All 21 Uses of
comprehend
in
Atlas Shrugged
- It still seemed simple and incomprehensible to him: simple that things should be right, and incomprehensible that they weren't.†
Chpt 1.1 *
- It still seemed simple and incomprehensible to him: simple that things should be right, and incomprehensible that they weren't.†
Chpt 1.1
- But how one could feel a personal emotion about a metal alloy, and what such an emotion indicated, was incomprehensible to him; so he could make no use of his discovery.†
Chpt 1.1
- The smile was disarming, like that of a boy who throws himself at the mercy of an incomprehensible universe.†
Chpt 1.2
- What he felt, thought Rearden, was anger at the incomprehensible fact that he had allowed himself to enjoy this conversation.†
Chpt 1.6
- " 'You don't have to worry, Hank," said Larkin, with that incomprehensible, insistent note of pleading in his voice.†
Chpt 1.8
- This was it, thought Dr. Stadler, this was the incomprehensible element in Ferris' manner: he had supposed that an indication of his disapproval would be sufficient, but Ferris seemed to remain untouched by it "If a drunken lout could find the power to express himself on paper," said Dr. Stadler, "if he could give voice to his essence-the eternal savage, leering his hatred of the mind-this is the sort of book I would expect him to write.†
Chpt 2.1
- The boy had stood, glumly avoiding Rearden's eyes, as if trying to avoid something incomprehensible within himself.†
Chpt 2.4
- By the rules of the complicated pretense which all those people played for one another's benefit, they should have considered his stand as incomprehensible folly; there should have been rustles of astonishment and derision; there were none; they sat still; they understood.†
Chpt 2.4
- Dr. Stadler saw the little shyster's eyes studying him for the fraction of a second: the eyes had a touch of superstitious awe, as at the sight of a phenomenon from a mystical realm forever incomprehensible to Mr. Thompson-and they had the piercing, calculating shrewdness of a ward heeler who feels certain that nothing is immune from his standards, a glance like the visual equivalent of the words: What's your angle?†
Chpt 3.3
- She sat at the window of a coach, like a stranger who has to learn the incomprehensible language of those around her.†
Chpt 3.3
- They were going through the performance of a child who, not yet able to read, holds a book open and spells out anything he wishes to spell, pretending that it is contained in the incomprehensible black lines.†
Chpt 3.3
- She could not understand Jim's behavior, or his sullen anger, which looked like weakness, or his evasive, incomprehensible answers to her questions, which sounded like cowardice; such traits were not possible in the James Taggart whom she had married.†
Chpt 3.4
- Her doubt kept growing-doubt of his incomprehensible work and of his relation to the railroad.†
Chpt 3.4
- He had never spoken to her again about Cherry], but he had started coming to her office more often than usual, he had stopped her in the halls for snatches of pointless discussions-and such moments had grown into a sum that gave her an incomprehensible sensation: as if, while clinging to her for support and protection against some nameless terror, his arms were sliding to embrace her and to plunge a knife into her back.†
Chpt 3.5
- He had been unable to discover any clue to Philip's purpose, only some incomprehensible solicitude, of a kind Philip had never displayed before.†
Chpt 3.5
- The cry was oddly, incomprehensibly genuine.†
Chpt 3.5
- Cuffy Meigs tried to avoid her; his manner was part scorn, as if he considered her an impractical idealist, part superstitious awe, as if she possessed some incomprehensible power with which he preferred not to tangle.†
Chpt 3.5
- It does not matter who then becomes the profiteer on his renounced glory and tormented soul, a mystic God with some incomprehensible design or any passer-by whose rotting sores are held as some inexplicable claim upon him-it does not matter, the good is not for him to understand, his duty is to crawl through years of penance, atoning for the guilt of his existence to any stray collector of unintelligible debts, his only concept of a value is a zero: the good is that which is non-man.†
Chpt 3.7
- Man's standard of value, say the mystics of spirit, is the pleasure of God, whose standards are beyond man's power of comprehension and must be accepted on faith.†
Chpt 3.7
- No child is afraid of nature; it is your fear of men that will vanish, the fear that has stunted your soul, the fear you acquired in your early encounters with the incomprehensible, the unpredictable, the contradictory, the arbitrary, the hidden, the faked, the irrational in men.†
Chpt 3.7
Definition:
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(comprehend) to understand something -- especially to understand it completely