"Impracticability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whether or no, and in their quite natural ignorance of its character, they request me to perform in the small, roughly-paved court-yard of the hotel, and all sorts of impossible places. I shake my head in disapproval and explanation of the impracticability of granting their request, but unfortunately Adrianople is within the circle where a shake of the head is understood to mean " yes, certainly;" and the happy crowd range around a ridiculously small space, and smiling ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... difficulty—but, to his surprise, his enemies had been at work behind him, and the edge of the copse through which he was about to pass, was blockaded with bars in like manner with the path in front. He heard the shouts of the ruffians in the rear—he felt the danger, if not impracticability of his pausing for the removal of the rails, and, in the spirit which had heretofore marked his conduct, he determined upon the most daring endeavor. Throwing off all restraint from his steed, and fixing ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... impracticability of white silk, the inconvenience of unpacking the apparatus, the nuisance of dressing, the lack of time; but Rashe was delighted with the idea, and made light of all, and the gentlemen pressed her strongly, till with rather ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from forgetting to tell you particulars, that I tell you none; I am here, and don't know one but what you will see in the Gazette, and by which it appears that the victory was owing to the impracticability, as the French thought, and to desperate resolution on our side. What a scene! an army in the night dragging itself up a precipice by stumps of trees to assault a town and attack an army strongly entrenched and double ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... of the arm above the shoulders signifies vivid imagination, or impracticability. It may be read as an indication of lightness of character or of a tendency to go off on a tangent. Conversely, gestures outward from the lower part of the body denote power, or ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... of The Mirror, appeared a paper headed "The Habits of the Common Snake," purported to be extracted from the Magazine of Natural History. The doctrine enforced by the writer of this article, as regards the impracticability of domesticating a snake, has been proved entirely erroneous by the fact recited; and were there no positive instance adduced to the contrary, it does not follow that, because his effort, were ineffectual, such a thing is utterly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... division, Stoneman found that it would probably be isolated on account of the impracticability of crossing the rest of the corps, and consequently ordered its immediate return. And this was accomplished none too soon, by swimming ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... Basra and died at Cairo in 1038. He is to be distinguished from another Alhazen who translated Ptolemy's Almagest in the 10th century. Having boasted that he could construct a machine for regulating the inundations of the Nile, he was summoned to Egypt by the caliph Hakim; but, aware of the impracticability of his scheme, and fearing the caliph's anger, he feigned madness until Hakim's death in 1021. Alhazen was, nevertheless, a diligent and successful student, being the first great discoverer in optics after the time of Ptolemy. According to Giovanni Battista della Porta, he first explained the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... sad enough for the two girls,—this kind of life. The worst of it, perhaps, was this; that they never knew when to expect him. A word had been said once as to the impracticability of having dinner ready for a gentleman, when the gentleman would never say whether he would want a dinner. It had been an unfortunate remark, for Sir Thomas had taken advantage of it by saying that when he came he would come after ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... recall how the spirit James, while wandering through the darkness of unoccupied Space (about five-and-twenty billions of eons before the commencement of Eternity), conceived a wild idea of the possibility of the existence of worlds—worlds occupied by an impracticability called "man." It will be recollected how the wiser spirit William cast well-merited ridicule upon this insanely impossible phantasy of a disordered mind; nay, even condescended to crush, by perspicuous and irrefutable logic, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... however, have evaded it if I would; but my heart was bursting, and partly from instinctive desire of unloading it—partly, I hope, from principle, too—I called her into my room and fairly told her the truth; told her the strength of my passion for Piozzi, the impracticability of my living without him, the opinion I had of his merit, and the resolution I had taken to marry him. Of all this she could not have been ignorant before. I confessed my attachment to him and her together with many tears and agonies one day at Streatham; ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the proportionate representation of parties is the only satisfactory solution of our electoral difficulties, it becomes the duty of statesmen to find some way by which practical effect can be given to Mill's formula. There was doubtless some excuse for the cry of impracticability when, in launching in 1857 his proposals for proportional representation, Thomas Hare suggested that the whole kingdom should form a single constituency. This suggestion raised a barrier of prejudice against all proposals ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... of a certain writer will serve to illustrate the impracticability of writing the final form of the synopsis first. A few years ago, when all editors were asking for the complete script, and when most companies were insisting upon a synopsis of approximately two hundred and fifty words, ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... call for seventy-five thousand men to uphold and vindicate the authority of the Government, and to prove, if possible, that secession was not only a heresy in doctrine, but an impracticability in the American Republic. The response to this call was much more general than the most sanguine had any reason to look for. The enthusiasm of the people was quite unbounded. Individuals encouraged individuals; families aroused families; communities vied with communities, and States ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... explained, and another large part are too young to attend to it. I wish the object of these remarks not to be misunderstood. I do not recommend the attempt to teach on so extensive a scale; I admit that it is impracticable; I only mean to show in what the impracticability consists, namely, in the difficulty of making such arrangements as to derive the full benefit from the instructions rendered. The instructions of the teacher are, in the nature of things, available to the extent I have represented, but in actual ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... may talk as you please of the wildness and impracticability of the sentiments of my amiable solitaire, they are at least in the highest degree amusing and beautiful. There is a voice in every breast, whose feelings have not yet been entirely warped by selfishness, responsive to them. It is in vain that ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... and takes the opinion of the native elders in preference to his own. Is it right to impose a yoke like this on that little Church which God is gathering by your instrumentality in that far-off land of China? But it is said, that these cases of appeal (because of impracticability) will very rarely or never happen. Be it so; then this supposed advantage will seldom or never occur, and if it should occur, it would prove a disadvantage. The highest practical court of appeal for the native churches can be secured only on the plan ...
