Home > Topic > incredulity
1 " A lot of people experience the world with the same incredulity as when a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat.…We know that the world is not all sleight of hand and deception because we are in it, we are part of it. Actually we are the white rabbit being pulled out of the hat. The only difference beween us and the white rabbit is that the rabbit does not realize it is taking part in a magic trick. "
― Jostein Gaarder , Sophie's World
2 " So, what...in the meantime, you just...” He glanced at her then back at the road. “Deny yourself?”Em gave a half smile at the incredulity in his voice. Clearly it was a foreign concept to him. “It’s okay. I have a battery operated boyfriend awaiting my attention when I get home.”He shot her a quick, open-mouthed stare, his lips parted enticingly. He looked so stunned at her admission she couldn’t help but laugh.“Sorry, didn’t you know that women did that, too? Did I shock you?”“Not at all.” He recovered quickly, a big smile splitting his profile. “I’m just trying to decide which is sexier. Self-denial or self-abuse. "
― Amy Andrews , Playing the Player (Sydney Smoke Rugby, #3)
3 " ... He who innovates will have for his enemies all those who are well off under the existing order of things, and only lukewarm supporters in those who might be better off under the new... partly from the incredulity of mankind, who will never admit the merit of anything new, until they have seen it proved by the event. "
― Niccolò Machiavelli , The Prince
4 " The twentieth century prided itself on invalidating the metaphysical. Doubts about the afterlife arose even as so-called nonbelievers attempted to locate surrogates for the loss of meaning atheism occasioned. Enraptured with progress, we deepened our collective worship of science. As incredulity to metanarratives rose, so did a massive publicity campaign to convince us of the omnipotence of science. "
― Adam Leith Gollner , The Book of Immortality: The Science, Belief, and Magic Behind Living Forever
5 " An English teacher at school once said to her, 'Alice, one thing I hope you never find out is that a broken heart hurts physically.' Nothing she has ever experienced has prepared her for the pain of this. Most of the time her heart feels as though it's waterlogged and her ribcage, her arms, her back, her temples, her legs all ache in a dull, persistent way: but at times like this the incredulity and the appalling irreversibility of what has happened cripple her with a pain so bad she often doesn't speak for days. "
― Maggie O'Farrell , After You'd Gone
6 " She made a hungry, eager sound, parted her lips and took the tip of his cock in her moth. Belatedly her mind caught up with what she had done.Um, maybe she should have asked first. If somebody had grabbed her crotch and helped himself without so much as checking in with the rest of her, you can bet your ass she would react with a strategically aimed knee to the privates.Just because he had an erection didn't mean he was willing or prepared to act on it....Her face flooded with heat. Pulling back, she muttered, " Sorry." Incredulity sharpened his gaze, " You're sorry?" Her shoulders crept up to her ears. " I just grabbed hold and started sucking. Then I thought maybe I should have asked first." Amusement bolted over his hard features, completely banishing his moody isolation.Then, sobering -- or at least appearing to -- he said, " Melly, please suck me off. Fasten your sexy mouth around my cock and pull on me until I don't have anything left to give. My God, just looking at the erotic shape of your lips makes me want to spill all over your gorgeous face. "
7 " Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms round the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage. "
― David Mitchell , Cloud Atlas
8 " A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's? "
― C.P. Snow
9 " She never opened her mail in the middle of the day. Sometimes she forgot about it for a week or more until people rang to complain. Nor did she check her answering machine messages. In fact, it had only been in the last year that she had finally bought an answering machine, and she steadfastly refused to have a mobile, to the incredulity of all those around her, who didn’t believe that people could actually function without one. But Frieda wanted to be able to escape from incessant communications and demands. She didn’t want to be at anyone’s beck and call, and she liked cutting herself off from the urgent inanities of the world. When she was on her own, she liked to be truly alone. Out of contact and adrift. "
― Nicci French , Blue Monday (Frieda Klein, #1)
10 " Centuries have passed since the wars of religion ceased in Europe, and since men stopped dying in large numbers because of arcane theological disputes. Hence, perhaps, the incredulity and denial with which Westerners have greeted news of the theology and practices of the Islamic State. Many refuse to believe that this group is as devout as it claims to be, or as backward-looking or apocalyptic as its actions and statements suggest." Their skepticism is comprehensible. In the past, Westerners who accused Muslims of blindly following ancient scriptures came to deserved grief from academics—notably the late Edward Said—who pointed out that calling Muslims 'ancient' was usually just another way to denigrate them. Look instead, these scholars urged, to the conditions in which these ideologies arose—the bad governance, the shifting social mores, the humiliation of living in lands valued only for their oil." Without acknowledgment of these factors, no explanation of the rise of the Islamic State could be complete. But focusing on them to the exclusion of ideology reflects another kind of Western bias: that if religious ideology doesn’t matter much in Washington or Berlin, surely it must be equally irrelevant in Raqqa or Mosul. When a masked executioner says Allahu akbar while beheading an apostate, sometimes he’s doing so for religious reasons. "
11 " Son, I hope your opinion of your mother hasn’t lessened, knowing what you now know.” Gavin glanced up; incredulity skewed his eyebrows. His expression appeared both stunned and appalled. “Never, Father! I love her! It makes no difference to me where she came from.” The man nodded, a show of relief in his features. His large hand, soft in touch, went to brush a string of hair away from his wife’s peaceful profile. “Your mother loves you too, son, more than anything in the world. She worries about you, day and night.” That sentiment stirred something profoundly pleasant inside the boy. He grinned at the internal warmth it created. "
― Richelle E. Goodrich , Secrets of a Noble Key Keeper
12 " Then there were her rules, rules that stated quite clearly that he was a ‘no-go’ area. She drew a deep breath and tried to make a decision in keeping with her rules. But the words would not come. She could not decide to give him up. Her inner self would not even contemplate it. Somehow, he had touched her soul in a way that she could not explain adequately. She felt a link there that was too real to consider severing. Kate felt the anguish of this conflict between her morality and her acceptance of the bond that did exist between them, despite her incredulity and despite her objections. "
― Khul Waters
13 " Those mortals who operate in the grey area between conviction and incredulity are in a position to choose most meaningfully, and with most meaningful consequences […] Perhaps only a doubter can appreciate the miracle of life without end. "
― Terryl L. Givens , The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life
14 " He is as good as anybody in this parish! He is very particular, too, about going to church-yes, he is!''I am afeard nobody ever saw him there. I never did, certainly.''The reason of that is,' she said eagerly, 'that he goes in privately by the old tower door, just when the service commences, and sits at the back of the gallery. He told me so.'This supreme instance of Troy's goodness fell upon Gabriel's ears like the thirteenth stroke of a crazy clock. It was not only received with utter incredulity as regarded itself, but threw doubt on all the assurances that had preceded it. "
― Thomas Hardy , Far From the Madding Crowd
15 " Now envy and antipathy, passions irreconcilable in reason, nevertheless in fact may spring conjoined like Chang and Eng in one birth. Is Envy then such a monster? Well, though many an arraigned mortal has in hopes of mitigated penalty pleaded guilty to horrible actions, did anybody ever seriously confess to envy? Something there is in it universally felt to be more shameful than even felonious crime. And not only does everybody disown it, but the better sort are inclined to incredulity when it is in earnest imputed to an intelligent man. But since it's lodgement is in the heart and not the brain, no degree of intellect supplies a guarantee against it. "
― Herman Melville , Billy Budd, Sailor
16 " I recognized no obstacle to miraculous change but the incredulity of others. This was an idea that died hard, if it ever really died at all. "
― Tobias Wolff , This Boy's Life
