"Impossibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... afterwards; but in this grave reply to their exuberant enthusiasm he speaks of Him only as 'the Lord,' as if he would put stress on the monotheistic conception, which, at all events, does not appear in the people's words, and was probably dim in their thoughts. Then observe that he broadly asserts the impossibility of their serving the Lord; that is, of course, so long as they continued in their then tone of feeling ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... stared at that little wire-haired brute. "Haven't you any feeling for others?" he wanted to say. "Can't you see that this poor devil suffers tortures?" But the sheer impossibility of doing this before ten other men brought a slight sweat out on his face and hands; and in agitation he smote the table a blow with his fist. The effect was instantaneous. Everybody looked at the wire-haired man, as if saying: "Yes, you've gone a bit too far there!" ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... youthful curiosity, the wetness of his dress. His eye glanced, and his colour mounted to his cheek like that of a daring man who meditates an honourable action, as he replied, "It is a strong castle, and strongly guarded; but there is no impossibility to brave men." ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... association may well look forward in faith to a future progress from our existing marriage: yet, though eager for reform, he will, remembering the slowness of this steady upward progress in love's refinement in the past, refrain from acting in haste, understanding the impossibility of forcing any Utopia of the sexes. No change can be made in a matter so intimate as marriage by a mere altering of the law. Only such reforms as are the natural outgrowth of an enlightened public feeling can be of benefit, and thus permanent in their result. I must go further than ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... of Nations must start from, and keep intact, the independence and equality of the several States, with the consequence that the establishment of a central political authority above the sovereign States is an impossibility 32 ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim
... brings out the impossibility of substituting a higher ethical standard for a lower one without similarity of experience, but it is not as painful as that illustrated by the following example, in which the highest ethical standard yet attained by the charity recipient is broken down, and the ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... hour on the morning thereafter, my client called, and I soon discovered he was in a frame of mind by no means joyous. The disappointment he expressed at the continuance of his suit was evidently sincere. My explanation of the impossibility of preventing it, and the confident hope I held out that he would certainly get his divorce at the next term, evidently gave him little relief. He at length intimated a desire to have a confidential talk with me. I took him ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... walked again towards the parlour, finding by her shaking frame, the impossibility of getting ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... she and I would have to walk, I shall never forget the look of approval that she turned on me. As a matter of fact, I doubt very much whether I really could have walked. I am a little lame, and the circumstances made it almost an impossibility. But the determination of Dr. Inglis that somehow we should get to our meeting infected me, and, like many others who have followed her since, I felt able to achieve ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... what had already occurred, that had they again pronounced that name, the General would have repelled the suspicion as a monstrous impossibility, regretting even the thought. ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... superstition was a desperate thing for retaining life, and, as the brain weakened, might conceivably reassert itself. Christianity was both wild and dull, he told himself, wild because of its obvious grotesqueness and impossibility, and dull because it was so utterly apart from the exhilarating stream of human life; it crept dustily about still, he knew, in little dark churches here and there; it screamed with hysterical sentimentality in Westminster ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... Lord Althorp, as the leader of the Government. Now, suppose Lord Althorp had come down to that House with a King's speech recommending them to revoke the Reform Act, and have asked leave to introduce another Bill for the purpose of reforming the constitution, would it not have been asking an utter impossibility? But how did Her Majesty's Government act towards Denmark in similar circumstances? First of all, the noble lord at the head of the Foreign Office wrote to Lord Wodehouse on December 20, giving formal advice to the ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... everything approaching to amalgamation; and of all the men I ever met, cherishes the most unchristian prejudice against coloured people. He says, the existence of "a gentleman" with African blood in his veins, is a moral and physical impossibility, and that by no exertion can anything be made of that description of people. He is connected with a society for the deportation of free coloured people, and thinks they ought to be all sent to ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... mechanical device assist you, for nothing can successfully defeat the wandering of the mind. Continuous concentration is an impossibility; there is nothing for it but habit—a new habit that shall be as strong as the old—or the total cessation of all correspondence and (O that 'twere possible!) all making ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... o'clock in the evening, he came staggering down the wharf, rolled himself into the stern seats of the boat, and