— History and Ecclesiastical Relations of the Churches of the Presbyterial Order at Amoy, China • J. V. N. Talmage
... which characterised Mendelssohn's life—'he lived years whilst others would have lived only weeks,' was the true remark of one who knew him well—reminds us of the impracticability of giving anything like a complete description of even its chief incidents. The stage at which our story has arrived does not, it is true, show him at the pinnacle of his fame as a composer, but if we entertained any doubts as to his greatness or his popularity at this time, ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... which I have referred. It may be defeated. It is possible that, for the chastisement of our sins and transgressions, the rod of Providence may be still applied to us, may be still suspended over us. But, if defeated, it will be a triumph of ultraism and impracticability—a triumph of a most extraordinary conjunction of extremes; a victory won by abolitionism; a victory achieved by freesoilism; a victory of discord and agitation over peace and tranquillity; and I pray to Almighty God that it may not, in consequence of ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... continuing to threaten us could he do harm.[689] Another sceptic was Lord Melville, First Lord of the Admiralty, who, in a letter of 14th October, urged Pitt during his stay at Weymouth to represent to the King the importance of attacking the flotilla at Boulogne, if only in order to show the impracticability of Napoleon's scheme. Experienced officers, said Melville, reported that the flotilla must embark the troops in the outer road; yet the work of getting that vast concourse of boats out of the inner harbour could not be accomplished ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... and from their local circumstances cannot be represented in the House of Commons in Great Britain; and farther, that, in the opinion of this house, the several powers of legislation in America were constituted in some measure upon the apprehension of this impracticability. That the only representatives of the people of this province are persons chosen therein by themselves; and that no taxes ever have been, or can be, constitutionally imposed on them but by the legislature of this province. That all supplies ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... a fallacy, a mere chimera, that was gone; an impracticability too. She had smiled at it as such when Dorcas used to hint at it; but are there no castles in the clouds which we like to inhabit, although we know them altogether air-built, and ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... simplicity, yet it was sufficiently removed from that which prevails in many other countries to interest us by its singularity. We were here amused with an account of two English gentlemen, who attempted to ascend Mont Blanc, notwithstanding the assurances they received of the impracticability of the attempt under present circumstances, as a chasm had lately been made by the thaw on one side of the mountain; but they were not to be intimidated either by the advice of the inhabitants, or by the accounts of the hardships suffered by M. de Saussure, ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... notice and opportunity to be heard. These requirements are met by personal service on the bank and publication of summons to depositors and of notice to all other claimants. The fact that no affidavit of impracticability of personal service on claimants is required before publication of such notices does not render the latter unreasonable inasmuch as they are used only in cases where the depositor is not known to the bank officers to be alive.[733] Similarly, a Kentucky ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... for he would have preferred to proceed direct to Remilly, where he was certain to find a refuge, but where was he to obtain the blouse and trousers that he required as a disguise? to say nothing of the impracticability of getting past the numerous Prussian pickets and outposts that filled the valley all the way from la Garenne to Remilly. He therefore ended by consenting to act as guide to the two comrades. His leg was less stiff than it had been, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... congratulation. Robert was the stepson, older by several years, and was viewed as the representative of sober common sense in the family. Joe and his mother did like to feel a plan quite free from Robert's condemnation for enthusiasm or impracticability, and it was not the worse for his influence, that he had been generally with his regiment, and when visiting them was a good deal at the United Service Club. He had lately married an heiress in a small way, retired ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... vessels will, I trust, by the sufferings of war, reduce the barbarians of Tripoli to the desire of peace on proper terms. Great injury, however, ensues to ourselves, as well as to others interested, from the distance to which prizes must be brought for adjudication and from the impracticability of bringing hither such as are not ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... articles to No. 29, in the gallery. This she refused to do, and the consequence has been that the Exhibition has been deprived of some of its rarest specimens of art. The reason Mrs. Peachey assigns for not sending her works to the gallery is the impracticability of their being carried up stairs without being, from their extreme fragility, seriously injured, perhaps mutilated. Even were they to be slung up by tackle, she says they would be subject to the same risk, and her two principal works, viz.—an enormous bouquet ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey
... to ask whether the impracticability of bringing wagon trains over the mountains was as complete as we reported, and Grant's horseback journey back into Kentucky when the thermometer was at zero is sufficient proof that he found it imperatively necessary to settle that question also with his own eyes and without delay. ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... to raise funds, and then came the explosion, striking evidence of the enormous difference between the American and the Continental point of view in morals. With characteristic Russian impracticability, Gorki had come to America with a woman whom he introduced as his wife; but it appeared that his legal wife was in Russia, and that his attractive and accomplished companion was somebody else. This fact, which honestly seemed to Gorki an incident of no importance, took on a prodigious shape. ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... to the head of his department the total impracticability of carrying on the public service without a remittance of specie, or a government paper substitute. He was in expectation of making arrangements with some individuals that would have enabled him to proceed, but I much fear that the whole project has fallen to the ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... apparently unable to talk on any other subject, Mr. Dwerrihouse then went on to tell of the opposition he had encountered and the obstacles he had overcome in the cause of the Stockbridge branch. I was entertained with a multitude of local details and local grievances. The rapacity of one squire, the impracticability of another, the indignation of the rector whose glebe was threatened, the culpable indifference of the Stockbridge townspeople, who could not be brought to see that their most vital interests hinged upon a junction with the Great East Anglian ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... and sell it, too, for a high figure—such an echo as that at the Villa Siminetti, two miles from Milan, for instance. My first purpose was to have the man make a collection of caves and afterwards of echoes; but perceived that the element of absurdity and impracticability was so nearly identical as to amount to a repetition of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... act in behalf of the colonists, to forget imperial interests, to misapply the funds and pervert the labor belonging to the crown. The precision of his injunctions left no alternative but to obey. Had Wilmot at once declared the impracticability of Lord Stanley's schemes he might have been recalled, but the responsibility of an utter failure would have rested with his chief. The interested reports of his subordinate officers unfortunately enabled him to hold out hopes of success ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... understand my reasons, I refused to consent to its burial in the wilderness. In spite of their superior knowledge of the country and the weather conditions, I felt that the body could be taken down to the post later, but recognised the impracticability, if not impossibility, of undertaking the ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... but what it was, considered with the impracticability of unobserved entrance and ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... The impracticability of African colonization[5] had long since become a foregone conclusion, so far as it could be made applicable to the present or prospective transfer of 4,000,000 of negroes from this republic to Liberia. A mathematical solution of that problem shows the cost of purchase and transportation ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... nature. Thus was she constituted; merciless in egotism when put to the use of all her weapons, moved to warmest gratitude as soon as concession was made to her. To be on ill terms with her father had caused her pain, the only effect of which, however, was to heighten the sullen impracticability of her temper. At the first glimpse of relief from overstrained emotions, she desired that all angry feeling should be at an end. Having gained her point, she could once more be the affectionately wilful girl whose love was the first ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... Consul also received me with much civility, and most obligingly placed his house at my disposal, although compelled to start for Spolatro on business. For some reason best known to himself, he begged of me to return to Mostar, insisting on the impracticability of travelling in Bosnia in the present state of political feeling. This, coupled with the specimen of priestly civility which I had experienced in the convent of Goritza, inclined me to alter the route which I had proposed to myself by Foinitza to Bosna Serai. ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... Maximilian's hopes were high: he bragged to the Venetians that the "Duke of York" would immediately unseat the Tudor, and when he was on the throne, England would be at the beck of the League. The Emperor's impracticability was sufficiently shown by his having procured from Perkin his own recognition as heir, if the pretender should die without issue. The expedition attempted to land at Deal, but the men of Kent assembled in arms, and drove it off with ignominious ease. For ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... suffering state in which I had lived for the last three months; the difficulty with which I had waded through even the most common fatigues of the day; the constraint of attendance, however honourable, to an invalid; and the impracticability of pursuing such a life, when thus enfeebled, with the smallest chance of ever recovering the health and strength which it had ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... views expressed ten years ago upon the impracticability of supplanting to any extent the Tagal language by the Spanish. The same considerations apply equally well to English. Estadismo, ii, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... result of which, contrary to his usual custom, Sir William communicated to none of those who, on all former occasions, were fully in his confidence, viz. Trevor, Lawrence, and myself. It seemed as if he feared that we might insist on the impracticability of the plan, which he must have studiously concealed from himself. All the following morning his manner was distracted and hurried, in a way that none of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... the very teeth of my adversaries. This would have been very spirited and chivalrous, no doubt, but unfortunately, the obstacles that opposed themselves to this plan were legion. No sooner did I convince myself of the impracticability of such a mode of procedure, than other plans would present themselves, which, in their turn would have to be relinquished when submitted to the rigorous test of practicability. This constant strain on my mind interposed stumbling ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... his own child according to Rousseau's plan, he not only discovered its impracticability but also that the only way to improve on it was to study the children themselves. Accordingly he opened a school and home on his farm at Neuhof, in 1774. Here he took in fifty abandoned children, to whom he taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, gave them moral discourses, and trained ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... questionings. The sane, practical man shakes his head, smiles pityingly at my dreamy impracticability, and passes ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... returning, from Gauley Bridge to the narrows of New River where the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad crossed upon an important bridge which was several times made the objective point of an expedition. This alone proved the impracticability of the plan McClellan first conceived, of making the Kanawha valley the line of an important movement into eastern Virginia. It pointed very plainly, also, to the true theory of operations in that country. Gauley Bridge should have been held with a good brigade which could have had outposts ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... had already received, and that at once the most splendid and the least suitable which Europe could afford. Philip of Spain, loth to relinquish his hold upon England, but long since aware of the impracticability of establishing any claims of his own in opposition to the title of Elizabeth, now sought to reign by her; and to the formal announcement which she conveyed to him of the death of his late wife, accompanied with ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... occupied in recommending others to profit by the mistakes regarding contagion which occurred in that country:—"Dr. Sacks, in No. 38 of his Cholera Journal, published here, has again shewn, against Dr. Rush, the fallibility of the doctrine of contagion, as well as the mischievous impracticability of the attempts founded on it to arrest the progress of the disorder by cutting off the communications. It is to be hoped that the alarm so methodically excited by scientific and magisterial authority in the countries to the west of us [!!] will cease, after the ample experience ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... Utopian dreams of social justice in which many contemporary socialists and anarchists indulge are, in spite of their impracticability and non-adaptation to present environmental conditions, analogous to the saint's belief in an existent kingdom of heaven. They help to break the edge of the general reign of hardness and are slow leavens of a ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... single man of ability and firmness at the head of the administration, was for a moment surprised out of her habitual courtesy. She could not forbear a smile, and in plain terms asked him "if he were crazy.