him by the hand, caught hold of a tuft of grass which grew on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 399, Supplementary Number • Various

... this experience[498]." But the Trent operated like a thunder-storm to clear the atmosphere. It brought out plainly the practical difficulties and dangers, at least as regards Canada, of a war with America; it resulted in a weakening of the conviction that Seward was unfriendly; it produced from the British public an even greater expression of relief, when the incident was closed, than of anger when it occurred; and it created in a section of that public ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... mood to be courted. Bessie was to go to Brentwood for the nomination-day, and to remain until the election was over. By this date it had begun to dawn on other perceptions besides Mr. Cecil Burleigh's that she was not a young lady in love. His sister struggled against this conviction as long as she was able, and when it prevailed over her hopefulness she ventured to speak of it to him. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... a number of important monuments which expressed the protest of their authors against the caprice of the Rococo style then in vogue. The colonnades of the Garde-Meuble, the faade of St. Sulpice, and the coldly beautiful Panthon (Figs. 202, 203) testified to the conviction in the most cultured minds of the time that Roman grandeur was to be attained only by copying the forms of Roman architecture with the closest possible approach to correctness. In the Panthon, the greatest ecclesiastical monument of its time ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... city ready to accept of any employment that may offer. "A thing of wood and wires by others played." Following the paste as the parrot, they stutter out anything in hopes of reward: obsequious parasites, says Erasmus, teach, say, write, admire, approve, contrary to their conviction, anything you please, not to benefit the people but to improve their own fortunes. They subscribe to any opinions and decisions contrary to the word of God, that they may not offend their patron, but retain the favour of the great, the applause of the multitude, and thereby acquire riches for themselves; ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... convinced him that, if the wooden sides of ships could not be pitted in prolonged stand-up fight against the stone walls of fortresses, they were capable of enduring such battering as they might receive in running by them through an unobstructed channel. This conviction received support by the results of the attacks upon Hatteras Inlet and Port Royal. He might, indeed, have gone much further back and confirmed his own judgment as a seaman by the express opinion of an eminent soldier. Nearly a hundred years before, Washington, at the siege of Yorktown, ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan

... of making a good impression. So attractive was she that the contemplation of her brought a sinking sensation to Rosalind that drooped her shoulders, and caused her to look around, involuntarily, for something to lean upon. For there flashed into her mind at this instant the conviction that she had herself to blame for this visitation—she had written to Ruth Gresham, and Ruth very likely had disseminated the news, after the manner of all secrets, and Hester had heard it. And of course the attraction ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... prompter still; and Theron stood, bag in hand, waiting till this energetic throng should have pushed itself bodily past him forth from the car. Then he himself made his way out, drifting with a sense of helplessness in their resolute wake. There rose in his mind the sudden conviction that he would be too late. All the passengers in the forward sleepers would be gone before he could get there. Yet even this terror gave him no new power to get ahead of anybody else in the ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... The conviction grew with Beth that Harvey Baker's 'gator had eaten Fritz. Her resentment rose against the boy and his pet, she even shedding some tears of anger and ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine

... had the rope, just as I described. He's been tied up, of late, and broke away," the scout master observed, with conviction in his voice. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren

... the circulating medium will always be found to be an important element in national prosperity; and so great has been the conviction of this fact, that a whole school of political economists have advocated a paper-currency, in order to escape from the danger of restriction. 'Give us,' say they, 'paper-money, the basis of which shall be, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various

... is in accordance with the system and on a level with it, and false when it is below it. Every now and then at rarest intervals a creature is introduced to us who speaks the veritable reality and wakes in us the slumbering conviction of universal imposture. We know that he is not as other men are; we look into his eyes and see that they penetrate us through and through, but we cannot help ourselves, and we jabber to him as we ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford

... he remembered that Marie Fauville had given him the same impression. Was he then to hark back to his first conviction and believe Marie guilty, a dissembler like her accomplice, a dissembler like Florence? Or was he to attribute a ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... such an air 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 of finding ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... left Croydon, in 1758, when Archbishop Hutton died. The line of archbishop tenants of the Palace had been broken in the days of the Commonwealth, when Sir William Brereton, one of the Parliamentary Major-Generals, lived there. He was a soldier of conviction, and was nearly torn in pieces by the mob at Chester, "for ordering a drum to be beat for the parliament." Croydon's historian, Steinman, quotes from a pamphlet of Cavalier days, The Mystery of the ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... another to observe the weather, and return to report their observations, each ending with the refrain "Receive me from the night, my friends." The whole episode is singularly arresting, and carries a conviction of reality too often wanting in the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... calculations of chance? Such as it is and has been, my life is vowed to the law, and the law will have the offering. Could I escape from this indictment, I know that seven others await me, and that by one or the other of these my conviction and my sentence must come. Life may be sweet to all of us, my lord; and were it possible that mine could be spared yet a while, that continued life might make a better atonement for past actions than a death which, abrupt and premature, calls for ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Moreover, these unlooked for observations, made sometimes on the public highway, the worst of laboratories, are only half-satisfactory. In the case of swiftly-enacted scenes, which it is not in our power to renew again and again until perfect conviction is reached, we always fear lest we may not have seen accurately, may not ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... was now calmed, and who had already begun to feel uneasy at absence from the still reigning favourite of his heart, on perusing her letter was overcome with joy. He listened eagerly to the account of his fancied rival by the eloquent Ali Bin Ibrohim, to whom he expressed his conviction of her constancy, his own sorrow for his unreasonable desertion of her, and his intention of departing to visit her the next night, till when he desired the eunuch to repose himself after his fatigue. Ali Bin Ibrahim was then lodged, by the prince's orders, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.

