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More "Problematical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his chest, his back, or his side, we can readily ascertain the extent to which effusion exists in the thoracic cavity; and, if we think proper, we can get rid of the fluid. It is not a dangerous thing to attempt, although it is very problematical whether much advantage would accrue from the operation. With a favourite dog it may, however, be tried; and, to prevent all accidents, a veterinary surgeon should be entrusted with ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... doubt the product of high training, so it is difficult to know in you that which is nature and that which is art. And such a person in that changed form is problematical—I beg you, I beg you to tell me whether in you this is ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... cylinder preserved in the British Museum, representing two figures, a man (with horns) and perhaps a woman, both clothed, on either side of a fruit-tree, towards which they stretch out their hands.23 For the meaning of this is extremely problematical. Some better monumental illustration may some day be found, for it is clear that the Babylonian sacred literature had much to tell of offences against the gods in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... explain its possibility, while they regard it only psychologically, whereas if they had studied it in a transcendental point of view, they must have recognized that it is not only indispensable as a problematical concept, in the complete use of speculative reason, but also quite incomprehensible; and if they afterwards came to consider its practical use, they must needs have come to the very mode of determining ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... to say that the Atlantic cable would never have been laid, but there can be no doubt that the enterprise would have been long suspended, without this timely aid. The third cable was a success; the lost second was recovered and made useful; and now the thing is easy which thus seemed so problematical. If Peter Cooper received in the end a handsome sum from this investment, who could grudge him ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... per cent of the women were to vote, and a large per cent of the men were to vote, it would always be problematical as to what effect the consensus of the women's opinion would have had in the result, if a full vote had been polled; and this questionable result of an election is one of the dangers incident to the exercise of the right of suffrage. If the women manifest ...
— Citizenship - A Manual for Voters • Emma Guy Cromwell
... I shrank from verifying, that a former inmate of our house had hung himself in it, but I do not know to this day whether it was true or not. The doubt did not prevent him from dangling at the door-post, in my consciousness, and many a time I shunned the sight of this problematical suicide by keeping my eyes fastened on the book before me. It was a very simple device, but perfectly effective, as I think any one will find who employs it in like circumstances; and I would really like to commend it to growing boys troubled as ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... for this poor lady, whose usefulness in the world is apparently problematical. She seems to me like a picture which has fallen from its gilded frame and lies, face downward, on the dusty floor. The picture never was as needful as a window or a door, but it was pleasant to see it in its place, and it would be pleasant to see it ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the world as his wife? With the possible exceptions of the Brownings and one or two others, the case is hardly recorded where a poet has been inspired to his highest efforts by his wedded wife, and it is extremely problematical whether or not in the present instance the fire and fervor of Ariosto's lines could have been kindled at a domestic hearth which all the world might see. The secret marriage was probably insisted upon by ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... advance, that the adversaries were to be satisfied with one exchange of shots. Monsieur de Ronquerolles, in spite of the great distance determined by the seconds, which seemed to make the death of either party problematical, if not impossible, brought down the baron. The ball went through the latter's body just below the heart, but fortunately ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... seems to assert the motion should perhaps be expunged; but it may perhaps be problematical; and, not to break up the book, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... intentionally, makes the best justification of it by saying that while Charles lived the projected republic could never be secure. But to justify taking away the life of an individual upon the principle of self- defence, the danger must be not problematical and remote, but evident and immediate. The danger in this instance was not of such a nature, and the imprisonment or even banishment of Charles might have given to the republic such a degree of security as any government ought to be content with. It must be confessed, ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... ministers; Bjoernson having determined to reject all such gewgaws, Ibsen announced his intention of accepting (and wearing) every cross and star that was offered to him. At this date, no doubt, the temptation was wholly problematical in both cases, yet each poet acted on his determination to the end. But Bjoernson's hint about the comedy seems to have been, for some years, the last flicker of friendship between the two. On this Ibsen presently acted in a ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... said, addressing some problematical individual. "You oughtn't to be doing anything like that. These girls," and he waved an inclusion of all shop and factory girls, "don't get anything. Why, you can't live on ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... have inspired many hundreds of thousands to look for the first time with seeing eyes at the pageant of the out-of-doors—is a satisfaction that must endure. For the part of the publishers, they began their business by issuing "Nature Books" at a time when the sale of such works was problematical. As their tastes and inclinations were along the same lines which Mrs. Porter loved to follow, it gave them great pleasure to be associated with her books which opened the eyes of so great a public to new ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... adjudication in, for example, an ejectment proceeding, are (or their privies are) parties here. It certainly cannot be that the law, seeking the truth, will not avail itself of this scientific method of ascertaining the genuineness of the instrument because of some problematical effect upon the rights or opportunities of parties to future litigations respecting the same instrument. The possibilities of litigation over a will are almost infinite, and if such a rule should obtain this important channel of investigation would be closed. Suppose ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... it,—representing to him that the "New Monthly" would lose its most valuable contributor, Mr. Hook, and other useful allies with him,—that the ruin of the "New Monthly" must be looked upon as certain, while the success of his "Joker's Magazine" was problematical at best. Such arguments prevailed; and he called upon Mr. Hook with a view to relinquish his design. Mr. Hook was exactly of Mr. Colburn's new opinion. He had received the money, and was not disposed, even if he had been able, to give it back, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... ground at an increasing rate to the obscenity crawling over our planet. That same potential applied to direct offensive measures may yet turn the balance in our favor. Against this, the possibility of a scouting party stumbling over the remains of a colony the location of which is almost completely problematical, and which by analogy with all of the earlier colonial attempts has at best managed to survive as a marginal foothold, is so fantastically remote as to ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... lives with cheerfulness in the sure expectation of a blessed immortality; but that is a different affair from giving up youth, with all its admirable pleasures, in the hope of a better quality of gruel in a more than problematical, nay, more than improbable, ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... She must tell Samson: Samson, whom she held in an artless exaltation of hero-worship; Samson, who was so "smart" that he thought about things beyond her understanding; Samson, who could not only read and write, but speculate on problematical matters. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... view to its harmonious organisation under the control of a lucid reason—whether it will ever be possible again to realise this ideal, and that not only in the members of a privileged class, but in the whole body of the State, is a question too problematical to be raised with advantage in this place. But it is impossible not to perceive that with the decline of the Greek city-state something passed from the world which it can never cease to regret, and the recovery of which, if it might be, in some more perfect form, must be the ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... he settled down at Carthage than his father died. This made his future again problematical. How was he to keep up his studies without the sums coming from his father? The affairs of Patricius must have been left in the most parlous condition. But Monnica, clinging to her ambitious plans for her ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... attain success in the cultivation of plants in boxes at the window-sill, and their failures have given rise to the impression in the minds of those who have watched their undertaking, that success with them is very problematical. "It looks easy," said a woman to me last season, "when you see somebody else's box just running over with vines, but when you come to make the attempt for yourself you wake up to the fact that there's ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... the fall of fish during showers, even were it not so problematical in theory, is too rare an event to account for the punctual appearance of those found in the rice-fields, at stated periods of the year. Both at Galle and Colombo in the south-west monsoon, fish are popularly believed to have fallen from the clouds during ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... of acceptance that this theory has met with, all, I think, anticipated that the appearance of Mr. Darwin's large and careful work on "Animals and Plants under Domestication" could but further increase that acceptance. It is, however, somewhat problematical how far such anticipations will be realized. The newer book seems to add after all but little in support of the theory, and to leave most, if not all, its difficulties exactly where they were. It is a question, also, whether the hypothesis ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... work on which I inscribe your name —twice made illustrious in this century—is very problematical; whereas you have graven mine in bronze which survives nations —if only in their coins. The day may come when numismatists, discovering amid the ashes of Paris existences perpetuated by you, will wonder at the number of heads crowned in your ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... third kind of ignorance more dangerous still—that of knowing more than one ought to know?" interposed another speaker, whose countenance had already struck me as one of the most problematical that I had ever seen. His composed yet keen physiognomy, strongly reminded me of the portraits of the Italian Conclave—some of the cardinals of Giorgione and Titian; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... of the Infinite Father, who cares for all of His children, and will ultimately blend them in the blessed bonds of an endless confraternity. Whether we or our posterity will ever become better acquainted in this life with the man in the moon is problematical; but in the ages to come, "when the manifold wisdom of God" shall be developed among "the principalities and powers in heavenly places," he may be something more than a myth or topic of amusement. He may be visible among the first who will ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... supplied for weeks, and supplementing all these with a gift which would be the envy of all her friends. But when he returned to Severndale after bidding the lady farewell at the station, he breathed one mighty sigh of relief. He had escaped a situation of which the outcome was a good deal more than problematical for everyone concerned, ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... its developed industries, is reached. The only seeming evidence of superior intellect to be found in this gradual progress is that of the drawings and carvings left us by one group of palaeolithic men. But the actual mental development indicated by these becomes problematical when we consider that similar drawings are made to-day by the Bushmen of South Africa, a race of men occupying a very low mental stage. From this fact we may fairly conclude that the possession of a simple ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... Against those three millions, yielding forty-seven thousand francs a year, Mademoiselle Natalie brings eight hundred thousand francs in the Five-per-cents, the diamonds (supposing them to be worth a hundred thousand francs, which is still problematical) and fifty thousand francs in money; in all, one million and fifty thousand francs. In presence of such facts my brother notary tells you boastfully that we are marrying equal fortunes! He expects us to encumber ourselves with a debt of eleven hundred and fifty-six ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... Nathaniel had made up his mind that he must try to postpone decisive action until the circumstances on which they depended—which, after all, were only problematical—should have been tested satisfactorily, one way or another. When he did speak, Adam at first thought that his friend was wavering in his intention, or "funking" the responsibility. However, his respect for Sir Nathaniel was so great that he would not act, or even come to a conclusion ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... their decisions. When men exercise their reason coolly and freely on a variety of distinct questions, they inevitably fall into different opinions on some of them. When they are governed by a common passion, their opinions, if they are so to be called, will be the same. Fourthly. It is at least problematical, whether the decisions of this body do not, in several instances, misconstrue the limits prescribed for the legislative and executive departments, instead of reducing and limiting them within their constitutional places. Fifthly. I have never understood that the decisions ...
— The Federalist Papers
... the idea, and it is just this last meaning which common sense affirms and Berkeley denies. In any case it was a work of great merit to have transferred the existence of objects beyond our ideas, of things-in-themselves, out of the region of the self-evident into the region of the problematical. We never get beyond the circle of our ideas, and if we posit a thing-in-itself as the ground and object of the idea, this also is simply a thought, an idea. For us there is no being except that of the perceiver and the perceived. Later we shall meet ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... deposits extended to the north of the Laurentian Hills, as well as the outline of that portion of the continent in those times, remains still very problematical; but the investigations thus far undertaken in those regions would lead to the supposition that the same granite upheaval which raised Canada stretched northward in a broad, low ridge of land, widening in its upper part and extending to the neighborhood of Bathurst Inlet and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... of disappointments, and I have now to state, that as Martin Chuzzlewit's success was to seem to him at first only distant and problematical, so even the prodigious immediate success of the Christmas Carol itself was not to be an unmitigated pleasure. Never had a little book an outset so full of brilliancy of promise. Published but a few days before Christmas, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... little, upon his first visit to his aunts, the Queens Eleanor and Mary, accustomed to look upon proper men in Flanders and Germany, that he was fain to win their favor by making certain attempts in the tournament, in which his success was sufficiently problematical. "His body," says his professed panegyrist, "was but a human cage, in which, however brief and narrow, dwelt a soul to whose flight the immeasurable expanse of heaven was too contracted." [Cabrera] The same wholesale admirer adds, that "his aspect was so reverend, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... never—never to have anything to do with him. Play grandly, honourably. Be not, of course, cast down at losing; but above all, be not eager at winning, as mean souls are. And, indeed, with all one's skill and advantages, winning is often problematical; I have seen a sheer ignoramus that knows no more of play than of Hebrew, blunder you out of five thousand pounds in a few turns of the cards. I have seen a gentleman and his confederate play against ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... creed against Europe—is not yet as fully recognized as it should be. The doubt has been already expressed whether the Mongols would ever have risen to higher rank than that of a nomad tribe but for the appearance of Genghis. Leaving that supposition in the category of other interesting but problematical conjectures, it may be asserted that Genghis represented in their highest forms all the qualities which entitled his race to exercise governing authority. He was, moreover, a military genius of the very first order, and it may be questioned ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... unscrupulous ones—as the greatest strategist of the war, is permanently fixed in history. What it might have been had he not been hampered, annoyed, and insulted as no other commanding general was at any time by both the Secretary of War and the General-in-Chief, is merely problematical. Personally, he regarded all this as mere "incidents of the service," and strove to the best of his ability to do his whole duty to his country. His combination with Thomas—Rosecrans to plan brilliant campaigns, with Thomas's great abilities to aid him in carrying them out—made ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... not so appalled at the stupidity of that move as I might have been had not the usefulness of our centre in Hermione Street become already very problematical. In fact, in my opinion it was much more of a police trap by this time ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... the Compere Mathiew[21] the Pere Jean rates mightily the natives of Cologne for their bigotry and superstition and for the bad reception they gave to him and to his philosophy. That people are happier from a blind belief, as some pretend, appears to me extremely problematical. For my part, under no circumstances can I think bliss to consist in ignorance; nor have I felt any particular discomfort in having learned at a very early age to put under my feet, as Lucretius expresses it, the strepitum Acherontis avari. On ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... knowledge of the character of the people over whom he reigns. Could but justice and humanity be added to his other qualities, but, unfortunately for my nation, I fear that the answer of General Mortier to a remark of a friend of mine on this subject is not problematical: "Had," said this Imperial favourite, "Napoleon Bonaparte been just and humane, he would neither have ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... became a sort of fairy-story with us, an imaginative exercise. And there came Capern's discovery of what he called the ideal filament and with it an altogether less problematical quality about the business side of quap. For the ideal filament needed five per cent. of canadium, and canadium was known to the world only as a newly separated constituent of a variety of the rare mineral rutile. But to Thorold it was better known as an ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... neither more nor less than a compound of hog's lard and gunpowder, with the juice of tobacco and walnut leaves—a mixture that might perhaps have been useful for the destruction of vermin, but the efficacy of which as an antidote to freckles and lockjaw was at least problematical. The teapots, the ointment, and some spices, amongst which wooden nutmegs cut an important figure, were duly consigned to the keeping of the Mississippi kelpies; while the dollars that had been paid for them were retransferred from the pockets of the Yankee to those ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... medicated salts advertised under various trade names as preventives against worms is problematical. Commonly they contain little else than ordinary salt, the other substances being in such small quantity that their therapeutic effect is practically negligible. Definite evidence that they are more efficacious than plain salt is ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... such things as vampyrs?" tantamne rem tam negligenter? I turn to the learned pages of Horst for a luminous and precise definition of the destructive and mysterious beings, whose existence you have ventured to consider problematical. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... time is already short," Crane replied after a time. "We know enough, I believe; and furthermore, any additional assistance is problematical; in fact, it is more than doubtful. The Norlaminians have surveyed the system rather thoroughly, and no other planet seems to have inhabitants who have even ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... slope in front of us. It was steep and bad going. Anscombe might get up it on the horse before the Kaffirs overtook us, but it was extremely problematical if we could do so. I might perhaps if I mounted behind him and the horse could bear us both, which was doubtful, but how about our poor servants? He saw the doubt upon my face and ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... to pay a pious visit to the problematical dungeon in which Tasso, mad with love and grief, passed so many years, according to the poetic legend which grew up concerning his misfortune. We did not have time to spare and we regretted it very little. This dungeon, a perfectly correct sketch of which we have before our eyes, consists ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... you do not know. The perils and rewards are problematical. Of the former there will be enough; as for the latter, those lie on the knees of the gods. There will be no payment for any man. Not a cent of money is involved ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... had commanded, but she did not go far to seek it. Not further than the end of the back veranda, where she stood for some time motionless, before beginning to occupy herself in a way which Aunt Belindy, who was watching her from the kitchen window, considered highly problematical. The negress was wiping a dish and giving it a fine polish in her absence of mind. When her curiosity could no longer contain itself she ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... them save the translated copy of the writing in his notebook (the missing words inserted) and the legends of the negroes who, generation after generation since forgotten times, had told the story of the "Mountain of the Golden Pyramid." Nobody, within the memory of man, had ever searched for the problematical tomb: and as tales of more or less the same character are common in Egypt, I did not place much faith in the enthusiastic jottings of Ferlini. However, my love of the unknown, the mysterious and ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... that M. Violette had formed as to his son's inheriting from M. Gaufre were very problematical; for the father, whom M. Gaufre had not been able to avoid receiving at his table occasionally, had been struck, even shocked, by the familiar and despotic tone of the old merchant's servant, a superb Normandy woman of about twenty-five years, answering to the royal name of Berenice. The ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... sneer, and had tokened the old rascal's scorn of the girl's scrawniness. Failing to connect with the missionary brig, the Western Cross, on which she would not have been eaten, Captain Van Horn had been compelled to keep her in the cramped quarters of the Arangi against a problematical future time when he would be able to turn her ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... speculating in any theories which have for a basis opposition to the collected experience of mankind. This was a position laid down by Bolingbroke to escape all the historical arguments which some men deduce from alleged miraculous agency in the past, or problematical prophecy in the future. It likewise shows the untenable nature of all analogy, which presumes to trace an hypothetical first cause or personal intelligence, to account for a supposed origin of primeval existence, by which nature was caused, or forms ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... which proves to be a conscious willing of the means towards an unconsciously willed purpose. This conception explains clearly and without violence all the problems which instinct presents to us; or more truly, all that was problematical about instinct disappears when its true nature has been thus declared. If this work were confined to the consideration of instinct alone, the conception of an unconscious activity of mind might excite opposition, ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... inhabitants of Meroz, who came not to the help of the Lord against the mighty. The orators on the other side thundered against sinful associations. There were malignants in William's Army: Mackay's own orthodoxy was problematical: to take military service with such comrades, and under such a general, would be a sinful association. At length, after much wrangling, and amidst great confusion, a vote was taken; and the majority pronounced that to take military service would be a ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... compatible with its remaining yellow, but its persistent yellowness depends on the continuance of some of those changes. Similarly, a man's hair may remain black for some years; though, no doubt, at a certain age its colour may begin to be problematical, and the applicability to it of 'black' or 'not-black' may become a matter of genuine anxiety. Whilst being on our guard, then, against fallacies of contradiction arising from the imperfect correspondence of fact ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... to pine away in her new place. The house where she had taken service as a maid of all work was what servants call "a barrack." A spendthrift and glutton, devoid of order as of money, as is often the case with women engaged in the occupations that depend upon chance, and in the problematical methods of gaining a livelihood in vogue in Paris, the depilator, who was almost always involved in a lawsuit of some sort, paid but little heed to her small servant's nourishment. She often went away for the whole day without leaving her any ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... large and important picture based upon the destruction of Alost, and this work was hanging in the old church of St. Martin just before the outbreak of the war in 1914. Its fate is problematical, for St. Martin's Church was razed to the ground in the bombardment in 1914-15, the charge being the usual one that the tower was used for ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... where every parish had its own special saint and special legend of him. These sixty-six lives may have contained (Mr. Gibbon says must have contained) at least as many thousand lies. Perhaps so. To severe criticism, even the existence of a single apostle, St. Patrick, appears problematical. But at least there is the historical fact, about which admits of no mistake, that they did grow up in some way or other, that they were repeated, sung, listened to, written, and read; that these lives in Ireland, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... menace from injunctions than the officials who might face a prison sentence for contempt of court. Probably for this reason the "delivery" of the labor vote by the Federation has ever been so largely problematical. That the Federation leaders were able to force the desired concessions from one of the political parties by holding out a quid pro quo of such an uncertain value is at once a tribute to their political sagacity as well as a mark of the instability of ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... Sphagnales show such considerable and important differences from the rest of the mosses, that like the Anthocerotales among the liverworts, they may be regarded as a group, the relationship of which to the main stem is at least problematical. Between the Hepaticae, Anthocerotales, Sphagnales and Musci, there are no connecting forms known, and it must be left as an open question whether the Bryophyta are a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... received their collars and made their vows as stated. He excepted no member in the phrase about the joy displayed, though, as a matter of inference, the pleasure experienced by the Count of Charolais may be reckoned as somewhat problematical. ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... say "squeeze Mulhausen," it was a different thing to do it. He came to this conclusion after a few minutes' earnest concentration of mind on that problematical person. Hitherto he had been dealing with small men and wasters. Voles was a plain scoundrel, quite easily overthrown by direct methods. But Marcus Mulhausen he guessed to be a big man. The first thing to be done was to verify this supposition. ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... industry. I see clearly that, by excluding the produce of slave labour from our ports, I should inflict great evil on my fellow-subjects and constituents. But the good which, by taking such a course, I should do to the negroes in the United States seems to me very problematical. That by admitting slave grown cotton and slave grown sugar we do, in some sense, encourage slavery and the Slave Trade, may be true. But I doubt whether, by turning our fiscal code into a penal code for restraining the cruelty ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... we don't do that in Jingalo. No Jingalese Church-woman may throw away her whole life on so problematical a benefit as a religious vow of celibacy. She may lease herself to Heaven for a given number of years, ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... now?" was asked of Stumpy. The answer was doubtful. The only other being of Cherokee Sal's sex and maternal condition in the settlement was an ass. There was some conjecture as to fitness, but the experiment was tried. It was less problematical than the ancient treatment of Romulus and ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... explore that wilderness in person. And flying above it, as well insulated as he was, Dane knew that he could be dangerously exposed. If the contaminated territory extended more than a thousand miles, his danger was no longer problematical—it ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... the favourite plaything of school-boy and sage, Of the baby in arms and the baby of age; Of the grandam whose sight is at best problematical, And of the soph who explains ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... the pair. If it was written upon their foreheads that they should marry, the inscription was none of mine; and, of course, it was true, as John had indignantly stated, that Dacres might do very much worse. One's interest in Dacres Tottenham's problematical future had in no way diminished; but the young man was so positive, so full of intention, so disinclined to discussion—he had not reopened the subject since that morning in the saloon of the Caledonia—that one's feeling ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... tendencies, we begin to see that the matter is a very serious one. I am sometimes told that young people will not be influenced by a consideration for the welfare of unborn generations whose existence is very problematical in their thought; but my observation is that young folks are much more sensible than we give them credit for being. More than one young man has said to me: "I was never taught that my conduct and thought would impress themselves upon my children, ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... a fold of skin which resembled the larger lip of the vulva, while the penis was very short and resembled a clitoris. This individual, who was baptized as a woman, was certainly male on one side; on the other hand, the feminine nature was more than problematical. Menstruation was alleged to have occurred but was not established with certainty, any more than ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... out to the centre of the stream, and then veered slightly toward the right. He knew the sand ridge was only used by horsemen, not being wide enough for the safe passage of wagons, but the depth of the water on either side was entirely problematical. He was taking a big chance, yet dare not wait for daylight. Summoning all his nerve and alertness, he urged his horse slowly forward, the intelligent animal seemingly comprehending the situation, and ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... their bantering tone. Elena's answer threw a sudden search-light upon much that was problematical before. Andrea understood, and with that rapid and precise intuition so often found in minds practised in psychological analysis, he instantly divined the moral attitude of his visitor, and foresaw the further development of the coming scene. Moreover, he ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... Confessions in 397, lived to experience the capture and sack of Rome by Alaric the Goth, 410, composed his great work, The City of God, amidst the clear dissolution of a mighty past and the dim presage of a problematical future, and died at Hippo, his episcopal city, in 430, whilst the Vandals were besieging it. St. Augustine is more largely a convert and a rigorist even than St. Paul when St. Paul is most incisive. But here he ...
— Progress and History • Various
... of the nobilitie of England and Scotland, and gatt great summes of money with her: and promise of peace and unity made and ordained to stand between the two realms," says Pitscottie. The great sums, however, seem problematical, as the dower of Margaret was not a very large one, and the sacrifices made for her were considerable—the town of Berwick being given up to England as one preliminary step. The event, however, was one of incalculable importance to both nations, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... taking both these factors into account. It is scarcely necessary to add, in view of so superficial a way of looking at the problem, that we hardly ever find any attempt to deal with the more fundamental question of the meaning of a low birth-rate, and the problematical character of the advantages of rapid multiplication. The whole question is usually left to the ignorant preachers of the gospel of brute force, would-be patriots who desire their own country to increase at the cost of all other ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... said of the possibilities of blank verse as a dramatic medium? This is a thorny question, to be handled with caution. One can say with perfect assurance, however, that its possibilities are problematical, its difficulties ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... laboured to prove to man, that every thing in this world is nothing more than a chimerical illusion; that the universe exists nowhere but in himself; that it has no identity but in his imagination; who has rendered the existence of all things problematical by the aid of sophisms, insolvable even to those who maintain the doctrine of ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... naturally appeal to a person of your temperament; a life, apart from the small services which I have required of you, directed altogether by your own inclinations. Be thankful for those six years. As you well know, but for me they would have been spent either in prison or in the problematical future world—a matter entirely at the discretion of the judge who tried you. It pleased me to rescue you for my own purpose. You were possessed of a certain amount of low cunning and a complete absence ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... would, to an adventurer of our time. Given the vehicle, no doubt many volunteers would offer for the journey; Columbus could get a ship, but the chances of his arriving at his proposed destination must have appeared as problematical to him as the Moon enterprise in a balloon would to a world-weary globe-trotter of to-day. It was not merely that the ship was small and the Atlantic large and stormy; there were legends of vast whirlpools, of abysmal oceanic ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... paint-brush. The grub then recognizes the hole of its own making, slips its neck into it and little by little dives into the Cetonia's belly, so that the original state of affairs appears to be exactly restored. And yet its successful rearing is henceforth highly problematical. It is possible that the larva will prosper, complete its development and spin its cocoon; it is also possible—and the case is not unusual—that the Cetonia-larva will soon turn brown and putrid. We then see the Scolia itself ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... we think so, but it's problematical. Whether it did or not, we're safe in resuming the run without any shift in the ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... half a million or at four millions just as you liked; but it made the difference of three and a half millions in your pool to start with, according to which estimate you preferred. After that you had to cut out the unfit—another problematical figure. Finally came the question of casualties based on suspicious enemy statistics, and the perplexities involved in the number of wounded who would, and who would not, be able to return to the ranks. The only conclusion that one seemed to be justified in arriving at was that the wastage was ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... grafted successfully in any month of the year. But practically I think that grafting will be limited to that part of the year during which the cambium layer of the stock is active. At other times of the year preservation of the vitality of the scion will be too problematical, it seems to me, even if it is very carefully waxed. However, I may be mistaken. At any rate grafting is not very pleasant work out of doors in very cold weather. The success of bench grafting would be an argument for ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... trained, as ours has been, in the doctrines of the conservation and dissipation of energy as the very alphabet of physical science can but ill appreciate the mental attitude of a generation which for the most part had not even thought it problematical whether the sun could continue to give out heat and light forever. But those advance thinkers who had grasped the import of the doctrine of conservation could at once appreciate the force of Thomson's doctrine of dissipation, and realize the complementary character ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... to London must always be problematical like all my movements, and of course this sickness of Bob's makes it still more uncertain. If all goes well I may have to go to the country and take care of him in his convalescence. But I shall come shortly. Do not hurry to write to me; I had rather you had ten minutes ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an hour later. At eleven o'clock we began the search for Monsieur Feurgeres. At three, Allan discovered that he had left the Savoy Hotel at ten for St. Petersburg. Since then we have sent seven telegrams, the delivery of which is very problematical—and we have heard—nothing!" ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to some conclusion with regard to the probabilities of the truth of Mr. Darwin's theory." As one of these facts, he stated that the brain of the gorilla "presented more differences, as compared with the brain of man, than it did when compared with the brains of the very lowest and most problematical of ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... world, while increasing Sophy's tenderness for the Farlows, had left her with few illusions as to their power of advancing her fortunes; and she did not conceal from Darrow that her theatrical projects were of the vaguest. They hung mainly on the problematical good-will of an ancient comedienne, with whom Mrs. Farlow had a slight acquaintance (extensively utilized in "Stars of the French Footlights" and "Behind the Scenes at the Francais"), and who had once, with signs of approval, heard Miss Viner ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... everywhere its indispensable foundation. But we get nowhither unless we carefully distinguish between the foundation of the problem and the problem itself. There is nothing in the unlikeness of the unlike that is necessarily problematical; it may be simply accepted and dealt with as a fact, like any other fact. The problem arises only when the people of one race are minded to adopt and act upon some policy more or less oppressive or repressive in dealing with the people of another race. In the absence of ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... thought some of the excitement will be gone, and the struggle of the 'survival of the fittest' will become less problematical," said Bearwarden. ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... troops. At one time, while we were standing at our horses' heads, a startled rabbit ran to us for cover. The poor little creature meant a dinner to the fortunate captor on a day when a dinner was extremely problematical. We engaged in a sharp scramble, the prize being won by the regimental surgeon, who kindly shared his game ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... portion of our country, or a dissolution of the government. On the whole, we think it may with candor be said, that whether the possession at this time of any territory west of the river Mississippi will be advantageous, is at best extremely problematical. For ourselves, we are very much inclined to the opinion that, after all, it is the Island of N. Orleans by which the command of a free navigation of the Mississippi is secured, that gives to this interesting cession its greatest value, and will render it in every ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... most realize profits, another fourth hold their own, and the rest are constantly running behind in their business. Take, then, half at most of the six million so-called leaders in enterprises, which we will add to the very problematical twelve million landed proprietors, and we shall attain a total of fifteen million Frenchmen in a position, by their education, their industry, their capital, their credit, their property, to engage in competition. For the rest of the nation, or nineteen million ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... ever made a Rule for the Third Order it must have very nearly resembled this epistle, and until this problematical document is found, the letter shows what were originally these associations of Brothers of Penitence. Everything in these long pages looks toward the development of the mystic religious life in the heart of each Christian. But even when Francis dictated them, this high view ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... from early marriage? You may justly conclude that their native island and town can contain but a limited number. Emigration is both natural and easy to a maritime people, and that is the very reason why they are always populous, problematical as it may appear. They yearly go to different parts of this continent, constantly engaged in sea affairs; as our internal riches increase, so does our external trade, which consequently requires more ships and more men: sometimes ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... that any opinion upon the future results of the Measure must rest on surmises; she has that confidence, however, in Lord John's experience and judgment in these matters, and so strong a conviction that he will have spared no pains in forming as correct an opinion as may be formed on so problematical a matter, that she is prepared to come to the decision of approving the Measure on the strength of Lord John's opinion. She only hopes that the future may bear it out, and that the character of the House of Commons may not be impaired. Should this prove the case, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... like this. First of all, I suppose, they would feel that they could serve their God as well on their backs as upright, while all the help I shall be able to give the cause is dreadfully indirect and problematical. Then certainly they would feel that they might be getting ready for the next world where all wrong is, they believe, to be set right, while I am only terribly hindered in getting ready for this world a whole year without the chance of a lecture. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... hoped, quite plainly "how it works." But electricity is elusive, invisible; and the greatest authorities cannot say what goes on at the poles of a magnet or on the surface of an electrified body. Even the existence of "negative" and "positive" electricity is problematical. However, we see the effects, and we know that if one thing is done another thing happens; so that we are at least able to use terms which, while convenient, are not at present ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... immediate effect on the spirits of my children, who at once regarded our problematical chance of escaping as a happy certainty, and began to enjoy the relief from the violent pitching and rolling of the vessel. My wife, however, perceived my distress and anxiety, in spite of my forced composure, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... elevation have to be constructed across deep valleys, and the speculation is at all times problematical, as the ground cannot be properly tested until the water arrives upon it, and disputes may arise between the shareholders of the canal and the mining company, ending frequently in the one devouring the other, unless the two interests ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... this specious philosophic discussion would have continued is problematical had it not been interrupted by the entry of a young gentleman dressed with a somewhat ostentatious elegance, whose wizened face bore an expression at once of vast good nature and of ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... the numbers of the Hochelagan race, the question how long they had been in the St. Lawrence valley must be problematical. Sir William Dawson describes the site of Hochelaga as indicating a residence of several generations. Their own statements regarding the Huron country—that they "had never been there", and that they gathered ...