[4]" But she proceeded with her usual kindness to explain to him the impracticability of the scheme which he had suggested, and the foundation of her argument was an explanation that such an appointment would be a violation of the Constitution, which forbade the king to create any new ministerial office. And ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... nor any of his nation had ever been lower than at a place where they could see the gap made by the river on entering the mountain. To that place he said he would conduct captain Clarke if he desired it by the next evening. But he was in need of no further evidence to convince him of the utter impracticability of the route before him. He had already witnessed the difficulties of part of the road, yet after all these dangers his guide, whose intelligence and fidelity he could not doubt, now assured him that the difficulties ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... who thinks of constructing a novel out of somebody's correspondence may surely consult Clarissa upon all the details of the craft. And Clarissa, and Grandison still more, will also give the fullest warning of the impracticability of the method, after all; for Richardson is forced to pay heavily for its single benefit. He pays with the desperate shifts to which he is driven in order to maintain any kind of verisimilitude. The visible effort of keeping all Clarissa's friends at a distance all ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... selecting candidates whose talents were adapted to the public service. It was averred, in the spirit of complaint or disappointment, that he often conferred offices on men who immediately coincided with the opponents and became calumniators of his administration. He was soon made to realize the impracticability of disregarding the old lines of party. On being informed, by some of his friends in the Southern States, that the objections to the appointment of Federalists were insuperable, and would everywhere affect ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... the impracticability of their attempt, our adventurers entered upon it with a spirit worthy of success,—worthy of the country from ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... moved by his ward's benevolent enthusiasm, paused and said that there were many recollections which made it rather painful to him to revisit Old Forest. Still he would do it for Beauclerc, since nothing but seeing the place would convince him of the impracticability of his scheme. "I have not been at Old Forest," continued the general, "since I was a boy—since it was deserted by the owners, and sadly ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... have not studied for themselves fully aware of the truth of what I have quoted. The best chance is collection of cases; in fact, a Budget of Paradoxes. Those who have no knowledge of the subject can thus argue from the seen to the unseen. All can feel the impracticability of the Hubongramillposanfy numeration, and the absurdity of the equality of contour of a regular pentagon and hexagon in one and the same circle. Many may accordingly be satisfied, on the assurance of those who have studied, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... of the Court, if I were to spend further speech in the refutation of this discovery of the public prosecutor—that impracticability is the test of science—I should ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... of the course was not criticised. Its consistency only was challenged. After giving a history of the various steps in organizing the three Territories in 1861, and of the great need, by reason of the pressure of thousands of emigrants, of providing a government therefor, and the impracticability of passing a Territorial bill with an anti-slavery proviso, Mr. Grow, in a letter to ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... us to mention, that those "many principal persons in Pennsylvania," as is observed in the representation, "whose names and association lie before your Majesty in Council, for the purpose of making settlements in Nova Scotia," have, several years since, been convinced of the impracticability of exciting settlers to move from the middle colonies, and settle in that province; and even of those who were prevailed on to go to Nova Scotia, the greater part of them returned with great complaints against the severity ...
— Report of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations on the Petition of the Honourable Thomas Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, John Sargent, and Samuel Wharton, Esquires, and their Associates • Great Britain Board of Trade
... Virginia is unsupported even by those whose interests are similar to hers.[27] Colonel Lee tells me that many who were warm supporters of the government are changing their sentiments, from a conviction of the impracticability of union with states, whose interests are so dissimilar to ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... last never yet did exist, it was probably never designed by divine wisdom that it should exist. The whole structure of society must be changed, even in this country, ere it could exist among ourselves, and the change would not have been made a month before the utter impracticability of such a social fusion would ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... convened the officers for the purpose of holding a survey on the state of the ship and provisions, they all agreeing with me as to the impracticability of attempting a six weeks' voyage with defective masts and rigging, and only a week's provisions on board, at the same time signing a survey to that effect, which document is now in my possession. It was therefore determined to put into some port for the purpose ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... have been justified. One further principle of warfare, by no means new, was justified to the hilt—no frontal attack should ever be attempted unless all counter attack from a flank is impossible, or unless sufficient forces are available to render such an attack an impracticability. The ultimate capture of the Hill necessitated nearly two months' artillery preparation and the employment at intervals of two Brigades. Perhaps there is one further illustration of the uncertainty of modern warfare ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... There is a sort of rumour prevalent that Lord Palmerston may seek Lord J. Russell's aid.... This would, of course, negative all idea of your joining in the concern. Otherwise a refusal would be set down as sheer impracticability, or else the selfish ambition of a clique which could not stand alone, and should no longer attempt to do so. If the refusal to join Palmerston is to be a going over to the other side, and a definite junction within a brief space, that is clear and ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... realized the Utopian character of the scheme, saw its impracticability, and proceeded to condemn it with more than his ordinary irritability and brusquerie. Finding, however, that the emperor was not to be argued out of the idea of holding a labor conference, he proceeded to ridicule it, and what was worse, to cause it to be scoffed at and treated with derision as ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... circumstances under which the masses had heretofore labored, in coming under plans of instruction and Christianity, owing to their poverty; their dispersion over large areas of country for large parts of the year; the impracticability of their finding subsistence in large bodies at one place; and the deleterious influence of the commerce in furs and peltries, on their moral and mental character. He submitted a report of the proceedings ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... woman's mind. I mean a deep-lying distinction, not superficial and to be explained away as due to outside things, but based on the essential fact of her womanhood—her capacity for maternity. But the impracticability of making any definite statement as to the exact nature or extent of such mental sexual differentiation is evident. First must be cleared up the difficulty of distinguishing between those differences that are fundamental and constitutional as being directly dependent on the woman character and ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... The impracticability of navigating the river upwards from the sea, and the want of wood for forming an establishment, would prove insuperable objections to rendering the collection of copper at this part ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... fortress. For Palmyre's assurance that the candle burning would certainly cause the rent-money to be forthcoming in time was to Clotilde unknown, and to Aurora it was poor stuff to make peace of mind of. But there was a degree of impracticability in these ladies, which, if it was unfortunate, was, nevertheless, a part of their Creole beauty, and made the absence of any really brilliant outlook what the galaxy makes a moonless sky. Perhaps they had not been as diligent as they might have been in canvassing ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... was