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More "Unlikely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... me, Mr. Everard," exclaimed Alice, aroused from her timidity by a dread of the consequences not unlikely to ensue, where civil war sets relations, as well as fellow-citizens, in opposition to each other.—"Oh, begone, I conjure you, begone! Nothing stands betwixt me and my father's kindness, but these unhappy family ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... in Florida two Government officials who had done splendid work in behalf of labour. I mean the labourers who were decoyed by false promises and brutally abused on their arrival in the camps. They were both modest men—men unlikely to enter politics for personal advancement. I cut my articles out of the magazine and sent them to President Roosevelt, calling his attention to the conditions and commending these men to his notice. The result was ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... was expected to catch a night train across the border, it is only just to his manhood to say that he should have balked, even though the act were to cost him years of prison servitude—which, of course, was unlikely in the face of the explanation that would be made in proper time by the real Medcroft. It thus may be seen that Brock not only had been vilely imprisoned twice in the same night, but that he was very much in the dark, notwithstanding his attempt ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... countless legends and traditions are attached to his name. As a matter of fact he cannot be regarded in any sense as a great man. His career shows no great political ideas, and none of his actions indicate genius. His one thought was family aggrandizement, and while it is unlikely that he meditated making the papacy hereditary in the house of Borgia, he certainly gave away its temporal estates to his children as though they belonged to him. The secularization of the church was carried to a pitch never before dreamed of, and it was clear to all Italy that ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... on to an old sun-dial, once a cross. The cross was found broken at its foot, probably by the country iconoclasts of the day. I have brought the interesting fragment again into light, and placed it conspicuously opposite to an old Scotch fir in the churchyard, which I think it not unlikely was planted by Townson on his restoration. The accumulation of the soil of centuries had covered an ascent of four steps at the bottom of this record of silent hours. These steps have been worn in places, from the act of frequent prostration or kneeling, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... his search after professional information, still retains its buoyancy and freshness; and he wreaths with roses the hours which he passes in the dissecting-room, although the world in general looks upon it as a rather unlikely locality for those flowers to shed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various
... having failed, a strike would on a similar argument be never admissible. Unyielding obstinacy being presumed, it must end in the closing down of the factory and break up of the men. But if in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases it is not the case that strikes end in this manner, it is more unlikely that, instead of righting the manifest wrongs that India complains about, the British people will value their Indian Dominion so low as to prefer to allow us to non-co-operate up to the point of separation. It would be a totally false reading ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... he got those notes. He replied, he had bought them from some boatmen, who said they had found them under a stump, which had been pulled up from a boat having been tied to it. I told him that was a very unlikely story. When called upon to testify, I told, upon oath, what I knew about the matter, but I had no unkind feeling towards the poor fellow. I would have done him a kindness if it had been in my power. I have always tried to be a good neighbor—to do justly—and to love ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... Ellen Carley as to the probability of Mr. Holbrook's return. The girl seemed to think it very unlikely that Marian's husband would ever again appear at the Grange. His last departure had appeared like a final one. He had paid every sixpence he owed in the neighbourhood, and had been liberal in his donations to the servants and hangers-on ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... such to be quite without foundation. Then came wafts of rumor to the effect that the prospectors had "struck it rich," but were determined to keep the strike to themselves. My youthful imagination inclined to the latter view. I had a friend who knew the Swazis well, and he held it to be unlikely in the last degree that a party of peaceful prospectors would be molested. Accordingly, I made up my mind to get on the trail of the adventurers and stick to it ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... see the Colonel of the company to protest. But the soldier had been to the officer with his story, and Grant was told that the boy attacked the militiaman—which, considering that the boy was a child in his early teens and the man was armed and in his twenties, was unlikely. But Grant saw that his protests would not avail. He issued a statement, gave it to the press correspondents who came flocking in with the troops, and sent it to the Governor, who naturally transferred it ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... not unlikely that something will happen to her, unless, of course—" I paused, but her quick wit ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... of circumstances is one which is exceedingly unlikely to occur. There is more chance that there will be discrimination in favor of the foreign buyer. In short, the matter is not one ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... had a long conversation with Syde, who thinks that the sun rises and sets because the Koran says so, and he sees it. He asserts that Jesus foretold the coming of Mohamad; and that it was not Jesus who suffered on the cross but a substitute, it being unlikely that a true prophet would be put to death so ignominiously. He does not understand how we can be glad that our Saviour died ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... is unlikely the lady may find me all her imagination has depicted," went on the nobleman, with palpable embarrassment. "My noble master, the emperor, hath—regarding me still as but a stripling from his own vantage point of age and wisdom—represented ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... in spite of Mrs Greenways' anger it sank deeply into her mind. Why had she not made more of Lilac? What should she do, if the child, with the consent of her uncle and encouraged by Mrs Leigh, were to choose to leave the farm? It was not unlikely, for although she had not been actively unkind to Lilac she had never tried to make her happy at the farm; her jealousy had prevented that. And then, the money—that would be a great temptation; and the offer of it seemed to raise Lilac's value enormously. In short, ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... Ku Hsi, however, in his note on it, says nothing about Wu-ting, but simply that the piece belonged to the sacrifices in the ancestral temple, tracing back the line of the kings of Shang to its origin, and to its attaining the sovereignty of the kingdom. Not at all unlikely is the view of Kang Hsuean, that the sacrifice was in the third year after the death of Wu-ting and offered to him in the temple of Hsieh, the ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... "Sounds rather unlikely," says Mr. Robert. "Still, you seem to have an uncanny instinct for being right in such matters. Perhaps we ought to go down and ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... thanked Mr. Riley, and accepted these friendly offers, though he afterwards remarked to Winn that as they were searching for a lost raft, and not for a gang of counterfeiters, he thought it unlikely that he should ever ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... defense reversed. As it is Black cannot enter on h3 with his Queen without exchanging Rooks and so he is unable to take advantage of the weakness on f3. After (7) ..., R-g6, (8) B-h4, B-a5 or c5, (9) P-d4 and Q-d3 the game probably ends in a draw as it is unlikely that White can realize an advantage from the doubled Pawn ...
— Chess and Checkers: The Way to Mastership • Edward Lasker
... memory of those shots that turned the scale. It was unlikely he would again become entangled with a man bearing a tongue and the other things—he had given up in despair the attempt to unravel the mystery of the tongue; it completely baffled him—but it was by no means unlikely ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... later, Samuel de Champlain lived, loved, and died. Had the advent of the St. Malo vikings been heralded by watchful swift-footed retainers to swarthy king Donnacona, the ruler of the populous town of Stadacona, and a redoubtable agouhanna of the Huron nation? 'Tis not unlikely. ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... visit, some weeks before, that he was likely to remain some time with his people, and possibly would not return again to the East. Many things were more unlikely than that he would be carried away by the craze that was affecting his tribe, and become one of the most ferocious foes of ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... respectful distance behind Philip, one armed with the poker and the other with a fire-shovel, while he pulled open closet doors with reckless disregard of any possible man hiding within, and pretended to look into the most unlikely places for him, joking all the while to ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... that he had not shown himself sufficiently tender, and that had chilled them with his military sternness; and now repeating with bitter regret, that, having always lived away from them, he must be always a stranger to them. In a word, the most unlikely suppositions presented themselves by turns to his mind, and whenever such seeds of doubt, suspicion, or fear, are blended with a warm affection, they will sooner or later develop themselves with fatal effect. Yet, notwithstanding this fancied coldness, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... unlikely, from what he knew of such things. Before he left home he had been shown all sorts of copper ore; and on the way the patrol leader had stored up in his mind many minute descriptions he had read of the famous country north of Superior, where such valuable mines were being ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... progress of Shanghai, Foo-Chow, Amoy, and Hong-Kong (which last, however, is purely a British colony) has been amazing, and men who visited China ten years ago would not recognize these places. Indeed, it is not unlikely, with the rapid extension of Chinese trade, and the removal of the prejudices of the people, that the history of Chinese cities, like those of the Western States and California, will have to be rewritten every ten years to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... rushed forward at the top of his speed and plunged into the thickest of the fight, which was then severely contested. Captain Johnson and several of the more advanced soldiers had been killed by the bullets of the enemy, almost at the same instant that Kit Carson's horse had fallen. It is not at all unlikely, therefore, that the accidental falling of his horse had been the means of saving Kit Carson's life. After a desperate and deadly conflict, Moore and his men dislodged the enemy, causing them to retreat. They were followed by the Americans, but, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... dispassionate judgment. And yet again, if he did, may we, with all reverence for Lamb's exquisite genius, have permission to say—that his own constitution of intellect sinned by this very habit of discontinuity. It was a habit of mind not unlikely to be cherished by his habits of life. Amongst these habits was the excess of his social kindness. He scorned so much to deny his company and his redundant hospitality to any man who manifested a wish for either by calling upon him, that he almost seemed to think it a criminality in himself if, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... play, it is difficult now to find the reason: it certainly has, in a very great degree, the power of fixing attention and exciting merriment. From the charge of disaffection he exculpates himself, in his preface, by observing, how unlikely it is, that, having followed the royal family through all their distresses, "he should choose the time of their restoration to begin a quarrel with them." It appears, however, from the Theatrical Register of Downes, the prompter, to have ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... called in the list, "Tallarte de Lajes" (Ingles). It is not unlikely that an English sailor, making voyages from Bristol or from one of the Cinque Ports to Coruna, may have married and settled at Lajes. But what can we make of "Tallarte"? Spaniards would be likely enough to prefix a "T" to any English name beginning with a vowel, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... wires and boxes, he soon set up a telephone which put him into communication with the boy whose desk was farthest away. He possessed tools necessary for any of his tricks, and his desk was a veritable bazaar: copybooks, books, pen-holders and paper were mixed pell-mell with the most unlikely objects, such as fragments of fencing foils, drugs, chemical products, oil, grease, bolts, skate wheels, and tablets of chocolate. In one corner, carefully concealed, were some glass tubes which awaited a favorable moment for projecting against the ceiling a ball of ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... creation, has the look of something meant especially for us; for although, in pursuance of the appointed system of government by universal laws, these same degrees exist where we cannot witness them, yet the existence of degrees at all seems at first unlikely in Divine work, and I cannot see reason for it unless that palpable one of increasing in us the understanding of the sacred characters by showing us the results of their comparative absence. For I know not that if all things had been ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... corrected; with additional notes, and an historical introduction, attributed to Sir Walter Scott." I have found no external evidence that Scott was the editor. The introduction sounds as if Scott wrote it, but that so much work could have been done by him without occasioning any record seems unlikely. There is a historical introduction of 35 pp., and copious notes. The book is one with which Scott was familiar. See Memoirs of Robert Carey, pp. 34 ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... Briggs (ii. 312, n.) considers it unlikely that the armies could have possessed artillery at so ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... found them in my talk. As a matter of fact it was my inquiring attitude that he loved, the knowledge that there was no detail that he could give me about himself, his impressions and experiences, that was unlikely to interest me. I would not for the world imply that he was egotistical or complacent, absolutely the reverse, but he possessed an articulate soul which found its happiness in expression, and I liked to listen. I feel that these are complicated words to explain a very simple ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... it, As the worst and ugliest picture They could possibly have dreamed of. 'Giving one such strange expressions - Sullen, stupid, pert expressions. Really any one would take us (Any one that did not know us) For the most unpleasant people!' (Hiawatha seemed to think so, Seemed to think it not unlikely). All together rang their voices, Angry, loud, discordant voices, As of dogs that howl in concert, As of cats that wail ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll
... deemed advisable to carry that recommendation into effect, I would suggest that authority be given for investing the principal, over the proceeds of the surplus referred to, in good securities, with a view to the satisfaction of such other just claims of our citizens against China as are not unlikely to arise hereafter in the course of our extensive trade ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... divisions may be observed, such divisions naturally resulting from the nature of all narratives. Sometimes the strophe seems to contain four lines, sometimes more. No strophic rule has yet been established; but it seems not unlikely that when the longer poetical pieces shall have been more definitely fixed in form, certain principles of poetical composition will present themselves. The thought of the mythical pieces and the prayers and hymns is elevated and imaginative. Some of this ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... in the most unlikely subjects. I have heard a Major, a Regular with, as I thought, a good deal of regimental stiffness, talk about his men with a voice almost choked with emotion. "When you see what they have to put up with, and how amazingly cheery they are through it all, you feel ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... Swallow for themselves, and my mother's fervent "God keep you, Phil!" and all the other prayers that I felt in her arms round my neck, were with me still as we ran past Brecqhou, and I stood with an arm round the mast looking eagerly for possible, but unlikely, sight ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... the beginning, the mother of all the rest. It reminds one of the seven devils from which poor Mary Magdalen was freed. It is not unlikely these were their names: Selfishness, pride, envy, avarice, jealousy, malice and cruelty. This we deny for the patient through the five different sources, and you can see how apt it will be to touch him, ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... has few men to show whose spirit had any such world-embracing might, and who, out of so unlikely a beginning, knew how to raise up so gigantic a work as compels us to be filled, if not with love to him, at least with the greatest respect for ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... the minister, "be sure there will be a thorough investigation, and I greatly misjudge the case if there are not faults on both sides. And for one thing, the man who can strike such a cowardly blow as you did a moment ago would not be unlikely to be guilty ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... Jewish Senate is held, not unlikely hastily summoned of those not infected with belief. And there it is officially determined to put Jesus to death, and serve public notice that any one knowing of His whereabouts must report their information ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... up his actual pedagogic establishment in Barbican, and went into a new house, where he either ceased to teach altogether, or had no pupils remaining but his two nephews. What may have been his reasons for the step we do not know; but it is not unlikely that the change of his circumstances by his father's death had something to do with it. No will of the ex-scrivener having been found, it is not known what property he left; but there is reason to believe that he left something ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... field-sports as any healthy lad growing up in a country house must enjoy them; and Raymond had seen him introduced to the style of men whom he thought would be thoroughly congenial to him, and not unlikely to lead him on to make a mark in ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... placed plenty of logs for the purpose of replenishing it close at hand. He put tankards on the board, and with them a large jug full of wine, so that the freebooters would have no occasion to call for him, and unless they wanted him they would be unlikely to look into the kitchen. Except when occasionally breaking into a walk to get breath, he ran steadily on. It was not until he had gone nearly ten miles that he saw a goatherd tending a few goats, and from him he learned the direction of Glogau, and was glad to find he had not gone ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... of the night?) holding her hand or feeling her pulse; little Mary at one side, crying,—why should the child cry?