"Improbable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... centuries before in Sippara, or Larsa, or Babylon; or later in Babylon, Sippara, or Nippur? There cannot be a shadow of doubt that such documents exist in shoals somewhere in the ruins of Nineveh and will one day be found. Hence we must regard it as extremely improbable that the ordinary citizens of Nineveh contributed the records of their transactions to the Kouyunjik Collections now in the British Museum. They either kept them in their own houses or in some temple archives. As will be seen later, a few have already been found; but it is extremely ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... is an improbability?" answered her companion. "It is only a matter of the capacity of the age to receive what is new. A few years ago electricity was improbable, yet look at the telegraph and the telephone. Still further back, who would have believed that railways would exist above ground and under ground, and mock at the difficulties of rivers and mountains? What have you discovered strange ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... towards that view of the question, if it could be shown, that, in order to controvert it, we were driven to the necessity of admitting long written poems, in the ninth century before the Christian aera. Few things, in my opinion, can be more improbable; and Mr. Payne Knight, opposed as he is to the Wolfian hypothesis, admits this no less than Wolf himself. The traces of writing in Greece, even in the seventh century before the Christian aera, are exceedingly ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... nothing improbable in the claim that phenomena like these, strange, weird, startling, "were so much like miracles that they had the same effect as miracles on unbelievers." They helped break up the apathetic torpor of the church and summon the multitudes into the wilderness to hear ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... summer that he drives his cattle out into the open to crop the fresh grass, and it is on the approach of winter that he leads them back to the safety and shelter of the stall. Accordingly it seems not improbable that the Celtic bisection of the year into two halves at the beginning of May and the beginning of November dates from a time when the Celts were mainly a pastoral people, dependent for their subsistence on their herds, and when accordingly the great epochs of the year for ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... Mrs. Cowperwood had trailed them—in all probability her father. He wondered now what he should do to protect her, not himself. He was in no way deeply concerned for himself, even here. Where any woman was concerned he was too chivalrous to permit fear. It was not at all improbable that Butler might want to kill him; but that did not disturb him. He really did not pay any attention to that thought, and he was ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... of the three States of New Grenada, Venezuela, and Equador, forming the Republic of Colombia, seems every day to become more improbable. The commissioners of the two first are understood to be now negotiating a just division of the obligations contracted by them when united under one government. The civil war in Equador, it is believed, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... that," he said, busy again with the sail stops; "nor St. Chrysostom's, were he to come here and vouch for it. It is too damned improbable." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... singular coincidence, it so happened that the agent was at that very time holding a council with the chiefs of the identical band of Indians from whom she had last escaped, and they had just given a full history of the entire affair, which seemed so improbable to the agent that he was not disposed to credit it until he received its confirmation through Mr. Bent. He at once dispatched a man to follow the woman and conduct her to Council Grove, where she was kindly received, and remained for some ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... Hyksos, or Shepherd kings, in Egypt. It is not improbable that Abraham made his well-known journey to Egypt during the early reign of these kings. Joseph's visit occurred near the close ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... may seem, both he and Vizcarra would have rejoiced to see the cibolero tumble over the bluff. Horrible indeed it seems; but such were the men, and the place, and the times, that there is nothing improbable in it. On the contrary, cases of equal barbarity—wishes and acts still more inhuman—are by no means rare under ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... suppose that the substratum of limestone in all the country for many miles in the vicinity is perforated with these tremendous shafts; as those which are seen in the cave are only such as happened to be in the course of the tunnels composing the Mammoth Cave. It is not improbable that there are many others on every side, close to the line of the tunnels, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... was responsible herself for a set of love romances of an inordinate length, but of great popularity in their day, e. g. "Le Grand Cyrus" and "Clelie," &c., in which a real gift for sparkling dialogue is swallowed up in a mass of improbable adventures ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... which is saturated with the ascetic idealism of the East, the explanation which I have given of the rule of continence observed under certain circumstances by rude or savage peoples may seem far-fetched and improbable. They may think that moral purity, which is so intimately associated in their minds with the observance of such a rule, furnishes a sufficient explanation of it; they may hold with Milton that chastity in itself is a noble virtue, and that the restraint which it imposes ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... (2s.), is evidently a beginner, but he is a beginner from whom nothing is to be expected. That he has a certain gross facility in the management of sentimental narrative we will not deny. It is possible that he is destined to be the delight of "the great public." It is possible—but improbable. He has no knowledge of life, no feeling for style, no real sense of the dramatic. Throughout, from the first line to the last, his story moves on the plane of tawdriness, theatricality, and ballad pathos. There are some ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... Skipjack seemed the most improbable one of all," said his mother. "I wish he were not deprived ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pupils, and that the poet may have hoped to obtain court favour at Alexandria from this early connection. About this point nothing is certainly known, nor can we exactly understand the sort of education that was given in the school of the poet Philetas. The ideas of that artificial age make it not improbable that Philetas professed to teach the art of poetry. A French critic and poet of our own time, M. Baudelaire, was willing to do as much 'in thirty lessons.' Possibly Philetas may have imparted technical rules then ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... would crowd itself upon me. "Where are the men?" And as constantly would I be forced to the conclusion that Mizora was either a land of mystery beyond the scope of the wildest and weirdest fancy, or else they were utterly oblivious of such a race. And the last conclusion was most improbable of all. ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... it necessary to send her through the lines to her husband. The men fancied they saw signals conveyed from the house to the enemy, and believed that secret messages were sent, giving information of our numbers and movements. All this was highly improbable, for the lady knew that her safety depended upon her good faith and prudence; but such camp rumor becomes a power, and Rosecrans found himself compelled to end it by sending her away. He could no longer be answerable for her complete protection. This, however, was not till November, and ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... hope on, dream on, Nigel, and despair not," replied Seaton, in the same earnest tone. "We know not yet what may be, and, improbable as it seems now, succors may yet arrive. How long doth ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... purpose was this meeting? What was the occasion of this excited assemblage? Phileas Fogg could not imagine. Was it to nominate some high official—a governor or member of Congress? It was not improbable, so agitated was the multitude ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... would have been held as highly improbable that we would enter into such a collectivist period in half a century. Already a large part of the present generation expect to see it in their lifetime. And the constantly accelerated developments of recent years justify the belief of many that we may find ourselves ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... in their turn fallen to ruin, while they have continued the same from the beginning, and are likely to continue the same to the end: and this, in the natural course of human affairs, was so highly improbable, if not altogether impossible, that as nothing but a Divine Prescience could have foreseen it, so nothing but a Divine Power could have ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... the terrible misfortune that had happened, though as yet they hardly realized its full significance. They purposely refrained from talking about it, though each knew in his own heart how wildly improbable was the hope ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... proposes as his immediate object a moral end instead of the giving of aesthetic pleasure. His prophets and wise men are pedlars and tramps not because it is probable that they should be of this condition—it is on the contrary highly improbable—but because we are thus to be taught a salutary moral lesson. The question of language in itself, if it enters at all here, enters only as the indifferent means by which a non-poetic end is sought. The accidentality lies not in the words, but in ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... I have just said good-bye to Hilda; and though I kept up my spirits and made the best of this expedition of ours, I cannot but feel how improbable it is that we shall meet again—that is to say, in our present relations; for if I fail I certainly shall not return home for some years; it would be only fair to her that I should not do so. I know that she would keep on as long as there was any hope, but I should not care to think that ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... was unfavorable to poor Bert. His mother's straitened circumstances were well known, and it certainly did seem improbable upon the face of it that she should have a twenty-dollar bill in ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... birth of every government of Europe, and it is not at all improbable that she shall also witness the death of them all and chant their requiem. She was more than fourteen hundred years old when Columbus discovered our continent, and the foundation of our Republic is but as ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... the great moulding forces, geographical or other, must be merely guessed at. Much turns on the period assigned to the first appearance of man in this region; for that he is indigenous is highly improbable, if only because no anthropoid apes are found here. The racial type, which, with the exception of the Eskimo, and possibly of the salmon-fishing tribes along the north-west coast, is one for the whole continent, has a rather distant resemblance to that ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... so improbable that any other magistrate but Mr. Vigors would perhaps have dismissed it in contempt. But Mr. Vigors, already so bitterly prejudiced against me, and not sorry, perhaps, to subject me to the humiliation of so horrible a charge, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... phrases, which are only so much superfluous baggage for literary camp-followers. All great romancers are realists, and the converse may be true. You note it in Dumas and his gorgeous, clattering tales—improbable, but told in terms of the real. For my part, I often find them too real, with their lusty wenches and heroes smelling of the slaughter-house. Turn now to Flaubert, master of all the moderns; you may trace the romancer dear to the heart of Hugo, or the psychologist in Madame Bovary, the archaeological ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... semi-civilized; some are "blanket-Indians," so called, but there are no longer any murderous or predatory bands, and all save a few stragglers are on the reservations. From 1812 to 1876, more than half a century, they were the scourge of the West and the Northwest, but another outbreak is highly improbable. They once occupied the vast region included between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, and were always migratory in their methods of living. Over fifty years ago, when the whites first became acquainted ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... was anything disreputable attached to the lady's name is very improbable; for she was more than fifteen months in the house of Green, who was a man of wealth, and remarkable for his pride and fastidiousness in selecting his friends or acquaintances. He was the first Territorial representative of Mississippi in Congress—was at the head of society socially, and ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... lived near the Ponte Quattro Capi. It would be a relief to talk to some one, to hear the sound of a human voice. But a remnant of prudence restrained him. It was not very likely that he should be suspected; indeed, if he behaved prudently nothing was more improbable. To leave the house at such a time, however, would be the height of folly, unless it could be proved that he had gone out some time before the deed could have been done. The porter was vigilant, and Meschini almost always exchanged a few words with ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... appreciate and to avail myself of the mystery of my birth. I did not read romances and novels for nothing. So I began my mendacious career. Oh! the improbable and the impossible lies that I told, and that were retold, and all believed. I was a prince incognito; my father had coined money—and I gave my deluded listeners glimpses at pocket-pieces as proof; if I was doubted I fought. The elder boys shook their heads, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... that none was possible. Since that time the Board has been controlled by trustees, some of whom are thorough experts in bridge building, and the others men of such high character that the suggestion of malpractice is improbable to absurdity. ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... modification [Rx], which was equivalent to Recipe, Jupiter,—Take, O Jupiter! We are told that the astrological signs were thus brought into use during Nero's reign, and that the practice of Medicine was then and afterwards regulated by the government. It is not improbable that Christian physicians were obliged to follow the example of their heathen professional brethren in prefixing to ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... of the Arabian geographers assert that the diamond is found at Adam's Peak; but this is improbable, as there is no formation resembling the cascalhao of Brazil or the diamond conglomerate of Golconda. If diamonds were offered for sale in Ceylon, in the time of the Arab navigators, they must have been brought thither ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... into a sudden laugh of sheer amusement when he realized to what a wild and improbable flight his fancy was soaring. He could not quite rid himself of a feeling that Stewart was, in some mysterious fashion, responsible for his friend's vanishing, but he was unlike Ste. Marie: he did not trust his feelings, either good or bad, unless they were backed ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... discussion until a distinguished place had been found for the French philosopher." This must be set down as a myth. The journals have been searched, and there is no official confirmation of the statement, improbable enough on the face ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... as they followed the doctor upstairs. Jane Finn at last! The long-sought, the mysterious, the elusive Jane Finn! How wildly improbable success had seemed! And here in this house, her memory almost miraculously restored, lay the girl who held the future of England in her hands. A half groan broke from Tommy's lips. If only Tuppence could have been at his side to share in the triumphant conclusion of their joint venture! ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... fiery imagination of Coleridge," was a novel and untoward experiment on the part of an author whose "peculiar art" it was "to show the reader where his purpose tends." The resemblance to Coleridge is general rather than particular. It is improbable that Scott had ever read Limbo (first published in Sibylline Leaves, 1817), an attempt to depict the "mere horror of blank nought-at-all;" but it is possible that he had in his mind the following lines (384-390) from ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... them that their evidence might be used against them, it would appear like a breach of faith to treat them now as criminals." "Should the prosecution of these persons result in their acquittal, which seems to me not improbable, I fear that the good effect produced by the severe reprimand, which I understand that your Honor administered publicly to all the parties concerned in these two cases, might be to a ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... and for the penalty of perpetual imprisonment substituted that of the stake. On the 22d of April, 1529, according to most of the documents, but on the 17th, according to the Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris, which the details of the last days render highly improbable, the officers of Parliament entered Berquin's gloomy chamber. He rose quietly and went with them; the procession set out, and at about three arrived at the Place de Greve; where the stake was ready. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Aryans already believed in a personal immortality, and we agree with him. Whitney's belief that hell was not known before the Upanishad period (in his translations of the Katha Upanishad) is correct only if by hell torture is meant, and if the Atharvan is later than this Upanishad, which is improbable. ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... possibly be true; but none are irretrievably beyond the jurisdiction of scientific tests. No suggestion has so far been broached which a very little further increase of our scientific knowledge may not show to be either eminently probable or eminently improbable. We have kept pretty clear of mere subjective guesses, such as men may wrangle about forever without coming to any conclusion. The theory of the nebular origin of our planetary system has come to command ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... villa in Hackney. It is said that not only the wife of George the Third but the wife of George the Fourth believed that the marriage had taken place. We must not attach too much importance to a story which in itself is so very unlikely. It is in the last degree improbable that a statesman like Pitt would have lent himself to so singular a proceeding. Even if an enamoured young Prince were prepared to sanction his affections by a marriage, he would scarcely have found an assistant in the ablest politician of the age. The story of the Axford ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... reasoning, rest on a vicious intellectualism. I will not recapitulate my criticisms. I will simply ask you to change the venue, and to discuss the absolute now as if it were only an open hypothesis. As such, is it more probable or more improbable? ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... undertaking—is her only fault, and is tragic because inconsistent with the character of womanhood, which the Almighty has also ordained. Compared with the iron necessity of her being, to which Judith succumbs, the accidental and improbable fault of Schiller's Maid of Orleans seems as trivial as it ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... minds. Staleness is the breeding ground for all sorts of social diseases which most people attribute to quite other causes. There is a staleness in work as well as in amusement, in love as well as in hate. Variety is the only real happiness—variety, and a longing for the improbable. What we have we never appreciate after we have had it for any length of time. Doctors will tell you that an illness every nine years is a great benefit to a man. It makes him appreciate his health when it returns to him; it gives ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... Heptameron. It is not likely, however, that the French or the Italian novelist borrowed from one another. The tales of Bandello were first published in 1554, and as the Queen of Navarre died in 1549, it is improbable that she ever had an opportunity of seeing them. On the other hand, the work of the Queen was not printed till 1558, nine years after her death, so it is not likely that any part of it was copied by Bandello, whose tales had been edited some ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... without necessity had quitted Egypt and left it at the advice of Theophanes who was planning profitable occupation for Pompeius and a subject for a fresh command. But the villainy of Theophanes does not make this so probable, as the character of Pompeius makes it improbable, for he had no ambition of so ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... not derive the eosinophil cells of the blood from the bone-marrow, but assume, as very probable, that the finely granular cells grow into eosinophils within the blood-stream. This developmental process seems very improbable for many reasons. Since the polynuclear cells circulating in the blood are all under the same conditions of nutrition, it is a priori inconceivable why only a relatively small portion of them should undergo the transformation in question. ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... various known channels, by which portions of Welsh and Armoric fiction crossed the Celtic border, and gave rise to the more ornate, and widely-spread romance of the Age of Chivalry. It is not improbable that there may have existed many others. It appears then that a large portion of the stocks of Mediaeval Romance proceeded from Wales. We have next to see in what condition they are still found ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... industriously advertised in the Democratic papers. It was helped along by the Washington correspondent of The Herald who sowed broadcast the most improbable stories with regard to it. Today, Secretary Fessenden was a convert to the idea; another day, Senator Wilson had taken it up; again, the President, himself, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... Unknown, as, for example, by eating a wolf's brains, by drinking water out of a wolf's footprints, or by drinking out of a stream from which three or more wolves have been seen to drink; but as most of the stories I have heard of werwolfery acquired in this way are of a wild and improbable nature, I think there is little to be learned from the modus operandi they advocate. The following story, which I believe to be true in the main, was told me by a Dr. Broniervski, ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... disbelieved that Louis could have encouraged this audacious attempt, but they were dismayed to find that Madame de Ste. Petronelle thought it far from improbable, for she believed him capable of almost any underhand treachery. She did, however, believe that though there might be some delay, a stir would be made, if only by her own son, which would end in their situation being publicly known, and final release coming, if Jean could only ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European Literature at any rate, of prose fiction, and the comparative absence, in the two great classical languages, of what we call by that name. It might be an accident, though a rather improbable one, that we have no Greek prose fiction till a time long subsequent to the Christian era, and nothing in Latin at all except the fragments of Petronius and the romance of Apuleius. But it can be no accident, and it is a very momentous fact, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... that the region to the west was not likely to prove a Garden of Eden, and I thought it was not improbable that I might have to go 200 miles before I found any water. If unsuccessful in that way I should have precisely the same distance to come back again; therefore, with the probabilities of such a journey before me, I determined to carry out two ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... If, as seems not improbable, it should become the fashion among our merchant princes to seek health and relaxation by applying capital and commercial principles to land, good farming will spread, by force of vaccination, over the country, and plain ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... that her debts were really and truly paid. She remembered the inhuman scorn with which he had spoken of persons who failed to meet their pecuniary engagements honestly. Even if he forgave her for deceiving him—which was in the last degree improbable—he was the sort of man who would suspect her of other deceptions. He would inquire if she had been quite disinterested in attending at his bedside, and saving his life. He might take counsel privately with his only surviving partner, Mrs. Wagner. Mrs. ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... Any other thing can happen to anybody else—to you, for example—but no violence can happen to the thing or person you're trying to do something violent to. The psi field has melted down ordinary probabilities. The violence you intend has become the most improbable of ...
— The Ambulance Made Two Trips • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... been chiefly carried on through Phebe herself, who was the old man's prime favorite. Neither was he a man likely to let out anything he might wish to conceal. But still she was nervous and afraid. How far from improbable it was that through some unthought-of channel Felicita might hear that a stranger, related to Madame Sefton, had entered the household of Mr. Clifford as his confidential attendant, and that this stranger's name was Jean Merle. ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... not be a trouble to any one. Maybe in the summer they could find a nice dry cave to live in. Lots of people had lived that way. Then in a few years he would be big enough to have a house of his own. All sorts of improbable plans flocked into his little brain under cover of the darkness, but always ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... elapsed, they were tried with bits of meat, and all became quickly inflected. It then occurred to me that particles floating on the secretion would cast shadows on the glands, which might be sensitive to the interception of the light. Although this seemed highly improbable, as minute and thin splinters of colourless glass acted powerfully, nevertheless, after it was dark, I put on, by the aid of a single tallow candle, as quickly as possible, particles of cork and glass on the glands of a dozen tentacles, as well as some of meat on other glands, ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... sensation on the very morning after you left, at the disappearance of Martha Bennett, the daughter of one of your tenants. She left the house just at dusk the evening before, and has not been heard of since. As she took nothing with her, it is improbable in the extreme that she can have fled, and there can be little doubt that the poor girl was murdered, possibly by some passing tramps. However, though the strictest search was made throughout the neighbourhood, her body has never ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... was taken; many of the members were prisoners; the Governor was a fugitive in Virginia; and the Province in the hands of a force, professing to act, and probably acting, under authority of Parliament."[34] There is no authority given for the first part of this statement, though it is not improbable, and is partly substantiated by the exaggerated charges against Ingle, made by the Assembly of 1649, and the references to him in proclamations. There is no mention in the provincial records of Calvert's having being forced out of the province, but, on the ...
— Captain Richard Ingle - The Maryland • Edward Ingle
... Mr. Geraint's lively imagination, but much more so when Mr. Topham, the under-secretary, shook his head gravely, and said in his most dignified manner, that he thought the reported occurrence—the melinite incident—quite improbable. He was going on to explain that the composition of the explosive differed so materially from that of the food that it would be almost impossible for any mother to take the one for the other, when ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... unpleasant reception; they reproached me coarsely for my behaviour to Minna, whom they said I could not even manage to support, and when I only replied by asking for information as to the whereabouts of my wife, and about her plans for the future, I was put off with improbable statements. Tormented by the sharpest forebodings, and understanding nothing of what had occurred, I went back to the village, where I found a letter from Konigsberg, from Moller, which poured light on all my misery. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... discoveries, is a pleasing tale; but the evidence on which it rests is far from conclusive. Thus at Amsterdam he called the anchorage Van Diemen's Road, and where the boats went for water Maria's Bay, "in honor of our governor-general and his lady." That a daughter of the same name existed is not improbable, but who can tell whether the Maria Island of Tasmania's coast was named in complaisance to the daughter, or to conciliate the mother! In hope to confirm the agreeable fiction the journal of Tasman has been examined, ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... maps, office stores, tin despatch boxes, photographs of blonde girls, bayonets, hand bombs, ... everything dead thrust into the ditches, both men and horses, the latter smelling earlier and stronger than the former. (The more I look at dead bodies, the more childish and improbable does the old idea of personal immortality ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... have been more instant in her efforts to stop the letter, had she not felt that it would not decide everything. In the first place it was not improbable that the letter might not reach the dean till after his return home,—and Mrs Crawley had long since made up her mind that she would see the dean as soon as possible after his return. She had heard from Lady Lufton that it was not doubted in Barchester that he ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... Nor is it improbable, that the Romans early possessed this country. For though we meet not with such strict particulars of these parts before the new institution of Constantine and military charge of the count of the Saxon shore, and that about the Saxon invasions, the Dalmatian ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... is usually determined with absolute certainty. With most machines there are accidental variations in alignment. Certain letters from use become more or less imperfect, or become filled or fouled with ink. It is highly improbable that any one even of these accidents should occur in precisely the same way upon two machines, and that any two or more should do so is well nigh impossible. It is equally certain that all the habits and mannerisms of the operators would not ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... was the comment of von Liebknecht, "but you will scarcely expect us to believe that in the face of all the circumstances. We don't mean to imply that you, necessarily, know different, but the man's story as you have told it is improbable." ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... improbable, as it might be asked how, in the excitement of a battle, men of one religion could be distinguished from those of another? But this will not seem so unlikely if the circumstances arising out of the Ulster Plantation of King James I. be remembered. As a consequence of this you will find townlands ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... a stream of electricity is sent through water, I think it not improbable that hydrogen and electricity may be identical. When a piece of zinc and silver are connected together, and the zinc is put in a situation to decompose water, and oxidate, a current of hydrogen gas will ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... to accept the humble position in which he finds himself by his old family lawyer, who secretly designs to marry him to the daughter of his new employers. A scheme of this sort would not Strike a French reader as improbable, for marriage in France is often more a business arrangement than a love affair. Feuillet spent the latter part of his life in retirement, and died on December ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... of their physical and moral agency, should have effected, during a long series of ages, remarkable changes in the tribes of human beings subjected to their operation—changes which have rendered these several tribes fitted in a peculiar manner for their respective abodes—is by no means an improbable conjecture; and it becomes something more than a conjecture, when we extend our view to the diversified breeds of those animals which men have domesticated, and have transferred with themselves from one climate to another. Considered in this point of view, it acquires, perhaps, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... venerated the Solar Wheel. This had sometimes six and sometimes four spokes, {image "solarwheel1.gif"} or {image "solarwheel2.gif"}, and the warriors of their native land had long been in the habit of wearing a representation of the same upon their helmets. It is therefore not improbable that even before the date of the alleged vision when marching upon Rome, some such symbol formed the standard ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... The street cars were full of happy people rollicking off to work: policemen directed the traffic with jaunty affability: and the white-clad street-cleaners went about their poetic tasks with a quiet but none the less noticeable relish. It was improbable that any of these people knew that she was back, but somehow they all seemed to be behaving as though this ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... looked at me with their mournful made-up eyes I felt as if my wicked French heels were on their necks. I noticed one girl, particularly; there was something so gallant about her cracked and polished shoes, her mended gloves, her collar, laundered to a cobweb thinness, and about the improbable sea-shell pink in her hollow cheeks. She had a sort of eager, sharpened sweetness in her face and ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... scanned the horizon, beginning at the furthest possible quarter toward the south, and ranging to one equally improbable northward. ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... later, for at the moment he was dazed by seeing in this small light the same face he had seen over old Cameron's coffin. The sight he had had of it then had almost faded from his memory; he had put it from him as a thing improbable, and therefore imaginary; now it came before his eyes distinctly. A man's face it certainly was not, and, in the fleet moment in which he saw it now, he felt certain that it was a woman's. The match, if it was a match, went out before its wood was well kindled, and all ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... imagination of the fairy tale. A small number of scriptural and legendary stories lend themselves quite particularly to the development of such beautiful accessory, which soon becomes the paramount interest, and vests the whole with a totally new character: a romantic, childish charm, the charm of the improbable taken for granted, of the freedom to invent whatever one would like to see but cannot, the charm of the fairy story. From this unconscious altering of the value of certain Scripture tales, arises a romantic treatment ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... the land which forms its sides. All these particulars are noticed by Cook. Even the name given to it by the natives, as reported by the one, is not so entirely unlike that stated by the other, as to make it quite improbable that the two are merely the same word differently misrepresented. Cook writes it Taoneroa, and Rutherford Takomardo. The slightest examination of the vocabularies of barbarous tongues, which have been collected by voyagers and travellers, will convince every one of the extremely ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... not improbable that his daughter would come to him, but would have preferred to avoid the interview if possible. Here it was, however, ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... dead now, nor even middle-aged; but it is Wyoming mythology already—quite as fabulous as the high-jumping cow. Indeed, people gathered together and behaved themselves much in the same pleasant and improbable way. Johnson County, and Natrona, and Converse, and others, to say nothing of the Cheyenne Club, had been jumping over the moon for some weeks, all on account of steers; and on the strength of this vigorous price of seventy-five, ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... several Substances into which the Fire has divided the Concrete, to an exquisite simplicity, They pretend also to be able by the Fire to divide all Concretes, Minerals, and others, into the same number of Distinct Substances. And in the mean time I must think it improbable, that they can either truly separate as many differing Bodies from Gold (for Instance) or Osteocolla, as we can do from Wine, or Vitriol; or that the Mercury (for Example) of Gold or Saturn would be perfectly of ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... Terrier, it seems a matter of difficulty to produce a perfect Clydesdale, and until the breed is taken up with more energy it is improbable that first class dogs will make an appearance in the show ring. A perfect Clydesdale should figure as one of the most elegant of the terrier breed; his lovely silken coat, the golden brown hue of his face fringe, paws and legs, his well pricked and feathery ear, and ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... Greif's chivalrous determination. She might be a suspicious girl, who would immediately be attacked with jealousy and would imagine that Greif loved another and wished to be free from herself. On the whole, Rex, in his worldly wisdom, thought it improbable that Hilda would turn out to be sincere, simple and loving, whereas for her own interest it was important that she should possess these qualifications. Lastly, Rex reflected that Hilda might very well be a selfish, reticent, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... were inadmissible, and liable from their very extravagance to be considered as mere pretexts, deliberately adopted with a view to aggravate the quarrel and prevent a reconciliation. It is difficult to admit any other explanation of the extraordinary policy of the Southern leaders. It is not improbable that they will henceforward acknowledge such to have been the motive of their principal political acts for many years past. The terrible events now passing before our saddened eyes, are too solemn and weighty, not to be understood ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... in Mr. Michael Johnson's circumstances should think of sending his son to the expensive University of Oxford, at his own charge, seems very improbable. The subject was too delicate to question Johnson upon. But I have been assured by Dr. Taylor that the scheme never would have taken place had not a gentleman of Shropshire, one of his schoolfellows, spontaneously undertaken to support him at Oxford, in the character ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... disconnected and absent-minded as her conversation with him. It almost certainly wasn't Mrs. Britling's. The girl next to him or the girl next to Mr. Britling or the lady in black might any of them be married, but if so where was the spouse? It seemed improbable that they would wheel out a foundling ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... my conscientious wife to yield her scruples to our heart's necessity. 'Great God!' I thought aloud—for none could hear me there—'how dreadfully that secret marriage will compromise my wife! Who will believe us without a witness of what I must assert—a story so improbable that I would not believe it myself? I must say that I married my wife secretly from my father's house, confessing deceit for both of us, and with Agnes's religious professions, a sin in the church's estimation. If there could be an excuse for me, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... relation to the story, is an interesting and well-constructed tale, in which Mr. Trowbridge has introduced what we believe is a new element in American fiction, the French Canadian. The plot is simple and not too improbable, and the characters well individualized. Here, also, Mr. Trowbridge is most successful in his treatment of the less ambitiously designed figures. The relation between the dwarf Hercules fiddler and the heroine Marie seems to be a suggestion from Victor Hugo's Quasimodo and Esmeralda, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... regimental badge in his grey Norfolk jacket. But an Englishman of his class would be hardly likely to wear either once he had left the Army. It was almost certain that he must have seen service in the war, and by no means improbable that he had been bowled over by shell-shock, like many thousands more of equally splendid specimens of young manhood. Any other conclusion to account for the strange condition of a young man like him seemed ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... surprise, on the occasional display of reason, even in a common degree, where the faculties are understood to be disordered. Still it is singular, that the observers should have recourse for explanation to so injurious and so improbable a supposition, as that of supernatural agency. What has often, been said of sol-lunar and astral influence on the human mind, the opinion of which is pretty widely spread over the world, may be interpreted so as perfectly ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... admit that these grave defects were attended by striking merits, which pleaded in mitigation of literary sentence. It was stamped with a truth, earnestness, and vital power, of which its predecessor gave no promise. Though the story was improbable, it seized upon the attention with a powerful grasp from the very start, and the hold was not relaxed till the end. Whatever criticism it might challenge, no one could call it dull: the only offence in a book which neither gods nor men nor counters can pardon. If the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... going to prostrate myself to kiss his hoof, he did me the honour to raise it gently to my mouth. I am not ignorant how much I have been censured for mentioning this last particular. Detractors are pleased to think it improbable, that so illustrious a person should descend to give so great a mark of distinction to a creature so inferior as I. Neither have I forgotten how apt some travellers are to boast of extraordinary favours they have received. But, if these censurers were better ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... manned by United States soldiers, on Humber Island. It was one of the chain of forts that guarded the approaches to Rock Haven. And Bessie had an idea that she would be able to find someone at the fort to believe her story, wild and improbable as she knew it must sound. The great problem now was to get out ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart
... the highest degree improbable that anything should come hurling through the air and alight on our little planet, which we know is a mere speck in a great ocean of space; but we must not forget that the power of gravity increases the chances greatly, ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... the shack, nearly seven years ago. How tense they both had been, how afraid of each other, how she had irritated him! Well, he had grown accustomed to her at last, thanks be. Was he, perhaps, foolish not to get more out of their life—it was not improbable that a child might come. Why had he been taking it so for granted that this was out of the question? When one got right down to it, just what was the imaginary obstacle that was blocking the realization of this deep wish? Her chance of not pulling ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... Oliver Goldsmith, whose Vicar of Wakefield, 1766, was the earliest, and is still one of the best, novels of domestic and rural life. The book, like its author, was thoroughly Irish, full of bulls and inconsistencies. Very improbable things happened in it with a cheerful defiance of logic. But its characters are true to nature, drawn with an idyllic sweetness and purity, and with touches of a most loving humor. Its hero, Dr. Primrose, was painted after Goldsmith's father, a poor clergyman of the English ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... broken leg, and his very life seemed leaving him; yet he remembered afterwards how the marine recalled his fellows, and how, in the pause before they returned, his face became like one formerly known to the sick senses of Kinraid; yet it was too like a dream, too utterly improbable to be real. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... We have heard nothing of it, and it is highly improbable. If there be such a story, let me beg you will not ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... Liszt—who was at the time in Italy—and Karasowski speak only from hearsay, we cannot do better than accept George Sand's account, which contains nothing improbable. In connection with this migration to the south, I must, however, not omit to mention certain statements of Adolph Gutmann, one of Chopin's pupils. Here is the substance of what Gutmann told me. Chopin was anxious to go to Majorca, but for some time was kept in suspense ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... "I consider it not improbable myself," said Charles, with a faint smile, and he changed the conversation. I really cannot put down here all that he proceeded to say in the most cold-blooded manner concerning Carr and Aurelia, or as he would call them, Mr. and Mrs. Brown, alias Sinclair, alias ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... Explain yourself; for, really, you are putting forward the most improbable facts without any proof whatever. It's easy enough to say that I stole the notes. And how were you to know that they were here at all? Who brought them here? Why should the murderer choose this flat to hide them in? It's all so ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... "I think it improbable," was the grim reply. "And if you'll allow me to say so, Ma'am, when I do stay anywhere, I prefer a house where I can be sure of the sort of people I am ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... surprises! At Pass Christian yesterday morning, Faye and I were sitting on the veranda reading the papers in an indifferent sort of way, when suddenly Faye jumped up and said, "The Third has been ordered to Montana Territory!" At first I could not believe him—it seemed so improbable that troops would be sent to such a cold climate at this season of the year, and besides, most of the regiment is at Pittsburg just now because of the great coal strike. But there in the Picayune ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... hesitating at accepting my views. To me, however, your theory of hosts of existing species migrating over the tropical lowlands from the N. temperate to the S. temperate zone appears more speculative and more improbable. For where could the rich lowland equatorial flora have existed during a period of general refrigeration sufficient for this? and what became of the wonderfully rich Cape flora, which, if the temperature of tropical Africa had been so recently lowered, would certainly have ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... was dawning upon me that perhaps this was a plan of the black's, who had set fire to one of the huts and then seized the opportunity to get the prisoner away. It was like the Australian to do such a thing as this, for he was cunning and full of stratagem, and though it was improbable the idea was growing upon me, when all at once a tremendous weight seemed to fall upon my head and I was dashed to the earth, with a sturdy savage pressing me down, dragging my hands behind me, and beginning to fasten them with some ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... gradually became convinced that the only existence of which he could be quite certain was his own. He imagined a deceitful demon, who presented unreal things to his senses in a perpetual phantasmagoria; it might be very improbable that such a demon existed, but still it was possible, and therefore doubt concerning things perceived ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... that the colored people have debating-societies among themselves. It was an assault and battery case; one of the disputants, in the heat of the argument, struck the other; but then they have precedents for that in the House of Representatives. Is it an impossible, or improbable, or a disproved supposition, that a number of slaves, having agreed together to desert their masters, or having concerted such a plan with somebody here, Drayton was employed to come and take them away, and that he received them on board without ever having ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... calmly, I find it very improbable. The delay, doubtless, was simply owing to inadvertency on the part of subordinate agents. Enraged as I was, I heard with still more excited feelings that my companions were about to celebrate Easter week ere their departure. As for me, I considered it wholly impossible, inasmuch ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... name formally given the family, and is therefore accepted. Recent investigations of the dialect spoken at Taos and some of the other pueblos of this group show a considerable body of words having Shoshonean affinities, and it is by no means improbable that further research will result in proving the radical relationship of these languages to the Shoshonean family. The analysis of the language has not yet, however, proceeded far enough to ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell
... yearning was almost more than she could bear, and that she must arise and go forth and seek this straying sheep of the fold of Poe. But alas, she was but a woman, without money and without a clue upon which to begin to work save such as wild, improbable and contradictory rumors afforded. That was, after all, what she most needed—a clue. If she could only find a clue, poor as she was, she would follow it to the ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... girl is Calpurnia; and Caius Marius was a native of Arpinum, and when this town was taken by the Romans from the Samnites, in B.C. 188, the franchise was given to the inhabitants, who were enrolled in the Calpurnian gens. Now this is a little fact that it is most improbable a forger would know—but it quite explains the girl receiving the ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... daughter of David Lillie, sometime Deacon of the Wrights, married, first, Alan Stevenson, who died May 26, 1774, "at Santt Kittes of a fiver," by whom she had Robert Stevenson, born 8th June 1772; and, second, in May or June 1787, Thomas Smith, a widower, and already the father of our grandmother. This improbable double connection always tends to confuse a student of the family, Thomas ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Fitzedward Hall remarks, in his "Recent Exemplifications of False Philology": "That any one but Cobbett would abide this as English is highly improbable; and how the expression—a quite classical one—which he discards can be justified grammatically, except by calling its than a preposition, others may resolve at their leisure ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres) |
