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Ken   /kɛn/   Listen
Ken

noun
1.
Range of what one can know or understand.  Synonym: cognizance.
2.
The range of vision.  Synonym: sight.



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"Ken" Quotes from Famous Books



... dream upon the busy haunts of men As things that touch me not. An empire riven, A monarchy o'erthrown, here seem to me Importless as a foam-bell's death. The world And all its revolutions are now less Within my chronicles, than is the ken Of a star's orbit on the fines of space; But like a mariner saved from the wreck On this calm spot I stand, unscathed, secure From the rough throbbings of the sea of strife, And woe, and clamour, wherewith this world's life Ebbs and declines unto the printless shore Of death. O! blessed change, ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... (ignorant of the nature of this particular delicacy): "Ah, Donal, mon, we ken weel hev the Rawbit fur saxpence. We ken get twa Bawbees fur the Skeen when ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... sure about that," cried the girl, with a deeper blush, and a saucy toss of her head. "It is a fine country, but it's no' Scotland, ye ken, as my Aunt would say. My! but I'm ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor

... redoubtable Ben. "'E said I was to give you this an' tell you, 'Life an' death!'" As he spoke he held out a roll of paper tied about the middle with a boot lace; which done, the round head grinned, nodded, and disappeared from my ken. Unwinding the boot lace, I spread out the paper and read the following words, ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol

... nothing to do with the making of him, Captain Campbell," said Jean Clerk, now safe and certain that the boy's future was assured. "It'll be Miss Mary will have the making of him, and I ken the lady well enough—with my humble duty to her—to know she'll make him a gentleman ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... "I ken his head must be a muckle thicker nor that," was his comment, at which both the boys laughed as they climbed the steel ladders that led from the warm and oily regions to the deck. The engineer, with a "dour" Scot's grin, gazed ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... one another, as any other mechanical appliances interact on and help the invention that first hit upon them; but reason or thought, for the most part, flies along over the heads of words, working its own mysterious way in paths that are beyond our ken, though whether some of our departmental personalities are as unconscious of what is passing, as that central government is which we alone dub with the name of "we" or "us," is a point on which I will not ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler

... don't matter a hoot in hell to me what they are, or who they are, or what becomes of 'em. I ain't shepherdin' souls like that guy. It ain't in me, anyway. I just got to make good so that some day I ken quit these cursed forests and live easy the way I'd fancy. When that time comes maybe I'll change. Maybe I'll feel like that guy standin' doping over that spread of forest scene. I don't know. And just now I don't ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... feckless potie, and dinna ken the when she's well off. She wishes ta captain wad pit her in ta galley, to get ta fairst wee tasties of all ta gravies and good things ta ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn

... said the good woman, taking his hand and shedding tears. "I kent ye had lost a' by that fearfu' bank failure, but I didna ken ye had come doon sae low. And oh! to think that it was a' through me, an your kindness in offerin' to tak the shares aff my hands. Oh! Maister Black, my heart is wae when I look at ye. Is there onything I can dae ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne

... alternately wringing his hands and rumpling his hair. Beside him was a middle-sized, middle-aged lady in a most amazing state of preservation, who evidently presided over the cosmetic mysteries beyond the male ken. She was so perfectly groomed that she looked as though her clothes were a mould into which ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve

... sorry to part with Harris. Nearly two hundred hours (as we had calculated it) had we walked the ship's deck together, at anchor watch, when all hands were below, and talked over and over every subject which came within the ken of either of us. He gave me a strong gripe with his hand; and I told him, if he came to Boston again, not to fail to find me out, and let me see an old watchmate. The same boat brought on board S——, my friend, who had begun the voyage with me from ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... Endure for a space, Yet God! our salvation! We gain by Thy grace, At end of life's fever, Bliss passing man's ken; There to praise Thee for ever! And ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... in a new delight? I hearken for thy household cheer, O eloquent child! Whose voice, an equal messenger, Conveyed thy meaning mild. What though the pains and joys Whereof it spoke were toys Fitting his age and ken, Yet fairest dames and bearded men, Who heard the sweet request, So gentle, wise and grave, Bended with joy to his behest And let the world's affairs go by, A while to share his cordial game, Or mend his wicker wagon-frame, Still plotting how their hungry ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... myself! The phantoms all about here, in the college archways, and windows. They used to look friendly in the old days, particularly Addison, and Gibbon, and Johnson, and Dr. Browne, and Bishop Ken—" ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... fields for a covey of birds. The desired quarry being found, he "points" to them, and this time the female peregrine or true falcon is sent on her way. Away she soars upwards, "waiting on and towering in her pride of place." Then the birds, lying like stones beneath her savage ken, are flushed by the dog, and the cruel peregrine, after selecting her bird, with her characteristic "swoop" brings it to the ground. If she is unsuccessful in her first attempt, she will tower again, and renew the attack. The riders have to gallop as fast as their ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... a startled jackrabbit, kicking up behind it a tiny trail of yellow dust. Stone and dust diminished in size, until some of the party said the stone had stopped. That was because they could not see it any longer. It had vanished into the distance beyond their ken. Others saw it rolling farther on—I know I did; and it is my firm conviction that that stone ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... for he had charmed me by the mere amenity of his detachment which, in this case, I cannot help thinking he had carried to excess. He went away from his rooms without leaving a trace. I wondered where he had gone to—but now I know. He vanished from my ken only to drift into this adventure that, unavoidable, waited for him in a world which he persisted in looking upon as a malevolent shadow spinning in the sunlight. Often in the course of years an expressed sentiment, the particular sense of a phrase heard casually, would ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... talk. The courtiers drew together in groups, and it seemed that a man's name was being bandied to and fro, dark shuttlecock to this painted throng. Damans Sedley, entering the antechamber by a small side door, swam into the ken of a number of eager players gathered around a gentleman of flushed countenance, who, with much swiftness and dexterity, was wreaking old grudges upon the shuttlecock. One of the audience trod upon the player's toe; ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... in the peace of the closing day, Resting, as striving side by side, What does He mean? again we say; For what new lot are our souls allied? Comes to my ken, in Death's advance, Life in its ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... showering. Like stars that are ring'd, Like gems that are string'd Are those locks, while, as wing'd From the sun, blends a ray Of his yellowest beams; And the gold of his gleams Behold how he streams 'Mid those tresses to play. In thy limbs like the canna,[135] Thy cinnamon kiss, Thy bright kirtle, we ken a' New phoenix of bliss. In thy sweetness of tone, All the woman we own, Nor a sneer nor a frown On thy features appear; When the crowd is in motion For Sabbath devotion,[136] As an angel, arose on Their vision, my fair With her meekness of grace, And the flakes of her dress, As they ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... the pen, Had but the painter, in his fair work, then Language and intellect to beauty join'd, Less 'neath its care my spirit since had pined, Which worthless held what still pleased other men; And yet so mild she seems that my fond ken Of peace sees promise in that aspect kind. When further communing I hold with her Benignantly she smiles, as if she heard And well could answer to mine every word: But far o'er mine thy pride and pleasure were, Bright, warm and young, Pygmalion, to have press'd ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... come by divers ways To keep this merry tryst, But few of us have kept within The Narrow Way, I wist; For we are those whose ampler wits And hearts have proved our curse— Foredoomed to ken the better things And aye ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis

... of a defined system of drainage, the crests of snow-topped mountain ranges in the distance were proof of whence these rivers sprang. The native tribes were of higher intelligence, had a partial knowledge of what lay beyond their immediate ken, and could show articles of barter and commerce that they had obtained ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... what of life in such a world as that? On the night side, where no sunshine ever penetrates, the temperature must be extremely low, hardly greater than the fearful cold of open space, unless modifying influences beyond our ken exist. It is certain that if life flourishes there, it must be in such forms as can endure continual darkness and excessive cold. Some heat would be carried around by atmospheric circulation from the sunward side, but not enough, it would seem, to ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss

... I'll jest learn all they know—pianner and all. I ken, and I will. I'll begin right now. You'll see!" And her blue eyes flashed with the glitter of steel, while her chin was thrown up in ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris

... history as a genetic process. It is also an idea distinct from that of evolution. Nevertheless it is closely related to the ideas which revolutionised history at the beginning of the last century; it swam into men's ken simultaneously; and it helped effectively to establish the notion of history as a continuous process and to emphasise the significance of time. Passing over earlier anticipations, I may point to a Discours of Turgot (1750), where history is presented as a process in which "the total mass of ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel

... drops too slow,— "Angelo, Raffael, Pergolese,"—all Whose strong hearts beat through stone, or charged again The paints with fire of souls electrical, Or broke up heaven for music. What more then? Why, then, no more. The chaplet's last beads fall In naming the last saintship within ken, And, after that, none prayeth in the land. Alas, this Italy has too long swept Heroic ashes up for hour-glass sand; Of her own past, impassioned nympholept! Consenting to be nailed here by the hand To the very bay-tree ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... trees, immediately below the point of land on which Luke stood; and although their branching antlers could scarcely be detected from the ramifications of the wood itself, they escaped not his practised ken. ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... barrels: by the by, the very same I killed the lion with. Ugh! I never think of that scene without feeling a little quiver; and my nerves are pretty good, too. Well, he took me into an awful part of the town, down a filthy close, into some boozing ken—I beg pardon, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... being termed "P" Celts, and the other races "Q" Celts, because in words of the same meaning the Welsh used "P" where the Gaelic speaking Celt used the hard "C". For instance, "Pen" and "Map" in Welsh became "Ken" (or Ceann) and "Mac" ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray

... Thou Unweariable Launcher of worlds upon bewildered space," Rose in me, "All? or did thy hand grow dull Building this world that bears a piteous race? O was it launched too soon or launched too late? Or can it be a derelict that drifts Beyond thy ken toward some reef of Fate On which ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice

... brought into contact with the things which cannot be defined and assessed; once he stood face to face with some strange visible resultant of those secret forces that lie beyond the human ken. And, moreover, the adventure affected the whole of his domestic life. The wonder and the pathos of the story lie in the fact that Nature, prodigal though she is known to be, should have wasted the rare and beautiful visitation on just Mr. Woolley. Mr. ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... she is a fine gentlewoman,' replied Magsie. 'She gave me a whole sovereign. What I ken o' her, I ken weel, and I ken kind. Eh, but ye 'll hae to soople your backbone, Miss Hollyhock, and think a pickle less o' your dainty self. It 'll be guid for ye to ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade

... bound me to the mast of your destiny. I cannot go back, I must go forward: now I must keep on loving you or be shipwrecked. I did not know that this was in me, this tide of love, this current of devotion. Destiny plays me beyond my ken, beyond my dreams. "O Cithoeron!" Turn from me now—or never, O my love! Loose me from the mast, and let the storm and wave wash me out into the sea of your forgetfulness now—or never!... But keep me, keep me, if your love ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... Canticles ever composed for the English Liturgy, is very dull, but his harmony of the Litany and of the Versicles after the Creed, has never been equalled for beauty. His Canon tune, to which we sing Ken's Evening Hymn, is also unsurpassed, and his anthem, "If ye love Me," is one of wonderful sweetness and devout feeling. John Redford was his contemporary, and was organist of St. Paul's, 1530-1540. His anthem, "Rejoice in the Lord," is as impressive and stately ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham

... should na speir—but, eh, Glenfernie, I wad gie mair than a bawbee to ken what you did ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... she said, by way of introduction, "an' ah'm gaun to hae a bit private crack wi' ye. Ye're aunt's brocht ye up weel, an' ah ken ah'm takin' nae risk in confidin' in ye. Some o' the neeighbors 'll be sayin' ye're a' that prood, but ah've always stood up for the Gordons, an' said ye were nae mair prood than ye ocht to be. Noo, aboot this business. Ah wanted tae get yer help." The girlish ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... at home, sir. My grandpapa used to love it very much. His wife's father was a great friend of good Bishop Ken, who wrote it; and—and my dear brother used to love it too;" said ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... wily quarry shunned the shock And TURNED him from the opposing rock; Then dashing down a darksome glen, Soon lost to hound and hunter's ken, In the deep Trossach's wildest ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield

... these is open to us; any conclusions we can draw about them may be legitimate and true. But to step outside their province and to deny the existence of any other region because we have no sense-organs for its appreciation, or because (like the ether) it is too uniformly omnipresent for our ken, is to wrest our advantages and privileges from their proper use and apply them to our own misdirection." . . . "I am one of those who think that the methods of science are not so limited in their scope as has been thought: ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... nor keil To mark her upo' hip or heel, Her crookit horn did as weel To ken her by amo' them a'; She never threaten'd scab nor rot, But keepit aye her ain jog-trot, Baith to the fauld and to the cot, Was never sweir to lead nor caw; Baith to the fauld ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... us at a view. And how if we manage finally to print one of our pages on the crow-scalp of that solitary majestic outsider? We may get him into the Book; yet the knowledge we want will not be more present with us than it was when the chapters hung their end over the cliff you ken of at Dover, where sits our great lord and master contemplating the seas without upon the reflex ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... to the analogy, find a sense in which the divine Redeemer does not help and does not know the growth of his own grace in believing hearts. The germination and increase of vegetation without the intervention of the sower and beyond his ken, represent a helplessness and an ignorance so definite and complete, that we cannot, on any rule of sober interpretation, apply it to the omniscient and ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... which she yielded herself as a wild sea-bird to the rocking of the sea. They had started—those conversations—from her attempt to penetrate the secret history of the man whose poems had filled her with a thrilling sense of feelings and passions beyond her ken—untrodden regions, full, no doubt, of shadow and of poison, but infinitely alluring to one whose nature was best summed up in the two words, curiosity and daring. She had not found it quite easy. Cliffe, as we know, had resented the levity of her first attempt. ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... their souls to the white. The People of the Southern Ice, they trade with the whaler's crew; Their women have many ribbons, but their tents are torn and few. But the People of the Elder Ice, beyond the white man's ken— Their spears are made of the narwhal-horn, and they are the last ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling

... no solution: we came out of the burning nebulae just as our horse and dog, but why we are men and they are still horse and dog we owe to some Power, or, shall I say, to the chance working of a multitude of powers, that are beyond our ken. That some Being willed it, designed it, no; yet it was in some way provided for in the constitution of ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... is chill and drear, November's leaf is red and sear; Late, gazing down the steepy linn, That hems our little garden in, Low in its dark and narrow glen, You scarce the rivulet might ken, So thick the tangled greenwood grew, So feeble trill'd the streamlet through; Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen, Through bush and briar no longer green, An angry brook, it sweeps the glade, Brawls over rock and wild cascade, And, foaming brown with doubled ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... with the same crankiness as the horse, and always runs better toward night (this is curious, but it is a fact), which a horse seldom does. All the same an automobile is like David Balfour's Scotch advocate: hard at times to ken rightly—most of the time, one may say without undue exaggeration. Often an automobile is as fickle as a stage fairy, or appears to be, but it may be that only your own blind stupidity accounts for the lack of efficiency. ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... billeted, stoops Our wants to supply, and cooks our soups. His ox, or his horse, the peasant must chain To our baggage-car, and may grumble in vain. Just let a lance-corp'ral, with seven good men, Tow'rd a village from far but come within ken, You're sure he'll be prince of the place, and may Cut what capers he will, with unquestioned sway. Why, zounds! lads, they heartily hate us all— And would rather the devil should give them a call, Than our yellow collars. And why don't they fall On us ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... from this street, but soon her hunger for news of Thrums overcame her prudence, and she consented to let him go back if he promised never to tell that his mother came from Thrums. "And if ony-body wants to ken your name, say it's Tommy, but dinna let ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie

... the Duke. XXVI. Fouquet again. XXVII. The Aeronaut. XXVIII. The True-Blooded Yankee. XXIX. In France. I don't know where to stop. Apropos, I want a book about Paris, and the first return of the emigres and all up to the Cent Jours: d'ye ken anything in my way? I want in particular to know about them and the Napoleonic functionaries and officers, and to get the colour and some vital details of the business of exchange of departments from one side to the other.[58] ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... imajin; or that it wud b[i] [w]l on w[u]n seid. Beseidz, [u]nles h[i] kan sh[o] hou a reform ov speli[n] iz not [o]nli for the prezent tu b[i] avoided, b[u]t [w]ltugether tu b[i] renderd [u]nnesesari, ei konsider that the s[ue]ner it iz t[e]ken in hand the beter. It s[i]mz tu m[i] that the Archbishop luks on the introd[u]kshon ov f[o]netik speli[n] az a m[i]r krochet ov a fiu skolarz, or az an atempt on the part ov s[u]m haf-ediuk[e]ted personz, wishi[n] tu avoid the tr[u]bel ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller

... Of dream did marvel in his heart; because He found he had but dreamed the thing that was: For there, assuredly, was neither sea Nor Isle Enchanted; and assuredly He sat upon the peak of a great hill; And far below him, looking strangely still, Uptowered a city exceeding fair to ken, And ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... of the life of Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun, in the province of Galloway, Scotland. Earlstoun is a bonny place, sitting above the waterside of the river Ken. The gray tower stands ruinous and empty to-day, but once it was a pleasant dwelling, and dear to the hearts of those who had dwelt in it, when they were in foreign lands or hiding out on the wild wide moors. It was the time when Charles II wished to compel the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... Little-Faith been a worse sinner, he would have been a better saint. "O felix culpa!" exclaimed a church father; "O happy fault, which found for us sinners such a Redeemer." An apostrophe which Bishop Ken has put into these four ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... went to the hill-top by the side of Loch Ken and looked northward every eventide; and her ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... old Bill. "But he's a-goin' to marry her. But I'll tell you both right here, she'll never set foot in my house, ner I in her'n. Sam ken keep her, but what on, I don't know. He gits right out of this here farm the day he marries her, and he don't come ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson

... Tappan's Burro Ken Ward in the Jungle The Young Pitcher The Young Lion Hunter Roping Lions in the Grand Canyon The Last of the Plainsmen The Shortstop ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... reason to believe so."—"Have ye gotten doon your letter yet frae London?"—"No: but I expect an express every minute."—"Nae doot, nae doot; have you bethocht yoursel o' what teetle ye're to tak'? Lord H—n will never do; ye ken that's the teetle o' ane o' oor grandest dukes. Gudesake, for a bit session lordy, like you, to gang by that style and teetle o' ane high and michty prince! that wad be a bonny boorlesque on a' warldly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various

... laboratory is not the only ground for experiment; science, we must remember, is derived from sciens, present participle of scire, "to know,"—its origin is similar to that of the word "discern," to "ken." Science does not therefore deal only with matter, no, not even its subtlest and obscurest forms. Such an idea is born merely of the idle spirit of the age. Science is a word which covers all forms of knowledge. It is exceedingly interesting ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins

... fight The worse the disease, the more remarkable the cure Their lines belonged rather to the landscape (cottages) Thy politics are not over politic Tis no so bad it micht-na be waur Within every man's province to make himself what he will Ya maun ken th' incentive's the maist o' the battle Youth is in truth ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... workmen in his stall, To serve him well upon; The first of them were Peter and Paul, The third of them was John. Mary, God's handmaiden, Bring us to thy Son's ken. ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

... "But, Ken, don't you see how necessary you are to each other!" said Julia, kneeling before the chair in which her fat godson was seated, and displaying a number of gold chains and bracelets for his amusement. "You have to ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris

... "I dinna ken but I wad," responded the emigrant, consulting his watch; and he went in and set to work. No matter how often he found a fit, he tried on another and another till he tried on about thirty. Then, again ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... clenched his fists: this slim man embodied the very spirit of the outre. The fantastic surroundings melted from the ken of Soames, and he seemed to stand in a shadow-world, ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... main; then, stormily distraught, Backward again and eastward. To all time, Be well assured, that inlet of the sea All mortal men shall call Ionian, In memory that Io fared thereby. Take this for proof and witness that my mind Hath more in ken than ever sense hath shown. (To the CHORUS) That which remains, to you and her alike I will relate, and, to my former words Reverting, add this final prophecy. (To Io) There lieth, at the verge of land and ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus

... "stony-hearted stepmother" of them both, and came back bearing that "glass of port wine and spices" but for which he might, so he thought, actually have died. Was this the very door-step that the old De Quincey used to revisit in homage? I pondered Ann's fate, the cause of her sudden vanishing from the ken of her boy friend; and presently I blamed myself for letting the past override the present. ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm

... was a Greek idea. The classic formula for tragedy, the struggle of Man with the sequence of cause and effect within him and without, that is so utterly beyond his grasp and ken, or power to modify, originated with them. But they must also be given the credit for having conceived an idea and started a process which, at first slowly and gropingly, now slipping and falling, torn and bleeding ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... time that Jared Thurston found the new stars that had ranged across his ken, Tom Van Dorn, the handsome, cheerful, exquisite Tom Van Dorn began to find the debates between Casper and Dick Bowman diverting. So many a night when the society of the softer sex was either cloying or inconvenient, the dapper young fellow would come ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... standing over him, "let me tell you this, my man. The next time ye gang to my faither, and tell a story about any one o' us, or the next time you say a word against the French lassie, as ye ca' her, do ye ken what I'll do? I'll take ye back to my faither by the lug, and I'll tell him ye were sweerin' like a trooper down by the burn, and every one o' us will testify against you, and then, I'm thinking, it will be your turn ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... and for numerous improvements and corrections in detail he is particularly indebted to Miss Beatrix F. Cresswell, whose published works "Exeter Churches," "Notes on the Churches of the Deanery of Ken," and "Edwardian Inventories for the City and County of Exeter" have made her an authority on the ecclesiology of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw

... and flew high into the air. Balaam, however, surpassed him, and took a path in the air on which Zaliah could not follow, and after the former had soared through five different layers of air, he had quite vanished from Zaliah's ken, who knew not what to do. Phinehas, however, came to his aid. By means of a magical invocation he dispelled the clouds that covered Balaam, and then Zaliah forced Balaam to descend to earth and appear before Phinehas. [854] He began to implore Phinehas to spare his life, promising never again to ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... weather shall rise clear and gay; Out of the other an England beautiful And like her mother that died yesterday. Little I know or care if, being dull, I shall miss something that historians Can rake out of the ashes when perchance The phoenix broods serene above their ken. But with the best and meanest Englishmen I am one in crying, God save England, lest We lose what never slaves and cattle blessed. The ages made her that made us from the dust: She is all we know and live by, and we trust She is good and must endure, loving her so: And as ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas

... went round the sun, larger or lesser, and seeing this I began to question him, for I was uneasy in my innermost mind and, you will remember, so far had no certain knowledge of where I was, only a dim, restless suspicion that I had come beyond the ken of all men's knowledge. ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... George; I ken it as weel as if we had a year auld acquentance; I ken it by thae sweet mouth and een, and by the look she gied me when you tauld her, Sir, I had been in the house near as lang's yoursel. An' look at her eenow. There's heaven's ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... in the old fortification was waiting breathlessly for information as to what intelligence regarding the movements of the enemy the two stern-looking men up on the wall were gathering into their brains through their glasses—intelligence far beyond the ken of the sentries, whose duty it was to keep strict watch upon the great circle which was ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn

... the day began, The cock upon the village church Looks northward from his airy perch, As if beyond the ken of man To see the ships come sailing on, And pass the isle of Oleron, And pass the Tower ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... depths of Perpetual Darkness which MUST be, even as the Everlasting Light IS. Thy immortal but perverted Will bore thee always further from God, . . further from Him, and so far from me, that thou wert at times beyond even an Angel's ken! Ages upon ages rolled away, . . the centuries between Earth and Earths purposed redemption passed, ... and, . . though in Heaven these measured spaces of time that appear so great to men are as a mere ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... mental object to another, traceable backward from point to point till we reach the moment when, in the nursery or in the schoolroom, some little story told, some little object shown, some little operation witnessed, brought the first new object and new interest within our ken by associating it with some one of those primitively there. The interest now suffusing the whole system took its rise in that little event, so insignificant to us now as to be entirely forgotten. ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... Judith Montmarte had disappeared from the ken of the world. Where she went, what she did, what happened to ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson

... story of the life of Alexander Gordon, of Earlstoun in Galloway. Earlstoun is a bonny place, sitting above the waterside of the Ken in the fair strath of the Glenkens, in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright. The grey tower stands ruinous and empty to-day, but once it was a pleasant dwelling, and dear to the hearts of those that had dwelt in it when they were in foreign ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... of species, like all origination, like the institution of any other natural state or order, is beyond our immediate ken. We see or may learn how things go on; we can only frame hypotheses as ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... horizon is this morning full of remembrances. Cape St. Vincent, Cape Spartel, Tarifa, Trafalgar—all spirit-stirring sounds, are within our ken, and recognised with enthusiasm both by the old sailors whose memory can reinvest them with their terrors, and by the naval neophytes who hope to emulate the deeds of their fathers. Even a non-combatant like myself feels his heart beat faster and fuller, though ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... not had such a chat for a very long time—not, in fact, since Keningale (or Ken, as his friends called him) had returned from his visit to Europe the year before. He went abroad, as he affirmed at the time, "for purposes of study," whereat we all smiled, for Ken, so far as we knew him, was more likely to do anything else ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne

... never having done it before? Show me the example and I will say no more, but until it is shown me, I shall credit action where I cannot watch it, with being controlled by the same laws as when it is within our ken. It will become unconscious as soon as the skill that directs it has become perfected. Neither rose-seed, therefore, nor embryo should be expected to show signs of knowing that they know what they know—if they showed ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... supposed existences, which, though they might never become subject to our organs of vision, were yet conceived to be perpetually near us, fairies, ghosts, witches, demons and angels. Our ancestors often derived suggestions from these, were informed of things beyond the ken of ordinary faculties, were tempted to the commission of forbidden acts, or encouraged to proceed in the paths ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... many painful hours spent in their company is responsible for their neglect. Yet there is a charm about the early-printed Mentors of our youth which it is impossible to deny, and there is a growing demand for them—as the booksellers will tell you. The number that has disappeared from the ken of bibliographer must be large, for it is difficult to imagine a more unpopular type of book—at least with those who are obliged to use them; and if your taste has altered to such an extent that you now desire them above all things, you ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan

... discovery, of having a mutual friend, completed Kenneth's feeling of ease and confidence, and he was soon talking unrestrainedly about the Latimers—what splendid people they were. How Jim's father was trying to save his (Ken's) father from having a very valuable patent stolen by a ring of rascals in New York City. And how Mr. Latimer's brother who was a large financier on Wall Street, was financing the lawsuit, and the stock-company that was formed on ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... Marvell's classification of the world into the visited and the unvisited was as obsolete as a mediaeval cosmogony. Some of those whom Washington Square left unvisited were the centre of social systems far outside its ken, and as indifferent to its opinions as the constellations to the reckonings of the astronomers; and all these systems joyously revolved about their central ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... died; and Lady Castlewood appointed Thomas Tusher to the vacant living; about the filling of which she had a thousand times fondly talked to Harry Esmond: how they never should part; how he should educate her boy; how to be a country clergyman, like saintly George Herbert or pious Dr. Ken, was the happiest and greatest lot in life; how (if he were obstinately bent on it, though, for her part, she owned rather to holding Queen Bess's opinion, that a bishop should have no wife, and if not a bishop why a clergyman?) she would ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... air from powerful Master Rollock, and Mess David Black of North Leith, and sic like. Alack-a-day, wha can ken, if it please your lordship, whether sic prayers as the Southrons read out of their auld blethering black mess-book there, may not be as powerful to invite fiends, as a right red-het prayer warm from the heart may be powerful to drive them away; ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... might, unquestioned, unsubdued, Pervading ears and soul of lesser men, Is silent now and dead. Yet rules a viler dread; For bliss and power, however won, As gods, and more than gods, dazzle our mortal ken. ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... and in 1631 he was so intimate with Dr. Donne that he was one of the friends who attended him on his death-bed. J. BOSWELL, jun. His first wife's uncle was George Cranmer, the grandson of the Archbishop's brother. His second wife was half-sister of Bishop Ken. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... seem an easy thing to walk up to the trenches. One goes on, and ultimately one arrives, the casual reader will surmise. And with luck the casual reader will be right. But there are certain small points which may have escaped his ken and which render the task of reaching the front line a trifle harder than walking to the club ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... Poole, in the lovely hats and gowns and jewels of Lady Diana, would accept the dignity and social obligations that hedge a peer's daughter, even on a voyage to South Africa. On arrival at the Cape, each to assume her identity and disappear from the ken of their fellow-travellers: April to be swallowed up by a Cape suburb, where she was engaged to teach music and French to the four daughters of a rich wine-grower; Diana to proceed to her destination—the farm of an eccentric ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... them. A very strange race of people, in my opinion—very. Know the story of the master who fancied his man was drunk? 'Donald, you're trunk,' says he. 'It's a tam lee,' says Donald. 'Donald, ye ken ye're trunk,' says the master. 'Ah ken ah wish to Kott ah was!' says Donald. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... going on his way, was totally oblivious to the doctor's sage counsel as to the merits of deep breathing. Neither did he realize in the least the splendid optimism of the stern old doctor's creed. For the hour, optimism was quite beyond his ken. He only realized that his own world had gone bad; that failure awaited him at every turn, not a downright and practical failure, either, but a nebulous and indeterminate futility. His life had been nothing but one restless struggle to arrive at something finite, something which should satisfy ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... several nouns that are not used in prose, or are used but rarely; as, benison, boon, emprise, fane, guerdon, guise, ire, ken, lore, meed, sire, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... sighs from its full and overflowing breast, or a grateful coolness swept their cheeks and hair when the tranquil heights around them were moved to slowly respond. Odors from invisible bay and laurel sometimes filled the air; the incense of some rare and remoter cultivated meadow beyond their ken, or the strong germinating breath of leagues of wild oats, that had yellowed the upland by day. In the silence and shadow, their voices took upon themselves, almost without their volition, a far-off confidential murmur, with intervals of meaning silence—rather ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte

... impediment in his way, and he managed to have it understood that Mr. Kennedy's cousin should be summoned on the following morning. "Is anybody else coming?" Robert Kennedy asked, when the landlord was about to leave the room. "Naebody as I ken o', yet, laird," said Macpherson, "but likes they will." Nobody, however, did come, and the "laird" had spent the evening by himself in ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... can there be infinite power, either material or spiritual? If the universe is spherical because its molecules are, can the molecules compose any other than the spherical form? Do we gain much by reasoning from an assumption below the ken of the microscope to a conclusion above that of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... the new-born years behold him, crowned with applause of men, Pass at last from a lustrous past to life that lightens beyond their ken, Glad and dead, and from earthward led to sunward, guided ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... persons to think exactly alike, in regard to the rule of duty. Each person is bound to inquire and judge for himself, as to his own duty or deficiencies; but as both the resources, and the amount of the actual charities, of other men are beyond our ken, it is as indecorous, as it is uncharitable, to sit in judgement ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher



Words linked to "Ken" :   grasp, compass, sight, reach, cognizance, knowing, range



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