ordered us to shove off and pull towards the sloop. We represented to him that the night was dark and cloudy, and it would be next to an impossibility to find the sloop in the broad bay at that hour; that the attempt would be attended with risk, and consequently it would be wiser to wait until morning before we left ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... you alone the appearance of kindness and benignity. Try then your influence over my Guardians. If they consent to our union my hand is yours: From your account of my Brother, I cannot doubt your obtaining his approbation: And when they find the impossibility of executing their design, I trust that my Parents will excuse my disobedience, and expiate by some other sacrifice my Mother's ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... not be raised." What, then, was open to Russia—since "all the world privately admitted that the position created for her by the Treaty of 1856 was inequitable and an obstacle to good understanding" but to show the signatory Powers the impossibility of her remaining any ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... accurate knowledge of the distance to the object to be fired upon. This distance determines the quantity of powder necessary for the discharge, and the length of the fuses to be employed. Captain Porter understood the impossibility of judging and estimating distances and bearings correctly, particularly when the objects are for the most part hidden from view, as was the case with the forts on the wooded and crooked Mississippi, and had therefore requested of the department ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the word move of the first, into wound of the second: but in this instance he overshot the mark, in not perceiving the nice and subtle distinction which exists between them. The first implies possibility: the second impossibility. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... apt to come to the surface in periods of religious excitement found in Rhode Island a favoured spot where they could prophesy without let or hindrance. But the immediate practical result of so much discordance in opinion was the impossibility of founding a strong and well-ordered government. The early history of Rhode Island was marked by enough of turbulence to suggest the question whether, after all, at the bottom of the Puritan's refusal to recognize the doctrine of private inspiration, or to tolerate ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... at the bottom of the bore of any guns. Should the inspection of guns with conical chambers or slopes take place at the foundry, an examination of the chamber reamer will be very satisfactory. If found correct in size and shape, the impossibility of making the chamber too ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... poor horse's neck almost to strangulation, and to the great danger of his eyes, he gave up the useless task, pronouncing that the horse's head must have grown, (gout or dropsy!) since the collar was put on! for, he said, it was a downright impossibility for such a huge Os Frontis to pass through so narrow a collar! Just at this instant the servant girl came near, and understanding the cause of our consternation, "La, Master," said she, "you do not go about the work in the right way. You should do like as this," ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... rest of the night in torturing anxiety. He seemed quite insensible now to the danger they had escaped through the departure of the wolves, and would have hastened immediately after Robert if the Indian had not kept him back by making him understand the impossibility of their horses overtaking Thaouka; and also that boy and horse had outdistanced the wolves long since, and that it would be useless going to look ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... commenced bemoaning over the poverty of the country. It was a market morning and there were many asses, creels and carts with fish drawn up in the market place. I ventured to suggest a fish for breakfast, which was an utter impossibility. Cahir has a handsome old castle standing close to its main street which ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... could arise, I knew not; but having heard that the Cumberland had been removed from her usual place, and fearing that her reparation and refitment might be the cause, a letter was sent to inform colonel Monistrol, [AUGUST 1805] "that the impossibility of obtaining any better vessel for a direct passage to England could alone have induced me to undertake it in the Cumberland; and that unless His Excellency denied me any other means of quitting the Isle of France, it was not my intention to re-embark in her. If therefore ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... confusion, she could not tell. It had always been her intention to acquaint him with the deceit she had fallen to in her zeal to move Lassiter. She did not mean to spare herself. Yet now, at the moment, before these riders, it was an impossibility to explain. ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... later Herbert Bayliss and I had our delayed interview. He had called several times, but Hephzy had kept him out of my way. This time our meeting was in the main street of Mayberry, when dodging him was an impossibility. He hurried up to ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... be of interest to you," Sexton continued apologetically. "Miss Sumner called me on the telephone yesterday and instructed me formally to notify the board of directors of the Laguna Grande Company of a special meeting of the board, to be held here at two o'clock this afternoon. In view of the impossibility of communicating with you while you were en route, I conformed to her wishes. Our by-laws, as you know, stipulate that no meeting of the board shall be called without formal written notice to each director ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... other, the object of infinite