—and Jervis, very, anxious, pouring something into a glass. There were other faces there which she was sure must have come out of a dream,—so unlikely was it that they should be collected in her bedchamber,—and all with a sort of halo of feverish light about them; a magnified and mysterious importance. This strange scene, which she did not understand, seemed to make itself visible all in a moment out of the darkness, ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... and Irish, travel so much now a days, that one ought never to feel surprised at finding them anywhere. The instance I am about to relate will verify to a certain extent the fact, by showing that no situation is too odd or too unlikely to be within the verge ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... collision with a meteor he conceded, but, it was thought, highly unlikely. And now, the urgent business of the search called, the Controller escaped, ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... finally that someone else had found it. It seemed unlikely, however, for the spot was remote, and the thickness of the bushes offered a barrier to anyone ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... received surreptitiously, by herself, and without receiving Frances and Anthony in her turn. It had hurt her; but Stephen's celebrity was a dressing to her wound. He was so distinguished that it was unlikely that Frances, or Anthony either, would ever have been received by him without Vera. She came, looking half cynical, half pathetic, her beauty a little blurred, a little beaten after seventeen years of passion and danger, saying that she wasn't going to force Larry ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... "It is unlikely," I said, as I handed it to him, "that any other should bear precisely this monogram, and yet be in all other particulars ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... Spain, and the inscriptions and signatures would naturally have been added at the same time. Stuart would never have engrossed a long Spanish inscription, and that he should have signed his name (contrary to his habit) and have added the "R. A." to which he had no right is most unlikely. What is most unlikely of all, however, is that there should have been found in Spain an artist capable of painting a portrait like the Don Josef. Both heads are absolutely alike in handling, in texture, in mixing of the pigments, and in all of those things are absolutely characteristic ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... Dabber.' Perhaps some one annual, of more comprehensive design than its fellows, might even contain a portrait of the mother of Lady Mulberry Hawk, with lines by the father of Sir Dingleby Dabber. More unlikely things had come to pass. Less interesting portraits had appeared. As this thought occurred to the good lady, her countenance unconsciously assumed that compound expression of simpering and sleepiness which, being common to all such portraits, is perhaps one reason why they are ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... that the chief route was directly by land from the Tigris to the Black Sea. This seems a very good way; but, in that case, why cross the Black Sea to go to the Crimea? Any one who looks at the map will be able to judge that as being very unlikely. Doctor Robertson, however, has taken no notice of this difficulty. Two things are certain: that the depot was in the Crimea, and that merchants never go out of their road without having some cause for doing it. The reader ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... among the poorest countries in the world, with a per capita GDP below $200. Agriculture and fishing are the main economic activities, with cashew nuts, peanuts, and palm kernels the primary exports. Exploitation of known mineral deposits is unlikely at present because of a weak infrastructure and the high cost of development. The government's four-year plan (1988-91) has targeted agricultural development as the ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... what Sylvia had been leading up to. She agreed with Herbert that it was most unlikely George would take any part in such proceedings without some prompting, and she was curious to learn who ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... poor light he had not recognized me. I moved deliberately into the full red glow. If he did not know me for the Terran he had challenged last night in the spaceport cafe, it was unlikely that anyone else would. He stared at me for some minutes, but in the end he only shrugged and poured wine from ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... POPULARITY.—The office of the prophet was almost obsolete. Several centuries, as we have seen, had passed since the last great prophet had finished his testimony. The oldest man living at that time could not remember having seen a man who had ever spoken to a prophet. It seemed as unlikely, to adopt the phrase of another, that another prophet should arise in that formal, materialistic age, as that another cathedral should be added to the splendid remains of Gothic glory which tell us of those bygone days when there ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... jest. While the Colonel had been questioning me, I had reflected. It was impossible that my cousins should have had books of this sort in their possession without speaking to me about them; and it was most unlikely that they could have belonged to Serge, who, always very careful, made it a strict rule never to bring anything of a compromising nature to our uncle's house. But I had often heard that the political police, to create evidence ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... required several days to complete the landing. During the whole time (and indeed up to this moment) not a single south-east gale, the summer torment of this harbour, has occurred. This is a thing almost unheard of here, and has indeed been most fortunate, since otherwise it is not at all unlikely that some of the boats, laden as they were to the water's edge, might have been lost, and the whole ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... it seems unlikely, Lottie; but then, on the other hand, what do you accuse these men of? Why, of no less a crime than forging a will, of suppressing the real will, and bringing forward one of their own manufacture. Why, my dear wife, such an act of villainy ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... impossible to make more than a rough estimate of the extent of the disturbed area. Even when the boundary lies on land, it traverses some districts which are thinly populated and others where the inhabitants are unobservant, and unlikely to notice the slow oscillations which were alone perceptible at great distances. The shock was, however, felt at Boston (800 miles from the epicentre), La Crosse on the upper Mississippi (950 miles to the north-west), at several places in Cuba (between 700 and 710 miles), and in Bermuda (950 ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... felt as if it rang for her. But that was unlikely; and there were other lodgers of her kind in the house. No doubt it was a visitor for ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... crisis, when public opinion showed itself in sympathy with the Serbian claims to Bosnia; I recalled also the benevolent promotion of nationalist hopes that went on in the days of Lord Byron and Garibaldi; and on these and other grounds I thought it extremely unlikely that English public opinion would support a punitive expedition against the Archduke's murderers. I thus felt it my duty to enter an urgent warning against the whole project, which I characterized as ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... is not so unlikely," said Mohi; "for old King Rondo the Round once set about getting him a coffin-lid of amber; much desiring a famous mass of it owned by the ancestors of Donjalolo of Juam. But no navies could buy it. So Rondo had himself urned ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... unexpected and accidental change for the better. He had heard and read of extraordinary cases of LUCK. Why might he not be one of the LUCKY? A rich girl might fall in love with him—that was, poor fellow! in his consideration, one of the least unlikely ways of luck's advent; or some one might leave him money; or he might win a prize in the lottery;—all these, and other accidental modes of getting rich, frequently occurred to the well-regulated mind of Mr. Tittlebat Titmouse; but ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... not at all unlikely that he will place himself and his interests, pecuniary and political, altogether in your hands, and consequently you will probably ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... at the sight of him Poussette's extraordinary remark about his "best girl" came back. What possible connexion could have suggested itself to Poussette between the faded sickly creature he called his wife and the visitor from Ontario? Ringfield thought it not unlikely that Poussette was confusing him with Crabbe, for to-day was not the first time he had seen the woman wandering in the proximity of the shack. However, Crabbe gave him no opportunity for ministerial argument or reasoning, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... methods of saving the zinc formerly discarded from lead ores, and enormous supplies will come forward when required. The tin outlook is encouraging, for the supply from a mining point of view seems unlikely to more than keep pace with the world's needs. In copper the demand is growing prodigiously, but the supplies of copper ores and the number of copper mines that are ready to produce whenever normal prices recur was never so great as to-day. One very hopeful ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... investigations, that as perfect a vacuum as could be made[B] did conduct, but does not consider the prepared spaces which he used as absolute vacua. In such experiments I think I have observed the luminous discharge to be principally on the inner surface of the glass; and it does not appear at all unlikely, that, if the vacuum refused to conduct, still the surface of glass next it might ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... time of the American War of Secession, and I am not sure that Messrs. Mason and Slidell were not trotted out. The Foreign and Home Secretaries, the very distinguished civil servants declared, would not unlikely be agitated when they heard of the shocking affair. Soldiers, no doubt, were by nature abrupt and unconventional in their actions, and the Foreign and Home Offices would make every allowance, realizing that we had acted in good faith. But, hang it all—and they ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... supposed that the "terra Flandrensis" of my charter signified land of the same description as the Dutch polders; the art of thus redeeming land being probably introduced from the Low Countries. It is not unlikely that, in that day, lands so brought into cultivation were designated as "terre Flandrenses," and the term afterwards anglicised ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... General von Bernhardi makes it clear that the theatre of War in South Africa does not assist us with any complete object-lessons from which to evolve a change of tactical principles, inasmuch as the conditions were entirely abnormal, and in European Warfare are unlikely ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... man into the chains," continued Cavendish, speaking to Roger. "As the land lies so low in the water, it is not unlikely that the water round it is very shoal, and I have no wish to get any of the vessels ashore if I can help it. And order the signalman to signal the rest of the fleet ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... less successful rivals. The reason why he left Rome is not certain, and the possible causes of his departure are discussed by Dr. Greenhill in the "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology." A pestilence raged in Rome at this time, but it is unlikely that Galen would have deserted his patients for that reason. Probably he disliked Rome, and longed for his native place. He had been in Pergamos only a very short time when he was summoned to attend the Emperors Marcus Aurelius and L. Verus in Venetia. The latter ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... Thirty Black Devils leaping high and merrily in the morning. As I ran down the last hill, with an eye on the light glowing in the kitchen window of Skipper Tommy Lovejoy's cottage, I made shift to hope that the old man had made harbour from Wolf Cove, but thought it most unlikely. ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... it is that makes me wonder most: That you and I should be of one conceit I such a strange unlikely passion. ...
— Fair Em - A Pleasant Commodie Of Faire Em The Millers Daughter Of - Manchester With The Love Of William The Conquerour • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... annoyed when he learnt that his orders had been thus disobeyed. The Lorraines plastered over the affair by representing that they feared an affront from M. de Mantua, and indeed it did not seem at all unlikely that M. de Mantua, forced as it were into compliance with their wishes, might have liked nothing better than to reach Italy and then laugh at them. Meanwhile, Madame d'Elboeuf and her daughter embarked on board ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the "Admiral" of Governor Winthrop's fleet, a ship of 350 tons, carried 52 men, and it is a fair inference that the MAY-FLOWER, of a little more than half her tonnage, would require at least half as many. It is, therefore, not unlikely that the officers and crew of the MAY-FLOWER, all told, mustered thirty men, irrespective of the sailors, four in number (Alderton, English, Trevore, and Ely), ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... determined by motives of petty interests, personal jealousies, and local considerations, to such an extent that the election seemed finally to be the result of chance or inspiration. We find the most unlikely candidates, Caraffa and Peretti, attributing their elevation to the direct influence of the Holy Ghost, in the consciousness that they had slipped into S. Peter's Chair by the maladroitness of conflicting factions. The upshot, however, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... understood anything in the remotest degree resembling a ritual legislation. Are we to take it then that he formed his own special private notion of the Torah? How in that case would it have been possible for him to make himself understood by the people, or to exercise influence over them? Of all unlikely suppositions, at all events it is the least likely that the herdsman of Tekoah, under the influence of prophetic tradition (which in fact he so earnestly disclaims), should have taken the Torah for something quite different from what it ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... written. Especially is even the meanest Elizabethan of importance and value in relation to the re-construction—still far from complete—of the life and times of the immortal bard of Avon. In the most unlikely quarters a quarry may yet be found from which the social historian may obtain a valuable sidelight on manners and customs, the philologist a new lection or gloss, or the antiquary a solution to some, as ...
— The Choise of Valentines - Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo • Thomas Nash
... one thing that makes that notion seem consider'ble more than unlikely. How in the world could she have found out that there ever ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... lived at the time in Lower Canada than Mgr Briand, the bishop of Quebec; and the priests shaped their conduct after that of their superior. At any rate, the danger which Haldimand feared did not take form; and the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 made it more unlikely ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... Greigs had a hard struggle, though two of the sons ultimately set up a business in Montrose. James Mill appears to have helped to support his father, whose debts he undertook to pay, and to have afterwards helped the Greigs. They thought, it seems, that he ought to have done more, but were not unlikely to exaggerate the resources of a man who was making his way in England. Mill was resolute in doing his duty, but hardly likely to do it graciously. At any rate, in the early years, it must have been a severe strain to ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... quest of collectors for years, and so are probably nearly all sifted out of the great rubbish-heaps of dealers; the latter have not been in great demand, and may be unearthed in odd corners of country shops and all sorts of likely and unlikely places. Therefore, as a hobby, it offers an exciting quest with almost certain success in the end; in short, it offers the ideal conditions for collecting as a pastime, provided you can muster sufficient interest ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... found many things to amuse him, and made friends in every part of the big steamer. The stewards, and the crew, and the stokers would all smile, or have some joke ready, when his bright little face appeared round some unlikely corner. For Jeff soon knew his way about the ship, and was here, there, and everywhere all day long. Of course he was not always thinking of his home in India, or of the dear faces he had left behind. Even grown-up people easily forget their sorrows ...
— A Little Hero • Mrs. H. Musgrave
... thing they ride in, solid enough for our good Jane!' With intuitive tact of a very high order, I omitted this entire passage about marrying the Jap. When your aunt's letter was finished, he asked point blank whether there was one from you. I said No, but that it was unlikely the news had reached you, and I felt sure you would write when it did. So I hope you will, dear; and Nurse Rosemary Gray will have instructions to read all ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... you to me, relative to the error you suppose I have fallen into in mistaking the Wizard Peak of Captain King for the hill named by him Mount Fairfax, and I find I have certainly fallen into this error — a by no means unlikely one, considering the very similar character of the singular group of hills called Moresby's Flat-topped Range, and the circumstances under ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... none to challenge him but old Keltie, and the carrier Auchtermuchty," replied Randal; "unlikely men to stay one of the frackest [Footnote: Boldest—most forward.] youths in Scotland of his years, and who was sure to have friends and partakers at ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... Prince, standing where I am—the road was probably a mule track then—-would have seen against the sky the picture that sets me dreaming of the past. But the quietude of the summer night might have been disturbed by sounds that are not heard now. It is unlikely that so large a castle, containing so many men-at-arms and officials as must have been deemed necessary to its safety and dignity, would at this early hour have been wrapped in silence more complete than ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... was attended with the best possible results, to justify its restoration in the present century, after so long an interval and such elemental changes of the social and commercial system. It is quite possible, and not at all unlikely, that in the time of the second Richard ninety-six Common-Councilmen may have been amply sufficient to discharge all the duties that devolved upon them. But it does not thence follow that that same number will now suffice. If it is proposed by Sir ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... held on the receipt of this unwelcome information. It was thought unlikely that the Eburones would rise by themselves. It was probable enough, therefore, that the conspiracy was more extensive. Cotta, who was second in command, was of opinion that it would be rash and wrong to leave the camp without Caesar's orders. ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... Chronotype, in the course of an appreciative review of this poem, urges with some force a single objection, which we are induced to notice, as it is one not unlikely to present itself to ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... to tell? No, you and I are in the same boat, and we must shield each other. I wouldn't trust anybody in the school. One never knows how things are talked about and get round from the most unlikely quarters. Whatever happens, this ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... that some of the stories which I now tell must seem very wild and unlikely to landsmen; but those who have been to the whale-fishery will admit that I tell nothing but the truth, and if there are any of my readers who are still doubtful, I would say, go and read the works of ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... more willing animal than she is. But she is naturally a more irritable constitution than the black horse; flies tease her more; anything wrong in the harness frets her more; and if she were ill-used or unfairly treated she would not be unlikely to give tit for tat. You know that many high-mettled horses will ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... Tourte were contemporaries, Tourte's birth having taken place only five years before that of Dodd in 1752. When I come to speak more particularly of Tourte I shall show my reasons for thinking it unlikely that Dodd copied Tourte in this respect. The whole matter is shrouded in mystery. In other branches of science, art, etc., we find brilliant thinkers arriving simultaneously at identical results,[1] and I can quite believe that the idea of the ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... are passed by a majority of the representatives of the people, and these representatives are chosen for such short periods that any injurious or obnoxious law can very soon be repealed, it would appear unlikely that any great numbers should be found ready to resist the execution of the laws. But it must be borne in mind that the country is extensive; that there may be local interests or prejudices rendering a law odious in one part which is not so in another, and that the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... real Belgian policeman. You can have no idea what a fine sense of security that gives us in case anything goes wrong. We have already enjoyed his assistance in a variety of ways, and we have something still in reserve in the very unlikely event of his being professionally called in—his uniform. When we put him into his uniform the effect will ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... chestnuts of unknown performance record as to habit of bearing, size or flavor of nut, shape of tree, resistance to blight, or spring freezes, and other characteristics which combine to make good nuts, with the inferior and largely inedible Japanese chestnuts, are unlikely to do the damage to the industry that is sometimes predicted. They are now so mixed up that few will be planted by themselves, and there is considerable evidence that the xenia influence of good Chinese chestnuts with which the trees are being planted ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... see the force of Mivart's objection to the theory of production of the long neck of the giraffe (suggested in my first Essay), and which C. Wright seems to admit, while his "watch-tower" theory seems to me more difficult and unlikely as a means of origin. The argument, "Why haven't other allied animals been modified in the same way?" seems to me the weakest of the weak. I must say also I do not see any great reason to complain of the "words" left out by Mivart, as they do not seem to me materially to affect ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... certain noble elegance, but a shade across his forehead testified to the failure of his eyesight, and he shambled along with difficulty on two lame legs. If we followed him he would probably take us slowly to the Garden of the Luxembourg, where it was very unlikely that any one would ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... which first emboldened the English to require greater independence from their sovereign: it is also probable, that the boroughs and corporations of England were established in imitation of those of France. It may, therefore, be proposed as no unlikely conjecture, that both the chief privileges of the Peers in England and the liberty of the Commons were originally the growth of ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... headmistress talking so unreservedly they would have gasped with astonishment. But Kitty was too full of sympathetic interest to think of anything else. She had a little unconscious way of her own of winning confidence from the most unlikely of people, and poor Miss Pidsley, who was so weary, so overburthened with worries, so perplexed and altogether out of heart, could not refrain from pouring her troubles out to her; for, first of all, her sympathy, and, secondly, her little gift of the rose had carried her straight ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... We must admit that it is not at all unlikely that our eldest daughter may live to inherit her grandfather's earldom and become Countess of Enderby in her own right. In which case, should she be living here, the wife of an American citizen, she must either lose all the privileges of her rank and title ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... 9 with Gen. xii. 8, xiii. 3), whence it would appear that too much importance must not be laid upon any ethnological interpretation which fails to account for the three versions. That similar traditional elements have influenced them is not unlikely; but to recover the true historical foundation is difficult. The invasion or immigration of certain tribes from the east of the Jordan; the presence of Aramaean blood among the Israelites (see JACOB); the origin ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Mulberry lazily puffing at his cigar "but in my opinion the disappearance of Sheene is the most extraordinary it was so very sudden and unexpected, but it was not at all an unlikely thing for Palsey to do, he was so angry at ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... trouble of toiling for them; but for many days together, not a canoe was to be seen. It is difficult to ascertain the cause of this strange indifference; it may be that they are afraid to venture out to sea, and this is not unlikely, as they appeared, on our first arrival, to entertain much apprehension at the sight of a strange vessel on their coast; but, as they became accustomed to our presence, and began to entertain a feeling of confidence and protection in ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... possible crimes, we find nothing but monstrous charges of sorcery, idolatry, apostasy, and such like, instances of which we know are to be found in those strange times; but which it seems altogether unlikely would infect a large body whose fundamental principle was close adherence to Christianity; a body which was spread all over the world, and which included in its ranks such a multitude and variety of men and of nationalities, among whom there must ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... expelling and exterminating before him the great herbivores, his predecessors. He needs for his corn and his bananas the fruitful plains which were once laid down in prairie or scrubwood. Hence it seems not unlikely that the elephant, the hippopotamus, the rhinoceros, and the buffalo must go. But we are still a long way off from that final consummation, even on dry land; while as for the water, it appears highly probable that there are as good fish still in the sea as ever came out ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... corners where men whispered, even in the cloisters where men bit their nails in impotent anger, the stillness of fear ruled all. Whatever Count Hannibal had it in his mind to tell the city, it seemed unlikely—and hour by hour it seemed less likely—that ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... of Senses that we receive all our Skill in the works of Nature, so they also may be wonderfully benefited by it, and may be guided to an easier and more exact performance of their Offices; 'tis not unlikely, but that we may find out wherein our Senses are deficient, and as easily find wayes of ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... will you carry away your goods? We are here in a desert place, and there is no likelihood of your getting horses." "My lord," answered one of the prisoners, "the black robbed us of our camels as well as our goods, and perhaps they may be in the stables of this castle." "This is not unlikely," replied Codadad; "let us examine." Accordingly they went to the stables, where they not only found the camels, but also the horses belonging to the sultan of Harran's sons. There were some black slaves in the stables, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... have foretold last Christmas who would be the party at that dinner? Mrs. Poynsett at the head of her own table, and Miles in the master's place, and the three waifs from absent families would have seemed equally unlikely guests; while of last year's party—Charlie was in India, Tom De Lancey with the aunts in Ireland, Cecil at Dunstone. Mrs. Duncombe was perfectly quiet, not only from the subduing influence of all she had undergone, but because ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ward. He could hardly file through the bars of the window unnoticed by them, and they would naturally wish to share in his flight; but where one person might succeed in evading the vigilance of the guard, it was unlikely in the extreme that twenty would do so, and the alarm once given all would be recaptured. He was spared the trouble of making up his mind as to his plans, for by the time he had finished his letter the hour that the hucksters ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... and I—that we could very easily dress up as peasants, and go down to Saverne, or anywhere you might think fit, and find out all particulars as to the strength and position of the enemy. No one would suspect two boys of being franc tireurs. It would be unlikely in the extreme that anyone would ask us any questions and, if we were asked, we should say we belonged to some village in the mountains, and had come down to buy coffee, and other necessaries. The risk of detection would be next to nothing, for we speak German quite well ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... itself to this: If Carew knew the latitude and longitude of the smoking mountain—and being familiar with the Bering Sea, all hands admitted that he might well know it—the ambergris was most certainly lost to them, unless, as was most unlikely, the Dawn had had even worse luck with the weather than the Cohasset. But if Carew did not know Fire Mountain's location, they had a chance, though Carew was probably cruising adjacent waters, on the lookout for them—and if they encountered ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... endeavours to collect various sums due to her husband, took some time. Perhaps, when on the point of executing a terrible crime, Derues tried to postpone the fatal moment, although, considering his character, this seems unlikely, for one cannot do him the honour of crediting him with a single moment of remorse, doubt, or pity. Far from it, it appears from all the information which can be gathered, that Derues, faithful to his own traditions, was simply experimenting on his unfortunate guests, for no sooner ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... staffs would consider the American troops sufficiently seasoned to take over a complete sector of the battle line, and for that reason, the "Sammies," as they were affectionately called at home, were unlikely to see any ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... It is not unlikely that Akiba's journeys, extending into Africa, and undertaken to bring about the restoration of the independence of Judaea, had as their subsidiary, unavowed purpose, the discovery of the ten lost tribes. The "Dark Continent" played no unimportant role in Talmudic writings, special interest ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... anonymous author always arouses a certain inquiry, and when the book is clever and original the interest becomes keen; and conjecture is rife, endowing the most unlikely people with authorship.... It is very brilliant, very forcible, very sad.... It is perfect in its way, in style clear, sharp and forcible, the dialogue epigrammatic and sparkling.... Enough has been said to show ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... at him in doubting surprise. To catch Emerson Mead unarmed seemed a most unlikely fairy tale. The two men held his arms and Daniels called a third to search him. Mead flushed and bit ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... friendliness, he had come out on the chance of gaining some news of Poppy. Disappointment, however, awaited him. For the discreet Phillimore, though receiving him graciously, reported her mistress resident at home again, it is true, but gone into town on business, probably theatrical, and unlikely to return until late. Therefore Dominic had walked on to Barnes Common, and finding the uncomfortable bench by the roadside—whereon Cappadocia, the toy spaniel, had sought his protection more than a year ago—untenanted, had sat down there ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... as I am," he said, "unlikely as it seems that I can marry at all, I'm hanged if I don't marry an Englishwoman, if I give my life ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... latter. Were they exclusively under the control of the State Governments, the General Government might easily be dissolved. But if they be regulated properly by the State Legislature, the Congressional control will very properly never be exercised. The power appears to me satisfactory, and as unlikely to be abused as any part of the Constitution. (Elliot's Debates, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... British royal family was, with the member of another great reigning family, honouring her table—though the ladies of neither were to be present; and this had been a drop of chagrin in her cup. She had been unaware of the gossip there had been of late,—though it was unlikely the great ladies would have known of it—and she would have been slow to believe what Ian had told her this day, that men had talked lightly of her at De Lancy Scovel's house. Her eyes had been shut; her wilful nature had not been sensitive to the quality of the social air about her. People came—almost ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... rested from money-getting; and even now, when he was on the brink of an adventure which should make or mar him, he was up an hour after midnight to squeeze poor neighbours. He was one who trafficked greatly in disputed inheritances; it was his way to buy out the most unlikely claimant, and then, by the favour he curried with great lords about the king, procure unjust decisions in his favour; or, if that was too round-about, to seize the disputed manor by force of arms, and rely on his influence and Sir Oliver's cunning in the law to hold what he had snatched. Kettley ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... call, locking the door behind him. At that hour it was luncheon-time in well-regulated households, and it was in the last degree unlikely that Mrs. Gallilee could be the visitor. Getting within view of the front of the house, he saw a man standing on the doorstep. Advancing a ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... use more principles than are sufficient for the reasonable explanation of phenomena. Yet you urge, do you, that it is no less unphilosophical, in an obscure and unsettled inquiry, wholly to exclude the consideration of unlikely possibilities?—Well! it is nothing to me. Have it your own way: suppose, if you like, that the man in the grave had something to do with spreading the disease, and that his nervous system, in its abnormal state, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... now-a-days who peruse with pleasure the works of Homer, Juvenal, and other poets and satirists of the old school; and it is not unlikely that centuries hence persons will be found turning back to the pages of the writers of the present day (especially PUNCH), and we rather just imagine they will be not a little puzzled and flabbergasted to discover the meaning, or wit, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... gratitude for such kindness and foresight, though she thought it unlikely that she would need ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... Chonita better since that dance," I said to him. "Polar stars are not unlikely to have volcanoes. Better let the deeps alone, my friend; the lava might scorch you badly. Women of complex natures are interesting studies, but dangerous to love. They wear the nerves to a point, and the tired brain and heart turn gratefully to the crystalline, idle-minded woman. ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... you know what this is?" With a dramatic gesture she flung back the left side of her coat and exposed a small enamelled badge. It was extremely unlikely that Albert would have any knowledge of it—indeed, it would have been fatal for Tuppence's plans, since the badge in question was the device of a local training corps originated by the archdeacon in the early days of the war. Its presence in ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... organisms are probably chiefly confined to the soil, and do not usually occur in rain or in the atmosphere. That, however, they are found in spots which we might be inclined to think extremely unlikely, is shown by some recent interesting researches carried out by Muentz, who discovered that the bare surfaces of felspathic, calcareous, schistose, and other rocks at the summit of mountains in the ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... to the Princess Y——, he gave me another to a member of the staff of the Russian Embassy in London, a M. Gudonov. He also urged me to call upon a member of Parliament, a rising politician who is not unlikely to have a ministerial post in the next government, and who has made himself known as an apologist of the Czar's. But as I had good reason to know that this gentleman was by no means a disinterested dupe, like Mr. Place, I prudently left ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... for twenty years in the firm conviction that she would die in the poorhouse—as, indeed, seemed not unlikely—before she would ask a favour of Andrew Cameron. And so, in truth, she would have, had it been for herself. But for Sylvia! Could she so far humble herself for ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... forced to admit that was extremely unlikely. And as she watched Ellen she could not but be convinced that there was something woefully wrong between her ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... me to tell you that they think it very unlikely for little Flossy to be expected to rear so numerous a family; they think you are quite right in protesting against all the pups being preserved, for, if kept, they will pull their poor little ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... advanced ideas of justice for the time, it is unlikely that so capable a person as Salisbury appears to have been,[42] could fail to perceive that the publication of the Attorney-General's opinion of Vavasour's guilt must, in the absence of any prosecution, call attention to Vavasour, and thus furnish a clue to the writer of the letter. Salisbury, ...
— The Identification of the Writer of the Anonymous Letter to Lord Monteagle in 1605 • William Parker
... pins, pens, wires and boxes, he soon set up a telephone which put him into communication with the boy whose desk was farthest away. He possessed tools necessary for any of his tricks, and his desk was a veritable bazaar: copybooks, books, pen-holders and paper were mixed pell-mell with the most unlikely objects, such as fragments of fencing foils, drugs, chemical products, oil, grease, bolts, skate wheels, and tablets of chocolate. In one corner, carefully concealed, were some glass tubes which awaited a favorable moment for projecting against the ceiling ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... of the boat lifted on the waves close to us, and I swam to her and climbed in over her stern. By this time the ship was too far off to be dangerous, unless it was thought worthwhile to come back to pick up the boat, which was unlikely, as it would have been done at once if at all. Between us, the Saxon and I managed to get Dalfin into her, and then our new companion followed. He wore a thrall's dress, and had not so much as a knife on him. Yet one could see that he ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... prose tale, in which France was to hold almost if not quite the highest rank among European countries, was also included. It would not seem that the kind was as yet very frequently attempted—the fact that the verse fabliau was still in the very height of its flourishing-time, made this unlikely; nor was it till that flourishing-time was over that farces on the one hand, and prose tales on the other, succeeded as fruit the fabliau-flower. But it is from the thirteenth century that (with some others) we ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... the saddlebags he took bread, eggs, chocolate, sardines, biscuits and apples. With a mixture of permanganate of potash, tea and cold water from the well, if the puddle at the bottom of a deep hole could be so termed, he made a drink that, while drinkable by one who has known worse, was unlikely to cause an attack upon an enfeebled constitution, of cholera, enteric, dysentery or any other of India's specialities. What would he not have given for a clean whisky-and-soda in the place of the nauseating muck—but what should be the end of a man who, in his position, turned to ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... and exceedingly doubtful view of us been caught, steps would at once have been taken on board the ship to further test the matter. Some one, for instance, would probably have been sent aloft to get a more extended view of the ocean's surface; nay, it was by no means unlikely that an officer might have taken the duty upon himself, and have searched the ocean with the aid of a telescope, in either of which cases we should soon have been discovered; when the sight of a small boat battling for life against a rapidly increasing gale and an already extremely dangerous ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... retorted Dick, laughingly. "Gems are sometimes found in the most unlikely looking places. I did not expect the landscape to be distinguished by any unusual ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... stood looking at her. That he should fail and become an outcast were not at all unlikely. Her words seemed to him like a divination! But it is the unexpected that happens, she said to herself, and the train came up to the station, and he bade her good-bye, and settled himself down in a seat to consider his ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... French garrisons be asleep? No sentry's challenge was heard on the walls. Perhaps, believing that it was unlikely an enemy should discover them, and impossible for one to approach at night, they had all, in fancied security, gone to rest; but then they must have seen the approach ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... other side. Her entry into the War has put an end, I hope for ever, to the family quarrel, not very profound or significant, which for a century and a half has been a jarring note in the relations of mother and daughter. And it has put an end to another danger. It seemed at one time not unlikely that the English language as it is spoken overseas would set up a life of its own, and become separated from the language of the old country. A development of this kind would be natural enough. The Boers of South Africa speak Dutch, but not the Dutch spoken in Holland. ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... was in the yard, shining very much all over, but without any horses to it as yet; and it looked in that state as if nothing was more unlikely than its ever going to London. I was thinking this, and wondering what would ultimately become of my box, which Mr. Barkis had put down on the yard-pavement by the pole (he having driven up the yard to turn his cart), and also what would ultimately become of me, when a lady looked out of a ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... appeared episodically, are hardly enough to justify the view that stupors are the result of a specific infection. We must remember, too, that no focal neurological symptoms are ever observed, which makes the possibility of a central nervous system infection highly unlikely. ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... does the Interstate Commerce Commission now find it practically impossible, with its present membership and organization, to perform its great functions promptly and thoroughly, but it is not unlikely that it may presently be found advisable to add to its duties still others equally heavy and exacting. It must first be perfected as ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... that name engraved as a talisman!... The mysterious Adonis who loved her and suffered for her sake!... All that story seems very unlikely; and I wonder whether, Lupin though you be, you did not just drop upon a pretty love-story, absolutely genuine and ... none ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... had Prather and Nogales?" Jack asked. He must reach the water-hole as soon as Prather; for it was not unlikely that Prather might have fresh mounts waiting there to take him on to the nearest ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... that you will believe me," Eleanor went on after a minute, "because it seems so unlikely; but this is the first time I ever thought ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... that the daughter of Raymond Berenger was unlikely to listen to any opinions which would affect the dignity of that good knight's nation and descent; and with this assurance, the Constable, finding it impossible to obtain any which had more special reference to himself and his suit, was compelled to remain satisfied. He recollected ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... mirror and examined himself critically, Why not? he asked himself. He was very pleasing. Women had always been wax in his hands; he had a personality, an air, an irresistible something that had won him many conquests. It seemed not unlikely that Hilda had been shocked into a new and keener realization of his many admirable qualities and was ready to make up, if, or when, he ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... rather to travel than to live; shall find more things to observe than desire; and more persons to esteem than to love. But the same qualities and dispositions do not value a private man and a state, nor make a conversation agreeable, and a government great: nor is it unlikely, that some very great King might make but a very ordinary private gentleman, and some very extraordinary gentleman might be capable of making but ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... Waterloo, and pay for it into the bargain. The little demons are the source of as many reprieves, calamities, and anxieties as the battle itself. Sometimes Mrs. Bonham has just gone out; at others she is at home. But, even if the cards should be superseded, which seems unlikely, there are unruly powers blowing life into storms, disordering sedulous mornings, and uprooting the stability of the afternoon—dressmakers, that is to say, and confectioners' shops. Six yards of silk will cover one body; ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... order to have been seen clearly, almost simultaneously, from places 175 miles apart. If all reports were of a single object, in the knowledge of this investigator no man-made object could have been large enough and far enough away for the approximate simultaneous sightings. It is most unlikely, however, that so many separated persons should at that time have chanced on Venus in the daylight sky. It seems therefore much more probable that more than one object was involved. The sighting might have included two or more balloons (or aircraft) or they might have ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... the most noble sense of the word, is to form herself to be the equal of the man she marries, and all will be right. I speak advisedly, because a girl who has the courage to so plan out her future is very unlikely to wed with any save the most desirable of ...
— How to Marry Well • Mrs. Hungerford
... like to see that god. But for my own part I have made up my mind never to believe in logs and stones, though they be in the shape of fiend or man, whose power I do not understand; and although I have been told that they have great power, yet it seems to me very unlikely, for I find that those images which are called gods are in every way uglier and less powerful than myself. How much less powerful are they therefore than the great God who rules over the whole universe, who makes the rain to fall and ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... heart not to pause at hearing a story which, however unlikely, was not impossible. He fastened his penetrating gaze on the farmer, who submitted to the examination with a plentiful supply of impudence ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... meaning to reluctant minds. It is an expression unwelcome on the drawing-room table. But, briefly, what Mr. Salter had so sworn to do was to twist his wife's nose off with his finger and thumb. And he did not seem unlikely to carry out his threat, as Livermore's tenantry lacked spirit or will to interpose, and did nothing but shriek in panic when feminine, and show discretion when masculine; mostly affecting indifference, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... present day. The late Professor Peter of Bala believed that he found traces of Lake-dwellings in Bala Lake, and the people in those parts have a tradition that a town lies buried beneath its waters—a tradition, indeed, common to many lakes. It is not therefore unlikely that if the lakes of Wales are explored they will yield evidences of lake-dwellers, and, however unromantic it may appear, the Lady of the Van Lake was only possibly a maiden snatched from her watery home by a member of ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... moment a great power, now, very much greater, had a firm hold of certain wires carefully concealed; the dexterous pulling of which would cause 100,000,000 of men to rush at each other's throats: nor is this supposition rendered the more unlikely because of the utterance of the most religious sentiments on the part of the great power in question, and because of the well-known Christianity and orthodoxy of its ruler. But this was not the only power ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... no habit, likely or unlikely, Mrs. Tutt had no intention of taking any chances so far as Tutt was concerned. If he did not reach home precisely at six explanations were in order, and if he came in half an hour later he had to demonstrate his integrity beyond a reasonable ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... nothing ginger faraway kettle shadow next mercy scrub hilltop internal recite shoestring narrative thunder seldom harbor jury eagle windy occupy squirm hobby balloon multiply necktie unlikely supple westbound obey inch broken ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... right mixture of friendliness without impertinence and restraint without servility. Mr. WENMAN as a superabundant gum-chewing impresario, and Mr. EILLE NORWOOD as head villain, were quite plausible in the interesting and unlikely situation. I must say I like this kind ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... in trees and have often five eggs at a time, and I believe that they leave these countries because their nests are full of broken egg-shells, and because the winter is setting in, and because they dislike cold weather; and, thus disliking cold weather, it is unlikely that they would fly to the North Pole where the cold is very intense, and where, moreover, there is little food to be found, saving polar bears and Esquimos, a form of victual for which birds have only the scantiest relish. My own impression is, that these birds ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... true, been suggested as a possibility, but through an outside source which Mr. Wintermuth felt sure was most unlikely to have been stimulated to the suggestion by the person most interested. The President was in a mood of despondency, incidental to the painful discovery of how frail a tissue of truth most of the recommendations of ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... an extremely unlikely place to meet a lady on camel-back; there were no tourists in that part of the desert, so far back from the Nile; it was not a likely place to meet an European pleasure-party. Michael knew that Abdul had meant an European lady when he spoke of ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... the Emperor Maximilian: "We would all of us prefer to die," they said, "rather than to fall under the domination of Venice." Such language may, of course have been a compliment; and yet it does not seem unlikely that the people of Triest had some knowledge of the ruin and death that were overtaking all the Dalmatian towns with the one exception of ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... another heap. These heaps are more or less scattered, and are exposed to the rain, and snow, and frost. The horse-manure is quite likely to ferment too rapidly, and if in a large heap, and the weather is warm, it not unlikely "fire-fangs" in the center of the heap. On the other hand, the cow-manure lies cold and dead, and during the winter freezes ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... afterwards; and another daughter, born in May, 1652. The birth of this child may have been connected with the death of the mother in the same or the following month. The household had apparently been peaceful, but it is unlikely that Mary Milton can have been a companion to her husband, or sympathized with such fraction of his mind as it was given her to understand. She must have become considerably emancipated from the creeds of her girlhood if his later writings could have been anything but detestable to her; and, ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... growth and development of steam-navigation, a large amount of freight is still carried by sailing-craft; moreover, it is not unlikely that the relative proportion of ocean freight carried by sailing-vessels will increase rather than decrease, especially in the case of ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... retailers of the marvelous, the sober chronicler is bound to forego such advantage as he may reap from an odd-sounding name, on which many ephemeral successes are founded in these days. Wherefore the present writer gives the following succinct statement of the reasons which induced him to adopt the unlikely ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... considered the observations made by you to me, relative to the error you suppose I have fallen into in mistaking the Wizard Peak of Captain King for the hill named by him Mount Fairfax; and I find that I have certainly fallen into this error, a by no means unlikely one, considering the very similar character of the singular group of hills, called Moresby's Flat-topped Range, and the circumstances under which I was journeying. Consequently the country I have ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... of the 'appiest evenings together that Sam 'ad ever known; and Mr. Goodman would 'ave been just as 'appy too if it hadn't ha' been for the thoughts o' that five pounds. The more 'e thought of it the more unlikely it seemed that 'is wife would blame it on to the sweep, and one night he took the match-box out of 'is pocket and shook his 'ead over it till Sam ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... betting ring with a persistence almost pitiful, but he had neither the appearance nor the manner which begets confidence in unlikely tales, and in his mouth the truth itself sounded like a fabrication. He was a willing but an unconvincing liar, and the few who lingered long enough to listen to his clumsy attempts ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... Worcester and Archbishop of Canterbury—as "in a chrysalis state, putting off the worm and putting on the dragon-fly, a kind of intermediate grub between sycophant and oppressor"? Perhaps Macaulay was naturally unlikely to judge him well. A portrait drawn by one who lived nearer his day is Izaak ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... word with her first. He believed the story of her being insane had been carefully planned, and that Warfield had perhaps ridden over in the hope that they would find her alone; though with Frank dead on the ranch that would be unlikely. But to offset that, Lone's reason told him that Warfield had probably not known that Frank was dead. That had been news to him—or had it? He tried to remember whether Warfield had mentioned it first and could not. Too many disturbing emotions ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... meeting was arranged at which it was resolved that the least prepossessing and most unlikely of the nominees had secured the winning majority. But love is a very contrary commodity, and a defect may be a virtue in the eyes of a hero-worshipper; and "My Lady" was serenely happy in spite of her unpopularity with her rivals. Hard Times Hance had sprouted from pauperdom and ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... Peg and said coldly "Good-bye, Margaret. It is unlikely we'll meet again. I hope you have a safe ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... I likely to tell? No, you and I are in the same boat, and we must shield each other. I wouldn't trust anybody in the school. One never knows how things are talked about and get round from the most unlikely quarters. Whatever happens, this mustn't ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... bishops' power with never a word of invective against their teaching or their faith. His conduct was guided solely by a desire to aggrandize the crown, and he seized without a scruple the tools best fitted to his hand. Had Brask been more compliant, or the Church less rich, the king would not unlikely have continued in the faith. The moral of all this is to hide your riches from those that ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... ginginianus. The smaller white scavenger vulture. This occurs up to at least 5000 feet. Fairbank did not observe any other vultures on the higher hills, but it is unlikely that Pseudogyps bengalensis (the white-backed vulture), Gyps indicus (the long-billed vulture), and Otogyps calvus (the black or Pondicherry vulture) do not visit the higher hills. These three birds should be ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... popular with all hands. Early in the campaign we had a Turkish attack one morning; it was over by midday, and an hour later most of the men were in swimming. I think it not unlikely that some of the "missing" men were due to this habit. They would come to the beach and leave their clothes and identity discs ashore, and sometimes they were killed in the water. In this case there was no possibility of ascertaining their names. It often struck me that ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... the last pretty woman, and which was simply the beautiful though somewhat superannuated image of HONOR; he was irresistibly entertaining and enlivening, and he formed a character to which Newman was as capable of doing justice when he had once been placed in contact with it, as he was unlikely, in musing upon the possible mixtures of our human ingredients, mentally to have foreshadowed it. Bellegarde did not in the least cause him to modify his needful premise that all Frenchmen are of a frothy and imponderable substance; he simply reminded ...
— The American • Henry James
... the basic idea and an hour or so on "equipment"; the longer I go on the more unlikely it all seems. In the end I have maybe two hundred words which acting on instructions I post through a slit ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... March 1962; in 1970 the Council was changed to an appointive body by decree of the sultan; an elected Legislative Council is being considered as part of constitutional reform, but elections are unlikely for several years ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... assume something of a supernatural character. He considered that the ways of the Gods are not as our ways, and that it is rather the rule than the exception with them to accomplish their designs in the most circuitous manner, and by the most unlikely instruments. He also reflected upon the history of the Sibyl and her books, and shuddered to think that unseasonable obstinacy might in the end cost the temple the whole of its revenues. The result of his cogitations was a resolution, ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... thing that fitted nowhere into the pattern within whose corners he had by this time brought the other queer things in the case. It was very possible that she could explain it away in a breath; it was unlikely that any one else could. He ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... called "second sight." That under certain conditions knowledge can pass from one mind to another otherwise than through the ordinary channels of the senses, is familiarly shown by the examples of persons en rapport. The limit to this we do not know, but it is not unlikely that clairvoyance or second sight is based upon it. In his autobiography, the celebrated Sac chief Black Hawk, relates that his great grandfather "was inspired by a belief that at the end of four years, he should see a white man, ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... moments I shall never forget. All at once the idea struck me that we should be caught like foxes which they smoke in their holes. The enemy held every avenue. I went to a window in the rear, and saw that it looked out on a yard, and that the yard had no gate except in front. I thought it not unlikely that the Austrians, in revenge for the loss we had inflicted upon them, might put us to the point of the bayonet. It would have been natural enough. Thinking thus, I ran back to a room, where a dozen of us yet remained, and there I saw Sergeant Pinto leaning against the wall, his arms hanging by ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... Nature insists above all things upon balance. She contrives to maintain a harmony between the material and spiritual, nor allows the cerebrum an expansion at the cost of the cerebellum. If the character, for example, run on one side into religious enthusiasm, it is not unlikely to develop on the other a counterpoise of worldly prudence. Thus the Shaker and the Moravian are noted for thrift, and mystics are not always the worst managers. Through all changes of condition and experience man continues ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... himself. Instinctively, he felt that Sarria and Vanamee wanted to talk of things concerning which he was an outsider. It was not at all unlikely that Vanamee would spend half the night before the high ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... sweet, huge heaps of stones are found, But so confused, that neither any eye Can count them just, nor Reason reason try, What force brought them to so unlikely ground. ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... always the same calm, reposeful face and clear gray eyes. I ceased looking for her in society, quite sure that I should not find her, and nursed a wild expectation of suddenly meeting her, face to face, in the most unlikely places and under startling circumstances. However, the end of it all was ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... world-wide importance of the Alliance we are able to announce. But we have left untouched its most momentous aspect. The new Alliance is a guarantee of peace to that half of the world which is primarily concerned; it renders a breach of the peace in the other half of the world far more unlikely than it ever was before. As a defensive Alliance between the English-speaking peoples, this should represent the beginning of an era of unexampled peace, progress, and prosperity ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... you. The old man made a row in the office, and went off in fire and flame, and gave up our friend here to his partner's tender mercies. I sent for you, as you've taken charge of him. I suppose you have your reasons. This is an unlikely corner to find him in, and I suppose he couldn't be safer anywhere. That's about the state of the case. I came down to look after him, out of kind feeling," said the heir of the Wentworths. "If you don't mean to eat any ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... other of the apocryphal books, this is a traditional story of great popularity. It is not necessary to suppose that its author's name has been lost from the title, as it may always have been anonymous. The nature of its contents would not be unlikely to give offence to the Sanhedrin, and therefore a motive for anonymity is not ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... It is unlikely that any complete history of these events will ever be written in a form and style which will interest a later generation. The complications of extraordinary names and the imperfection of the records might alone deter the chronicler. The universal squalor of the scenes ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... of Raven Rock and the Thirty Black Devils leaping high and merrily in the morning. As I ran down the last hill, with an eye on the light glowing in the kitchen window of Skipper Tommy Lovejoy's cottage, I made shift to hope that the old man had made harbour from Wolf Cove, but thought it most unlikely. ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... were sent from the plunder of England to the Pope, together with costly ornaments, which would have been held in the highest estimation even at Byzantium, then universally regarded as the most opulent city in the world." All this implies that the Saxon aristocracy were very rich, and it is far from unlikely that it was the desire to preserve their property that led them to offer so little resistance to William,—a fatally mistaken course, for the invading adventurers had entered England in search of other men's property, and were not to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... like the rose. The New South, the Anglo-Saxon declared, was happy to welcome capital and enterprise, and hoped that Colonel French might find, in Clarendon, an agreeable residence, and an attractive opening for his trained business energies. That something of the kind was not unlikely, might be gathered from the fact that Colonel French had already repurchased, from William Nichols, a worthy negro barber, the old French mansion, and had taken into his service a former servant of the ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... horizontal red and white stripes with a white canton containing a red St. George's Cross; but there is no reason to suppose that this inspired the flag of the colonies. Bunting was scarce and Franklin was always a thrifty soul. If that committee of three did design the flag, it is not at all unlikely that Franklin suggested utilizing the standards they already had, and changing their character by stitching on white stripes. To deface the flag of Britain was a serious offense, and maybe it was thought just ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... and sunk and risen again, in simple obedience to the pulsations of the great fiery monster below. It puffs up or sinks, like the crust of a baking apple-pie. This region is evidently not done; and I think it not unlikely it may have to be turned over again before it is. We had seen where Herculaneum lies under the lava and under the town of Resina; we had walked those clean and narrow streets of Pompeii, and seen the workmen ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and very unlikely supposition to Matilda. "I don't think I shall ever have anybody to take care of but mamma and ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... region,—if that be the Highest (though in that too there are many stages) wherein a man can believe and discern for himself, without need of help from any other, and even in opposition to all others: but I consider him entirely unlikely to accomplish anything considerable, except some kind of crabbed, semi-perverse, though still manful existence of his own; which indeed is no despicable thing. His "more than prophetic egoism,"—alas, yes! It is of such material that Thebaid Eremites, Sect-founders, and all manner of ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Boutell" in small bronze letters, of that back-slope writing only made by French painters, and which can only be met with, ordinarily, in the French cities or those of the adjacent German provinces. It seems unlikely that any particular attention should have been paid to the latter unimportant detail at that moment; but the detail was really not an unimportant one. Among the half-working amusements of his idle hours in youth, Leslie had indulged in ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... costly journeys, and we hear that for a time he had money in his purse. In the will which he dictated at St. Helena is a bequest of one hundred thousand francs to the children of his friend who was the first mayor of Ajaccio by the popular will. It is not unlikely that the legacy was a grateful souvenir of advances made about this time. There is another possible explanation. The club of Ajaccio had chosen a delegation, of which Joseph Buonaparte was a member, to bring Paoli home from France. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Barry that, as Anty had left her own home in company with Martin's mother, and as she now was a guest at the widow's, it was unlikely that any immediate clandestine marriage should be resorted to; that their most likely course would be to brazen the matter out, and have the wedding solemnised without any secrecy, and without any especial notice to him, Barry. That, on the next morning, a legal notice should be prepared in ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... but unlikely, as none knew better than Val Elster. To get to the surgeon's he would have to pass his own house, and would be more likely to go in, and send for Mr. Hillary, than walk on with a disabled foot. Besides, if he had gone to the surgeon's, he would not stay there all ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... to enjoy during life, and Harley after his decease. He had now, what wits and philosophers have often wished, the power of passing the day in contemplative tranquillity. But it seems that busy men seldom live long in a state of quiet. It is not unlikely that his health declined, he complains of deafness; "for," says he, "I took little care of my ears while I was not sure if my head ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... the case, I reasoned that it was altogether unlikely that the trivial impression as to President Byxbee had been the only one which I had received in that state. It was far more probable that it had remained over in my mind, on waking from the swoon, merely because it was the latest of a series of impressions ...
— The Blindman's World - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... than those to which we are introduced by the current creed. Complete definiteness is not, of course, to be expected. Right regulation of the actions of so complex a being as man, living under conditions so complex as those presented by a society, evidently forms a subject-matter unlikely to admit of specific statements throughout its ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... at that," she announced suddenly, eyes coldly unprepossessed. "You sound fishy as all-hell, and God knows you're the sickest-looking cop I ever laid eyes on; but there are less unlikely things than that a second-story man should try this route for his getaway.... Well!" she demanded urgently—"what're you standing there for, like a ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... a bit of an ascetic. I have no doubt that his life is now and will continue to be spotless. But that it was always so is most unlikely. Army subalterns during the war were given no end of a good time. And quite right too, it was the least that could be done for us: and the most, in nine cases out of ten: personally I had no use for munition workers in mud-coloured overalls, but I still ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... is obvious how strongly this suggests the idea of a code, and that therefore this flaw prevents these experiments from having any value as tests, or as establishing de novo the existence of the genuine power. But apart from the moral conviction that unfair practices were extremely unlikely, Sir Oliver Lodge says that there was a sufficient amount of internal evidence derived from the facts themselves to satisfy him that no code was used. As examples, two from a series of ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... and the love of beauty; and it is as the accidental effect of these qualities only, that it seeks the Middle Ages; because in the overcharged atmosphere of the Middle Age there are unworked sources of romantic effect, of a strange beauty to be won by strong imagination out of things unlikely or remote." "The sense in which Scott is to be called a romantic writer is chiefly that, in opposition to the literary tradition of the last century, he loved strange adventure and sought it in ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... and I proceeded to search for other footprints farther down the bed. I did not feel much hope of being successful, since, if our man had had the forethought to leave so many traces of some one else's presence, it was unlikely he would have neglected to ensure that his own should be absent. And as I expected, I ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... just as Hillyard had been. Harry Luttrell had meant to pay his farewell visit to Stella Croyle, knowing well that he was unlikely ever to come back, and understanding that he owed her it. But an incident drove the whole matter from his thoughts, and the incident was just one instance to show how wide a gulf ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... gone!” and these words, uttered in the big clergyman’s deep tones, seemed wholly plausible. There was, to be sure, nothing so unlikely as that Arthur Pickering, executor of my grandfather’s estate, would come to Glenarm without ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... he to be controlled? One expedient after another was swiftly considered and as swiftly rejected. At last the right one! Like his ancestors from Ertoghrul down, the young Turk was a believer in the stars. Not unlikely he was then in the Castle by permission of his astrologer. Indeed, if Mirza had repeated the conversation and predictions at El Zaribah, the Prince of India was being waited for with an impatience due a master of the astral craft. Again the Wanderer cried, "Let the audience come!" ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... obscure presentiments, based on prophecies and traditions, that he must die, that an important part of his mission was connected with his death. This appears from such passages as we have cited above, found in early Rabbinical writers, who would certainly be very unlikely to borrow and adapt a new idea of such a character from the Christians; and from the manner in which Jesus assumes his death to be a part of the Messianic fate and interprets the Scriptures as necessarily pointing to that effect. He charges his disciples with being "fools and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... of any of his expeditions. There was always the chance, unlikely as it might be, that some one of the bipedal natives had found his machine. He dared not use it too close to his base because of the possibility of its drive vibrations being detected in the narrow estuary. Out here in the open sea there was far less likelihood of that, but leaving ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... a not unlikely explanation. But the consensus of opinion in camp was that the bright patch was the reflection of some powerful light in the low country on the opposite side of ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... and quite irrespective of their dramatic relevancy. It cannot be said that they suggested much resemblance to actual warfare. Still they demanded of the performers skill of a peculiar kind, great physical endurance and ceaseless activity. The combat-sword was an unlikely-looking weapon, very short in the blade, with a protuberant hilt of curved bars to protect the knuckles of the combatant. The orchestra supplied a strongly-accentuated tune, and the swords clashed together in strict time with the music. The fight raged hither and thither about the stage, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... be quite without foundation. Then came wafts of rumor to the effect that the prospectors had "struck it rich," but were determined to keep the strike to themselves. My youthful imagination inclined to the latter view. I had a friend who knew the Swazis well, and he held it to be unlikely in the last degree that a party of peaceful prospectors would be molested. Accordingly, I made up my mind to get on the trail of the adventurers and stick to it ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... the drama, but should bear in mind that quite recently it has been stated that both the Rev. SILAS K. HOCKING and Mr. JACK DEMPSEY have taken part in photo-plays. It cannot be doubted that the peculiar talent required for making the heart of the people throb is being revealed in the most unlikely places. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... But if Napoleon had not intended that Ney should occupy Quatre Bras on the night of the 15th, the statement that this had been done would have been a purposeless futility; and if he had intended that Ney should do so it is unlikely that he should have omitted to give him instructions to that effect. Grouchy claims to have heard Napoleon censure Ney for his omission to occupy Quatre Bras; an omission which had its importance, for the reason, among ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... of course, is eager to know whether the boatman's much more complete and connected narrative is a popular mythical development in the years between 1820 and 1890, or whether the schoolmaster of Rannoch did not tell all he knew. It is unlikely, I think, that the siege of Seringapatam would have been remembered so long in connection with the Black Officer if it had not formed part of his original legend. Meanwhile the earliest printed notice ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... thereby. Money advanced upon such a security must be as safe as money invested in Consols, unless there were anything doubtful in the circumstances of the policy; and that, with a man of Mr. Sheldon's respectability, was to the last degree unlikely. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... thought he could discern the stuff that meant an actress in her, and prophesied that she would before long be playing Juliet at the Haymarket. He was still at the age when the habit is to discover geniuses in unlikely places, especially when the women are pretty. He raved about her when he adjourned with his companions to the bar, and they chaffed him a good deal to his face and sneered at him behind his back. He was there the next ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... famous residence of the Medici, in the same city, are among, the best examples of their kind still remaining. We are informed by Vasari that these "lumiere miravigliosi" were the work of one Nicolo Grosso Caparra, a celebrated artificer of the time, by whom it is not unlikely that many of the beautiful rings and cressets which still decorate the old palaces of Siena may have been executed. On the centre spike was fixed a little iron barrel, containing tow and pitch, while on each of the other spikes a torch was fastened. In some of ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 1, No. 7, - July, 1895 • Various
... are for the most part very ingenious and useful to advanced players, but when some of them are transposed into other keys as their composer demands they become practically impossible to play with the proper touch, etc. Furthermore, one would be very unlikely to find a passage demanding such a technical feat in the compositions of any of the great masters of the piano. Consequently, such exercises are of no practical value and would only be demanded by a teacher with more respect for tradition ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... have been a collision with a meteor he conceded, but, it was thought, highly unlikely. And now, the urgent business of the search called, ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... driven up to the door with a considerable pile of luggage on it. There was nothing very remarkable in that. The arrival of a cab loaded with luggage was an event of hourly occurrence at Paulo's Hotel, and quite unlikely to arouse any especial interest in the mind of Miss Dolores. What, however, did languidly arouse her interest, did slightly stir her surprise, was that the smooth-shaven patroller of the opposite side of the way immediately crossed ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... seems a terribly sterile place, but we may as well have a look round; one finds good specimens sometimes in unlikely spots. Let's get ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... prefer, sir, that you did not address me thus familiarly, since you and I have omitted the formality of an introduction; and in the absence of any joint acquaintances are unlikely ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... we lived in a condition of great misery, and death stared us in the face many times. The prospect was a gloomy one: just when my wife and I had reached the time to which we had been looking forward for many years it seemed daily increasingly unlikely that our lives could escape a violent and brutal ending. Such thoughts inevitably occurred to our minds during these dark and anxious days. But there was still to come even worse than we had yet experienced. It got colder and colder every day ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... no fastening whatever, but they passed away without molesting us. I was a little more seriously alarmed another day. Some reports had reached us that the French were coming back, and were within nine miles. I thought it unlikely, but about eight in the morning all the waggons that had passed for two hours came back as fast as possible, horses trotting and men running. I was uneasy on Sir William's account: his situation was so helpless. I leant forward, to prevent ...
— A Week at Waterloo in 1815 • Magdalene De Lancey
... indeed its constitutive elements. That two walkers starting from different points and wandering at random should finally meet, is no great wonder. But that, throughout their walk, they should describe two identical curves exactly superposable on each other, is altogether unlikely. The improbability will be the greater, the more complicated the routes; and it will become impossibility, if the zigzags are infinitely complicated. Now, what is this complexity of zigzags as compared with that of an organ in which thousands of different cells, each being itself a kind of organism, ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... comments to be made on this. The first is that the scene of the fighting was in Yamato. The second, that the chiefs of the Tsuchi-gumo had Japanese names—names identical, in two cases, with those of a kind of Shinto priest (hafuri), and therefore most unlikely to have been borne by men not of Japanese origin. The third, that the presence of Tsuchi-gumo in Yamato preceded the arrival of Jimmu's expedition. And the fourth, that the Records are silent about the whole episode. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... be on my guard, and, as I have said before, I never take an avoidable risk. For this reason I sat at once in the darkest corner I could find and remained there throughout the examination. I thought it extremely unlikely, though possible, that an attempt might be made to track the assassin with dogs, yet, since that is precisely the first thing I myself would have done, I decided that the risk was worth avoiding. I accordingly set the boat adrift to indicate an escape by water, ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... the author of the above lines had ever been to Japan. I should think it very unlikely; and possibly the poet is but describing the scenery of his Cumberland home. In no disparagement of the beauteous country of the lake and mountain, yet we must confess that nothing there can ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... be a fair death for the servant of God. But unlikely it is that you will accomplish this deed of violence, because God's angels follow me ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... one. A handsome master will charm a girl much more than one who is ill-favoured or deformed. Other qualities besides beauty affect the issue. Effeminate boys or tomboyish girls are apt to be repulsive to other children; they are exposed to mockery and teasing of all kinds, and are very unlikely to give rise to erotic sentiments in their companions. It is by no means rare for the inclinations of children to be directed towards their own parents. In the case of many children who are fond of "getting into mother's bed," sexual sentiments lie at the root of the desire. Moreover, ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... Warton, that it had more energy than could have been expected from Walpole, to whom others ascribed it, Warton remarked that it might have been written by Walpole, and buckramed by Mason. Indeed, it is not unlikely that one supplied the venom, and the other spotted the snake. In a letter of expostulation to Warton, Mason did not go the length of disclaiming the satire, though he was angry enough that it should be ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... must do him that justice. Not even an appearance accused him. He was faithful, unlikely as that may seem in a man of his kind; he never left his wife. He had hardly ever gone out without her; they were a couple of turtle-doves. They ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... unusually strong in him, a passion for ludicrous images, and a passion for subtle speculations, sometimes prompted him to talk on serious subjects in a manner which gave grave and just offence. It is not unlikely that Temple, who seldom went below the surface of any question, may have been infected with the prevailing scepticism. All that we can say on the subject is, that there is no trace of impiety in his works, and that the case with which he carried his election for ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to promote a system of public schools in Pennsylvania was defeated through their own ill judgment and the ignorant prejudices of the immigrant people played upon by politicians. But the mere attempt entitles them to lasting gratitude. It is not unlikely that their divisive work of church organization may have contributed indirectly to defeat the aspirations of their fellow-Germans after the perpetuation of a Germany in America. The combination of the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... the momentary fright she had received from her supposed recognition of a face in the audience. Undoubtedly she had been mistaken. Yet why should she have chosen to believe that she saw about the most unlikely person of her acquaintance? A guilty conscience should have conjured up some ghost who had ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World • Margaret Vandercook
... utterly wretched and depressed: the world seemed a dark place to her, especially when she considered that she had already lost one friend whom she had so long and so tenderly loved, and that she was not unlikely to lose another. For Wyvis might blame her—would blame her, probably—for what she had ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... It is very likely that the same ingredients are also used in dyeing the northern green teas for the foreign market; of this, however, I am not quite certain. There is a vegetable dye obtained from Isatis indigotica much used in the northern districts, and called Teinsing; and it is not unlikely that it may be the substance which is employed. The Chinese never use these dyed teas themselves, and I certainly think their taste in this respect is more correct than ours. It is not to be supposed that the ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... the MS. of the novel as fast as he wrote it, and I was afraid that some of the original characters might be recognized by their friends, being so graphically described; however, he believed it unlikely, people seeing and judging so differently ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Majesty appointed Commissions to inquire; read Reports; could for a long while make out nothing certain. At last came a decision on the sudden;—royal mind suddenly illuminated, it is a little uncertain how. Some give the credit of it to Gundling, which is unlikely; others to "Two Generals" of pious orthodox turn, acquainted with Halle;—and I have heard obscurely that it was the Old Dessauer, who also knew Halle; and was no doubt wearied to hear nothing talked ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... perhaps this sense of a clear call in an age of intellectual ferment, of sex problems and political friction, that sent so many unlikely types of manhood straight as arrows to that universal target—the Front. The War offered a high and practical outlet for their dumb idealism; to their realism, it offered the 'terrific verities of fatigue, suffering, bodily danger—beloved life and ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... were naturally disposed to borrow it, or to put on the semblance of it. But no phase of life is without its reverse side, and the present generation cannot claim freedom from pretension of the same sort. It is not unlikely that in expanding the intelligence they established new standards of distinction, which in a measure weakened the old ones. But if they precipitated the downfall of the court they began by rivaling, it was in the logical course of ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... the dear little fellow ought not to be peached on for his fun. If I had known at the time how easily they forgave him, I should have suspected that the offence Billy had led Daniel into committing was not unlikely to be repeated on the offender's own account; but so much as I could see showed me ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... deliberate rocking motion. If I was able to swing it back and forth fast enough by slowly gaining speed and multiplying the momentum, it would be possible to get it to lean far enough that the dome would snap off, leaving the room open to the air. This was possible, though rather unlikely. But I tried anyway. ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... in London," admitted Draycott. "Anyway, I got out. It was a mistake; I see it now. Who is to believe me as it is—it sounds a sort of unlikely tale. And how do they come to pick on me? to know what I had? I don't drink, or open my mouth, or hell round. It ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... seaport village the passage of time was deliberate, and the development of hard-worked apothecaries was slow. Ibsen's nature was not in any sense precocious, and even if he had not languished in so lost a corner of society, it is unlikely that he would have started prematurely in life or literature. The actual waking up, when it came at last, seems to have been almost an accident. There had been some composing of verses, now happily lost, and some more significant ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... about that," said Mr. Granger, "and how the law will treat your claims; if you care to advance them—which I should suppose unlikely. I have no compunction about the justice of my decision. You will go nowhere without your child, you say? Did you think of that last night when your lover was persuading ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... it is so unlikely, Uncle Abel, that I shall ever have any money to spend. It is quite easy saying what we can do in imaginary circumstances. Reality is always different, and more ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... from one to a half dozen lines in length, have come down to us in literature. They have the unique distinction, too, of being specimens of Roman folk poetry, and some of them are found in the most unlikely places. Two of them are preserved by a learned commentator on the Epistles of Horace. They carry us back to our school-boy days. ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... exist in the countries where they were originally domesticated, and yet be unknown to ornithologists; and this, considering their size, habits and remarkable characters, seems improbable; or they must have become extinct in the wild state. But birds breeding on precipices, and good flyers, are unlikely to be exterminated; and the common rock-pigeon, which has the same habits with the domestic breeds, has not been exterminated even on several of the smaller British islets, or on the shores of the Mediterranean. Hence the supposed extermination of so many ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... his lay confessor, to square matters with the hierarchy of Adonai, who belongs to the Latin persuasion; he has changed his name, adopted a third profession, and is so safe in retreat that his friends are as unlikely to find him as are the enemies who thirst for ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... followed a course by which he had nothing to gain and everything to lose was either a fool or was actuated by some profound unselfishness. To save a life? But with all the resources Clark could have commanded, added to his personal popularity, a first degree sentence would have been unlikely. Not a life, then, but perhaps something greater than ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... subject, he observed, "'twould be well to offer a reward of thirty or forty thousand crowns to any one who will deliver the Prince, dead or alive; since from very fear of it—as he is pusillanimous—it would not be unlikely that he should die of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... seas and lakes, there was no sign of water in the whole, vast, desolate globe. An unlikely place, Chet admitted, for the beginning of their search, and yet—those flashes of light!—the S O ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... Not unlikely the squire of these two ladies was rather loath to leave this gay assemblage; but he was speedily consoled, for, to his inexpressible joy, he found, when they got in-doors, that there was no one else coming to lunch—these ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... the young heir of Ellangowan; "and I trust, with the assistance of Heaven, which has so far guided us, and with that of these good friends, whom their own generous hearts have interested in my behalf, such a consummation of my hard adventures is now not unlikely.—But as a soldier, I must look with some interest upon that worm-eaten hold of ragged stone; and if this undermining scoundrel, who is now in possession, dare to ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... would not be very easy for me to give you any idea of the pleasure I found in your present. People who write for the magazines (probably from a guilty conscience) are apt to suppose their works practically unpublished. It seems unlikely that any one would take the trouble to read a little paper buried among so many others; and reading it, read it with any attention or pleasure. And so, I can assure you, your little book, coming from so far, gave me all the pleasure ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... down their buildings with her terrible shells. The Secretary of War said, at a hastily called cabinet meeting in Washington: "The 'Merrimac' will change the whole character of the war: she will destroy every naval vessel; she will lay all the seaboard cities under contribution. Not unlikely we may have a shell or cannon-ball from one of her guns, in the White House, before we ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... (para 172) that the Holy Spirit was so greatly angered by the sin of Ham that he could not bear even to speak his name in the curse. And it is true, as the punishment shows, that Ham sinned grievously. The other reason mentioned above as not at all unlikely, I will here repeat: Ham had been called and received into the ark by the divine Word, and had been saved with the others, and Noah wanted to spare him whom God had spared in the flood. Therefore, he transferred the curse which Ham ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... have been an elaborate trick. It was unlikely, but not impossible, that Garr Symm had learned Ramsey's identity already and had sent an operative here to await him. Ramsey and the Vegan girl had come on foot. It was a ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance
... fear for me, Mr. Everard," exclaimed Alice, aroused from her timidity by a dread of the consequences not unlikely to ensue, where civil war sets relations, as well as fellow-citizens, in opposition to each other.—"Oh, begone, I conjure you, begone! Nothing stands betwixt me and my father's kindness, but these ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... Dago Duke. "It's the preposterous—the most unlikely thing you can think of that is frequently true. I've studied that woman, with my comparatively limited opportunities, until I know her better than you think and far, far better ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... living in a period of transition more hysterically hurried than its immediate predecessor at least, I have made my figures vacillating, out of joint, torn between the old and the new. And I do not think it unlikely that, through newspaper reading and overheard conversations, modern ideas may have leaked down to the ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... north a similar condition is emphasized conspicuously at Majuba Hill and the surrounding country, which, however, and perhaps for that very reason, seem unlikely to play much of a part in the ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... boy, a year older than himself. The two lads were antipodal in disposition, intelligence, and social standing; for though Richard went poorly clad, the reflection of his cousin's wealth gilded him. Durgin was the son of a washerwoman. An intimacy between the two would perhaps have been unlikely but for one fact: it was Durgin's mother who had given little Dick a shelter at the period of his parents' death. Though the circumstance did not lie within the pale of Richard's personal memory, he ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... so many different kinds of homes that it is unlikely that they will meet the same sorts of difficulties. There is the girl who goes into the society home, where it is impossible for her to carry out her ideals without conflict with its social standards. On the other hand, there is the girl who goes into the very simple ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... getting on at the bar, Pleading or Sessions. I have failed in the former, I shall now try the latter. Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo!" I was, I confess, amongst those of his friends who were not sanguine as to his prospects of success at the bar, regarding him as unlikely to attract favourable notice in court practice. Shortly after he had attended at the Sessions, however, he began to obtain a little employment in petty cases there; and, contrary to expectation, became very ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... mark on the MS, and the date when it was written are, it may be observed, wholly unfounded. The MS. L, in which it occurs, is of the year 1502, and it is very unlikely that Leonardo was in Milan at that time; this however would not prevent the remark, which is somewhat obscure, from applying to the Cathedral at ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... The boat was gone, and it was extremely unlikely anyone had seen him leave it. The turn had caused the boat to tilt, lifting the side away from him. He was certain that the guards had not seen the maneuver. That being so, and taking into account his distance from the creek entrance, he ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... suffer from slugs when in flower, but perhaps equally as much when in its dormant state, especially if the winter is mild; then I have noticed the somewhat prominent crowns eaten entirely off, and it is not unlikely that this plant has come to have the name of a fickle grower, from being the favourite prey ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... their thoughts to one another, and some of them deliberately act in concert. The comparison of similarities is endless: I only make it because some may say that since the vapour-engine is not likely to be improved in the main particulars, it is unlikely to be henceforward extensively modified at all. This is too good to be true: it will be modified and suited for an infinite variety of purposes, as much as man has been modified so as to exceed ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... naturally have been added at the same time. Stuart would never have engrossed a long Spanish inscription, and that he should have signed his name (contrary to his habit) and have added the "R. A." to which he had no right is most unlikely. What is most unlikely of all, however, is that there should have been found in Spain an artist capable of painting a portrait like the Don Josef. Both heads are absolutely alike in handling, in texture, in mixing of the pigments, and in all of those things are absolutely characteristic of Stuart, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... putting off those who plague others with their great discoveries. The first demand made should be—Mr. Moses, before I allow you to lead me over the Red Sea, I must have you show that you are learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians upon your own subject. The plea that it is unlikely that this or that unknown person should succeed where Newton, etc. have failed, or should show Newton, etc. to be wrong, is utterly null and void. It was worthily versified by Sylvanus Morgan (the great herald who in his Sphere of Gentry gave coat armor to "Gentleman Jesus," ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... the latitude and longitude of the smoking mountain—and being familiar with the Bering Sea, all hands admitted that he might well know it—the ambergris was most certainly lost to them, unless, as was most unlikely, the Dawn had had even worse luck with the weather than the Cohasset. But if Carew did not know Fire Mountain's location, they had a chance, though Carew was probably cruising adjacent waters, on the lookout for them—and if they encountered him, they ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... gift of prophecy to his other high qualifications, and amongst other things has predicted that, when the town shall join the wood, Bombay shall be no more. The accomplishment of what in his days must have appeared very unlikely ever to take place—namely, the junction of inhabited dwellings with the trees of Mahim—seems to be in rapid course of fulfilment; the land has been drained, many portions formerly impassable filled up, and rendered solid ground, while the houses are extending so fast, that the Burruh ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... broken down in quotient. Two must ultimately be eliminated—barring, of course, the possible emergence of any minor factor to status of Prime, which at this stage seems unlikely. It is estimated that by today or tomorrow at the latest Carmack's murderer will be brought ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... the loan of his house at Cromer. She accepted the offer for a couple of months, and found a little benefit for the bracing air. She mentioned in her diary at this time that she had "an undue fear of an imbecile or childish state"—a not unlikely feeling to be cherished by an energetic woman accustomed all her life long to the work of helping others. At the end of October she returned home, thankfully rejoicing, however, in an improved ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... me, for Mr. Gregory had always seemed so unlikely to be swayed by impulse, or carried, in the slightest degree, beyond a point indicated by his judgment. It simply went to prove that the most regularly and smoothly laid-out man, if one may so express it, has unsuspected ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... affect the designs of civil buildings, for the most beautiful forms of Gothic chapels are not those which are best fitted for Protestant worship. As it was noticed in the second volume, when speaking of the Cathedral of Torcello it seems not unlikely, that as we study either the science of sound, or the practice of the early Christians, we may see reason to place the pulpit generally at the extremity of the apse or chancel; an arrangement entirely destructive of the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... simple enough, though very sad. The Earl— the last Earl of Cairnforth—was a hopeless cripple for life. All the consultations of all the doctors had resulted in that conclusion. It was very unlikely he would ever be better than he was now physically, but mentally he was certainly "a' richt"—or "a' there," as the country-folk express it. There was, as Mr. Cardross carefully explained to every body, not ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... and their intense anxiety lest the one descendant of that branch become in any way a Marley rather than a Pritchard, she was able to gather a very fair idea of what Elsie's upbringing must have been. Unless she might have inherited a sense of humor from the Marley side (which was unlikely, since no one possessing a sense of humor would have married Augusta Pritchard), the girl could hardly have escaped becoming a prig at the mildest. Cold, colorless, correct, self-sufficient, Elsie Pritchard would ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... my rage abated, that I had set out on a foolish undertaking. I was utterly at sea as to the character of the grounds; I was following a man whom I had not seen until two hours before, and whom I began to suspect of all manner of designs upon me. It was wholly unlikely that the person who had fired into the windows would lurk about, and, moreover, the light of the lantern, the crack of the leaves and the breaking of the boughs advertised our approach loudly. I am, however, a person given to steadfastness in error, if nothing else, and I plunged ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... and this stone is therefore called Enalus to this day. To be short and to speak all in a few words,—he that knows how to distinguish between the impossible and the unusual, to make a difference between the unlikely and the absurd, to be neither too credulous nor too distrustful,—he hath learned your lesson, Do not overdo. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... and the full flow of gossip swept about him. Yes, the great Dr. Shergold lay dying; there were bulletins in the morning papers; it seemed unlikely that he would see ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... Milner was to be got rid of at all costs; for the policy which The South African News was intended to promote was that not of Great Britain, but of the Transvaal. The paper was directly inspired—it is indeed not unlikely that the articles themselves were written—by some of the members of the Ministry, Lord Milner's "constitutional advisers," whom throughout he himself treated with the respect to which their ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... my errand struck me hard as I felt the city surging round me. Without a clew to work on, I was utterly unlikely to find the two women, and even if I should stumble upon them, in what way could I explain my conduct in following them? I was visited also by the discouraging thought that New York might not, after ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... Muse pays you long visits." And Gloriani turned and looked, from head to foot, at so unlikely an object of her favors. Singleton smiled and began to wipe his forehead very hard. "Oh, you!" said the sculptor; "you ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... a little surprised and embarrassed at this unexpected and informal proceeding, which she knew would greatly shock the countess; but, taking the card, answered, courteously, "I fear nothing is more unlikely than that I should cross the ocean; but, if such an unlooked-for event should ever occur, I ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... time they all studied together under Hugh Knox. At first there was discord, for Alexander would have led a host of cherubims or had naught to do with them, and these boys were clever and spirited. There were rights of word and fist in the lee of Mr. Lytton's barn, where interference was unlikely; but the three succumbed speedily, not alone to the powerful magnetism in little Hamilton's mind, and to his active fists, but because he invariably excited passionate attachment, unless he encountered jealous hate. When his popularity with these boys was established ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... author probably had not read at thirty. So now of her budding maturity she was not the wonder-woman of fiction, causing by her brilliance her hearers, like Cortez's men, to stare at each other with a wild surmise. No, nothing so unlikely. But she was intelligent and she was ardent; and there are not boundaries to the distance one may go with that equipment. She was admirable and she felt that she was effective. She had a consciousness of confidence amounting almost ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... rejoined Diana doubtfully, "but it is unlikely. As to other people identifying the body, they no doubt did so by looking at the face and its scar. Still, I do not believe the ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... at all that I was the person referred to; but what could be the reason of it all? What was there that I could possibly hear to my advantage, save news of Phyllis, and it would be most unlikely that I would learn anything about the movements of the gang who had abducted her from a firm of first-class solicitors such as I understood Messrs. Dawson & Gladman to be. However, it was no use wondering about it, so I dismissed the matter from my mind for the present, ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... been obliged to drive over the Taygetus range, over which there has never yet been a road for wheeled vehicles. It is plain therefore that the audience for whom the "Odyssey" was written was one that would be unlikely to know anything about the topography of the Peloponnese, so that the writer might take what liberties ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... qualities, and her personal attractions, that certain persons whom he names, among others the clergyman of the parish, expressed their desire to engage her in their own service. The poet rejects their solicitations, and informs them how unlikely a thing it is that Flora should engage with them, as she was intended for ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... Mr. Weatheral, if you could see the heaps and heaps of lovely things simply begging to be bought; it seemed positively unkind to come away and leave any of them." As she said nothing whatever about the young man, it seemed unlikely that she could have him much on her mind. She had a new way, very charming to Peter, of surrendering the afternoon into his hands; let him ask nothing of her she seemed to say, but to enjoy herself. She built out of their being there before her, ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... Umbrella—since for all practical purposes the two are really identical—dates from the earliest ages, some commentators on the Bible fancying they can discover it in places where a shade protecting from the sun is mentioned. This is not unlikely, but it is certain that the Parasol has been in use from ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... in the autumn; and in the autumn they said it must come in the spring. All these years have passed and there is still no sign of war. We hear the same prophecies daily, but I learned long since not to believe in them. War may come, but it seems to me more and more unlikely." He answered, "I think you are right. I advise my own government in the same sense. The fact is that war in these days is not what it once was; it is infinitely more dangerous from every point of view, and it becomes more and more so every ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... to find out that,' said John, admiringly. 'Now a man would never have thought of it. Whereas, it's my belief that if you was to pack a wedding-cake up in a tea-chest, or a turn-up bedstead, or a pickled salmon keg, or any unlikely thing, a woman would be sure to find it out directly. Yes; I called ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... her position to-day? In the eyes of the State, she is now living with a man who is not {115} her husband. Her State-husband is still alive, and can apply, at any moment, for an order for the restitution of conjugal rights—however unlikely he is to get it. Further, if in the future she has any children by her real husband (unless she has been married again to him, after divorce from her State-husband) these children will be illegitimate. This is the sort of muddle the Divorce Act has got us into. One course, and ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... a life as Clare's, so prominent are the human interests which confront us, that those of poetry, as one of the fine arts, are not unlikely to sink for a time completely out of sight. The long and painful strain upon our sympathy to which we are subject as we read the story is such perhaps as the life of no other English poet puts upon us. The spell of the great moral problems ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... clever chap like you, P-Peter." Speug had also accumulated a considerable collection of pencil sketches, mostly his own, in which life at Muirtown Seminary was treated very broadly indeed, and as he judged this portfolio unlikely to be appreciated by Nestie, and began himself to have some scruple in having his own name connected with it, it was consigned to the flames, and any offer of an addition, which boys made to Speug as a connoisseur in Rabelaisean art, was taken as a ground of offence. His personal ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... countrymen. It was hard telling how long it would be before the British and French general staffs would consider the American troops sufficiently seasoned to take over a complete sector of the battle line, and for that reason, the "Sammies," as they were affectionately called at home, were unlikely to see any real ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... In proof of the existence of such a faction, an appeal has been made to a letter from Lord Spencer to his wife.—Sidney Papers, ii. 667. Whether the cipher 243 is correctly rendered "papists," I know not. It is not unlikely that Lord Spencer may have been in the habit of applying the term to the party supposed to possess the royal confidence, of which party he was the professed adversary. But when it became at last necessary to point out the heads of this popish faction, it appeared ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... herself—that Essec Powell or Shoni might have discovered her intentions and prevented their fulfilment; perhaps even she might be shut up in one of the rooms in that gaunt, grey house! Nothing was too unreasonable or unlikely for his fears, and as he approached the church he was firmly convinced that something had happened to frustrate his hopes; nobody was in sight, the Berwen brawled on its way, the birds sang the ivy on the old church tower glistened in the sunshine, and the ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... Governor Bernard not unlikely felt more keenly the awkwardness of all this from having received, as a reward for service, the honor of a Baronetcy of Great Britain. The "Gazette," in announcing this, (May 1, 1769,) has an ironical article addressing the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... instance, a man goes out of a room for a walk. Nothing more trivial in appearance. And yet it may be momentous. He comes back—he has seen perhaps a drunken brute, taken particular notice of the snow on the ground—and behold he is no longer the same man. The most unlikely things have a secret power over one's thoughts—the grey whiskers of a particular person—the goggle ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... saw how impossible it would be even to keep a healthy child well in the absence of proper food, in an unwholesome atmosphere, and without sufficient shelter from the changes of weather which might come at any hour, and must come soon. How unlikely it was that a sick baby should recover under such circumstances, she was well aware. Yet she little thought how ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... It was an unlikely thing to bet on, and Barker thought he might have given the Duke odds, instead of asking them, as he had done. But he liked to get all he could in a fair way. Having arranged his bet, he told Claudius he might climb to the mast-head if ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... previously unexplored, no pains should be spared in examining every spot, even the most unlikely, where it is possible for water to exist, for after searching in vain, in large deep rocky and likely looking watercourses, I have frequently found water in some small branch or gorge, that had appeared too insignificant, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... hurriedly and ran downstairs. Lord Randolph had come to the window in his greatcoat. His follower waited for him outside. It was possible that he would take a hansom and drive straight to the House, but Andrew had reasons for thinking this unlikely. The rain had somewhat abated. Lord Randolph came out, put up his umbrella, and, glancing at the sky for a moment, set off briskly up St. ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... is very unlikely. In 1757 Griffiths, the owner of the Monthly, aiming a blow at Smollett, the editor of the Critical, said that The Monthly Review was not written by 'physicians without practice, authors without learning, men without decency, gentlemen without ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Bertran moved Henry II. to clemency by a reference [112] to the death of the "young king." The account of Alfonso's supposed treachery is probably no less unhistorical: the siege lasted only a week and it is unlikely that the besiegers would have been reduced to want in so short a time. It was probably invented to explain the hostility on Bertran's part which dated from the wars between Alfonso and Raimon V. of Toulouse. This animosity was trumpeted forth in ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... foreign countries have likewise to be approved by the parliament, etc., etc. Such strict stipulations which are not even known in such an advanced country in matters constitutional as England were extorted from the imperial family by the advisory council. Therefore it is most unlikely that the makers of the future constitution will take any article from the nineteen capitulations of "confidence." They will use the Constitutions of Japan and Prussia as joint model and will always have in their mind the actual conditions of this country and the standard of the people. In short, ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... French seem rather inclined to place, after Bolivar, a Prince of the House of Orleans on the throne, and it does not seem unlikely that the Columbians may ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... own part I have made up my mind never to believe in logs and stones, though they be in the shape of fiend or man, whose power I do not understand; and although I have been told that they have great power, yet it seems to me very unlikely, for I find that those images which are called gods are in every way uglier and less powerful than myself. How much less powerful are they therefore than the great God who rules over the whole universe, who makes the rain to fall and the ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... but he said that there was no danger. He was greeted on every hand with great consideration; and it seemed not unlikely that, in recognition of his influence with the people, he might rise to some high position. The King of Prussia sympathized with him. Heine called him the Messiah of the nineteenth century. When he passed from city to city, the whole population turned ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... Dallaway's Constantinople (p. 2) [Rev. James Dallaway (1763-1834) published Constantinople Ancient and Modern, etc., in 1797], a book which Lord Byron is not unlikely to have consulted, I find a passage quoted from Gillies' History of Greece(vol. i. p. 335), which contains, perhaps, the first seed of the thought thus expanded into full perfection by genius: "The present state of Greece, compared to the ancient, is ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... "Flora and fauna of some unknown island would be much more in the Schermerhorn line of traffic. Not unlikely that some of the festive natives collected ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... gathering, from the expression of their countenances, that they obviously relished the "fire-water" which has been the ruin of so many peoples in these beautiful but benighted seas. However, there was not enough left to go round, and it was manifestly unlikely that William Bludger had succeeded in conveying ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... from one mother? I am quite ready to admit it, so unlikely is it that the bluebottle, who is so rare inside our houses during the severe cold of winter, should be frequent enough outside to form into groups and to do business in common while an icy blast is raging. A ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... with a kindness, and would nurse the sick, and he was not afraid of contagious diseases or of anything. Gabriel could match Celeste as a dancer, but it was not likely Alexis Barbeau would find him a match in any other particular. And it grew more unlikely, every day that the man from New Orleans spent ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... his passions and despairs and infidelities, would find Caroline's stories innocent enough. Her hope was that Henrietta would not try to cap them, but the chances were that she would be a terrible young person, that she would find herself adrift in the respectability of Radstowe where she was unlikely to meet those young men, not of the right kind, ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... think that the only true friend she had had in Memphis, till she had become more intimate with the physician, should quit the world forever without having heard her justification. Nothing could be more unlikely than that any one in Neforis' household—excepting her little grandchild should ever remember her with kindness; and she scarcely desired it; but she rebelled against the idea of forfeiting the respect she had earned, even in the governor's house. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was the next question? I knew my father's vessels were all out to the herring harvest, which begins in August, and ends just before Christmas, so that it was very unlikely he would send for me. Beside this, I wanted to give them a surprise by popping in upon them when they least expected me. To this proceeding, however, there was one great drawback, for, like a true Crusoe, I lacked money, having but a ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... hundred pounds—favors my theory," he replied. "Your Munich Jew, whom I happen to know by repute, is a very clever scoundrel. It is most unlikely that he would have parted with a real Rembrandt for such a sum. But I will gladly refund you the amount if this proves ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... as to whether she would ever be likely to see him again, and decided it was most unlikely, and that probably he had already forgotten the ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... of events is not very well observed in the Assyrian text, and the liberation of Padi is inserted in 11. 8-11, before the account of the war with Hezekiah. It seems very unlikely that the King of Judah would have released his prisoner before his treaty with Sennacherib; the Assyrian scribe, wishing to bring together all the facts relating to Ekron, anticipated this event. Hebrew tradition fixed the ransom at the lowest figure, 300 talents of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... lighter and more pleasing style of poetry than the harsh and scholastic productions of Donne and Cowley. The admirers, therefore, of this old school were confined to the ancient cavaliers, and the old courtiers of Charles I.; men unlikely to lead the fashion in the court of a gay monarch, filled with such men as Buckingham, Rochester, Etherege, Sedley, and Mulgrave, whose time and habits confined their own essays to occasional verses, and satirical effusions, in which they often ridiculed the heights of poetry they ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... with the confidence accorded to such solid and old-established structures as the Church or Bank. He dreaded no shrinking in the eyes of the three women he had come to see. But supposing—merely supposing—anything so unlikely as a mental reservation or suspension of judgment on their part, there was that solid pile of dollars at his back for proof. And because the better part of five million dollars cannot be produced visibly and bodily at a moment's notice, and because the female ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... it secret, the story went the rounds, and was embellished by the way: a note of ironic pity for Olivier, who was represented as a victim, was introduced, and he cut rather a sorry figure. It seemed unlikely that the story could be very interesting to anybody, since the heroes of it were very little known: but a Parisian takes an interest in everything that does not concern him. So much so, that one day Christophe ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... cross-garterings have a certain newness and freshness. They seem sure they will yet be claimed. Why not? Why SHOULDN'T John Doe, Esq., or Mrs. Richard Roe turn up at any moment? I do not know. I can only say that nothing in the world seems to me more unlikely. Thus it is that these young bright envelops touch my heart even more than do their dusty and sallowed seniors. Sour resignation is less touching than impatience for what will not be, than the eagerness that has to wane and wither. Soured beyond measure ...
— A. V. Laider • Max Beerbohm
... "That is extremely unlikely," answered Duncan, "particularly as his standing at Bradstreet's is unimpaired. I asked Bradstreet's yesterday for a special report on him, and they gave him four A's. That means that he has ample capital and ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... me not unlikely that there should be. Do not different tribes of our own race and color often ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... carrots, turnips, and potatoes; but although he had sufficient proofs of the suitableness of the soil and climate to the growth of most of these articles, which he found that even the winter of New Zealand was too mild to injure, it appeared to him very unlikely that the inhabitants would be at the trouble to take care even of those whose value they in some degree appreciated. With the exception, in fact, of the turnips and potatoes, the vegetable productions which Cook took so much pains to introduce seem to have all perished. The potatoes, ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... not seem at all likely that the pistols or the ammunition could fall out of the box. It is true other things had fallen along the way, but this seemed to be such an unlikely occurrence that they could scarcely ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... fancy, often put her foot into the garden; and young people like her mustn't really go into strange places, for she's not like our children, who are able to use their legs! In what graveyards don't they ramble about! A puff of wind may, on the one hand, have struck her, it's not at all unlikely; or being, on the other, so chaste in body, and her eyes also so pure she may, it is to be feared, have come across some spirit or other. I can't help thinking therefore that you should consult some book of exorcisms on her behalf; for mind ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... life had lost the edifying element of the complete poverty of his shelterless sojourn by the side of the tomb. Nor, when his time was up, did he show any inclination to resume his wanderings, and it seems not unlikely that he will remain in his quarters at the tomb till his turn comes to die, and then the kindly egg-merchant will erect a whitewashed sepulchre over his remains, and he will be ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... her advice for the journey (and perhaps something more substantial), but he must have seen that, though virtue might be its own reward, he was unlikely to get any other. Mrs. Bal had lent Barrie to us, and without a woman to aid and abet him, it seemed to me that he was powerless. Such chaperons as Mrs. James don't grow on blackberry bushes even in Scotland, where blackberries, if not gooseberries, are ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... faded, then returned. "Can only suggest ... most unlikely ... but try ... calculator ... ...
— Death Wish • Robert Sheckley
... crashed through obstacles which had delayed the upward journey and they knew where to avoid the worst of the shoals. What fretted them was the fear that Blackbeard might have buried the sea-chest and descended the creek while they were engaged in this wild-goose chase. But this seemed unlikely and, moreover, old Trimble Rogers was the man to nose out the marks of the landing-place and the trail which ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... writing is one of my amusements, but in a wild, careless, and desultory way. Judge, then, how unlikely such scraps are to come out a book. Not that I would hesitate to publish any thing which might do these people good, however it might effect my own name, about which the fifty years which have passed over my head have rendered me quite indifferent. ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... before the arrest, it is not at all unlikely that the death sentence has already been decided upon. Optimists in the labor movement maintain that a repetition of the legal murder of 1887, that has caused shame and horror even in the ranks of the upper ten thousand, ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... be done before it is ready for the birth-hour, that yet is at a measurable distance from the moment that the germ is planted in the womb of time. Try to realise the analogy by means of the image that I have suggested, and it will not then seem so unlikely to you, that which is true, that in our own times again many messengers have come out from the Manu of the future, in order that those messengers may strike certain keynotes, which mark the chief characteristic of the child that is to be. That note ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... the letter to the Princess Y——, he gave me another to a member of the staff of the Russian Embassy in London, a M. Gudonov. He also urged me to call upon a member of Parliament, a rising politician who is not unlikely to have a ministerial post in the next government, and who has made himself known as an apologist of the Czar's. But as I had good reason to know that this gentleman was by no means a disinterested dupe, like Mr. Place, ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... seemed to the Vicar's mind no more unlikely and infinitely more pleasant that the King's favour should be bound up with the lady we had called Cydaria than that it should be the plain fruit of my lord's friendly offices. Presently his talk infected me with ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... to the depot, where he learned that no one had entered the cars from that place on the previous night, and that Maggie, if she took the train at all, must have done so at some other station. This was not unlikely, and before the day was passed Mr. Carrollton had visited several different stations, and had talked with the conductors of the several trains, but all to no purpose; and, very much disheartened, he returned at nightfall to the old stone house, where to his surprise he found both Theo ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... who identify themselves as Berber live mostly in the mountainous region of Kabylie east of Algiers; the Berbers are also Muslim but identify with their Berber rather than Arab cultural heritage; Berbers have long agitated, sometimes violently, for autonomy; the government is unlikely to grant autonomy but has offered to begin sponsoring teaching ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Bilbao to help him to carry out any scheme he might suggest. Giles wished to catch him before he had time to formulate any new villainy. At all events, Morley would never think that they had tracked him so speedily, or had followed so rapidly. It was unlikely that he would use the yacht to the fullest extent of ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... not talk with her again about books. He imagined what erroneous conclusions she had drawn from that particular chapter, and it stung him the more in that they were undeserved. Of all unlikely things, to have the reputation of being a lady-killer,—he, Burning Daylight,—and to have a woman kill herself out of love for him. He felt that he was a most unfortunate man and wondered by what luck that one book of all the thousands of books should have fallen into his stenographer's ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... burglar or assassin, by day-time, reconnoitres the walls of a house? But, with ill purposes, to solicit such information openly of the chief person endangered, and so, in effect, setting him on his guard; how unlikely a procedure was that? Absurd, then, to suppose that those questions had been prompted by evil designs. Thus, the same conduct, which, in this instance, had raised the alarm, served to dispel it. In short, scarce any suspicion or uneasiness, ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... strongly appreciated that view. When he called upon President Grant his first conversation consisted in urging upon him very strongly the selection of Governor Boutwell. He supposed then that it would be quite unlikely that the President would take two men from the same State and supposed that selection would require his own refusal of the offer of the office of Attorney- General. President Grant said that he would think it over and not ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... a turn in the season. But certainly it would have been a very unlikely place for us to meet ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... life, and such a case could hardly arise. The Princess Chiaromonte was in no bodily danger, and the chances were that the delirium would leave her before long; when it disappeared she would probably fall asleep, and it was very unlikely that she should remember anything she had said in her ravings. Meanwhile it was certainly not good for her to go on crying and throwing herself about, as she was doing, for the fever was high already and her wild excitement ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... a separate sheet of paper addressed for signature. The messenger brought back the sheet of paper with strange initials, "J. L. for S. A.," and there was no reply. There remained the possibility of absence from Calcutta, of illness. That he should have gone away was most unlikely, that he had fallen ill was only too probable. Hilda looked from her bedroom window across the varying expanse of parapeted flat roofs and mosque bubbles that lay between her and College Street, and curbed the impulse ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... reserved headmistress talking so unreservedly they would have gasped with astonishment. But Kitty was too full of sympathetic interest to think of anything else. She had a little unconscious way of her own of winning confidence from the most unlikely of people, and poor Miss Pidsley, who was so weary, so overburthened with worries, so perplexed and altogether out of heart, could not refrain from pouring her troubles out to her; for, first of all, her sympathy, and, secondly, her little gift of the rose had carried her straight into ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... It was unlikely that the entire plant would be shut down. In that case what supervisors would want him to stay on? He ran through the list of his superiors and immediately came ...
— All Day Wednesday • Richard Olin
... in providing methods of saving the zinc formerly discarded from lead ores, and enormous supplies will come forward when required. The tin outlook is encouraging, for the supply from a mining point of view seems unlikely to more than keep pace with the world's needs. In copper the demand is growing prodigiously, but the supplies of copper ores and the number of copper mines that are ready to produce whenever normal prices recur was never so great as to-day. One very hopeful fact ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... as if it rang for her. But that was unlikely; and there were other lodgers of her kind in the house. No doubt it was a visitor ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... maintained its ground; and, when {148} the Virginian group tried in the House to prove laxity and mismanagement against Hamilton, he was triumphantly vindicated. Had the United States been allowed to develop in tranquillity and prosperity for a generation, it is not unlikely that the Federalist party might have struck its roots so deeply as to be impervious to attacks. But it needed time, for in contrast to the Jeffersonian party, whose origin is manifestly in the old-time ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... there is no likelihood of your getting horses." "My lord," answered one of the prisoners, "the black robbed us of our camels as well as our goods, and perhaps they may be in the stables of this castle." "This is not unlikely," replied Codadad; "let us examine." Accordingly they went to the stables, where they not only found the camels, but also the horses belonging to the sultan of Harran's sons. There were some black slaves in the stables, who seeing all the prisoners ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... gleamed out at him expectantly, avariciously, with some suspicion, too. She hoped it concerned money, but it seemed unlikely, so chill a habit of life ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
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