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More "Impracticable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The astrological tower! How happens it That this same sanctuary, whose access Is to all others so impracticable, Opens before you ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... iron bridge. Leaving the west end of that bridge, we look out of the rear car and send our final message to the Atlantic by the last stream which we shall find going thither. A stupendous, but not impracticable, system of grades next carries us over the axial water-shed of the continent, by the way of Bridger's Pass. One hundred and fifty miles of tortuous descent brings us to Green River,—the stream which farther down becomes the mysterious Colorado, and seeks the Pacific ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... of his people, and such a king—the first citizens of a great nation—not Paris and its suburbs, but all France, will be eager to love and obey. As for kings like Louis XV., they have become totally impracticable; but if there are any such, however much they may be supported by interested parties, in the eyes of public opinion they will be dishonoured and disgraced before their bodies are in a grave and their names are written ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... character building. They are invaluable allies of the home, the school, and the church, for they are the boys' and girls' own organizations and meet their desire for group activities. Just which one or how many of them are needed in any one community is a local problem, and it is impracticable to here attempt any evaluation of their particular advantages. Suffice it to say that every rural community which can find suitable leadership should have such an organization of boys or girls, and will find the ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... numerous, more moral and active. There was no motive for interference. The conscription that, by converting the idle youth of Bavaria into disciplined soldiery, was a blessing to the martial-spirited and improvident population, was impracticable amid the well-trained Tyrolese, and, although the control exercised by a well-regulated bureaucracy might be beneficial when viewed in contradistinction with the ancient complicated system of government and administration of justice ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... this letter was only an aggravation of former misconduct, and a proof of the unnatural and impracticable character of her son. The fact that it was written from a prison was hideous, to begin with. That, after all the pains at which she had been to teach him what was right, he could suggest that she was in part to blame for his course seemed such black ingratitude that his apologies ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... away, but in vain did the assembly rack their brains for some plan of action which might in any way be likely to serve the purpose they had in view. The first wild suggestion, that they should go in a body and carry Horace House by storm, was abandoned as impracticable; in hopeless inactivity they stood watching the long hand of the clock creep up from six ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... of the front door was obviously impracticable; the marshal ducked around the corner just in time to avoid a painful meeting with a billiard ball. Mother McGrew had piled two tables against the dining-room door and braced them with the mop, and stubbornly refused to let Tom touch ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... Europe on ships under an enemy flag," and the Taegliche Rundschau said that the "answer with gratifying decisiveness, guards the conscience of the nation in the question of continuing the submarine war," but it criticises the note for possibly going too far in making concessions, which "may prove impracticable and result ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... know of the President's plan I am sure that it is impracticable. There is in it too much altruistic cooperation. No account is taken of national selfishness and the mutual suspicions which control international relations. It may be noble thinking, but ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... planted his army upon three elevations—Kenesaw, Pine, and Lost Mountains—and stubbornly stood at bay. A pouring rain, which turned the whole country into a quagmire and the streams into formidable rivers, made the usual flank manoeuvre impracticable. Sherman resolved to assault in front. June 27th a determined onset was made along the whole line for two hours but failed, though the troops gained positions close to the hostile works and intrenched. They lost 2,500; the Confederates not ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... from you to procrastinate) for your most acceptable present of Coleridge's portrait, welcome in itself, and more so as coming from you. It is as good a resemblance as I expect to see of Coleridge, taking it all together, for I consider C.'s as a face absolutely impracticable. Mrs. Wordsworth was overjoyed at the sight of the print; Dorothy and I much pleased. We think it excellent about the eyes and forehead, which are the finest parts of C.'s face, and the general contour of the face is well given; but, to my sister and ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... stand for whole hours, perhaps all day, watching the works which I intend to upset; lens in hand, I must scrutinize, unmoved amid the whirl, the things that are happening in the cells. The use moreover of a mask, of gloves, of a covering of any kind is impracticable, for utter dexterity of the fingers and complete liberty of sight are essential to the investigations which I have to make. No matter: even though I leave this wasps'-nest with a face swollen beyond recognition, I must to-day obtain a decisive solution of the problem which ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... one. And so he offered himself if they could not find a better candidate, without waiting for the ceremony of a requisition. He was exactly the man they wanted; and though he had 'no handle to his name,' and was somewhat impracticable about pledges, his fortune was so great, and his character so high, that it might be hoped that the people would be almost as content as if they were appealed to by some obscure scion of factitious nobility, subscribing ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... was so thick that it was not easy to see where were the sullen group of diggers presided over by the quondam duellists of Thirsk, Kitson and Trenton, now the most inseparable and impracticable of men; but James and his companions had ridden about two miles from the market-place, when Ralf Percy came out of the mist, exclaiming, 'Is it you, Sir King? Maybe you can do something with those rascals! I've talked myself blue with cold to make them slope the sides of their ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... devoted to plans for commercial alliances dedicated to reprisal. In other words, this helps to bear out the theory held in many quarters that the economic pact is after all merely a campaign document and utterly impracticable. ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... forced upon them. The gradual and conservative method of training the Negro for franchise, as suggested and approved by Governor Hampton, had many advocates among the Republicans in the North; and though in my judgment it would have proved delusive and impracticable, it was quite within the power of the South to secure its adoption or ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... materials in which sculptors worked—clay, plaster, and marble—were like life, death, and immortality? I thought my own bust (the one Macdonald executed in Edinburgh, you know) very good; the marble is beautiful, and I really think my friend did wonders with his impracticable subject; the shape of the head and shoulders is very pretty. I wonder what Sappho was like! An ugly woman, it is said; I do not know upon what authority, unless her own; but I wonder what kind of ugliness she ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... they had explored the cave mouths in the cliff opposite to where the boat had beached. There were three caves just here. One was impracticable owing to water dripping from the roof, but the other two, floored with hard sand, were good enough for shelter. The men had stowed the provisions and themselves in the western mast giving the girl the other and the boat sail for ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... instead of having entered a narrow passage between an island and the main, we were at the mouth of a harbour, having an island at its entrance; and that it was necessary to return by the way we came, and get round a point to the northward. This was, however, impracticable, the channel being blocked up by drift ice; and we had no prospect of release except by a change of wind. This detention was extremely vexatious, as we were losing a fair wind, and expending our provision. In the afternoon the weather ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... These troubles show how impracticable was the attempt to create a national domain in any part of the country which contained a considerable population. The instinct of self-government was too strong to allow it. Any such population would have refused to submit to ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... his keys, &c., in the sole charge of one of his slaves, without the slightest apprehension of loss or damage. In judging of the position of this Christian prelate as a slave-owner, the English reader must bear in mind that, by the laws of Louisiana, emancipation has been rendered all but impracticable, and, that if practicable, it would not necessarily be, in all cases, an act of mercy or of justice."—The Western World Revisited, by the Rev. Henry Caswall, M.A., author of America and the American Church, etc. Oxford, John Henry Parker, 1854. See Journeys and Explorations in the Cotton ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... the Mount when she came to Cornwall—to which we must add a surmise that this saint may not have been a woman at all, but was really St. Kenwyn. The Mount is only insular during high tide, yet at such times, exposed to the full force of the sea, the passage sometimes becomes impracticable; and there are many low tides when it is not safe or even possible to cross the causeway. Perhaps at any time those who see the rock from a distance can best appreciate its charm. From Marazion to Penzance there are three miles of flat, uninteresting road—perhaps the dullest ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... very doubtful whether they would be congregated about any one spot in sufficient numbers to supply a breeding station, and it would be impracticable to occupy any widely extended part of the river, on account of the difficulties of communication. At the mouth of the river, on the other hand, the supply of adult salmon could be found with certainty, but they must be obtained from the ordinary salmon fisheries in June and held in durance ...
— New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th Century • Various
... Hampden, "would never fight against men of honour"; and he pointed to religious enthusiasm as the one weapon which could meet and turn the chivalry of the Cavalier. Even to Hampden the plan seemed impracticable; but the regiment of a thousand men which Cromwell raised for the Association of the Eastern Counties, and which in later times were known as his Ironsides, was formed strictly of "men of religion." He spent his fortune freely on the task ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... Byron said, "Crabbe's the man, but he has got a coarse and impracticable subject." (Moore's Life and Letters of Byron, Vol. IV, pp. 63-4.) Leslie Stephen remarks that Crabbe "was admired by Byron in his rather wayward mood of Pope-worship, as the last representative of the legitimate school." (English ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... that it filled the room, and for the moment Marcia had been left to herself while some new people were being ushered in. "It says, David, that 'the project of a railroad from Bawston to Albany is impracticable as everybody knows who knows the simplest rule of arithmetic, and the expense would be little less than the market value of the whole territory of Massachusetts; and which, if practicable, every ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... form a close alliance with the Russian Government. General Kaufmann had advised Shere Ali to try and stir up disaffection among the Queen's Indian subjects, promising to aid him, eventually, with troops. Finding that this scheme was impracticable at the moment, Russia dropped the Ameer, who fled from the scene of his misfortunes, and died ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... the letter down, and a little sound escaped him that was half a sigh, half an oath. He was wondering whether even now some desirable end might not be achieved by going to Chicago and breaking Gerald Foster's neck. Abandoning this scheme as impracticable, and not being able to think of anything else to do he re-lit his pipe and started ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... details the light of a more modern criticism. Rosweid's fame was European in the first quarter of the seventeenth century; and his proposal attracted the widest attention. To the best judges it seemed utterly impracticable. Cardinal Bellarmine heard of it, and proved his keenness and skill in literary criticism by asking what age the man was who proposed such an undertaking. When informed that he was about forty, "Ask him," ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... resorting to the exercise of legal authority; it is to be hoped that all good citizens will be much more inclined to reflect on the value of the Union and the benefits which it has conferred upon all, than to speculate upon impracticable means for its severance or dissolution. No State legislation, it is evident, is competent to declare such severance or dissolution—the people of no State have clothed their Legislature with any such authority; any act therefore proclaiming such severance by a Legislature, would be merely ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... enemy, how, knowing as they did that the peril was hourly becoming greater, could they have changed their mind in the morning? Certain it was that General de Palikao's plan of a swift, bold dash on Montmedy, which seemed hazardous on the 23d and was, perhaps, still not impracticable on the 25th, if conducted with veteran troops and a leader of ability, would on the 27th be an act of sheer madness amid the divided counsels of the chiefs and the increasing demoralization of the troops. This they both well knew; why, then, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... is, in the direction of the glacier, east and west — and was thus the shortest. But it is not always the shortest way that is the best; here, in any case, it was to be hoped that another and longer one would offer better conditions. The shortest way was awful — possibly not altogether impracticable, if no better was to be found. First we had to work our way across a hard, smooth slope, which formed an angle of 45 degrees, and ended in a huge, bottomless chasm. It was no great pleasure to cross over here on ski, ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... of twelve months will now have to be passed over, the upshot of this long conversation must be told in as few words as possible. The father found it impracticable to talk his son out of his intended marriage; indeed, he hardly attempted to do so by any direct persuasion. He explained to him that it was impossible that he should marry at once, and suggested that he, Frank, ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... suggested leap-frog, and the others added equally impracticable requests; but Mrs. Wilkins settled ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... last I was chatting with two or three men, and his name happened to crop up, and one of them said, 'Bathurst is a sort of knight errant, an official Don Quixote. Perhaps the best officer in the province in some respects, but hopelessly impracticable.'" ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... where each student must first win a diploma before being eligible for the stage, would be an inestimable advantage; but, unless this academy were founded and endowed by the "State," it would again prove to be impracticable. Moreover, as there is an universally accepted theory that the British public does not want Art, but merely demands to be amused, or to have its attention attracted (by some means or other), I fear it would be a somewhat difficult affair to ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the English; while de Baudricourt was anxiously waiting to hear whether his protector, the Duc de Bar, whom Bedford had summoned to enter into a treaty with the English, would not be prevailed upon to do so. If he consented, this would make the knight's tenure of Vaucouleurs impracticable. It was probably owing to this state of affairs that, on her second interview with the knight of Vaucouleurs, Joan of Arc was favourably received by him. Since the first visit to de Baudricourt by the Maid of Domremy, her name had become familiar to many of the people in and ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... regiment in which it is impracticable to make the permanent battalion division alphabetically, the flags of a battalion are as shown; flags are assigned to the companies alphabetically, within their respective battalions, in the ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department
... find his leading idea seems to be to arrange your own half-formed views for you; in short, to show you what you really do want, to put your desire into shape. He interprets you. Many of the clients who come to him are the most impracticable men in the world. A farmer, for instance, with a little money, is in search of a farm. Find him twenty farms just the size for his capital, he will visit them all and discover a fault in each, and waver and waver till the proper season for entering on possession is ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... book could be written about a hermit, a man that deliberately left the world, retiring, not to an impracticable distance—let us say to a small farm, in a country village, with half an acre of garden—and there let no sound from the world without reach him, except incidentally, and lived a pure and uncontaminated life, watching his garden, and turning over, ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... church extended its influence into Massachusetts, and in 1649 we find a group of Baptists at Rehoboth, with Obadiah Holmes as leader. The intolerance of the authorities rendered the prosecution of the work impracticable and these Massachusetts Baptists became members of the Newport church. In 1651 Clarke, Holmes and Joseph Crandall of the Newport church made a religious visit to Lynn, Mass. While holding a meeting in a private house they were arrested ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... organization that was different from the organization that was required for war, and to convert the former into the latter meant a delay that would have been deadly. Swift mobilization, like that of the Germans even in 1870, was in these older days impracticable. ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... determination, the lower value must be considered an artificial unit. The lower value entails the use of an ultimate analysis and involves assumptions that would make the employment of such a unit impracticable for commercial work. The use of the low value may also lead to error and is in no way to be recommended for ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... be done with such a man? Clearly, but one thing, and I sighed for one of our American belles who should come and see and conquer this impracticable Englishman. At present, things seemed quite hopeless. There was no one within reach who would have the slightest chance of success in such an undertaking. Though outsiders gave me the credit of his subjugation, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... indeed bear to become the curate at will of another, but I hoped still that I might have been my own master there. I had hoped an exception might have been made in my favour, under the circumstances; but I did not gain my request. Indeed, I was asking what was impracticable, and it is well for me that ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... sin, however apparently trifling, however hidden in some obscure corner of our consciousness,—a sin which we do not intend to renounce,—is enough to render real prayer impracticable. A course of action not wholly upright and honorable, feelings not entirely kind and loving, habits not spotlessly chaste and temperate,—any of these are impassable obstacles. If we know of a kind act which we might, but do not intend to, perform,—if we be aware ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... back within forty-eight hours. It is the last voyage Count d'Artigas proposes to make before the winter gales render navigation in these parts impracticable." ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... industriously brandished his authority for retaining classics, are discreetly silent upon this other recommendation. He was too little conversant with the working of Universities to be aware that the addition of two sciences to the existing course was impracticable; and he was never asked which alternative he would prefer. I am inclined to believe that he would have sacrificed the classics to scientific completeness; he would have been satisfied with the quantum of these already gained at school. But while we have no positive assurance on this point, I ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... Nations," but its real object was one which Sumner always had at heart, and never relinquished the hope of,—namely, the establishment of an international tribunal, which should possess jurisdiction over the differences and quarrels between nations, and so bring warfare forever to an end. The plan is an impracticable one, because the decisions of a court only have validity if it is able to enforce them, and how could the decisions of an international tribunal have value in case the parties concerned declined to accept them? It would only result in waging ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... to commend it, but it is quite impracticable," Mr. Squiggs announced with some finality. "It could never ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... she had the opportunity. I had no idea she was so handsome until to-night. I suppose I never noticed her by candlelight before. By Jove! I ought to have made her an actress, or singer, or something of that kind. And so I might, if I'd known her face would light up as it does. I wish she wasn't so impracticable—always cutting in with some awkward speech, that makes me look like a fool, when, if she had an ounce of common sense, she might see that I'm trying to make her fortune. Yes, egad, and such a fortune ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... towns composing the original elements of the Colony was a whole "democratie" in himself, and generally a "fierce" one. Disputed boundaries with both the other Colonies, and an especial and continuous feud with Massachusetts,—unruly spirits, bent upon working out all manner of impracticable theories,—the oddest and most original, as well as the most obstinate and indomitable dreamers and enthusiasts, furnished some daily nutriment to dissension with their neighbors or among themselves. Men of mark, like Roger Williams, Samuel Gorton, Governor Arnold, and William Harris, appear equally ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... as she sits, the beautiful creation!—delighting to magnify the qualities of the idol of her affections and to depreciate herself in the comparison; overlooking, perhaps incapable of once imagining the thought of his harsh and selfish and impracticable nature, and constantly endowing him with all the fresher breathings of her spiritual existence—like the Rainbow of the Waterfall, that clothes, with its own celestial dyes, the dark and shapeless mass of Rock ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... personal influence of King Carol. Germany, he considered, was at the beginning of her development and needed, above all, peace; as Rumania was in the same position the wisest policy was to follow Germany, neglecting impracticable national ideals. King Carol outlined his views clearly in an interview which he had in Vienna with the Emperor Franz Joseph in 1883: 'No nation consents to be bereaved of its political aspirations, and those ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... his voice and manner were oppressive. He had a large watch-chain and bunch of seals, a coat buttoned up to inconvenience, a waistcoat buttoned up to inconvenience, an unwrinkled pair of trousers, a stiff pair of boots. He was altogether splendid, massive, overpowering, and impracticable. He seemed to have been sitting for his portrait to Sir Thomas Lawrence all the days ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... of 1800.—The election of 1800 also showed the plan to be impracticable. At this time, the Democratic-Republican party was determined to have Mr. Jefferson for President and Aaron Burr for Vice-President. They both received seventy-three votes, a majority of all the votes. But since the number was equal, it ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James
... him to the practices of the shrewd frontiers-men among whom he lived. He soon became involved in debt, and at the time of Burr's visit his situation made him a ready volunteer for any enterprise which promised to repair his shattered fortunes. That the enterprise was impracticable, and that he was unfit for it, only made it more attractive to his imaginative and simple mind. The fancy of Wirt has thrown a deceptive romance around the career of Blennerhassett, yet there is enough of truth in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... Carfax. They had been his wife's in turn, and had much annoyed a man of his decided character. He himself had always known his mind, and had let others know it, too; reminding his wife that she was an impracticable woman, who knew not her own mind; and devoting his lawful gains to securing the future of his progeny. It would have disturbed him if he had lived to see his grand-daughters and their times. Like so many able men of his generation, far-seeing enough in practical affairs, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that canyon impracticable for a railroad, and yet I have just driven through it without once dismounting from this buckboard. Moreover, we shall find in Copah to-morrow a re-survey of the line showing its entire practicability, Mr. Ford—a report not made ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... zinc can only be made indirectly, and is unsatisfactory. Zinc is volatile, and at the temperature of its reduction is a gas. It is impracticable to condense the vapour so as to weigh the metal, consequently its amount is determined by loss. The following method gives approximate results: Take 10 grams of the dried and powdered ore and roast, first at a low temperature and afterwards at a higher one, with the help of carbonate ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... the beach is generally impracticable with our own boats, at least without great risk; but there is a very fine pier on which people may land without difficulty if there is not much swell in the road. To this pier the water is conveyed by pipes for the use of shipping, and for ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... hearts, and luminous minds well know that in the moral world there are natural laws, which like those of gravitation in the physical, oppose the elevation of all whom chance has thrown down to the bottom of life, rendering it difficult or rather indeed utterly impracticable for them to rise, but by means of the most gigantic powers; and therefore consider those who emerge to the top by the fair exercise of their natural talents, as the only valuable levellers—the real and substantial asserters of ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... no passages of Scripture which positively require immersion, but various scriptural considerations against it, besides its being always inconvenient, and not unfrequently impracticable, the Pedobaptists have ever thought it fit and requisite, as a general rule, to practise baptism by sprinkling ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... was effected on the peninsula, the sailors and guns were disembarked, and an imposing auxiliary force, sent, according to promise, after much delay, by the Sultan of Johore, proceeded to invest Malacca. The ground proved wet, swampy, and impracticable for trenches, galleries, covered ways, and all the other machinery of a regular siege. Matelieff was not a soldier nor a naval commander by profession, but a merchant-skipper, like so many other heroes whose achievements were to be the permanent glory of their fatherland. He would not, however, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... grows or ought to grow under education's fostering care, he will give you a long list of faculties—mental, for the most part, but also moral and physical—and then break off under the impression that he has set education an adequate and a practicable task. But he has set it an inadequate and an impracticable task. For behind all the faculties that he enumerates dwells the living reality which he cannot bring himself to believe in,—the soul. And because he cannot bring himself to believe in the soul, he deprives ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... had appeared wild and impracticable, it was that of saving the engines then embedded between the Douvres. The idea of sending a crew to work upon those rocks was absurd. It was the season of heavy seas. Besides, on the narrow ledge of the highest part of the rock there was scarcely room for one ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... necessity prove fatal to the manufactures of the younger state, it as certainly leads to the destruction of the agriculture of the older; and it is this double effect this RECIPROCITY OF EVIL, which renders it so disastrous and impracticable an experiment for both the older and the younger community. The reason of this has not hitherto been generally attended to; but when once it is stated, its force becomes obvious, and it furnishes the true answer on principle ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... doubt, can appreciate liberty, and use it as wisely and well as any freeborn white: gradual emancipation would be one of the grandest schemes that could be propounded to human benevolence: it is rife with difficulty, but surely not impracticable. The indiscriminate and abrupt manumission of the negro would, I am convinced, turn a quaint, simple, childish creature—prone to mirth, and not easily discontented if his indolence be not taxed too hardly, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... not a learned man, but a bold thinker. He would root out all distinctions in society, because they could not be reconciled with his sense of justice. He preached a gospel of human rights, based not on Christianity but on instinct. He was full of impracticable theories. He would have no war, no suffering, no hardship, no bondage, no fear, and even no labor, since these were evils, and, according to his notions of moral government, unnecessary. But in all his grand theories he ignored the settled laws of Providence,—even those of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... delicate subject. The announcement of the unexpected alliance with France struck all with astonishment and indignation. Francis, vehemently moved, rose, and smiting the table with his hand, exclaimed, "Such an alliance is unnatural and impracticable—it never shall take place." The empress, by nods and winks, encouraged her minister, and he went on detailing the great advantages to result from the French alliance. Maria Theresa listened with great attention to his arguments, and was apparently convinced ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... an instant, and made us hurriedly resolve to go to the play. So, when I had pledged myself to comfort and abet Herbert in the affair of his heart by all practicable and impracticable means, and when Herbert had told me that his affianced already knew me by reputation and that I should be presented to her, and when we had warmly shaken hands upon our mutual confidence, we blew out our candles, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... The river here became impracticable, and Job went forward to hunt out the trail. The sandhills at this point stood back a little from the river. The low-lying land between was thickly wooded, but up on the hills the walking was good. So the trail was cut ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... that there were serious difficulties still to be overcome. The chief trouble was that acetone expands a small percentage of its own volume while it is absorbing acetylene; therefore it is impossible to fill a cylinder with acetone and then force in acetylene, and still more impracticable only partly to fill the cylinder with acetone, as in that case the space above the liquid would be filled with acetylene under high pressure, and would have all the disadvantages of a cylinder containing compressed acetylene only. This difficulty was overcome by first ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... dish. Sandys says: "The French do not seem to have been so well acquainted with brawn; for on the capture of Calais by them they found a large quantity, which they guessed to be some dainty, and tried every means of preparing it; in vain did they roast it, bake it, boil it; it was impracticable and impenetrable to their culinary arts. Its merits, however, being at length discovered, 'Ha!' said the monks, 'what delightful fish!' and immediately added it to their stock of fast day viands. The Jews, again, could not believe it was procured from that ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... unsoftened; honest, but uneducated—impracticable, and by nature a malcontent, he felt as if he were no longer necessary to the Senator, and this offended his pride. Strange as it may seem, the sullen artisan bore, too, a secret grudge against Rienzi, for not having seen and selected him from a crowd of thousands on the day of ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... that it is superficial and pleasant, who grant that working for a state of being is the most profound and worthy and strenuous work a teacher can do,—that it is what education is for,—will feel that it is impracticable. It is thus that it has come to pass in the average institution of learning, that if a teacher does not know what education is, he regards education as superficial, and if he does know what education is, he regards ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... was suffering tortures of irresolution, mingled with incoherent projects no sooner formed than they were rejected as impracticable. To know?—this was easily said, but I, who was so eager, nervous, and excitable, so little able to restrain my quickly-varying emotions, would never be able to extort his secret from so resolute a man, one so completely master of himself as my stepfather. My consciousness of his strength and ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... to you, that's a thing that can on no account come about! My faithful attendance is an obligation of my duties, and is no exceptional service! and when I'm gone you'll again have some other faithful attendant, and it isn't likely that when I'm no more here, you'll find it impracticable to obtain one!