detestation and scorn. It is in this marvelous power in men to do wrong (it is an old story, but none the less true for that),—it is in this power to do wrong—wrong or right, as it lies somehow with ourselves to choose—that the impossibility stands of forming scientific calculations of what men will do before the fact, or scientific explanations of what they have done after the fact. If men were consistently selfish, you might analyze their motives; if they were consistently noble, they would express in their conduct the laws ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... inevitable, it was as if in the solid rock of their mutual understanding there had suddenly appeared a tiny crack. She felt the reasonableness as well as the tenderness with which Hugo spoke; she wanted nothing in the world but to do what he wanted. And yet it seemed somehow a physical impossibility for her now to say that she would unsettle and postpone it all,—something, say, as if Hugo had asked her to step back into last year or the year before. And she tried to make him understand this, saying—what seemed a feeble ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... belonged to members of the Austrian family. In the south, the considerable kingdom of the Two Sicilies was ruled over by a branch of the Spanish Bourbons. In the center, cutting the peninsula in twain, were the Papal States, which extended north to the Po. The presence of Austria, and the apparent impossibility of inducing the pope to submit to any government but his own, seemed to preclude all hope of making Italy into a true nation. Yet fifty years later the kingdom of Italy, as it now appears on the map of Europe, came into existence through the final exclusion of Austria ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... points which were not accurately known by our own explorers for many years afterward. He undoubtedly saved our little band from a watery grave, for without his advice we had gone on and on, far into the great Colorado canon, from which escape would have been impossible and securing food another impossibility, while destruction by hostile indians was among the strong probabilities of the case. So in a threefold way I have for these more than forty years credited the lives of myself and comrades to the thoughtful interest and humane consideration ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... the poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey, is an aesthetic judgment. It is, however, by no means affirmed against the poet of these epics that he was merely the imaginary being of an aesthetic impossibility, which can be the opinion of only very few philologists indeed. The majority contend that a single individual was responsible for the general design of a poem such as the Iliad, and further that this individual was Homer. The first part of this contention may be admitted; but, in accordance ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... myself he was standing over me, counting my pulse. 'I have startled you,' he said. 'A difficulty unforeseen—the impossibility of obtaining a certain drug in its full purity—has forced me to resort to London unprepared. I regret that I should have shown myself once more without those poor attractions which are much, perhaps, to you, but to me are no more ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... operation of the tan, from its affinity for metallic salts, we may conjecture, that, in the first instance, it forms a triple compound with the gallic acid and the iron; and that, in consequence of the decomposition of the tan, this compound is afterwards destroyed. Owing to the difficulty, if not impossibility, of entirely depriving the infusion of galls of any one of its ingredients, without, in some degree, affecting the others, I was not able to obtain any results which can be regarded as decisive; but the general result of my experiments ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... climbed Mt. McKinley! If she had told me to concoct a new pudding, write an essay, or make a trip to Kotzebue, I should not have been so much dismayed; but to make a garment like that, out of "whole cloth," so to speak, from my own design—that was really an utter impossibility. ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... small local vagaries in a smaller country. Infinitely more remote from England than any Russian or Italian, utterly incapable of even conceiving what English conventions are, he could not see the social impossibility of the Court of Beacon. It is firmly believed by those who shared the experiment, that to the very end Pym believed in that phantasmal court and supposed it to ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... conciliatory, affectionate movement, Blake's hand slipped from his shoulder to his arm. "Don't be absurd, boy," he said, gently. "Nothing on God's earth is impossible. 'Impossibility' is a word coined by weak people behind which to shelter. Why may I not know ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... philosophy is out-and-out mechanistic, he yet recognises the difficulty, even the impossibility, of straightway reducing development to the physico-chemical level. He tries to steer a course midway between the simplicist conceptions of the materialists and the "metaphysics" of the neo-vitalist school, which the experimental study of development ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... in his thought. It was regret at the impossibility of these pioneers ever enjoying the full fruits of their labors. They would enjoy them in their own way, at the moment, but such enjoyment was not adequate reward for their daring, their sacrifice, their hardihood. Well enough he knew that they were but the ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... honest sport. The only apology I could make to myself was, that the deer and pig were far too numerous, and doing immense damage to the crops, and if not thinned out, they would soon have made the growing of any crop whatever an impossibility. ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... wished only to make a thrust at his old enemy, had at the same time decided the fate of poor Anne Askew. It was now almost an impossibility to speak in her behalf, and to implore pardon for her was to become a partaker of her crime. Thomas Seymour had abandoned her, because, as traitress to her king, she had rendered herself unworthy of his protection. Who now would be ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... world; and by Owen, who stands at the head of the school of comparative anatomy in England, if not in Europe. The remark made by Cuvier, more than thirty years ago, is still true at the present day, that, "although the impossibility of spontaneous generation cannot be absolutely demonstrated, yet all the efforts of those physiologists who believe in the possibility of it have not succeeded in showing us ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... public; hence cliques, and claqueurs, and coteries, and the would-if-I-could-be aristocracy of letters; hence bickerings, quarellings, backbitings, slanderings, and reciprocity of contempt; hence the impossibility of literary union, and the absolute necessity imposed upon the great names of our time of shunning, like a pestilence, the hordes of vanity-struck individuals who would tear the coats off their backs in desperate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... if their presence is noticed; human midwives are asked to help fairy mothers, fairy maidens marry ordinary men or girls marry and live with fairy husbands. All such things may have happened and bear no such a priori marks of impossibility as speaking animals, flying through the air, and similar incidents of the folk-tale pure and simple. If, as archaeologists tell us, there was once a race of men in Northern Europe, very short and hairy, that dwelt in underground chambers artificially concealed by green hillocks, it does not ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... to spade up and carry away the filth from the bedrooms, and it took two women an entire week all but one day, scrubbing all day long until their shoulders ached, to scrub the place clean. But they got it clean. They were the kind of women that did not give up even when a thing seemed an impossibility. This was the sort of thing they were up against continually. They could have no meetings that week because they had to scrub and make the place fit for a ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... again in forest timber, principally pine of the "old field" species. No land could offer less inducements to the cultivator or give smaller hope of renovation, than these old fields of Virginia. Such was the conviction of impossibility to raise a crop upon this kind of land, that Mr. Newton's first essay was looked upon by his neighbors with a conviction that the fool and his money would soon part company. One sensible old servant told us he thought his master "for sartain was done gone crazy, cause he nebber seed no nothing ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... told my lady. Miss Galindo herself cried plentifully, but my lady, although very much distressed, could not cry. It seemed a physical impossibility, as if she had shed all the tears in her power. Moreover, I almost think her wonder was far greater that she herself lived than that Mr. Horner died. It was almost natural that so faithful a servant should break his heart, when the family he belonged to lost their ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... they did," said Mr Saltseller, which was actually the wretch's name, and with whom I fell desperately in hate at first sight. "Bump me!" he exclaimed soliloquising—and with that air of astonishment, as if he had heard the most monstrous impossibility spoken of imaginable. "Bump me? droll, isn't it—excessively? Where have you been brought up, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the time, not to inform my admirers that my courage was the result of the know-nothing, fear-nothing principle; for I was certainly ignorant, until I had passed them, of the dangers of the passage. Another thing that prevented my dismounting was the apparently utter impossibility, on such a steep and narrow path, of mounting again. Then, I had much more confidence in my mule's power of picking the way and keeping his footing, than in my own. It is the prettiest sight in the ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... an Empress of the last century could be made to believe that it was, in reality, on a level with the top of the lofty Admiralty spire, and that she must continue her tiresome trips to and fro in her coach, in the impossibility of constructing a canal which would enable her to sail in comfort. Tzarskoe Selo, "Imperial Village:" well as the name fits the place, it is thought to have been corrupted from saari, the Finnish word for "farm," ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... will, His love, and the likeness of His blessed Son. That is what God is for, to work in us by His mighty operation, without one moment's ceasing. When I begin to get hold of that, I no longer think of the true Christian life as a high impossibility, and an unnatural thing, but I say, "It is the most natural thing in creation that God should have me every moment, and that my God should be nearer to me than all else." Just think, for a moment, what folly it is to imagine that I can not expect God to be with me every moment. ...
— The Master's Indwelling • Andrew Murray
... highest mountain in Europe. Several mountains in Asia and America are higher; but of what use would it be to attempt them, if, in the absolute impossibility of reaching their summit, you must be content to remain ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... from our midst, for the reason that its roots have struck too deep, and that the dishonourable traffic in bribes has become a necessity to, even the mainstay of, some whose nature is not innately venal. Also, I know that, to many men, it is an impossibility to swim against the stream. Yet now, at this solemn and critical juncture, when the country is calling aloud for saviours, and it is the duty of every citizen to contribute and to sacrifice his all, I feel that I cannot but issue an appeal to ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... an earthly sovereign and the emotional scenes accompanying it were interpreted by the Russian authorities as "mutiny." Under the patriarchal conditions of Jewish life prevailing at that time a political protest was a matter of impossibility. The only medium through which the Jews could give vent to their burning national sorrow was a religious demonstration within the ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... steamboat ascended to the head of navigation of the Kantishna. Heading straight across an unknown country for the base of the mountain, Judge Wickersham's party unfortunately attacked the mountain by the Peters Glacier and demonstrated the impossibility of that approach, being stopped by the enormous ice-incrusted cliffs of the North Peak. Judge Wickersham used to say that only by a balloon or a flying-machine could the summit be reached; and, indeed, by no other means can the summit ever be reached from ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... Tennessee River, preparing to cross and begin his march to Nashville. Thomas had ready to meet him only about two thirds Hood's strength in infantry, and less than half in effective cavalry. A few days' delay on Sherman's part in commencing his march would have disclosed to him the impossibility of Smith's arrival in time, and have enabled him to send another corps from his superabundant force to assist Thomas. Such delay of only a few days could not have been of serious consequence in respect to Sherman's ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... Clifford, laughing gayly; "I am too great a traveller to make that hope a matter of impossibility. Take care, madam,—one ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and Frenchmen are asked whether they will or will not accept a given policy. Rarely, indeed, when it has been taken, has the voting itself been full or fair. Deliberation and discussion are the requisite conditions for rational decision. Where effective opposition is an impossibility, nominal assent is an unmeaning compliment. These essential characteristics, the lack of which deprives a French plebiscite, of all moral significance, are the undoubted properties of the ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan
... Mary Skene, daughter of Skene of Skene, in 1661. This is proved by a charter to her of her jointure lands of Kincardine, etc. (see Particular Register of Sasines Invss., vol. ix. fol. 9). He married, secondly, Margaret, daughter of Urquhart of Craighouse. The absolute impossibility is at once obvious of George of Kildun - who only married his first wife in 1661 - having had a son, John Mackenzie of Gruinard, in a position to have obtained a charter in his favour of the lands of Little Gruinard, etc., in 1669 - within eight years ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... The question was, not whether there was not some evil attending the Slave-trade, but whether by the measure now before them they should increase or diminish the quantum of human misery in the world. He believed, for one, considering the internal state of Africa, and the impossibility of procuring the concurrence of foreign nations in the measure, that they would not be able to do any good by ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... off—certainly not twenty. Behind it stretched a foaming wake, straight as an arrow. Its vast mountainous head ploughed up the waves like a ship's cutwater, piling high the foam and spray before it. To miss us was now a sheer impossibility and no earthly power could arrest the creature's career. Instant destruction appeared inevitable. I grew dizzy, and my head began to swim, while the thought flashed confusedly through my mind, that infinite wisdom had decreed that we must die, and this manner of ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... Gilgamesh makes no such attempt, and Parnapishtim is not carried on high, but to "the confluence of the streams." Gilgamesh, it will also be recalled, is unable to pass to the nether world where Eabani is placed, and in the following chapter we will come across a tale intended to illustrate the impossibility of any one ever returning from the hollow under the earth where the dead dwell. The story of Etana appears, therefore, to emphasize the equal impossibility for any mortal to ascend to the dwelling of the gods. Etana is deified, but he belongs permanently to the region where all mortals go ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... river first, 'in radiant progress tow'rd the deep,' instead of tracing this 'child of the clouds' from its cradle in the lofty waste. We reached the Kirk of Ulpha between five and six. The appearance of the little farm-house inn at once made anything approaching to a dinner an impossibility had we wished it ever so much; but in due time we had tea and boiled ham, with two eggs apiece, and were much invigorated by this our first Duddonian meal. The hostess was evidently surprised that we thought of remaining all night, so humbly did she think of the accommodation ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... opened her eyes she saw a white world. Trees, fences, roofs, were covered with snow. It was banked up in great drifts along the road. The path to the gate was so deeply snowed under that it was an impossibility to think of getting from the house. At the back it was no better. The two little girls looked ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard
... seemed to nerve again Mr. Marchdale, and he, as well as the two young men, ran forward towards the wall. They got so close to the figure before it sprang down on the outer side of the wall, that to miss killing it with the bullet from the pistol was a matter of utter impossibility, unless wilfully. ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... during Morgan raid; imprisons Morgan and his officers in Ohio penitentiary; dramatic announcement of fall of Vicksburg; rejoices in return of 9th army corps; Halleck's unjust treatment of; concentrates forces and advances into E. Tennessee; captures General Frazer and 2500 men at Cumberland Gap; impossibility of co-operating with Rosecrans; congratulated by President and Halleck; asks to be relieved; organizes and arms E. Tennessee volunteers; directed to move toward Chattanooga and support Rosecrans; inability to reach River before battle ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... which it is not.—"Give us a high protective tariff," says another. Most certainly, friend, if we are to be perpetually flooded with paper, a high tariff is needed;—your theory is at least consistent, however it may have worked in practice. But a high protective tariff is an impossibility, because it can be attained only by favor of the Federal legislature; and, as we all know, at the door of that legislature stands the inexorable shape of the Slave Power, which consults no interest but its own in the management of government, and which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... wilderness, that know not whence the refreshing moisture has come. But on the wide scale be sure of this: it is the law of Christ that will fight and conquer the natural selfishness which makes bearing our brother's burdens an impossibility for men. Only, Christian people! let us take care that we are not robbed of our prerogative of being foremost in all such things, by men whose zeal has a less heavenly source than ours ought to have. Depend upon it, heresy has less power to arrest ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of the most proper subjects of taxation, a mere luxury and superfluity, but which affords so very important a revenue as the tax upon silver, will ever be given up as long as it is possible to pay it; yet the same impossibility of paying it, which, in 1736. made it necessary to reduce it from one-fifth to one-tenth, may in time make it necessary to reduce it still further; in the same manner as it made it necessary to reduce the tax upon gold to one-twentieth. That the silver mines ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... the same time they are not less mistaken on the impossibility of a society of atheists; and I do not know how Mr. Bayle can have forgotten one striking example which was capable of making ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... Rancocus Island were temporarily abandoned by the governor and his council. Mark was greatly disappointed, nor did his regrets cease with disappointment only. Should Waally leave a portion of his people on that island, a collision must occur, sooner or later; there being a moral impossibility of the two colonies continuing friends while so near each other. The nature of an echo would be ascertained, before many months, among the hills of Rancocus Island, and when that came to be understood, there was an end of the ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... notice "every thing," contains a multitude of rules to regulate the conduct of the master and the slave. Otherwise he could scarcely have imagined that it was from an aversion to minuteness, or from an impossibility to forbid every evil, that the sin of slavery is passed ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... am not writing a technical treatise, I need not go into the details of the Ribblevale suit. Since it to say that the affair, after a while, came apparently to a deadlock, owing to the impossibility of getting certain definite information from the Ribblevale books, which had been taken out of the state. The treasurer, for reasons of his own, remained out of the state also; the ordinary course of summoning him before a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the distance the ships were from us, and the impossibility of reaching one of them. Some of the poor fellows launched their rafts overboard, but were quickly swallowed up by the sea. Even the lieutenants went below; and, strange as it may seem, few of the men remained on deck. Tom Pim and I, however, kept together, with ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... lovers of the beautiful. Each of these works may be entitled to admiration in the circle to which it belongs; and more than this, both, fundamentally, may be quite of equal value; but it would be requiring an impossibility to expect that the work which demands all the application of the thinker should at the same time offer an easy recreation to the man who is only a ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... report from Cuba that the Spaniards have reconquered the town of Las Tunas. This, however, seems hard to believe. Only last week reliable information was sent to us, that, owing to the impossibility of sparing enough men to guard the town, the Cubans had decided to destroy it, and had accordingly burnt it ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 49, October 14, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... States as belligerents under the terms of international law and closed their ports to the armed vessels of both contestants. Mr. Seward, Lincoln's Secretary of State, hastened to assure the nations of Europe that a dissolution of the Union was an absurd impossibility. It had never entered the mind of any candid statesman in America and should be dismissed at once by statesmen in Europe. And yet at this time eleven Southern States, stretching from the James to the Rio Grande, with a population of ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... present you and your people must consider yourselves prisoners pending the arrival of the dispatches that I must send to the British Government. Yours, sir, was a daring and extremely hazardous plot, designed in extravagance and I may say in ignorance of the impossibility of its execution. The prisoner was too closely guarded and watched, and, as you have seen, it was quite impossible for your vessel to approach this island without being seized. I gather that you have been a naval officer in the service of the late ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... Knowing the impossibility of reconciling views so opposite as those expressed by the British Missionaries and those of the great majority of Canadian Methodists (as represented by the Guardian), Dr. Ryerson resolved to retire from the editorship. This, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... herself gently from his clasp, saying, after her old habit of hiding emotion under a jest, something about the impossibility that the mistress of a household could idle away her time in this way. She made her husband's breakfast, and insisted ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... was assured of the impossibility of procuring help nearer than Cairo he wasted no further time in discussion, but mounted his horse with a businesslike air and proceeded to take leave of Anstice with a heartiness which but thinly disguised his real and ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... thus disrespectfully alluded to was an ancient, ancient car, the pride of many a year ago, which sentiment (together with the impossibility of finding a purchaser) would not allow me to sell. It had been a splendid thing in those far-off days. It kept me in health. It made me walk miles and miles along unknown and unfrequented roads. In the aggregate I must have spent months of my life doing physical culture ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... hailed Barebone with winged words which need not be set down here, and explained to him the impossibility of escape. ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... Agamemnon's murder.—Cho. taunt Apollo that Zeus himself rose by imprisoning his father.—Apollo rejoins that imprisonment is remediable, but blood once spilt can never be brought back.—Cho. appeal to impossibility of restoring such a criminal to the house he has polluted.—Then Apollo puts forth the essence of his case (in a subtle plea which would delight the litigious Athenians): the mother is only the nurse, the ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... get the combined quota which they have paid for, when in reality they do not even get any one thing. It is the alert eye which can go over three rings and two stages at once and enjoy the pattern of each of them. It is a physical impossibility really. ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... the impossibility of either," he objected, knocking the top off an egg. "Suppose you were ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... — N. impossibility &c. adj.; what cannot, what can never be; sour grapes; hopelessness &c. 859. V. be impossible &c. adj.; have no chance whatever. attempt impossibilities; square the circle, wash a blackamoor white; skin a flint; make a silk purse out of a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... gigantic steadfastness. It is almost as if any change in his manner, any concession to what is usual and esteemed, any amelioration of his blind, relentless exercises of force majeure, were a physical impossibility. One feels him at last to be authentically no more than a helpless instrument (or victim) of that inchoate flow of forces which he himself is so fond of depicting as at once the answer to the riddle of life, and a riddle ten ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... if this impossibility of explaining ultimate principles should be esteemed a defect in the science of man, I will venture to affirm, that it is a defect common to it with all the sciences, and all the arts, in which we can employ ourselves, whether they be such as are ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... to Sunday-schools, to Christian Endeavor societies and to churches for the establishment of scholarships for worthy and capable pupils. We have many such, on whom the burdens press so heavily that continuance in school to the end of the course is an impossibility. We wish to help such after they have reached the normal department. A small sum expended in keeping these worthy students in the school may bring rich rewards when the harvests of ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 2, April, 1900 • Various
... what I was about, but went through the forms in the same mechanical spirit which pervaded all present. As for that solemn, humble, and heartfelt sense of God's presence, which Christian prayer demands, its existence in the mind would not only be a moral but a physical impossibility in Lough Derg. I verily think that if mortification of the body, without conversion of the life or heart—if penance and not repentance could save the soul, no wretch who performed a pilgrimage here could with a good grace be damned. ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... civility. It was provoking beyond sufferance; but with several strokes which I considered important, I bore it with saint-like patience. I remonstrated mildly but firmly on the waste of my money, and on the impossibility of any good to the country while the rajah conducted himself as he had done. I urged upon him to release the poor women whom he had kept confined for nearly five months; and I guarantied the peaceful disposition of the people if it were done. I might as well have whistled to the winds, or ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... fioritures, to give an Italian turn to the severe simplicity of Orpheus's air. At the least deviation from his text, Gluck, with a frown, would recall the ambitious tenor, and do away with his embellishments. In vain had the chorus-singers complained of the impossibility of learning their parts. Gluck instructed them one by