"Assailable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was no sally of troops nor shock of armed men nor rush and charge of cavalry. The knights stood looking on with idle weapons, waiting until they should have an opportunity of signalizing their prowess by scaling the walls or storming the breaches. As the place, however, was assailable only in one part, there was every prospect of a ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... which, whosoeuer haue skil to compasse, and make yeelding and flexible, what may not he commaund the body to perfourme? He therefore that hath vanquished the minde of man, hath made the greatest and most glorious conquest. But the minde is not assailable vnlesse it be by sensible approches, whereof the audible is of greatest force for instruction or discipline: the visible, for apprehension of exterior knowledges as the Philosopher saith. Therefore the well tuning of your words ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... article in the Nineteenth Century for August, 1894, where he calls Palmer's book the most powerful and least assailable defence of the position of the anglican church from the sixteenth ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... infinite abysses of inconclusion, into precise form and shape, there is not one of them that does not seem to be quite controvertible; nor did I ever utter or assume a position of which I felt most assured while uttering it, without perceiving almost immediately that it was assailable on many sides. This is extremely disagreeable to me; the labor necessary to establish any mental or moral proposition simply on intellectual grounds, appears to me so great that I hate the very ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... is generally either earning her living or studying to acquire the means of earning her living. Her days are therefore sure to be occupied, and the fact that she has little time for the gaiety of life, and that she is a worker, puts her in a somewhat less assailable position. She can on occasion go out alone with a man (not a married one), but the theater she goes to must be of conventional character, and if she dines in a restaurant it is imperative that a chaperon be in the party; ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... Long Point on Lake Erie, May 15, 1814, and had burned some Canadian mills and a few dwellings. The expedition was promptly disowned by the American Government as unauthorized, but in retaliation the British navy was ordered to lay waste all towns on the Atlantic coast which were assailable, sparing only the lives of the ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... wish to assume the offensive. There was no ground for manoeuvring. The woods were like a heavy curtain in his front. His left wing was placed so as to be of absolutely no value. His right flank was in the air. One of the roads on which he must depend for retreat was readily assailable by the enemy. And he had in his rear a treacherous river, which after a few hours' rain might become impassable, with but a single road and ford secured to him with ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... 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 George Grey to establish the civic administration on the broadest, safest, and least assailable foundation, it is scarcely consistent to begin by narrowing that basis. It is generally believed that it is more difficult to corrupt or influence a large number of persons than a small one. In the multitude of counsellors ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... spirit breathed into the British marine, by which it has ever since been animated, and which has seldom stopped to count odds. Then began that dashing course of enterprise which gave almost everything to England that was assailable, from Goree to Cuba, and from Cuba to the Philippines. Then was laid the foundation of that Oriental dominion of England which has been the object of so much wonder, and of not a little envy; for on the 23d of June, 1757, was fought the battle of Plassey, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... according to his trisection of all philosophy into dogmatic, sceptical, and critical, he was, upon all questions, disposed to a strong affirmative creed, without courting any particular examination into the grounds of this creed, or into its assailable points. From this slumber, as it is called by himself, he was suddenly aroused by the Humian doctrine of cause and effect. This celebrated essay on the nature of necessary connection—so thoroughly misapprehended at the date of its first publication ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Law of Population', is another effort in the same direction. At our trial the Lord Chief Justice said, that it was the advocacy of the preventive checks which was the assailable part of Knowlton; that advocacy is strongly and clearly to be found in the new pamphlet, together with facts useful to mothers, as to the physical injury caused by over-rapid child-bearing, which Knowlton did not give. The pamphlet has the advantage of being ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... petty, getting a miserable sour sustenance out of his consciousness of the position it explained. Great enemies, great undertakings, would have revived him as they had always revived and fortified. But here was a stolid small obstacle, scarce assailable on its own level; and he had chosen that it should be attacked through its own laws and forms. By shutting a door, by withholding an answer to his knocks, the thing reduced him to hesitation. And the thing had weapons to shoot at him; his history, his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... assume the role of prophet long enough to venture to say that the day of the modern walled fort is over and done with. I do not presume to speak regarding coast defenses maintained for the purposes of repelling attacks or invasions from the sea. I am speaking with regard to land defenses which are assailable by land forces. I believe in the future great wars—if indeed there are to be any more great wars following after this one—that the nations involved, instead of buttoning their frontiers down with great fortresses ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... idea of following any such advice. He was fully aware of the strength of his position on the Peak, and felt no disposition to abandon it. His great apprehension was for the Reef, where his territories were much more assailable. It was not easy to see how the crater, and ship, and the schooner on the stocks, and all the other property that, in the shape of hogs, poultry, &c., was scattered far and wide in that group, could be protected against a hundred canoes, by any force at his command. ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... be at hand; so it must be the more close and vigilant, because he is no where free from danger, but is on every side open to attack. "Sume superbiam quaesitam meritis," was the maxim of a worldly moralist: but the Christian is aware, that he is particularly assailable where he really excels; there he is in especial danger, lest his motives, originally pure, being insensibly corrupted, he should be betrayed into an anxiety about worldly favour, false in principle ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... not have been without effect upon the energy of M. Dmowski's attitude toward the demand of the Polish Jews to be placed in the privileged position of wards of the League of Nations. But the principle of the protection of minority—Jewish or Gentile—is assailable on grounds which have nothing to do with race or religion." Some of the most interesting and characteristic incidents at the Conference had the Polish statesman for their principal actor, and to him Poland owes some of the most solid and enduring benefits conferred on ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... you—far from it! I own with sorrow that your severity does occasionally encounter us on assailable ground. But there are exceptions, even to the stiffest rules. Some of us are not guilty of wilful carelessness: some of us apply to competent authority, when we write on subjects beyond the range of our own experience. Having thus far ventured to speak for my colleagues, you will conclude that ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... tell in sowing distrust between the allies. The suggestion was not worth a thought, and it was plain that no site would be available except the Debateable Strand. To this, however, Ebbo's title was assailable, both on account of his minority, as well as his father's unproved death, and of the disputed claim to the ground. The Rathsherr, Master Gottfried, and others, therefore recommended deferring the work till the Baron ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the outline of his argument. He seems to think that if there be any flaw in it, the only assailable point must be his extension of the analogy: "In the chain of analogies which Paley commenced, and which I have continued, I believe there is no defective link. The principle of assailment, if any, is the extension of the analogies beyond the Paley point.... With the extension ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... on both sides of the river continued day and night to fire upon and harass the British. Wherever a group of the latter appeared, or an assailable object presented, the American fire was directed to disperse or destroy. This incessant cannonading exercised our gunners in the more skillful use of their pieces, annoyed the enemy in the work of his fortifications, and ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... himself. The critics who have delighted to point at them have been anticipated by the penitent; and their indictment has been little more than the quotation of his own confession. His tremulously susceptible nature, especially assailable by the delights of sense, led him astray. There are traces in his life of occasional craft and untruthfulness which even the exigencies of exile and war do not wholly palliate. Flashes of fierce vengeance at times break from the clear sky of his generous nature. His ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... I had not spared him on this point, nor perhaps on any other that was assailable. Magnificent-minded, grand-hearted, dear, faulty little man! You deserved candour, and from me always ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... one part of virtue differs in kind from another, is a position easily assailable by contentious disputants, who appeal to ...
— Statesman • Plato
... back vividly to David as he waited for the promised coming of Bateese. He began to appreciate McVane's point of view, and it was comforting, because he realized that his own logic was assailable. If McVane had been comparing the two women now, he knew what his argument would be. There had been no absolute proof of crime against Carmin Fanchet, unless to fight desperately for the life of her brother was a crime. In the case of Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain there was proof. She had tried to ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... with military stores and artillery, formed a force obviously inadequate to the magnitude of his enterprise. Some of his counsellors would have persuaded him, from these considerations, to turn his arms against some weaker and more assailable point than Loja. But Ferdinand burned with a desire for distinction in the new war, and suffered his ardor for once to get the better of his prudence. The distrust felt by the leaders seems to have infected the lower ranks, who drew the most unfavorable prognostics from the ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... took all the wise precautions necessary to insure, as far as possible, the safety of the old castle, and in some respects this was not a difficult task, for Singleton Towers stood at the head of a narrow arm of the sea, which on three sides completely surrounded it, leaving only the east side assailable by land. ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... elaborated by Holbach throughout his second volume. Here as elsewhere he writes with seriousness and conviction, although some of his logical positions are assailable. Never before in France had materialism, necessarianism and atheism been so clearly and forcibly expounded. The very Philosophers were alarmed. Voltaire hastened to write an article on God so unconvincing, that it can hardly have convinced ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... superiors in rank he was grudgingly respectful; to equals and inferiors, insupportably insolent. But when to these aggravating traits he added the vanity of printing an autobiography, exposing a thousand assailable points in his life and character, the temptation was irresistible, and the whole population of Grub Street enlisted in a crusade against him.[12] Fortunately, beneath the crust of insolence and vanity, there was a substratum of genuine power in the Laureate's make, which rendered him not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Republic's service, and Van Beverningh as Commissioner of the States-General. With their help and counsel he had before autumn an efficient army of 57,000 men on guard behind entrenchments at all assailable points, while armed vessels patrolled the waterways. Outside the line Nijmwegen, Grave, Coevorden, Steenwijk and other smaller places had fallen; but the Muenster-Cologne forces, after a siege lasting from July ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... Belisarius arranged for the defence of the city in the following manner. He himself held the small Pincian Gate and the gate next to this on the right, which is named the Salarian. For at these gates the circuit-wall was assailable, and at the same time it was possible for the Romans to go out from them against the enemy. The Praenestine Gate he gave to Bessas. And at the Flaminian, which is on the other side of the Pincian, he put Constantinus in command, having previously closed the gates and blocked ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... in theory and never troubling about practice, then it's incredible to what lengths self-deception can go. Dr. Johnson said that he looked upon himself as a polite man! It is quite easy to get to believe yourself impeccable in certain points: and as one gets older, and less assailable, and less liable to be pulled up and told the hard truth, it is astonishing how serenely you can sail along. But that isn't pose exactly. It generally begins by a pose, and becomes simple imperviousness; and that ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... naturally with the Bible, as giving us the earliest historical point at which Christianity is assailable. What then has modern criticism accomplished on the Bible? The Biblical account of the creation it has shown to be, in its literal sense, an impossible fable. To passages thought mystical and prophetic it ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... the base of the cover; here they make several borings, without any reason, so far as I can see, the bed of soil being everywhere equally assailable away from the brick; the first point sounded is abandoned for a second, which is rejected in its turn. A third and a fourth are tried; then another and yet another. At the sixth point the selection is made. In all these cases the excavation is by no means a grave destined to receive ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre |
