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More "Impossible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quite impossible!" said the Brownie, tightening his belt to make his poor little inside feel less empty. He had been asleep so long—about a week, I believe, as was his habit when there was nothing to do—-that he seemed ready to eat his own head, or his boots, or anything. "What's to be done? Since nobody ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... success at this procession in honour of Lamarque, that there must have been a new ministry and new measures, had not this unfortunate event occurred. As it is, the government will profit by events. I do not wish to wake any unjust accusations, but, with my knowledge of men and things, it is impossible not ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... skilful combination of our hours and our means enabled us to take short spells of rest in turn. However, for a hundred reasons sleep was impossible to me, and for several weeks I forgot what it ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... dream, which she had had the night before her father's death. Now her love suddenly burst into the light like a wonderful flower, which suddenly springs up with a thousand fragrant buds. Now it was impossible to stem it or to conceal it. She had wanted to suppress every germ, with her father's coldness and the day's dispassionately proud haughtiness she had been willing to stifle every impulse toward love, every longing for self avowal. Now ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... It would be impossible in the space to which we are necessarily confined, to do justice to Mr. Hudson's powers of analysis and representation, as exercised through the wide variety of the Shaksperian drama. The volumes swarm with strong and striking thoughts on so many suggested topics, that it is difficult ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... Union will be of the utmost moment to the peace and liberty of the States, as a barrier against domestic faction and insurrection. It is impossible to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy without feeling sensations of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were continually agitated, and at the rapid succession ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... tugged and strained. He ran back into the water. It struck him that he might climb aboard the boat again. But his arms were caught down at his sides. It was impossible for him to get at a knife to cut the ropes. He could ease off the noose with his teeth, but it would be ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... not the reason of its failure. It failed, sir, because there was a vile conspiracy against it; and what made the conspiracy successful was, that among the leading conspirators were officers of the law—the very men without whose active co-operation it was impossible for it to be successful. Allow me to illustrate what I mean by an anecdote: A few years ago there was a gang of desperadoes, who operated in one of the south-western states. They robbed every one with perfect impunity for several years, all attempts to capture them proving abortive, ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... the hundreds of thousands, and sold for three half-pence each, or sometimes a franc per dozen. Thrushes, moreover, are considered game, and occasionally the gendarmes succeed in catching a poacher, but so mixed are one's feelings in dealing with this question that it is impossible to know whether to sympathise with the unfortunate wine-grower whom the thrush robs of his two bunches of grapes per day, the poacher who is caught and heavily fined for catching it, or with the bird itself. No one who has Browning's charming lines by ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... was buried in this spot more than twelve days, to carry off the volumes found there; many of which were so perished, that it was impossible to remove them. Those which I took away amounted to the number of three hundred and thirty-seven, all of them at present uncapable of being opened. These are all written in Greek characters. While I was busy in this work I observed a large bundle, which, from the size, I imagined must contain ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... baby!" repeated the deeply affronted baronet. "Heavens, would you liken me to that, of all things! I had meant to confide in you, Cicely, but you have made it impossible. Impossible!" he repeated sombrely, and ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... nevertheless to be turned into any other speech that many prime spirits in most of the nations of Europe, since the year 1573, which was fourscore years ago, after having attempted it, were constrained with no small regret to give it over as a thing impossible to be done, is now in its translation thus far advanced, and the remainder faithfully undertaken with the same hand to be rendered into English by a person of quality, who (though his lands be sequestered, his house garrisoned, his other goods sold, and himself ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... finite. Again the spirit (originally the identity of object and subject) must in some sense dissolve this identity, in order to be conscious of it; fit alter et idem. But this implies an act, and it follows therefore that intelligence or self-consciousness is impossible, except by and in a will. The self-conscious spirit therefore is a will; and freedom must be assumed as a ground of philosophy, and can never be deduced ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... "Impossible, Effendina. There was not time. He was alive and well here at the Palace at eleven, and—" Kaid made an impatient gesture. "By the stone in the Kaabah, but it is not reasonable that Foorgat should die in his bed like a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... born dumb! Excuse me, the thing is impossible,—all Moldavians are born talking! I have known a Moldavian who could not speak, but he was not born dumb. His master, an Armenian, snipped off part of his tongue at Adrianople. He drove him mad with ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... impossible place for squatting. When I first tried to enter, I found it so given over to poison-oak and rattlesnakes that I did not care to pursue my investigations very far. I did not know at that time that I was quite immune from the poison of the oak and that the ...
— The Sea Fogs • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and her mother. What more could Mrs. Woodward say? It would have been totally opposed to the whole principle of her life to endeavour, by any means, to persuade her daughter to the match, or to have used her maternal influence in Norman's favour. And she was well aware that it would have been impossible to do so successfully. Gertrude was not a girl to be talked into a marriage by any parent, and certainly not by such a parent as her mother. There was, therefore, nothing further to be said ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... decay may advance, and does advance still further. Full words also may lose their independence, and be attacked by the same disease that had destroyed the original features of suffixes and prefixes. In this state it is frequently impossible to distinguish any longer between the radical and formative elements ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... you see a thing difficult, do not instantly conclude it to be impossible to master it. Diligence and industry are seldom defeated. Look, therefore, narrowly into the thing itself, and what you observe proper and practicable in another, conclude likewise ...
— Dickory Cronke - The Dumb Philosopher, or, Great Britain's Wonder • Daniel Defoe
... line of sea-wall is intersected by figures in brick-red tunic, moving back and forward on ledges of masonry; the morning air is alive with drum-beats and bugle and trumpet-calls; everything is of the barrack most barrack-like; the broad arrow is indented in large deep character on the Rock. It is impossible to shake off the Ordnance atmosphere. The Irish jaunting-cars are all driven by the sons of soldiers' wives; the clergy-men are all military chaplains; those goats are going up to be milked for the major's delicate daughter; ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... printers except in obvious misprints, and followed them also, as far as possible, in their distribution of roman and italic type and in the grouping of words and lines in the various titles. To follow them exactly was impossible, as the books are so very ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... if they were fortunate enough to get a good boat. I've been told that the table is simply impossible on some ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... by one after another and welled into a grand chorus, it was impossible not to share the enthusiasm that it created. Another prime ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... clearer. I discerned that the scope of my quest for emotion must be narrowed. That abandonment of ones self to life, that merging of ones soul in bright waters, so often suggested in Pater's writing, were a counsel impossible for to-day. The quest of emotions must be no less keen, certainly, but the manner of it must be changed forthwith. To unswitch myself from my surroundings, to guard my soul from contact with the unlovely things that compassed it about, ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... It was impossible for Elizabeth to say a word of thanks, or of his kindness; the words choked her; she ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... filament; and perhaps in some degree from the different forms of the particles of the fluids, by which it has been at first stimulated into activity. And that from hence, as Linnaeus has conjectured in respect to the vegetable world, it is not impossible, but the great variety of species of animals, which now tenant the earth, may have had their origin from the mixture of a few natural orders. And that those animal and vegetable mules, which could continue their species, have done ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... must have been apparent to every one that it would cause our ruin. We had lately made extensive additions to our store and out-houses—our shelves were filled with articles laid in at a great cost, and which were now unsaleable, and which it would be equally impossible to carry home. Everything, from our stud of horses and mules down to our latest consignments from home, must be sold for any price; and, as it happened, for many things, worth a year ago their weight ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... libert. La premire attaque contre la superstition a t violente, sans mesure. Une fois que les hommes ont os d'une manire quelconque donner l'assaut la barrire de la religion, cette barrire la plus formidable qui existe comme la plus respecte, il est impossible de s'arrter. Ds qu'ils ont tourn des regards menaants contre la majest du ciel, ils ne manqueront pas le moment d'aprs de les diriger contre la souverainet de la terre. Le cble qui tient et comprime l'humanit est form de deux cordes, l'une ne peut ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... to be a dominating influence in the economy, and reforms have so far failed to bring about much-needed structural changes. The IMF suspended Uzbekistan's $185 million standby arrangement in late 1996 because of governmental steps that made impossible fulfillment of Fund conditions. Uzbekistan has responded to the negative external conditions generated by the Asian and Russian financial crises by tightening export and currency controls within its ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... rib," went on the minister, "and how readily and kindly would God have disposed of the first sinning Eve and under the pleasant sleep of the man, Adam, extracted another rib out of which he would have constructed another and yet more beautiful woman. Some of us are finding it impossible to keep order in our families, and until we do, we cannot expect to live ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... taken this same point of view. At the present moment she was going over the situation in retrospection. In the first place, it was absurd to think that any train of circumstances could be impossible in such a surprising world. The woman, whom they had once known as Lady Dorian and whom they now were to think of by another name, had evidently once been a woman of wealth and culture, no matter what her ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... the time to go to all sorts of wild and impossible places to get the pictures. It's all well enough to talk about getting moving pictures of natives in battle, or wild beasts fighting, or volcanoes in action, but it isn't so easy to do it. Then, too, I'd have ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton
... further enacted, That all trusts upon which, and all purposes for which any deposit shall be made, and which shall be indicated in the writing to accompany such deposit, shall be faithfully performed by the Corporation, unless the performing of the same is rendered impossible. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... scornful impatience. "Pshaw! We'll let that go. You said you hoped things might change. Do you think any change of fortune could give you the tastes and feelings of a gentleman? Make you a proper husband for my daughter? You know the thing's impossible." ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... might put him to a cruel death, in order to be revenged for the loss of his hen. Jack, finding that all his arguments were useless, ceased speaking, though resolved to go at all events. He had a dress prepared which would disguise him, and something to colour his skin; he thought it impossible for any one to recollect ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... brought these girls to France, and was thought to be absent for some days; but he is in Paris, and, notwithstanding his age, a man of extraordinary boldness, enterprise and energy. Should he discover that the girls are here (which, however, is fortunately almost impossible), in his rage at seeing them removed from his impious influence, he would be capable of anything. Therefore let me entreat you, my dear mother, to redouble your precautions, that no one may effect an entrance by night. This quarter of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... ordered Andrews. The boy seized the can, and poured some more of the greasy liquid into the fiery furnace. He knew that the wood was almost exhausted, and that it would soon be impossible to hold the present rate of progress. Oh, if there only would be time to burn the bridge, and thus check the pursuers! But he saw that he was ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... besides, I shall take as much Pleasure myself when I hear others romancing about Things they never heard nor saw; nay, and that they do with that Assurance, that when they are telling the most ridiculous and impossible Things in Nature, they persuade themselves they are ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... It is impossible to use words sufficiently emphatic in urging the study of history. You cannot get too much history in college and out of it. Sir William Hamilton was right—history is the study of studies. The man who occupies ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... the key, so as to lock it on the other side and secure the robbers and insure the safety of her own retreat; but to do this without betraying her purpose and destroying her own life seemed next to impossible. Still singing gayly she ran over in her mind with the quickness of lightning every possible means by which she might withdraw the key silently, or without attracting the attention of the watchful robbers. It is difficult to say what she would have done, ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... is esteemed the closest, and which of all others produces most commonly the passion of pride, is that of property. This relation it will be impossible for me fully to explain before I come to treat of justice and the other moral virtues. It is sufficient to observe on this occasion, that property may be defined, such a relation betwixt a person and an object ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... horses and, soon after, to scramble on our hands and feet until, at length, even our quadrumanous progress was arrested in the bed of the river by round boulders which were as large as houses, and over or between which we found it impossible to proceed. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... shade, in a voice whose sweetness, from its melancholy, was like the wailing of plaintive music; 'not so, if thou wilt otherwise. Thou hast erred; from the shades of Love thou didst select me, and, panting as we each do for sole possession of the heart we occupy, it is impossible either separately can bring happiness to it. Each has striven for ages, but in vain. It is the union of the three, the perfect union, that alone ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... very soon made it impossible, indeed ridiculous, to maintain such an attitude of mind. He ran through his business with his usual clearness and rapidity. It was not complicated; her views proved to be the same as his; and she ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... which it is impossible to enter familiarly, without discovering that parents are by no means exempt from the intoxications of dominion; and that he who is in no danger of hearing remonstrances but from his own conscience, will seldom be long without the art of controling his convictions, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Katna, sometimes Shuna. The country included the two towns of Kamani and Dur- Katlimi, and on the south adjoined Bit-Khalupi; this identifies it with the districts of Magada and Sheddadiyeh, and, judging by the information with which Assur-nazir-pal himself furnishes us, it is not impossible that Dur-Katline may have been on the site of the present Magarda, and Kamani on that of Sheddadiyeh. Ancient ruins have been pointed ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... prefer to leave it alone if the indulgence of private feeling in the matter could be made consistent with an adequate sense of public duty. As things have been, and still continue to be, however, silence is impossible. The question presses for solution, from many sides, with a painful persistency, and the further shelving of it would scarcely be good policy. Here in New England the problem may not confront us in that sternly practical aspect which it every day wears to the ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... sent for me two days before he died, and told me things had gone badly with him last year, but it seemed impossible to retrench ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... employed is fallacious, since the mere existence of a distinct beach implies a pause in the movement and a long continuance at one level. It is impossible to form any estimate of the lapse of time necessary for the building up of a beach-terrace. We can only, in some cases, obtain a measure of the time that elapsed between the formation of two successive ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... a savage gesture. His face was deeply flushed and his voice was hoarse as he said: "That is enough. The thing looks impossible! I must try to find out what foundation there is for the ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... also not idle in arranging the provisions and the rooms for the guests. Tom was a man of a single idea; that was, that it was his business to obey the captain in all things without questioning. He had learned that lesson at sea and it would have been impossible for any one to persuade him out of it. Becky, however, not having been under similar discipline, did not consider herself bound to obey in the ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... dialectics will probably be employed in order to prove that idealistic dreams are vain. Young men will not be afraid of such arguments; they will not be deterred by purely logical difficulties. Let us remember that this war has been waged in order to make war for the future impossible. If that be the presiding idea of men's minds, they will keep their reforming course steadily directed towards ideal ends, patiently working for the reconstruction of Europe and a better ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney
... little girl, because—well I am a lonely man. I walk alone—and because I am human—it does me good to have someone to talk to. I had hoped I might maintain myself in the Great City. Last night—at the start of the Water Festival—I began to realize it was impossible. I should have enlisted the Rhaals—the men of science, Elza. But I had no time, and they are very aloof. I could have won them to me had I tried." He shrugged. "I must confess I was over-confident of my strength—the strength of my position. The Rhaals ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... it was impossible to properly swear out a warrant for the arrest of Del Norte's companions without making the ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... in all probability, spurn me for the avowal, but make it I must. Miss Trevannion, I have dared—to love you; I have but one excuse to offer, which is, that I have been more than a year in your company, and it is impossible for any one not to love one so pure, so beautiful, and so good. I would have postponed this avowal till I was able to resume my position in society, by the means which industry might have afforded me; but ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... them on the path, got into the water, only to find it much deeper than they had expected; their feet sank into the mud at the bottom, and the water came nearly up to their necks at once, and as it was deeper towards the middle, they found it impossible to carry out their task. But the worst feature was that neither of the men could swim, and, being too deeply immersed in the water to reach high enough on the canal bank to pull themselves out again, they were in great danger of drowning. Fortunately, however, a boat was coming ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... have been asked, not a dissenting voice has been heard. The bird is a common crow or a raven, and is one of the most happily executed of the avian sculptures, the nasal feathers, which are plainly shown, and the general contour of the bill being truly corvine. It would probably be practically impossible to distinguish a rude sculpture of a raven from that of a crow, owing to the general resemblance of the two. The proportions of the head here shown are, however, those of the crow, and the question of habitat renders it vastly more likely that the ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... again," she cries. "Oh! why is he so long? I want him now. I could do it now. After to-day I shall have swept the temptation from my path, and made it impossible for Carol Quinton ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... by, the spark brightened, dimmed—brightened, dimmed! Mr. Heatherbloom bent nearer. "At any rate, she was honest enough to attempt to dissuade you—in vain! And then"—her voice changed—"since you willed it so, she yielded. It sounded wild, impossible, the plan you broached. Perhaps because it did seem so impossible it won over poor Sonia Turgeinov—she who had thrown her cap over the windmills. There would be excitement, fascination in playing such a thrilling part in real life. Were you ever hungry, Prince?" She broke off. "What an absurd ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... examine the combined effect of ruined transport and the six years' blockade on Russian life in town and country. First of all was cut off the import of manufactured goods from abroad. That has had a cumulative effect completed, as it were, and rounded off by the breakdown of transport. By making it impossible to bring food, fuel and raw material to the factories, the wreck of transport makes it impossible for Russian industry to produce even that modicum which it contributed to the general supply of manufactured goods which the Russian peasant was accustomed to receive ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... A true-blue Presbyterian, a long-faced, puritanical minister, who would deem it a sin to laugh, speak, or wink on a Sunday. And this was what their brother was coming to. This was why it had been impossible to get him to go with them to St. Mark's Church, though they had told him how beautifully High Church it was; how it had a high altar and candles, almost like the Romanists, only that it was not at all Romish, but entirely and truly Catholic! Was ever ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... birds called tangara is sure to be on it. There are eighteen beautiful species here. Their plumage is very rich and diversified. Some of them boast six separate colours; others have the blue, purple, green and black so kindly blended into each other that it would be impossible to mark their boundaries; while others again exhibit them strong, distinct and abrupt. Many of these tangaras have a fine song. They seem to partake much of the nature of our linnets, sparrows and ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... and vacant whitewashed countenance, he had been horribly shocked, horribly scared—for all the inherited valour of his good breeding—and, above all, most horribly disappointed. History had played very dirty pranks with him, which he found it impossible as yet to forgive. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... was known, or at least believed, to be, so slippery a lady, as she had already proved herself, would be very difficult to find. To effect an entrance into the house and to serve the writ upon her personally was evidently impossible, and the only alternative was to make sure that she was in the house and then to put the writ into it in such a way that she could not avoid learning of its presence. Therefore, says the Ambassador, "I directed this Bearer to put the Box with the Privy Seale in it ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... to me—dretful dubersome. It don't look reasonable to me, that He, the mighty King of heaven and earth, would speak to His children through a senseless Indian jargon, or impossible and blasphemous speeches ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... is small and land-locked; there is no surf; the vessels lie within a cable's length of the beach, and the beach itself is smooth, hard sand, without rocks or stones. For these reasons, it is used by all the vessels in the trade as a depot; and, indeed, it would be impossible, when loading with the cured hides for the passage home, to take them on board at any of the open ports, without getting them wet in the surf, which would spoil them. We took possession of one of the hide-houses, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... most intimate ally, in the Waterloo room, and this ally only six years ago living in this country an exile, poor and unthought of! . . . I am glad to have known this extraordinary man, whom it is certainly impossible not to like when you live with him, and not even to a considerable extent to admire. I believe him to be capable of kindness, affection, friendship, and gratitude. I feel confidence in him as regards the future; I think he is frank, means well towards us, and, as Stockmar says, 'that ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... and as he had become after I as Tootmanyoso had reigned about one hundred of your years. Man's life had been lengthened from your average age to one which before the employment of the means enjoined and carried out in my reign would have been considered impossible. ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... doubtless, have died within two or three hours, had no relief been afforded. The legs of the foetus protruded as far as the knees; the head was turned backward, and with the body, pressed firmly into the vagina, so that it was impossible to return it, or to bring the head forward. The operation of embryotomy was, therefore, at once performed, by cutting away the right shoulder, which enabled the operator, with the aid of his appropriate ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... with a lantern. By degrees the passage narrowed, yet the duke continued his course. At last it became so narrow that the fugitive tried in vain to proceed. The sides of the walls seem to close in, even to press against him. He made fruitless efforts to go on; it was impossible. Nevertheless, he still saw Grimaud with his lantern in front, advancing. He wished to call out to him but could not utter a word. Then at the other extremity he heard the footsteps of those who were pursuing him. These steps came on, came fast. He was discovered; all hope ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... lakes, and navigable rivers not directly connected with either of these coasts or with the wonderfully ramified St Lawrence. So, taking every factor of size and significance into consideration, it seems almost impossible to exaggerate the magnitude of the influence which waterways have always exerted, and are still exerting, on the ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... with renewed determination to pack his belongings and bolt, but the manly streak in his blood made it impossible for him to go without some sort of ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... should have stumbled upon so many of the phrases, the exact phrases! And suddenly full knowledge blinded Harber.... No! No! He spurned it. It couldn't be. And yet, he felt that if Barton were to utter one more phrase of those that Janet had said and, many, many times since, written to him, the impossible, the unbelievable, would be ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... mood there dropped suddenly a fragment of her neighbour, the Colonel's, conversation—"Mrs. So-and-so? Impossible woman! Oh, one doesn't mind seeing her graze occasionally at the other end of one's table—as the price of getting her ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... "Miss Hays,"—a dubious respect that, in a community of familiar "Sallies," "Mamies," "Pussies," was grimly prophetic. Yet she rejoiced in the Oriental appellation of "Zuleika." To this it is needless to add that it was impossible to conceive any one ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... but very small, compared to that of Nismes. The arena is ploughed up, and bears corn: some of the seats remain, and part of two opposite porticos; but all the columns, and the external facade of the building, are taken away so that it is impossible to judge of the architecture, all we can perceive is, that it was built in an oval form. About one hundred paces from the amphitheatre stood an antient temple, supposed to have been dedicated to Apollo. The original roof is demolished, as well as the portico; the ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... about his share in the remaining fourteen statues; but the matter is of no great moment, seeing that the style of the work is conventional, and the scale of the figures disagreeably squat and dumpy. It seems almost impossible that these ecclesiastical and tame pieces should have been produced at the same time as the David by the same hand. Neither Vasari nor Condivi speaks about them, although it is certain that Michelangelo was held bound to his contract during several years. Upon the death ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... grandee, as if you or I had anything in common with the women of the people! Since then, well-bred women have suckled their children, have educated their daughters, and stayed in their own homes. Life has become so involved that happiness is almost impossible,—for a perfect harmony between natures such as that which has made you and me live as two friends is an exception. Perpetual contact is as dangerous for parents and children as it is for husband and wife. There are few souls in which love survives ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... parts a paraphrase, and in others, but an abstract. I have myself, indeed, endeavoured to support my right to that force and freedom of translation which Horace himself recommends; yet I have faithfully exhibited in our language several passages, which his professed translators have abandoned, as impossible to be ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... you to listen! You've promised like a man," said the general. "I'll make you the best promise I can in return. Mine's conditional, but it's none the less emphatic. If possible, you shall catch your regiment before it puts to sea. If that's impossible, you shall take passage on another ship and try to overtake it. If that again is impossible, you shall follow your regiment and be in France in time to lead your squadron. I think I may say you are sure to be there before the regiment goes ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... on occasion; but they were good company for each other, and the hearty, manly friendship which all but poor Goldsmith and Boswell felt for every one else was certainly excellent. Assemblies like the Club are impossible nowadays; but surely we might find some modification suited even to our gigantic intellects and our exaggerated cleverness! I have defined bad company; I may define good company as that social intercourse which tends to bring out all that is ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... affectation. There are, it is true, passages, though comparatively speaking very few, where his poetry exceeds the bounds of actual dialogue, where a too soaring imagination, a too luxuriant wit, rendered a complete dramatic forgetfulness of himself impossible. With this exception, the censure originated in a fanciless way of thinking, to which everything appears unnatural that does not consort with its own tame insipidity. Hence an idea has been formed of simple and natural pathos, which consists in exclamations destitute of imagery and nowise elevated ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... told her of the performance in the ship. Finding a listener neither inattentive nor without sympathy, he went further still and told of the song's effect upon him, and that the sweetness of it still abiding made his hatred of her people impossible. ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... believe I can do as much as any other man, be he who he may. Further, I could engage to execute the bronze statue in memory of your honored father. And again, if any of the above-mentioned things should appear impossible or overstated, I am ready to make such performance in any place or at any time to prove to you my power. In humility I thus commend myself to your illustrious house, and am your ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... Unless some new and foreign element should interpose, I look for decided progress in enlarging the popular features of the constitution, and diminishing the influence of the aristocracy.... It is impossible not to perceive traces of the influence of our institutions upon all these changes.... The progress of the liberal cause, not in England alone, but all over the world, is, in a ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... 'tis impossible; for I have studied still, To root abuses from the commonwealth, That may infect the king or commonalty. Therefore, base peasant, wilful as thou art, I tell thee troth, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... where a ridge of rock reared through the soil, was it possible to cross the stretch of burned-over ground. Naturally Racey had picked this one spot. Whether the posse had not known of this rock ridge, or whether they had simply miscalculated its position it is impossible to say. ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... the difficulties presented by these Books, and he now hoped to have the leisure they required. Such was his zeal that, when he came to Jeremiah, he looked forward to finishing all the Prophets by Whitsuntide, but he soon saw that this was impossible. He published the prophecy of Ezekiel about Gog and Magog by itself. His wish was to treat of various portions of the Psalms, his own constant book of comfort and prayer, for the benefit of his congregation; and he began, accordingly, with a Commentary on the 118th Psalm. He expounded to Dietrich ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... 40320 several changes on 8 bells, which to Ring it is altogether impossible; the greatest Peal that ever was Rang on 8 Bells, is 1680, being only a third part of the changes on seven Bells, which are to be Rang with a whole Hunt, half Hunt, quarter Hunt, half quarter Hunt (for so you may term it) and three extream Bells: But the most complete and musical ...
— Tintinnalogia, or, the Art of Ringing - Wherein is laid down plain and easie Rules for Ringing all - sorts of Plain Changes • Richard Duckworth and Fabian Stedman
... of accepting anything and everything with the most irresponsible complacency rendered the situation aggravating. It was so utterly impossible to discuss with such a being even such of the morning's developments as the relationship of mistress and maid ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... cordially join in the opinion of a late noble statesman, more famous for his wit than for his love of music, who, hearing a remark on the extreme difficulty of some performance, observed that he wished it was impossible." It was this same nobleman, Lord North, who perpetrated the following mot: Being asked why he did not subscribe to the Ancient Concerts, and reminded that his brother, the Bishop of Winchester, had done so, he said, "Oh, if I was as deaf ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... a question as to the true principles of translation when applied, not to the mere literature of knowledge (because there it is impossible that two opinions can arise, by how much closer the version by so much the better), but to the literature of power, and to such works—above all, to poems—as might fairly be considered works of art in the highest sense. To what ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... rain during the night, and for several kilometres, next morning, the road is a horrible waste of loose flints and mud-filled ruts, along which it is all but impossible to ride; but after leaving the level bottom of the Isar River the road improves sufficiently to enable me to take an occasional, admiring glance at the Bavarian and Tyrolese Alps, towering cloudward on the southern horizon, their shadowy ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... not you, my lord, But he who murdered Laius, frees the land. Were you, which is impossible, the man, Perhaps my poniard first should drink your blood; But you are innocent, as your Jocasta, From crimes like those. This made me violent To save your life, which you unjust would lose: Nor can you comprehend, with ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... which any insulated body or system of bodies can continue to furnish without limitation cannot possibly be a material substance; and it appears to me to be extremely difficult, if not quite impossible, to form any distinct idea of anything capable of being excited and communicated in these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... "I told her, very politely, that I found it quite impossible to believe in such things; and she was awfully nice about it, and said it didn't matter what I believed. It seems that my name was chosen by chance—they opened the Telephone Directory at random and she, blindfolded, made a pencil mark on the ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... of Clarence was, in truth, the one cloud in her happiness just then. It was impossible to calculate how he would take the news. If it made him angry or very unhappy, if it broke up his friendship with Geoff, and perhaps interfered with their partnership so that one or other of them ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... a central crank, there would be no oscillation produced; or the same effect would be realized by placing one cylinder in the centre of the carriage, and two at the sides— the pistons of the side cylinders moving simultaneously: but it is impossible to couple the piston of an upright cylinder direct to the axle of a locomotive, without causing the springs to work up and down with every stroke of the engine: and the use of three cylinders, though adopted in some of Stephenson's engines, involves too much complication ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... him in silence with playful curiosity, under which shone a delight impossible to hide. The count coloured up to the eyes, and he would gladly have cut his tongue out before having said ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... how to make noble. Besides, you are necessary to your father; your death would hurry him to his grave, hearty and robust as the Mauprat still is. Put away these gloomy thoughts, then, and these violent resolutions. It is impossible. This adventure of Roche-Mauprat must be looked upon only as an evil dream. We both had a nightmare in those hours of horror; but it is time for us to awake; we cannot remain paralyzed with fear like children. You have only one course open to you, and ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... scattered spray reflecting into our being a whole gamut of rainbow colours. Then, with the freshness of youth, our new-born energy, impelled by its virgin curiosity, struck out new paths in every direction. We felt we would try and test everything, and no achievement seemed impossible. We wrote, we sang, we acted, we poured ourselves out on every side. This was how I ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... real authors of the evil are punished. Many parents have told me, that when their children were at home, they employed themselves in singing the alphabet, counting, patting their hands, &c. &c.; that it was impossible to keep an infant asleep, that they were glad to get them out of the way, and that they would take care that they should ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... chance than before of effecting anything of importance against you, unless he could destroy the Phocians. And this was no easy matter. For he had now been reduced, as if by chance, to a position in which he must either find it impossible to effect any of his designs, or else must perforce lie and forswear himself, and make all men, whether Hellenes or foreigners, witnesses of his own baseness. {318} For if, on the one hand, he received the Phocians as allies, and administered the oath to them together ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... Sir Bale—why, Bale, Bale, it's impossible! You can't believe it. When did I ever wrong you? You know me since I was not higher than ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... become delirious; his passions were certainly exceeding strong, nor were his vanity and jealousy less. Upon his coming to England he had lost no time in waiting upon Mr. Addison, who had resigned the seals, and was retired into the country for the sake of his health; but Mr. Addison found it impossible to stem the tide of opposition, which was every where running against his kinsman, through the influence and power of the duke of Bolton. He therefore disswaded him in the strongest manner from publishing ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... for perspective treatment will constantly present themselves to the artist or draughtsman in the course of his experience, and while I endeavour to show him how to grapple with any new difficulty or subject that may arise, it is impossible to set down all of them in ...
— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey
... tossed his head. "You are quite incorrigible, Harry; but I don't mind. It is impossible to be angry with you. When you see Sibyl Vane you will feel that the man who could wrong her would be a beast, a beast without a heart. I cannot understand how anyone can wish to shame the thing he loves. I love Sibyl Vane. I want to place her on ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... man's perception that Edward would hardly have been found in Dahlia's neighbourhood with evil intentions at this moment, though it was a thing impossible to guess. Generous himself, he leaned to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... artificially fertilised in a legitimate manner produced a capsule—and most of the illegitimate unions were highly productive. The mid- styled form thus appears to be highly feminine in nature; and although, as just remarked, it is impossible to consider its two well-developed sets of stamens which produce an abundance of pollen as being in a rudimentary condition, yet we can hardly avoid connecting as balanced the higher efficiency of the female organs in this form with ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... was impossible. Mother and son reached the yard gate as Uncle Billy opened the coach door and announced the fact that Miss Ann had arrived at her destination. Then began the unpacking of the visitor. It was a roomy carriage, and well that it was ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... after all, they would have told me something of the joy they were in at the sight of a boat and pilots, to carry them away to the person and place from whence all these new comforts came. But it was impossible to express it by words, for their excessive joy naturally driving them to unbecoming extravagances, they had no way to describe them but by telling me they bordered upon lunacy, having no way to ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... once out—that is, if he could be got out by any means—he would save him from being further troubled, and would grant him a protection under his own hand. But how on earth are we to get him out? It is impossible. These two guards at the door, besides other difficulties, render it altogether impracticable. I know not ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... allowed for this course in the Public Schools, it will be impossible to teach more than a few of the first principles governing each department of the work, viz., a knowledge of the constituent parts of the human body; the classification of food and the relation of each class to the sustenance and repair of the body; simple recipes illustrating the most wholesome ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... enthusiasm has at last contracted itself within narrower and more intelligent limits, and is restricted to productions which rank as masterpieces or are special favourites, and then all postulates have to be satisfied, all bibliographical minutiae have to be studied. It is impossible to foresee how far this latest compromise may last; but whatever it is, there must always be some novelty to keep the market going, and bring grist to the mill. The world of fashion comprehends books as well ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... living and the dead; they accept much of his teaching and try to follow it because they believe that it is true, but they do not believe that it is true because it is his teaching. It is therefore impossible today for educated men, even among those who most sincerely adopt it, to settle a moral argument by an appeal to the teaching of Jesus. The tragedy is that there are probably as many today outside the Church ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... Pasha. They remained in exile a year, when the interdict was withdrawn by Russia, as it is said in consequence of British intervention, but more probably from finding, that, notwithstanding their absence, it was impossible to stir up faction against Prince Alexander. The circumstances of their return have been already given from Mr Paton's account; and we can little doubt, that on his next interview with the Prince, after his faithful counsellors had been restored to him, "he showed no trace ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... (entering by the same door) I like you when you bear your head so high; Lift but your heart as high, you could get crowned And rule a kingdom of impossible things. You would have moon and sun to shine together, Snowflakes to knit for apples on bare boughs, Yea, love to thrive upon the terms of hate. If I had fared abroad I should have found In many countries many marvels for you— Though not more comeliness in ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... family fortune. But what had the death of the Comte de Verneuil to do with it? I picked up my bag again and walked with him to the exit. The hurrying crowd of passengers by my train and of clerks and work-people pouring from suburban platforms rendered conversation impossible. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... to tell what ails her, unless it be the desire for some impossible thing. Some minds are never content. To multiply their blessings is but to ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... which he had promised to show her, and his magic lantern, and his microscope, and all the Natural History books of which he had so often spoken. She watched the weather impatiently, and when the snow fell faster and faster, and Beatrice decided emphatically that the visit was impossible, she broke ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... indeed so many wonderful Strokes of Poetry in this Book, and such a variety of Sublime Ideas, that it would have been impossible to have given them a place within the bounds of this Paper. Besides that, I find it in a great measure done to my hand at the End of my Lord Roscommon's Essay on Translated Poetry. I shall refer my Reader thither for some of the Master Strokes in the Sixth Book of Paradise Lost, tho at the ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... contradictory aspect of this neighborliness, this kindliness, this thought for mutual welfare, and that was its narrowness, especially in New England, as regards the limitations of space and locality. It is impossible to judge what caused this restraint of vision, but it is certain that in generality and almost in universality, just as soon as any group of settlers could call themselves a town, these colonists' notions of kindliness and thoughtfulness for others became distinctly and rigidly ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... time was at hand when all good spirits in Scotland, and George Buchanan among them, had to choose, once and for all, amid danger, confusion, terror, whether they would serve God or Mammon; for to serve both would be soon impossible. ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... when Shanter's head reappeared over the sharp ridge and his arm was stretched down with the spear, so that the final climb was fairly easy, though it would have been almost impossible without. ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... make everything as present and as true as my faithful diligence could repeat the tale. It was necessary that I should sometimes judge of the first race of our patriots as some of their contemporaries did; but it was impossible to avoid correcting these notions by the more enlarged views of their posterity. This is the privilege of an historian and the philosophy of his art. There is no apology for the king, nor any declamation for the subject. Were we only to decide by the final ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... thing I have found it impossible to contemplate is her death;—the extinction of all hope which death alone can bring. She has become so blended with my every thought since the hour she vanished from my eyes and consequently from my protection, that I should ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... The immense amount of effective work accomplished under Mr. Herrick would have been impossible had he not been so ably supported by the two Secretaries of the Embassy, Mr. Bliss and Mr. Frazier, past-masters of the intricate technique of their profession. In the emergency of the war crisis the usefulness of the numerous subordinate members of the Embassy staff absolutely depended ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... Adams into a role, admirable artist that she was, to which she was absolutely unsuited. A storm of criticism arose. But Frohman was absolutely firm. Opposition only made him hold his ground all the stronger. When people asked him why he insisted upon casting Miss Adams for this almost impossible ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... will find that there are two general classes of genius: the "partial" genius, and the "general" genius. Actually, such a narrow definition doesn't do either kind justice, but defining a human being is an almost impossible job, anyway, so we'll have to do the best we can with the tools we have ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... revolver—the weapon which he carried in case self-defense became necessary. Taking the barrel of the revolver, he tried to pry up the telegraphic keyboard from the table to which it was attached. But he found this impossible to accomplish; he could secure no leverage on the instrument. He was not to be thwarted, however; so changing his tactics, he took the barrel in his hand and began to rain heavy blows upon the keys, with the butt end. In less time than it takes to describe the episode, the ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... thirdly—the avoidance of the wear and tear of an extremely swift delivery of the ball; fourthly—the prevention of obstacles to successful base running, in the way of allowing too many balk movements in preventing stolen bases. These desirable objects were almost impossible of attainment under the badly-worded rules in existence ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... looking on the grim faces that surrounded us, we agreed to make our retreat; and descended into the garden, intending to pass out by the gate leading to the Quays. Here, however, we were met by a figure, at the sight of which we found it almost impossible to restrain our risibility. It was a man keeping watch at the gate as a sentinel, dressed for the most part as we commonly see the masters of chimney-sweeps, without a vestige of either shoes or shirt, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... feeling of panic. He could see the air literally filled with bursting shrapnel, while red-hot bullets from machine-guns swept the earth as clean as a scythe goes through the ripening wheat. Man simply could not endure in a hell like that! It was utterly impossible! ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... cannot say. Christ is his judge, and not I. He may be saved, yet so as by fire, as St. Paul says. Repentance is open to all men, and forgiveness for those who repent. But from that day, if he chooses wrongly, true repentance will grow harder and harder to him—perhaps impossible at last. He has made his bed, and he must lie on it. He has chosen the evil, and refused the good; and now the evil must go on getting more and more power over him. He has sold his soul, and now he must pay the ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... enterprising tramp: First, it was not likely at that time in the evening that he would be left alone long enough to gather in his booty, and, secondly, the absent occupants of the house might have money and articles of value on their persons which at present it would be impossible to secure. ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... I to answer that? Really, it's quite impossible to tell. You piqued my interest from the ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... questions poured in on Elmer as thick as hail stones during a summer storm. Finding it utterly impossible to answer a quarter of these intelligently, and make any kind of ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... glorious scheme, if I were only well and strong, of putting me in a takterrawan and taking me to Mecca in the character of his mother, supposed to be a Turk. To a European man, of course, it would be impossible, but an enterprising woman might do it easily with a Muslim confederate. Fancy seeing the pilgrimage! In a few days I shall go down to Alexandria, if it makes me ill again I must return to Europe or go to Beyrout. I can't get a boat under 12 ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... been found impossible, the window being too small for even Mattingley's head to get through. The second had failed because the righteous Royal Court forbade Carterette the prison, intent that she should no longer be contaminated ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... with that bend of the body which bespeaks an obeisance which is half homage and half an invitation. He was still talking, and as he went up, he looked back smiling and gossiping over his shoulder in a smooth and courtly way which made it impossible for me to withdraw my ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... against it. She did not wish to have Lizzie outshone. She had been working nights for two weeks on an elaborate organdie, with pink roses all over it, for Lizzie to wear. It had yards and yards of cheap lace and insertion, and a whole bolt of pink ribbons of various widths. The hat was a marvel of impossible roses, just calculated for the worst kind of a wreck if a thunder-shower should come up at a Sunday-school picnic. Lizzie's mother was even thinking of getting her a pink chiffon parasol to carry; but the family treasury was well-nigh depleted, and it was doubtful whether that would be possible. ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... world; and gravity badgers the bullet's trajectory; and a magnetic "H" disturbs the needle; and "impossible" roots turn up in the equation; and the finger of God is in ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... like Marston, engaged in the pursuit of his desires, sent a fever of repulsion through his veins. He turned back to the door deluded by the notion that it was his duty to render the occurrence impossible of repetition. He was checked, however, by the thought of Mrs. Branscome. The shame he felt hinted the full force of degradation of which she must have been conscious, and begot in him a strange feeling of loyalty. Up till now the true meaning of chivalry had been unknown to him. ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... settled at Avignon; and he made use of him for the purpose of proposing a new crusade, in which Edward III. should be called upon to join with him. If Edward complied, any enterprise on his part against France would become impossible; and if he declined, Christendom would cry fie upon him. Two successive popes, John XXII. and Benedict XII., preached the crusade, and offered their mediation to settle the differences between the two kings; but they were unsuccessful in both their attempts. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... rise above her, shot beneath the arch of London Bridge, and beheld the massive walls of the Tower with its low-browed arches opening above their steps. Whenever a scarlet uniform came in view, how the girl's eyes strained after it, thinking of one impossible, improbable chance of a recognition! Once or twice she thought of a far more terrible chance, and wondered whether Lady Belamour knew how little confidence could be placed in Loveday; but she was sure that their expedition was my lady's own device, and the fresh air and motion, with all ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... after this was all over, the Coroner showed me his reasons as a trained surgeon, for perceiving it to be impossible that the child could, under the most favourable circumstances, have drawn many breaths, in the very doubtful case of its having ever breathed at all; this, owing to the discovery of some foreign matter in the windpipe, quite irreconcilable with ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... been impossible, I say, to resist these personal impressions and magnetisms, and impossible with me not to follow them up in the poems, in doing which I found that his "Leaves of Grass" was really the drama of himself, played upon various and successive stages of nature, history, passion, ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... better to be a first rate brick mason than a second rate lawyer. Choose your calling in this world. Prosecute it with all the vigor in your being. With a firm reliance in God and confidence in yourself failure is impossible." ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... O! 'tis impossible to tell you what it is! 'Tis all extravagance both in mode and fancy, my dear; I believe there's six thousand yards of edging in it—then such an enchanting slope from the elbow—something so new, so lively, so noble, so coquet ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... right up stairs, with her little petticoats and things to work on; and she and Frank returned these visits in a social, cosy way, after Sinsie was in her crib for the night. Frank's boots never went on with a struggle for a walk down to Orchard Street; but they were terribly impossible for ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... that, as the law stands, it cannot put the chateau in the hands of the regulars,[3319] as this would, it is said, excite the National Guard. Besides, how without an army is this post to be wrested from the hands which hold it? It is impossible with only the resources which the Constitution affords us." Thus, in the defense of the oppressed, the Constitution is a dead letter.—Hence it is that the refugees, finding protection only in themselves, undertake to help each ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... could be believed that the Court was sincere, a Dissenter might reasonably have determined to cast in his lot with the Church. But what guarantee was there for the sincerity of the Court? All men knew what the conduct of James had been tip to that very time. It was not impossible, indeed, that a persecutor might be convinced by argument and by experience of the advantages of toleration. But James did not pretend to have been recently convinced. On the contrary, he omitted no opportunity of protesting that he had, during many years, been, on principle, adverse to all ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... are covered with large and valuable trees, which are felled and sold by their owners; and as it would be decidedly inconvenient to take horses and carts up the mountain, and utterly impossible to get them down with a heavy load of those giant trees with sound necks, an ingenious Swiss invented the cheap and rapid way of getting the trees off the mountain by means of a slide, formed of immense troughs lapped ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... strength of this Ricordo, it has been assumed that Michelangelo actually began to paint the Sistine on the 10th of May 1508. That would have been physically and literally impossible. He was still at Florence, agreeing to rent his house in Borgo Pinti, upon the 18th of March. Therefore he had no idea of going to Rome at that time. When he arrived there, negotiations went on, as we have seen, between him and Pope Julius. One plan for the decoration of the roof was abandoned, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... below the rock where the water remained I found its course so sinuous, and its banks so steep, the valley itself having no breadth, steep-sided hills closing on the deep dry channel, so that it must have been almost impossible to proceed that way with the party. I therefore determined to explore the country more to the right, early next morning, expecting to find in that direction a line of route by which we might be sooner extricated from these sinuous valleys and hilly extremities. I hoped also that we should thus reach ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... open with Miss Garnet, or My Dear Miss Garnet, or Dear Miss Garnet, or My Dear Miss Barbara, or My Dear Miss Barb, or Dear Miss Barb, or just Dear Friend as you would to an ordinary acquaintance. He tried every form, but each in turn looked simply and dreadfully impossible, and at length he went on with the letter, leaving the terms of his salutation to the inspiration of the last moment. It was long after midnight when he finished. The night sky was inviting, and the post-office near by; he mailed the letter there instead of trusting the hotel. ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... that it is impossible for me to remain here. I cannot meet mother after what has happened. You must take me to the convent to- night. Say that ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... wounds, the difference between sleeping and waking became more evident, the eyes lost the painful, half-closed, vacant look, but were either shut or opened with languid recognition. The injuries were such as to exclude him from almost every means of expression, the wound in his mouth made speech impossible, and his right arm was not available for signs. It was only the clearness of his eyes, and their response to what was said, that showed that his mind was recovering tone, and then he seemed only alive to the present, and to perceive nothing but what related to his suffering and its ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his eloquence, as he faced the blackboard, filling it with signs and figures as rapidly as possible; then expunging them to refill again and again, without a break in his explanations; talking as fast as his hand moved. Harriot struggled several days to follow him, but found it impossible, so we gave up the chase after cubes and squares, and she devoted herself wholly to the study of the language. These were days, for me, of perfect rest and peace. Everything moved as if by magic, no hurry and bustle, never a cross ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... vessel had that appearance; but as it seemed clearly impossible that it should be so, especially when she was lighter than usual, they thought that they must be mistaken, and the subject was put aside. Half an hour later Captain Drake himself, rowing alongside, called to his brother, ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... a loud voice, after he had heard these lines; "I have repeatedly maintained that it was impossible for you to remain long inferior to any, and now the verses you have recited are a prognostic of your rapid advancement. Already it is evident that, before long, you will extend your footsteps far above the clouds! I must congratulate you! ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... neutral flag and other neutral distinctive marks. It would appear to be a matter of course that such mercantile vessels also abstain from arming themselves and from all resistance by force, since such procedure contrary to international law would render impossible any action of the submarines ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... me. Bunsey was a bachelor, and should have been therefore the more impressionable. I forgot for the moment, in my annoyance, that he was a novelist, and had been so diligently creating lovely and impossible women to order that he was not easily moved ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... Mirabilis Deus, saying it to the organ. And while this was singing in great accord, the workmen stood ready with their instruments in hand, to lift off the upper stone of the coffin, because it was well nigh impossible to remove the whole together, and also because the Abbot, Prior, and Convent, had resolved to see that holy body and relicks, by reason of the devotion which they bore to the blessed Cid, and that they might bear testimony in what manner he ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... replied with a laugh, for the strings of my mind seemed torn that night, "would not craft be a better word? How do you turn a stick into a snake, a thing which is impossible to man?" ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... the Mariners and Sea-men secretly withdrew themselues both day and night, lest that the duke of Parma his souldiers should compell them, by maine force to goe on boord, and to breake through the Hollanders Fleete, which all of them iudged to bee impossible by reason of ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... to Evansville," says Dr. Buckner, "there were seventy white physicians practicing in the area, they are now among the departed. Their task was streneous, roads were almost impossible to travel and those brave men soon sacrificed their lives for the good of suffering humanity." Dr. Buckner described several of the old doctors as "Striding [TR: illegible handwritten word above 'striding'] a horse and setting out ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... Princess, speaking for the first time. "How can you say such a thing? My husband couldn't do a mean action if he tried. The idea of him stealing the diamonds! Not if they were worth a thousand millions and detection impossible." ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... certain skilled trades that were needed to develop the new country. Madison favored a policy of liberality and inducement, so that population might increase more rapidly. Jefferson, on the other hand, wished "there were an ocean of fire between this country and Europe, so that it might be impossible for any more immigrants to come hither." We can only conjecture what his thoughts would be if he were to return and study present conditions. Franklin, certainly one of the wisest and most far-seeing of the earlier statesmen, feared that immigration ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... he was married, and that his marriage had been made in that heaven where the spirit of creative comedy abides. In spite of the superb sincerity of his indifference, he found it increasingly difficult to ignore his wife. It had, in fact, become impossible now that people no longer ignored him. Rose, as the wife of an obscurity, could very easily be kept obscure. But, by a peculiar irony, as Tanqueray's genius became recognized, Rose, though not exactly recognized in any social sense, undoubtedly tended to appear. ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... hitherto stood to them for country. But, moved by feeling and prejudice, wrought upon by the strong appeals of those they loved, and unfortified by the well-reasoned convictions which made the strength of Farragut, it was equally impossible for the greater part of them to imitate his example. The sense of duty and official honor which they owed to their long training in a generous service stood by them, and few were the cases of men false to trusts actually in their charge; but ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... ring was found by Polykrates' cooks in the body of a fish. He sent us news at once of this strange occurrence, but instead of rejoicing your father shook his grey head sadly, saying: 'he saw now it was impossible for any one to avoid his destiny!' On the same day he renounced the friendship of Polykrates and wrote him word, that he should endeavor to forget him in order to avoid the grief of seeing ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... presently came above a certain confusion of ground which marked an advance depot. He pressed his foot twice on a lever and circled. Looking down he saw two red bursts of flame and a mass of smoke. He did not hear the explosions of the bombs he had loosed, because it was impossible to hear anything but the angry "Whar—r—r—!" of ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... philosophy, and religion are false and worthless when they do not contribute to the happiness and elevation of mankind, and that the chief factor in human elevation is that wise adaptation of measures to human nature which is utterly impossible without a thorough understanding of man,—in other words, without the science of anthropology, for the lack of which all national and individual life has been filled with a succession of blunders and calamities. It is especially in the most brilliant ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... It seems almost impossible to describe the ending of The General's life, because there was not even the semblance of an end within a week ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... some ten feet away. They had been up most of the night, watching the flames, had seen them creep across Market street, up Powell, Mason, Taylor, Jones streets to Nob Hill. Finally Frank had persuaded Aleta to seek a little rest. Despite her protest that sleep was impossible, he had rolled her in one of the borrowed blankets, wrapping himself, Indianwise, in the other. Toward morning slumber had come ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... affectionate interview, to turn at once leftward and make for Meiningen, by what road or roads there were from Bretten thither. Schiller's poor guinea (Karolin) was not needed on this occasion; the rendezvous at Bretten being found impossible or inexpedient at the Stuttgart end of ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... migration, but it opened a market for the huge agricultural surplus of the Middle West. Without the market in the cities of the populous Atlantic Coast and Europe, the expansion of the West would have been impossible. Moreover, the railways brought coal, ore, cotton, wool and other raw materials to the Northeast, and thus enabled that section to develop its ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... occurred to him that the Misfits might have another kind of trained talent. They seemed to be able to search out and find a single Aristarchy ship, while it was impossible to even detect a Misfit fleet until it came within attacking distance. Well, that, again, ...
— But, I Don't Think • Gordon Randall Garrett
... condition of the king, that bull amongst the Bharatas! If, O Arjuna, I go there, many foremost of heroes will then say that I am frightened in battle!" Then Arjuna said unto Bhimasena, "The samsaptakas are before my division! Without slaying those assembled foes first, it is impossible for me to stir from this place!" Then Bhimasena said unto Arjuna, "Relying upon my own might, O foremost one among the Kurus, I will fight with all the samsaptakas in battle! Therefore, O ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... professed a desire on the part of the king to establish. The English-speaking or Protestant people in the colony did not number in 1764 more than three hundred persons, of little or no standing, and it was impossible to place all power in their hands and to ignore nearly seventy thousand French Canadian Roman Catholics. Happily the governor, General Murray, was not only an able soldier, as his defence of Quebec against ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... small stick of wood on the floor, stuck this under the barrier and shoved it as tight as possible. Then he took up the bench and braced this under the handle of the door, so that to shove the door inwards would be all but impossible. ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... only added fuel to a fire which was fast assuming the proportions of a conflagration. All the anti-Garrisonians formed themselves into a new anti-slavery society, and the National Board, as if to burn its bridges, and to make reconciliation impossible, established a new paper in Boston in opposition to the Liberator. The work of division was ended. There was no longer any vital connection between the two warring members of the anti-slavery reform. To tear the dead tissues asunder which ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... you are doing out of your hands, and cries "give it me," and does it worse, and lays an engagement upon you too, and you must thank him for his pains. He lays you down an hundred wild plots, all impossible things, which you must be ruled by perforce, and he delivers them with a serious and counselling forehead; and there is a great deal more wisdom in this forehead than his head. He will woo for you, solicit for you, and woo you to suffer him; and scarce any ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... pretext was conclusive; it was impossible to refuse a lady's invitation, even if a man has armed force at his command. He is obliged to yield to ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... of her own to her husband's sermons grew more and more frequent. She could not but see that she held the hearts of the people in her hands to mould them like wax; and her intimate knowledge of their conditions and needs made it impossible for her to refrain from sometimes speaking the words she knew they ought to hear. Whenever she did so at any length, she laid her manuscript on the table, that they might know the truth. Her sense of honesty would not let her do otherwise. It was long before anybody ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... country house. Ole glanced at his watch. No; it was too late to try and get Mrs. Hanka back to-day. What reason could he have given, anyway? He had wanted to surprise them both with his little scheme, but now it had become impossible. Alas, how everything turned out ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... your countrymen, to ask the ladies whether they can be satisfied with that," he went on, between his mirthful explosions. "Chere Countess, do not let your kind heart run away with you. Let me tell Sir Ralph Moray that it is impossible for you to tour with him under such conditions, which are surely not what you had a right to expect. If you will go with me, that"—pointing a derisive finger at the Panhard—"can follow with ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Morgan was pleased to give." There was general dissatisfaction with "his proceedings in this particular," and many shaggy ruffians "feared not to tell him openly" that he had "reserved the best jewels to himself." They "judged it impossible" that the share per man should be but a paltry 200 pieces of eight, or L50, after "so many valuable booties and robberies." Why, they said, it is less than we won at Porto Bello. Many swore fiercely that, if they had ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... with an effort: "I'm afraid I didn't respect his sincerity, and I ought to have done that, though I don't at all agree with him on the other points. It seems to me that what he said was shocking, and perfectly—impossible." ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Finding that it was impossible to catch these wary horsemen, King Richard ordered his bowmen to march outside his cavalry, so that when the enemy's horse approached within bowshot they should open upon them with arrows; then, should the horsemen persist in charging, ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... might have brought only a small price indeed in the money-market, while yet they were of a national and historical value which it would be difficult to estimate. For, when once swept away, their full replacement is impossible. They cannot be purchased back with gold. Their deliberate and ruthless annihilation is, in truth, so far the annihilation of the ancient records of the kingdom. If any member of any ancient family among us needlessly destroyed some of the olden records ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... hat, when he accidentally met any of those farmers' wives—who that noticed his hearty welcome to the man of the people, when that man happened to be a man of genius—would have thought him proud? On such occasions as these, if he had any pride, it was impossible to detect it. But seeing him when, for instance, an author and a new-made peer of no ancestry entered his house together—observing merely the entirely different manner in which he shook hands with ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... five-and-twenty of them fell victims. In July, 1813, a mad dog broke into the menagerie of the Duchess of York, at Oatlands, and although the palisades that divided the different compartments of the menagerie were full six feet in height, and difficult, or apparently almost impossible to climb, he was found asleep in one of them, and it was clearly ascertained that he had bitten at least ten ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... he perceives what is by no means obscurely intimated, that Margaret, redeemed and beatified, cannot be happy unless her lover also is saved, and that the soul of Faust can only be lost through the impossible contingency of being converted into the likeness of the Fiend, he will understand that a spectacle has been set before him more august, momentous, and sublime than any episode of tragical ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... Nevertheless, the state continues to be a dominating influence in the economy, and reforms have so far failed to bring about much-needed structural changes. The IMF suspended Uzbekistan's $185 million standby arrangement in late 1996 because of governmental steps that made impossible fulfillment of Fund conditions. Uzbekistan has responded to the negative external conditions generated by the Asian and Russian financial crises by tightening export and currency controls within its already ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... yielded to the fascinating pursuit of rare and curious editions, of old prints of celebrities, and of personal belongings of distinguished individuals; but how far these impulses were irresistible and how much he was mad only in craft, like Hamlet, it is impossible to say. The bibliomaniacs claim him for their scribe and poet, the defender of their faith, the high-priest of their craft. The scoffers find a grimace in everything he ever wrote upon the subject, from "The ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... employed by Centeno to conceal his operations and intentions, it was impossible to prevent intelligence from spreading in various directions, more especially after the expedition of Mendoza to Arequipa. Every thing he had already done, even the number of his troops, and of the musquets and horses he had collected, was fully known, by ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... beer mugs and chairs, and others swore there had been no fight at all. However, fight or no fight, the testimony was straightforward and uniform on one point, at any rate, and that was, that the fuss was about two dollars and forty cents, which one party owed the other, but after all, it was impossible to find out which was the debtor and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... he keeps, possibly, a wife and family. But, on the whole, his life, and not unfrequently his death, is lonely, Just before shearing-time Juan Lucio and his flock were lost. The flock was found, but not Juan. It was impossible to say what had become of him: he had a reputation for steadiness, and it seemed unlikely that he had taken French leave. When shearing was in full swing, a couple of freighters came for a load of wood. After some talk, they drove off to camp, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... work removing the debris that had fallen into the entrance of the cave, but some of this consisted of great rocks, which were impossible to get rid of with the means at their disposal, and Harry presently growled, as he wiped his perspiring forehead with one hand while he leaned against the ledge ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... Empire than yours will be Christ's Empire. And if you are longing for something greater than your present possession, you are indeed longing for this universal, pan-human Empire of Christ. Otherwise you would be sticking either at a stagnancy or at something impossible. Both would be unwise: nature tolerates no stagnancy and punishes experiments ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... for the inhabitants only made use of rain water. As therefore there was a great multitude of people gotten together upon this mountain, Vespasian sent Placidus with six hundred horsemen thither. Now, as it was impossible for him to ascend the mountain, he invited many of them to peace, by the offer of his right hand for their security, and of his intercession for them. Accordingly they came down, but with a treacherous design, as well as he had the like treacherous design upon them on the ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... were inculcated at the moment in which Judah was hastening to meet his fate. It had become impossible to check the natural results of the earlier transgressions. The inevitable happened; Babylon the mighty laid her ponderous hand upon tiny Judah. But Judah could not be crushed. From the heavy chastisement the Jewish nation emerged purified, re-born ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... strive against the sun. Then he drew his bow and shot arrows upward. Far, far out of sight the arrows of Heracles went. And the sun god, Helios, was filled with admiration for Heracles, the man who would attempt the impossible by shooting arrows at him; then did Helios fling down to ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... was almost stationary at the time; and the ship was heading as straight as she possibly could for us. How the trysail went up, it is impossible for me to say; we pulled like demons, and it seemed to rise instantaneously into its place, fully set. I sprang aft, and put the helm hard up, to gather way; and we had just begun to draw through the water, when the ship took a sheer as though to cross ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... Edward's slight to herself, resented deeply his evident admiration of her sister, and conversed apart with the archbishop, whose subtle craft easily drew from her lips confessions of an ambition higher even than his own. He neither encouraged nor dissuaded; he thought there were things more impossible than the accession of Clarence to the throne, but he was one who never plotted,—save for himself and ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mankind in the Lower Status of barbarism. In the Middle Status there was a sensible increase of numbers in a tribe, and an improved condition, but with a continuance of gentile society without essential change. Political society was still impossible from want of advancement. The gentes organized into tribes remained as before, but confederacies must have been more frequent. In some areas, as in the Valley of Mexico, large numbers were developed under a common government, ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... biography it should be the task of the writer to visualise the personality of his subject as well as to record merely the material events of his life. In this instance it would be quite impossible to do so from lack of material, but yet from his works, and from the opinion held of him by Michael Stanhope, and last, but not least, from the contents of his own Will, I think some picture can be painted ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... went on with a touch of sarcasm in his cool, slow voice, "I should like to call upon Mr. Alston to-morrow. You have, I presume, no objection to my going to see him in his own house. It is impossible to drop a matter of business without a word of explanation. And if you have no objection, I will mention to him the matters of which you have just been speaking. No one has a deeper interest in the public welfare, and certainly no one could be more eminently discreet. ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... nearly half a mile away, I had no fear of being seen by them. There were many of their dead scattered about, seventy or eighty yards from our square. I had, all along, felt convinced that it would be impossible to pass through their lines; therefore I went to a spot where I had noticed that a number had fallen, close together, and went about examining them carefully. It would not have done to have chosen the dress of an emir, as his body might have been ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... man who changes his religion is marked by a certain stigma from which it seems impossible to free him. From this it is evident that men cherish a steadfast purpose above all else, all the more so because they, divided into factions, constantly have their own safety and stability in mind. This is not a matter of feeling or conviction. We should be steadfast precisely there where fate ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... telegraph the state of electrical knowledge was for a long time such that electrical invention was in a sense impossible. The renowned exploit of Field was not an invention, but a heroic and successful extension of the scope and usefulness of an invention. But thought was not idle, and filled the interval with preparations for final achievements unequaled in the history of science. Two of these results ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... bail was impossible: this was a proceeding on a judgment; and with as little ceremony, and as much sang froid as he would have entered a theatre, poor Tom was placed inside a hackney coach, accompanied by the aforesaid personage and his man, and drove off ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Dorado which it afterwards turned out, and, truth to tell, had rather a shady name, owing to the transportation of convicts, yet I longed to go there and start a new life. Unhappily, however, I had not the means, and saw nothing better before me than the dreary life of a London clerk, as it was impossible that I could save out of the small salary I got. Just at this time, an old maiden aunt of my mother's died and left a few hundred pounds to me. With this, I came out to Australia, determined to become a rich man. I stayed some time in Sydney, ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... bourgeois, who led the mob on to act for them (1381-1382). The towns of Rouen, Rheims, Troyes, Orleans, and Blois, many places in Beauvoise, in Champagne, and in Normandy, followed the example of the Parisians, and it is impossible to say to what a length the revolt would have reached had it not been for the victory over the Flemish at Rosebecque. This victory enabled the King's uncles to re-enter Paris in 1383, and to re-establish the royal authority, at the same time making ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... be impossible for any one to know mamma now,—for any one who had not known her before. She never makes even a new acquaintance. She seems to think that there is nothing left for her in the world but to try and keep papa out of his misery. And she does not ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... away. You know that your good is my good as well, and that I am doing and shall keep on doing everything in my power to fulfill your ambitions. It would be my happiest joy to have your talents developed, so that you could devote all your lives to music and painting. If we should find it impossible, however, dear children, we must firmly believe that it would not have been for the best, had we succeeded, for God alone knows which ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... no!" said Amyas, looking somewhat blank, nevertheless, for he much doubted whether the whole was not a ruse on the part of the Spaniard, and he knew how impossible it was for his fifteen stone of flesh to give chase to the Spaniard's twelve. But he was soon reassured; the Spaniard wheeled round towards him, and began to put the rough hackney through all the paces of the manege with a grace and skill ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... touched her lute—it had no music; she gathered flowers—they had no sweetness; she turned to the fairy page of Ariosto—but she took no interest in his knights or dames; and at length the day was spent ere she had finished pacing the hall, and imagining all the possible and impossible ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... most solidly built works. In the especial jurisprudence of wit and wisdom the custom is to steal more dearly a leaf wrested from the book of Nature and Truth, than all the indifferent volumes from which, however fine they be, it is impossible to extract either a laugh or a tear. The author has licence to say this without any impropriety, since it is not his intention to stand upon tiptoe in order to obtain an unnatural height, but because it is a question of the majesty of his art, and not of himself—a poor clerk ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... and keep your attention fixed, George," I heard her say severely. "To allow it to wander when high spiritual affairs are under discussion (sneeze) is scarcely reverent. Could you tell the man to shut that door? The draught is dreadful. It is quite impossible for you to agree with both of us, as you say you do, seeing that metaphorically Dr. Jeffreys is at one pole and I am ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... which he had purchased while on a trading trip in Texas—and many a time had he ridden it while guiding the United States troops in their frequent expeditions against ill-disposed Indians. Taken both together it would have been hard to equal, and impossible to match, Hunky Ben and ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... On the watch for us!" said Cary. "Impossible; lies! Amyas, this is some trick of the rascal's ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... prisoner, and his prime minister, the Peshwa, had become the hereditary chief of the state. The Peshwa, in his turn, was fast sinking into the same degraded situation to which he had reduced the Rajah. It was, we believe, impossible to find, from the Himalayas to Mysore, a single government which was at once a government de facto and a government de jure, which possessed the physical means of making itself feared by its neighbors and subjects, and which had at the same time the authority derived ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Daniel Baker, near Lebanon, Missouri. The favor was granted, and that was the last seen of Samuel Moritz; although, when some neighbors shook their heads and wondered how it was that Baker was so well in funds, there were others who replied that it was impossible to keep track of peddlers, and that if Moritz wanted to start on his travels early in the morning, or to return to St. Louis for goods, it mattered to nobody. On an evening in 1860 when there was a mist in the gullies and a new moon hung in the west, Rev. Mr. Cummings, a clergyman of that ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... "Dead! Impossible!" old Joubard stammered. "Monsieur Joseph dead—murdered! And the gendarmes on your side, monsieur! Why, he was here giving us our orders, a ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... master's hand had stamped him with the outline and the value, with life and sweetness and patience—shown, as after the long futility, seated in a quiet wait, very long too, for the end. That was sad, one couldn't but feel; yet it was in the oddest way impossible to take him for a failure. He might have been one of fortune's, strictly; but what was that when he was one of Thackeray's own successes?—in the minor line, but with such a grace and such a truth, those of some dim ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... to me one of the worst charges—that you assail the names of those whose places you desire for yourself or your friends, under cover, and in ways impossible for them to circumvent." ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... the ruin which lies on top of the knoll, the walls so far as traced conform to the shape of the site. The ground plan of the buildings that once occupied the slopes can not be traced, and it is impossible to determine whether its walls were ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... is impossible to expect that human nature, as long as it is only human nature, should act without interruption or feebleness, uniformly and constantly as pure reason, and that it never offend the laws of moral order; if fully persuaded, as we are, both of the necessity and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a conflict that lasted for ten years are quite impossible of presentation in a few pages. Nor are they of value or interest to any except special students who can find them elaborately set forth in many volumes, some in Spanish and a few in English. Having tried once before to cover this period as briefly ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... difficult to describe the surprise created by this announcement, in every quarter of the Union. Speculation was at fault. Would he accept or reject such a nomination? By a large class it was deemed impossible that one who had occupied positions so elevated—who had received the highest honors the nation could bestow upon him—would consent to serve the people of a single district, in a capacity so humble, comparatively, ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... would be impossible. That cabin is too full—well, I'm sure I could not listen as I should, to you, ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... sufficient for me to carelessly display my card as "depute," thanks to which I had inspired complete confidence in the gate-keeper at Saint-Lazare?—But the situation was greatly changed. I was no longer free. It was impossible to attempt one of my usual tricks. In one of the compartments, the commissary of police would find Mon. Arsene Lupin, bound hand and foot, as docile as a lamb, packed up, all ready to be dumped into a prison-van. He would have simply to accept delivery of the parcel, the same as if it ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... still runs it close; nevertheless the excision of even a single my that had been allowed to stand through such close revision as those to which the "Origin of Species" had been subjected betrays uneasiness of mind, for it is impossible that even Mr. Darwin should not have known that though the my excised in 1866 was the most technically categorical, the others were in reality just as guilty, though no tower of Siloam in the shape of excision fell upon them. If, then, Mr. ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... winning fame and wealth—life for him is a Grand Adventure, more beautiful and wonderful than anything she ever dared to dream. She knows Felix is selfish, but she can always see so many reasons why it is impossible for him to do any particular generous thing. Oh, Mr. Gordon, it would grieve her so to know how that accident really happened and how he concealed ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... As it is impossible to frame any but a purely arbitrary definition of teratology or to trace the limits between variation and malformation, it may suffice to say that vegetable teratology comprises the history of the irregularities of growth and development ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... of her absence had her mother gone? Matinee? Impossible! Walking? Hardly possible. Upon inquiry in the kitchen, neither of the maids had seen nor heard her depart. Motoring? With a hand that trembled in spite of itself Alma telephoned the garage. Car and chauffeur were there. Incredible as it seemed, Alma, upon more than one occasion, had lately ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... Marcus' heart did not fail, for it beat as strongly as ever, but a feeling of doubt began to grow as he glanced along the line of the army he was approaching, and then at the loose mass standing or moving about at right angles, and thought how impossible it would be to dash ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... reply, but from another cabin the voice of Mr. Rogers was heard calling wildly for medical aid, and offering impossible sums in exchange for it. The doctor went from cabin to cabin, and, first collecting his fees, administered sundry potions to the sufferers; and then, in his capacity of cook, went forward and made an unsavory mess he called gruel, which he ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... with mirth—he was delightful! Juliette shrugged her shoulders; it was impossible to engage him in a serious talk. Then she rose to meet a lady whose first visit this was to her house, and who was a superb pianist. Helene, seated near the fire, her lovely face unruffled by any emotion, looked on and listened. Malignon, especially, seemed to ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... It is naturally impossible to consider or discuss the effect of the Protocol of Geneva without constant reference to the text of the Covenant, to which the Protocol refers throughout. It is also necessary to consider to some extent the Statute of the Permanent ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... he said, with the studied calmness with which one speaks to an unreasonable child, "you are perfectly absurd. Here it is within five minutes of the tune for the concert to begin. It is impossible to tell when that car is coming back. You are making us all very uncomfortable. Mrs. Tirrell, won't you please tell her ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... Paul at his conversion, that when conviction of his bad life took fast hold of his conscience, he trembled, and was astonished (Acts ix. 6); and although we read not of any particular circumstance of his behaviour under his conviction outwardly, yet it is almost impossible but he must have had some, and those of the most solid sort. For there is such a sympathy betwixt the soul and the body, that the one cannot be in distress or comfort, but the other must partake of and also signify the same. If it be comfort, then ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... seemed incredible, inconceivable; the misfortune, if he heard aright, was too terrible; the humiliation too overwhelming! He had brought listeners—and for this! 'Understand?' he cried, looking at her in a confused, chap-fallen way. 'Hang me if I do understand! You don't mean to say—Oh, it is impossible, stuff me! it is. You don't mean that—that you'll not have me? After all that has come and ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... week's time, by tying up the railways and other means of transportation, we could so paralyze the country that the government would come to us on their knees and beg us to go to work on terms they are now flouting as impossible." ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... was promising enough—up to a certain point, at which somebody was certain to point out an insurmountable difficulty. One suggested a concerted attack by the entire Chilian squadron; but this was manifestly impossible, in face of the enormously powerful guns which the Peruvians could bring to bear. Another put forward the suggestion that an assault could be delivered in the rear of the town, by landing a number of seamen and marines in ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... been under, he began to get chilly again. He had just begun to warm up, when he heard the animal returning. He crouched back against the cavern wall, but the lion had evidently lost the zest for such impossible prey. It walked about and sniffed at the edges of the fissure for some minutes; then it sneaked off into the timber with a ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... Arkansas. It was desired to get a Southern man for that purpose. The opponents of Mr. Blaine also desired to have a candidate of their own from the South. The colored Southern men were generally Blaine men. I advised them to nominate Lynch, urging that it would be impossible for the Southern colored people, whatever their preference might be as a candidate for the Presidency, to vote against one of their own color. Lynch was nominated by Henry Cabot Lodge, afterward my colleague ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Offemont. The marquise offered to go with him. M. d'Aubray, who supposed her relations with Sainte-Croix to be quite broken off, joyfully accepted. Offemont was exactly the place for a crime of this nature. In the middle of the forest of Aigue, three or four miles from Compiegne, it would be impossible to get efficient help before the rapid action of the poison had made ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... and martyr of a vanquished party. The serious wound which he had received in the combat of Saint Antoine turned him, so to speak, to advantage. Struck by a ball which had traversed both cheeks and temporarily deprived him of sight, it was impossible for him to continue in active service and to follow the army. He did not therefore play false to Conde in not accepting the command of such troops as remained to the Fronde—a command which, on his retirement, was offered ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... of civil strife have destroyed much of Liberia's economic infrastructure, made civil administration nearly impossible, and brought economic activity virtually to a halt. The deterioration of economic conditions has been greatly exacerbated by the flight of most business people with their expertise and capital. Civil order ended in 1990 when President ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... never had such a good time in my life. But, do you know, Miss Watson says she was bored, and Roberta thought it was tiresome and the grind-book silly and impossible." ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... a sample of the many similar incidents that occurred from time to time throughout the Territory. Invariably the Military attempted to find the raiders, and sometimes they were successful. But it seemed impossible to teach the Apaches their lesson, and even now there are sometimes simmerings of discontent among the surviving Apaches on their reservation. They find it difficult to believe that their day and the day of the remainder of the savage ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... lie in the trench, and fire through the space between the logs upon the Union troops if they attempt to advance upon the works. You look down this outer slope. It is twenty rods to the bottom, and it is covered with fallen trees. You think it almost impossible to climb over such a hedge and such obstructions. You see a cleared field at the base of the hill, and a farm-house beyond the field, on the Fort Henry road, which is General Grant's head-quarters. The whole country is broken into hills, knolls, and ridges. It reminds ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... forehead. But when I was twelve years old, after my first communion, there was nothing but poverty. The managers put me as apprentice with a chair mender in Faubourg Saint-Jacques. That is not a trade, you know, it is impossible to earn one's living at it, and as proof of it, the greater part of the time the master was only able to engage the poor little blind boys from the Blind Asylum. It was there that I began to suffer with hunger. The master and mistress, two old Limousins—afterwards murdered, were terrible ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... which we are sent to jail for so much as mentioning! Consider the divorce reforms for which the world is crying—and for which it must wait, because of St. Paul! Realize that up to date it has proven impossible to persuade the English Church to permit a man to marry his deceased wife's sister! That when the war broke upon England the whole nation was occupied with a squabble over the disestablishment of the church of Wales! Only since 1888 has it been legally possible for ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... parents on both sides, and a day is fixed for receiving the congratulations. The betrothed are then considered almost married. Engagements are, of course, frequently broken off, but such a thing as an action for 'breach of promise' is impossible, and would be considered most mercenary and mean. As a rule, engagements are not long, and as soon as the wedding-day is agreed upon, the preceding fortnight is filled with parties of various kinds, while there is another great ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... It's impossible to describe adequately the meeting as the newcomers left the carriages and were greeted by those waiting for them. The chatter and laughter of the girls made merry music, but for the most part the young men shook hands in ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... those women who are inherent home-makers. Such women can accomplish more with the bare necessities of life than others with the world's wealth at their command. It is like personal magnetism, difficult to understand, impossible ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... girls knew how they walked up on the stage. Before them swam "a sea of upturned faces." It was impossible to tell one person from another. When Madge and Phil overcame their fright they discovered that they were among the twelve girl graduates, who formed a white semi-circle about the stage, and that Miss Matilda Tolliver was making an address ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... flashing a twenty at him like a private eye did in the old tough-books, but I knew it wouldn't work. Rhine also made it impossible for a public official to take a bribe. So instead, I ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... had a strange mysterious impulse to speak to her about Annie Hogg. The thought of his mother and Annie Hogg together showed him at once how impossible that was. They were in separate worlds. He was suddenly angry at the difficulties that life was making for him without his own wish. "Oh, I'll be here some time yet, mother," he said. "Well, I must get along now. I've got an ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... record of wanton crime and shameless debauchery, of intrigue and scandal both in public and in private life. It is plain that the thing is overdone, and the very extravagance of the calumny makes it impossible to be believed; again and again we meet statements which, if not absolutely impossible, are at least highly improbable. Many of the events of the History are presented in an entirely new light; we seem to hear one speaking out of the bitterness of his heart. It should be said, at the same time, ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... appointed guardians of the Holy Sepulchre and defenders of Jerusalem, it is to be supposed were not in sympathy with these things. Whatever the cause, their extermination was decreed. Accused of impossible crimes, the whole brotherhood was arrested in one day, and, at a summary trial, condemned, Philip himself, in that old palace on the island in the Seine, giving orders for the fagots to be laid, and the immediate execution of the grand ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... so disappointed,' said Lord Chelford, looking gravely and enquiringly at her. He began, I think, to fancy some estrangement there. 'But perhaps to-morrow—perhaps even to-day—you may relent, you know. Don't say it is impossible.' ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... in Scope of Employment. In a case in which the design was made within the regular scope of the designer's employment and individual authorship of the design is difficult or impossible to ascribe and the application so states, the name and address of the employer for whom the design was made may be stated instead of ...
— Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code, Circular 92 • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... because he was too extreme; but as a matter of fact he never went to extremes, he worked step by step; and because of this the extremists hated and denounced him with a fervor which now seems to us fantastic in its deification of the unreal and the impossible. At the very time when one side was holding him up as the apostle of social revolution because he was against slavery, the leading abolitionist denounced him as the "slave hound of Illinois." When he was the second ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... on written charters for their liberties, instead of the divine right of kings, and come perchance to learn, that neither language, nor covenants, nor signatures, nor seals avail much, as against the necessities of nations, and the policy of rulers. Do we then regard reform as impossible, and society to be doomed to struggle on in its old sloughs of oppression and abuses? Far from it. We believe and hope, that at each effort of a sage character, something is gained, while much more than had been expected is lost; and such we think ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... announced breakfast. Joe had prepared it, and the others came straggling out one by one looking sleepy and happy, enjoying the thought of the day's rest, the more that it was the kind of day to make it impossible to travel. Returning to my tent after the meal I lay down to sleep. My head had no sooner touched the pillow than I was asleep, and did ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... to confer this power on Congress, because had it been left to the States its efficient exercise would have been impossible. In that event any one State could have effectually continued the trade, not only for itself, but for all the other slave States, though never so much against their will. And why? Because African slaves, when once brought within the limits of any one State in accordance with its laws, can not ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... onwards, jostling each other in their course, their sharp horns lowered for the charge, the approaching herd appeared like some vast army of savage monsters, rushing on to meet their foes in battle. To draw up out of their way was impossible, and the travellers soon found themselves surrounded by the herd; the creatures, however, turned their horns aside, while the shape of their own heads and the width of their backs prevented them from running ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... that Chapman in his picture of Bussy's quarrels and encounters-at-arms was deviating little, except in details of names and dates, from the actual facts of history. Bussy's career was so romantic that it was impossible for even the most inventive dramatist to embellish it. This was especially true of its closing episode, which occupies the later acts of Chapman's drama—the intrigue with the Countess of Montsoreau and the tragic fate which it involved. It is somewhat singular that the earliest narratives ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... wrote that you would prefer to room together," said the house master. "But that will be impossible, since our rooms accommodate but two students each. We have assigned Samuel and Thomas to room No. 25 and Richard to ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... Greece, with her ever-jealous autonomies, cities, and states, that the only positive unity she ever own'd or receiv'd, was the sad unity of a common subjection, at the last, to foreign conquerors. Subjection, aggregation of that sort, is impossible to America; but the fear of conflicting and irreconcilable interiors, and the lack of a common skeleton, knitting all close, continually haunts me. Or, if it does not, nothing is plainer than the need, a long period to come, of a fusion of the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... his intimates can never be adequately rendered or reproduced. He bubbled over with mirth, of which his own enjoyment formed an irresistible element, he shook, and his eyes glistened at his own ludicrous ideas, as they dawned upon his brain; and it would be impossible to convey the faintest idea of the genial humor of his habitual talk by merely repeating separate ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... marching, I idly gazed, my eye was caught by an odd trick of the sun which, now at nine o'clock well on its upward way, yet seemed to illuminate the bottom of a cloud that hung near the sky line. It was a sunset effect impossible by day, but there was the distinctly gleaming band. And then I knew—Champlain! It was the lake, turning faintly silver further north or further south. What I had thought to be a cloud was distant haze. And above it hung, at first unnoticed, the faint blue silhouettes ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... Danish word), another trace may perhaps be found of their presence, as well as of the existence of a town at this early period. The town probably grew up around the monastery. It has been believed that a civic charter was granted by King Alfred in 886; but this is impossible, even if such charters were ever granted at this time, for Alfred had resigned all this part of England (which since about 839 had owned the overlordship of Wessex) ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... true, but a matter of long scraping together for a missionary. Yet if there had been unlimited funds at his disposal—and the financial aspect of the affair is alluded to only that this may be said—it would have been impossible to assemble a ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... no encouragement. With two men short it was next to impossible to add to their present advantage. But they contrived to stand their ground and save the School goal. And when at last the welcome "No side" was called, the cheers which greeted them proclaimed that the ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... you want to issue, regardless of what the property is worth. Oh, we got wise to that, muy pronto! Why, these here Texas laws are the bunk! Them fellows at Austin, if they had their way, would make it impossible to promote a legitimate enterprise—on a paying basis. They'd make you turn in cash or property the equivocal thereto every time you organized. Wouldn't that be sweet? This joint-stock arrangement is the only way to beat the game. It's a shrewd ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... Kolotskoi it was still raging. Death here seemed to be pursuing his victims, who had escaped from the engagement, with the utmost malignity; he penetrated into them by all their senses at once. They were destitute of every thing for repelling his attacks, excepting orders, which it was impossible to execute in these deserts, and which, moreover, issuing from too high and too distant a quarter, passed through too many ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... likewise easy to understand how laws, reason and judgment are powerless to prevent. Juries seem to understand this when women kill husbands and lovers, but a long-established code of chivalry and a cultivated attitude toward women, which is partly right and partly wrong, make it impossible to see that men are just as helpless under strong feelings as women. No doubt a public opinion that would favor divorces on a greater number of grounds and make them easily obtainable would prevent large numbers of such killings, but ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... earth for his possession, caused the day spring from on high to visit us. Our glorious Redeemer, that bright and morning Star, having, by his almighty power, shaken oft the fetters of death, wherewith it was impossible that he could be held, and, as a victorious conqueror, leading captivity captive, ascended into the highest heavens, and there sat down on the right hand of God, did very soon discover his cordial acceptance of, and superlative delight ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... hunters paused, and, finding it impossible to ride through the thick growth, tethered their horses and left them in charge of some natives, while they, creeping cautiously forward, with guns in hand, tried to find out in which ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... the King is surrounded by formality and circumstance. On many mornings I waited round the gates of Buckingham Palace but I found it quite impossible to meet the King in the quiet sociable way in which one met him in Orillia. The English, it seems, love to make the kingship a subject of great pomp and official etiquette. In Canada it is quite different. Perhaps we understand kings and princes better ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... wild gardens I know is a bare, open spot in a cottonwood grove, part of it tunneled by ants, which run over it by millions, and the rest a jumble of bowlders and wild rosebushes, impossible to describe. In this spot, unshaded from the burning sun, flourish flowers innumerable. Rosebushes, towering far above one's head, loaded with bloom; shrubs of several kinds, equally burdened by delicate white or pink ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... changed from a very good one to a most indifferent one. How often this happens in a run! And it is one of the fox-hunter's chief consolations that there is scarcely a day throughout the season on which a run is impossible, if only a fox will set his head resolutely up wind, just as in a ringing run there is a certain amount of consolation in the thought that a fox must travel up wind part ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... looked hard. Was it, he seemed to be turning over in his mind, that she loved him a little in the depths of her heart? That was an irritating trait of feminine stupidity. But one intelligent glance at her calm face rendered that supposition impossible. She was merely largely human, with a ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... accepts and the children whom she brings into the world. I think I perceive in you a secret desire to widen the narrow circle of the life to which all women are condemned, and to put love and passion into marriage. Ah! it is a lovely dream! it is not impossible; it is difficult, but if realized, may it not be to the despair of souls—forgive me ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... complete list of these fraternities is quite impossible. Commonly, thirty-two are reckoned, but many have vanished or have been suppressed, and there are sub-orders innumerable. Each has a "rule" dating back to its founder, and a ritual which the members perform when they meet together in their convent (kh[a]nq[a]h, z[a]wiya, takya). ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... a shrew, it was because Jack did not, as in duty bound, stop her mouth with a kiss!" Still, notwithstanding these more obnoxious notions on her part, and a certain awe inspired by the stiff silk gown and the handsome aquiline nose, it was impossible, especially in the softened tempers of that Sunday afternoon, not to associate the honest, comely, beaming countenance of Mrs. Hazeldean with comfortable recollections of soups, jellies, and wine in sickness, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had last started from the fort he had managed to make his escape, and had either followed Sandy's trail or had taken an independent course by himself. Which he had done it would be impossible to ascertain, nor did it matter. I, at all events, felt deeply indebted to him, and we became more attached friends than ever. On the canoe being examined, Alick and the other people in the fort were decidedly of the opinion that it was built by Indians, and ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... so much applauded in his ante-aggressive days, was all forgotten. Nevertheless, some of Punch's references were harmless and innocent enough, such as that in which he asks, in 1861: "Why can the Emperor of the French never be Pope?" and himself replies, "Because it is impossible that three crowns can ever make ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... uttered it. Undoubtedly there is a strong tendency in the pursuits of the medical profession to produce disbelief in that figment of tradition and diseased human imagination which has been installed in the seat of divinity by the priesthood of cruel and ignorant ages. It is impossible, or at least very difficult, for a physician who has seen the perpetual efforts of Nature—whose diary is the book he reads oftenest—to heal wounds, to expel poisons, to do the best that can be done under the given conditions,—it is very difficult for ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a very wet stormy day; we were therefore obliged to remain here, it being impossible to cross the sea ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... abolish slavery in Texas, and, through Texas, to accomplish the abolition of slavery in the United States and the world. The ground I put it on was, that it would make an exposed frontier, and, if Great Britain succeeded in her object, it would be impossible that that frontier could be secured against the aggressions of the Abolitionists; and that this government was bound, under the guaranties of the Constitution, to protect us against such a state ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... for foreign investors. The state continues to be a dominating influence in the economy and has so far failed to bring about much-needed structural changes. The IMF suspended Uzbekistan's $185 million standby arrangement in late 1996 because of governmental steps that made impossible fulfillment of Fund conditions. Uzbekistan has responded to the negative external conditions generated by the Asian and Russian financial crises by tightening export and currency controls within its already largely closed economy. Economic policies ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... exclaimed aloud. "My God!" He feared to find a crushed and broken little body at the foot of those steep iron ladders. It seemed impossible for such a frail and aged woman to have, unaided, made her way down the sides of that inky precipice. "Good Lord!" he exclaimed again, "if only she isn't killed!" He stood looking out, leaning as far over the iron railing as he dared, waiting till his eyes should become accustomed to the ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... which the game is played." How different from the rest of Europe, where intrigue, etc., are conspicuously absent; and the explanation seems to be that wine and beer are unlike coffee, which it may be quite impossible to drink without remembering the poison which so many furtive fingers have dropped into it. And it would be rank ingratitude if I omitted the Italian Admiral Millo, though he was injudicious. After he had been at his post for four ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... No! Impossible! Look at the speed of our gun-fire! But I judge that we have not been able to silence as many of their guns as we ought to—they're using shell into our close order. But all the guns in creation shall not stop us! I have men enough ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... want of freshness so remarkable in the toilettes of Englishwomen, to their crowded routes, and the knowledge of its being impossible for a robe, or at least of a greater portion of one than covers a bust, to be seen; which induces the fair wearers to economise, by rarely indulging ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... hermit-trapper, who hated everything in the wide world except his young brother, the beautiful, wild, and sunny Jerry Strann. And Mac Strann loved his brother as much as he hated everything else; it is impossible to state it more strongly. It was not long before the men of the Three B's discovered how Mac Strann felt about his brother. After Jerry's famous Hallowe'en party in Buckskin, for instance, Williamson, McKenna, and Rath started out to rid the country of the disturber. They went out to ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... are people who are always more or less affected by the mentalities of those with whom they come in contact, or in whose company they are. A friend, the editor of one of our great journals, is so sensitively organized that it is impossible for him to attend a gathering, such as a reception, talk and shake hands with a number of people during the course of the evening, without taking on to a greater or less extent their various mental and physical conditions. These affect him to such an extent that ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... servants, too; surely her mother had suffered, and doubtless this misery which had come upon her had been communicated to her before her birth. Jealous-mad she was; that was what it meant, the one idea goading her on to do what would otherwise have been impossible, possessing her in spite of herself, and not to be banished by any ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... revolutionised the whole world of thought—have an intense human interest, and belong essentially to the creative imagination of poetry. It is with these moments that my poem is chiefly concerned, not with any impossible attempt to cover the whole field or to make a new poetic system, after the Lucretian model, ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... I directed General Merritt to march to the Loudoun Valley and operate against Mosby, taking care to clear the country of forage and subsistence, so as to prevent the guerrillas from being harbored there in the future their destruction or capture being well-nigh impossible, on account of their intimate knowledge of the mountain region. Merritt carried out his instructions with his usual sagacity and thoroughness, sweeping widely over each side of his general line of march with flankers, who burned the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... used. The new church is of stone, with twin towers, walls flangeing into buttresses, and sculptured front. The design itself is good, simple, and shapely; but the character is all in the detail, where the architect has bloomed into the sculptor. It is impossible to tell in words of the angels (although they are more like winged archbishops) that stand guard upon the door, of the cherubs in the corners, of the scapegoat gargoyles, or the quaint and spirited relief, where St. Michael (the artist's patron) ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Von Rosen enter the Eustace house and had guessed dully at the reason. She had always thought that Von Rosen would eventually marry Alice Mendon and she wondered a little, but not much. Her own affairs were entirely sufficient to occupy her mind. Her position had become more impossible to alter and more ghastly. That night Wilbur had brought home a present to celebrate her success. It was something which she had long wanted and which she knew he could ill afford:—a circlet of topazes for her hair. She kissed him and put it on to please him, but it was to her as ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... do so in broad daylight, for my supper is served almost directly after the gates are closed; and were I missing there would be a search for me at once, the sentries on the wall would all be warned, and it would be impossible to get past them. If I could get out two or three hours before the gates are closed at nine o'clock I might, as soon as it became dark, attempt to get over the walls before the alarm was given, or I might possibly go out ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... possible foe lurking in the shadows, Cuthbert entered this strange abode, and felt rather than saw that the door closed noiselessly behind them, whilst he heard the shooting of a heavy bolt, and turned with a start, for it seemed impossible that this could have been done without some human hand to accomplish the deed. But his sense of touch assured him that he and Cherry were the only persons at this end of the narrow passage, and with a light shiver at the uncanny occurrence, he ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... its shadow before it, and the shadow became marvellously distorted. Pulteney, speaking on February 23, 1733, with regard to the Sinking Fund proposal, talked of the expected excise scheme in language of such exaggeration that it is impossible to believe the orator could have felt anything like the alarm and horror he expressed. There is "a very terrible affair impending," Pulteney said, "a monstrous project—yea, more monstrous than has ever yet been represented. It is ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... to breakfast the conversation turned upon his return to Germany. He did not object to going, although it can hardly be said that he willed to go. He was in that perilous condition in which the comparison of reasons is impossible, and the course taken depends upon some chance impulse of the moment, and is a mere drift. He could not leave, however, in complete ignorance of Madge, and with no certainty as to her future. He resolved therefore to make one more effort to discover the house. That was all which he ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... Finding it impossible to make this self-sufficient youth listen to reason, Louis and Mme. Fauvel, after discussing the matter fully, decided that assistance must be forced upon him, and his path in ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... Department in sympathy with the rioters, it is not difficult to see what the end would have been. We do not mean by that, that the heads of the department would not have endeavored to do their duty, but it would have been impossible to control the kind of element they would inevitably have to deal with. This even the long-tried, trusted leaders of the Democratic party acknowledged. In fact, the police force would not have been in a condition, ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... up the impossible. I am tired of this unequal contest of which we are certain to have the worst. It's cowardly, it's ridiculous, it's anything you please.... I don't care! Lupin is stronger than we are. Consequently, there's nothing to do but ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... he still cut himself now and then, for which he would always mildly reproach me, though jestingly and in kindness. Besides, from the manner in which he began, and which he would never change, it was impossible for him not to cut his face sometimes, for he shaved himself downward, and not upward, like every one else; and this bad method, which all my efforts could not change, added to the habitual abruptness of ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... one of the pretty soft grey demi-toilette dresses which remained among her well-stocked wardrobe, and prepared to assist her chief in receiving her guests, who soon flocked in so rapidly as to make separate receptions impossible. Miss Bradley came early, arrayed in white silk and lace with diamond stars in her coronet of thickly-plaited red hair. She was looking radiantly well—so well and unusually animated that her aspect struck sudden terror into Katherine's heart; something had gladdened her heart to give that ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... trial by jury shall be preserved as usual in civil cases." The proposal failed when it was pointed out that the make-up and powers of juries differed greatly in different States and that a uniform provision for all States was impossible.[1] The objection evidently anticipated that in cases falling to their jurisdiction on account of the diversity of citizenship of the parties, the federal courts would conform their procedure to the laws of the several States.[2] The omission, however, raised an objection to the Constitution ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... can ever reunite us; nothing shall reunite us, no consideration, no necessity. I reject the past, this guilty past, the responsibility of which weighs so heavily on my conscience, and I should like to lose the memory of the detested time. It would be impossible for me to accept the struggle, or supplications, if you think it expedient to make any. I have cut our bonds, and hereafter we shall be as far apart as if one of us were dead, or even farther. Have no scruples, then, in leaving me alone to face a new life, a beginning that may ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... succeeded so well, that the Bulls grew cold and reserved towards one another, which soon after ripened into a downright hatred and aversion, and, at last, ended in a total separation. The Lion had now obtained his ends; and, as impossible as it was for him to hurt them while they were united, he found no difficulty, now they were parted, to seize and devour every Bull of them, one ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... us in saying, that Mr. Smith must select his editors with more care, if he wishes that his "Library of Old Authors" should deserve the confidence and thereby gain the good word of intelligent readers,—without which such a series can neither win nor keep the patronage of the public. It is impossible that men who cannot construct an English sentence correctly, and who do not know the value of clearness in writing, should be able to disentangle the knots which slovenly printers have tied in the thread of an old author's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... come of it," retorted Dolman. "A Christian man must feel that he is encouraging gambling if he countenances racing, for they contend that without betting racing is impossible." ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... world, necessarily suggested to the Babylonians that the gods worshipped by the living had no control over the fate of the dead. The gods, to be sure, were at times wrathful, but, on the whole, they were well disposed towards mankind. When angry, they could be pacified, and it was impossible to believe that they should deliberately consign their creatures to such a sad lot as awaited those who went down to Aralu. The gods who ruled the dead must be different from those who directed the fate of the living. A special pantheon for the nether world was ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... and New confirm it and not euer heard of til this time to be inouated. And yet not only president but the nature of the thing inforces it for to these juors the law gaue this power vested it in them they had it in right of law and it is incompatible and impossible that it should be uested in these and in others too for then two juries may haue the same power in the same case one man ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... "But, 'tis impossible," replied mystified Phil. "To whom in the world would your father pass his authority over you? He is hale and hearty; there's not the least occasion ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the Gods that Romans bow before, I heere discard my sicknesse. Soule of Rome, Braue Sonne, deriu'd from Honourable Loines, Thou like an Exorcist, hast coniur'd vp My mortified Spirit. Now bid me runne, And I will striue with things impossible, Yea get the better of them. What's to do? Bru. A peece of worke, That ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... KING [rising].—Impossible! Have evil spirits power over my subjects, even in my private apartments? Well, well— Daily I seem less able to avert Misfortune from myself, and o'er my actions Less competent to exercise control; How can ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... him. Furthermore, he seemed to have a prejudice against enlisted men and showed his teeth at several of them. Katie began to explain that that was because—but Wayne had curtly cut her short with saying that he didn't care why it was, the fact that it was had made it impossible to have the dog around. If one of the men had been bitten by the contemptible cur Katie couldn't cauterize the wound with the story ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... end of the series on Plate 50. Referring to the codex the reader will observe at the bottom of each plate and directly under—that is to say, in the same vertical lines as the day columns—two lines of red numerals. It is impossible to determine these in Kingsborough's copy (except on Plate 50), but they can readily be made out on the photographed plates. (See the copy of Plate 50, given in Fig. 362.) Those on a single ...
— Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices • Cyrus Thomas
... this stagnant watching. Else a way will have to be fought out of it; and a great European war would set the Old World, perhaps the whole world, back a long way; and thereafter, the present armed watching would recur; we should have gained nothing. It seems impossible to talk the Great Powers out of their fear of one another or to "Hague" them out of it. They'll never be persuaded to disarm. The only way left seems to be to find some common and useful work for these great armies to do. Then, perhaps, they'll work themselves ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... answered Focus, "it is impossible for me to keep your law. I am obliged to earn eight pennies every day, therefore was I ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... "With my skill, monsieur? It is impossible—he cannot die! He will be restored in three ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... have saved you from ignominious death; but I have saved myself also from a death by no means agreeable to me. It was impossible that our love could have held us much longer at a distance from each other, impossible that we could have still suffered a third person to usurp our privileges. If that stabbed stabber under the table had not misunderstood you so grotesquely—the gross-witted hog!—he ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... we got up to the buggy, we found it fairly stuck in the mud, in one of the worst parts of the road, with a trace broken. I got under the rails of the paddock in which the coach passengers were walking—for it was impossible to walk in the road—and crossed over to where my former mates were stuck. They were out in the deep mud, almost knee-deep, trying to mend the broken trace. Altogether they looked in a very ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... expect that I should make a distinction between confirmed and unconfirmed communicants, which would render any administration in the abbey impossible, or that I should distinguish between the different shades of orthodoxy in the different nonconformist communions, I cannot conceive. I am sure that I acted as a good churchman. I humbly hope that I acted as He who first instituted ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... movement against the enemy ordered by Burnside. That facts discovered may be published or not, for the Administration shuns publicity. The Committee discovered that Mr. Seward was implicated in that conspiracy of generals against Burnside. Any qualification of such conduct is impossible, and the vocabulary of crimes has no name for it; let it, therefore, be Sewardism. The editors of the New York Tribune did their utmost ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... say the least, it was an awkward one—nearly two hundred miles from any civilised settlement, and no means of getting there,—no means except by walking; and how were his children to walk two hundred miles? Impossible! ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... the hurricane began, and by the afternoon the Albemarle frigate and all the merchantmen in the bay parted from their anchors and drove to sea. By night the fury of the tempest had reached its utmost height, and dreadful were the consequences. It is impossible to describe the scenes of horror and distress occurring on every side. A friend of mine was at the house of the governor, which was a circular building with very thick walls. The roof, however, soon began to fall in, and the family were compelled to take shelter in the cellar. The water, ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... Impossible! Suzanne's eyes as she sought those of Sir Andrew plainly told him that she thought that HE at any rate rescued his fellowmen from terrible and unmerited death, through a higher and nobler motive than his friend would have ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... it's a surprise to me to find her—" he waited, and calculated again, "to find her grown up to be seventeen years old." To Ovid's ears, there was an inhuman indifference in his tone as he said this, which it was impossible not to resent, by looks, if not in words. Benjulia noticed the impression that he had produced, without in the least understanding it. "Your nervous system's in a nasty state," he remarked; "you had better take care of yourself. I'll go ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... "Preposterous, impossible, absurd!" he exclaimed. Then revolving on his heels so as to face the crowd he swiftly repeated in Spanish what Weir ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... and then—well, what then?—why, nothing!' And Graham, having talked himself into a cul-de-sac of thought, shook his head furiously and strove to dismiss the matter from his too inquisitive mind. But not all his philosophy and will could accomplish the impossible. 'We are a finite lot of fools,' said he, 'and when we think we know most we know least. How that nameless Unseen Power must smile at our attempts to scale the stars,' by which remark it will be seen that Dr Graham was not the atheist Beorminster believed him to be. And ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... one can spare you. That cannot be. It is amongst the things that are impossible. But they will have pity upon—your father, and they will let ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... Blackbeard held them irresolute and curious. He had turned his back to them and was shouting boisterously to others to follow him. Seven men came through the doorway, one after the other, hanging back with evident reluctance. It was impossible to discern who they were, whether officers or seamen. Every one carried in his arms what looked to be a tub or an iron pot. These they set upon the dunnage boards which covered the ballast and made ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... carried me along with them, while they lasted. But here was the vortex of my meditations, around which they revolved, and whitherward they too continually tended. In the midst of cheerful society, I had often a feeling of loneliness. For it was impossible not to be sensible that, while these three characters figured so largely on my private theatre, I—though probably reckoned as a friend by all—was at best but a secondary or tertiary ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... translator of the Department of State. Though an able and learned man he was not in the line of preferment. He was without political standing or backing of any sort. At first blush a more unlikely, impossible appointment could hardly be suggested. But—so on the instant I reasoned—he was peculiarly fitted in his own person for the post in question. Though of Greek origin he looked like a Spaniard. He spoke the Spanish language fluently. He had the ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... thing had hit him. It is impossible to describe the effect produced on the mind by that quiet and sunny garden scene, the frame for a stunning and brutal personality. The evening air was still, and the grass was golden in the place where the little flowers he studied cried to heaven ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... great a population that it would be impossible to give an idea of it without entering into extensive details. In the king's palace are several cells, like basins, filled with ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... them returned with cargoes of crockery, bar iron, pig iron, and salt. This part of the trip also proved successful. It was the intention of the owners to sell some of the vessels in England, but the shipping interests were so prostrated that it was impossible to dispose of the ships at anything like a fair price. They therefore still remained in the hands of Cleveland owners, but four of them did not return to the Lakes. The D. B. Sexton went up the Mediterranean; the H. E. Howe went on a voyage to South America, the Harvest to ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... time when the exercise of the intellect became the source of strength and of wealth, it is impossible not to consider every addition to science, every fresh truth, and every new idea as a germ of power placed within the reach of the people. Poetry, eloquence, and memory, the grace of wit, the glow of imagination, the depth of thought, and all the gifts which are bestowed by Providence ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... become so closely interwoven in this society that it is well-nigh impossible to separate them. The building of a house, the planting, harvesting and care of the rice, the procedure at a birth, wedding, or funeral, in short, all the events of the social and economic life, are so governed by custom and religious beliefs, that it is safe to ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... a dream—an error which is hourly contradicted by reality. As the world is at present constituted, such a state of things is impossible. The rich and the educated will never look upon the poor and ignorant as their equals; and the voice of the public, that is ever influenced by wealth and power, will bear them out ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... in sin and selfish indulgence, they desire to make their peace with God; for, says he, 'They shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way'. The imaginary obstacles which arise in people's minds, seeming to make holy living impossible, are varied in character, but I see that many are influenced by fears and feelings concerning things which I class under the headings ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... does not really matter, because such a marriage would be absolutely impossible for Helene. But it is better for a young man not to have such wild ambitions in his head at all. You know I am right. You agree with me. That is one reason why you are working with ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... standstill, for if the mown grass is left in the field it blackens and rots; if it is drawn to the barn, it turns musty in the mow. Usually the sun does its duty, but once in a while there comes a summer in Maine when there is so much wet weather that it is nearly impossible to harvest the hay crop. Such a summer ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... be one of our chief duties—promoting the happiness of our neighbors—most certainly there is nothing which so entirely runs counter to it, and makes it impossible, as an undisciplined temper. For of all the things that are to be met with here on earth, there is nothing which can give such continual, such cutting, such useless pain. The touchy and sensitive temper, which ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... will prove to whom, in the end, victory shall belong. One institution at least will remain, for no power, not even that of hell, can prevail against it. As in the early days, when society had fallen to a state of chaos, and orderly government had become impossible, it may, once more, raise the standard of order and reconstitute the broken and ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... create a counter current. Will you excuse me if, from a sincere desire for your success, I go farther & touch upon matters not political, or at least not wholly so? Your situation of course excites envy & jealousy on the part of some. It is impossible from the character of man that it should be otherwise, bear yourself ever so meekly & you cannot avoid it. There will therefore in Albany, as well as elsewhere, be people who will make ill natured remarks & there will be ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... the system of firing and gear used, electric firing was very successful as long as one had the gear for refitting and repairing and an armourer attached to one's guns; this, of course, as the guns became split up into pairs was impossible, and I may say that carting electric batteries (which of necessity for quickness have to be kept charged) in wagons or limbers over rocks and bad roads, and with continual loading and off-loading, becomes a trouble and anxiety to one. So for active service I should certainly recommend ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... Although it is impossible for men to form the least idea of the soul, or the pretended spirit, which animates them; yet they persuade themselves that this unknown soul is exempt from death. Every thing proves to them, that they feel, that they think, that they ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... first in her kindergarten and then in her own nursery, which furnished a veritable illustration of Victor Hugo's definition of heaven—"a place where parents are always young and children always little." Her daily presence for the first two years made it quite impossible for us to become too solemn and self-conscious in our strenuous routine, for her mirth and buoyancy were irresistible and her eager desire to share the life of the neighborhood never failed, although ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... miles in all England. The road is good; the soil is good; the houses are neat; the people are neat; the hills, the woods, the meadows, all are beautiful. Nothing wild or bold, to be sure, but exceedingly pretty; and it is almost impossible to ride along these four miles without feelings of pleasure, though you have rain for your companion, as it happened to be with me." Would the scenery have pleased Cobbett better if it had been "wild or bold"? Probably ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... "I think it wouldn't be quite right to show you a private letter from one of my clients. I have told you enough already. I'm sorry, but it's impossible for me ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... dear friend, I have reflected since we parted; it is impossible for me to let the lamb confided to me go among the wolves of the world. I mean, you understand, our little Jacques, who has fulfilled your message to the king. Instead of him, who is too young, I send you a good and worthy brother of our order; his manners are good, ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... draws all light things to it, except basil and such as are dipped in oil; and a loadstone will not draw a piece of iron that is rubbed with onion. Now all these, as to matter of fact, are very evident; but it is hard, if not altogether impossible, to find ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... I cannot identify the original. To an expert of that period it should not be impossible, however." Septimus Marvin was all awake now, with flushed cheeks and eyes brightened by enthusiasm. "Do you know why? Because her hair is dressed in a peculiar way—poufs de sentiment, these curls are called. They were only worn for a ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... desirable to make a change in one place in order to join their arguments harmoniously to those of their colleagues; they will wish to make changes in another place for the sake of assailing an obviously weak spot or in order to ward off an unexpected attack. This versatility is practically impossible if one is delivering an argument that he has memorized word for word. Again, a memorized argument cannot carry with it the force and the conviction that may be found in an effort of a more spontaneous character. Furthermore, if a debater should be ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... they get, are instantly conveyed from one hand to another, till the remotest person of the gang (who is not suspected because they come not near the person robbed) gets possession of it; so that, in the strictest search, it is impossible to recover it; while the wretches with imprecations, oaths, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... William been more severely tried. He was provoked by the perverseness of his allies; he was provoked by the imperious language of the enemy. It was not without a hard struggle and a sharp pang that he made up his mind to consent to what France now proposed. But he felt that it would be utterly impossible, even if it were desirable, to prevail on the House of Commons and on the States General to continue the war for the purpose of wresting from France a single fortress, a fortress in the fate of which neither England ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... wild cats," and her beautiful slender heroine, "daughter of castles, descendant of crusaders." First the twain fall desperately in love, and Edith, the Catholic, discovers Ben to be an innocent divorce. Marriage impossible, they part. But it is apparently quite in order for her to marry, without loving, a cocoa king who drinks—anything but cocoa; which done, to add to the bitterness of the cup, Ben's wife is reported dead. Whereafter the king ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... was found to be impossible to get the wheeled gun of the 1st King's Royal Rifles over ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... their hold, were washed away, and again dragged in by the boat's crew. What chance had one whose right arm hung a dead weight, when strong men with their two hands went down before him? He caught at a rope, found it impossible to save himself alone, and then for the first time said,—"I am injured; can any one aid me?" Ensign Taylor, at the risk of his own life, brought the rope around his shoulder in such a way it could not slip, and he was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... rose to that Providence which can do all things for the feeblest of its creatures, though the creatures can do nothing of themselves. And so Godfrey had to wait for the day to resign himself to his fate, if safety was impossible; and, on the contrary, to try everything, if there was any chance ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... But it was impossible that they should yet, or for many a day, feel any sense of kinship with this aboriginal girl. Presently the carriage drew up to the doorway, which was instantly opened to them. A broad belt of light streamed out upon the stone ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... all conditions of peace, but that doesn't mean that we shall accept them.... For some of our terms we shall fight to the end-but possibly for others will find it impossible to continue the war.... Above all, we want to ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... Thurston, of what are you talking? Of the event of your doing an unprincipled act! Impossible, ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... brides of the church. I should honestly be glad to have either of them marry almost anybody, provided he is a decent fellow. I should not even object to their marrying foreigners, but the difficulty is that it is almost impossible to find out whether a foreigner is really decent or not. It is true that the number of foreign noblemen who marry American girls for love is negligible. There is undoubtedly a small and distinguished minority who do so; but ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... objects. These new and powerful instruments, supplemented by many accessories which have completely revolutionized observatory equipment, have not only revealed a vastly greater number of stars and nebulae: they have also rendered feasible observations of a type formerly regarded as impossible. The chemical analysis of a faint star is now so easy that it can be accomplished in a very short time—as quickly, in fact, as an equally complex substance can be analyzed in the laboratory. The spectroscope also ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... the mute, obscure forces of habit, which are doubtless the strongest forces in human nature, were dragging him back to her. Because their lives had been united so long, it seemed impossible to sever them, though their union had been so full of misery and discord; the custom of marriage was so subtile and so pervasive, that his heart demanded her sympathy for what he was suffering in abandoning her. The solitude into which he had plunged stretched ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... then another, and the bandits discovered themselves in the centre of a ring formed by twenty men, with the young captain in command. Resistance would have been foolish, flight impossible; yet, as the captain stepped toward the brigand leader, the man in the cloak attempted the foolish and impossible; he fired his pistol full at the captain's head, flung the weapon after the bullet, missing his aim each ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... to give himself freer use of his right arm, for the savages were pressing more closely upon Twelve and Three, and the change made it impossible for the girl to see his face even in ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and pencil were also used in the fourteenth century, how much earlier is unknown.[5*] Algorism quickly ousted the Abacus methods for all intricate calculations, being simpler and more easily checked: in fact, the astronomical revival of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries would have been impossible without its aid. ...