... week, an' still I don't see any chance of your gettin' away yet awhile," said Ben, in a matter of fact tone, as he devoted his attention again to his horses, leaving Toby to his own sad reflections and the positive conviction that boys who run away from home do not have a good time, except ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis

... he remarked with conviction, "in such distressing circumstances I have no hesitation whatever in advising you to consult Mr. ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... in the Bible—difficulties not easy to explain, and some, perhaps, which in our present state of information can not be cleared up. But, my dear sir, when I consider the overwhelming testimony in its favor, so ample, complete and satisfactory, I can not resist the conviction of its divine origin. The field of prophetic inspiration is so varied and full, and the internal evidence so conclusive, that, with all the difficulties, the preponderance of evidence is overwhelming in its ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... dangerously ill. Slavin's anxiety and fear were not relieved much by the reports the men brought him from time to time of Geordie's ominous forebodings; for Geordie had no doubt but that the Avenger of Blood was hot upon Slavin's trail; and as the sickness grew, he became confirmed in this conviction. While he could not be said to find satisfaction in Slavin's impending affliction, he could hardly hide his complacency in the promptness of Providence in vindicating his ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor

... turned. From ridicule it had swept with eager-eyed conviction to vast local pride in Henley as a native product. From that day on the remaining items of the circus property were regarded with growing interest. Would Henley actually triumph all through? became the ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... kind is open to several objections. If such an idea existed, it must, to answer the required end, be sufficiently clear and well defined to give at least a tolerably accurate notion of the Deity, and must also bring with it a well-grounded conviction of its correspondence to the reality. But the variety of opinions which have been entertained on the subject forbid us to believe that any such idea as this exists. Search as far as we can into our ...
— Thoughts on a Revelation • Samuel John Jerram

... been ungenteel in me to run riot on my entrance into the career of practise, I affected thorough conviction; indeed, I thought there was something in it. I therefore went on drinking water on the authority of Celsus, or to speak in scientific terms, I began to drown the bile in copious drenches of that unadulterated liquor; and tho I felt myself more out of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... asked the principal distributor of rabble justice. The others stooped forward, pens in hand, to record my conviction. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... as I saw his Excellency taking keen pleasure in the consciousness of my difficulties (for he had a shrewd notion of how the land lay), but of course I could say nothing. So I rose and bowed myself out, feeling I had gained nothing, except a very clear conviction that I should not see the color of the President's money on the next interest day. True, I could just pay myself. But what would happen next time? And if he wouldn't pay, and I couldn't pay, the game would be up. As to the original loan, it is true I had no responsibility; ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope

... from the window, with the reluctant conviction that he had been nursing an untenable theory, a last ray of sunshine shot through the open window, causing the dust he had raised by his entrance to quiver and gyrate like a host of mad bacilli dancing a jig. The shaft of light, falling athwart the dismantled toilet-table, ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... is satisfied, then it must be, for there is no conclusive right or wrong—only an unending search for that which is most gem-set and resourceful," replied this person, with an ever-deepening conviction of no enthusiasm towards the sit-round game. "But," he added, resolved to raise for a moment the canopy of a mind swan-like in its crystal many-sidedness, and then leave them to their own ineptitude, "for five centuries ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... me with a kind of dismay, as if my words had carried conviction, or had roused a conviction long dormant in his heart. "It wouldn't have ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells

... evil befallen him? These and similar inquiries were continually arising in her mind, filling her with disquiet. She was one of those singularly-constituted persons who are given to presentiments, and who, when they are under the spell of a deep, controlling conviction that something unusual is to transpire,—a persuasion that comes to them, not through reason or evidence, or the probabilities of things, but, as some express it, "as if a voice had spoken to them" when no human being was near, or ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson

... evening tried also to make light of the jeweler's son and the air of importance he constantly assumed. They also spoke of him as a young upstart and a windbag, but after the beginning of his connection with Hugh McVey, something of conviction went out of their voices. "I read in the paper that a man in Toledo made thirty thousand dollars out of an invention. He got it up in less than a day. He just thought of it. It's a new kind of way for sealing fruit cans," a man in the crowd before ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson

... for who will suspect them of an intention to injure the object of their peculiar and professed esteem? The hearer's belief of the fact grows in proportion to the seeming reluctance with which it is told, and to the conviction he has, that the relater is not influenced by any private pique, or personal resentment; but that the confession is extorted from him sorely against his inclination, and purely on account of ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More

... peculiar fondness. I have heard a young, elegant, and accomplished woman discourse in very choice Italian with the accent of a market-woman, and on being remonstrated with for the use of some very pungent proverbial illustration in her talk, she replied with conviction, "That is the right way to speak Tuscan. I have nothing to do with what Italians from other provinces may prefer. But pure, racy Tuscan—the Tuscan tongue that we have inherited—is spoken as I speak ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... lost no time in carrying out her idea. She took possession of Georgy that afternoon, while teaching her a new stitch in tricot, and succeeded in impressing her with the conviction that change of air ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... face so swept by emotion, and met the deathless fire of Howard's brilliant eyes, she felt as never before the frailty of his physical life, and wondered at the mighty force of his passionate will. The conviction came that she was grappling with no slight feeling, but with that which really might mean life or death ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt

... rapidly away. That unusual look in her face, the strangeness of the fact that she should be leaving the house at this hour, inspired him with a vague terror, and he followed her, not stealthily, without a thought that he was doing any wrong by such an act—rather, indeed, with the conviction that he had a right ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... walked along, the conviction growing every moment that he was hopelessly lost. The ground was now soft and miry and was covered with tussocks of coarse grass, between which the soil was black and oozy. The horse floundered on for some distance, but with such increasing difficulty that, upon reaching ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty

... impressed, in spite of himself, by this weight of conviction, especially when the Cubans ridiculed his suggestion that the combination of milk and mango might not prove altogether fatal to an American. Nothing, they assured him, could possibly be ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... dieted and quit; exercised and quit; gone on the waterwagon and fallen off; had fussed round a good deal, spending a lot of money in the attempt, and I was getting fatter all the time. I hated to admit that fact. I tried to fool myself into the conviction that I wasn't getting any larger—and all the time I knew I was. I even went so far as to stop getting on the scales; and when anybody—as almost everybody did—said, "Why, you're getting bigger, ain't you?" I always replied: "No, I think not. I ...
— The Fun of Getting Thin • Samuel G. Blythe

... the whisper of a present muse," he said, gayly, but with conviction in his voice. "'Twas in the very mood of Jacques, my lady—a melancholy ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... dubious morn; It must be sure!—The honour and the fame Of France's gay and gallant infantry— So dear, so cherished all the Empire through— Binds us to compass it! Maintain the ranks; Let none be thinned by impulse or excuse Of bearing back the wounded: and, in fine, Be every one in this conviction firm:— That 'tis our sacred bond to overthrow These hirelings of a country not their own: Yea, England's hirelings, they!—a realm stiff-steeled In deathless hatred of our ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... one! There's no doubt of it, I tell you," rejoined his friend, with an air of conviction. "The more I think of it, the more positive I am of it. Why, his eyes shone like stars under his overhanging false eye-brows, and in spite of his absurd pasteboard nose he had a grand, majestic air about him that was very imposing, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... dissemination of knowledge and virtue throughout the whole body of the people. And what object or consideration more pleasing than this can be presented to the human mind? If national pride is ever justifiable or excusable it is when it springs, not from power or riches, grandeur or glory, but from conviction of national innocence, ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... both," answered Leam as positively as she used to answer Alick about the ugliness of England and the want of flowers in the woods and hedges, and with as much conviction of her case. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... same thing might be said, in a different sense, of Voltaire; while, as every one knows, the money-value of any hand-stroke of Watteau or Hogarth, Nattier or Sir Joshua, is out of all proportion to the importance of the men. Society seemed to delight in talking with solemn conviction about serious values, and in paying fantastic prices for nothing but the most futile. The drama acted at Peking, in the summer of 1900, was, in the eyes of a student, the most serious that could be offered for his study, since it brought him suddenly ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... in the moonlight first! So down the steps and the winding path into the valley of the burn, and up to the flower garden they wandered, Clementina telling him how sick the moonlight had made her feel that night she met him first on the Boar's Tail, when his words concerning her revived the conviction that he loved Florimel. At the great stone basin Malcolm set the swan spouting, but the sweet musical jargon of the falling water seemed almost coarse in the soundless diapason of the moonlight. So he stopped it again, and they strolled ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... adobe walls at Moreno's, and glittering eyes and swarthy faces peered through the westward aperture, while out in the corral the night lights were dancing to and fro, and Feeny, sore perplexed, but obedient to orders, was hurrying the preparations of his men. Murphy's wild announcement had carried conviction to the major's soul, despite all Feeny's pleadings, and the sight of that beacon furiously burning, the thought of those helpless women being borne off into the horrors of captivity among the Indians, had conspired to rouse the paymaster ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... trust their hearts; when I remember that the Scripture quoted as opposing is susceptible of another interpretation, when I remember that blossoms are not men, and, most of all when I see the God-like possibilities in every human being, I cannot resist the conviction that every soul of man is from God, and that, sometime and somehow, it may be by the hard path of retribution, possibly through great agonies and by means of austere chastisements and severe discipline as well as by loving entreaty, after ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford

... any of the Streets, Lanes, Wharves, High-Ways, Commons, Fields, Pastures or Orchards of any Town or Place within this Province upon the Lord's Day, or any Part thereof, every Person so offending shall forfeit and pay the sum of five shillings and upon a second Conviction bound for good behaviour,... If any Persons being able of Body and not otherwise necessarily prevented shall for the space of one Month together absent themselves from the Publick Worship of God on the Lord's ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 3: New-England Sunday - Gleanings Chiefly From Old Newspapers Of Boston And Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... quite right—I haven't made it too strong?" she asked solicitously; and he replied with conviction that he had ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... from first to last the view of life taken by the most serious thinkers was grave and sad. Not in one age or in one form of poetry alone, but in most that are of great import, the feeling that death was better than life is no mere caprice of melancholy, but a settled conviction. The terrible words of Zeus in the Iliad to the horses of Achilles,[11] "for there is nothing more pitiable than man, of all things that breathe and move on earth," represent the Greek criticism of life already mature and consummate. "Best of all is it for men not to be ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail

... sections of the German people were greatly excited during the summer and autumn of 1911. The conviction lay heavy on all hearts that in the settlement of the Morocco dispute no mere commercial or colonial question of minor importance was being discussed, but that the honour and future of the German nation were at ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi

... arms of the prince. M. de Beaufort finished by giving away his horses and the hay from his lofts. He made more than thirty happy with kitchen utensils; and thirty more, with the contents of his cellar. Still further; all these people went away with the conviction that M. de Beaufort only acted in this manner to prepare for a new fortune concealed beneath the Arab tents. They repeated to each other, while devastating his hotel, that he was sent to Gigelli by the king, to reconstruct his lost fortunes; that the treasures of Africa ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... a theory, for I learn most from such a man, and when I have thought a thing out in my own mind and forgotten the arguments while I have arrived at a firm conviction as to the conclusion, it is refreshing to be reminded of points and facts that have slipped ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... of this attack on crime must be the conviction that a free America—as Abraham Lincoln once said—must "let reverence for the laws . . . become the political religion ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Lyndon B. Johnson • Lyndon B. Johnson

... a perplexity only too common during the stresses of that tragic year. He was entangled in a paradox; like a large majority of Americans at that time his feelings were quite definitely pro-Ally, and like so many in that majority he had a very clear conviction that it would be wrong and impossible for the United States to take part in the war. His sympathies were intensely with the Dower House and its dependent cottage; he would have wept with generous emotion to see the Stars and Stripes interwoven with ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... came to himself, the first bitterness of the thing over, he could not avoid the conviction, that the playmate of his childhood, whom once he loved best in the world, and who when a girl refused to marry him, had come to despise him, and that righteously. The idea took a firm hold on him, ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald

... it all ends here on the day one dies. I feel as certain of that as of my being a woman. And this being my conviction, I think it of paramount importance to have a good time while I ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... vulgarly called a man who would not harm a fly. He was modest and incapable of conceiving an evil thought. He would have made a good missionary had he lived in olden times. His stay in the country had not given him that conviction of his own superiority, of his own worth, and of his high importance, which the larger part of his countrymen acquire in a few weeks in the Philippines. His heart had never been able to conceive hatred for anybody or anything. He had ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal

... dread disgrace. Why should I have dreaded it? I had neither portfolio, nor office, nor salary, for, as I have said, I was only with Bonaparte as a friend, and we had, as it were, a common purse. I feel a conviction that it would have been very possible for me to have dissuaded Bonaparte from his fatal design, inasmuch as I positively know that his object, after the termination of the peace, was merely to frighten the emigrants, in order to drive them from Ettenheim, where great numbers, like the Due ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... she turned upon the two men Madison could see that she was not expecting them, and even in the slight curiosity with which she glanced at her husband, that evidently he had said nothing of his previous visit or invitation. And this conviction became certainty ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... started; this reasoning confused her a little, the more so that she had an uneasy conviction that she had punished the lesser offender. She looked at the proud little figure in the torn coat, and her mild heart went out to him. She glanced round; there were not many scholars in the room. Elmira sat in her place, busy with her slate; a few of the older ones were in a knot near the ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... statement seemed too good to be true; yet he had spoken with the easy confidence of a man who knows what he is about. Standing there, the personification of respectability, a trifle indignant, a trifle contemptuous, his words could not fail to carry with them a certain amount of conviction. The inspector rang a ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... modesty, even in excess, is more nearly allied to wisdom than conceit and self-sufficiency. He who has attentively considered the political, or, indeed, the general concerns of life, may possibly go still further, and rank a willingness to be convinced, or in some cases even without conviction, to concede our own opinion to that of other men, among the principal ingredients in the composition of practical wisdom. Monmouth had suffered this flexibility, so laudable in many cases, to degenerate into a habit which made him often follow the advice, ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox

... summer happiness, her Professor father did not share in his son's opinions and after John had a long talk with Betty Ashton he became well, not convinced, but at least more open to conviction. Usually Betty did have this effect upon him, which was perhaps ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook

... Morris came home to find the old barn afire. There had been a few, a very few, exceptions. There were the nights when he was expecting to go duck-shooting before daylight, and waked up at midnight with a strong conviction that he was late about starting. There were, perhaps, a dozen of "eeling" expeditions, that had kept him out late enough for a full basket and a proper scolding. There, too, was the night when he had stood so steadily by the tiller of "The Swallow," ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard

... possession of truths, that shall carry them on as far beyond what their natural instincts now can do, as these instincts carry them on beyond any point to which the brutes ever arrive. This, certainly, was my own conviction, before I met with Christianity. Now, Marcus and Lucilia, what is this Christianity, but a revelation from Heaven, whose aim is to give to you, and to all, such conceptions of God, and futurity, as I have just spoken of?'—I ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... "listen to me, for your country's sake. The promise contained in that letter is barely worth the paper it is written on, so long as the British fleet remains what it is. But, apart from that, I tell you here, of my own profound conviction—and I will prove it to you before many days are past—Germany does not ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... talk, because the candidate was approaching his climax, and the grand swell of his speech had in it a musical quality that did not detract from its power to carry conviction. Then he closed, and the thunders of applause rose again and again. At last, after bowing many times to the gratified audience, he came back to the box, and his niece, her eyes shining with delight, sprang up, as if driven by an impulse, and, throwing her arms about his neck, ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... my point of view, an unjustifiable intrusion upon very busy people. I must ask you to take my word for it that no publisher would bring out your poem, and it never would pay you a cent if he did." The boy remained silent as before, and Sewell had no means of knowing whether it was from silent conviction or from mulish obstinacy. "Mrs. Sewell will be down presently. She wished me to ask you to stay to dinner. We have an early dinner, and there will be time enough after that for you to ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells

... what will happen to the Slavs hitherto living in Austria is not without significance. Without attempting to prophesy future events which for a mortal man it is difficult to foreshadow, I may say from my inner conviction that the Czechs as a nation, if they fell under the subjection of either Russia or Prussia, would never rest contented. It would never fade from their memory that according to right or justice they should be ruled by themselves, that is by their own government and by their ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... was not a question of even who talked best. It was who talked last. And Driscoll, being for the moment an exhorter of both descriptions, drove home conviction as a sabre point. He spoke bluntly, earnestly; and, at the scent of opposition, he spoke fiercely. The South was defeated, he said, and the North would now make good its threat to drive out the French. And the French would go, too. Suppose they were even willing ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... four thousand crowns, and when Iscatinaro stooped to pick it up, the Pope told him to keep it for his sake. I was present at these transactions: and if the diamond of which I speak be missing, I have told you where it went; but I have the firmest conviction that you will find even this noted upon the register. After this you may blush at your leisure for having done such cruel injustice to a man like me, who has performed so many honourable services for the apostolic chair. I would have you know ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... contrary, I am going, Mr. Hobson, with the profound conviction that I leave you in excellent hands. (R. of table.) One prescription is on the table, Mrs. Mossop. The other two ...
— Hobson's Choice • Harold Brighouse

... ain't white," said the sheriff doggedly, "and our people won't stand a nigger's puttin' on such airs. Why, Captain," he continued in a tone which showed that he felt that the fact he was about to announce must carry conviction even to the incredulous heart of the Yankee officer. "You just ought to see his place down at Red Wing. Damned if he ain't better fixed up than lots of white men in the county. He's got a good house, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... sense in which so much can be said of every country in the world, but in a very special sense. For the past decade Ireland has been thinking in terms of woollens and linens, turnips and fat cattle, eggs and butter, banks and railways. The conviction that the country is under-developed, and in consequence under-populated, has been growing both in area and in depth. With it there has been growing the further conviction that poverty, in the midst of untapped resources, is a national ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... overcome by thy enemies, and be made the sport and contempt of the world, I will drink of the bitter cup. Thy will be done.' I had hardly spoken these words before I was inspired with new hope, and felt a full conviction that God would frustrate the designs of ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... not be ignored, and a significance which should not be overlooked. It bears vivid testimony to the rate at which events, as well as their appreciation of events and of conditions, have been advancing. It is one of the symptoms of a gathering accord of conviction upon a momentous subject. At such a time, and on such a scene, the sympathetic drawing together of the two great English-speaking nations, intensely commercial and enterprising, yet also intensely ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan

... wife and I were immediately accommodated with dry stockings and shoes, a warm apartment, and a good supper, which I ate with great satisfaction, arising not only from our having happily survived the adventure, but also from a conviction that my strength and constitution were wonderfully repaired: not but that I still expected a severe cold, attended with a terrible fit of the asthma: but in this I was luckily disappointed. I now for the first time drank to the health of my physician ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... boy, and can't be taken as a sample of other boys," said Amy, in a tone of solemn conviction, which would have convulsed the 'remarkable boy' if he had heard it. "If we were belles, or women of wealth and position, we might do something, perhaps, but for us to frown at one set of young gentlemen because we don't approve of them, and smile upon another ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... know what happiness can fruit for me in life; I know that the star of fortune shines upon me; but a mighty feeling and conviction animates me: no sacrifice can be too great for ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth

... Harrington's drawing-room seemed to absorb the new-found manhood of the two boys, for they came forward shyly, overawed by the consciousness of their own boots, by the conviction that they carried with them the odour of cigarette smoke ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman

... the New Mennonite doctrine that none outside of the only true faith of Christ, as held and taught by the New Mennonites, could be saved from the fire which cannot be quenched. With the heroism born of deep conviction, he stoically disregarded the feelings of the bereaved family, and affirmed that the deceased having belonged to one of "the World's churches," no hope could be entertained for him, nor could his grieving widow ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin

... enough to him. It was only when the storms set in and the winds of adversity blew and he found himself facing the armed forces of convention that he realized he might be mistaken as to the value of his personality, that his private desires and opinions were as nothing in the face of a public conviction; that he was wrong. The race spirit, or social avatar, the "Zeitgeist" as the Germans term it, manifested itself as something having a system in charge, and the organization of society began to show itself to him as something based on possibly a spiritual, or, at least, superhuman ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... abound in esoteric lore, such as female circumcision and excision, etc. I answer all my friends that reading it will be a liberal education, and assure them that with such a repertory of esotericism at their finger ends they will know all the Scibile [380] requisite to salvation. My conviction is that all the women in England will read it and half ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... to stare upward, however, a conjecture presented itself to my mind which rapidly ripened into a conviction. Was not this the house that Dr. Dudeen had described that very evening as having been formerly the abode of the Kern of Querin and his mysterious bride? There was the projecting window, the arched doorway. Yes, beyond a doubt ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne

... observation of Europe a people more happy and better instructed than under other forms of Government. Fourth Stanza. Switzerland, and the Poet's recantation. Fifth Stanza. An address to Liberty, in which the Poet expresses his conviction that those feelings and that grand ideal of Freedom which the mind attains by its contemplation of its individual nature, and of the sublime surrounding objects (see Stanza the First) do not belong to men, as a society, nor ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... added the great expence of the court of Spain, in fitting out Pizarro, and in paying the additional charges in America, incurred on our account, together with the loss of their men of war, the total of all these articles will be a most exorbitant sum, and is the strongest conviction of the utility of this expedition, which, with all its numerous disadvantages, did yet prove so extremely prejudicial ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... me was to give the whole thing away. My rig underneath, though good enough for your girl, Tom, on a holiday, wasn't just what they wear in the Square. And, d'ye know, you'll say it's silly, but I had a conviction that with that coat I should say good-by to the nerve I'd had since I got into the Bishop's carriage,—and from there into society. I let her take the hat, though, and I could see by the way she handled it that it was all right—the thing; her kind, you know. Oh, the girl I got it ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson

... western borders, and have made some progress in agriculture and the arts of civilization, have, in the property they have acquired, and the protection and aid extended to them, too many advantages to be induced readily to take up arms against us, particularly if they can be brought to the full conviction that their new homes will be permanent and undisturbed; and there is every reason and motive, in policy as well as humanity, for our ameliorating their condition by every means in our power. But the case is far different with regard to the Osages, ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... It is rather, I think, a diversion of attention to more sustained and more exacting forms. It was my friend Mr. C.L. Hind who set that spring going. He urged me to write short stories for the Pall Mall Budget, and persuaded me by his simple and buoyant conviction that I could do what he desired. There existed at the time only the little sketch, "The Jilting of Jane," included in this volume—at least, that is the only tolerable fragment of fiction I find surviving from my pre-Lewis-Hind period. But I set myself, so encouraged, to the experiment of ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... we have before us is old, but not inveterate,—a question often argued, but whose decision is still pending: Should a Judge decide according to the evidence, or according to his conviction?" ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton

... of the Chiefs expressed in a single sentence an affirmative conviction, which was evidently shared by all present except myself. Appealing by a look to Esmo, and encouraged by ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... keepers vied with each other in illuminating their doors and windows to attract the notice of their victims. How was it that this disgrace was permitted to exist from season to season? The police seemed satisfied with the occasional conviction of one or more minor delinquents from the neighbourhood of Leicester Square, but the Leviathans in crime were allowed to continue their nightly course of profligacy and plunder with impunity. The French ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... friends, and sympathize with each other either in sunshine or shadow. To do this two things are indispensible: confidence and love. And we can never have the latter without first winning the former. Remember this, dear, I shall never doubt you. Whatever happens, you may rest firm in the conviction that I shall always accept your word when it is given. Our self-respect suffers when we are doubted, and one's self-respect is a very precious thing, and not to be lightly ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... straying beyond his subject when he undertakes to extend the principles of organic evolution to those possessions of mankind that seem to be unique. The task was undertaken in the Hewitt Lectures because the writer holds the deeply grounded conviction that evolution has been continuous throughout, and that the study of lower organic forms where laws reveal themselves in more fundamental simplicity must lead the investigator to employ and apply those laws in the ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... were very thoroughly studied by Mr. Squier. When he commenced his investigations, he was under the impression that he was dealing with the remains of a people very similar, at least, to those who built the massive works in the Ohio Valley and elsewhere, but he was led to the conviction that they were the works of the Iroquois Indians, and as further proof that such was the case, we are told that since the palisades that once inclosed places known to be villages of the Iroquois have disappeared, there is no difference to be observed between ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... study of Fox's writings, however, to arrive at the conviction that the distinction between subjective and objective verities had not the same place in his mind as it has in that of an ordinary mortal. When an ordinary person would say "I thought so and so," or "I ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... both—with a difference. Richard was wondering how any one could choose to change the sweet dignity of that rural life for the flaring, hurried delights of London and the season. He had thought this a thousand times, and yet, though he would have been little willing to acknowledge it, his conviction was not so impregnable as it ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... burthensome to it, and that it suffers a sort of torment brought on by a violent desire of possessing God, which is a martyrdom both agreeable, and, at the same time, painful; but we must be under the conviction, that with ordinary grace, which God increases in proportion to faithfulness, we may attain to an entire disengagement from worldly affairs, and to that longing for heaven which, as Christians, we ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... is good news!" the girl exclaimed, as she hurried across to her mistress. After the custom of her class, she had hitherto looked upon the matter in the darkest possible light, and had joined in the general conviction that Julian had ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty

... now lasted two years. But the question for us to answer is this: Are we going forwards or backwards? My own conviction—a conviction founded upon the views expressed by my commandos and the speeches which I have listened to at this meeting—is that we are not gaining, but losing ground. There is nothing, in my opinion, more evident than ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet

... into the military zone, the more fervent and evident is this confidence, until on the front it is an irresistible conviction that inspires men and officers alike. Even a novice like myself began to understand why the army is sure of ultimate victory, and the longer one stays at the front the more this faith of the French seems justified. In the first place, ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... of his tuition, illness or domestic affairs would, to his great regret, detain him from our midst, and the beatitude we would experience when the conviction gradually dawned upon us that we were watching for him in vain was too deep for either words or deeds or outward demonstration of any sort. It was enough to sit on our stone posts and let it ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... the earth," she replied passionately, seizing his hand and drawing him further up the hill. Then she stopped suddenly and gathered a handful of dead leaves, moss, twigs and earth. The exquisite familiar perfume as she held it to his face pierced through him with a singular power of conviction. ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood

... which mark the union of thought with grit. A politician of this class is not content to comprehend and wield the elements of power already existing in a community, but he aims to make his individual conviction and purpose dominant over the convictions and purposes of the accredited exponents of public opinion. He cares little about his unpopularity at the start, and doggedly persists in his course against obstacles which seem insurmountable. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... is heresy," she exclaimed gaily. "We must pretend there aren't any vampires, and that we do not know what they are made of. If we tell the naked truth, how can we cry out with conviction that the old world is an harmonious and ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... again to oversteal her body and spirit. Visions of her peaceful past seemed to confuse themselves with the present. "You—must stay to tea, and—not—go home until—after sunset, when it is cooler," she murmured, drowsily, and with a dim conviction that this was a Sabbath of long ago, that Lucina was a little girl in a short frock and pantalettes; then in a few minutes her head drooped limply towards her shoulder, and all her thoughts relaxed into soft ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... young and very pretty. She spoke with the conviction of candor that counts so much to honest minds, and judge Cowles encouraged her with a most pleasant manner. The newspaper men were scribbling notes rapidly. Rob Roland was looking steadily at the chandelier at the risk of injury to his neck ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose

... from a deep conviction! Oh, Herman, I know you will never willingly forsake me; but I feel you ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... searched. Not a trace of him could be anywhere discovered. Neither were there any indications of a struggle. Yet it was Toby's firm conviction that the ruffians had entered the house, and seized him; that Pepperill was in the plot, the object of whose visit was merely a diversion, while Ropes and the rest accomplished the abduction. This could not, of course, have been done without the aid of magic and the devil; but ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... natural facility for speech. He tells us that at first he disliked it, and that he had a firm conviction that he would break down every time he opened his mouth. The only two possible faults of a public speaker which he believed himself to be without, were "talking at random and indulging in rhetoric." With practice, he lost this earlier hesitancy, and ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... well that Sheila had a much more accurate notion of you than ever you had of her; and I happen to know, also, that at the very time when you were most deeply distressing her here in London she held the firm conviction that your conduct toward her—your habits, your very self—would alter if you could only be persuaded to get out of the life you have been leading. That was true, at least, up to the time of your leaving Brighton. She believed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... He would ask Sowerby, and if he could not learn from him, he would go to the three banks in Barchester. That it had been taken to one of them he felt tolerably certain. He would explain to the manager his conviction that he would have to make good the amount, his inability to do so at the end of the three months, and the whole state of his income; and then the banker would explain to him how the matter might be arranged. He thought that he could pay L50 ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... opportunities, your happy chances in life—in a word, your possibilities. You despair of finding any opening; you are sure that you will never hear a call to come up higher; you think your lives must always be ill-paid drudgery, with no promotion. It is sad to work with a conviction of that kind. You never work well if there is nothing to look forward to, and it is cowardly to give way to a conviction of that kind. Perhaps you are not specially clever—no, but there are better things than cleverness in the world, and ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.

... "I don't think that I'm a particularly sentimental sort of person, but all the same I'm not storm-proof against sentiment. And I've just got the conviction that it's up to me to go on with my cousin's job ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... with sullen scorn. If Cecily declared her marriage at an end, what fault could reason find with her? If she acted undisguisedly as a free woman, how was she to blame? Reuben's praise of her might still keep its truth. And the unwilling conviction of this was one of Miriam's sharpest torments. She would have liked to regard her with disdainful condemnation, or a fugitive wife, a dishonoured woman. But the power of sincerely judging thus was gone. Reuben ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... which Du Bois-Reymond here passes over the most important part of his subject is truly surprising; as if it were ultimately indifferent whether we have before us one single insoluble fundamental problem or two quite different ones; and as if mature reflection did not lead to the conviction that, in fact, the second problem is only a special case of the first general problem. I, for my part, cannot conceive of them in any other relation; I think, too, that all further words are by no means superfluous, but on the contrary conduce to a very strong conviction of the unity of the ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

... compatible with your safe custody on condition:—1st, that you make full confession of all the decoities in which you have been engaged; 2nd, that you mention truly the names of all your associates in these crimes, and assist to the utmost of your power in their arrest and conviction. If you act contrary to these conditions—conceal any of the circumstances of the decoities in which you have been engaged—screen any of your friends—attempt to escape—or accuse any innocent person—you shall be considered ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... Bridge at Des Vaches, Indiana, looking down at the tawny sweep of the Wabash. He had no love for that stream, nor for the ambitious town on its banks, but ever since he woke that morning he had felt a growing conviction that he had been a great ass to leave them. He had, in fact, taken the prodigious risk of breaking his life sharp off from the course in which it had been set for many years, and of attempting to renew it ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells

... and energy equally hot and untiring. Their words stung the slave-holding States to something like frenzy. The Georgia Legislature offered a reward of five thousand dollars to any one who should kidnap Garrison, or who should bring to conviction any one circulating the "Liberator" in the State. Yet so little known in their own neighborhoods were these early workers in this great reform that when the Mayor of Boston received remonstrances from certain Southern States against ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... seeing a good opening, had closed with his opponent, and after a moment's struggle had thrown him heavily, by the help of the fall he had learned from his village rival in the vale of White Horse. Williams hadn't the ghost of a chance with Tom at wrestling; and the conviction broke at once on the slogger faction, that if this were allowed their man must be licked. There was a strong feeling in the school against catching hold and throwing, though it was generally ruled all fair within certain limits; so the ring was ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... for which my life would pay for forfeit on conviction; no punishment could be inflicted on me further than that, and therefore I had nothing to fear but detection, for had my offences been millions of times more aggravated than they are now, ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... any mistake," said Nan Sherwood with such conviction in her voice that once more ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr

... manifested by Avondale people when Captain Royce was conducting the other side of the argument. But the evil spirit was scotched, not killed; and Bill became a harmless melancholic, dwelling on old time memories of the diggings, and gradually lying himself into the conviction that, if he had gone to Mount Brown, he could have told by the lay of the country, unerringly, and at the first ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... our modern and everyday speech, admitting at times even Latin and French terms, such as res scibilis and citrouille. The mixture startled the critics and carpers to whom its object had not been explained; but my conviction still remains that it represents, with much truth to nature, the motley suit of the Arabo-Egyptian. And it certainly serves one purpose, too often neglected by writers and unnoticed by reviewers. The fluent and transparent styles of Buckle and Darwin (the modern Aristotle who has transformed the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... Hell to you as it really is. He made you see pretty much what it will be like to wriggle and turn and squirm, and never escape from burning. But Ezekiel Pim, though he seldom said more than three words, uttered those words with such alarming sincerity and had such a sure conviction shining in his eyes that searched right in your face as he said them, and his long hair waved so weirdly as his head shot forward when he said "You're all damned,'' that Ezekiel Pim brought home to you that the vivid descriptions of Eliphaz really ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany



Words linked to "Conviction" :   murder conviction, condemnation, article of faith, strong belief, final decision, judgment of conviction, amateurism, acquittal, final judgment, convict, sentence



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