— Hochelagans and Mohawks • W. D. Lighthall
... few days later, the glad tidings that no German reinforcements arrived at the critical moment and all the British objectives had been captured and held. Whether or not the only night-bombing squadron engaged in that action was responsible for the tie-up of the Hun transportation system is problematical, but all the members of the squadron remember that night and hope that their efforts ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... which seemed to us problematical in its outcome, we did not dare to borrow money or to induce friends to invest; and of course Mission funds were not available. For the day has not yet arrived when all those who seek by their gifts to hasten the coming of the ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... which we are taught to expect at Christ's coming. For it is the language of the text, and other Scriptures, that every impediment to the complete knowledge of each other, will then be done away; that no person's character will longer remain problematical. The hidden works of darkness will be brought to light, and the counsels of ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... passed open through the office of the town major, that no plea, even what arbitrary power could construe into such, might be taken for continuing our imprisonment; but the arrival of letters thus sent being exceedingly problematical, and my hope of liberation from general De Caen having disappeared, the motive for this forbearance had ceased to exist. An account was therefore written to the secretary of the Admiralty of my arrival, reception, and treatment ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... infirm will by every possible safeguard, he might have been carried through the inevitable period of horrible depression; but even then the habit had become so confirmed that his chances would have been problematical, for experience sadly proves that confirmed opium-consumers are ever in danger of ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... of her so strongly. It was but a month since she had left the Warren with her mother, with some gentle anticipations of pleasure, but none that were exaggerated or excessive. All that was likely to happen, as far as she knew, was that dinner party at Mrs. Benson's, and a play or two, and a problematical hall. This was all that the "vortex" meant about which her mother had laughed; she had not any idea at that time that the vortex would mean Dick Cavendish. But now that she fully understood what it meant, and now that it was all over, and her agitated little bark had come ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... be the one lady in a party of four men, and he invited the Professor's wife as an excellent neutral figure-head, to keep her in countenance. Ladies were scarcer then in Oxford than they are nowadays. The married fellow was still a tentative problematical experiment in those years, and the invasion of the Parks by young couples had hardly yet begun in earnest. So female society was still at a considerable local premium, and Berkeley was glad enough to secure even colourless old Mrs. Martindale to square ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... in subsequent editions, a paragraph aiming to show that the inferred structure of the Sun's interior was congruous with the low specific gravity of the Sun—a conclusion which, as indicated on p. 156, implies some very problematical assumptions respecting the natures of the unknown elements of the Sun. There ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... three-quarters of an hour taking a bearing based upon the problematical position of the lights, the height and density of the box screen and then boldly and rapidly opened the door, stepped through and closed it behind him. His calculations had been accurate. He found himself in a room, the extent of which he could only conjecture. What, however, interested ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... economic paralysis resulting from the political interference by the tariff walls of newly-created states with the established economic relations of agricultural areas and manufacturing centers, and an unwillingness of the farmer to do business with a currency so debased that its value is highly problematical. So we see the great city of Vienna,[26] once one of the gayest and most brilliant capitals of Europe, now reduced to destitution, and the cities not only of Russia but of Germany being forced to revert to the ancient system of barter in order to ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... islands affords shelter from all heavy seas and there are good harbours at convenient distances. I entertain indeed sanguine hopes that the skill and exertions of my friend Captain Parry will soon render this question no longer problematical. His task is doubtless an arduous one and if ultimately successful may occupy two and perhaps three seasons but, confiding as I do from personal knowledge in his perseverance and talent for surmounting difficulties, the strength of his ships, and the abundance ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... intently. To a man of another stripe, the proposal might have been alluring. It meant that although the organization ticket won, he would, in the public eye at least, have the credit of beating the System, of going into office unhampered, of having assured beyond doubt what was at best only problematical with the Reform League. ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... one of the South American states. There would this time be no escape. The death sentence had been passed upon the Turk, and if he waited for his enemies to gather and descend upon him defense would be problematical. It was, of course, realized that in the long run Germany would save Turkey by battles won in France or in Poland, and also that German defeats in Europe would in the long run spell the downfall of Turkey whatever the Turk did. It was, therefore, advisable ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... apparent inconsistency of his character. That a person who, from his earliest childhood, had been brought up to fraud and deceit, should, of his own accord, and so suddenly, return to honesty, may at first appear problematical. But let it be remembered, that McElvina was not in the situation of those who, having their choice of good and evil, had preferred the latter. From infancy he had been brought up to, and had heard every ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... affection—and so on. Apart altogether from the facts that this investigation is still in its infancy and that the conditions of experiment are insufficiently understood, its ultimate success is rendered highly problematical by the essential fact that real scientific results can be achieved only by data recorded in connexion with a perfectly normal subject; a conscious or interested subject introduces variable factors which are probably ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... manifested, and the present condition of Europe clearly shows, that the lamp of liberty, which was lighted here, has burned with a brilliancy so steady as to have reflected its light across the Atlantic. Whether it will be there permitted to shine, is somewhat problematical. But should a "holy alliance of legitimates" extinguish it, it will be but for a season. Kings, Emperors and Priests cannot succeed much longer in staying the march of freedom. The people are sensibly alive to the oppression of their rulers—they ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... The treasure was at hand and enormous, whereas the wrath of a Heavenly or an earthly king was problematical and far away. So greed, outstripping caution and superstitious fear, won the race, and Ramiro threw himself into the adventure with a resource and energy which in their way ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... arrival of a new baby until the important Sunday of the christening, nothing was discussed with such eager zest and such sustained interest as the name he should get—there was a fascinating list at the back of the dictionary—and to the last minute it was problematical. In Stella's case, Mrs Murchison actually changed her mind on the way to church; and Abby, who had sat through the sermon expecting Dorothy Maud, which she thought lovely, publicly cried with disappointment. Stella was the youngest, and Mrs Murchison was thankful to have a girl at last whom ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... fallen on him from that initial deception, and it was no longer a load on his mind; kind fortune had brought him immunity, and he thought it was only fair that she should. Who was hurt by it? The results to Baldassarre were too problematical to be taken into account. But he wanted now to be free from any hidden shackles that would gall him, though ever so little, under his ties to Romola. He was not aware that that very delight in immunity which ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... philosophy that borrows its concepts from practice has thus laid a great emphasis on association by contiguity. Hobbes and Locke made knowledge of this kind the only knowledge of reality, while recognising it to be quite empirical, tentative, and problematical. It was a kind of acquaintance with fact that increased with years and brought the mind into harmony with something initially alien to it. Besides this practical knowledge or prudence there was a sort of verbal and merely ideal knowledge, a knowledge ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... stake in the cost of the European War, it is important to find out first just how much money has been expended and what the likelihood of future outlay will be. Like every other phase of the stupendous upheaval this one is both speculative and problematical. ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... with satisfaction by the little circle at Billingsfield, while he himself was at once received into intimacy and treated with cordial friendliness, he nevertheless represented in the minds of all an unsolved enigma. And to the squire the existence of one of the circle was at least as problematical as his own life could seem to any of them. The more he saw of Mrs. Goddard, the more he wondered at her and speculated about her and the less he dared to ask her any questions. But he understood from Mr. Ambrose's manner, that the vicar at least ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... not cemented by any common ties of nationality. Under these circumstances, and bearing in mind the immense political machinery which the Papacy can set to work in Canada, the transfer of British institutions to the colony must at present remain a matter of problematical success. It is admitted that the failure of representative institutions arises from the unworthiness of constituencies; and if the efforts which are made by means of education to elevate the character of the next generation ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... The day is likely to be long delayed. Of the collector's whereabouts now no one of his friends dares to speak positively; for at the time when knowledge of him was most exact THE BIBLIOTAPH was like a newly-discovered comet,—his course was problematical. ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... their own, and so much more easily are they led by the hope of acquisition than by the fear of loss. The suggestions of the latter appear incredible till they are verified; and the pleasing anticipations of the former are cherished as facts, even while the advantages are very problematical, or at best, remote. The people of Florence were inspired with hope, by the acquisitions which Niccolo Fortebraccio had made, and by letters received from their rectors in the vicinity of Lucca; for their deputies at Vico and Pescia had written, that if permission were given to them to receive ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... telling, only a sweet naturalness and an apparent honesty—the honesty of purpose that comes to people in lonely places. Her stories were all of the class that magazine editors call "homely, heart-interest stuff," not deep or clever or problematical— the commonplace doings of common people—but it found an entrance into the hearts ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... that this was not the point. “There were those on his side who held that grace is not given to all, and even the examiners themselves had declared, in a full meeting of the Sorbonne, that this opinion was problematical.” This was, in fact, his own view; and he confirmed it by what he said was a celebrated passage of St Augustine, “We know that grace is not given to all men.” He was equally unfortunate in his second inquiry. His neighbour, opposed as he was to Jansenism, would not condemn the doctrine of ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... turned upon her, made haste to leave the church and returned to the square less hurriedly than she had left it. She had reckoned on the doctor's money, and possession was becoming problematical. She found the clerk of the court, the collector, and their wives in greater consternation than ever. Goupil was taking ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... state of peace and security. This current scheme of investment, business, and sabotage, should have an appreciably better chance of survival in the long run if the present conditions of warlike preparation and national insecurity were maintained, or if the projected peace were left in a somewhat problematical state, sufficiently precarious to keep national animosities alert, and thereby to the neglect of domestic interests, particularly of such interests as touch the popular well-being. On the other hand, it has also appeared that the cause of peace and its perpetuation might be materially ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... however, getting the better of problematical risk, I went in. The room allotted me lay on the ground floor just off the garden, and I had not been there many minutes before I became aware, as one does, that I was being stared at. The culprit instantly pretended, with a very sheepish air, to be only taking a walk. ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... written so convincingly, as he thought, of Bettina's beauty, breeding, and fitness for the position of Lady Hurdly that was to be, that he would not and could not believe that his cousin would disapprove. Besides, he was too blissfully happy to grieve over problematical troubles, and so he quite gave himself up to the joys of his present position and ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... the Lord Chamberlain—everything, in fact, that we thought might contain some allusion to Willie Hughes. We discovered nothing, of course, and every day the existence of Willie Hughes seemed to me to become more problematical. Cyril was in a dreadful state, and used to go over the whole question day after day, entreating me to believe; but I saw the one flaw in the theory, and I refused to be convinced till the actual existence of Willie Hughes, a boy-actor ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... Blake's establishment was limited to an old creature almost doting and totally deaf, the advantages of whose presence might have been considered problematical; but, then, as Miss Blake remarked, ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... synchronous with that in the tides of the ocean, the greatest number occurring at the time of new and full moon.[96] If this theory be sustained, we must admit the existence of a vast subterranean sea of lava. But all this is problematical. Earthquakes appear independently of the geology of a country, though the rate of undulation is modified by the mineral structure. Earthquake waves seem to move more rapidly through the comparatively undisturbed beds of the Mississippi Valley than through the contorted strata ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... eager natures, the appeal of the present was all-powerful, the more so when that present offered her with both hands the best that life has to give. To sacrifice it on the altar of a problematical future seemed sheer folly; magnificent folly, perhaps, but, in the circumstances her quickened heart leaned towards a less magnificent wisdom. She detected in this unmanageable husband of hers a strain of unpretentious heroism, which delighted her ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... brief instant the girl did not reply. She was weighing the problematical value of an attempt to enlist the king in the cause of the American. Leopold had shown a spark of magnanimity when he had written a pardon for Mr. Custer; might he not rise again above his petty jealousy and save the American's life? It was a forlorn hope to the woman who knew ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... identical with those of the Christian creed, and these commandments are, as we have previously observed, the same that Moses laid down for the guidance of his people. That they were old before Moses was born, is also more than problematical. ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... Jean rates mightily the natives of Cologne for their bigotry and superstition and for the bad reception they gave to him and to his philosophy. That people are happier from a blind belief, as some pretend, appears to me extremely problematical. For my part, under no circumstances can I think bliss to consist in ignorance; nor have I felt any particular discomfort in having learned at a very early age to put under my feet, as Lucretius expresses it, the strepitum Acherontis avari. On the contrary, it has made me a perfect cosmopolitan, ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... thankless a subject, with a solid background of resignation. Stowing this safely away, I could calculate my intentions with cold egotism. If the weather held I might pass a not intolerable fortnight with Davies. When it broke up, as it was sure to, I could easily excuse myself from the pursuit of the problematical ducks; the wintry logic of facts would, in any case, decide him to lay up his yacht, for he could scarcely think of sailing home at such a season. I could then take a chance lying ready of spending a few weeks in Dresden or elsewhere. I settled this programme comfortably ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... they became a sort of fairy-story with us, an imaginative exercise. And there came Capern's discovery of what he called the ideal filament and with it an altogether less problematical quality about the business side of quap. For the ideal filament needed five per cent. of canadium, and canadium was known to the world only as a newly separated constituent of a variety of the rare mineral rutile. But ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... was this infernal detective. Bechamel had told his wife he was going to Davos to see Carter. To that he had fancied she was reconciled, but how she would take this exploit was entirely problematical. She was a woman of peculiar moral views, and she measured marital infidelity largely by its proximity to herself. Out of her sight, and more particularly out of the sight of the other women of her set, vice of the recognised description ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... return for a moment to the problematical function of the antennae. The male Oak Eggar has a sumptuous pair, as has the Great Peacock or Emperor Moth. Are we to regard these silky "feelers" as a kind of directing compass?—I resumed, but without attaching much ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... the sun at new, and in opposition at the full, an atmospheric spring-tide may be supposed to exist, and to exert some sort of influence. But the existence of any atmospheric tide at all is denied by some naturalists, and is at most very problematical; and the absence of regular diurnal fluctuations of the barometric pressure favours the negative of this proposition. But, granting that it were so, and that the moon, in what is conventionally called the beginning of its course, and again in the middle, at the full, did produce changes in the weather, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... meaning which common sense affirms and Berkeley denies. In any case it was a work of great merit to have transferred the existence of objects beyond our ideas, of things-in-themselves, out of the region of the self-evident into the region of the problematical. We never get beyond the circle of our ideas, and if we posit a thing-in-itself as the ground and object of the idea, this also is simply a thought, an idea. For us there is no being except that of the perceiver and the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... woman-worship the highest value was no longer felt as male but as female, that secretly a goddess had usurped the place of a god. Very likely the minnesingers finally fixed the female gender when it had become problematical, and worshipped the loved woman under the divine symbol ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... stood mute and impassive, waiting for further orders, whilst two soldiers were kneeling beside the prostrate form of Marguerite. Chauvelin gave his secretary a vicious look. His well-laid plan had failed, its sequel was problematical; there was still a great chance now that the Scarlet Pimpernel might yet escape, and Chauvelin, with that unreasoning fury, which sometimes assails a strong nature, was longing to vent his ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... knew that his own existence was in danger is problematical. Like the human brain, his own had no pain or sensory circuits within it; in addition, his knowledge of robotics was small—he didn't even know that his brain was in Cargo Hold One. He thought it was in his head, if he thought ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the vast remaining sum was due to banks, to printers, to binders, and to dealers in various publishing materials. Somehow it must be paid. As for their assets, they looked ample enough on paper, but in reality, at a time like this, they were problematical. In fact, their value was very doubtful indeed. What he was to do Clemens did not know. He could not even send cheerful reports to Europe. There was no longer anything to promise concerning the type-setter. The fifty machines which the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... relate that of the nuns of Loudun, on which such various opinions have been given, the reality of which was doubted at the very time, and is very problematical to this day. Those who are curious to know the history of that affair will find it very well detailed in a book I have already cited, entitled, "Examen et Discussion Critique de l'Histoire des Diables de Loudun, &c., par M. de la Menardaye," ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... with the household of the Infinite Father, who cares for all of His children, and will ultimately blend them in the blessed bonds of an endless confraternity. Whether we or our posterity will ever become better acquainted in this life with the man in the moon is problematical; but in the ages to come, "when the manifold wisdom of God" shall be developed among "the principalities and powers in heavenly places," he may be something more than a myth or topic of amusement. He may be visible among the first who will declare every man in his own tongue wherein ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... length, at the very moment when these savages were committing daily inroads upon our frontier, we were informed by them that "the continuation of the peace, good harmony, and perfect friendship of the two nations was very problematical for the future, unless the United States should take more convenient measures and of greater energy than those adopted for a ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... words had an immediate effect on the spirits of my children, who at once regarded our problematical chance of escaping as a happy certainty, and began to enjoy the relief from the violent pitching and rolling of the vessel. My wife, however, perceived my distress and anxiety, in spite of my forced composure, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... banking house used its tremendous influence is problematical, but it is history that Mr. Lloyd George has been bringing all pressure to bear to increase England's supplies, and with them the supplies of the remaining allies, since British purchasing agents are, to a large extent, looking ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the lamp of liberty, which was lighted here, has burned with a brilliancy so steady as to have reflected its light across the Atlantic. Whether it will be there permitted to shine, is somewhat problematical. But should a "holy alliance of legitimates" extinguish it, it will be but for a season. Kings, Emperors and Priests cannot succeed much longer in staying the march of freedom. The people are sensibly alive to the oppression of their rulers—they have groaned beneath the burden 'till it has ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... venture which seemed to us problematical in its outcome, we did not dare to borrow money or to induce friends to invest; and of course Mission funds were not available. For the day has not yet arrived when all those who seek by their gifts ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Florence, which he afterwards had introduced not very effectively into his work. But where exactly had he stood? That was the question which Mr. Eager hoped to solve now. And Miss Lavish, whose nature was attracted by anything problematical, had become equally enthusiastic. ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... given to all”? But he received a rude rebuff, and was told that this was not the point. “There were those on his side who held that grace is not given to all, and even the examiners themselves had declared, in a full meeting of the Sorbonne, that this opinion was problematical.” This was, in fact, his own view; and he confirmed it by what he said was a celebrated passage of St Augustine, “We know that grace is not given to all men.” He was equally unfortunate in his second inquiry. His neighbour, opposed as ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... expeditions and colonies beyond the sea carried off their redundant population. The Saxon warriors established themselves near the mouths of the Loire; others, conducted by Hengist and Horsa, settled in Great Britain. It will always remain problematical from what point of the coast these adventurers departed; but many circumstances tend to give weight to the opinion which pronounces those old Saxons to have started ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... legislatively operative. If it were so defined we should have dogma and not Christianity. Nevertheless, it may be practically potent. The degree in which a given man may justly identify his own consciousness and experience with that of the Christian world is problematical. In Schleiermacher's own case, the identification of some of his contentions as, for example, the thought that God is not personal with the great Christian consciousness of the past, is more than problematical. To this Schleiermacher would reply ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... speculations it may be gathered that Morris Monk was that rather common yet problematical person, an inventor who ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... railway, all the sinews of war without importation, and mechanics unnumbered and of every sort. And while champions of the Union would fight with all the prestige of law, national history and the status quo on their side, Europe's aid to the South, or even that of the border slave States, was more than problematical, as was a successful career for the Confederacy in case its independence should chance to be won. Events proved that the very defence of slavery had best prospect in the Union, and it seems as if this might have been foreseen by all, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... principle which regulated all the various movements of the complex machinery; so that his narrative becomes, what he terms it in his English abridgment, a history of Italian liberty. By keeping this principle steadily before him, he has been able to solve much that hitherto was dark and problematical in his subject; and if he has occasionally sacrificed something to theory, he has, on the whole, pursued the investigation in a truly philosophical manner, and arrived at results the most honorable and cheering to humanity. ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... only be achieved with difficulty. So, also, Professor W. Thomas (Sex and Society, 1907, p. 193), while regarding monogamy as subserving social needs, adds: "Speaking from the biological standpoint monogamy does not, as a rule, answer to the conditions of highest stimulation, since here the problematical and elusive elements disappear to some extent, and the object of attention has grown so familiar in consciousness that the emotional reactions are qualified. This is the fundamental explanation of the fact that married men and women frequently become interested ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... character of the people over whom he reigns. Could but justice and humanity be added to his other qualities, but, unfortunately for my nation, I fear that the answer of General Mortier to a remark of a friend of mine on this subject is not problematical: "Had," said this Imperial favourite, "Napoleon Bonaparte been just and humane, he would neither have ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the Sphagnales show such considerable and important differences from the rest of the mosses, that like the Anthocerotales among the liverworts, they may be regarded as a group, the relationship of which to the main stem is at least problematical. Between the Hepaticae, Anthocerotales, Sphagnales and Musci, there are no connecting forms known, and it must be left as an open question whether the Bryophyta are a monophyletic ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... else have they? Nobody but C——-, who has only good sense, but not the necessary talents nor experience, 'AEre ciere viros martemque accendere cantu'. I never remember, in all my time, to have seen so problematical a state of affairs, and a man would be much puzzled which ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... of the writing in his notebook (the missing words inserted) and the legends of the negroes who, generation after generation since forgotten times, had told the story of the "Mountain of the Golden Pyramid." Nobody, within the memory of man, had ever searched for the problematical tomb: and as tales of more or less the same character are common in Egypt, I did not place much faith in the enthusiastic jottings of Ferlini. However, my love of the unknown, the mysterious and romantic, made me feel that the possession of the notebook was worth the ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... queen, being unencumbered and ardent, will fly much further, and in the first stage lead the swarm to a considerable distance from the hive. The conduct of these second and third migrations will be far more rash, and their future more problematical. The queen at their head, the representative of the future, has not yet been impregnated. Their entire destiny depends on the ensuing nuptial flight. A passing bird, a few drops of rain, a mistake, a cold wind—any one of these may give rise to irremediable ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... as to all eager natures, the appeal of the present was all-powerful, the more so when that present offered her with both hands the best that life has to give. To sacrifice it on the altar of a problematical future seemed sheer folly; magnificent folly, perhaps, but, in the circumstances her quickened heart leaned towards a less magnificent wisdom. She detected in this unmanageable husband of hers a strain ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... 1920), which embodied the territorial arrangements already made at San Remo, Greece obtained practically the whole of Thrace outside the enclave of Constantinople, and a mandate over Smyrna and its hinterland. No doubt, this enormous extension of the kingdom, though still largely problematical, appealed to that compound of idealism and greed (mostly greed) which constitutes Hellenic, as it does all other, Imperialism. But it did not fully compensate for the suppression of popular liberties within its frontiers. Except among the followers of M. Venizelos the ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... Harry had no hesitation in selling the amethysts given to him by his uncle Ralph, or the Sheikh Burrachee. For he fully intended to seek him, if he could not find Daireh, a matter which he felt to be extremely problematical. Without the sale of these jewels he could not attempt the rescue of the will at all. He was surprised at their value, for he got more for them than he expected, and it seemed a great risk to have left them in the secret drawer of his desk all this time. You may be sure he did ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... Slegge's remarks remained problematical for a few moments, and then the meaning came with a flash to Burton, who had suddenly caught ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... river, head toward the other shore, and was already so far away the men on deck were invisible. It was scarcely probable that Kirby would go far northward, but just what course the man would take when once more ashore was problematical. Where he might choose to seek for us could not be guessed. Yet the mere fact that he was already above us on the river was in itself a matter for grave consideration. Still, thus far we remained unlocated, ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... of aluminium hydrates, my boy, is problematical, but the South is in a hurry for it, and the duty must come down. It's got to come down, and I'm not going to do ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... nearly three-quarters of an hour taking a bearing based upon the problematical position of the lights, the height and density of the box screen and then boldly and rapidly opened the door, stepped through and closed it behind him. His calculations had been accurate. He found himself in a room, the extent of which he could only conjecture. What, ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... proposal. He advised its adoption, as it was hopeless to await the problematical arrival of a vessel in Twofold Bay. But before coming to any decision, he thought it best to visit the ship mentioned by the geographer. Glenarvan, the Major, Paganel, Robert, and Mangles himself, took a boat, and a few strokes brought them alongside the ship anchored ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... were equally vain. There were two ways of proceeding. Silence and safety might be purchased: or the law might be let loose on a knave, who set it at defiance. The one was secure: the other problematical; and replete with the danger which we ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Munich, Berlin, and other scientific centres, he had been considered one of the most competent bacteriologists, a man whose career had passed the stage of the problematical. The worst against him—and that only in the opinion of the cut-and-dried among his fellow-scientists, who shook their heads doubtfully—had been a certain belletristic tendency. Now, however, that his abortive work had appeared ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... certainly a better chance than there was before the defeat of Chang for the unification of China and the ending of the Tuchuns' tyranny. But it is as yet no more than a chance, and the future is still problematical. ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... fame. My mind was the richer merely by the knowledge that it was there. But the chief profit of those wild days, to him and me, lay not in any definite idea, not in any angular or rounded truth, which we dug out of the shapeless mass of problematical stuff, but in the freedom which we thereby won from all custom and conventionalism and fettering influences of man on man. We were so free to-day that it was impossible to be slaves again to-morrow. When we crossed the threshold of the house or trod the thronged pavements of a city, still ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... some of the excitement will be gone, and the struggle of the 'survival of the fittest' will become less problematical," ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... ourselves, we shall endeavour to prevent ourselves from pursuing this argument any further—and perhaps quite enough has been said to show that Dr Kitchiner's assertion, that persons who live in the country have firmer health and finer spirits than the inhabitants of towns—is exceedingly problematical. But even admitting the fact to be as the Doctor has stated it, we do not think he has attributed the phenomenon to the right cause. He attributes it to "their enjoying plenty of sound sleep." The worthy Doctor is entirely out in his conjecture. The working ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... such good fortune should attend me that I get rich by my contrivances of public story-telling and so on, I shall share everything with you and the rest of us, in which case you shall not work at all. But (although I have been unexpectedly successful so far) this is problematical; and it would be rash to calculate upon all of us being able to live, or even us seven girls only, upon the fortune I am going to make that way. So, though I don't mean to be harsh, I must impress upon you the necessity of going on as you are going just at present. I know the place ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... English extraction, she is sure to be a maritime nation. I formerly imagined that Australia would rise to be as grand and powerful a country as North America, but now it appears to me that such future grandeur is rather problematical. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... was considered the physician of most "weight," though Dr. Minchin was usually said to have more "penetration," divested his large heavy face of all expression, and looked at his wine-glass while Lydgate was speaking. Whatever was not problematical and suspected about this young man—for example, a certain showiness as to foreign ideas, and a disposition to unsettle what had been settled and forgotten by his elders—was positively unwelcome to a physician whose standing had been fixed thirty years before ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... that borrows its concepts from practice has thus laid a great emphasis on association by contiguity. Hobbes and Locke made knowledge of this kind the only knowledge of reality, while recognising it to be quite empirical, tentative, and problematical. It was a kind of acquaintance with fact that increased with years and brought the mind into harmony with something initially alien to it. Besides this practical knowledge or prudence there was a sort of verbal and merely ideal knowledge, a ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... that it lay to the south. The days went by, and she lived on the cocoanuts that had kept her afloat. They supplied her with drinking water and with food. But she did not drink all she wanted, nor eat all she wanted. Rescue was problematical. She saw the smoke of the rescue steamers on the horizon, but what steamer could be expected to come to lonely, ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... organizations and charities in which he was interested, and it was characteristic of him that he could not wait until he had the actual cash in hand, but, even while his own future was uncertain, he made donations of large blocks of stocks, which, while of problematical value while the litigation was proceeding, eventually rose to ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... obstacle, they show you the labor which it brings into play; and if you say this is not labor created but diverted, they answer you as does the Esprit Public—"The impoverishing only is certain and immediate; as for the enriching, it is more than problematical." ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... so. If the fact that the killing could be avoided in some such way or at a certain price, and the discrepancy between the cost and the value of the life were squarely brought to your particular attention, you might and probably would do something. How much is problematical. ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... of the Hochelagan race, the question how long they had been in the St. Lawrence valley must be problematical. Sir William Dawson describes the site of Hochelaga as indicating a residence of several generations. Their own statements regarding the Huron country—that they "had never been there", and that they gathered their knowledge of it from the Ottawa Algonquins, permits some deductions. If the Hochelagans—including ...
— Hochelagans and Mohawks • W. D. Lighthall
... want of a constitution in England to restrain and regulate the wild impulse of power, many of the laws are irrational and tyrannical, and the administration of them vague and problematical. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... pursuers were gaining steadily. When the storm broke, however, these very provisions saved their lives, for the Hudson Bay men, being without means of shelter or sustenance, had given up the chase, rather than lose their lives in a pursuit of which the favorable outcome was so problematical. Seguis, striking into the usual trail to the camp, had overtaken his men that night, while they were still struggling on, and had ordered a halt. Confident of their safety, they had camped, and then resumed their march at daybreak, finding their bearings, and keeping them, by the ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... and was now on my way back to Kansas, riding the rods of freights, once more an unsavoury outcast, a knight of the road ... he ended with the implication, if I remember correctly, that the reception that awaited me in Kansas, would be, to say the least, problematical. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... evidence in Great Britain and other European countries. Whether that system works well in the West, where it has been in existence for centuries and is not always taken over-seriously by party politicians themselves, is a question upon which I shall express no opinion. But I think it is problematical whether such a system is well adapted for an Oriental people, possessed of and permeated by an ancient civilisation—a people whose feelings, sentiments, modes of thought, prejudices and passions are so essentially different from those of Western ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... taking off his hat, "the reception I offer you is rather problematical; but let me beseech you to give us the pleasure of your society. You are a little embarrassed for the moment; you must, indeed, permit me to advance what may be necessary. I ask it as a favour; we must not part so soon after having ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... realises that he may have to retain the same partner for several dances, or even for the greater part of the evening, he will, unless he is a Bayard absolutely sans peur et sans reproche, naturally think twice of engaging a lady from whom his release is problematical. Hence the tendency is to increase the triumphs of the belle, and decrease the chances of the less popular maiden. It is also extremely uncomfortable for a girl to feel that a man has (to use the ugly slang of the occasion) "got stuck" with ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... man, but to be in silence." Hear, hear! from the males in the body of the synagogue. Evidently Paul could bray on occasion as lustily as Balaam's ass. If the women "will learn anything," which he clearly thought problematical, "let them ask their husbands at home." Fancy some women with no other ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... with its remaining yellow, but its persistent yellowness depends on the continuance of some of those changes. Similarly, a man's hair may remain black for some years; though, no doubt, at a certain age its colour may begin to be problematical, and the applicability to it of 'black' or 'not-black' may become a matter of genuine anxiety. Whilst being on our guard, then, against fallacies of contradiction arising from the imperfect correspondence of fact with thought and language, ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... remaining requirement for the conception of an actual instinct, which proves to be a conscious willing of the means towards an unconsciously willed purpose. This conception explains clearly and without violence all the problems which instinct presents to us; or more truly, all that was problematical about instinct disappears when its true nature has been thus declared. If this work were confined to the consideration of instinct alone, the conception of an unconscious activity of mind might excite opposition, inasmuch as it is one with which our educated public ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... solemnedlie by the advice of the nobilitie of England and Scotland, and gatt great summes of money with her: and promise of peace and unity made and ordained to stand between the two realms," says Pitscottie. The great sums, however, seem problematical, as the dower of Margaret was not a very large one, and the sacrifices made for her were considerable—the town of Berwick being given up to England as one preliminary step. The event, however, was one of incalculable ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... paralysis resulting from the political interference by the tariff walls of newly-created states with the established economic relations of agricultural areas and manufacturing centers, and an unwillingness of the farmer to do business with a currency so debased that its value is highly problematical. So we see the great city of Vienna,[26] once one of the gayest and most brilliant capitals of Europe, now reduced to destitution, and the cities not only of Russia but of Germany being forced to revert to the ancient system of barter in order to ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... question &c. (inquiry) 461. vague; indeterminate, indefinite; ambiguous, equivocal; undefined, undefinable; confused &c. (indistinct) 447; mystic, oracular; dazed. perplexing &c. v.; enigmatic, paradoxical, apocryphal, problematical, hypothetical; experimental &c. 463. unpredictable, unforeseeable (unknowable) 519. fallible, questionable, precarious, slippery, ticklish, debatable, disputable; unreliable, untrustworthy. contingent, contingent on, dependent on; subject to; dependent ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... orchard, the foundations of additional building, and the arch of a cellar are visible, 58 feet in extent, and east of the present house. It is probable a similar wing was on the south aspect and thereby formed a Greek II. The ancient apple trees which cover the flank, render such an idea very problematical." Near the building is a very deep well, said to have been used as a place of destruction for those members of the convent, who had dared to break their ...
— The History and Antiquities of Horsham • Howard Dudley
... on which I inscribe your name —twice made illustrious in this century—is very problematical; whereas you have graven mine in bronze which survives nations —if only in their coins. The day may come when numismatists, discovering amid the ashes of Paris existences perpetuated by you, will wonder at the number of heads crowned in your atelier and endeavour ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... probable' that the Catstane is a monument to Vetta, the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa. But I did not consider the question as a settled question. I began and ended my paper by discussing this early Saxon origin of the monument as problematical and probable, but not fixed. At the same time, I may perhaps take the liberty of remarking, that both in archaeology and history we look upon some questions as sufficiently fixed and settled, regarding which we have ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... inscription a sufficient warning on the subject of marsh malaria. Once or twice I have come in its way, but never willingly, and happily always without calamitous result. Once only I have slept within its problematical range, and that was off that pestiferous bit of coast near Epidaurus, and I fancy at a season when the marshes had not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... early deposits extended to the north of the Laurentian Hills, as well as the outline of that portion of the continent in those times, remains still very problematical; but the investigations thus far undertaken in those regions would lead to the supposition that the same granite upheaval which raised Canada stretched northward in a broad, low ridge of land, widening in its upper part and extending to the neighborhood ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... concerning all preternatural influences; and, had Robert Maclean been cognizant of half the ghostly associations attached to the residence which he had selected in compliance with general instructions from his mistress, it is scarcely problematical whether the house would not have remained in the hands of the real-estate broker; but, fortunately for their peace of mind, Elsie and her son were as yet in blissful ignorance of the dismal celebrity of ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... It was soon found that the Legislature on joint ballot would probably give a majority for Senator against Shields, the incumbent, or any other Democrat who had supported the Nebraska bill. Who might become his successor was more problematical. The opposition majority was made up of anti-Nebraska Democrats, of what were then called "abolitionists" (Lovejoy had been elected among these), and finally of Whigs, who numbered by far the largest portion. But these elements, except on one single issue, were somewhat ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... Elgin about the most problematical public man in high position I had ever met, but I now know him one of the ablest. Deeds, not words; judgment, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... again by the appearance of another suitor, in dog-skin gloves of a brilliant tan, and his usual air of cheerful confidence. No guile was there in Jack Vavasour, whose prostrate adoration of her daughter was so undisguised, that she mentally deposed Bertie (whose devotion was more problematical) in his favour. Still she thought, "I should never think of influencing dear Bluebell one way or the other, and we shall ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... him. He was impossible. It was like a case of possession. His protest, however, was essentially quite sound. As a matter of fact, my notion of heading out west on the chance of sighting a problematical steamer could not bear calm examination. On the side where we were we had enough wind, at least from time to time, to struggle on toward the south. Enough, at least, to keep hope alive. But suppose that I had used ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... the tatter's pretensions, I was throwing out a hint concerning Kentucky, as a land of tall men, when our Vine-yarder turned away abruptly, and desired to hear nothing more. It was evident that he took Long Ghost for an exceedingly problematical character. ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... whom she held in an artless exaltation of hero-worship; Samson, who was so "smart" that he thought about things beyond her understanding; Samson, who could not only read and write, but speculate on problematical matters. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... Gust was afraid of the jungle he was far more afraid of Kai Shang and Momulla. The dangers of the jungle were more or less problematical, while the danger that menaced him at the hands of his companions was a perfectly well-known quantity, which might be expressed in terms of a few inches of cold steel, or the coil of a light rope. ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... at all: you have sophistries and to spare to reassure you: the sacred rights of property, the fair struggle for life, the supreme interests of that Moloch, the State and Progress, that fabulous monster, that problematical Better to which men sacrifice the Good,—the Good of other men.—But for all that, the fact remains, and all your sophistries will never manage to deny it: "You have too much to live on. We have not enough. And we are as good as you. And some of us are better than the whole lot ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... me. I had just purchased "Fortunatus with his Purse and Wishing-hat," when I was attacked by a restlessness and fever which announced the small-pox. Inoculation was still with us considered very problematical; and, although it had already been intelligibly and urgently recommended by popular writers, the German physicians hesitated to perform an operation that seemed to forestall Nature. Speculative Englishmen, therefore, had come ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... stipulation in advance for compensation for profit lost, and does not condemn the actual payment of compensation;[2] second, that the point is made that the probability of gaining a profit on money is so problematical as to make it unsaleable. As Ashley points out, the latter consideration was peculiarly important at the time when the Summa was composed; and, when in the course of the following two centuries the opportunities for reasonably safe and profitable business investments increased, ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... cloudy, raining or shining. Under any of these circumstances, if the relation of the plate and atmosphere be such as to invite upon the plate a precipitation of humidity from the atmosphere, the prospect of producing a clear impression is quite problematical. ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... problematical nature of the theory of atoms strikes us still more clearly when we try to analyze it philosophically. First, we meet that antinomy which we always find where we try to pass beyond the limits of our empirical knowledge by means of conception. For, if the atoms still occupy space, ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... down their lives with cheerfulness in the sure expectation of a blessed immortality; but that is a different affair from giving up youth with all its admirable pleasures, in the hope of a better quality of gruel in a more than problematical, nay, more than improbable, old age. We should not compliment a hungry man, who should refuse a whole dinner and reserve all his appetite for the dessert, before he knew whether there was to be any dessert or not. If there be such a thing as imprudence in the world, we ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an impure life and Manichaeism, with its spatially extended God (A.D. 386), wrote his Confessions in 397, lived to experience the capture and sack of Rome by Alaric the Goth, 410, composed his great work, The City of God, amidst the clear dissolution of a mighty past and the dim presage of a problematical future, and died at Hippo, his episcopal city, in 430, whilst the Vandals were besieging it. St. Augustine is more largely a convert and a rigorist even than St. Paul when St. Paul is most incisive. But here he shall testify only to the natures of Eternity and of real ...
— Progress and History • Various
... no union office felt less intensely the menace from injunctions than the officials who might face a prison sentence for contempt of court. Probably for this reason the "delivery" of the labor vote by the Federation has ever been so largely problematical. That the Federation leaders were able to force the desired concessions from one of the political parties by holding out a quid pro quo of such an uncertain value is at once a tribute to their political sagacity as well as a mark ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... of the year. But practically I think that grafting will be limited to that part of the year during which the cambium layer of the stock is active. At other times of the year preservation of the vitality of the scion will be too problematical, it seems to me, even if it is very carefully waxed. However, I may be mistaken. At any rate grafting is not very pleasant work out of doors in very cold weather. The success of bench grafting would be an argument for the success ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... recently in the School of Pharmacy at Paris, the Water-cress contains a sulpho-nitrogenous oil, iodine, iron, phosphates, potash, certain other earthy salts, a bitter extract, and water. Its volatile oil which is rich in nitrogen and sulphur (problematical) is the sulpho-cyanide of allyl. Anyhow [130] there is much sulphur possessed by the whole plant in one form or another, together with a considerable quantity of mineral matter. Thus the popular plant is so constituted as to ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... are signs of this dread malady. Instead of shrinking from pronouncing the patient's doom, he knows now that he has everything to gain and nothing to lose by promptly warning him of his danger, even while it is still problematical. On the other hand, the patient need no longer recoil in horror when told that he has consumption, and either go home to set his house in order and make his will, or hunt up another medical adviser who will take a more cheerful view of his case. All that he has ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... receive their talents and tendencies, we begin to see that the matter is a very serious one. I am sometimes told that young people will not be influenced by a consideration for the welfare of unborn generations whose existence is very problematical in their thought; but my observation is that young folks are much more sensible than we give them credit for being. More than one young man has said to me: "I was never taught that my conduct and thought would impress themselves upon my children, but now that I see ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... upon the scene in Washington toward the middle of the seventies one of those problematical characters the fiction-mongers delight in. This was John Chamberlin. During two decades "Chamberlin's," half clubhouse and half chophouse, was all ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... Here was a matter on which he really had no ideas except the broad and general one that truth is mighty and shall prevail—but that the speed of its forward march is problematical. ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... (October 14, 1848) the statements of the critic of the Courant. From this communication we learn that one of the etudes played was in F minor (probably No. 2 of Op. 25, although there are two others in the same key—No. 9 of Op. 10 and No. 1 of Trois Etudes without opus number). The problematical Andante precede d'un Largo was, no doubt, a juxtaposition of two of his shorter compositions, this title being chosen to vary the programme. From Mr. Hipkins I learned that at this Chopin played frequently the slow movement from his Op. 22, Grande ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... surprise that so many boast of being able to understand it quite well and to explain its possibility, while they regard it only psychologically, whereas if they had studied it in a transcendental point of view, they must have recognized that it is not only indispensable as a problematical concept, in the complete use of speculative reason, but also quite incomprehensible; and if they afterwards came to consider its practical use, they must needs have come to the very mode of determining the principles of this, to which they are now so ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... stay here to solve the riddle," said Becker; "the storm seems disposed to abate; and the more that it was unreasonable to face certain destruction in a vain endeavor to assist a problematical shipwreck, the more it is incumbent upon us now to go ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... at least a portion of the expense. I readily admit the justice of the latter branch of this argument, but I am disposed to question the force of the former. The benefit which the province will derive from this year's immigration is, at best, problematical; and it is certain that they who are to profit by it would willingly have renounced it, whatever it may be, on condition of being relieved from the evils by which it has been attended. Of the gross number of immigrants who have reached the province, many are already mouldering in their graves. ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... during the expedition. In vain I urged that our motto was Rescue and Retire, and that such elaborate preparations might prevent our retiring from our native shore, and therefore make rescue exceedingly problematical. ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... on either side without the suspicion of flattery or detraction. I shall say nothing of his military accomplishments, which the opposite reports of his friends and enemies among the soldiers have rendered problematical. Those maligners who deny him personal valor, seem not to consider that this accusation is charged at a venture, since the person of a general is too seldom exposed, and that fear which is said sometimes to have ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... having paid a visit to the larder, and made up a stock of provisions equal to a journey through the Wilderness, they adjourned to the yard to get the other dog, and the man to carry the game—or rather, the prog, for the former was but problematical. He was a character, a sort of chap of all work, one, in short, "who has no objection to make himself generally useful"; but if his genius had any decided bent, it was, perhaps, an ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... long slope in front of us. It was steep and bad going. Anscombe might get up it on the horse before the Kaffirs overtook us, but it was extremely problematical if we could do so. I might perhaps if I mounted behind him and the horse could bear us both, which was doubtful, but how about our poor servants? He saw the doubt upon my face and ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... conclude, that the history and inventions of past ages, recorded by these perplexed symbols, must frequently prove unintelligible; and consequently the learning and boasted antiquity of the nation most, in numerous instances, be extremely problematical. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... affords shelter from all heavy seas, and there are good harbours at convenient distances. I entertain, indeed, sanguine hopes that the skill and exertions of my friend Captain Parry will soon render this question no longer problematical. His task is doubtless an arduous one, and, if ultimately successful, may occupy two and perhaps three seasons; but confiding as I do, from personal knowledge, in his perseverance and talent for surmounting ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... made a Rule for the Third Order it must have very nearly resembled this epistle, and until this problematical document is found, the letter shows what were originally these associations of Brothers of Penitence. Everything in these long pages looks toward the development of the mystic religious life in the heart of ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... Shakspere. Now, admirable as it is, I doubt if it can be considered as expressive of the deliberate opinion of Dryden. The essayist himself, in his epistolary address to lord Buckhurst, gives a caution on that point. He observes, "All I have said is problematical." In short, the essay Of dramatick poesie is in the form of a dialogue—and a dialogue is "a chace of wit kept ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... even further rebuff. He would write again, and this time he would trust no precarious and problematical post-office. He would drop his letter into the Pixley letter-box himself, and so be sure that ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... justice of their cause and to the God of battles for the maintenance of that declaration. That people were few in number and without resources, save only their wise heads and stout hearts. Within the first year of that declared independence, and while its maintenance was yet problematical, while the bloody struggle between those resolute rebels and their haughty would-be masters was still waging,—of undistinguished parents and in an obscure district of one of those colonies Henry Clay was born. The infant nation and the infant ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... of the people towards their present government had been problematical before, the visible effect of Dumouriez' conduct would afford an ample solution of the problem. That indifference about public affairs which the prospect of an established despotism had begun to create has vanished—all is hope and expectation—the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... that of Greece. In the instrumental field, we find the lyre of less importance, but the flute (a term that included reed instruments also) was constantly used in ceremonial and sacrificial music. Trumpets were in use at all triumphal processions, while in the days of the empire the well-known but problematical water-organ became popular. Although the Roman domestic conditions admitted of more freedom than those of Greece, it is doubtful if the women took any important part in performance or composition of music. There are no great poetesses on the Roman roll of ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... provisions depended entirely upon the humour in which he might happen to find his uncle's sole confidant, the old housekeeper. If she chanced to be a-bed, which was very likely, or out of humour, which was not less so, Morton well knew the case to be at least problematical. ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... he said, addressing some problematical individual. "You oughtn't to be doing anything like that. These girls," and he waved an inclusion of all shop and factory girls, "don't get anything. Why, you can't live on ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... scarcely necessary to add, in view of so superficial a way of looking at the problem, that we hardly ever find any attempt to deal with the more fundamental question of the meaning of a low birth-rate, and the problematical character of the advantages of rapid multiplication. The whole question is usually left to the ignorant preachers of the gospel of brute force, would-be patriots who desire their own country to increase at the cost of all other ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... admissibility of any lake theory, but in this point he was mistaken. He wrote (Glen Roy paper, page 49) "the conclusion is inevitable, that no hypothesis founded on the supposed existence of a sheet of water confined by BARRIERS, that is a lake, can be admitted as solving the problematical origin of ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... unbusiness-like Nott would take—which the girl herself might be tempted to listen to. Clearly he could do nothing but abandon the Pontiac and her owner to the fate he could not in honor avert. And even that fate was problematical. It did not follow that the treasure was still concealed in the Pontiac, nor that Nott would be willing to sell her. He would make some excuse to Nott—he smiled to think he would probably be classed in the long line of absconding tenants—he would ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... a sleepless night, for even the question of food would be problematical if all the able-bodied men and women on the place went away. In the early dawn there were ominous sounds at the quarters, and as the light increased a spectacle which filled the old planter and his wife with rage was revealed. The quarters were empty and all were trooping toward ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... guessed. The treasure was at hand and enormous, whereas the wrath of a Heavenly or an earthly king was problematical and far away. So greed, outstripping caution and superstitious fear, won the race, and Ramiro threw himself into the adventure with a resource and energy which in their way ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... beyond which it was lost in the higher range. It made part of a net-work of glaciers running back into a large massif of mountains, and fed by many a neve on their upper slopes. The depth as well as the length of this glacier remains somewhat problematical, and indeed all the estimates in so cursory a survey must be considered as approximations rather than positive results. The glazed surface of the ice is an impediment to any examination from the upper side. It would be impossible to spring from brink ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... same time, he takes delight in presenting problematical characters, and he finds pleasure, for example, in emphasizing the lovable qualities of a Musarion, a Lais, and a Phryne without regard to womanly chastity, and in exalting their practical wisdom above the scholastic ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... extreme degrees, be for us a subject involved in much obscurity, this is not the case with regard to the more common effects of heat; and, tho' the actual existence of subterraneous fire, as the cause of light and heat, might be a thing altogether problematical in our opinion; yet, as to other effects, there are some of these from which the action of that liquefying power may be certainly concluded as having taken place within the mineral region, although the cause should be in every other respect a thing to us unknown. In ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... to give them a holiday, though sorely against my will, by not opening a book the whole day. Whether I should have succeeded in observing such a desperate resolution without the aid of circumstances is quite problematical, but Mr. Gray opportunely came with a request that I should take a ride with him to Cambridge, and visit the libraries there. This occupied four or five hours, and a lyceum lecture provided for the evening. I have always congratulated myself on being so little dependent on others ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... the awful scene, or his feet from the spot where he had first beheld it; then, with the cry of sudden madness, he threw himself beside the bleeding corpses and lost all consciousness. How long he remained there was problematical, but on awaking Guir was still in the dark, and where he had fallen. At that moment a strange and overpowering desire seized him. He must paint the portraits of his murdered family before it became too late. Had he been sane, such a ghastly thought would never have possessed him; but Guir was ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... "as true as the nose on your face. That precious Phil, was a cowardly whelp all his life—so was his father. D—n you, sirra; where did you get your cowardice? I'm sure it was not from me; that is if you be mine, which is a rather problematical circumstance; for I take it you are as likely to be the descent of some rascally turnkey or hatchman, and be hanged ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... a glance at the sun and at his compass, hung there in gimbals before him, and with firm hand steadied the machine for the long problematical flight to westward. Behind them the sun kept even with their swift pace; and very far below and ahead, at times they thought to see the fleeing shadow of the biplane cast now and then on masses of formless vapor that rose ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... existence of such a society as that of the Rose-cross was problematical, it was quite evident that somebody or other was concerned in the promulgation of these placards, which were stuck up on every wall in Paris. The police endeavoured in vain to find out the offenders, and their want of success only served to increase the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... those of the Christian creed, and these commandments are, as we have previously observed, the same that Moses laid down for the guidance of his people. That they were old before Moses was born, is also more than problematical. ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... The rich tried on the new winter fashions, and the poor shivered with the cold. It became more and more difficult for well-gloved hands to leave the warm muff or the fur-lined coat to take out a copper for the beggar, and more and more desperate became the struggle for bread amongst the problematical existences [Footnote: The problematical existences. Explain this expression.] of ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... to say whether or not the feeling which had awakened in our hero's breast was the feeling of love; for it is problematical whether or not men who are neither stout nor thin are capable of any such sentiment. Nevertheless, something strange, something which he could not altogether explain, had come upon him. It seemed as though the ball, with its talk and its clatter, had suddenly become a thing remote—that ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... mouth also; though Florence Grace Hallman was but a pawn in the game, after all, and not personally guilty of half the deliberate crimes Andy laid upon her dimpled shoulders. With her it was pure, cold-blooded business, this luring of the land-hungry to a land whose fertility was at best problematical; who would, for a price, turn loose the victims of her greed to devastate what little grazing ground ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... though the days became weeks, and the weeks months, until it was almost time for Greif to go back to Schwarzburg. Greifenstein began to think that the problematical personage was dead, though Clara evidently did not share his opinion, for she never regained her former manner. Under any other circumstances Greifenstein would have enjoyed the change, the absence of irrelevant interruption, the rest from her unnatural laughter, the gravity of ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... to the fate of the child. "Can he live now?" was asked of Stumpy. The answer was doubtful. The only other being of Cherokee Sal's sex and maternal condition in the settlement was an ass. There was some conjecture as to fitness, but the experiment was tried. It was less problematical than the ancient treatment of Romulus and ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... the christening, nothing was discussed with such eager zest and such sustained interest as the name he should get—there was a fascinating list at the back of the dictionary—and to the last minute it was problematical. In Stella's case, Mrs Murchison actually changed her mind on the way to church; and Abby, who had sat through the sermon expecting Dorothy Maud, which she thought lovely, publicly cried with disappointment. Stella was the youngest, and Mrs Murchison was thankful to have a girl ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... me the compliment of advising me not to rewrite my original manuscript, I did revise it quite thoroughly before publication. When my book was about to go to press for the first time and since its reception by the public was problematical, I asked permission to publish the letter already quoted. In reply, Mr. James sent the following letter, also ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... depths of that hell to which the Church consigned them. The Martian logically deduces that by employing science for its defense, the Church admits the impotence of "divine revelation," in this age, to convince even its own adherents of the problematical existence of a divine being. Theology is no longer recognized ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... of medicated salts advertised under various trade names as preventives against worms is problematical. Commonly they contain little else than ordinary salt, the other substances being in such small quantity that their therapeutic effect is practically negligible. Definite evidence that they are more efficacious ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
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