— The Earliest Arithmetics in English • Anonymous
... way at the wrists, I I prevented him from helping himself too freely to the liquors upon the table; a precaution rendered necessary, in the opinion of Legs, by the peculiarly sottish and wine-bibbing cast of his visage. A pair of prodigious ears, nevertheless, which it was no doubt found impossible to confine, towered away into the atmosphere of the apartment, and were occasionally pricked up in a spasm, at the sound of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... after that Deidrick proposed in perfect good faith, the girl repeated her objections with equal candour, and they were received with somnolent approval. Love-making is very agreeable, and by the usuage of long years it becomes a confirmed habit. In less than a decade it became impossible for Katrina to enjoy her supper without the regular proposal, and Deidrick could not sleep of a night without the preliminary nap in the goat-yard to taper off his wakefulness. Both would have been wretched had they retired to bed with a shade of ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... of surprise, confusion, and delight that followed were impossible. The questions put that were never answered; the answers given to questions never put; the exclamations; the cross purposes; the inextricable conglomeration of past, present, and future history—public, personal, and local; uttered, ejaculated and gasped, in short, or incomplete, or disjointed sentences—all ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... 120 millions of loan, and on which Chamberlain wrote: "As a result of yesterday's Council, I think Trevelyan and I will be out on Tuesday. If you are at the House, come to my room after questions." I went to Chamberlain's room and met Bright with him. But real consultation in presence of Bright was impossible, because Bright was merely disagreeable. On Monday, the 15th, Chamberlain and Trevelyan wrote their letters of resignation, and late at night Chamberlain showed me the reply to his. On the same day James told me that ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... Boileau has so very well enlarged upon in the Preface to his Works, that Wit and fine Writing doth not consist so much in advancing Things that are new, as in giving Things that are known an agreeable Turn. It is impossible for us, who live in the lat[t]er Ages of the World, to make Observations in Criticism, Morality, or in any Art or Science, which have not been touched upon by others. We have little else left us, but to represent ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... promises. I didna believe them a', for it seemed impossible that they could be true. But I liked the man, and I decided that if the half of what he said was true it would be verra interesting—verra interesting indeed. Whiles, when you deal w' a man and he tells you more than you think he can do, you ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... not too much to say that the keystone to the whole arch is gone. So too when the medieval Church allowed and then adopted the word 'transubstantiation' (and we know the exact date of this), it committed itself to a doctrine from which henceforward it was impossible to recede. The floating error had become a fixed one, and exercised a far mightier influence on the minds of all who received it, than except for this it would have ever done. It is sometimes not a word, but a phrase, which proves thus mighty in operation. ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... flashes by, drawn by a pair of fine trotters. "Vot on sam!" mutters our izvostchik,—There he is himself! It is General Gresser*, the prefect of the capital, who maintains perfect order, and demonstrates the possibilities of keeping streets always clean in an impossible climate. The pounding of those huge trotters' hoofs is so absolutely distinctive—as distinctive as the unique gray cap—that we can recognize it as they pass, cry like the izvostchik, "Vot on sam!" and fly to the window with the certainty ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... Mille Nocendi Artes; and it will be impossible for us, to run over all the Stratagems and Policies of our Adversary. I shall only attempt a few Observations upon the Temptations of our Lord Jesus Christ: who was Tempted in all things like unto us, except in our Sins. When we read the Temptations of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... ambition was done. He saw this girl with his mind's eye—how much he longed to see her with the eyes of the body —in all her strange beauty; and he knew that even if she cared for him, such a sacrifice as linking her life with his was impossible. Yet her very presence there was like a garden of bloom to him: a garden full of the odour of life, of vital things, of sweet energy and happy being. Somehow, he and she were strangely alike. He knew it. From the time he held her in his arms at Carillon, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fingernails. And lazily, with graceful sloth, she allowed her indolent figure to curve and sway;—a figure that a garter might span, and that was made even more slender to the eye by the projection of the hips and the curve of the hoops that gave the balloon-like roundness to her skirt;—an impossible waist, absurdly small but adorable, like everything in woman that offends one's sense ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... excitement which was quite visible to Alice. More than once Alice asked little questions, not supposing that she was specially concerned in the matter which had caused her aunt's fidgety restlessness, but observing it so plainly that it was almost impossible not to allude to it. "There's nothing the matter, my dear, at all," at last Lady Macleod said; but as she said so she was making up her mind that the moment had not come in which she must apprise Alice of Mr Grey's intended visit. As Alice had questioned ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... age, or was carried off by one of the diseases incident to youth, it is impossible to say; for his departure was as quiet as his advent was mysterious. I only know that he appeared to us in this world in his perfect stature and beauty, and that after a time, like Lohengrin, he withdrew. In his illness there was nothing more to be regretted ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... important; and with a view to obtain this, the minister addressed to her a letter, in which he expressed his ardent desire to effect a reconciliation between herself and the King, in order that the prayers of the nation might be answered by the birth of a Dauphin; or, should she deem such an event impossible, to entreat of her to pardon him if he ventured to take the liberty of imploring her Majesty to make ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... Fellow-creatures: (1) Justice and Equity, the doing as we would be done by. Iniquity is the very same in Action, as Falsity or Contradiction in Theory; what makes the one absurd makes the other unreasonable; 'it would be impossible for men not to be as much (!) ashamed of doing Iniquity, as they are of believing Contradictions;' (2) Universal Love or Benevolence, the promoting the welfare or happiness of all, which is obligatory on various grounds: the Good being the fit and reasonable, the greatest Good is the most ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... stars. There were the same steep ascent to maximum and more gradual decline to minimum, the same irregularities in heights and hollows, and, it may be added, the same tendency to a double maximum, and complexity of superposed periods.[1466] It is impossible to compare the two sets of phenomena thus graphically portrayed without reaching the conclusion that they are of closely related origin. But the correspondence indicated is not, as has often been hastily ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... Admiral was ashore, dining with General Madeira; when, at ten o'clock at night, a shot was heard. "What is it?" exclaimed the latter to the messenger, who, in alarm, entered the room.—"'Tis Lord Cochrane's line-of-battle ship, in the very midst of our fleet."—"Impossible!" exclaimed the Admiral; "no large ship can have come up with the ebb tide." And there was as much consternation and as much bustle of preparation, as if the fleet of England had entered in a hostile manner. The Pedro Primeiro was indeed close alongside of the Constituica[)o]; ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... disquieting conversation, but she was not to be seen until the party assembled at the table, set under an awning on the terrace. Then, to my disappointment, I found no opportunity to speak to her, for her seat was so placed as to make it impossible, and she escaped into the house immediately upon the conclusion of the repast, hurrying away too pointedly for any attempt to detain her—though, as she passed, she sent me one glance of meek reproach which she was at ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... keep from being hurled out of one's berth was to cling like a leech to a rope fastened to a ring in the wall, for the little ship was bouncing back and forth so fast and so far that it was impossible to compare it with the motion of any other craft. Day began to dawn about 3 A.M. By the dim light I could make out mighty mountains of green foaming water. At each roll of the steamer we seemed to be at the bottom of a huge emerald pit. Suddenly some one yelled, "There she goes!" and that second ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... the door, they got up seven of the steps, beginning at the uppermost one, till they formed a gap which it would be impossible for a man to spring over. The boards they carried down as they descended, when they found themselves in another storey, the whole of which was occupied by one large room without doors, the reason, of course, why it had not been ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... nay, almost impossible, to criticise or refute such statements, and yet it is necessary to do so; for such is the interest, or I should rather say the feverish curiosity, excited by anything that bears on ancient religion, that M. Jacolliot's book has produced ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... clothing which are necessary for the mere maintenance of the functions of the body in their normal state cannot be obtained; in which men, women, and children are forced to crowd into dens wherein decency is abolished, and the most ordinary conditions of healthful existence are impossible of attainment; in which the pleasures within reach are reduced to brutality and drunkenness; in which the pains accumulate at compound interest in the shape of starvation, disease, stunted development, and moral degradation; in which the prospect of ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... hoped for in such surroundings? With every effort to be clean the dirt accumulates faster than it can be washed away. It was impossible, I found by my own experience, to be really clean. There was a total absence of beauty in everything—not a line of grace, not a pleasing sound, not an agreeable odour anywhere. One could get used to this ugliness, become unconscious even of the acrid smells that pervade ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... orders to his men to keep together in their companies, each under his commander; and not to try to maintain regular order as one band, for this would be next to impossible, fighting on such hilly and broken ground. Besides, they would be sure to get mixed up with the ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... the work is worth nothing without faith, for "without faith it is impossible to please him." (Hebrews 11:6.) The sacrifice of Abel was better than the sacrifice of Cain, because Abel had faith. As to Cain he had no faith or trust in God's grace, but strutted about in his own fancied worth. When God refused to recognize Cain's worth, Cain ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... I tell you?" cried Sir Matthew triumphantly. "Trust me to find the right man, Mr. Tarleton, trust me. I always believe in demanding the impossible and I generally get it. If you're modest, you ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... add "he was safe, and aware Of a presence that turned off the balls ... was imprest It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear, And how 't was impossible, quite dispossessed, To live ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... as, seated on his saddle, he rolled up a neat cigarette, "don't be too confident. You little know what sights these four walls have witnessed. True, this is not quite the season when one runs much risk of being starved to death, but the thing is not impossible." ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... circuit round the foe or attack him unexpectedly in the flank seemed impossible; but the rocks themselves were made to serve Joshua; for he had commanded his skilful slingers and trained archers to climb the precipices to a moderate height and wait for the signal when they were to mingle in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Everywhere pitch blackness, the blackness of the tomb. The consumptive soldier pulled a candle from his kit, balanced it in the straw, and over it warmed his hands. If that candle had toppled over in the straw we wouldn't have had a rat's chance in the fire. It was impossible to get out of our car or to communicate with another except by tapping. The fellows in the next car must have been considerably frightened, for after about an hour they began yelling and pounding at the walls. ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... badly, and there was nothing with which to bale her out but the hats and shoes of the ship's cook and two other men who had taken refuge under the thwarts. Flinders steered towards the Bridgewater's lights, but she was standing off, and it was soon seen to be impossible to reach her. It was also unsafe to return to the Porpoise through the breakers in the darkness; so that the boat was kept on the water outside the reef till morning, the small party on board being drenched, cold under a sharp south-easter, and wretchedly miserable. ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... the Works! To-night? Impossible! You mustn't think of such a thing," the young man protested. Mrs. Maitland looked at him, and he shifted from one foot to the other. "It—it won't do, really," he said, weakly; "that was a pretty bad knock you got on the back of ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... manages to do with the trains which it despatches from Inverness at 10 P.M. and reproduces the next morning at Perth about 7, it is impossible for the mind of man to imagine; but it is not of much consequence so long as you are snugly ensconced in a sleeping-berth; and Lionel passed the night in profound oblivion. With the new day, however, these unavailing ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... the face, whose expression is sinister and gruesome, like that of an unrelenting criminal violated by torture. The criminal look of misery and hatred on the fixed, violated face and in the bloodshot eyes is almost impossible. He is conquered, beaten, broken, his body is a mass of torture, an unthinkable shame. Yet his will remains obstinate and ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... large vegetable gardens, plainly indicated the occupation of the inhabitants and the origin of the name Gardener's Lane. I was wondering in which of these miserable huts my odd friend might live. I had completely forgotten the number; moreover it was impossible to make out any signs in the darkness. At that moment a man carrying a heavy load of vegetables passed me. "The old fellow is scraping his fiddle again," he grumbled, "and disturbing decent people in their night's rest." At the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Hannibal, placing before their minds the fear lest their fields should be devastated, and the many hardships and indignities which must be endured in a siege; nor were there wanting persons who advised a revolt. In this state of things, when a fear took possession of the senate, that it would be impossible to resist the excited multitude if they went openly to work, devised a delay of the evil by secret simulation. They pretended that they were agreeable to the revolt to Hannibal; but that it was not settled on what terms they should enter into the new alliance and friendship. Thus having ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... only bind a nation as long as it is to its interest, goes to the root of public law. It is the straight road to barbarism, just as if you removed the magnetic pole whenever it was in the way of a German cruiser, the whole navigation of the seas would become dangerous, difficult, impossible, and the whole machinery of civilization will break down if this doctrine wins in ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... anything against it. Two heroes of the Guard may quarrel, and fight,—but at least there are no civilians to look on and sneer. No, I say that big villain never served in the Guard. A guardsman would never behave as he does to another guardsman, under the very eyes of the bourgeois; impossible! Ah! it's all wrong; the Guard is disgraced—and here, at Issoudun! where it ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... must do it. Tessibel was his wife, his dear little wife. He had promised to make a home for her. But how? Could they get along at all, and what would he do with her impossible father? As his mother had said, he had no ability to earn anything. Bitter tears of ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... Madame d'Ouditot, the lady who inspired Rousseau with the idea of Julie. Julie is now seventy-two years of age, a thin woman in a little black bonnet: she appeared to me shockingly ugly; she squints so much that it is impossible to tell which way she is looking; but no sooner did I hear her speak, than I began to like her; and no sooner was I seated beside her, than I began to find in her countenance a most benevolent and agreeable expression. She entered into conversation ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... come to at last?" she inquired. "It is quite impossible to remember that though you sleep for hours you are liable to wake in time to contradict me on any point whatever. In this case it is of no consequence what I may ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... said; "but I know enough of myself to say that it cannot be true. I do not say that the Sepoys can never be fighting against whites, improbable as it seems, but that I was doing what that figure did is, I know, impossible." ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... commons—who were accustomed to confer with the King on public affairs. The stage which marks the birth of representation was when these different estates and communities were asked to tax themselves to relieve the necessities of the King. It was obviously impossible that the consent of every freeman should be obtained, hence the duty had to be deputed to agents. Now, the idea of agency was not unknown in the ancient world, but that agents should have power to bind those for whom ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... neither time, place, nor the words. It was a loose matter of hearsay which was alleged—evidently a wanton provocation to a murderous duel. Burr demanded so broad a retraction from Hamilton of all he might have said, that compliance was impossible. It was an attempt to procure an indorsement of his character at the cost of the moral character of the indorser. Hamilton despised the manoeuvre, but perceiving that a meeting was forced upon him, and unhappily determining, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... request your daughter will have all her property settled upon herself, so that I can have no control over it—thus leaving it impossible that I should waste it. And I trust that by an active attention to my profession I may be enabled not inconsiderably to ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... of the open time trips were made north and south along the coast, efforts being directed to going farther in each direction before the frost made progress in the boats impossible. Of these trips many were made, each being pushed farther north or south; for the ice had opened more and more away from the shore, increasing the length and width of the channel in the incomprehensible, unexpected manner in which such changes do take ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... he been as much distinguished for higher qualifications as he was for genius and depth of judgment in the art he practised, he would, beyond all doubt, have been without an equal. But there was a certain timidity of mind, a sort of diffidence and want of force in his nature, which rendered it impossible that those evidences of ardor and animation which are proper to the more exalted character, should ever appear in him; nor did he at any time display one particle of that elevation which, could it but have been added to the advantages wherewith he was endowed, would ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... Lawless's turn to look out of countenance, and for a moment he did appear thoroughly disconcerted, more especially as it was next to impossible to repress a smile, and Freddy Coleman grinned outright; quickly recovering himself, however, he resumed, "Laugh away, Freddy, laugh away, it only serves me right for playing such a trick. I've been deceiving ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... would ensue, but he was willing to risk that. Or should he slip into the underbrush, take a great circuit about the camp and make his way to Detroit overland through the trackless forest? It would be a difficult but not impossible thing to do. Still, it must not be thought of, for there was Edith still a captive, and any freedom that he might gain must be devoted to her rescue. So he must take his ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... ever seen her, you would know how terrible, how impossible, such a situation is for her. She's the sort of woman who ought to have money—who must have money. And so I thought if ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... Ostrogoths had descended to Theodoric, nephew of Velamir, who, being on terms of friendship with Zeno the eastern emperor, wrote to him that his Ostrogoths thought it an injustice that they, being superior in valor to the people thereabout, should be inferior to them in dominion, and that it was impossible for him to restrain them within the limits of Pannonia. So, seeing himself under the necessity of allowing them to take arms and go in search of new abodes, he wished first to acquaint Zeno with it, in order that he might provide for them, by granting some country in which they might establish ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... allowed them; some were bundled off into the dark gullies and passes of the hills; others betook themselves hastily to that side of the valley which was yet in shadow, to sleep a few moments beyond the legitimate time; others still, finding escape impossible, rose heavenward like a mighty incense, and were by the sun converted into something wellnigh as glorious ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... excused ourselves with appropriate remarks of disappointment. From his preoccupied manner it was impossible for me to guess whether Craig had ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... have sought to make an art of impertinence by mistaking preferences for principles. In 'taste' you have invented a word incapable of definition, to denote an idea impossible of expression; and by employing in connection therewith the words 'good' and 'bad,' you indicate a merely subjective process in terms of an objective quality. Such presumption transcends the limit of the merely impudent, and passes into ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... in his countenance that expression of modified sorrow which is common to any gentleman who is supposed by himself to have incommoded a lady. But over and above this,—or rather under it,—there was a slight smile of derision, as though it were impossible for him to look upon the bearing of Lady Lufton without some amount of ridicule. All this was legible to eyes so keen as those of Miss Dunstable and Mrs. Harold Smith, and the duke was known to be a master of this ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... quite plain. As our pursuers were approaching, evidently in a strong body, there was no time to be lost. To successfully evade them appeared impossible, so I decided to meet them, rather than attempt flight. Chanden Sing and I were armed with our rifles, and Mansing with his Gourkha kukri, and thus we awaited their arrival. There came out of the mist a long procession of grey, phantomlike figures, each one leading a pony. ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... to avoid being seen and then watch from your hiding-place. As the stranger comes near, the crouching Dog sees that it is one of his own kind, and that it is needless to hide any longer; indeed, that it is impossible to remain hidden. So the moment the stranger stops and looks at the crouching Dog, the latter stands straight up on all fours, raises his tail up high, and wags the white tip from side to side in the sign ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... for the school had taken up again after its two weeks' holidays, and the boys were a little more inquisitive than usual, and unfortunately, the snow happened to be good for packing. It had been a bad day for nerves, and Mr. Bushy, as the boys called him, found it impossible to keep his tail in one position for more than one second at a time. It was in vain that his more sedate and self-controlled partner in life remonstrated with him and urged a more ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... had broken Caste in baptism took any part in the cooking. It would never be allowed. Such a woman could take no share in the family life. Her presence, her shadow, above all her touch, would be simply pollution. Therefore, and for many other reasons, her life at home is impossible, and the Hindu, without arguing about it, regards it as impossible. It does not enter into the scheme of life as laid down by the rules of his Caste. He never, if he is orthodox, contemplates it for a moment as a thing to be ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... scandalized in earnest. The idea of anyone finding Miss Pat a nuisance was beyond her powers of thought, and she could not even find words to express her scorn of such an impossible state of things. ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... its turpitude be laid open, and the eye secured from the deception of surrounding splendour[3]." "If nothing but the bright side of characters should be shown," he once remarked to Malone, "we should sit down in despondency, and think it utterly impossible to imitate them in any thing[4]." It was this conscientious freedom, we believe, that has, more than any other cause, subjected the Lives of the Poets to severe censure. We readily avow this our belief, since we are persuaded that it is now generally admitted ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... not in Lucy, the Mrs. Leland. I assure you it was not. Leland knew, to his heart's core, that a lovelier, more prudent, sensible, intelligent wife it was impossible to exist. Thrifty, loving, lady-like, right ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... for their rescue, but none that gave the least hope of success. It was simply impossible to launch a boat. The vast fields of ice, two or three feet in thickness, and from twenty feet to a hundred yards in breadth, were crushing and grinding down the river at the rate of four or five ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... liberty of being of a different opinion from the multitude. It is enough for me that it is not impossible to conquer one's inclination to condemn all those who are unreasonable or dishonorable. Dear me! Have we not seen women succeed in destroying in their hearts a weakness which has taken them by surprise, as ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... winter. "Dog and Deer," "Dare Gool" and "Fox and Geese" were our favorite diversions, and the wonder is that we did not all die of pneumonia, for we battled so furiously during each recess that we often came in wet with perspiration and coughing so hard that for several minutes recitations were quite impossible.—But we were a hardy lot and none of us seemed the worse for ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... finding it impossible to take the city and the havoc in their ranks being dreadful, made a precipitate retreat, leaving the field covered with their dead ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... something in reply, it was impossible to say what, and leaving one man to act as boatkeeper, they all set off together along ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... like a sort of shrine for you. I said to a man I was with, 'I want to meet the girl who looks like cream in a gold saucer,' and he introduced us. What could be stranger than that? Not, as a matter of fact, that I ever thought love at first sight impossible, as ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... not a little of the inner meaning of words, a meaning perhaps more latent in things. Does not gesture indeed make emotion, more certainly and more immediately than emotion makes gesture? You may feel that you may suppress emotion; but assume a smile, lifted eyebrows, a clenched fist, and it is impossible for you not to assume along with the gesture, if but for a moment, the emotion to which that gesture corresponds. In our marionettes, then, we get personified gesture, and the gesture, like all other forms of emotion, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... of horrible nightmares, But broad awake, as he declares), Go bustling up and down the stairs, Or setting back last evening's chairs, Or with the poker thrusting The raked-up sea-coal's hardened crust— And—what! impossible! it must! He knew she had returned to dust, 210 And yet could scarce his senses trust, Hearing her as she poked and fussed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... of the family, to see if Mrs. Veal was there or not. They said, they wondered at her asking, for that she had not been in town; they were sure, if she had, she would have been there. Says Mrs. Bargrave, I am sure she was with me on Saturday almost two hours. They said, it was impossible; for they must have seen her if she had. In comes Captain Watson, while they were in dispute, and said, that Mrs. Veal was certainly dead, and her escutcheons were making. This strangely surprised Mrs. Bargrave, when she sent to the person immediately who had the care of ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... Spaniards to her, that they would probably have scrupled to recognize Philip as their sovereign, unless she had consented to assume him as her partner on the throne. Her utter incapacity for business rendered it impossible to obtain her consent. But her death, which happened this year, removed this difficulty; and as Charles, upon that event, became sole monarch of Spain, it left the succession open to his son. The war with France had likewise been a reason ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... the new gown, I attended my first ball in November, going with a party of eight that included my two sisters, another girl, and four young men. The ball was at Big Rapids, which by this time had grown to be a thriving lumber town. It was impossible to get a team of horses or even a yoke of oxen for the journey, so we made a raft and went down the river on that, taking our party dresses with us in trunks. Unfortunately, the raft "hung up" in the stream, and the four young men had to get out into the icy ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... orphan. An orphan! Did the Court realize what it meant? No, he dared not ask them to picture to themselves all that was implied in that bitter word. An orphan. Nobody to instil those early lessons of piety . . . to grow up wild, neglected, despised. . . . It was impossible for a man to avoid going astray in such terribly unnatural conditions. Everybody else had parents to counsel and direct them; he alone was bereft of this blessing. It was cruel, it was illogical, to apply the same standard to him as to those fortunate ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... that I wish particularly to go out this morning. It is now past one o'clock, and if you continue endeavouring to do what is quite impossible, my hair will never be dressed. You had much better plait it ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... Antonia," he said slowly. It seemed impossible to quicken his pulses in any way. "She needn't ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... sciences, and department stores for cultivated and attractive salesladies. Then, when all such people have received cards to dinners or dances, it will only remain for them to have previous engagements, and the true beginning is made. Come! You can't say the thing is impossible." ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... criminations to which the diplomatic complexities, which it was impossible then to unravel, gave rise. Fortunately they were soon rendered mere personal and abstract disputes, of little practical consequence, by the simultaneous execution of definitive treaties by France and the United States with Great Britain ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... camp-outfitters advertises a canoe called the Sponson, the name being taken from the air-chambers built along the outside rail, which are called sponsons. It is claimed that these air-chambers make it next to impossible to upset the canoe, and that even when filled with water it will support a heavy weight. Sponsons can also be purchased separately and can be ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... free to show her arched foot, free of her luminous movements. This first interview was what every rendezvous must be between persons of passionate disposition, who have stepped over a wide distance quickly, who desire each other ardently, and who, nevertheless, do not know each other. It is impossible that at first there should not occur certain discordant notes in the situation, which is embarrassing until the moment when two souls ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... party. After four days he came out on the coast, and by following that, he succeeded in coming to the fleet. Their friends supposed them to have been killed and eaten by the Caribs, as, since some of them were pilots and able to set their course by the pole-star, it seemed impossible that they ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... her; he had been at his wits' end to know what to do or say. She was so utterly alone; she had no father—no brothers to whom he could send. He had wired to an uncle of whom she had told him, but it was impossible that anyone could arrive before the ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... los Rios, administrator of the royal hospital of this city, declare that, because of the small amount of income and alms received by the said hospital, the needs of the sick are not provided for. It is impossible to give them everything requisite for their health, inasmuch as there are many sick there, both of the ordinary troops and the mercenary soldiers, to whom his Majesty gives medicines, and for whom he supplies a physician, as he is bound to do. The same provision is ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... investigation to {60} determine under the language of Article 10 of the Protocol whether a State had resorted to war in violation of its undertaking, or had violated the rules laid down for a demilitarized zone. It is utterly impossible to suppose that the Council could ever immediately determine the aggressor under such circumstances by unanimous vote; and such determination must be immediate. The language of the text is: "at once"; and in the French: "dans ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... my pages brought me the she-mule, and said to me, 'O our lord, rise up and fare to the house, for that our lady hath required thee at this very hour and she hath caused dinner to be served and sore we fear lest it wax cold.' Therefore, O Commander of the Faithful, I found it impossible to bathe[FN140] by reason of the pages which were standing with the mule at the door of my shop; so I mounted and rode home. I entered my house according to my usual habit when my wife met me and said to me 'O my dearling, my heart hath been occupied with thee this day, for ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... be expected to sink so much capital in the soil, in the hope of a distant and uncertain return, as the lessee certain of a possession for a specified number of years; but some capital he must sink in it. It is impossible, according to the modern system, or indeed any system of husbandry, that all the capital committed to the earth in winter and spring should be resumed in the following summer and autumn. A considerable overplus must inevitably remain to be gathered up in future seasons; and this ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... bayonet fencing should be conducted with a view to teaching the aggressive use of the bayonet. Unless troops are so thoroughly trained with the bayonet that they believe that with it they are superior to their opponents it will be difficult or impossible to develop that morale which is necessary for a successful assault. Men should be impressed with the importance of acting always on the offensive in bayonet combat, of pushing their attack with all their might. Troops which are successful in their first few bayonet encounters will ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... Government is engaged in constructing one, but it is slow work, as the immense blocks of concrete used can be handled and laid only in smooth seas, which seldom occur. Sometimes the mail steamers find it impossible to land passengers or cargo, and are compelled to carry both to Calcutta. The surf often sweeps over the top of the iron pier, which is certainly twenty feet high. Passengers are taken ashore in native boats ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... laid their axes and extra rifles. In the same manner they made high shelves, on which their food would be safe from prowling wild beasts, even should they succeed in breaking in the door. But Dick soon made the latter impossible by putting the door on strong hinges of leather which he made from the gear that he had cut from the horses. He also split a new bar from one of the young ash trees and strengthened the hasps on the inside. He felt now that when the bar ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... can find out about it are true. The obvious, every-day things that are easily believed are much the most likely to be untenable reports or the day dreams of imaginative chroniclers. You are safe if you believe all the quaint and romantic and inconsistent and impossible things that come to your knowledge concerning the Village. That is its special and sacred privilege: to be unexpected and always—yes, always without exception—in the spirit of its irrational and sympathetic role. It needs Kipling's ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... should send our manufactures, not to Portugal, but to South America; while Portugal would be obliged to send the bullion to some other country that it might carry on a smuggling trade with its neighbour, Spain. It was impossible for the ingenuity of man to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... four dynamic centers follows no one conceivable law. Mental activity continues according to a law of co-relation. But there is no logical or rational co-relation in the dynamic consciousness. It pulses on inconsequential, and it would be impossible to determine any sequence. Out of the very lack of sequence in dynamic consciousness does the individual himself develop. The dynamic abstraction of a child's precepts follows no mental law, and even no law which can ever be mentally propounded. And this is why it is utterly pernicious to set ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... To the doorways of the West-Wind, To the portals of the Sunset, To the earth's remotest border, Where into the empty spaces Sinks the sun, as a flamingo Drops into her nest at nightfall, In the melancholy marshes. "Hold!" at length cried Mudjekeewis, "Hold, my son, my Hiawatha! 'T is impossible to kill me, For you cannot kill the immortal. I have put you to this trial, But to know and prove your courage; Now receive the prize of valor! "Go back to your home and people, Live among them, toil among them, Cleanse the earth from all that harms it, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... repetition of the four-headed figure at the top of every tower, a striking and effective motive, which is also found above the gates of the town. Chou Ta-kuan says that there were golden statues of Buddhas at the entrance to the Bayon. It is impossible to say whether this statement is accurate or not. He may have simply made a mistake, but it is equally possible that the fusion of the two creeds may have ended in images of the Buddha being placed outside the ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... melodramatic; the Greeks knew neither domesticity nor melodrama, and the early Italian painters were imbued with a faith which, if not so virile as the worship of the Phidian Zeus, yet absorbed them and elevated them in a degree impossible in the tawdry Sadduceeism of our own day. By the way, when the weather is milder you must go to Orvieto; you have never been there, I think; it is the Prosodion of Signorelli. What a fine Pagan he was at heart! He admired masculine beauty like a Greek; he ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... sounds impossible!" he burst forth, finally. "Are you telling me that you, alone and unprotected, managed to inveigle this murderer into confessing his crime to you? Gee, it's—it's unbelievable! The four of you would be a great help to me in my profession," ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... communal husbandry is progress. Everyone testifies to the leadership of the "best families" in the transformation of the older modes of the tillage of the soil to the newer. It is impossible for the scientific agriculturist to make much improvement upon a country community until the more progressive spirits and the more open minds have been enlisted. Thereafter the better farming problem is solved. There can be no modern agriculture in a community in which all are equal. The communities ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... the objects above him on the mantle-shelf. They all meant something from the past,—a busy, wholesome past which had formed habits of thought and action, habits he could no longer enjoy alone, and which, on the other hand, it was quite impossible for him to share with any one else. He was no longer ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... work in Ireland that, in the wholly abnormal condition of our national life, no project which is theoretically sound need be rejected because everybody says it is impracticable. The work of the morrow will largely consist of the impossible of to-day. If this adds to the difficulty, it also adds to ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... most interesting problems which offer themselves to the geological student essentially insoluble? Is he in the position of a scientific Tantalus—doomed always to thirst for a knowledge which he cannot obtain? The reverse is to be hoped; nay, it may not be impossible to indicate the source whence help ...
— Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life • Thomas H. Huxley
... ailing of late—how much it is impossible to say, because she is always cheerful and indomitable. She never complains, she never neglects a duty; but I have found her, several times of late, sitting alone, unoccupied, musing—that is unlike her—and with a certain shadow upon her face that I do not recognise; but the ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... glowing colors made the legs of the pious tremble. Besides, the eyes of the image had the marvelous peculiarity of looking straight at those who contemplated it, following them even though they changed position. A veritable miracle. It seemed impossible that that good gentleman who came up every morning in the summer to hear mass in the village, had painted that supernatural work. An Englishman had tried to buy it for its weight in gold. No one had seen the Englishman, but ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... strong principles as well as warm feelings, and a fine and resolute sense of honour utterly impervious to attack. It was impossible to be in his company an hour, and not see that he was a man to be respected. It was equally impossible to live with him a week, and not see that he was a man ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... the Kid had not felt the grim thirst for encounter that usually urged him on to battle. It had been a purely chance row, born of the cards and certain epithets impossible for a gentleman to brook that had passed between the two. The Kid had rather liked the slim, haughty, brown-faced young chap whom his bullet had cut off in the first pride of manhood. And now he wanted no more blood. He wanted to get away and have a good long sleep somewhere ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... doubt that both the Knapps were conspirators in that murder. The counsel, therefore, are wrong, I think, in saying they might safely admit this. The admission of so important and so connected a fact would render it impossible to contend further against the proof of the entire conspiracy, as ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... dreaded to look into my own thoughts, from day to day. Above all, I dreaded to sit down and write to him. Oh, the hateful falsity of those letters—Yet what could I do, what could I do? I had no right to give such a blow, unless I felt that anything else was utterly, utterly impossible." ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... attention to the conversation was so conspicuous as to be disconcerting. Mrs. Dill signalled with her head that comment should be omitted, and Mr. Dill became, for the moment, one factor in a fairly clear example of telepathic communication, for it is impossible to believe that his wife's almost imperceptible gesture was what caused him to remember that Charles J. ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... be that he had gone deliberately into an influence that would make it impossible for ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... inexperience. In the latter respect, however, she was, of course, at the less disadvantage with a stranger to the manners and life of her world. A more perfectly charming companion it would have been difficult to desire and impossible to find. If at first I had been secretly inclined to reproach her with exaggerated timidity, it became more and more evident that her personal fears were due simply to that nervous susceptibility which even men of reputed courage have often displayed ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... shelter. They built up the approaches to the cavern, filled the entrance with rocks, and considered themselves to be safe. But their confidence proved fatal to them. The Count La Palud, who was in command of the troops, seeing that it was impossible to force the entrance, sent his men up the mountain provided with ropes; and fixing them so that they should hang over the mouth of the cavern, a number of the soldiers slid down in full equipment, landing on the ledge right in front of the concealed Vaudois. Seized with a sudden ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... hairless ape must be Tarzan, while the other was, doubtless, Taug. Never, in her wildest hopes, had she expected succor of this sort. Her one thought had been to escape and find her way back to the tribe of Kerchak; but even this had appeared to her practically impossible, so closely ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and round all those thousand and one spurs running into each other, with no distinct valley or flat between, is best known to the engineers and surveyors, who have declared it practicable. To the non-professional eye it seems not only difficult, but impossible. But oh how it is wanted! All along the road shrill bugle-blasts warned the slow, trailing ox-wagons, with their naked "forelooper" at their head, to creep aside out of our way, I counted one hundred and twenty wagons that day on fifty miles ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... were going to get the machines. He said that of course they would prefer to buy them abroad, but that, though this was impossible, the work would not be delayed on that account, since they could make a start with the machines they had. Turbines for the Petrograd works they still hoped to obtain from abroad when peace had been arranged. ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... doubt he thought the formation of an Academy a matter of great importance. Why then did he deliberately introduce controversial elements and thus make impossible a discussion of his proposal wholly on its merits? I suggest as a possible answer that he wished the Whigs to dissociate themselves from the project and that he used the tactics expected to achieve this end, in the desire that entire credit for the founding of the Academy ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon
... structure had been finished in 1387, but not for many years did it receive its statues, of which something must be said, although it is impossible to get more than a vague idea of them, so high are they. A captive balloon should be arranged for the use of visitors. Those by Donatello, on the Baptistery side, are the most remarkable. The first of these—that nearest to the cathedral and the most striking as seen from the distant earth—is ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... is filled with an anguish of pity for the mother and the young wife, whose health, like that of the elder Mrs. Winthrop, had made the journey impossible for both. ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... first matters which engaged the attention of the Committee was the question how reliable information could be gathered which would indicate the present prevalence of these diseases in this country. Recognizing that it would be impossible to obtain trustworthy figures without securing the widespread co-operation of the medical profession, the Committee at an early stage sought and was readily given the help of the British Medical Association in the matter. Representatives of the Association gave their assistance ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health
... would deprive her of her estate." He had asked for names, but these his informant would not give, saying merely, "the best of England were in it," and "such a {p.271} number agreed thereupon, that it was impossible but that it would take effect." There was no chance of discovery; "the matter had been in hand for a year or thereabouts," yet no one "had uttered a word of it;" should it become known, the conspirators were so strong that the catastrophe would only be precipitated. They would have moved already, ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... anxious not to lose so pliant a negotiator as Oswald, the cabinet agreed that Oswald should continue to confer with him. On June 4, Grenville complained to Fox that the separate negotiation between Oswald and Franklin rendered it impossible for him to make any progress, and further told him that he had learned from Oswald that Shelburne had seen the paper containing Franklin's proposition with respect to Canada. Fox was indignant, for he considered that Shelburne was carrying on a clandestine negotiation, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... commenced, "it is impossible to supply more than eight horses for one bull; there are five more bulls to be dispatched. They are more savage than this one. I must keep horses for them. Let the senors be reasonable and allow the ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... illness, had been occasioned by his leaving a warm upper coat, which he had been accustomed to wear, to add to the bed covering of a poor sick child, whom he had gone out one cold winter's day to visit. Now, though it was impossible for any one to help dearly loving so amiable and generous a character as Frank, his parents had found it necessary gently to reprove his exceeding and indiscriminate generosity, by pointing out to him that it was even wrong when it tended to injure his own health, ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... set strongly towards union, and disdained contentment with anything else. Mankind turn naturally to the solutions that seem the simplest. Mr. Gladstone condemned the existing system as bad for us and bad for them. Circumstances made it impossible for him to suggest amendment by throwing the burden bodily off our shoulders, and at that time he undoubtedly regarded union with Greece as in itself undesirable for the Ionians. Circumstances and ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... that when Joseph was getting old the courtiers tried to bring about his disgrace by inducing Pharaoh to set him what appeared to be an impossible task, viz. to double the revenues of the province within a few years. Joseph accomplished the task by artificially adapting a natural branch of the Nile so as to give the district the benefit of the yearly overflow. The canal thus formed, which is 207 miles in length, was called after ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... aberrations, the instances of which given in books, and clearly authenticated, are innumerable. Things are distinctly seen in a room which have no existence in nature; and the illusion is so perfect that it seems impossible for eyes to ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... Cutty decided to let Hawksley sit in an easy chair in the living room until Captain Harrison arrived. Kuroki was ordered to prepare a supper, which would be served on the tea cart, set at Hawksley's knees. Kitty—because it was impossible for her to remain inactive—set the linen and silver. She was in and out of the room, ill at ease, angry, frightened, bitter, avoiding Hawksley's imploring eyes because she was not sure of ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... doorway, or rather into the angle of a door leading into the back room. The piano had stopped; while wondering what to do next my attention was suddenly attracted by a conversation to which I had to listen; it was impossible to move away. "So she is going to sing, is she? Well, we will see if this great and only true Italian method will put brains into a fool's head or voice into her chest." This was said in a guttural voice, the accent ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... had not been invented, and men fought with spears, swords, and battle-axes. The Austrian soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder, each grasping a long spear whose point projected far in front of him. The Swiss were armed with short swords and spears and it was impossible for them to get to the Austrians. For a while their cause looked hopeless, but among the ranks of the Swiss was a brave man from one of the Forest Cantons. His name was Arnold von Win'kel-ried. As he looked upon the bristling points of the Austrian spears, he saw that his comrades ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... her frightfully unhappy. And it'll bring back that infernal pain. If you'd seen her, Eliot, you'd know how impossible it is. We simply can't be swine. And if I could, Anne couldn't.... No. We've got to stick it somehow, Anne ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... animals, by which the smaller ones were here consumed. This must have been at a time antecedent to the submersion which produced the diluvium, since the bones are covered by a bed of that formation. It is impossible not to see here a very natural series of incidents. First, the cave is frequented by wild beasts, who make it a kind of charnel-house. Then, submerged in the current which has been spoken of, it receives a clay ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... were of a different character, and, instigated by whim, liquor, an evil temper, hatred to the African race, or a desire to get an impossible amount of work, acted the part of tyrants and oppressors, and made the slaves feel that they were trodden beneath the ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... mistrustful spirit which prevails among the rest of the Hellenes. {37} Were it possible, indeed, to join forces with them all, and with one accord to attack the king in his isolation, I should have counted it no wrong even were we to take the aggressive. But since this is impossible, we must be careful to give the king no pretext for trying to enforce the claims of the other Hellenes against us. If you keep the peace, any such step on his part would arouse suspicion; but if you are the first ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... cried in terror; 'it is impossible. I cannot. Come to my club instead.' But he shook ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... surrounded by a border of calfs'-foot jelly, like a setting of crystals. The bread revealed new qualities in the wheat, it was so sweet and nutty; and the fried potatoes, with which your beefsteak comes snowed under, are the very flower of the culinary art, and I believe impossible in ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... I saw the first horse since I left Rhodesia and it was a distinct event. Except in the Kasai region it is impossible to maintain live stock in the Congo. The tsetse fly is the devastating agency. Apparently the only beasts able to withstand this scourge are goats and dogs. The few white men who live in Coquilhatville have been able to maintain five horses which are ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... of the Jews, during the building of the wall of Jerusalem, under Nehemiah, may be included under this head. That they remained with their masters of their own accord, we argue from the fact, that the circumstances of the Jews made it impossible for them to compel their residence and service. They were few in number, without resources, defensive fortifications, or munitions of war, and surrounded withal by a host of foes, scoffing at their feebleness and inviting desertion from their ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... otherwise well circumstanced. Small rootlets and fibres in the surface soil do not count; they are quickly replaced, and if you do not destroy them, the whole surface soil, if moist enough, will be filled with a network of roots which will subsequently make decent working of the soil impossible. ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... delusion. Etiquette is that code of rules, not necessarily connected with morals, by which mutual intercourse is regulated. Every society, whether civilized or barbarous, has such a code of its own. Without it social life would be impossible, for no man would know what to expect of his neighbors, nor be able promptly to interpret the words and actions of his fellow-men. It is in obedience to an unwritten law of this kind that an American takes off his hat when he goes into ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... outrageous passion, Coloured like scarlet, and said, "None of your wit; I don't understand joking on those subjects; what do you think your father would have said if he had heard you say so? He Would have murdered you, and you would have deserved it." I was quite Confounded and amazed; it was impossible to explain myself across a loo-table, as she is so deaf: there was no making a reply to a woman and a Princess, and particularly for me, who have made it a rule, when I must converse with royalties, to treat them with the greatest respect, since it is all the court they will ever have from me. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... no more," Captain Mordaunt said to Jack. "The carpenter has just reported that the mainmast is so seriously injured that at any moment it may go over the side. It is impossible to hope any longer to reach Leghorn, but my ship I am determined they shall ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... for water were dreadful, despite all that could be done to help them. Frobisher had already told off as many men as he could spare to carry water, but it seemed impossible to quench the poor wretches' thirst; their cry was always for more, even though they had drunk but a moment previously. The unwounded men appeared to be quite indifferent, however, both to their own comrades' sufferings and their own chances of death or mutilation, and went on serving the guns ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... fatal disunion. Circumstances indeed would not permit the division to remain in its first intensity, and their common danger compelled the two nations into a partial understanding. Yet the reconciliation, imperfect to the last, was at the outset all but impossible. Their relations were already embittered by many reciprocal acts of hostility. Henry VIII. had won his spurs as a theologian by an attack on Luther. Luther had replied by a hailstorm of invectives. The Lutheran books had been proscribed, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... been completely out-generalled by his opponent. While he had been waiting with his army for a pitched battle Parma had invested Lagny, and there were no means of relieving it except by crossing the river in the face of the whole army of the enemy, an enterprise impossible of execution. As soon as Lagny had fallen provisions and ammunition were at once poured into Paris, two thousand boat-loads arriving in ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... immediately. The longer he reasoned with himself the more confident he became that Croisset had been the victor. He knew Jean. Every advantage was on his side. He was as watchful as a lynx. It was impossible to conceive of him walking into a trap. So he determined to wait, at ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
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