to be buried on the morrow, the expenses of which event Thaddeus saw he must discharge also; and he had engaged to pay Mr. Vincent that night! He had not a shilling in his purse. Over and over he contemplated the impracticability of answering these debts; yet he could not for an instant repent of what he had undertaken: he thought he was amply recompensed for bearing so heavy a load in knowing that he had taken it off ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... altogether abstained from opposing his new connection, she was actually on friendly terms with Mary. It is easy to understand how a limited nature like Harriet's should be worn out by the exaction and impracticability of one like Shelley; for to her most impracticable would seem his lofty and ideal requirements. On the other hand, it is evident that Shelley regarded the unfortunate girl with feelings of deep commiseration; and I know ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... on April 26th, Kane set out on what, to use his own words, "was to be the crowning expedition of the campaign, to attain the Ultima Thule of the Greenland shore." Impressed with the impracticability of a direct journey across the main ice-pack, he decided to follow the shore-line, five men dragging a sledge, while Kane and Godfrey travelled by dog-team. He had been led by his resolute spirit to overestimate the physical strength of his men and himself, and the party broke down ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... that the powers of Europe, who are convinced of the justice of the American cause, (and where is one to be found that is not?) should make haste to acknowledge the independence of the United States, and form equitable treaties with them, as the surest means of convincing Great Britain of the impracticability of her pursuits? Whether the late marine treaty concerning the rights of neutral vessels, noble and useful as it is, can be established against Great Britain, who will never adopt it, nor submit to it, ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... with country solitudes had bred in him an unconquerable, and almost unreasonable, aversion to modern town life, and shut him out from such success as he might have aspired to by following a mundane calling in the impracticability of the spiritual one. But something had to be done; he had wasted many valuable years; and having an acquaintance who was starting on a thriving life as a Colonial farmer, it occurred to Angel that this might be a lead in the right direction. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... infidels. That religious intolerance which foreign historians consider a purely Spanish product was really imported by the German Caesars. It was the German friar who came with his devout brutality and his crazy theology, not tempered as in Spain by Semitic culture. With their intolerance and impracticability they provoked the revolution of the Reformation in the northern countries, and, driven out of them, they came here to plant afresh their ignorance and fanaticism. The ground was well prepared. When the free towns whose municipalities were republics fell, the people ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... great flood stops me in my course. Opposuit natura. [Footnote: 50 ]—I cannot remove the eternal barriers of the creation. The thing, in that mode, I do not know to be possible. As I meddle with no theory,[Footnote: 51] I do not absolutely assert the impracticability of such a representation; but I do not see my way to it, and those who have been more confident have not been more successful. However, the arm of public benevolence is not shortened, and there are often several means to the same end. What nature has disjoined in one way, ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... I do not know whether the word is intelligible in England. It implies a combination of littleness of nature, small self-conceit, readiness to take offence, determination in little things to have one's own way, and general impracticability. There are men to whom even the members of their own families do not like to talk about their plans and views: who will suddenly go off on a long journey without telling anyone in the house till the minute before they go; and concerning whom their nearest relatives think it right ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... interests—in short, until the same obstacles arise to the choice of an international, artificial, and neutral language, as now prevent the elevation of any national language into a universal medium? The plea of impracticability on the score of dislocation might then be valid. At present it is not. To have an easy language that will carry you anywhere and enable you to read anything, it is sufficient to wish for it. Only, as we Britons are being taught to "think imperially," so must the nations learn ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... which I still chafe in vain is the impracticability of ascertaining so apparently simple a matter as the number of kinsfolk of each person in each specific degree of near kinship, without troublesome solicitations. It was specially asked for in the circular, but by no means generally answered, even by those who replied freely to ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster
... Carduchi. 16. This people, they said, lived among the mountains, were very warlike, and did not obey the king; that on one occasion, a royal army of a hundred and twenty thousand men had penetrated into their country, whence, from the impracticability of the ground, not one of them returned; but that, whenever they made a treaty with the satrap of the plain, some of them had intercourse with the Carduchi, and some of the Carduchi with them. 17. The generals, having ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... of Austin Selwyn the party presented an infinite chance for study, as well as an unlooked-for opportunity to meet Elise Durwent under circumstances which should either cement their friendship or else demonstrate its utter impracticability. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... the Indian Rebellion ten years later. She thinks it impossible for the Government of the United States to subdue and hold provinces so vast as the Cotton States of America; yet she neither foreboded nor as yet has found any impracticability in renewing and retaining her hold on the vaster provinces of British India,—provinces inhabited, all of them, by races alien in blood, religion, and manners, and many by a population greatly exceeding that of our Southern States, brave, warlike, and, to some ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... Basque Roads, then threatening our West India possessions, might be destroyed at one blow; this extraordinary request from a junior captain, after the most experienced officers in the navy had pronounced its impracticability, forcibly proving the very high opinion entertained by the Admiralty of Lord Cochrane's skill and resources. He gave in a plan, and was ordered to execute it, which order he reluctantly obeyed, having done all in his power to decline an invidious command, for fear of arousing the jealousy ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... "Krupp-Kaiser" alliance. But against such writing and such thought we had to count, in those days, great and powerful realities. Even to those who expressed these ideas there lay visibly upon them the shadow of impracticability; they were very "advanced" ideas in 1914, very Utopian. Against them was an unbroken mass of mental habit and public tradition. While we talked of this "war to end war," the diplomatists of the Powers allied against Germany were busily spinning a disastrous web of ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... ideas and the impracticability of his scheme must, indeed, have become evident, at the first moment it was brought under consideration. Inexperienced and blinded, as they were, by the delusions of the time and the excitements of the scene, and disposed, as they must have ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... W—— and B——, who walk in glory and in joy behind their ploughs upon your mountain sides. The Brunswick canal project was descanted upon, and pronounced, without a shadow of dissent, a scheme the impracticability of which all but convicted its projectors of insanity. Certainly, if, as I hear the monied men of Boston have gone largely into this speculation, their habitual sagacity must have been seriously at fault; for here on the spot ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... of air which reached the bay was narrow, affecting only a width of about ten or twelve miles. This circumstance impressed me at that time only as indicating a remarkable topographical feature of the country; but afterwards, when the impracticability of a canal at Nicaragua and the deficiencies in respect of ports for a railway at Tehuantepec had become established, I was led to reflect upon it in connection with a plan for inter-oceanic communication by railway through Honduras; and, as explained in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... amazed, at this sudden termination of the interview. He had anticipated argument, sophistry, appeal to old friendship, perhaps a more dark and doubtful approach. Though conscious throughout of Baker's contempt for what the promoter would call his childish impracticability, his disloyalty and his crankiness, Bob realized that all of this had been carefully subdued. Baker's manner at parting expressed more of regret than of anger ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... notes were written the impracticability of the universal or even of the general application of the principle has been fully demonstrated. Mr. Wilson resurrected "the consent of the governed" regardless of the fact that history denied its value as a practical guide in modern political relations. He proclaimed ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... Brittany, so able by her power and situation to give effectual and prompt assistance, would permit such an accession of force to her rival. He imagined, therefore, that the ministers of France, convinced of the impracticability of their scheme, would at last embrace pacific views, and would abandon an enterprise so obnoxious to all the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... general, sensible of the impracticability of reducing Quebec, unless he should be enabled to erect his batteries on the north side of the St. Lawrence, determined to use his utmost endeavours to bring Montcalm to an engagement. After several unavailing attempts ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... that Isabel would prevail on her husband to listen favourably; but Isabel gloried in his impracticability, and would have regarded any attempt at mediation as an unworthy effort to turn him aside from the path of duty. She replied, that she would never say a word to change his notions of right, and she treated poor Oliver with ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shudder! He would like to put into his book a penal code, a code of criminal procedure, and an evidence code. 'I could do it too if it were not too much trouble, and if a large part of the law were not too foolish to be codified.' He is, however, so convinced of the impracticability of parliamentary help or of a commission that he is much inclined to try. A fortnight later (October 8) he has resolved to convert his second edition into a draft penal code ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... landed, who hewed open the sally port with their axes and made themselves masters of the fort. Thus, in a few hours, and without losing a single man, had "the spirited resolution of Commodore James destroyed the timorous prejudices which had for twenty years been entertained of the impracticability of reducing ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... natural strength and resources of the country, directed to a common interest, would baffle all the combinations of European jealousy to restrain our growth. This situation would even take away the motive to such combinations, by inducing an impracticability of success. An active commerce, an extensive navigation, and a flourishing marine would then be the offspring of moral and physical necessity. We might defy the little arts of the little politicians to control or vary the irresistible and unchangeable ...
— The Federalist Papers
... hardness &c adj.; impracticability &c (impossibility) 471; tough work, hard work, uphill work; hard task, Herculean task, Augean task^; task of Sisyphus, Sisyphean labor, tough job, teaser, rasper^, dead lift. dilemma, embarrassment; deadlock; perplexity &c (uncertainty) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... number of the Crisis, which I find has been republished in England, I endeavored to set forth the impracticability of conquering America. I stated every case, that I conceived could possibly happen, and ventured to predict its consequences. As my conclusions were drawn not artfully, but naturally, they have all proved ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... delayed. This necessitated that Hancock's line should extend to Bottom's bridge on the Chickahominy. The enemy's early discovery of the movement and his concentration of troops on the north side prevented Hancock from accomplishing the programme laid out for him. Its impracticability was demonstrated early on the 27th, and Hancock's soldierly instincts told him this the moment he unexpectedly discovered Kershaw blocking the New Market and Charles City roads. To Hancock the temptation to assault Kershaw's position was strong indeed, but if he carried ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... He pleaded the probable utter impracticability of such an enterprise. He might as well have talked to a statue. It all ended with ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... book more from fear of the popular sentiment existing in its favor than from any love for the reform itself on the part of legislators, and it has lived and grown and flourished in spite of the covert as well as open hostility of spoilsmen and notwithstanding the querulous impracticability of many self-constituted guardians. Beneath all the vagaries and sublimated theories which are attracted to it there underlies this reform a sturdy common-sense principle not only suited to this mundane sphere, but whose application our people are more and more recognizing ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... Abul Hacen, after the loss of more than two thousand of his bravest troops in these precipitate assaults, became convinced of the impracticability of forcing a position, whose natural strength was so ably seconded by the valor of its defenders, and he determined to reduce the place by the more tardy but certain method of blockade. In this he was favored by one or two circumstances. The town, having but a single well within its walls, was almost ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... respective subdivisions, will afford a happy issue to the experiment. It is well worth a fair and full experiment. With such powerful and obvious motives to union affecting all parts of our country, while experience shall not have demonstrated its impracticability, there will always be reason to distrust the patriotism of those who in any quarter may ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... this semi-barbarous people is the obstacle to their being recognized as social equals. A tremendous task! Not so much to prove such an equality—for that had already been abundantly demonstrated—but rather to show the absurdity and impracticability of prejudice on account of color; or, in other words, that there is no such prejudice. It is prejudice on account ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... difficulty prudence required that the road which we had formed on landing should be continued to the very margin of the lake; whilst appearances seemed to indicate the total impracticability of the scheme. From firm ground to the water's edge was here a distance of many miles, through the very centre of a morass where human foot had never before trodden. Yet it was desirable at least to make the attempt; ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... Christianity), the American Oneida community, was successfully communistic in every respect for many years. But the modern Socialist is not a communist; the modern Socialist, making his scheme of social reconstruction for the whole world and for every type of character, recognizes the entire impracticability of such dreams, recognizing, too, it may be, the sacrifice of human personality and distinction ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... should contain only one idea. Every thought expressed has some specific work to do, and it can do it far more effectively if it stands by itself as a unit. The awkwardness and impracticability of proving the truth or falsity of a statement that makes several assertions has been treated under the head of Combined Propositions. Obviously, there are unwarrantable difficulties in grouping explanation or proof about such a statement as, "Municipal ownership has failed in Philadelphia, ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... steam has the disadvantage of radiated heat in the workings, of loss by the radiation, and, worse still, of the impracticability of placing and operating a highly efficient steam-engine underground. It is all but impossible to derive benefit from the vacuum, as any form of surface condenser here is impossible, and there can be no return of the hot soft ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... still, dreaming of the wonders of far-off places, such as could be reached by Bob Dimsted and his companion, the impracticability of such a journey never once occurring to him. Bob had been about all his life free to go and come, while he, Dexter, seemed to have been always shut up, as it were, in a cage, which had ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... — N. difficulty; hardness &c. adj.; impracticability &c. (impossibility) 471; tough work, hard work, uphill work; hard task, Herculean task, Augean task[obs3]; task of Sisyphus, Sisyphean labor, tough job, teaser, rasper[obs3], dead lift. dilemma, embarrassment; deadlock; perplexity &c. (uncertainty) 475; intricacy; entanglement, complexity ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... engagements by which not only the States but his Most Christian Majesty, are reciprocally bound to maintain the sovereignty, rights and jurisdiction of each of the thirteen States inviolably; and the utter impracticability of our acceding to any treaty of peace with Great Britain, on the principles of a uti possidetis, or on any other terms than such as shall imply an express or tacit acknowledgment of the sovereignty of each and every part, and which shall be consistent with the letter and spirit ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... interested in working out the less spectacular applications of its principles. Aviation remained very much of a poor sister in the scientific world, held back by all the discredit attaching to the early stunt-flying and by failure to break through the ancient belief in its impracticability for any purposes other ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... mental image and exclude it if it be not adapted to realization. If environment or internal inhibitions prevent this realization, however, the craving: lying back of the fancy must be diverted to a more practical channel—the normal solution—or the fancy must persist in spite of its impracticability. This latter process is the germ of the psychosis. But not its development. A certain compromise may be reached—he who digs for gold in his back-yard is not so crazy as he who reaches out his hand for the moon. Nor is the paranoic who chooses to put his interpretation ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... priests, being aware of the momentous consequences of such a change in their habits, and foreseeing the impracticability of much longer continuing the ceremonies of so-called "pagan rites," became willing to impart them to me, in order that a complete description might be made and preserved for the future information ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... to consider the rashness and apparent impracticability of his undertaking, the strange horseman, checking his rein, and burying the rowels of his spurs deep into the flanks of his steed, sent him bounding and plunging into the lake, in pursuit of ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... were produced the shorter time would the suit last. No replication or decree is recorded. The litigation apparently terminated in a compromise, doubtless hastened by Mrs. Nash's second marriage. Perhaps Edward Nash by this time realized the injustice or the impracticability of his claim. The only further allusion to it occurs in Lady Barnard's will.[201] She directs her trustees to dispose of New Place with the proviso "that my loving cousin, Edward Nash, Esq., shall have the first offer or refusal thereof, according ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... 1919, the Coal Commission had to face the physical impracticability of enforcing the demands of the Treaty, and agreed to modify them as follows:—"Germany shall in the next six months make deliveries corresponding to an annual delivery of 20 million tons as compared with 43 millions as provided in the Peace Treaty. If Germany's total production ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... that Lafayette assented to all that I said. He had reason for the impracticability of getting aside the personal interests which would be active in defeating such a reform, that involved details and a knowledge of character to which I had nothing to say; and, as respects the Duc de Bordeaux, he affirmed that ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... gratification, constitutes the sum total of life and all its enjoyments. He knows no other enjoyment, he has no higher object, or aim. It is therefore, very clear, that abolitionists are contending for an impracticability; that the two races cannot amalgamate and become one people, and enjoy equal rights and privileges; that they cannot live together on terms of perfect equality. The white man has the pre-eminence; ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... governor to protect them against the tyranny of the Court; but he endeavored to calm the agitation by representing, that by these violent measures they would only defeat their own object. He counselled them to name deputies to lay their petition before the Crown, stating the impracticability of the present scheme of reform, and praying for the repeal of it; and he conjured them to wait patiently for the arrival of the viceroy, who might be prevailed on to suspend the ordinances till further advices could ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... seem to show the impracticability on any considerable scale of a second possible expedient, namely, borrowing abroad. The amount that could be raised in any foreign market at this moment, in comparison with the sum required, is practically infinitesimal, and, if it were ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... Britons, to forgive enemies, to return them good for evil, and to love them, seemed madness. At the same time he had a feeling that in that madness itself there was something mightier than all philosophies so far. He thought that because of its madness it was impracticable, but because of its impracticability it was divine. In his soul he rejected it; but he felt that he was parting as if from a field full of spikenard, a kind of intoxicating incense; when a man has once breathed of this he must, as in the land of the lotus-eaters, ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... accomplishments, which were really remarkable, won lively admiration. His warm regard for a man like Baron Bunsen seemed to afford the best augury for the liberality of his sentiments. As yet the danger of impracticability, discouragement, confusion, and paralysis of all that had been hoped for, was but faintly indicated in the dreaminess and fancifulness of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... decline he gives no intelligible account; he would not have liked to admit the most probable causes of the fall of his ideal State, which to us would appear to be the impracticability of communism or the natural antagonism of the ruling and subject classes. He throws a veil of mystery over the origin of the decline, which he attributes to ignorance of the law of population. Of ...
— The Republic • Plato
... Germany, and in many respects was far ahead of every other German theatre, and this drew the attention of Wagner and his friends to the spot. Various causes combined to make the idea of giving the first performances of the Ring in this theatre an utter impracticability, and Wagner reverted to his old pet idea of building a theatre for himself. An eminent architect, Gottfried Semper, cheerfully helped at planning a building which should unite the utmost artistic usefulness with the ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... might as good have had the comfort of a private room, for there was none other to be had. Of the tea and coffee it might be said, as once it was said of two bad roads "whichever one you take, you will wish you had taken the other;" the beefsteak was a problem of impracticability; and the chickens Fleda could not help thinking, that a well- to-do rooster which she saw flapping his wings in the yard, must, in all probability, be at that very moment endeavouring to account for a sudden ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... and to make her repent. I thought of nothing else. At one time I would think of devoting all my intelligence and all my money to kindling an amorous passion in her heart, and then to revenge myself by treating her with contempt. But I soon realized the impracticability of such a plan, for even supposing that I should succeed in finding my way to her heart, was I the man to resist my own success with such a woman? I certainly could not flatter myself that I was so strong-minded. But I was the pet child of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... cynically, passing his hand pensively through his thick tangled locks, but Raphael saw no objection to the arrangement. As before, he felt his own impracticability borne in upon him, and he decided to sacrifice himself for the Cause as far as conscience permitted. Excessive as it was the zeal of these men, it was after all in the true groove. His annoyance returned ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... paradoxes. It proposes a language—if that be the proper name—in which things and their relations shall be denoted by signs, not words: so that any person, whatever may be his mother tongue, may read it in his own words. This is an obvious possibility, and, I am afraid, an obvious impracticability. One man may construct such a system—Bishop Wilkins has done it—but where is the man who will learn it? The second tongue makes a language, as the second blow makes a fray. There has been very little curiosity about his performance, the work is scarce; and I do not know where to refer ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... [Mr. MADISON], whose expositions of that instrument all classes, all parties, have heretofore received, and still receive, or pretend to receive, with profound deference and respect, has left on record his views of the injustice, impracticability, and inefficacy of force as a means of coercing States ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... eyes to see if I could discern any other spot at which an ascent or descent was possible. The prospect was not encouraging. At some places the face fell sheer away from the edge, and so evident was the impracticability of escape that the only place which I glanced at twice was the western side, that is the one away from the hill. Here it sloped gradually for a few feet. I took off my shoes and went down to the edge. Below, some ten feet, was a ledge, on to which with care I could get down, but below ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... enough to show how wisely Mr. Spyers dealt with them; the surplices, one would think, never needed washing; Mr. Dutton and Gerard Godfrey were paragons of lay helpers, and district visitors never were troublesome. Mrs. Edwards listened with open ears, and together they bewailed the impracticability of moving the Canon to raising Bridgefield to anything approaching to such a standard; while Nuttie absolutely cultivated her ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the people than the last. There is, I think, moreover, on their part, a desire to prove, by proper deference for the authority of the Governor-General (which they all admit has in my case never been abused), that they were libelled when they were accused of impracticability ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... campaign, as the general's extra aide-de-camp, and Lieutenant Hodgson, of the Cornwallis, as also by Lieutenant Heatley. Instantly rushing down the bank, the four officers plunged into the canal and swam across, thus proving the impracticability of fording it. ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... The impracticability of adding a stripe for each state was apparent as other states began to be admitted. Moreover, the flag of fifteen stripes, it was thought, did not properly represent the Union; therefore, on April 14, 1818, after a period of twenty-one years ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... educated and enterprising, the leaders of their race. Why? Let the facts answer. I have already said that the Church strove to continue after the war the same method of dealing with the negroes as before. She tried to keep the races together; but she has found it impractical, that impracticability growing more and more clear as the years have run on. The races have been steadily drifting apart in all social or semi-social life; the better class of each race is coming less and less into contact with each other; and race prejudice is increasing and deepening in the great ...
— Church work among the Negroes in the South - The Hale Memorial Sermon No. 2 • Robert Strange
... sixty pupils," said I; for I knew the number, and with my usual base habit of cowardice, I shrank into my sloth like a snail into its shell, and alleged incapacity and impracticability as a pretext to escape action. If left to myself, I should infallibly have let this chance slip. Inadventurous, unstirred by impulses of practical ambition, I was capable of sitting twenty years teaching ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... this enquiry; and, in hurried and confused terms, he informed Torres of the news brought by Paco, and of the plan he had devised for the rescue of Rita. Thunderstruck at the temerity of the project, Torres undertook, but at first with small success, to convince Herrera of its impracticability, and induce him to abandon it, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... expect the rising generation will be greatly improved, render particularly due to you, any examples which may teach those virtues that are not easily learnt by precept and shew the facility of what, in mere speculation, might appear surrounded with a discouraging impracticability: you are the best judge, whether, by being made public, they may be conducive to your great end of benefiting the world. I therefore submit the future fate of the following sheets entirely to you, and ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... confidently; only saying, that by an attempt there, we might probably approach nearer to the discovery.[40] He had good reason for thus guarding his expression; for the committee, who directed this voyage, admitting the impracticability of effecting a passage at Repulse Bay, had refused allowing the ships to go into it, being ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... him at Providence. The next day Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton returned to camp with the final determination of the Count D'Estaing to relinquish the meditated attack on the fleet in the harbor of New York, in consequence of the impracticability of ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... you would have known, if you had received my letters. The coup d'etat was a grand thing, dramatically and poetically speaking, and the appeal to the people justified it in my eyes, considering the immense difficulty of the circumstances, the impossibility of the old constitution and the impracticability of the House of Assembly. Now that's all over. For the rest—the new constitution—I can't say as much for it; it disappoints me immensely. Absolute government, no, while the taxes and acceptance of law lies, as he leaves it, with the people; but there are stupidities undeniable, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... straightforward with me when he saw that I knew his secret," said Clovis, "and it seems that his intentions were quite serious, if slightly unsuitable. I tried to show him the impracticability of the course that he was following. He said he wanted to be understood, and he seemed to think that Florinda would excel in that requirement, but I pointed out that there were probably dozens of delicately nurtured, pure-hearted young English girls who would be capable of understanding ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki |
