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More "Plausible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... prog," cried Dennis, as Power's servant entered with a very plausible-looking tray, while Fred proceeded to place before us a ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... circumstances which rendered the bragging of our writers over the victory somewhat plausible. Thus they could say with an appearance of truth that the enemy had 63 guns to our 54, and outnumbered us. In reality, as well as can be ascertained from the conflicting evidence, he was inferior in number; but a few men more or less mattered nothing. Both sides had men enough to ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... according to classes, so that a mischievous fellow, charged full of the rebellious imponderable, should find himself between two non-conductors, in the shape of small boys of studious habits. It was managed quietly enough, in such a plausible sort of way that its motive was not thought of. But its effects were soon felt; and then began a system of correspondence by signs, and the throwing of little scrawls done up in pellets, and announced by preliminary a'h'ms! to call the attention ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... monthly rations secured on the whole rent and to be set off against it later. That the quantities are in some sense distributive is certain, "so much each," but whether "each person," "each day," "each month," or "each year" is not stated. One plausible suggestion is that the landlord, like the votary in the Code whose brothers do not content her, let the farm to a man who covenanted to support or maintain him. The contention is strengthened by the fact that the cases known to us are all female landlords, ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... from his introductory speech, to give Old Teazle the Christian name of Solomon. Sheridan was, indeed, most fastidiously changeful in his names. The present Charles Surface was at first Clerimont, then Florival, then Captain Harry Plausible, then Harry Pliant or Pliable, then Young Harrier, and then Frank—while his elder brother was successively Plausible, Pliable, Young Pliant, Tom, and, lastly, Joseph Surface. Trip was originally called Spunge; the name of Snake was in the earlier sketch Spatter, and, even after ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... circumstances. One thing was certain, the muleteer could go no farther up the mountain, and yet he was mortally afraid to return alone to the Kurdish robbers. He sat down, and began to cry like a child. This predicament of their accomplice furnished the zaptiehs with a plausible excuse. They now absolutely refused to go any farther without him. Our interpreter, the Greek, again joined the majority; he was not going to risk the ascent without the Turkish guards, and besides, he had now come to the conclusion that we had not sufficient blankets ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... he—and doubtless they had more reason to be—then he could hardly blame them for falling out. With the morning, he knew, these army-wise soldiers would go down the road until they found their outfits and there pour forth a plausible lie about becoming lost in the tangle and how they had searched ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... Gwilt—or perhaps I ought to say, the woman calling herself by that name—has, to my unspeakable astonishment, openly made her appearance here, in my own parish! She is staying at the inn, accompanied by a plausible-looking man, who passes as her brother. What this audacious proceeding really means—unless it marks a new step in the conspiracy against Allan, taken under new advice—is, of course, more than ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... then, that a very plausible ground of attack may be taken up against the Church of England, from the circumstance that she is separated from the rest of Christendom; and just such a ground as it would be allowable for private ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... in the course of a sermon against Papal Infallibility, recently used the following language: "For my part, I have an infallible Bible, and this is the only infallibility that I require." This assertion, though plausible at first sight, cannot for a moment stand the test ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... was not a person given to the disguise of her own feelings. She was plausible enough to the outer world. To herself she was quite frank, and hardly seemed to recognise this as the event she had most desired. It is to be presumed that her heart was like her physical self, a large, unwieldy thing, over which she had not a proper ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... loiterers. Those who at once would have disbelieved the imputed guilt of Antagoras upon motives merely political, inclined to a suggestion that ascribed it to the jealousy of a lover. And his character, ardent and fiery, rendered the suspicion yet more plausible. Meanwhile the minds of the audience had been craftily drawn from the grave and main object of the meeting—the flight of the Persians—and a lighter and livelier curiosity had supplanted the eager and dark resentment which ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... on all sides. But, a comet's tail shoots off into space in a straight line of one hundred millions of miles, and frequently as much as ten millions of miles in a single day, as in the case of the comet of 1843. Sir John Herschel observes, that "no rational or even plausible account has yet been rendered of those immensely luminous appendages which they bear about with them, and which are known as their tails." Yet, he believes, and astronomers generally believe, that a comet shines by reflected light. This theory of reflexion is the incubus which clogs the question ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... unexpectedly strong witness they bear to the wholly interior and mystical experience of the man. They testify, moreover, to the real and objective character of that leading which he was constrained to follow; and not only that. They do so in a way which furnishes a convincing reply to a very plausible doubt as to whether the narrow and uncongenial surroundings of his early life might not, by themselves, be sufficient to explain the discontent of a poetic and ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... and examined the chain, but found none of the links or fastenings damaged. This was puzzling, and he wondered whether the man he had seen, knowing that somebody was about, had stolen away without beginning what he came to do. The explanation was plausible, but left Charnock uncertain who the fellow was. He suspected Wilkinson, but only because he could think of nobody else with any ground for wishing to do him ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... disposition, which young men may if they please call cowardice and sloth, so long as we have the consolation to reflect, that though hitherto the measures of others have always appeared on the first view of them the more plausible, mine on experience have proved the sounder. The other imputation is that of jealousy and envy towards the daily increasing glory of this most valiant consul. But if neither my past life and character, nor a dictatorship, ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... "the argument sounds not only plausible, but reasonable, and inexperienced persons might use the argument, believing it to be a sound and good one. I must, however, confess that I have been surprised to see this argument used by persons who must surely know that there is no ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... the commandant walked up and down the room, reflecting upon the best method of proceeding. "He says it was a spectre, and he has told a plausible story," thought he; "but I don't know—I have my doubts; they may be tricking me. Well, be it so. If the money is there, I will have it; and if not, I will have my revenge. Yes! I have it: not only must they be removed, but by degrees all the others too who assist ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... or crudeness, . . . 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' has the plausibility, the perfect adaptation to reason and life, which belongs to the marvellous, when actually presented as part of a credible experience in our dreams. . . . The spectral object, so crude, so impossible, has become plausible, as 'the spot upon the brain that will show itself without,' and is understood to be but a condition of one's own mind, for which—according to the scepticism latent at least in so much of our modern philosophy—the so-called real things themselves are but spectra after ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... extremely plausible, but doubts of its intrinsic value must, I think, occur to every one who has marked the result of a different system throughout ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... procession to proceed. Soon after the friars got up another procession on a funeral occasion. The magistrates, apprehensive that this was a trap to excite them to some opposition which would render it plausible for the emperor to interfere, suffered the procession to proceed unmolested. In a few days the monks repeated the experiment. The populace had now become excited, and there were threats of violence. ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... elaborate exposition of his own affairs and a specious and equally elaborate defense and justification of himself and denunciation of his accusers. For nearly half an hour he reviewed step by step and detail by detail the charges against him—with plausible explanation and sophistical argument, but always with a singular prolixity and reiteration that spoke of incessant self-consciousness and self-abstraction. Of that dashing self-sufficiency which had dazzled his friends ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and indisputable proof of the treachery which before he scarcely doubted, but could not demonstrate. The present instance of it has to do with himself, not his father, but in itself would justify the slaying of his uncle, whose plausible way had possibly perplexed him so that he could not thoroughly believe him the villain he was: bad as he must be, could he actually have killed his own brother, and such a brother? A better man than Laertes might have acted more promptly than Hamlet, and so happened to do right; ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... motives for advocating the laissez faire policy were, however, mainly political and economic.[208] The ready acceptance of this doctrine must be attributed largely to the fact that it offered a plausible ground for opposing the burdensome restraints of the old system ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... that the lender in some way gives the loan to the borrower; that the borrower becomes somewhat the owner of the property. The borrower is encouraged in this illusion and it becomes a plausible basis for ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... with the derivation of Mali from mala, a garland, makes it a plausible hypothesis that the calling of the first Malis was to grow flowers for the adornment of the gods, and especially for making the garlands with which their images were and still are decorated. Thus the Malis were intimately connected with the gods and naturally ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... victors should never be vindictive," said Cap, laughing, for, though knowing him to have been violent and unjust, she did not suspect him of being treacherous and deceitful, or imagine the base designs concealed beneath his plausible manner. Her brave, honest nature could understand a brute or a ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... command the respect of the most critical; or they may involve impossibilities. The extremes are the best; the former for their intrinsic value, the latter from their unlikelihood to mislead. The most dangerous are the intermediate. Possibly, plausible, or, at any rate, without any outward and ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... days of the Commonwealth. But so soon as we come to inquire into the matter we find that this good Bishop was borrowing from the ideas of others who had gone before him; and, look back as far as we will, mankind is discovered to have entertained persistent and often plausible ideas of human flight. And those ideas had in some sort of way, for good or ill, taken practical shape. Thus, as long ago as the days when Xenophon was leading back his warriors to the shores of the Black Sea, and ere the Gauls had first ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... sufferers by it would naturally seek for a mitigation of the burden. The others would as naturally be disinclined to a revision, which was likely to end in an increase of their own incumbrances. Their refusal would be too plausible a pretext to the complaining States to withhold their contributions, not to be embraced with avidity; and the non-compliance of these States with their engagements would be a ground of bitter discussion and altercation. If ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... whether there exists a parallel instance of a phrase, that like this of "horns" is universal in all languages, and yet for which no one has discovered even a plausible origin. ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... committed suicide by strangulation, but had been set on and stabbed with his own sword. In that case, of course, the brothers would have removed his rings and money, to prove that he had been robbed. The other theory, plausible enough, held that Godfrey was killed by Catholics, NOT because he took Oates's deposition (which he was bound to do), but because he officiously examined a number of persons to make discoveries. The Attorney-General at the trial of Godfrey's alleged murderers (February 1679), ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... their first trip. Bad manners can do it very easily. Sometimes they make themselves so objectionable that the customer will buy to get rid of them, especially if the purchase does not involve more than a dollar or two. Sometimes they carry the customer along so smoothly with plausible arguments that they persuade him to buy something that he knows he does not want. It is all right so long as the salesman is present, but discontent follows in his trail. Sometimes—stocks and bonds salesmen are guilty here—they wheedle the customer into buying more than he can afford, beginning ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... merit of the resolution must remain with the man who bore the responsibility of the event; but that he reached it at such a moment only after consultation with another, to whom current gossip attributed the chief desert, must be coupled with the plausible claim afterwards advanced for Sir Charles Douglas, that he suggested the breaking of the enemy's line on April 12th. Taken together, they indicate at least a common contemporary professional estimate of Rodney's temperament. No such anecdote is transmitted of ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... of the best-known and richest peers in England to promise support, when we spoilt his game. No one would prosecute. He always had luck, had Goldenburg. He's been at the back of a score of big things, but we could never get legal proof against him. He was a cunning rascal—educated, plausible, reckless. Well, he's gone now, and he's given us as tough a nut to crack as ever he did ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... in front of him, and thought of the famine of porters at Waterloo Station in August, and invented several other plausible excuses for a resolution which he foresaw that he was about to ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... case now, and whenever there was a collection of valuable MSS. in the market he often prided himself on having secured it long before any other library had the money ready. Now and then, it is true, he allowed himself to be persuaded by a plausible seller of rare books or MSS., but generally he was very wary. He was not always very courteous to visitors, and still less so to his under-librarians. The Oriental under-librarian Professor Reay, in ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... that Douglas had wittingly suppressed a clause in the original Toombs bill, which provided for a submission of the constitution to a popular vote. The circumstances were such as to make the charge plausible, and Douglas, in his endeavor to clear himself, made hasty and unqualified statements which were manifestly incorrect. In his own bill for the admission of Kansas, Douglas referred explicitly to "the election for the adoption of the Constitution."[577] The wording of the clause ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... order to have excuse for writing a passage which one would say was obviously inspired by that gorgeous description of the jungle in The Research Magnificent. Mr. BARKER has enough matter for two (or three) novels and enough skill in portraiture to make them more coherent and plausible than this. The theme is old but freshly seen. Tom Seton, resolved to avoid risking for his beloved the unhappiness which his mother had found in the bondage of marriage, offers her—indeed imposes on her—a free union. How the pressure of The Great Leviathan (Mrs. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... former friend, Lucia Horton; but she never told the story of the night when, misled by Lucia's plausible story, she had tried to defeat the loyalty of the settlers by setting their liberty tree adrift. As she looked up at the tall sapling, the emblem of the loyalty of the settlement, she was proud indeed that she had been ...
— A Little Maid of Old Maine • Alice Turner Curtis
... or whatever measures a disinterested and capable statesman might devise, he would only aggravate the evil. Sir Henry Maine would seem to be nearly as despondent. Hence his book is fuller of apprehension than of guidance, more plausible in alarm than wise or useful in direction. It is exclusively critical and negative. There Is, indeed, an admirable account of the constitution of the United States. But on the one great question on which the constitution of the United ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... your way to the goad of your hope, O plausible Mr. Perkins, You'll need ten tons of the softest soap And butter a thousand firkins. The soap you could put to a better use In washing your hands of ambition Ere the butter's used for cooking your goose ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... inseparable from speculation. Thus the production of a musical composition, even though it be very mediocre, will furnish to our co-religionists a plausible reason for elevating on a pedestal and surrounding with a halo the Jew who will be the author of it. As for the sciences, medicine and philosophy, they must equally be a part of ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... A plausible answer has been Italian mind, we are told, never of the hierarchy, while the origin given to this question. The went further than the denial and the vigor of the German Reformation was due to its positive religious doctrines, most ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... always appalled me. The sneer 'another actress being divorced' made me a coward. He knew that; he had found it out, somehow; his great talent was in bringing weaknesses to the surface. He detailed the charges he would bring against me; every one of them was a lie, but they were so ingenious, so plausible, so unutterably slimy that I couldn't bear up against them. It was in that way he broke ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... said, "your story is not even plausible. The articles are missing, and there was no one but yourself and Florence who were in a position to take them. Do you wish me to think that my Cousin ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... sense of certain distinctions than that which is observed nowadays, preferred to speak of as his manoir. This manor-house still preserved its fifteenth and sixteenth century character, when a fire breaking out destroyed everything but the walls, and gave M. Magne a plausible excuse for the demolition. A part that was spared by the fire, and was therefore suffered to remain intact, was the almost isolated tower, to which Montaigne withdrew for the sake of quiet and meditation, and which is so well known to all readers of his 'Essays.' ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... be impartial in the distribution of their patrimony among their children. They should never give one more than another unless for very plausible and Christian reasons, such as bad health, peculiar circumstances, of want, &c. They should have no pets, no favorites among them; and care more for one than for another, or indulge one more than another. Neither should they withhold ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... learn from them was that Susie Rolliffe had kept her word and had been to the farm more than once; but the girl had been as reticent as the mother. Zeke was now on his way home to prosecute his suit in person, and Zeb well knew how forward and plausible he could be. There was no deed of daring that he would not promise to perform after spring opened, and Zeb reasoned gloomily that a present lover, impassioned and importunate, would stand a better chance than an absent one who had never been ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... Montauban, and that we had met in Paris. He had once shown me her photograph and I believed I was not mistaken that she was Mademoiselle Jacquelot. At first she was surprised, but I told her a very plausible story, whereupon she explained that Charles had gone to Toulouse on business three days before, but that he was returning at noon to-morrow. She ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... and women who ask for evidence, or at least for plausible argument, proving the reasonableness of immortality? What can be said ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... thoroughly acquainted with the several political Institutions and Charters of the Colonies as well as the nature of free Governments in general before he explicitly & officially declares such an Opinion. I wish a Consideration that he has to correspond with the most artful plausible and insinuating Geniusses, & some of them the most malicious Enemies of the common Rights of Mankind, might induce his Lordship to be upon his Guard against too suddenly giving full Credit to their Representations, which perhaps was the capital mistake ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... of the Press there has been present, first, as a doctrine plausible and arguable; next, as a tradition no longer in touch with reality; lastly, as an hypocrisy still pleading truth, a certain definition of the functions of the Press; a doctrine which we must thoroughly grasp before proceeding to the nature of the Press ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... excepting the bequests to her, she must have had access to that before having this one written. Of course that helps to make it look as if the testator had changed his mind only as to the one legatee—makes it look plausible and genuine. The witnesses were of course parties to the fraud, but I seriously question our ability to prove there was fraud. We think they procured a copy of the will we kept in our safe at Butte through the clerk that Tafe fired awhile back because ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... of thing sounds extremely plausible, of course; and if there were no other explanation for your obstinacy—. But as it ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... three very striking coincidences out of the whole ninety cases, in which it would seem evident that the medicine produced the relief, though it had, as we assumed, nothing to do with it. Now suppose that the physician publishes these cases, will they not have a plausible appearance of proving that which, as we granted at the outset, was entirely false? Suppose that instead of pills of starch he employs microscopic sugarplums, with the five' million billion trillionth part of a suspicion of aconite ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... perhaps whether) it has not been used before. Inside also I found excellent entertainment. One supposes the author to have been confronted with two main problems with regard to her plot—how to make sufficiently plausible the marriage between a flapper (if you will forgive the odious word) of seventeen and a middle-ageing Anglo-Indian; and, secondly, how to impart any touch of novelty to the inevitable catastrophe that must attend this union. The first she has managed by a very cunning ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... overwhelming spouse, is one of the sort that finds a new religion every few months and is now in the first fast furious throes of her latest, which is some form of psychomania, whereof the high priest is one Beverley, a plausible ringletted charlatan of alcoholic tendencies (Sludge the Medium, without his cringe and snarl), who ekes out his spasmodic visitations of genuine psychic illumination with the most shameless ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... Cleopatra would expect to see him there in accordance with his promise. At this juncture he was annoyed to miss his friend Lysias, for he wished to avoid offending the queen; and the Corinthian, who at this moment was doubtless occupied in some perfectly useless manner, was as clever in inventing plausible excuses as he himself was dull in such matters. He hastily wrote a few lines to the friend who shared his tent, requesting him to inform the king that he had been prevented by urgent business from appearing among ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... under the guise of "natural curiosity." All she had to do was to make the call seem sufficiently casual and to time her arrival at the doctor's office at an hour when he could not possibly be in it. As a newcomer, such a mistake would seem quite plausible and could be passed over easily with "How stupid of me! I should have known." After that the nurse would probably invite her to wait. And, even if she did not, the mere exchange of question and answer would probably ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... rule in conducting inquiries of this nature to adopt the French method of "reconstituting" the incidents of a crime, so far as such a course was possible in the absence of the persons concerned. He reasoned that a very plausible explanation of the unexpected appearance of the three strangers in the Albert Gate mansion on Monday night had been given to Jack Talbot. This young gentleman, it might be taken for granted, had not been selected by the Foreign Office to carry to a successful issue such an ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... other, and it is treason to the pure truth of this teaching to cloud and confuse it with the thoughts of men whose Master was over their heads often, but most of all here. Such a statement of the case is plausible, and judging from the frequency with which it occurs must to some minds be very convincing, but nothing could be more superficial, or more unjust both to Jesus and the apostles. A parable is a comparison, and there is a point of comparison in it ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... You know, Griffin, I must have something plausible to tell the admiral; it will never do to have it published in the gazette that we were thrashed ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment. I did not like to walk at this hour alone with Mr. Rochester in the shadowy orchard; but I could not find a reason to allege for leaving ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... into a somewhat plausible form by the brilliant and imposing generalizations of Aug. Comte. The religious phenomena of the world are simply one stage in the necessary development of mind, whether in the individual or the race. He claims to have been the first to discover ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... of these the witness, a Sergeant Major, makes a suggestion which appears plausible, namely, that the German gunners use any conspicuous building as a mark to verify their ranges rather than for the purpose of destruction. It would be quite according to the modern system of what German writers call ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... waiting and the fretful impatience of the past few days there were only two plausible ways in which to treat such a letter. One way was with anger. One way was with amusement. With conscientious effort Stanton finally summoned a real smile to ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... know, alas! more of this evil and slanderous world than your happy inexperience can do. Who will receive our testimony? None—no, not one. The difficulty—the insuperable moral difficulty is this—that I should expose myself to the plausible imputation of having worked upon you, unduly, for this end; and more, that I could not hold myself quite free from blame. It is your voluntary goodness, Maud. But you are young, inexperienced; and it is, I hold it, my duty to stand between you and any dealing with your property at so unripe an age. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... the story was much better worth listening to than it had been when Barron had first presented it to Flaxman. By dint of much brooding, and under the influence of an angry obstinacy which must have its prey, Barron had made it a good deal more plausible than it had been to begin with, and would no doubt make it more plausible still. He had brought in by now a variety of small local observations bearing on the relations between the three figures in the drama—Hester, Alice Puttenham, ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... firmness, or his decision. He and his men pretended to be Kentuckians who had become disgusted with the Lincoln government and were making their way South, where they might find more congenial company than that of the ardent Union men who were their neighbors at home. This story was plausible on the face of it, for many Southern sympathizers had fled from Tennessee and Kentucky when the Federals began to take possession of ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... of painting and criticism have arisen and flourish whose only reason for existence is the extreme facility with which this confusion is made in European languages. It sounds so plausible that some have censured Michael Angelo for bad drawing because men are not from 9 to 15 or 16 heads high, and have not muscles so developed as the gods and Titans of his creation. And others have objected to the angels, the ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... tolerably plausible, and Jack was unable to gainsay it, though it was disagreeable to him to think of even a nominal connection between Ida ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... the construction of the verse points to 1588 or at earliest to 1587 as the date. Mr. Fleay's suggestion of 1589-90 may be accepted as the earliest likely date[223]. To my mind it would need external proof of an unusually cogent description to render plausible the theory that the year, say, of the Shepherd's Calender saw the appearance of ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... good-natured not to wish that they might get there, and did not like the notion of their going with perfect strangers. Here was a compromise. His nephew was young, but still he was a near relation, and in fact it gave the poor old man a plausible excuse for not exerting himself as he felt he ought to do, which was all he ever required for shifting his responsibilities and duties upon ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... give him. On the battle-field he seems to have been wanting even in personal courage, as he certainly was in power to handle his troops; but in society he was quite a lion. He had a smooth courteous manner and a plausible tongue which paid little heed to the difference between truth and falsehood. His lies were not very ingenious, and so they were often detected and pointed out. But while many people were disgusted by his selfishness and trickery, there were always some who insisted that he was ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... heads and semi-intelligent faces, seen peeringly uprising from the water alongside. In the sea, under certain circumstances, seals have more than once been mistaken for men. But the bodings of the crew were destined to receive a most plausible confirmation in the fate of one of their number that morning. At sun-rise this man went from his hammock to his mast-head at the fore; and whether it was that he was not yet half waked from his sleep (for sailors sometimes go aloft in a transition ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... of the anus as a sexual aim. But it should not be interpreted as espousing a cause when I observe that the basis of this loathing—namely, that this part of the body serves for the excretion and comes in contact with the loathsome excrement—is not more plausible than the basis which hysterical girls have for the disgust which they entertain for the male genital ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... Priests in the preceding catalogue, and repeats them at the expiration of weeks and months; and the question is this: how is it possible that she could have become acquainted with so many of that body, and by what means can she so precisely depict their external appearance?—The startling, but the only plausible answer which can be given to that question is this:— that she has seen them in the Nunnery, whither, as she maintains, most of them constantly resorted for licentious intercourse ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... term arose, it has been said, from the use of the copper cent with its head of Liberty as a peace button. But a more plausible explanation associates the peace advocates with the ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... very easily; but, then, Col. Anglesea was a very plausible person, and Mr. Force was one of the ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... difficulties of the subject through the desire of making it intelligible and attractive to unlearned readers. He never tampers with the truth of science, nor attempts to dodge the solution of a knotty problem behind a cloud of plausible illustrations. The numerous illustrations which accompany every chapter are of unquestionable value in the comprehension of the text, and come next to actual experiment as an aid to ...
— Publisher's Advertising (1872) • Anonymous
... judgement, if your Nine Comedies, whereunto in imitation of Herodotus, you give the names of the Nine Muses (and in one man's fancy not unworthily), come not nearer Ariosto's comedies, either for the fineness of plausible elocution, or the rareness of poetical invention, than that Elvish Queen doth to his Orlando Furioso, which notwithstanding you will needs seem to emulate, and hope to overgo, as you flatly professed yourself in ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... defeat. But these thoughtful people were always a small minority. They were able to impose their will upon a reluctant or indifferent majority partly because the increasingly offensive nature of German military and diplomatic policy made plausible opposition to American participation very difficult, but still more because of the overwhelming preponderance of pro-Ally conviction in the intellectual life of the country. If the several important ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... had come opportunely, since the sale of a portion afforded Plutina plausible excuse for her trip to Joines' store. There, a telephone had been recently installed, and it was the girl's intention to use this means of communication with the marshal. That the danger of detection was great, she was unhappily aware, but, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... what is there set down to agree with what we have said. I have said so much out of a desire that my readers may know that we speak nothing but the truth, and do not compose a history out of some plausible relations, which deceive men and please them at the same time, nor attempt to avoid examination, nor desire men to believe us immediately; nor are we at liberty to depart from speaking truth, which is the proper commendation of an historian, and yet be blameless: but we insist ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... an effort to clear himself, he exhibits the foulest stains. He thinks he made a most plausible excuse when he said, "Am I my brother's keeper?" But this very excuse becomes his most shameful accusation. The maxim of Hilary, that wickedness and stupidity always go hand in hand, finds unvarying application. If Cain had been as wise as he was wicked, he ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... the extent to which she had already betrayed her disappointment, believed that anxiety for her father's health, which she alleged as the motive of her sudden departure, was an excuse plausible enough to blind her friends to her overpowering reluctance to speak to Agatha or endure her presence; to her fierce shrinking from the sort of pity usually accorded to a jilted woman; and, above all, to her dread of meeting Trefusis. ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... to say here, parenthetically, that later inquiry proved the truth of Hewitt's supposition. Twice or three times Mr. Telfer had been hypnotised in a friend's chambers, by a plausible tall man whose acquaintance his host had made at some public scientific gathering. And in the end it became possible to identify this man ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... to be sure, an old man in years, he had occasionally an elfin, Puck-like perversity which was singularly boyish, at which times she felt it obligatory for her own self-respect to call him to order. Thus, whenever Tutt seemed to be incubating some evasion of law which seemed more subtly plausible than ordinary she made it a point to call it to Mr. Tutt's attention. Also, whenever, as in the present case, she felt that by following the advice given by the junior member of the firm a client was about to embark upon some ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... way in a very short time. Our conversation, it appeared, was overheard by one of the men we had shipped at Batavia. We had had a good deal of insubordination among the crew since we left that place, and we traced it all to that man, Miles Badham, as he called himself. He was about thirty, very plausible and insinuating in his manner, a regular sea-lawyer, a character very dangerous on board ship, and greatly disliked by most captains. He had managed to gain a considerable influence over the crew, especially ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... a pistol thrust into my face. "What if 'they' should include Roebuck!" And just as a man begins to defend himself from a sudden danger before he clearly sees what the danger is, so I began to act before I even questioned whether my suspicion was plausible or absurd. I went into the hall, rang the bell, slipped a lightweight coat over my evening dress and put on a hat. When Sanders appeared, I said: "I'm going out for a few minutes—perhaps an hour—if anyone should ask." A moment later I was ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... somewhat the protectionist leaders of the Republican organization. It was believed that a slight concession might prevent a more radical action, and just before the campaign a ten per cent reduction was brought about. In 1873 the industrial depression so lowered the revenues as to present a plausible opportunity for restoring duties to their former level in 1875, where they remained for ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... was presented first, the results for four out of five subjects were just reversed. For short distances the filled space was underestimated, for long distances the filled space was overestimated. A very plausible explanation for these anomalous results is again to be found in the influence of the time factor. The open space seemed longer while it was being traversed, but rapidly foreshortened after it was left for the filled space. While on the other hand, if the ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... very plausible reasoning does not convince me, as it has not convinced the wisest of our Statesmen, that our ancestors erred in laying it down as an axiom of policy that the toleration of Irregularity is incompatible with the safety of the State. Doubtless, the life of an Irregular is hard; but the interests ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... bluntly, for it has been more than once implied that Charlotte Bronte was in love with M. Heger, as her prototype Lucy Snowe was in love with Paul Emanuel. The assumption, which is absolutely groundless, has had certain plausible points in its favour, not the least obvious, of course, being the inclination to read autobiography into every line of Charlotte Bronte's writings. Then there is a passage in a printed letter to Miss Nussey which ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... good-night to his mother. Caesar at once followed suit, alleging his desire to go to the Vatican to bid farewell to the pope, as he would not be able to fulfil this duty an the morrow, his departure being fixed at daybreak. This pretext was all the more plausible since the pope was in the habit of sitting up every night till two or three o'clock ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... The reasoning was plausible enough; Basine gave way, and David went. Petit-Claud was just taking leave as he came up and at his cry of "Lucien!" the two brothers flung their arms about each other with tears ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... contributions were especially commended, and some of them were forthwith sung by professed vocalists in the principal towns. Much speculation arose respecting the authorship, and various conjectures were supported, each with plausible arguments, by the public journalists. In these circumstances, Lady Nairn experienced painful alarm, lest, by any inadvertence on the part of her friends, the origin of her songs should be traced. While the publication of the "Minstrel" was proceeding, her correspondents ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... must also remonstrate against the maltreatment and confinement of our officers—this, I am informed, is not only the case of those in Philadelphia, but of many in New York. Whatever plausible pretences may be urged to authorize the condition of the former, it is certain but few circumstances can arise to justify that of the latter. I appeal to you to redress these several wrongs; and you will remember, ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... men would find their outlet with no danger of competition with Europeans; where a new educational and representative system could be evolved for Natives to live their own lives, and work out their salvation in a separate sphere. But the lands Commission's Report places this plausible scheme beyond the region of possibility, for no native area, recommended by this Commission, includes any of the ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... moral, and social status, his past record, present affairs, and future purposes. A formality to be expected by all such as travel in war time, it had been rigid but mild in contrast with this eleventh-hour inquisition—a proceeding so drastic and exhaustive that the only plausible inference was official determination to find excuse for ordering somebody ashore in irons. Nothing was overlooked: once passports and other proofs of identity had been scrutinized, each passenger was conducted to his stateroom and his person and luggage subjected to painstaking search. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... naked before their own husbands, affecting a plausible pretense of modesty," writes Clement of Alexandria, about the end of the second century, "but any others who wish may see them at home, shut up in their own baths, for they are not ashamed to strip ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Wang Ho replied that his enterprise consisted in forecasting the winning numbers for State Lotteries and not in solving enigmas, writing deprecatory odes, composing epitaphs or conducting any of the other numerous occupations that could be mentioned. As this plausible evasion was accompanied by the courteous display of the many weapons which he always wore at different convenient points of his attire, the incident invariably ended in a manner satisfactory to ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... was no reason why they should have made a world. They seemed to be living as divine a life without it as with it. The question was one which persisted in Asiatic thought, and when Christianity became dominant in Europe, much of its theologians' time was spent in answering it. The only plausible answer then was that God made the world because He felt like it. For no reason could be given sufficiently compelling to sway the will of the Omnipotent. But such an answer was unsatisfactory to the Greek. In his philosophy all this is changed. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... Napoleon, should be given for the only victory in which he beat the Emperor in person. We believe that many Peninsular officers, puzzled to account for the constant and seemingly causeless refusal of the coveted decoration, hold the same opinion with Mr Grattan. We esteem it rather plausible than sound. The names Of WELLINGTON and WATERLOO would not the less be immortally associated because a cross bearing those of PENINSULA and PYRENEES, or any other appropriate legend, shone upon the breasts of that "old Spanish ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... have acquired immense renown for their ingenious and plausible system of phrenology. These eminent philosophers have by a novel and wonderful process divided that which is indivisible, and parcelled out the human mind into several small lots, which they call "organs," numbering and labelling them like the drawers ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... I am no more able to answer than yourself. There seems, however, only one plausible way of accounting for them—and yet it is dreadful to believe in such atrocity as my suggestion would imply. It is clear that Kidd—if Kidd indeed secreted this treasure, which I doubt not—it is clear that he must have had assistance in the labor. But this labor concluded, he may have ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... was captured, and a number of other rebels of less importance were equally unfortunate. Some of the refugees made a public demonstration from Vermont, but precipitately fled before a small force which met them. At St. Eustache, one Girod, a plausible, mendacious Swiss or Alsatian, who had become a leader in the rebellious movement, and Dr. Chenier, a rash but courageous man, collected a considerable body of rebels, chiefly from St. Benoit, despite the remonstrances of Mr. Paquin, the cure of the village, and defended the stone church ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... Sandy turned up, minus their biplane, which the government of Colombia had seized on some plausible pretext, though paying liberally for the same. But they were soon at work constructing another, which they claimed would far exceed the one that ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... clever, and had the advantage of knowing both French and English thoroughly. Nevertheless he was a bad fellow. He consorted with rogues; he got into scrapes; many times he saw the inside of an English prison. But so plausible was Simon Watts—as he called himself on the Warren's Grove farm—that Aunt Lydia was completely taken in by him. She esteemed him a valuable servant, and rather spoiled him with good living. Simon, keeping ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... Green or of Professor Sidgwick, and gained a first class at either University, he would, as I always felt, have remarked that the debaters did not know what they were talking about. So far as the discussions were properly metaphysical, the remark would have been more than plausible. With certain conspicuous exceptions, which I shall not specify, it was abundantly clear that the talk was the talk of amateurs, not of specialists. I do not speak from conjecture when I say, for example, that certain ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... very true," said the mayor, "as it is very plausible; if you have evidence to prove what you ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... Kuhraeuber at table; and an insatiable curiosity displayed by the baroness in regard to other people's correspondence and servants—every postcard she read, every envelope she examined, every telegram, for some always plausible reason, she thought it her duty to open: and her interest in the doings of the maids was unquenchable. "These are little ways," thought Anna, "that don't matter." And she thought it impatiently, for the little ways persisted in obtruding themselves on her remembrance in the middle of ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... rigidly limited, and confined almost wholly to munitions of war, or to raw material used in their construction. But international law went by the board early in the war. Each belligerent was able to ascribe plausible reasons for its amendment out of recognizable form. Great Britain established blockades two hundred miles away from the blockaded ports because the submarines made the old practice of watching at the ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... presence—intellectual tombstones over a lost and forgotten race, yet sufficient after twenty-six centuries of silence to solve in some measure the ethnic puzzle of the lost tribes of Israel. In regard to this second hypothesis, it is certainly more plausible and cannot be so curtly disposed of as the Spanish theory.... So far from being copied one from the other, they are in fact independent and original versions of a once common legend, or series of legends, ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... with incalculable mischief, and which the considerate sense of the people has rejected, could have had countenance in no part of the country had they not been disguised by suggestions plausible in appearance, acting upon an excited state of the public mind, induced by causes temporary in their character and, it is to be hoped, transient in ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... her theory seemed very plausible to me, though my friend Jenks, who was an exceedingly precise, matter-of-fact man, could not see any foundation for ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... according to treaty, when demanded, were the cause of this war, methinks I both heard our King Cluilius (assert), and I doubt not, Tullus, but that you state the same thing. But if the truth is to be told, rather than that which is plausible, the desire of dominion stimulates two kindred and neighbouring states to arms. Nor do I take upon myself to determine whether rightly or wrongly: be that his consideration who commenced the war. The ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... his thoughts like a man amid tossing waves, groping about in the dark for a plank to float upon, but could find none. Still, in spite of himself, in spite of his violent asseverations that "it was IMPOSSIBLE;" in spite of Cadet's plausible theory of robbers,—which Bigot at first seized upon as the likeliest explanation of the mystery,—the thought of Angelique ever returned back upon ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... month very delectable. For mental recreation he read fairly widely in literature, observed the habits of insects, with the microscope as well as the naked eye. He also sometimes drew ink or charcoal sketches of his visitors and himself. A fairly plausible rumor has it that Rembrandt was his teacher. Unfortunately, all of ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... their strength was waning. Dick wanted to kill the other dog. His argument was plausible. The toboggan was now very light. The men could draw it. They would have the dog-meat to recruit ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... intricate process of counterfeiting depicted, and the audience, as audiences did in Shakespeare's time when a sign represented a forest or a tree or a mountain, allowed its imagination to make the thing seem plausible. ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... to Balthazar to-day," she replied. "Stay and dine with us. If he happens to ask why you came, find some plausible pretext, I entreat you. Give me the letter. I will speak to him myself about it. All is well," she added, noticing the lawyer's surprise. "In a few months my husband will probably pay off all the ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... take up their abodes in the inhospitable wilds of Nova Scotia, or on the barren shores of the Bahama Islands. Parliamentary relief was extended to them; but this was obtained with difficulty, and distributed with a partial hand. Some, who invented plausible tales of loyalty and distress, received much more than they ever possessed; while others, less artful, were not half ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... village inn. He began at once to institute inquiries, the answers to which might serve his purpose, and to avert suspicion, casually mentioned that he was a capitalist, and thought of settling down in the town. As he was well dressed, and had a plausible manner, ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the Bastile. By chance a copy of the Marseillaise Hymn had reached him, and snatches of this he would sing, keeping time to the music with his own springing steps as he marched up and down. The cry of "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite," often broke from his lips. When Burr opened to him part of the plausible scheme against Mexico he eagerly volunteered to join any expedition gotten up in the name of freedom. He proffered his services as surgeon, and asked with amusing simplicity what ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... funds had the inside track because they had the money to hire the best brains in the world; men who were almost as able scientifically as had been Chipfellow himself but unfortunately hadn't made as much money. The monied interests also had access to the robot calculators that turned out far more plausible thoughts than there were positions ...
— Mr. Chipfellow's Jackpot • Dick Purcell
... or "universal definitions," or notions, those "ideas," which, according to Plato, are the proper objects of all real knowledge; concerning the adequacy of one's hold upon them; the relationship to them of other notions; the plausible conjectures in our own or other minds, [178] which come short of them; the elimination, by their mere presence in the mind, of positive ignorance or error. Justice, Beauty, Perfect Polity, and the like, in outlines of eternal and absolute certainty:—they were to be apprehended ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... endowed with special finesse of feeling, it might have been expected that a highly-coloured peacock butterfly would have had but scant appeal. In fact, one is driven back upon the young May Moon as the sole plausible explanation of the fact that, on that afternoon of bewitchment, Tishy Mangan went to ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... by those horses to Sedan. Meanwhile the distraction of the inferior ministers and the joy of the King to see himself delivered from a tyrant would dispose the Court rather to invite than to pursue him. This was La Rochepot's scheme, and it seemed exceedingly plausible. ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... predecessors, Persian art could not have borne the resemblance that it does to Assyrian. But these first mimetic efforts of the Arian race have almost wholly perished, and there scarcely seems to remain more than a single fragment which can be assigned on even plausible grounds to the Median period. A portion of a colossal lion, greatly injured by time, is still to be seen at Hamadan, the site of the great Median capital, which the best judges regard as anterior to the Persian period, and as therefore most probably Median. It consists of the head and body of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... continuation of this street toward the Cathedral is called St. Mary-gate, but this name again seems to be modern, and to have arisen from a notion that 'St. Mary-gate' is the origin of the word 'Stammergate'—a notion which would be rendered more plausible by the fact that this was the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... by foreigners, upon the present trend of events. The criticisms are more than plausible. It is evident that the present weakness of China is due to her divided condition. Hence it is natural to argue that the present movement being one of secession and general disintegration will increase the weakness of the country. It is also evident that many of China's troubles ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... bosom friend, the chosen companion of her girlhood has proved unkind—some delightful project of pleasure perhaps frustrated, or, I dare say she has found herself eclipsed at Madame Raynor's soiree by some more brilliant belle—no, no, none of these surmises are true, plausible as they appear! Then what is it? Perhaps—but you will never guess, and you will laugh incredulously when I tell you that poor, poor ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... a manner of speaking," Anthony quibbled, plausible and unperturbed. "I meant that I knew of its existence—which, after all, is relatively a good deal, being vastly ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... me. I see and know it perfectly; but this inexplicable ringing has so infected my people that all, except Jefferson, have gone away. Each made a plausible errand, for the moment, yet each declared her intention of leaving for good and right away. As for Jefferson, he claims to be unusually busy at the stable, and only appears—even that very reluctantly—when I ring him up. I'm not much used to doing my ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... belief. A young woman there is: she is not a wife. Lady Charlotte allowed her the fairly respectable post of Hecate of the Shades, as long as the girl was no pretender to the place and name in the upper sphere. Her deductions were plausible, convincing to friends shaken by her vehement manner of coming at them. She convinced herself by means of her multitude of reasons for not pursuing inquiry. Her brother said nothing. There was no need for him to speak. He seemed on one or ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and babbled to himself about fate and destiny, and decided that the most merciful course would be to deceive both women. Mercy was patient. Mercy was unsuspicious. She would content herself with occasional visits, if he could only feign some plausible tale ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... summon Adam Warner to his presence, and learned from the simple sage, who concealed nothing, the mode in which Anne had fled from the Tower. The king abruptly dismissed Adam, after a few hearty curses and vague threats; and awaking to the necessity of inventing some plausible story, to account to the wonder of the court for the abrupt disappearance of his guest, he saw that the person who could best originate and circulate such a tale was the queen; and he sought her at once, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of honey had come opportunely, since the sale of a portion afforded Plutina plausible excuse for her trip to Joines' store. There, a telephone had been recently installed, and it was the girl's intention to use this means of communication with the marshal. That the danger of detection was great, she was unhappily aware, but, she could devise no plan ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... in a voice that didn't sound at all like his own to him. It sounded much too unconcerned. "Perhaps I have offended only the Goddess herself." The idea sounded more plausible the more he thought about it. "Certainly the All-Father would back up his favorite Daughter in punishing ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... a pair of shoes, sell a pennyworth of tape, on such. No, thy shoes are vamped up falsely to meet the market; behold, the leather only seemed to be tanned; thy shoes melt under me to rubbishy pulp, and are not veritable mud-defying shoes, but plausible vendible similitudes of shoes,—thou unfortunate, and I! O my right honourable friend, when the Paragraphs flowed in, who was like Sir Jabesh? On the swelling tide he mounted; higher, higher, triumphant, heaven-high. But the Paragraphs again ebbed out, as unwise Paragraphs ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... consequence in my view; I presume I do not mistake or injure you in supposing that you publicly preach and advocate the final salvation of all mankind, their restoration and association with Jesus Christ in realms of glory. Whatever human ingenuity or plausible and sophistic reasoning may do with respect to either of these systems, they each and all of them are, in my view, destitute of divine authority, and have not a "thus saith ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... English, they decamped, showing signs of fear. The people of the Manjanga tribe, amidst whom they were now travelling, showed much suspicion of their object, saying that parties had come before with the same sort of plausible story, and had suddenly carried off a number of their people. To allay these suspicions, Dr Livingstone thought it best at once to return ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... year showed me a necessity of departing from my original intention. The task of impartial criticism[106] is now, unhappily, no longer to rescue modest skill from neglect; but to withstand the errors of insolent genius, and abate the influence of plausible mediocrity. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... where abnormal magnetic conditions prevail, in consequence of which disturbances may manifest themselves throughout the system at the same instant. Thus the sun may be getting the credit of producing what it merely reacts to in common with the rest of its family. But this suggestion, plausible though it may seem, will not explain why the magnetic disturbances experienced upon our earth show a certain dependence upon such purely local facts, as the period of the sun's rotation, ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... business first," said I, speaking from the lips outward, and meanwhile (in the private apartments of my brain) trying for the thousandth time to find some plausible arrangement of my story. "I want to have a notion how we stand about ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... inasmuch as babyhood spans but three short years, no baby is competent to be a joy "forever." It pains me thus to demolish two-thirds of your pretty sentiment in a single sentence; but the position I hold in this chair requires that I shall not permit you to deceive and mislead the public with your plausible figures of speech. I know a female baby, aged eighteen months, in this city, which cannot hold out as a "joy" twenty-four hours on a stretch, let alone "forever." And it possesses some of the most remarkable eccentricities of character and appetite that have ever ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... reflections. By a strong effort I restrained myself, and sat down to think the matter over and endeavour to frame some hypothesis that might explain the mystery. But it was all to no purpose. I merely wearied myself without being able to arrive at even a plausible conjecture, except that it seemed as though the strange coincidence of date might point to some ghastly charm or incantation which could only be carried out on one ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... remained nothing to do but invent a plausible explanation for their brother's disappearance to give to Jacob. First of all, however, they took an oath not to betray to his father or any human being what they bad actually done with Joseph. He who violated the ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... craven and foolish. It would allow the fleet of Weald to loot and then betray Dara. But it was Calhoun's idea. It seemed plausible to the admirals of Weald. They felt only contempt for blueskins. Contemptuously, they ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... year, why should he not save two dollars, in order to have two dollars and a half at that time? Why should not the amount of his present privation increase, when the surplus of benefit he can gain by it at a future date grows greater? Such is the reasoning, and it seems entirely plausible, if we assume that what the man loses is the gratification he might have by spending his dollar, and that what he gains is the benefit of spending it and its accumulation of interest at the end of the year. The assumption ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... a moment to deal with the argument advanced in the latter part of this sentence. It is very plausible, and, at first sight, appears convincing. It is also very commonly used. Over and over again, I have heard the presumed analogy between the surgeon and the soldier advanced as a proof of the absurdity of the English system. I believe that ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... see what age and adventures have done upon him. I recollect him a very handsome, plausible man. Of all good breeding, that of a swindler (of good education, be it understood) is ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... future to reserve their fire, and when necessary to shoot into, not above, a crowd. After this we proceeded to catechise the strangers, suspecting them to be scouts, the usual forerunners of a Somali raid: the reply was so plausible that even the Balyuz, with all his acuteness, was deceived. The Bedouins had forged a report that their ancient enemy the Hajj Sharmarkay was awaiting with four ships at the neighbouring port, Siyaro, the opportunity of seizing Berberah whilst deserted, and of re-erecting his forts there ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... be the logical indicator of her deepest feelings, and, enriched with this joyful discovery, inspired with new hope, he had returned, but had not dared at once to seek the Parsonage, until he could invent some plausible reason for his return; but his imagination was very poor, and he had found none, except that he loved ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... story is about half as long, and is a well-written and extremely plausible story about a house owned by an old gentleman of ancient lineage, where there is a collection of gold plate which was said to be an "incubus", that is, the subject of a curse. As indeed ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... although somewhat too remote from what was then the centre of the village. In the growth of the town, however, after some thirty or forty years, the site covered by this rude hovel had become exceedingly desirable in the eyes of a prominent and powerful personage, who asserted plausible claims to the proprietorship of this and a large adjacent tract of land, on the strength of a grant from the legislature. Colonel Pyncheon, the claimant, as we gather from whatever traits of him are preserved, was characterized by an iron energy of purpose. Matthew Maule, on ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... An Original Comedy in Four Acts. "The occasional publication of a play by Henry Arthur Jones is a matter for congratulation.... In 'The Manoeuvres of Jane' we see Mr. Jones in his most sprightly mood and at the height of his ingenuity; ... its plot is plausible and comic, and ...
— Her Own Way - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... presented, my husband recognized you instantly by the name and description given of you by his friend. When you sang that first song, he guessed your secret and told me his thought, and helped me to work the stratagem to lure you here. When he reached Port Natal, he tried to invent some plausible reason to induce Mr. Jordan to come here, but he could not; and so has hurried to get the mill working, and now both are on the way, and I must meet them. Jack and Rose are ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... Jack's excited, plausible manner had dropped from him. Mary felt it difficult to be severe when his look of dejection was piercing her heart; still, she felt that she owed it to him as well as to herself, she must see a little more clearly into how he ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... that all people were easily divided into two fundamental groups or families, the Sulphites and the Bromides. The revelation was apodictic, convincing; it made life a different thing; it made society almost plausible. So, too, it simplified human relationship and gave the first hint of a method by which to adjust and equalize affinities. The primary theorems sprang quickly into her mind, and, such is their power, they have attained almost the nature of axioms. The discovery, ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... quietude of the court—a quietude which to others might have spelt peace, but which, to Robert Cairn, spelled menace. That Ferrara's device was aimed at his freedom, that his design was intended to lead to the detention of his enemy whilst he directed his activities in other directions, seemed plausible, if inadequate. The carefully planned incident at the Museum whereby the constable had become possessed of Cairn's card; the distinct possibility that a detective might knock upon his door at any moment—with the inevitable ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... the position of a gaudy puppet, and the House of Lords to a mere cypher, and be as certainly followed by all the horrors of a revolution, and all the evils of a corrupt democracy. How easy is it to find politicians ever ready to sniff the incense of popularity at the plausible shrine of a descending franchise!—how difficult to find those who, while granting what is just and prudent, have the wisdom to plan, and the courage to dare, measures to arrest a ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... themselves been instrumental in the delay so earnestly desired by Marie; the hostile demonstrations of Vendome in Brittany, and the ill-judged movements of Conde himself in Poitou, having furnished her with a plausible pretext for deferring the opening of the States until the King could preside over them in person; when the public declaration made before the Parliament by the young sovereign of his intention still to be guided by the counsels of his mother at once freed ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... far, from the zones of danger) can no longer in the face of accumulating evidence, cling to their sentimental theory that war ennobles, they take refuge in the vague but plausible substitute that at least it makes the good better and the bad worse. Possibly, but it is to be remembered that there is bad in the best even where there is ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... besides, if she were in sympathy with her parent, why had she given me the hint which put me on the trail of the Development Company? Why had she given me the hint at all? That was the real riddle, and I had not, as yet, hit upon a plausible answer. Those I had hit upon were ridiculous and impossible, and I put them from my mind. But she was not tricky, ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... in the deep undercurrents of German politics a most remarkable whirlpool of discord, in which the policy of von Tirpitz was a severe tax on the patience of von Bethmann-Hollweg and the Foreign Office, for it was they who had to invent all sorts of plausible excuses ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... much rather the stocks had remained as it was before you touched it; but, as it is, if you could find a good plausible pretext—and there is an excellent one at hand,—the sternest kings open prisons, and grant favours, upon joyful occasions. Now a marriage in the royal family is of course a joyful occasion! and so it should be in that of the King of Hazeldean." Admire that ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... among themselves the cowardice of the American soldiers, and saw them wager the Dewey would not come to Manila at all but that he would sail down around the Malay Peninsula and hasten home by way of Good Hope to save his vessels from certain destruction. All this sounded plausible to her and she grew restless and enthusiastic as ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey
... rhymester in Petticoat Lane, it made no difference; there was no crime too heinous for "the great Mr. Pope's" next verses to charge you with, and, worst of all, there was no misdoing so out of character that his adroit malignancy could not make it seem plausible. ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... human look of their round heads and semi-intelligent faces, seen peeringly uprising from the water alongside. In the sea, under certain circumstances, seals have more than once been mistaken for men. But the bodings of the crew were destined to receive a most plausible confirmation in the fate of one of their number that morning. At sun-rise this man went from his hammock to his mast-head at the fore; and whether it was that he was not yet half waked from his sleep (for sailors ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... pleased to allow them a place for to rest 'em, For the rest of your trees we will never molest 'em; A kind shelter to us and protection afford, We'll do you no harm, sir, I'll give you my word. The good man was soon won by this plausible tale, So fraud on good-nature doth often prevail. He welcomes his guest, gives him free toleration In the midst of his garden to take up his station, And into his breast doth his enemy bring, He little suspected the nettle could sting. 'Till flush'd with success, and of strength ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... interpretation of her conduct not under interdict, an unscrupulous Imperial officer might in those military times venture to employ the gendarmerie for his own purposes, if he could but give a plausible colour of devotion ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that were not plausible as historical or phonetic spellings were corrected. In the original, ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... provisions it appeared to the people of Iowa that a vote cast for the Constitution would be a vote for the Constitution as modified by the act of Congress. This view was altogether plausible since no provision had been made for a separate ballot on the conditions imposed by Congress. And so it was thought that a ratification of the Constitution would carry with it an acceptance of the Nicollet boundaries, while a rejection of the Constitution would imply a ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh
... she is enabled to give all possible credibility to the legend of her miraculous birth. Moreover, the refinement of her bearing and manner allows no jarring note to be struck, and although, when Galatea sadly returns to marble not a tear is shed by the spectator, it is felt that a plausible and consistent interpretation of the ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... cheerfulness at the waste of the labor of years. Sypher, on whose conscience the guns had laid their two hundred ton weight, felt greatly relieved. Their colossal scale had originally caught his imagination which loved big conceptions. Their working had seemed plausible to his inexpert eye. He had gone with confidence to his friend, the expert on naval gunnery, who had reported on them in breezy, sea-going terms of disrespect. Since then he had shrunk from ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... be correct, and it seems plausible, if science asserts that electricity can photograph,—then certainly I am sorry, sorry enough for all I did in the trial; yet I cannot reproach myself, because I worked conscientiously; and the evidence was conclusive against the girl. The circumstantial coincidences were ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... country; but so prudently he carried his joy, that dissembling his true name and quality, he pretended to the shepherd that he was only some foreigner who by stress of weather had put into that port; and framed on the sudden a story to make it plausible, how he had come from Crete in a ship of Phaeacia; when the young shepherd laughing, and taking Ulysses's hand in both his, said to him: "He must be cunning, I find, who thinks to over-reach you. What, cannot you ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... anxiety was really a wish to provide a hallowed resting-place for the cavalier, or this pretence was merely to cover some ulterior purposes of his own, the maiden was left without a clue to form any plausible conjecture. She had heard sufficient, however, to ascertain that he was in some way or another accessory to the disappearance of Egerton, and that in all likelihood he knew the retreat ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... woman's intelligent mind would be fatal to all further procedure, and so he stood indifferent, while she lifted garment after garment and laid them carefully on the bed. He counted five coats and as many vests—and was racking his brains for some plausible excuse for a nearer inspection, when she stopped in the midst of her ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... indefinitely as an excuse for postponing the return of Shantung—as well as for interfering elsewhere. Anyone who knows the least thing about not only general disturbances in China but special causes of friction between China and Japan, can foresee that there will continue to be a series of plausible excuses for postponing the return promised—and anyway, as a matter of fact, what she has actually promised to return compared with the rights she would keep in her possession amount to little or nothing. Just this last week there was a clash in Manchuria and fifteen or twenty Japanese soldiers ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... people will be convinced that the Government had something to hush up, and had to take time to construct a plausible story. He kept the thought to himself. It was their government; how they mismanaged it was their own business. He found that there was no bartending robot; he had to have a human servant bring drinks. He made up his mind to have a few of the ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... his death! For this purpose she had herself made a cake, which she urged him to eat, but which Francesco insisted upon tasting, whereupon she consumed what he had left. The Cardinal further put into the Grand Duchess's mouth the plausible lament; "We will die together if ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... of the one doubtful point in his otherwise plausible account, we can credit his story as being in the main true, which," I calmly added, "places him above suspicion and narrows ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... friendship in your low estate, And should forget it in your better fate. Such maxims are more plausible than true; But somewhat must be given to love and you. I'll view this captive queen; to let her see, Prayers and complaints are ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... had said, there was a faint bluish spot on the sleeve of the shirt. This made Ben's story a plausible one, though not conclusive. The superintendent decided to inquire of Mike about the matter, and see what explanation ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... all a worthless, garbled piece of fiction, most obviously; as such it has ever been treated; but it is as plausible as it is untrue, and, at least, as authoritative as any available evidence ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... there exists a parallel instance of a phrase, that like this of "horns" is universal in all languages, and yet for which no one has discovered even a plausible origin. ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... publish, twelve days before the election, that Mr. Clay had agreed to vote for Mr. Adams, and that Mr. Adams had agreed to reward him by the office of Secretary of State. When the vote had been given and the office conferred, how plausible, how convincing, the ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... true peace was mine, I was still a wanderer from the true Church militant. I once knew the good Shepherd's voice, but was now too far away to recognize it. In these sad remembrances I sought a subterfuge behind which to hide in a false rest. Eagerly I read a book on that subject, and drank its plausible arguments without stint. It was a panacea, a temporary opiate to quiet the vacillating condition of a restless mind; yet my Bible was not laid aside, and many portions of Scripture were vigilantly brought to prove this specious error to be a radical truth; and two years in this dead faith I lived ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... the gold he had taken from his claim. The latter was his chief asset not from its amount, but its nature. Therefore he had been forced to take the leading merchant in the little prairie city into his confidence, and to suggest a partnership. This he had done, and a plausible tongue, and the sight of the wonderful raw gold, had had the effect he desired. The partnership was arranged, the immediate finance was forthcoming, and, for the time at least, Leeson Butte was left in utter ignorance of ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... jaw and nerved himself to endeavour, and, as the day of election was now close at hand, plunged into the task of canvassing and persuading—wondering all the time, now that he had heard Tansley's cynical remarks, if the people to whom he talked and who were mostly plausible and ingratiating in their reception of him were in reality laughing at him for his pains. He saw little of the efforts of the other side; but Peppermore agreed with Tansley that the opposition would leave no stone unturned in ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... injury was most painful. In her desire to punish France for assisting her rebellious heretical subjects, she seemed to have forgotten that France had an ally beyond the Alps. No sooner did Paul IV. learn that England was about to declare on the side of Philip, than, under the plausible pretence that he could have no ambassador residing in a country with which he was at war, he resolved to gratify his old animosity against Cardinal Pole, and cancel ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... does, least of all, why some masses of protoplasm act one way, and exact duplicates act differently. But if, on the other hand, we look beyond the facts and methods of physics and chemistry, and even beyond the most plausible theories of genetics, we can readily explain this remarkable action of the cells as the result of the will of an ever acting, omniscient, almighty God. Certainly nothing else is adequate to explain the behavior ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... somewhat in the form of a priest's tonsure. Not on the strength of his gallantry, for Larry was always talking morality and making sage reflections, while he supplied the womankind with bits of lace, rolls of ribbon, and now and then silk stockings. He always had some plausible story of how they happened to come in his way, for Larry was not a regular pedlar; carrying no box, he drew his chance treasures from the recesses of very deep pockets contrived in various parts of his attire. No one asked Larry how he came by such a continued supply of natty articles, and ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... we may perhaps claim to have shown, however briefly, in what direction we must look for the solution of our problem of universal immanence—a problem unnecessarily complicated by a plausible but false construction of that doctrine. We conclude that every portion of the cosmos, including our conscious selves, manifests so much, and such aspects, of God as it has the capacity to manifest—His Power, His Purpose, His moral Law, which vindicates its sanctity ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... finding new recruits. The ordinary rank and file of the police of London are sober, trustworthy, and courageous men, but as a body they are sadly wanting in intelligence. Knowing this, the authorities took into consideration a scheme, which looked plausible enough on paper, for availing themselves of the services of that proverbially sharp class of men, the experienced clerks in attorney's offices. Among the persons whose advice was sought on this point, I was the only one who dissented from the arrangement proposed. I felt ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... because the abundance itself of facts opens up temptation to a student in this department of Anthropology (as happens also in other branches of general Science) to rush in too hastily with what seems a plausible theory. The more facts, statistics, and so forth, there are available in any investigation, the easier it is to pick out a considerable number which will fit a given theory. The other facts being neglected or ignored, the ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... would entail great expense, it was desirable to annul the clause in the Berlin Act prohibiting the imposition of import duties for, at least, twenty years from that date (that is, up to the year 1905). The proposal seemed so plausible as to disarm the opposition of all the Powers, except Holland, which strongly protested against the change. Lord Salisbury's Government neglected to safeguard British interests in this matter; and, despite the unremitting ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... and murderess," as another admirer pleonastically describes her, is a sort of troll; nobody can explain—and yet an explanation seems requisite—what she does in the house of Rosmer. In his eagerness to work out a certain sequence of philosophical ideas, the playwright for once neglected to be plausible. It is a very remarkable feature of Rosmersholm that in it, for the first time, and almost for the last, Ibsen, in the act of theorizing, loses his hold upon reality. He places his ingenious, elaborate and—given the premises—inevitable denouement in a scene scarcely more credible ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... been given, "are inaccurately stated and improperly coloured; but it is too true that the treaty has been violated. On such occasions, I think it better fairly to confess and correct errors, than attempt to deceive ourselves and others, by fallacious though plausible palliations and excuses. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... has an inveterate abhorrence of all the pretended wisdom of philosophy derived from the monks and doctors of the middle ages, and not less of those of higher name who merely sought to make the monkish philosophy more plausible, or so to disguise it as to mystify the mob ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... be recognised and arrested and put down. The king should not trust the person that does not deserve to be trusted nor should he trust too much the person that is deserving of trust. Danger springs from trust. Trust should never be placed without previous examination. Having by plausible reasons inspired confidence in the enemy, the king should smite him when he makes a false step. The king should fear him, from whom there is no fear; he should also always fear them that should be feared. Fear ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... proper{213} subjects of slavery; that the relation of master and slave was one of reciprocal benefits; that our work was not more serviceable to our masters, than our master's thinking was serviceable to us. I say, it was in vain that the pulpit of St. Michael's had constantly inculcated these plausible doctrine. Nature laughed them to scorn. For my own part, I had now become altogether too big for my chains. Father Lawson's solemn words, of what I ought to be, and might be, in the providence of God, had not fallen dead on ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... written statements are very plausible. They have made an impression on Charles. It is very important that he know the truth. It will be much better for you to talk with him than for me to try to send him your statements in writing. Haste is necessary. Leave your horse ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... to think of a plausible explanation of his delay; he even contemplated taking advantage of this incident to re-establish his former intimacy in Villela's household ... Together with his plans there kept echoing in his soul the words of the fortune-teller. In truth, she had guessed the object of his visit, his own ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... grandest cathedral-music of modern times. Coleridge took occasion to observe that it was only our ignorance that prevented Bentley's emendations and innovations from appearing as monstrous and unnatural in the poetry of the ancients as in that of John Milton. The charge appears very plausible and damaging at first sight. We notice it in order to exhibit De Quincey's marvellous sagacity in detecting the true relation of things: he utterly dissipated the force of the cavil by simply stating the actual bearings of the two classes of poetry. Ancient poetry was ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... kept up an interest in Sicily, and her squadron had, from time to time, appeared on its coasts and taken part in the dissensions in which the Sicilian Greeks were universally engaged one against the other. There were plausible grounds for a direct quarrel, and an open attack ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... deformed into the day—to give words and intelligible symbols to that which was never imagined or expressed before! It is as if the dumb should speak for the first time, as if things should stammer out their own meaning through the imperfect organs of mere sense. I wish that some of our fluent, plausible declaimers, who have such store of words to cover the want of ideas, could lend their art to this writer. If he, 'poor, unfledged' in this respect, 'who has scarce winged from view o' th' nest,' could ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... great plea was to commence, Thirty good Knights were called by Ganelon Out of his kin, and one among them makes A speech all others hark: 'tis Pinabel Of Castel de Sorence, of greatest skill In words, and apt with reason plausible; Withal, a vassal brave to guard his arms. Thus to him Ganelon:—"In you my trust I place; my life from death, my name from shame Preserve!"—Said Pinabel:—"Thou shalt be saved. Dare one French Knight condemn ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... ridicule, similar to that begun by his nemesis on the first day of his imprisonment, according to the diary read by Hal to his companions. A few listeners-in indicated a willingness to come to his rescue, in spite of the plausible ridicule from anonymous source, but when asked where he was imprisoned, ignorance on that subject frustrated all good intentions along that line until his S O S reached Cub at the latter's ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... powers in that he was deemed by foreign nations a match for the Romans: and he believed that it would be opportune to assist the fugitives who had taken refuge with him, especially as they were Greeks, and at the same time to anticipate the Romans with some plausible excuse before he received any damage at their hands. So careful was he about a fair pretext that though he had long had his eye on Sicily and had been considering how he could overthrow the Roman ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... for the phenomenon—some of which, I remember, seemed to me sufficiently plausible in perusal—now wore a very different and unsatisfactory aspect. The idea generally received is that this, as well as three smaller vortices among the Ferroe islands, "have no other cause than the collision of waves rising and falling, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... guide me to the party. With apparent alacrity he obeyed my orders; but after leading me about some time in an extraordinary manner he told me that he had lost his way and could not find them. His look was so very plausible when he said this, and he seemed so grieved at the circumstance, that for a moment I believed his tale; but I felt convinced that we could not be at any very great distance from them and therefore fired one barrel of my gun; the echo of this sound, never heard in these solitudes ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... found her distracted, emharrassed, indifferent. In despair at not being allowed to heal his passionate malady in his own fashion, he did the most singular thing that he could have done under the circumstances. He wrote to Saint Lambert.[281] His letter is a prodigy of plausible duplicity, though Rousseau in some of his mental states had so little sense of the difference between the actual and the imaginary, and was moreover so swiftly borne away on a flood of fine phrases, that it is hard to decide how far ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... present day adopt in one shape or another the ballistic hypothesis. All new facts are co-ordinated so happily by it, that it more and more satisfies our minds; but it cannot be asserted that it forces itself on our convictions with irresistible weight. Another point of view appeared more plausible and simple at the outset, when there seemed reason to consider the energy radiated by radioactive bodies as inexhaustible. It was thought that the source of this energy was to be looked for without the atom, and this idea may perfectly well he maintained ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... ardour of Mary's new friends, in her cause, by representing her as an abandoned and worthless woman, ungrateful towards him, and undeserving of sympathy from others; allegations which he supported by the ready affirmation of some of his West India friends, and by one or two plausible letters procured from Antigua. By these and like artifices he appears completely to have imposed on Mr. Manning, the respectable West India merchant whom Dr. Lushington had asked to negotiate with him; and he prevailed so far as to induce Dr. Lushington himself (actuated by the ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... Beanquier, we think, who suggests that instrumental music should rank above vocal, because it is "pure music," bereft of the fictitious aids of language and of the emotional associations which are grouped about the peculiar timbre of the human voice. [64] At first the suggestion seems plausible; but on analogous grounds we might set the piano above the orchestra, because the piano gives us pure harmony and counterpoint, without the adventitious aid of variety in timbre. And it is indeed true that, for some such reason as this, musicians delight in piano-sonatas, ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... theory.—This is not only one of the latest, but, merely as a hypothesis, it is the most attractive and plausible of all. The serious objections to it, however, are the almost uniform failure that has met the attempts to transplant these tumors from one animal to another and the absence of any constant variety of organism in them. Several forms of parasites ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... procured. Thus by skill of verbal rhetoric, the worse might be made to appear the better reason; and philosophy, so far as it continued its functions, {85} became a search, not for the real amidst the confusions of the seeming and unreal, but a search for the seeming and the plausible, to the detriment, or at least to the ignoring, ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... is mainly a difference of taste or of method, and in Philo's day, and in fact down to the time of the sixteenth-century Renaissance, Jew and Gentile alike preferred the other way. For thought, ancient and mediaeval, was pervaded with the craving for authority or a plausible show of it. The Bible was not only the great book of morality, but the standard of truth, that from which knowledge in all its branches started, and that by which it was to be judged. As all knowledge came from God, so all knowledge ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... the advertisement would have spurned the impostor and exposed the fraud, had they discovered the facts. The most scrupulous and careful publishers are often deceived in the character of advertisements that come through the regular channels of business, and appear plausible on their face. In fact, the religious journals are the favorite vehicles of the swindlers. The solicitude felt by the newspapers, not only for their own reputation, but for the interests of their patrons, was illustrated in the correspondence found ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... however interesting and plausible, throws no very definite light upon the formation of Raeburn's style, to his early work itself, one finds it chiefly remarkable for frank rendering of character. Obviously he believed in his own eyes, and sought simple and direct ways for the expression of his vision. Certain ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... vaulting included, are covered with paintings. The effect clashes with Northern taste, but the absence of a columnar system affords a plausible reason for relieving the sameness of these large surfaces with colour. The Gothic style of the North, holding in itself such decorative resources, gains nothing from mural paintings, but always loses something of its true character when they are added. Apart from such considerations, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... from where she was sailing astern—the second cutter swinging now from the davits—crept up alongside of the lugger, and communicated with her skipper; and Murray's doubts grew more faint, for everything the American said sounded plausible. ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... the next two days. We saw Rozaine wandering about, day and night, searching, questioning, investigating. The captain, also, displayed commendable activity. He caused the vessel to be searched from stern to stern; ransacked every stateroom under the plausible theory that the jewels might be concealed anywhere, except ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... I would always desert the office if there's a plausible excuse to bum about the waterfront. Is there any passion in the breast of mankind more absorbing than the love of ships? A tall Cunarder putting out to sea gives me a keener thrill than anything the Polo Grounds or the Metropolitan Opera can show. Of what avail a meeting of the Authors' ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... influence of Mrs. Bazalgette, and miscalled her, till Jane's hair stood on end: she happened to be the one at the keyhole that night. Mr. Talboys laid all the blame on David Dodd. The discussion was vigorous, and occupied more than two hours, and each party brought forward good and plausible reasons; and, if neither made any progress toward converting the other, they gained this, at least, that each corroborated himself. Now Mrs. Bazalgette was gone no direct reprisals on her were possible. Registering a vow that one day or other he would be even with her, the senior ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... why is not every geological formation charged with such links? Why does not every collection of fossil remains afford plain evidence of the gradation and mutation of the forms of life? We meet with no such evidence, and this is the most obvious and plausible of the many objections which may be urged against my theory." [Footnote: Origin of ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... party in a contest for power, but that they studiously misrepresent their opponents, misstate their own motives, give currency to false accusations, suppress truth that tells against them, exaggerate the importance of that which favors them, seize upon all plausible pretexts for fraud, skulk behind subterfuges, and lie outright when it is deemed necessary. And what can be expected more and better than this, when the leaders are office-seekers, who live and thrive ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... is in parts very charming. That it is one of the romances on which, from the fact of the resemblance of its central incident to the story of Cupid and Psyche, the good defenders of the bad theory of the classical origin of romance generally have based one of their few plausible arguments, need not occupy us. For the question is not whether Denis Pyramus or any one else (modernity would not be modernity if his claims were not challenged) told it, but how he told it. Still less ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... are even now watching that bank. The bank would never give up the sealed packages contents unknown, save on surrender of the carefully drawn receipts." And then Berthe remembered her own secret work at Calcutta. The Grindlays knew of the surreptitious attempts made by the plausible Hugh Fraser to withdraw the deposit long before the baronetcy episode. And Berthe laughed, in memory of her capture of the receipts in the old days at Brighton, while ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... bane of life, and the necessity of concealment as a mark by which lines of action were to be avoided. The prospect of being urged against the confirmed habit of his mind was naturally grating. He even paused here and there before the most plausible shop-windows for a gentleman to look into, half inclined to decide that he would not increase his knowledge about that modern Ezra, who was certainly not a leader among his people—a hesitation which proved how, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... opportunities, and there can be no doubt that as soon as his purpose had established itself in his mind he made use of every opportunity that presented itself for improving his meagre scientific knowledge, in order that his proposal might be set forth in a plausible form. In other words, he got up the subject. The whole of his geographical reading with regard to the Indies up to this time had been in the travels of Marco Polo; the others—whose works he quoted from so ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... did, and though the garrulous old gossip drivelled endlessly about matters of supreme unimportance and ecstasized in his mild way over trivial anecdotes which he expanded beyond all proportion, and though his sentimentality and chauvinism sometimes discredited his quite plausible conjectures, he was nevertheless the only French historian who had overcome the limitation of time and made another age ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... justice to the play of Jacques Collin's countenance as he carefully spun out his speech, sentence by sentence, for ten minutes; and it was all so plausible, especially the mention of Corentin, that the lawyer ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... mind with Church ascendancy, just as Coryston was identified with landlord ascendancy. If there were anywhere to be found a narrower pair of bigots than Lord and Lady William Newbury, or a more poisonous reactionary than their handsome and plausible son, Atherstone didn't know where to ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... what it was all about for every one had a different story. The most plausible explanation was as follows. Russians had been rather persona non grata in Urga since the collapse of the empire, and the Mongols were ready to annoy them whenever it was possible to do so and "get ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... of it. And no doubt only at that moment of angry silence, the fiction of the little bag first occurred to him. No doubt he was conscious himself of the improbability of the story and strove painfully to make it sound more likely, to weave it into a romance that would sound plausible. In such cases the first duty, the chief task of the investigating lawyers, is to prevent the criminal being prepared, to pounce upon him unexpectedly so that he may blurt out his cherished ideas ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... thought that had constantly haunted his mind of late—the unsolved mystery of the alley up which hostile Germans could flit and apparently disappear into thin air. He knew there must be some explanation of the mystery, but what was it? He racked his brains to find a plausible solution. But the more he thought about it, the more uncertain he became, until at last ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... comment that modern tragedies dwell too exclusively on the passion of love. There is truth in the observation that Mr. B— and Lovelace think nothing can be done with women except by bribery, corruption, and terror, that Richardson is unable to describe a plausible seducer. The author of the Candid Examination seems to take up this cue when he says of the same pair, "I am of Opinion, that neither of the two Gentlemen conducted themselves so, as to overcome an ordinary Share of Virtue" (p. 24). ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... be good enough to see that the package was given to their man, who would call for it in fifteen minutes? Now the Catlins, as you must know, are richer people even than the Claflins, so that the thing was absolutely plausible. Mrs. Claflin tied up the jewels herself, and entrusted them to her own maid, who has been with her for years, and this woman answered the door and gave the parcel into the hands of a man who said that he was sent from Litterny's for it. All that the maid ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... the world know of him?—I ask you that! A flashy, plausible, shallow-pated, carpet-bagger,—that is what all the world knows of him. The man's a political adventurer,—he snatches a precarious, and criminal, notoriety, by trading on the follies of his fellow-countrymen. He is devoid of decency, destitute of principle, and impervious to all the feelings ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... Penmerryn, or Penmarin, now Penryn; and the spot on which Falmouth stands appears to have been known as Pen-y-cwm, the "head of the valley," to which the syllable quic was added, thus forming the familiar Penny-come-quick, for which it has been easy to find a plausible but erroneous derivation. If this quic is merely a corruption of wick, meaning dwelling or village, it would be obvious that Saxon influence had been at work here, as in the other old name for Falmouth, ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... came daily to work and did work—some. When he did not he always had a plausible excuse. As a self-excuser ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... admitted Warren, "but it is just as plausible to suppose that Nancy, fearing she would be discovered in Lloyd's room, did not dare to stop and open the pocketbook there, and so took it ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... makes it a little more plausible," replied Clarence. "Was there no one present when the man ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
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