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... questions that broke in upon him from all quarters, the two Buzzbys junior scrambled, as far as was possible, into his pockets, pulled his whiskers as if they had been hoisting a main-sail therewith, and, generally, behaved in such an obstreperous manner as to render coherent discourse all but impracticable. He got through with it, however, and then Mrs Buzzby intimated her wish, pretty strongly, that the neighbours should vacate the premises; which they did, laughingly, pronouncing Buzzby to be a "trump", and his better ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... Aga was all fudge. I looked in, but did not enter. There are no new works, and it is a castle such as those one sees on the Rhine; but its extraordinary position renders it impregnable in a country impracticable for artillery. Although blockaded in the time of the Revolution, and the Moslem garrison reduced to only seven men, it never was taken by the Servians; although Belgrade, Ushitza, and all the other castles, had fallen into their hands. Close to the castle is a mosque in wood, ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... evidently in deep thought. His continued stay in Richmond excited comment, because he was a man of such restless activity. He had never before been known to remain so long in one place, though now the frozen world, making military operations impossible or impracticable, offered ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... on any other part of the body," said Chillingworth, "because what you do now, you had better do well, and leave nothing to after thought, because it is frequently impracticable." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... sagacious speculator, about the same time, dropped the falling cause of Ghazi-ud-din, whose method of statesmanship was too vigorous for his taste, and who, as has been above shown, retired soon after from a situation which he had aided to render impracticable. But a criminal of greater promise, about the same time, joined Suraj Mal. This was none other than the notorious Sumroo, who had wisely left his late protector the Nawab of Audh, at the head of a battalion of ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... temperature of 20 deg. below the freezing point, we found the ice to form so rapidly on the surface, that any further examination of the barrier in so extremely severe a period of the season being impracticable, we stood away to the westward, for the purpose of making another attempt to approach the magnetic pole, and reached its latitude (76 deg. S.) ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... quarterings, I regret that I am unable to pay my state visit on a horse. As a Castilian hidalgo of that description, I should have preferred to ride through the streets of Venice; but owing, I presume, to an unusually wet season, the streets are in such a condition that equestrian exercise is impracticable. No matter. Where is our suite? LUIZ (coming forward). Your Grace, I am here. DUCH. Why do you not do yourself the honour to kneel when you address His Grace? DUKE. My love, it is so small a matter! (To Luiz.) Still, you may as well do it. (Luiz kneels.) CAS. The young man seems to entertain but ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... prescribed—it can be done in no other way—and those who accept the old regulations as the law of Masonry, must accept this provision with them. This will, in the present organization of many Grand Lodges, render it almost impracticable to make such a new regulation, in which case the Grand Master must remain exempt from other punishment for his misdeeds, than that which arises from his own conscience, and the loss of his Brethren's ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... either be received in vessels containing copperas solution, or, when this is impracticable, should be immediately covered with copperas solution. All vessels used about the patient should be cleansed ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... earlier romances, tinged with the magic radiance of youth, often fail to materialize." The last three words sounded somewhat trite when they struck the air. "But those fondly cherished dreams," I went on, "may cast a pleasant afterglow on our future lives, however impracticable and vague they may have been. But life is full of realities as well as visions and dreams. One cannot live on memories. May I ask, Miss Lowery, if you think you could pass a happy—that is, a contented and harmonious life with Mr.—er—Dodd—if in other ...
— Options • O. Henry
... have been carried out in 1776. In a contemporary English paper occurs the following significant item: "London, September 26th, 1776. Advices have been received here from Canada, dated August 12th, that General Burgoyne's army has found it impracticable to get across the lakes this season. The naval force of the Provincials is too great for them to contend with at present. They must build larger vessels for this purpose, and these cannot be ready ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... thousand pounds. Then the delightfulness of having whole groves of hummingbirds, tame tigers taught to fetch and carry, pocket spying-glasses to see all that is doing in China, with a thousand other toys, which we now look upon as impracticable, and which pert posterity would laugh in one's face for staring at, while they are offering rewards for perfecting discoveries, of the principles of which we have not the least conception! If ever this book should come forth, I must expect to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... at one time twelve hundred were in use. Edison's connection with this particular device was very close while it lasted. In a review of the ticker art, Mr. Callahan stated, with rather grudging praise, that "a ticker at the present time (1901) would be considered as impracticable and unsalable if it were not provided with a unison device," and he goes on to remark: "The first unison on stock tickers was one used on the Laws printer. [2] It was a crude and unsatisfactory piece of mechanism ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... were used as reservoirs it is a fair presumption that the bottoms were plastered with clay, so that there would be no seepage and the only loss would be by evaporation. Yet this loss, in a dry and windy climate such as that of the region here treated, would be sufficient to render impracticable a storage reservoir of a cross section and a site like the one under discussion. Most of the rainfall is in the winter months, from December to March, and it would require a fall of over 12 inches during those months to render the reservoir of ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... ex-Crown Prince of Sweden, visited Scotland in 1819. It was his intention to study at the University of Edinburgh during the winter session, but, his real name becoming known, this was rendered impracticable by the curiosity and attention of the public. He devoted himself mainly to the study of military matters, and out-door exercises, roughing it in all sorts of weather, sometimes,—to his mentor Baron Polier's uneasiness,—setting out on dark and stormy nights, and making his way across country ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... one foreign capital to another, making friends and winning admirers everywhere, and employing his enforced leisure in attempting great feats of literary enterprise. A scheme for a Constitutional History of England was succeeded by a no less difficult and, as it proved, no less impracticable scheme. During Wilkes's exile he lost the most famous of his enemies and the most famous of his friends. On October 26, 1764, Hogarth died. It was commonly said, and generally credited, that he died of a broken heart {69} in consequence of the furious attacks which had followed ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... May last; and the only cow that remained not being at that time with calf, and having since become wild and dangerous, the lieutenant-governor, whose property she was, directed her to be killed; she was accordingly shot at his farm, it being found impracticable to secure and slaughter her in the ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... with the remains of his fleet and army, his ships damaged and weather beaten, and his men almost in a state of mutiny from having received no pay. In these straits the colonial government found it impracticable to raise money, and resorted to "bills of credit," the first paper money which had ever been ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... constitutions which have modelled themselves upon those of 1791 and 1792, have been shown by experience to be entirely theoretical and metaphysical, and therefore impracticable. Witness those of France, Spain, and Portugal: they have not, as they ought, produced public happiness; but after a licentious freedom, we see that in some countries there has already taken place, and in others there is on the point of doing so, a despotism of one, ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... for all she idealized life and her surroundings out of all proportion to reality. She told herself that if she married Ward with her doubts alive, her misery would be far greater than if she gave him up, except as a friend. Of course, her ideals stepped in there with an impracticable compromise. She brought back the Ward Warren of her "pretend" life. She dreamed of him as a mutely adoring friend who stood and worshiped her from afar, and because of his sins could not cross the line ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... division to move against Negley, and ordered Hill to send or take Cleburne's division, join Hindman, and immediately move upon Negley. On receipt of these orders, Hill replied that his part of the movement was impracticable, as Cleburne was sick, and that both gaps—Dug and Catlett's—had been closed by felling timber which would require twenty-four hours to remove. Hindman having marched during the night of the 9th some ten miles, was now in position, some ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... regiments is one of the worst possible systems, and the Russian and Prussian system of divisions and permanent corps d'armee seems to be much preferable. In general terms, the Russian army now may be presented as a model in many respects; and if in many points its customs would be useless and impracticable elsewhere, it must be admitted that many good institutions might well ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... quest of easier prey, submitting to the brilliant frivolities of the sport, the sombre intrigues of policy, or the sadness of a life which has been a failure. Such a variety of causes renders at once very attractive and almost impracticable the task of the author who takes as a model that ever-changing society so like unto itself in the exterior rites and fashions, so really, so intimately complex and composite in its fundamental elements. The ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... condemned unread by Mr. Sheldon, who considered all works of fiction perfectly equal in demerit, and stigmatised them, in a general way, as "senseless trash." He had tried to read novels in the dreary days of his Bloomsbury probation; but he had found that the heroes of them were impracticable beings, who were always talking of honour and chivalry, and always sacrificing their own interests in an utterly preposterous manner; and he had thrown aside ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... excursions to avoid the heat of Florence. One year we went to Valombrosa and the convents of La Vernia, and Camaldoli, which are now suppressed. We travelled on mules or ponies, as the mountain paths are impracticable to carriages. I was disappointed in Valombrosa itself, but the road to it is beautiful. La Vernia is highly picturesque, there we remained two days, which I spent in drawing. The trees round the convent formed a striking ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... of Communism are by no means impracticable, and would, if realized, add immeasurably to the well-being of mankind. The difficulties which have to be faced are not in regard to the fundamental ideas, but in regard to the transition from capitalism. ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... is represented to me by the governor of the Territory of Washington that domestic violence exists within the said Territory, and that by reason of unlawful obstructions and combinations and the assemblage of evil-disposed persons it has become impracticable to enforce by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings the laws of the United States at Seattle and at other points and places within said Territory, whereby life and property are there ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... attack were, of course, numerous, and they varied according to the speed of the surface ships engaged. What was possible of accomplishment by fast-moving coastal motor boats or the larger-sized M.L.'s proved impracticable for the more heavily armed but slow-moving trawlers and drifters. The tactics of these latter craft were often of the simplest character, and consisted principally of either independent attacks with the aid ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... these worthies, both as to their number and the matters of fact in the time specified, than what is here to be met with—But in this publication, it is not pretended to give an account of all our Scots worthies, or their transactions: For that were a task now altogether impracticable, and that ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... word for priestly 'service.' He, a priest, has not forgotten that by original constitution all Israel was a nation of priests; and he looks forward to the fulfilment at last of the ideal which so soon became impracticable, and possibly to the abrogation of his own order in the universal priesthood. He knew not what deep truths he sang. The end of Christ's coming, and of the deliverance which He works for us from the hand of our enemies, cannot be better stated than in these words. We are redeemed that we ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... believe, usually succeed in deducting the Folkestone water rate from the Sandgate general rate which covers water, but the wear and tear is enormous. However, these are details, dear to my heart, but the merest marginal comments to my argument. The essential fact is the impracticable silliness of these little divisions, the waste of men, the waste of nervous energy, the waste of administrative energy they involve. I am convinced that in the case of almost any public service in the Folkestone district with our present boundaries, the administrative waste will more than ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... the responsibility rest where the power lies. On conquered territory there can be but one authority, and no conceivable ingenuity can construct any other system. If authority is apparently divided, then either the military commander does not understand his business, or he is hampered by impracticable orders and should ask to be relieved. This is what has paralyzed the action of every military governor, a title which implies a perfectly anomalous function, certain to lead to trouble. Almost all the great good effected by General Saxton has been achieved in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... their temple with the sacred ark and the great altar was the one true place of worship, and an author has clothed this very laudable effort on behalf of the purity of religion in the form of a law, which certainly in its strictness was quite impracticable (ILeviticus xvii.4 seq.), and which, therefore, was modified later by the Deuteronomist ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... endeavour to carry the mails through the snow on the 1st February 1831. The Dumfries coach had reached Moffat, where it became snowed up. The driver and guard procured saddle-horses, and proceeded; but they had not gone far when they found the roads impracticable for horses, and these were sent back to Moffat. The two men then continued on foot; but they did not get beyond a few miles on the road when they succumbed, and some days afterwards their dead bodies were found on the high ground near the "Deil's Beef-Tub," the ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... land. It is a country of chalk, but not of dry, turfy chalk, like those of the English Downs; rather a chalk mixed with clay, which makes for bad going after rain. It is the soil over which, further to the east, the battle of Valmy was fought, an action largely determined by the impracticable nature of the ground when wet. On the other hand, it is a soil that dries quickly. The country as a whole is remarkably open. There are no hedges, and the movement of troops is covered only by scattered, not infrequent plantations of pine trees and larches, which grow to no ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... was the most impracticable party of house-hunters whom the vicar's wife had ever known, and she wondered no longer at the difficulty they had experienced in finding a house to their taste, when she noted the spirit in which they surveyed the present premises. A convenience was not a convenience at all ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... beech." He goes on to say that "the evil of the colliers misapplying the timber served to them by the keepers could only be remedied by refusing it for the future to such parties as had been detected therein. Fining them was found impracticable, owing to the difficulty of proving the timber to have been the King's, without which proof the ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... quotations, and to deduce from them the meanings which might be put before him in a line or two. As a fact, while Richardson's notion was correct in theory, mundane conditions of space and time rendered it humanly impracticable. Nevertheless, the mass of quotations, most of them with exact references, collected by him, and printed under the word-groups which they illustrated, was a service never to be undervalued or forgotten, and ...
— The evolution of English lexicography • James Augustus Henry Murray
... received, and they obtained in reply to their written petition a very long apostil, to the effect, that consultation must be had with the Director, and his instructions followed, with many other things which did not agree with out object, and were impracticable, as we think. For various reasons which we set down in writing, we thought it was not advisable to consult with him, but we represented to his Honor that he should proceed; we would not send anything to the Fatherland without his having a copy of it. If he could ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... let us govern our fancies. It is enough they were held impracticable the night before, and as there was no alternative in my uncle Toby's wardrobe, he sallied forth in ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... far as the eye could see, the water came up against it, as that of a moat does against the wall of a castle. Obviously, therefore, the only line of escape ran through this cave, for, as I have explained, the channel by which I presume Babemba reached the open lake, was now impracticable. Lastly, we searched to see if there was any fallen log upon which we could possibly propel ourselves to the other side, and found—nothing that could be made to serve, no, nor, as I have said, any dry reeds or brushwood out of which ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... "You can fence it in with as many make-believes as is proper. And now, Gracie, this is deuced lucky! You see Sydenham will be down here at once; and it wouldn't be exactly the thing for you to receive him at this house, and our only hotel is perfectly impracticable in winter; and that brings me to what I am here about. Lillie is going to New York to spend the holidays; and I wanted you to shut up, and come up and keep house for us. You see you have only one servant, and we have four to be looked after. ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... daughter of Constantine, who could ill brook the insolence of a subject, expressed their resentment by instantly delivering Domitian to the custody of a guard. The quarrel still admitted of some terms of accommodation. They were rendered impracticable by the imprudent behavior of Montius, a statesman whose arts and experience were frequently betrayed by the levity of his disposition. The quaestor reproached Gallus in a haughty language, that a prince who was scarcely authorized to remove a municipal magistrate, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... one of her impracticable moods, throwing cold water on all her young mistress's suggestions, and doing her best to disarrange the domestic machinery. Dorothy suspected a mystery somewhere; her young ladies had sat up half the night, and looked pale and owlish in the morning. If they chose to keep her ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... blaming himself for his too ready agreement, he realized that several mingling emotions had been at the root of it. In the first place, he had said "yes" because his craven spirit had screamed "no" so loudly. He felt that the project was not only dangerous, but impracticable, yet something, which he chose to term his over-will, had warned him that he must not upon any account give way to fear lest he weaken his already insecure hold upon himself. Again, Donnelly had appealed to him in a way hard to resist. He was not only flattered by ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... there; and seeing my mother about to go up to the next floor, he stopped her, indicating the dilapidated condition of the stairs. 'This floor is abandoned,' he said; 'the platform above is in a very bad state, and the staircase impracticable and dangerous. Mme. de Combray begs that you will never go above the first landing, for fear of an accident.' After which he went to ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... what conception could he have but that of defeat, and failure, and sadness—the sons of man mounting into a bright existence, and one after another falling back into darkness and nothingness, like soldiers trying to mount an impracticable breach, and falling back crushed and mangled into the ditch before the bayonets and the rattling fire of their conquerors. Misery and guilt, look which way you will, till the heart gets sick with ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... upon the Solicitor-General mainly, whose shoulders are quite equal to the burthen. They are very unfortunate in the choice of their civilians: the King's Advocate is clumsy and confused, and has no practice; Adams is injudicious and impracticable, and has no learning. I shall be exceedingly curious to see the outset of the business; but probably it will be difficult to get a place, even if the present ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... shaken all round. Wine was then called for by Nicholas, who, at the same time, directed that the two Alsatian captains should be brought up from the cellar, where they had been placed for safety. The first part of the order was obeyed, but the second was found impracticable, inasmuch as the two heroes had found their way to the inner cellar, and had emptied so many flasks that they were utterly incapable of moving. While the wine was being discussed, an unexpected ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and been heartened by the thought that we had destroyed the Turks' last force in Mesopotamia. When the Aujeh lines had been taken, our cavalry, supported by the artillery, tried to rush Tekrit and burn the stores. This proved impracticable, so we shelled the dumps at long range. My brigade stood by, and watched from a high plateau the bursts and the great smoke-curtains which went up, as once from burning Sodom. The affair furnished Fowke with some excellent fooling. He would stand on a knoll ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... Tamul. While working at his translations with his moonshee, or interpreter, a Mussulman, he had much opportunity for conversation and for study of the Mahometan arguments, so as to be very useful to himself; though he could not succeed in convincing the impracticable moonshee, who had all that self-satisfaction belonging to Mahometanism. "I told him that he ought to pray that God would teach him what the truth really is. He said he had no occasion to pray on this subject, as the word of God is express." With the Hindoos at Dinapore, he found, to his ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... something mystifying about the persistence through so many vicissitudes of a religion which commands respect from neighbors who see in it a powerful inspiration, while the Jew himself, especially the Jew more fortunately placed in the general community, endeavors so often to cast it off as outworn and impracticable. It is the Jew himself who has misled the rest of the world into a delusion. He has seemed to consider himself, and the faith with which he is bound up, inferior. In his endeavor to take on the color of his ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... wrote to Governor Bates, who had planned the Mississippi gunboat scheme. He presented the letter at once to the Acting Secretary of War, Mr. Scott. They both opposed it at first as impracticable. I returned immediately to Washington, prepared a paper on that basis and took it to Mr. Scott, who was really Acting Secretary of War, General Cameron's time being largely consumed in Cabinet meetings. After reading my plan and ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... investigation no farther, but merely requested his son Benjamin to witness the fact that, in consideration of his love and affection for his son Simon, and in order to furnish the donee with the means of leaving that portion of the State of Georgia, he bestowed upon him the impracticable ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... let me explain, and you will see that my plan is not so impracticable as you seem to think. My father has money; and he has always said that he would start me in business whenever I got a good knowledge of it. He knows, of course, that I have not that knowledge yet; but he knows, too, that a man who can run Keimer's establishment has the requisite ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... "patience brings many things about that before seemed impracticable; but it may be this affair is of a nature not likely to succeed that way. Your majesty will have no cause to reproach yourself for precipitation, if you would give the prince another year to consider your proposal. If in this interval he return to his duty, you will have the greater ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... General Grant, deeming it impracticable to make any further attempt to carry the rebel position at Spottsylvania by direct assault, had determined upon another flank movement; and his preparations were made for moving around the left flank of the enemy during the night of the 19th, and seizing a position on the North Anna. But late in ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... least eight weeks beforehand, each sheet of which stood me in fivepence previous to its arrival at my printer's; though the subscription money was not to be received till the twenty- first week after the commencement of the work; and, lastly, though it was in nine cases out of ten impracticable for me to receive the money for two or three numbers without paying an ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... of the cavalry found the morasses and obstacles so impracticable that they were unable to attack as arranged, but two regiments succeeded in gaining the plateau. One of these dashed upon the Austrian infantry. They met, broke into fragments, and took two whole regiments prisoners; and brought them and six guns triumphantly off. The other ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... soucient peu des petits moraux.' It was not worth while to reason with a man who had neither little morals nor great ones, so I merely replied that from the genius and situation of the country the thing was impracticable; and he answered, 'That depends on the estimate we form of the human passions, and of the means of influencing them.' Burr would neither regard a scheme of usurpation as visionary,—he is sanguine and visionary to a degree that will be his ruin,—nor ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... comfort, yet, deprived of seeing thee, the eye of our rejoicing would be darkened; but for us to proceed on the earth's surface and so to traverse a great and long distance is impossible, and for thee, too, to fly through the expanse of air and accompany us is impracticable; and such being the case, ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... social and political movements such as spiritualism, total abstinence, and the prevention of capital punishment; which prevented many sympathetic friends of the cause from joining it, and gave it a quaint, and sometimes even a comical aspect. These Utopian and impracticable notions were accepted by the abolitionists partly on the log-rolling principle, and partly from a tendency of those people to separate themselves from what is real and tangible. It seems strange that a ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... amongst such characters as composed the colony, there must be numbers to whom these sentiments of insubordination must be congenial, and who would eagerly grasp at any projects, however absurd and impracticable, the proposed object of which was their emancipation from the punishment which their crimes had drawn upon them. Men who have obtained a proficiency in crime, and are callous to the voice of conscience, science, are seldom very ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... but he was ready to forsake all, and enter on an expedition of unknown length and peril, in the hope that it would be a means of introducing the gospel among his countrymen. The greater part of the other Esquimaux thought the voyage impracticable, and an old Angekok predicted that if the adventurers did not perish in the violent currents that set in round Cape Chudleigh, they most certainly would ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... of tranquillity was now shaken by the hideous howlings which arose from all quarters. Intended flight had become impracticable. Atrocious expressions were levelled against the Queen, too shocking for repetition. I shudder when I reflect to what a degree of outrage the 'poissardes' of Paris were excited, to express their abominable designs on the life of that most ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... This mode of making a new regulation is explicitly and positively prescribed—it can be done in no other way—and those who accept the old regulations as the law of Masonry, must accept this provision with them. This will, in the present organization of many Grand Lodges, render it almost impracticable to make such a new regulation, in which case the Grand Master must remain exempt from other punishment for his misdeeds, than that which arises from his own conscience, and the loss of his ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... to visit the scene of every accident, so called, and to ascertain, as far as possible, the cause. Messrs. T. C. Clarke and Julius W. Adams believed, that, in the present state of public opinion, the above method would be impracticable, and feared, that, if inspectors were appointed, it would be by political influence, and that the result would be worse than at present, as the inspectors would be inefficient, and yet, to a great extent, would relieve the owners of bad bridges ...
— Bridge Disasters in America - The Cause and the Remedy • George L. Vose
... in an area in which even the optimistic Ordnance Survey (who in the chatty little notes they append to their maps, characterised the local water supply as "abundant though varying in quality") considered wheeled transport as impracticable. In consequence our nodding acquaintanceship with camels ripened quickly into an undesired familiarity. There is a touch of oriental romance about the camel, as the mile long convoys loom up through the ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... assure your friend that he will ever be welcome here, and I hope that we shall have the young lady with us when he returns," answered Mr Bradshaw. "I will not say the same with regard to her impracticable father, for, between you and I, the farther he is away from her the better. I am no admirer of his wild, harum-scarum schemes, though he is individually a brave and honourable man; and had he not foolishly quarrelled with the ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... payment of the fish on delivery would be 'impracticable;' which is explained to mean, (1) that it would necessitate the employment of more highly paid factors at the stations, and the conveyance of considerable sums of money for distances of many miles, there being no banks in Shetland except at Lerwick; and (2) that the ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... gospels without bewilderment, and without the contemptuous incredulity which spoils the temper of many modern atheists, or the senseless credulity which sometimes makes pious people force us to shove them aside in emergencies as impracticable lunatics when they ask us to meet violence and injustice with dumb submission in the belief that the strange demeanor of Jesus before Pilate was meant as an example of normal human conduct. Let us admit that without the proper clues the gospels are, to a modern educated ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... bearers struggle along, till at length we came to open rolling ground quite uncultivated, and mostly treeless, but covered with game of all sorts, which lies beyond that most desolate, and without guides utterly impracticable, district. And here on the following morning we bade farewell, not without some regret, to old Billali, who stroked his white ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... rule them directly; he desired to colonise the selected districts by encouraging mixed marriages with the native inhabitants; where he could not conquer or colonise he desired to build fortresses; and where this was impracticable he desired to induce the native monarchs to recognise the supremacy of the king of Portugal and to pay him tribute. It is not necessary to illustrate Albuquerque's policy on all these points at greater length than has already been done. His building of fortresses has been ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... would, without hesitation, devise means for the restoration of those unhappy victims of violence and avarice, to their freedom and constitutional personal rights. The work, both from its nature and magnitude, is impracticable to individuals, or benevolent societies; besides, it is perfectly a national business, and claims national interference, equally with the captivity of our ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... not merely a crude measurement of the gross reaction time in a large number of cases, but rather a special investigation by such exact methods as have been used by Cattell [1] and others in the analysis of the complex reaction. It would be impracticable for us to employ such methods in a study so extensive ...
— A Study of Association in Insanity • Grace Helen Kent
... of ridicule. A Conservative Government then enjoyed a short tenure of office, but committed suicide by bringing in an impracticable Reform Bill. A second Berry Ministry came into office, but not into power. It also lived a few months, but with its dying kick it passed a measure which, though it placed the Upper Chamber on a more ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... schemed out, of a general and gradual cooping up of the Roman Catholics within the single province of Connaught. In the nature of things, that business, or indeed any actual prevention of the exercise of the Catholic Religion wherever Roman Catholics abounded, was impracticable. It was enough, in the Lord Protector's view, that the land lay quiet, the Roman Catholics and their faithful priests not stirring too publicly, the English soldiery keeping all under sufficient pressure, and English and Scottish colonization shooting in here and ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... He carried the impracticable theory of social equality to an extent beyond that of most Americans, and yet he was frequently complained of for his reserve and aristocratic manners. The range of his acquaintance was the widest of any man of his time. It extended from Lord Brougham to J. ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... sedulously done." Writing in "The Outlook" for June 27, 1896, Lady Henry Somerset says, in closing a sketch of Frances Willard: "The Temperance cause, in spite of the gigantic strides it has made of late years toward success, is still relegated to the shadowy land of unpopular and supposedly impracticable and visionary reform." ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... banks are steep in many places, of white clay and coarse sandstone, and fringed with tall melaleuca, whose long drooping branches and leaves swept the rapid and deep stream. A straight course was impracticable, for as soon as attempted, and the river was out of sight, the party got entangled in thick brushes and tea-tree swamps, without a blade of grass. They were obliged, therefore, to follow the course of the river in all its windings. The only birds seen were scrub ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... intimidated. "You are mistaken," said he. "I will exert myself, and if it is in my power to seize the monster, be assured that he shall suffer punishment proportionate to his crimes. But I fear, from what you have yourself described to be his properties, that this will prove impracticable; and thus, while every proper measure is pursued, you should make up ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... insisted on having green wood lighted beneath the toldo, in the hope of driving away the mosquitos by the smoke. The painful sensations of the eyes, and the increase of heat, already stifling, rendered both these contrivances alike impracticable. With some gaiety of temper, with feelings of mutual good-will, and with a vivid taste for the majestic grandeur of these vast valleys of rivers, travellers easily support evils that ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... and maxims, and not upon ours. We must not think to force them into the narrow circle of our ideas; we must extend ours to take in their system of opinions and rites, and the necessities which result from both: all change on their part is absolutely impracticable. We have more versatility of character and manners, and it is we who must conform. We know what the empire of opinion is in human nature. I had almost said that the law of opinion was human nature itself. It is, however, the strongest principle in the composition ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... character belonged to Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, a man distinguished by learning and eloquence, distinguished also by courage, disinterestedness, and public spirit but of an irritable and impracticable temper. Like many of his most illustrious contemporaries, Milton for example, Harrington, Marvel, and Sidney, Fletcher had, from the misgovernment of several successive princes, conceived a strong aversion to hereditary monarchy. Yet he was no democrat. He was the head of an ancient Norman ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... go to the south about May to make a stay of two or three months; she has formed a plan for my accompanying her and taking lodgings on the Sussex Coast; but the scheme seems to me impracticable for many reasons, and, moreover, my medical man doubts the advisability of my going southward in summer, he says it might prove very enervating, whereas Scarbro' or Burlington would brace and strengthen. However, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... duty Lord Fawn was a Hercules,—not, indeed, "climbing trees in the Hesperides," but achieving enterprises which, to other men, if not impossible, would have been so unpalatable as to have been put aside as impracticable. On the Monday morning, after he was accepted by Lady Eustace, he was with his mother at Fawn Court before he went down to the ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... conferences, that the life of their Founder was worthy of the highest praise, but that it was not given to all to imitate it; that among the things which he had prescribed for them, some appeared in the eyes of prudence very difficult of observance, others absolutely impracticable and beyond the strength of man; that, in the opinion of the most prudent, some modification was requisite and some change required, some practices necessary, which were not so strictly regular—by specious insinuations ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... of marauders had successfully gained the summit of the rocks, and, scattering in every direction, they buried themselves in the depths of the wood. Finding, however, there was no pursuit, which indeed would have been impracticable for horse, the leader ventured to call his band together with a whistle, and in a short time he succeeded in collecting his discomfited party, at a point where they had but little to apprehend from ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... into ruin, and in which those revenues had stagnated into contagion or uselessness,—transferred from what had become public evils to their original and inherent purpose of public benefits, instead of being sacrilegiously alienated by a transfer to private proprietors. That this was impracticable, is historically true; but no less true is it philosophically, that this impracticability, arising wholly from moral causes, (namely, the loose manners and corrupt principles of a great majority in all classes during the dynasty of the Tudors,) does not prevent this wholesale ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... palms. The European station is to the northward, for the southern shore is rugged, and ends abruptly in cliffs and huge boulders. Small coasting steamers maintain as well as they can communication with the fort; but the approach is always difficult, and is almost impracticable ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... detritus that a river washes into the sea. If the black stay here, it must be as a menial. In his own latitudes, where, after the third generation, the white man ceases to exist, he is the stronger; there the black man is king: let him betake himself to his realm. Abolition is impracticable, colonization feasible; on either is gunpowder wasted: one cannot explode a lie by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... peak's impracticable sides He opens of his feet the sanguine tides, 395 Weak and more weak the issuing current eyes Lapp'd by the panting tongue of thirsty skies. [R] —At once bewildering mists around him close, And cold and hunger are his least ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... obliged to wait at Monaco, until a gale of wind had driven the English squadron off the coast, and then they went along shore in small vessels at the imminent risque of being taken by the British cruisers. By land I apprehend their march would be altogether impracticable, if the king of Sardinia had any interest to oppose it. He might either guard the passes, or break up the road in twenty different places, so as to render it altogether impassable. Here it may not be amiss to observe, that when Don Philip advanced from Nice with his army ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... narrow part of the Isthmus (see map). "Sea level" means that it was to be merely a cut in which the water would be all the way at the same level—an open clear waterway from one ocean to the other. This proved impracticable on account of engineering difficulties and the crossing of the Chagres River, and in 1887 it was decided that it could ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 10, March 10, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... attend his lordship. [Exit Sam.] I tell you, Charles, aw this conscientious refinement in politics is downright ignorance, and impracticable romance; and, sir, I desire I may hear no more of it. Come, sir, let us gang down and ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... cannot be far short of one hundred and fifty persons dining daily in the public room: did I desire to dine at it, however, the hospitality of my friends I find would render this impracticable. ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... term he began to distinguish himself. Of all places, he started to do this at the Union—an institution few of us C—— men belonged to. There was a debate upon something connected with Education. An unknown person got up and savagely attacked existing methods as being useless, impracticable, and in the interests of the teacher and not of the taught. "Of what use to society is a College fellow?" he asked, and answering, "Of none, except to reproduce his species," backed up his case with such cleverness that a majority ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... Carlyle thought Jeffrey could have got for him; but the advocate did not, probably could not, in this case satisfy his client. In excusing himself he ventured to lecture the applicant on what he imagined to be the impracticable temper and perverse eccentricity which had retarded and might continue to ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... her heart had been torn by the cries of this child, Mary Ellen, kept in confinement by this brute. Much moved by this recital, the visitor felt impelled to demand the interference of the police. They told her this was impracticable unless she was able to furnish proof of her allegation. She knew the facts only upon hearsay, and only in case a misdemeanor were actually proved would it be possible for the police to interfere as she desired. The charitable feelings of the lady would not permit her to stop here. She made inquiries ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... back she met Tom Kitchener. He was looking very tough and strong, and at the sight of him a half-formed idea, which she had regretfully dismissed as impracticable, of assaulting Constable Cobb, returned to her in an amended form. Tom did not know it, but the reason why she smiled so radiantly upon him at that moment was that she had just elected him to the post of hired assassin. While she did not want ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... jungle, without any appearance of population: could we have got ashore, therefore, many of us might have perished before assistance could have been procured; but the breakers, dashing upon the rocks, convinced us that landing was impracticable. In the course of the morning we discovered a native vessel, or dhoney, lying at anchor, at some distance: the wind at that time beginning to favour us, every means was devised to render it available. In the yawl we extended the tablecloth as ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... except on high and solemn occasions, such as when you are about to be invested with some public dignity. But avoid any approach to a superstitious veneration for them: it is to keep those thin-skinned and impracticable individuals who are infected by this failing from the management of public affairs, that they have been, in great ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... second Caesar. They resolved to engage the young commander in an enterprise which would take him out of France. This undertaking was an attack upon England, which they were then meditating. Bonaparte opposed the plan of a direct descent upon the island as impracticable, declaring that England should be attacked through her Eastern possessions. He presented a scheme very characteristic of his bold, imaginative genius. This was nothing less than the conquest and colonization of Egypt, ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... imprint upon my memory that at such a period the Argives ceased to be called Pelasgi, and were henceforward called Danai, I felt how impracticable (and doubtless in their degree injurious, for though an infinitesimal injury only as regards any single act doubtless, yet, per se, by tendency doubtless all blank efforts of the memory unsupported by the understanding are bad), must be any violent efforts of the memory not falling in with ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... get this chance was to secure such an agreement of the two powers that they would meet and discuss the terms direct. Of course Japan will want to ask more than she ought to ask, and Russia to give less than she ought to give. Perhaps both sides will prove impracticable. Perhaps one will. But there is the chance that they will prove sensible, and make a peace, which will really be for the interest of each as things are now. At any rate the experiment was worth trying. I have kept the secret very successfully, ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... their march. Water-courses were waded, plains were passed, and rolling ascents risen and descended, without producing the smallest change. Long practised in the difficulties of that peculiar species of travelling in which he was engaged, the squatter avoided the more impracticable obstacles of their route by a sort of instinct, invariably inclining to the right or left in season, as the formation of the land, the presence of trees, or the signs of rivers forewarned him of ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... recent books. With the exception of the fiery martial pamphlets of Germany, the work of a von der Goltz or a Treitschke, or a Bernhardi, we shall find a general consensus of opinion that war on a large scale was impossible because too ruinous, that the very size of the European armaments made war impracticable. Or else, to take the extreme case of Mr. Norman Angell, the entanglements of modern finance were said to have put war out of count as an absurdity. We were a little too hasty in our judgments. It is clear that ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney
... they did that the peril was hourly becoming greater, could they have changed their mind in the morning? Certain it was that General de Palikao's plan of a swift, bold dash on Montmedy, which seemed hazardous on the 23d and was, perhaps, still not impracticable on the 25th, if conducted with veteran troops and a leader of ability, would on the 27th be an act of sheer madness amid the divided counsels of the chiefs and the increasing demoralization of the troops. This they both well knew; why, then, did they obey those ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... chattering topmen were soon dispersed: some ascending beyond the power of the engine, and others retreating into the neighbouring top, along ropes, and across giddy heights, that would have seemed impracticable to any animal ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... so wide a subject it has seemed inadvisable to make any attempt to describe the types of the various gods. Without full illustration and a considerable expenditure of space, such a description would be impracticable, and the reader must be referred to the ordinary handbooks of the subject. A fuller account will be found in Dr. Farnell's Cults of the Greek States, and some selected types are discussed with the greatest subtlety and understanding in Brunn's Griechische Gotterideale. In the present volume ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... then it is only correct in calm weather and with a very steady wind, so that in the majority of cases the engineer must take his own observations to obtain the necessary local information to guide him in the design of the works. It is impracticable for these observations to be continued over the lengthy period necessary to obtain the fullest and most accurate results, but, premising a general knowledge of the natural phenomena which affect the tides, as briefly described herein, he will be able to gauge the effect of ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... Euxine Sea. At the distance of four or five leagues from the entrance to the sea, are the Cyanean rocks; the Argonauts passed between them not without difficulty and danger; before this expedition, the passage was deemed impracticable, and many fables were told regarding them: their true situation and form were first explored by the Argonauts. They now safely entered the Euxine Sea, where they seem to have been driven about for some time, till they discovered Mount Caucasus; this ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... as a country retreat. On her departure, my wife was escorted by thirty-one American natives to carry herself and baggage. You know, Sir, that this road, the same pursued by M. de Maldonada, is impracticable even for mules; that those who are able effect the passage on foot, but that others are carried. The Americans who escorted Madame Godin, who were paid in advance, according to the bad custom in this country, a custom ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... he should not assume the correlative position. She saw no way of prevention, however, without running a risk of worse. She shrunk altogether from putting on anything; she abhorred tact, and pretence was impracticable with Mary St. John. She resolved that if she saw any definite ground for uneasiness she would return to England, and leave any impression she might have made to wear out in her absence and silence. Things did not seem ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... a net which was a double wall of herring; it had been some time in the water, and many of the fish were dead; they tried their best, but it was impracticable; they laid hold of the solid herring, and when they lifted up a hundred-weight clear of the water, away it all tore, ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... the visitors could only stare blankly at each other. "Rafferty's Ditch," the one notorious failure of Five Forks!—Rafferty's Ditch, the impracticable scheme of an utterly unpractical man!—Rafferty's Ditch, a ridiculous plan for taking water that could not be got to a place where it wasn't wanted!—Rafferty's Ditch, that had buried the fortunes of Rafferty and twenty wretched stockholders in its ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... his cap, and went back to Mr. Thorn, to whom he reported that the young Englishman was thoroughly impracticable, and that there was nothing to be gained by dealing with him; and the vexed conclusion of Thorn's own mind, in the end, was in favour of the wisdom of ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... movement, and had prepared for it. In addition to placing strong guards at the fords of the Hudson, he had formed an intrenched camp on the high grounds between fort Edward and fort George. The scouts sent to examine the route returned with this information, and the plan was abandoned as impracticable. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... antagonism of Mr. Stanton against these two able officers, and to deprive the country for a while of their services. A wiser and more temperate Secretary of War would have filed and ignored it, or sent for the officers and explained why he deemed their advice to be impracticable at that time. That, however, was not Mr. Stanton's way. Although intensely patriotic and in earnest, he was imperious and overbearing both to high and low alike, and preferred to banish and offend rather ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... Labaume. At his death in 1825, his brother Nicholas succeeded, not without opposition, which led to bloodshed and the execution of the five Dekabrists (conspirators of December). The schemes of these men were impracticable; so little did the common people understand the very rudiments of liberalism, that when the soldiers were ordered to shout for Konstitoutzia (the constitution, a word the foreign appearance of which ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... fast asleep—the respectfulness of his carriage was such, he would have retired as silent as death, and left them both in their arm-chairs, dreaming as happy as he had found them: but the thing was, morally speaking, so very impracticable, that for the many years in which this hinge was suffered to be out of order, and amongst the hourly grievances my father submitted to upon its account—this was one; that he never folded his arms to take his nap after dinner, but the thoughts of being unavoidably awakened by the first ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... Conference after "more than four-fifths of its members had left for their circuits." The pacific resolutions of the Upper Canada Conference were negatived by a majority, and it was declared "that a continuance of the more intimate connection established by the articles of 1833 [was] quite impracticable." ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... restored to me; she is so entirely the image of what Agnes was. To possess themselves of my home and property is all that brought them here; and whether as my wife or as my mother-in- law I think Agnes cares little. The first she sees is impracticable, and now to make me wed Gertrude is her aim. ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... and plunge into the hollow road at the moment when Argyll was debouching at the end and coming to the aid of Seyton and Arbroath. Meanwhile, the enemy's detachment had dismounted its infantry, which, immediately formed up, was scattering on the sides of the ravine by paths impracticable ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... whole year. But then it must be considered that there are, independent of the winds, many other inconveniences to be apprehended in the depth of winter, which are almost insuperable. For, at that season, the severity of the cold, and the shortness of the days, would render it impracticable to run so far to the southward as is here recommended. The same reasons would also greatly augment the danger and alarm of sailing, at that season, in the neighbourhood of an unknown shore, dreadful ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... It was impracticable to discuss anything seriously in the presence of Frau von Greifenstein, for her inopportune interruptions rendered any ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... aforesaid, are organized and armed and are so numerous and powerful as to be able to defy the constituted authorities of said State and of the United States within the said State, and by reason of said causes the conviction of such offenders and the preservation of the public peace and safety have become impracticable in ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... felt for his orange growing. When they fail, it is more often through their own incompetence than because some one comes along who is mean enough to take candy from a baby. They usually dissipate their assets by impracticable schemes before the unscrupulous can take them. The only hope for such men is to learn their limitations; to learn that, even though they may be ambitious for commercial success, they are utterly unqualified for it; that, ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... was irretrievably lost. In vain we searched for a way by which we might reach the bottom of the gorge; we were soon convinced that the cliff was utterly impracticable. ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... had begun to feel that the views of the Cabinet in Britain were impracticable: and that even the Civil List might not be so easily defended as Stanley imagined. "I know well by what a slender thread the adhesion of the colony will hang whenever we consent to leave the matter entirely ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... finding a temporary home for my love. I did not know Mrs. Mary Crantock, and I was afraid lest Tamsin Truscott should betray me. At the same time I did not see what else I could do. To take her to Trevose was altogether impracticable; Pennington was just as bad, even worse, while Lawyer Trefry expressly stated that he could not consent for her to be taken to his house. Moreover, I trusted that Naomi by her kindness and winsomeness would make both Mrs. Crantock and Tamsin ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... and impracticable, that London, in its most oppressive fogs, were a summer bower to this mist and sirocco, which has now lasted (but with one day's interval), checkered with snow or heavy rain only, since the 30th of December, 1820. It is so far lucky that I have a literary turn; but it is very tiresome ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... had for long played with the thought that it might possibly be one of those impracticable notions which had whipped Harry Luttrell up to the rupture of their alliance; that after all, it was not that he was tired of a chain. Yes, she ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... continuance of hopeless misery; and were at last whelmed in pits, or heaved into the ocean, without notice and without remembrance. By incommodious encampments and unwholesome stations, where courage is useless, and enterprise impracticable, fleets are silently dispeopled, and armies sluggishly melted away.' Works, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... haulage ways used as traveling ways by persons employed in a mine shall be made of a sufficient width to give not less than three feet of space between the rib and adjacent rail of track to permit persons to pass moving cars with safety. If found impracticable to make such slopes or mechanical haulage ways of sufficient width as provided, refuge holes not less than six feet in width and clearing the adjacent rail of the track not less than four feet, and not more than sixty feet ...
— Mining Laws of Ohio, 1921 • Anonymous
... I remember how my modern ideas were offended by John's familiarity when waiting at table. "Some more wine, John," said his mistress. "There's some i' the bottle, mem," said John. A little after, "Mend the fire, John." "The fire's weel eneuch, mem," replied the impracticable John. Another "John" of my acquaintance was in the family of Mrs. Campbell of Ardnave, mother of the Princess Polignac and the Hon. Mrs. Archibald Macdonald. A young lady visiting in the family asked John at dinner for a potato. John made no ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... formerly advised you. Your vigorous exertions in these matters are the more necessary, as during the apparent, or supposed uncertainty of our affairs, the loan we were directed to obtain of two millions sterling has hitherto been judged impracticable. ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... urging a rule of duty which is at once irrational and impracticable, there is another course, which commends itself to the understandings of all. For whatever may be the practice, of intelligent men, they universally concede the principle, that our physical gratifications should ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... impracticable, as Gwynplaine knew. He remembered Ursus's words, and there was no question possible. He remained standing in front of the wapentake. The latter raised the iron staff from Gwynplaine's shoulder, and drawing it back, held it out straight in an attitude of command—a constable's ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... from fluctuations in the taste of the reading public, there are special reasons why a version of this portion of Horace's works should be a difficult, perhaps an impracticable undertaking. It would not be easy to maintain that a Roman satirist was incapable of adequate representation in English in the face of such an instance to the contrary as Gifford's Juvenal, probably, take ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... of her feigned illness, her thoughts were always employed on the means of getting away. Whenever Leonora and she were together, a hundred contrivances were formed, which seemed equally alike impracticable; but at length they hit upon one which had a promising aspect and Louisa, after some scruples, resolved to make trial of. It ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... mount to the very pinnacle; or bouton of the spire; but the ascent was impracticable—owing to the stair-case being under repair. On the summit of this spire, there once stood a statue of the Virgin, above a cross. That statue was taken down at the end of the fifteenth century, and is now placed over the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... slave property, and the ultimate extinction of the system—had a certain superficial plausibility; and it seemed to avoid the inhumanity of general insurrection. But it was at the best hardly more than a boy's romance, and at the last moment Brown abandoned it for a still more impracticable plan. ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... Autumn, a history of his native state from 722 to 481 B.C. To bring again the golden days of Yao and Shun a return must be made to the principles of Wen and Wu, the kings that had rebuilt the empire after tyranny and selfishness had laid it low. Of impracticable ideals and renunciation of the ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... and is finished with the greatest care and exactness. It was formerly in the Louvre, but it is now unfortunately divided into two parts, one of which is at Berlin, and the other at Ghent. Philip I. of Spain desired to purchase it, but finding that impracticable, he employed Michael Coxis to copy it, who spent two years in doing: it, for which he received 4,000 florins. The king placed this copy in the Escurial, and this probably gave rise to the story that John van Eyck visited ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... said that the route to Oregon was impracticable, and that it was beset with dangerous enemies, and that we could not send troops over to Oregon, nor provisions to feed them. Now, sir, we of Missouri can fit out ten thousand waggon-loads of provisions for Oregon, and ten thousand waggon-boys to drive ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... were greatly delighted with the general look of the country, which exhibited many cultivated spots and beautiful situations; but we could only see a few small huts, whence I concluded no European resided in this part of the island. Much sea ran on the shore, so that landing with a boat was impracticable. At noon I was abreast of a very high head-land; the extremes of the land bore S W 1/2 W, and N N E 1/2 E; our distance off shore being three miles; latitude, by observation, 9 deg. 59' S; and my longitude, by dead reckoning, ...
— A Narrative Of The Mutiny, On Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty; And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew, In The Ship's Boat • William Bligh
... night full dressed and agitated; lying down only for an instant, but having always in his room Joseph and Duroc, and deliberating on a thousand methods of destroying the insolent islanders; all equally violent, but all equally impracticable. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... nations, would have been absurd in so young a people; and for months, and even years, the fierce contests of political parties in the United States made a declaration of war against either aggressor impracticable. Now the Franco-maniacs were in the ascendency, and the country rang with praises of France,—the nation which had cast off aristocrats, and, like America, was devoted to republican principles; the nation which had aided ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... manuscript of the first part of his Memoirs for the press, yet, in perusing the proofs, he found several errors of that kind. It was intended that he should have read the proofs of this part also, but the progress of his disease unfortunately rendered it impracticable. ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... the ancient republics, are we willing to split on the same rock on which we have seen them shipwrecked? Are we willing to give our enemies such a triumph as to fulfil their prophecy and convince the world that self-government is impracticable—a mere chimera—and that man is fit only to be a slave to his fellow man? Are we willing to teach the nations of the earth to despair, and resign themselves at once to the power that crushes them? Shall we forfeit all the bright honors that we ...
— Celebration in Baltimore of the Triumph of Liberty in France • William Wirt
... treated in this manner: in one the common carotid was tied (Mr. Jameson) for haemorrhage from an arterial haematoma in connection with the internal maxillary artery. Although ligature of the external carotid would perhaps have been preferable, the result was excellent. When even this expedient is impracticable, local ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... unfavourably disposed to him might have discovered, before they had known him long, that, with all his cleverness, he was deficient in common sense; that his mind was full of schemes which, at the first glance, had a specious aspect, but which, on closer examination, appeared to be impracticable or pernicious; and that the benefit which the public had derived from one happy project formed by him would be very dearly purchased if it were taken for granted that all his other projects must be equally happy. Disgusted by what he considered as the ingratitude of the English, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Aunt Malinda had set upon the hearth a big pan of bread "sponge," to rise, they industriously dotted its top with lumps of coal from the hod, in imitation of a huckleberry pudding which had appeared at table. They even essayed to eat the mixture; but finding this impracticable set to work to force one another down into the pan of dough—with sufficient success to ruin the new suits they wore as well as Aunt Malinda's "risin'." Having discovered that sugar was sweet they emptied a jar ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... although I have heard that there is certain movement on the part of Germans, especially amongst the war prisoners. I consider it impracticable. At present the military situation is as follows: the Czechs are nearing the Samara-Zlatoust line; in Siberia—there is a very big movement of Czech war prisoners and Russians—to assist the Czechs in their task of reaching the ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... as well as in politics, is distrusted as hypocrisy. Now Uncle Jerry Hollowell was neither oily nor frank; he was long-headed and cautious, and had a reputation for shrewdness and just enough of plasticity of conscience to remove him out of the list of the impracticable and over-scrupulous. This reputation that business men and politicians acquire would be a very curious study. The world is very complacent, and apparently worships success and votes for smartness, but it would surprise some of our most successful men to know what a real ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... not to inflict on her busy uncle the reading of anything entirely impracticable, so she sat with a stern and critical eye as the party mustered in Miss Mohun's drawing-room, and Gillian took ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... expressing a spark of that sentiment, for the purpose of expressing which he had made this journey to Devonshire. It is not pleasant to make love in the presence of a third person, even when that love is all fair and above board; but it is quite impracticable to do so to a married lady, when that married lady's sister is present. No more futile visit than this of Colonel Osborne's to the Clock House was ever made. And yet, though not a word was spoken to which Mr. Trevelyan himself could have taken the slightest exception, the visit, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Norland as to prevent his being of any service to her in removing her furniture. He really felt conscientiously vexed on the occasion; for the very exertion to which he had limited the performance of his promise to his father was by this arrangement rendered impracticable. The furniture was all sent around by water. It chiefly consisted of household linen, plate, china, and books, with a handsome pianoforte of Marianne's. Mrs. John Dashwood saw the packages depart with a sigh: she could not help feeling it ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... elapsed since this occurrence. I have been haunted by perpetual inquietude. To bring myself to regard Carwin without terror, and to acquiesce in the belief of your safety, was impossible. Yet to put an end to my doubts, seemed to be impracticable. If some light could be reflected on the actual situation of this man, a direct path would present itself. If he were, contrary to the tenor of his conversation, cunning and malignant, to apprize you of this, would be to place you in security. If he were merely unfortunate and ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... have so adjusted itself as to become entirely practicable; but as they were allowed to compete with other carriers in the transportation of passengers and merchandise, they were soon able to demonstrate, at least to the satisfaction of Parliament, that the use of the track by different carriers was impracticable and unsafe. A number of circumstances combined to aid the railroad companies in their efforts to monopolize the trade on their lines. In the first place, when the early railroad charters were granted, but few persons had any conception of the enormous growth of commerce ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... as it sounded, was quite impracticable at the present time. The wind had fallen some, but the waves were still so violent that the only safety for the heavily encumbered canoes lay in keeping parallel with the current. A flank movement toward shore ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... have nearly all of them been suggested by considering mere propositions of Political Economy. Some of them are old, or given me by friends: some are, I believe, new: these many persons will set aside as unpractical or impracticable, as that is the approved word by which people indicate that an idea is new to them. The topics of the nine articles have been largely taken from those now under political discussion, but they can hardly be called ephemeral; and, though they do not form a treatise, they will hardly be called disconnected. ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke
... the removal of the Indians, in which the Army has been constantly engaged on the northern and western frontiers and in Florida, have rendered it impracticable to carry into full effect the plan recommended by the Secretary for improving its discipline. In every instance where the regiments have been concentrated they have made great progress, and the best results may be anticipated from a ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren
... chapel exercises for a while, to give place to the proposed enlargement of the room. Hence, at the close of the last meeting previous to this vacation, the warden said, in substance, "We have been holding these meetings several weeks. At first I thought them wholly impracticable in the place, but am truly glad to find I was so greatly mistaken. As an act of simple justice, I feel that I ought to bear testimony, before you all, to the influence they have exerted on the morals of the inmates. Since they commenced, we have not ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... life not from its constant inferiority but from constant self-repression. A common woman finding herself placed in a commanding position might have formed the design to become the second Mrs. de Barral. Which would have been impracticable. De Barral would not have known what to do with a wife. But even if by some impossible chance he had made advances, this governess would have repulsed him with scorn. She had treated him always ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... Claverhouse had apprehended, did not fail to take place. The troopers, who, with Lord Evandale, had rushed down upon the enemy, soon found their disorderly career interrupted by the impracticable character of the ground. Some stuck fast in the morass as they attempted to struggle through, some recoiled from the attempt and remained on the brink, others dispersed to seek a more favourable place to pass the swamp. In the midst of this confusion, the first line of the enemy, of ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... a dreamer—an idealist, a man of impossible aims; his theories, indeed, were beautiful, but impracticable. Vera knew that he expected better things of her; but she had striven to be what he would have desired, and if she had failed, was it her fault? was it not rather the fault of the world and the generation in which her life had ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... "Impracticable! You cannot know, Father, all that love and youth will dare; but I, whose earthly life has given me experience in such matters, have seen the impossibilities of sober minds yield to the irresistible energy of two plighted hearts. Oh, no; ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... have been discovered, and Mr. Shea has diligently availed himself of them. The tastes and studies of many years have made him familiar with this field of research, and prepared him to accomplish an undertaking which would otherwise have been impracticable. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... assure an unbounded field for their successors. To shut out the possibility of complaint, however, Earl Grey sent circulars to all the colonies on this side the Cape of Good Hope. The reply was universally adverse; and this plan, which a few years before would have been gladly accepted, was rendered impracticable perhaps ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... similar body of running water, perfectly clear and transparent, with so many hundred cascades as beautify the Susquana, is perhaps no where else to be met with. Unfortunately these very beauties render the navigation of this noble river impracticable. ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... of the falling stones; and thus our old acquaintance was renewed, and gradually ripened into intimacy; not, I must own, without great patience and constant endeavour on my part; for his gloom and lonely habits rendered him utterly impracticable of access to any (as Lord Aspeden would say) but a diplomatist. I saw a great deal of him during the six months I remained in Italy, and—but you know already how warmly I admire his extraordinary powers ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and nutty taste. There is some difficulty in doing this. Scalding does not do it very well. Strong soda water or lye, will quickly loosen it, so that it may be readily removed by rubbing with the hands, but either fluid would soon convert the Peanut into soap, and is, therefore, impracticable for this purpose. Could some cheap and handy machine be invented, that would remove the skin from the kernel without loss, no doubt large quantities of peanuts would be used for bread-making purposes. Whether or not it would be economical, we ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones
... enables it to estimate, by comparison, the degree of incompleteness in the objects presented to it. But to aim at realizing the ideal in an example in the world of experience—to describe, for instance, the character of the perfectly wise man in a romance—is impracticable. Nay more, there is something absurd in the attempt; and the result must be little edifying, as the natural limitations, which are continually breaking in upon the perfection and completeness of the idea, destroy the illusion in the story and throw an air of suspicion even ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... procure the election of our saint to the patriarchate of that city. He therefore dispatched a secret order to the count of the East, enjoining him to send John to Constantinople, but by some stratagem; lest his intended removal, if known at Antioch, should cause a sedition, and be rendered impracticable. The count repaired to Antioch, and desiring the saint to accompany him out of the city to the tombs of the martyrs, on the pretence of devotion, he there delivered him into the hands of an officer sent on purpose, who, taking him into his chariot, conveyed him with all ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... the heads of their enemies. By these and every other means they attempted to stop Alexander's passage. But he had contrived to send detachments around by circuitous and precipitous paths, which even the mountaineers had deemed impracticable, and thus attack his enemies suddenly and unexpectedly from above their own positions. As usual, his plan succeeded. The mountaineers were driven away, and the conqueror advanced toward the great ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... brought on the long-neglected composer pressing applications for concerti and sonata, adapted to his more peculiar science on the violin. He had been employed for some weeks, day and night, on a piece in which he hoped to excel himself. He took, as usual, one of those seemingly impracticable subjects which it was his pride to subject to the expressive powers of his art,—the terrible legend connected with the transformation of Philomel. The pantomime of sound opened with the gay merriment of a feast. The monarch of Thrace is at his banquet; ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... connected with slavery; and I think that if the Confederate States were left alone, the system would be much modified and amended, although complete emancipation cannot be expected; for the Southerners believe it to be as impracticable to cultivate cotton on a large scale in the South, without forced black labour, as the British have found it to produce sugar in Jamaica; and they declare that the example the English have set them of sudden emancipation in that island is by no means encouraging. They say that ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... window, which was without glass and a mere opening in the wall, without awakening his guard, he could drop out and make for Allan Ramsay's. As soon as he tried to move, however, he found that this idea was for the present impracticable. He felt too weak to lift his head, and, at the slight rustle of straw caused by the attempt, the man opposite ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... classes, because by supplying a verb we may easily parse them as adverbs. I neither adopt the notion of Horne Tooke, that the same word cannot belong to different parts of speech, nor refer every word to that class to which it may at first sight appear to belong; for both of these methods are impracticable and absurd. The essential nature of each part of speech, and every important peculiarity of its individual terms, it is hoped, will be sufficiently explained in some part or other of this work; but, as the classification of words ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... this dying to self, to self-righteous pride, vain confidence, self-love, and self-complacency, is hard work to the old man; yea, it is both impracticable and impossible to him. It is only grace that can conquer and subdue him; and where grace reigns, this work is carried on day by day. And yet the old man of sin, and self-righteousness, still lives ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was everywhere increased. In Erfurt, after the church-yards were filled, twelve thousand corpses were thrown into eleven great pits; and the like might be stated with respect to all the larger cities. Funeral ceremonies, the last consolation of the survivors, were everywhere impracticable. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... him speechless. He arose to his feet, gripping the back of the chair, almost doubting if he could have heard aright, his eyes searching the girl's face which was glowing with excitement. Of course he could not permit of her exposure to such a risk; the scheme was impracticable, absurd. But was it? Did it not offer a fair chance of success? And was not the possible result worthy the risk assumed? He choked back the earlier words of protest unuttered, puzzled as to what he had best say. A quick-witted resourceful woman might ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... are overlooking something which makes the plan impracticable. You see, if you bring one of them home, and one remains behind with the other, there will be three persons there when one of you comes back for that other, for some one must drive the buggy back, and three can't ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... direction of the glacier, east and west — and was thus the shortest. But it is not always the shortest way that is the best; here, in any case, it was to be hoped that another and longer one would offer better conditions. The shortest way was awful — possibly not altogether impracticable, if no better was to be found. First we had to work our way across a hard, smooth slope, which formed an angle of 45 degrees, and ended in a huge, bottomless chasm. It was no great pleasure to cross over here on ski, but with heavily-laden sledges the enjoyment would be still less. The prospect ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... certainly was not a bright one. The door was fast locked. Escape from the windows seemed impracticable. This apparently exhausted the avenues of escape that were open to the dissatisfied prisoner. But accidentally Jack made an ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... round, the roads and the station were all lighted up a giorno, by the thousands of lamps of my kind host. What a strange power of suggestion the darkness has! I thought I had travelled a long way that night, and it seemed to me that the roads were impracticable. It proved to be quite a short distance, and the roads were charming, although they were now covered with snow. Imagination had played a great part during the journey to Edison's house, but reality played a much greater one during the same journey back to the station. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... intermission. People on horseback and on foot, who wanted to return into the city, had been already detained for several successive hours; the crowd every moment increased, and with it the danger. To seek another entrance was impracticable, as a person would run the risk of being detained by the thousands of pickets, and shot, or at least dragged to the filthiest bivouacs. The night was dark as pitch, and no hope left of getting home. It rained fast, and not a corner was to be found where you might take shelter. I was in ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... had a natural dignity which absorbed and surmounted any novelty of circumstance or setting, and was purely a matter of character, depending upon a mind familiar with large interests and launched towards ideal aims. He might be silent, melancholy, impracticable, but never meanly self-conscious. It had rarely occurred to anyone to pity or condescend to ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... an impracticable sound, even to you. You might want to eat some peanut-brittle (you never can tell when someone might offer you peanut-brittle these days), and the new-skin, while serviceable enough in the case of cream ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... 28th February the painful conclusion was come to, that with the slender resources available, it was impracticable to repair the damage done to the Uranie, especially as the original injury had been aggravated by the repeated shocks occasioned by thumping on the beach. "What was to be done?" Should the explorers ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... assistance might possibly avail; you apprehend it will be useless to-morrow, and yet you would have me see him then! If he be, indeed, as dear to you, as your words and manner would imply, why not try to save his life before delay and the progress of his disease render it impracticable?' ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... see the bodies thrown in and go away; so they left importuning him. But no sooner was the cart turned round and the bodies shot into the pit promiscuously, which was a surprise to him, for he at least expected they would have been decently laid in, though indeed he was afterward convinced that was impracticable—I say, no sooner did he see the sight but he cried out aloud, unable to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... connotative terms which imply a classification of the things denoted. Still, we may consider an observation as particular, in comparison with a law that includes it with numerous others in one general proposition. To turn an observation into an experiment, or (where experiment is impracticable) to repeat it with all possible precautions and exactness, and to describe it as to the duration, quantity, quality and order of occurrence of its phenomena, is the first stage of scientific manufacture. Then comes the formulation of an empirical law; and lastly, if possible, deduction ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... is the Army of the Loire; another day it is some mechanical machine; another day dissensions among the Prussian generals; another day the intervention of Russia or Austria. In the meantime, clubs denounce the Government; club orators make absurd and impracticable speeches, the Mayor changes the names of streets, and inscribes Liberte, Egalite, and Fraternite on the public buildings. The journals of all colours, with only one or two exceptions, are filled with lies and bombast, and the people believe ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... suggested that, if he had anything to do in the adjustment of his affairs, he could scarcely do it too soon. At this Mr. Whitelaw groaned aloud. If he could in any manner have adjusted his affairs so as to take his money with him, the suggestion might have seemed sensible enough; but, that being impracticable, it was the merest futility. He had never made a will; it cost him too much anguish to give away his money even on paper. And now it was virtually necessary that he should do so, or else, perhaps, his wealth would, by some occult process, ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... year period stipulated in the charter of 1669 was approaching, and he appealed for a renewal of the grant on the basis that the amount of land intended by Charles II had not been taken up. Considering the restriction an impracticable one, King James II issued a new charter in 1688 with Lord Culpeper as the sole proprietor and with no time limit specified. Through changes and additions prompted by Culpeper's knowledge of Virginia's geography, the area of the grant included in ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.
... collected every shilling that was to be got. Our guide had so often felt the pulse of the whole ward in this way, that he never suffered us to waste our time or our demands upon those whom he knew to be impracticable; and thus we got through the business much more quickly, as well as more prosperously, than we could possibly have done had we been left to our own resources. The result of our united labours was a purse of nearly L.200; and now came the more pleasant part of our duty—the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... method will come into general use, however, is very unlikely, since the expense, the time, and the trouble will be so great that it will be impracticable to use it in every case, especially in hospitals or dispensaries, where crowds of patients have to be attended to in a relatively brief time. In the surgical dispensary alone of the Jefferson Medical ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... been understood to offer the whole $300, it shall be paid, though I have meant as above stated. Among the various ways that have been suggested, has been that of taking all of them into the cars here; that, I think, will be found impracticable. I find so much vigilance at the depot, that I would not deem it safe, though, in any kind of carriage they might leave in ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... who said that the three materials in which sculptors worked—clay, plaster, and marble—were like life, death, and immortality? I thought my own bust (the one Macdonald executed in Edinburgh, you know) very good; the marble is beautiful, and I really think my friend did wonders with his impracticable subject; the shape of the head and shoulders is very pretty. I wonder what Sappho was like! An ugly woman, it is said; I do not know upon what authority, unless her own; but I wonder what kind of ugliness she enjoyed! Among other heads, we saw one of Brougham's mother, a venerable ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the floor with his foot. Himself a single man, without responsibilities, always in fairly good work, he could not invariably sympathise with Hewett's sore and impracticable pride. His own temper did not err in the direction of meekness, but as he looked round the room he felt that a home such as this would drive him to any degree of humiliation. John knew what the young man's thoughts were; he resumed in a voice of ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... river, sometimes to a height of fifty or sixty feet, affording not the slightest footpath on which to tow. At other places the whirls, and rocks partly submerged, rendered a water passage utterly impracticable. At every bar and shallow spot prospected in these wild localities gold was obtained in paying quantities, all of very fine quality—rather difficult to save without the use of quicksilver. From the head of the canons to the forks of Thompson's River, ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... claimed, passion mounts higher than in the Occident, and that morality is, to a certain extent, a matter of climate; and in the presence of large numbers of unmarried soldiers and sailors it is simply "impracticable" to attempt repressive measures in dealing with social vice. These Christians have listened to counsels of despair,—the arguments of gross materialists,—and have shut their eyes to the plainly written THOU SHALT NOT of the finger of God in ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... cruelty familiar to the conquistadores, had added fierce resentment to the natural racial antipathy already existing in the savage tribes of the country, and communication between provinces and towns was difficult in all cases, while in many it was altogether impracticable. There remained numerous bands of roving savages, fierce and predatory, to render travel unsafe; and though the efforts of the missionaries and others brought gentler ways to some in course of time, the whole of the colonial era was characterized ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... should say) by means of stone bridges; so that there is a series of alleys connected by a series of bridges which form the tout ensemble of this city; and you may thus go on foot thro' every part of it. To go on horseback would be dangerous and almost impracticable, for each bridge has a flight of steps for ascent and descent. All this forms such a perfect labyrinth from the multiplicity and similarity of the alleys and bridges, that it is impossible for any ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... modifications of the upper regions of the air can only be learned (when direct observations on mountain stations or aerostatic ascents are impracticable) from hypothetical combinations, by making the barometer serve both as a thermometer and an hygrometer. Important changes of weather are not owing to merely local causes, situated at the place of observation, but are the consequence of a disturbance in the equilibrium of the ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... in which it is impracticable to make the permanent battalion division alphabetically, the flags of a battalion are as shown; flags are assigned to the companies alphabetically, within their respective battalions, in the ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department
... uncommon magnificence; and, although not so curious on the score of antiquity, is yet not destitute of relics of the old warriors of Germany. Among these, those which belonged to my old bibliomaniacal friend Corvinus, King of Hungary, cut a conspicuous and very respectable figure. I fear it will be now impracticable to see the Arsenal as it ought ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... also the agent for the great Duke of Marlborough's estate, both of them appointments which implied a certain degree of intelligence and character. He also at one period was deputy-auditor of the exchequer. Mrs Clayton soon obtained the confidence of that most impracticable of all personages, Sarah, Duchess ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... It seems worth remembering that this day I did hear my Lord Anglesey at the table, speaking touching this new Act for Accounts, say that the House of Lords did pass it because it was a senseless, impracticable, ineffectual, and foolish Act; and that my Lord Ashly having shown this that it was so to the House of Lords, the Duke of Buckingham did stand up and told the Lords that they were beholden to my Lord Ashly, that having first commended them for a most grave ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... and he applied himself to it like an artist. Here he could lay aside that growing discontent, that dissatisfaction, that was growing upon him. Here, in the excitement of distinguishing the better from the worse, he could forget Ruth and the increasingly impracticable condition of ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... be too much alarmed; this is laid down to caution, not to terrify him: it is fit he should know his danger, and attend to it; for the prevention is easy; and the cure, even of the most advanced stages, when undertaken by gentle means, is not at all impracticable: to assist the physician, let him look into himself, and recollect the source of his complaint. This he may judge of from ...
— Hypochondriasis - A Practical Treatise (1766) • John Hill
... He wouldn't be, till twelve o'clock; there was no chance of it. Was there no possibility of sending to fetch him if it were only for an instant, or forwarding to him one line of writing to which he might return a verbal reply? That was quite impracticable. He was not at Golden Square, and probably had been sent to execute ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... showing that, for the resurrection of Ireland, the reconstruction of her past is impossible; parliamentary independence or "home rule," insufficient, physical force and violent revolution, in conjunction with European radicals particularly, is as unholy as it is impracticable. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... nails or wooden pegs in the walls strong enough to hold things, one on each side of the fire-place and one near the door. These would be impracticable with scenery made of screens as any weight on the screen would pull it over. A solid wooden chest, as a carpenter's tool chest, could be substituted to hold the children's wraps and the extra shawl for the old woman. The chest could be ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... winter to the gulf of Juan, and at the moment of leaving he would like to stay behind. He is worried at leaving his children and the little Aurore, but he suffers with the cold, he fears anemia, and he thinks he is doing his duty in going to find a land which the snow does not render impracticable, and a sky under which one can breathe without ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
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