one. He had trained the orchestra, too, to fullest precision; and finally, every difficulty overcome, the great opera of "Orpheus and Eurydice" was ready for representation on the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... steadily through the densest thorn scrub I have ever seen. It was about fifteen feet high, and so thick that its penetration, save by made tracks, would have been an absolute impossibility. Our road ran like a lane between two spiky jungles. Bold bright mountains cropped up, singly and in short ranges, as far as ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... to show the impossibility of such an achievement; the merchant will not hear of refusal, and as an inducement for me to make only a trial, he offers me a large price, promising to double the amount if I succeed ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... extension of trade, did not yet press upon wages. There was, further, a constant increase in the demand for the home market, keeping pace with the slow increase in population and employing all the workers; and there was also the impossibility of vigorous competition of the workers among themselves, consequent upon the rural dispersion of their homes. So it was that the weaver was usually in a position to lay by something, and rent a little piece of land, that ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... to supply the reader with an outline of the salient facts which account for the marvelous growth and development which the commonwealth is enjoying. To go largely into detail within the scope of a pamphlet of this size would be, manifestly, an impossibility. We might readily exhaust our available space in dealing with one industry or in describing a single county. Details, therefore, have ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... with what I had already gleaned from the doctor and had observed myself, confirmed my suspicion that it was far more dangerous than you thought; indeed no longer dangerous, but decided, past hope. Lost in this thought and my strength entirely exhausted on account of the impossibility of hurrying to your side, my state of mind was really very disconsolate. Now for the first time I understand what it really was, being new-born by the joyful news that you are well again. For you are well again now, as good as entirely well—that I infer from all the reports, with the same confidence ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... while to tell the tired little sister what another man had told him, that it was very doubtful whether they would be allowed to board any transport at night, and that Liverpool was so crowded that to find beds in it might be an impossibility. Bob refused to be depressed by the prospect. "If the worst came to the worst, there'd be a Y.W.C.A. that would take in Tommy," he mused. "And it wouldn't be the first time I've spent a night in the open." Nothing seemed to ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... him too well how little of wisdom there is in fretting against the day of action, when that day cannot be hurried nor controlled. Steadfastedly he refused to let himself brood. If he could not go to her he would not, nevertheless, allow himself to dwell upon that impossibility. Instead his spirit ranged ahead to a hopeful, more or less indefinite and not too distant date when his absence might not seem to threaten too great a cost to those whose matters lay ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... rewarded for her days of labor, but on this occasion, she not only went after the chair reluctantly, but also, when she as usual seated herself with her knitting work on her little bench at his side she sighed deeply. Her father did not observe her dejection, perhaps he considered it an impossibility for his precious jewel to sigh ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... solitary sail that remained, at the moment when the squall approached, the loosened but lowered topsail was now distended in a manner that threatened to drag after it the only mast which still stood. Wilder instantly saw the necessity of getting rid of this sail, and he also saw the utter impossibility of securing it. Calling Earing to his side, he pointed out the danger, and ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... R. Campbell. On the other hand, the Russians, who had laid siege to Sweaborg, in the Gulf of Finland, which was justly called the Gibraltar of the North, had induced the governor, Admiral Count Cronsted, to sign a capitulation, that, if not relieved by the 6th of May, which was next to an impossibility, the fortress was to be delivered up, and as a compensation he was to receive an estate of great value in Russia. The reason which has been assigned for this act of treachery was, that, having refused to meet the English fleet under Lord Nelson, he had been superseded ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... his blank, round face up to the stars and continued absentmindedly: "To take the vague idea first. I attach a good deal of importance to vague ideas. All those things that 'aren't evidence' are what convince me. I think a moral impossibility the biggest of all impossibilities. I know your husband only slightly, but I think this crime of his, as generally conceived, something very like a moral impossibility. Please do not think I mean that Boulnois could not be so wicked. Anybody can be wicked—as wicked as he chooses. ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... of those half-civilized nabobs who come here every year to astonish the Parisians with their wealth and display, and who, by their idiotic prodigality, have so increased the price of everything that life has become well-nigh an impossibility to such of us as don't care to squander an entire fortune in a couple of years. These folks are the curse of Paris, for, with but few exceptions, they only use their millions to enrich notorious women, ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau |
