"Indefensible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... painted one slaveholder as gentle and generous. Simon Legree, her villain, is a Yankee who has moved South and taken advantage of the power of a master to work evil. Such men have come South. Such things might be done. It is precisely this possibility that makes Slavery indefensible. You know ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... seemed to her sufficient excuse for her own delinquencies. It was absurd to think of tragic melodramas; no, everything wound up with universal happiness. However, while she had thus been indulging in the cowardly, but pleasing, thought that nothing was absolutely indefensible, Juliette and Pauline had opened the door of the pavilion, and were now dragging Malignon in their train into the garden. And, all at once, Helene heard Henri speaking to her in ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... Crawley was at Framley Parsonage. Old Lady Lufton's strategy had been quite intelligible, but some people said that in point of etiquette and judgment and moral conduct, it was indefensible. Her vicar, Mr Robarts, had been selected to be one of the clergymen who was to sit in ecclesiastical judgment upon Mr Crawley, and while he was so sitting Mr Crawley's daughter was staying in Mr Robarts's ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... are or as they appear to be. That will be admitted; but it will be urged that the hampering and limiting with which we have been dealing is not merely legitimate but inevitable, whereas the hampering and limiting—should such there be—on the part of the Church is wholly illegitimate and indefensible. ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... the only thoroughly logical people in the world, and their excessive development of the logical faculty leads them at times into pitfalls. "Ils ont lesdefauts de leurs qualites." In this country we have found out that systems, absolutely indefensible in theory, at times work admirably well in practice, and give excellent results. No Frenchman would ever admit that anything unjustifiable in theory could possibly succeed in practice—"Ce n'est pas logique," he would object, and there would ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... colonists. The former are at present heavily taxed; the latter pay relatively very little. It may be suggested that it would be worth the while of the French Government to consider whether this change should not occupy the first place in the programme of reform. The present system is obviously indefensible on general grounds, whilst its continuance, until its abolition results from the strong native pressure which will certainly ensue after the adoption of any drastic measure of political reform, would appear to be undesirable. It would probably be wise and statesmanlike ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... great role in imaginative sketches of winter life in the high north, and it is in the popular idea so connected with the ice and snow of the Polar lands, that most of the readers of sketches of Arctic travel would certainly consider it an indefensible omission if the author did not give an account of the aurora as seen from his winter station. The scientific man indeed knows that this neglect has, in most cases, been occasioned by the great infrequency of the strongly luminous aurora just in the Franklin archipelago on the north coast of America, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... went, and, as intended, upset the apple-cart which the general subsequently tried to drive over the brigadier's prostrate form. In the strict letter of the military law which, in so many cases, subordinates individual initiative and sound judgment, the action taken by the brigadier was indefensible. But as a matter of fact the mutiny was not so terrible as it at first appears. Setting aside the common-sense issue which ought to guide officers in senior commands when accepting orders from a superior, it should be remembered that the brigadier had only been directed ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... acquaintance with Continental opinion on the topic under consideration, I read with amazement "M.'s" assertion that "the majority in number," "the most weighty in authority" of the writers on international law "have never failed to protest against such practices as indefensible in principle." The fact is that the objections made by, e.g. Lord Palmerston in 1846, and by several writers of textbooks, to pacific blockade, had reference to the abuses connected with the earlier stages ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... such prominent features in the Japanese life of the past. Some Western writers have attempted to poke a mild kind of fun at this proneness of the Japanese for the "happy despatch" on what seemed to the writers very flimsy or trivial grounds. To me, on the contrary, the practice of hara-kiri, indefensible as it may be in some respects, indicates the existence of a high code of honour, the slightest infringement of which rendered life intolerable. The sword then had innumerable functions, and, like almost every article of utility in Japan, it became the subject of elaborate ornamentation. ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... mistake, Wolff," Seaman declared angrily. "I am your superior in the Service, and your attitude towards me is indefensible." ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to the moment of his leaving the Convention, Mr. Field had manifested great zeal and ability in sustaining and defending the principles which a majority of the delegation desired to advocate, and his failure at the last, and decisive vote, was as unexpected as it was indefensible. ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... in A.D. 256, addressed the eighty-seven bishops assembled in the Council of Carthage, and told them that they were all on an equality, he might have felt that the doctrine of episcopal parity, as then understood, must be given up as indefensible if assailed by the skill of a vigorous logician. Who could believe that the bishop of Carthage held exactly the same official rank as every one of his episcopal auditors? He was the chief pastor ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... hotly and instinctively on the side of the woman. She had thrown herself, therefore, with ardour into the defence of Mrs. Verrier; and for her it was not the wife's desertion, but the husband's suicide which had been the cruel and indefensible thing. All these various traits and liberalisms had made her very dear ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... asserted to be those of the Temple of Somnauth. Lord Ellenborough gave instructions to General Nott to bring back with him to India both the mace and the gates. The latter, as is well-known, now lie mouldering in the lumber-room of the fort at Agra, for their authenticity is absolutely indefensible; but the mace could nowhere be found by the British plunderer. Mahmud reigned from 997 to 1030 A.D., and in his days Ghuznee was probably the first city in Asia. The extensive ruins of his city stretch northwards along the Cabul road for more than two miles from the present town; but all ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... Mountclere; and, at other times, whether, for safety, she might marry him without previously revealing family particulars hitherto held necessary to be revealed—a piece of conduct she had once felt to be indefensible. The ingenious Ethelberta, much more prone than the majority of women to theorize on conduct, felt the need of some soothing defence of the actions involved in any ambiguous course before finally committing ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... alleged, to all the laws of civilized warfare, and defying him to a combat in the open field. Marion replied, that the practice of the British in burning the houses of all who would not submit and join them, was more indefensible than that of shooting pickets, and that as long as they persisted in the one he would persevere in the other. That as to his defiance, he considered it that of a man in desperate circumstances; but if he wished to witness a combat ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... pleaded guilty to the impeachment. It is not long since a great majority of our free population, servile to the opinions of those whose opinions they had been accustomed to follow, would have admitted slavery to be a great evil, unjust and indefensible in principle, and only to be vindicated by the stern necessity which was imposed upon us. Thus stimulated by every motive and passion which ordinarily actuate human beings—not as to a criminal enterprise, but as to something generous and heroic—what has been the result? A few imbecile and ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... what I did. She even turned, with pretty courtesy, to hold the light for me at the crypt steps,—a service that I accepted perforce and with joyless acquiescence in the irony of it. I knew that I did not believe in her; her conduct as to Pickering was utterly indefensible,—I could not forget that; but the light of her eyes, her tranquil brow, the sensitive lips, whose mockery stung and pleased in a breath,—by such testimony my doubts were alternately reinforced and disarmed. Swept by these changing moods ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... these, back of individuals, he sees humanity, superior to individuals, superior to states, governments, and laws, and holds that he may trample on them all or give them to the winds at the call of humanity or "the higher law." The principle on which he acts is as indefensible as the personal or egoistical democracy of the slaveholders and their sympathizers. Were his socialistic tendency to become exclusive and realized, it would found in the name of humanity a complete social despotism, which, proving impracticable from its very generality, would ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... Everett you are wrong; And your superannuated allies, TYPE and FIGURE, whom I disdain to combat, cannot aid you to defend what is indefensible. ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... Scotchman is far truer of this type of Puritan Irishman; he does not see things suddenly in a new light; all his brilliancy is a blindingly rapid calculation and deduction. Bernard Shaw never said an indefensible thing; that is, he never said a thing that he was not prepared brilliantly to defend. He never breaks out into that cry beyond reason and conviction, that cry of Lamb when he cried, "We would indict ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... any doubts about the right and wrong of an attempt to thwart the sheriff before, Laura had none now. Perhaps her course was indefensible; but intuitively she believed that farmer to be a bad man. And she was sure that he was the one who had set the sheriff on ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... of himself, and anxious too. His inflammable temper had rather out-flamed itself in its last-recorded performance, and he had begun to suspect that it had been responsible for some, though by no means all, of his troubles. The killing of Haig's bull, he now realized, was a foolish and indefensible act, which could be traced easily to him because of the bull that was gored; and he must prepare to account to Haig for it. And so, knowing that he would again be in the wrong, as in the affair at the post-office, ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... immediate subject of these observations is slight and trivial; but the evil itself is wide-spread and important, and deserves severe reprehension, as many portions of our national history have been strangely disfigured by such indefensible practices. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... not count for any practical purpose.... These monsters are the laughing-stock of everyone who takes the smallest interest in the subject. They are quite indefensible, and not worth making, even if they were unobjectionable, for the simple reason that everything we require can be done by smaller weapons.... It is believed that more of these useless monsters are to be made by way of reserve. It is an insane policy, designed simply to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... play' between his colleagues, and that he had not seen it, and should couple this charge with a promise to press for an inquiry into the working of the department whenever there should be a change of Government, is indefensible." ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... them of their office, and to turn them out of their livings; to do this, not by the power of their legal visitors or governors, but by acts of the legislature, and to do it without forfeiture and without fault; whether all this be not in the highest degree an indefensible and arbitrary proceeding, is a question of which there would seem to be but one side fit for a lawyer or ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... extraordinary opinion, made use of it to restore the lapsed dogma of the two principles, or two gods, the one good, the other evil, as if this dogma were a better solution to the difficulties over the origin of evil. Yet again he acknowledges that it is an indefensible opinion and that the oneness of the Principle is incontestably founded on a priori reasons; but he wishes to infer that our Reason is confounded and cannot meet her own objections, and that one should disregard them and hold fast the revealed dogmas, which teach ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... the North, whose motive for supporting the indefensible regime established by the Reconstruction Act has already been noted, used, of course, the "atrocities" of the Ku-Klux-Klan as electioneering material in the North. "Waving the bloody shirt," it was called. But the North was getting tired of it, and was beginning ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... of telegraph. According to a British law the telegraph was required to be a Government monopoly. This law had been passed six years before the telephone was born, but no matter. The telephone men protested and argued. Tyndall and Lord Kelvin warned the Government that it was making an indefensible mistake. But nothing could be done. Just as the first railways had been called toll-roads, so the telephone was solemnly declared to be a telegraph. Also, to add to the absurd humor of the situation, Judge ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... potential prime ministers Macdonald had advanced to the first place by reason of gifts precisely suited to the demands of the hour. Lord Monck's choice was therefore justified. Nor was the resolve to abolish the awkward and indefensible system of a dual premiership less open to question. It may have given pain to Cartier, but it was a wise ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... and does not care for style."[166] The era of vulgarity in national politics was ushered in by Jackson, who as President introduced the custom of rewarding political workers with offices, an innovation entirely indefensible; he ought to have continued the practice of his six predecessors. The interaction between government and politics on the one hand and the life of the people on the other is persistent, and it may be doubted whether the United States would have ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... wholly justifiable; and, conversely, the Northern States, in forcibly preventing secession and compelling the inhabitants of the States composing the Confederacy to remain under the authority of the Federal Government, would have perpetrated a great and indefensible wrong against the people of the South by depriving them of a right to which they were by nature entitled. This is the logic of the application of the principle of "self-determination" to the political rights at issue in the ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... began to long for a solution which he knew to be indefensible from every point of view; he began to hope, that is, in the depths of his heart, that the lodger would again go out one evening on his horrible ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... were stationed, were called into the field, and the concentration of all at Corinth, in Northern Mississippi, was arranged. Here he would have every thing massed and in hand, and in his rear would be no danger, nor indefensible line by which danger could menace him. His adversaries on the contrary would be separated from each other; rivers and all the perils of a hostile population would be between them and safety, if they were defeated or forced to turn and retreat; energy and promptness ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... had bought their monastery for three hundred marks of the king, and when they would not budge, he chased them away with beating and maiming, sacked their house, burnt their charters, and so on. Hugh was against this too vigorous gentleman, who was clearly indefensible; but it was by no means because he was blindly prejudiced in favour of monks, for he seems to have supported the Bishop of Rochester against his monks. These disputes of astonishing detail, are very important in the history ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... of use, with those honest men who will not go the whole way. That independent co-operation can serve the full purpose of the binding alliance that has proved fatal. Above all, let there be no charge of bad faith against the earnest man who chooses other ways than ours; it is altogether indefensible because we disagree with him to call his motives in question. Often he is as earnest as we are; often has given longer and greater service, and only qualifies his own attitude in anxiety to meet others. To this we ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... judgement, and practical sagacity. The sole important issue was the encouraging of the peace party at Paris, with a view to the revocation of the aggressive decrees of the Convention. In private, Fox had admitted that they were wholly indefensible; and yet, in order to snatch an oratorical triumph, he fired off a diatribe which could not but stiffen the necks of the French Jacobins. At such a crisis the true statesman merges the partisan in the patriot and says not a word to weaken his own ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... which he dealt with the potato blight, and consequent Irish Famine, is indefensible. His policy from first to last was a policy of delay—delay in a case in which delay was ruin. He went on by slow and almost imperceptible degrees preparing his colleagues for his altered views on the Corn duties; talking and writing ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... Christian; the only man alive who thinks concerning the person and doctrines of Christ what he himself thought and taught." His "Letter concerning the two first chapters of Luke" has the further title, "Who was the father of Christ?" He calls "not absolutely indefensible" the opinion of the anonymous German author of the "Natural History of Jesus of Nazareth," that Joseph of Arimathaea was the father of Jesus Christ. He mentions that "a more recent anonymous theorist, with greater plausibility, imagines that the acolytes employed in the Temple of Jerusalem were ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... that a coolness had sprung up between Pope and Addison. Considering Pope's offences against the senate, his ridicule of Philips, his imposition of that ridicule upon Steele, and his indefensible use of Addison's fame as a stalking-horse in the attack upon Dennis, it is not surprising that he should have been kept at arm's length. If the rod suspended by Philips at Button's be authentic (as seems probable), the ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... of the country, but which long survived to be a stain and disgrace to it. A measure so miserably false in principle as to render civil and military qualifications dependent upon a sacramental test must in any case be worse than indefensible. As all feel now, and as many felt even ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... first conception of the finale of "Tannhauser," for instance, was beautiful, poetical, and reasonable; for the sake of a spectacle he reconstructed it after the original production and plunged it into indefensible ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... and art. Its attitude toward them has been determined by temperamental indifference to their appeal. It forgets the significance of their intellectual and emotional sources. This is, then, provincialism and obtuseness and nowhere are they by their very nature more indefensible or more disastrous than ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... spelling of "segar" often occurs. A few folk still cling to this spelling—there was a "segar-shop" in the Strand till quite recently, and I saw the notice "segars" the other day over a small tobacco-shop in York—which has no authority, and on etymological grounds is indefensible. The derivation of "cigar" is not altogether clear; but the probabilities are strongly in favour of its connexion with "cigarra," the Spanish name for the cicada, the shrilly-chirping insect familiar in the southern countries of Europe, and the subject of frequent allusions ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... morning before had betrayed him into her hands, bound and captive. It was a smile that passed swiftly, like a flash of sunshine over a garden of gay flowers. It brought out unsuspected, ambushed dimples. It did fascinating and wholly indefensible things to her lips. It filled her eyes with gracious, beautiful meanings. Inez ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... nature. Unless, indeed, it be true, as I have heard it main- tained, that in the Middle Ages every one did go mad, - every one was mad. The theory that this was a period of general insanity is not altogether indefensible. ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... permitted the last opportunity for annihilating the invaders to escape. As to Kutusoff, who was fully informed concerning the utter disintegration of the "grand army," his conduct in holding back the main Russian force at the crucial moment is utterly indefensible; he saved thousands of his troops, perhaps, but he has passed into history as the man who is indirectly responsible for the rivers of blood which were still to drench the continent of Europe. Both he ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... any claim of the Cherokees to the above country, it is altogether new and indefensible; and never was heard of, until the appointment of Mr. Stewart to the superintendency of the Southern colonies, about the year 1764; and this, we flatter ourselves, will not only be obvious from the following state of facts, but that the right ...
— 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
... Clarke's tone was sneering. "You people don't try to understand them; you can't come down to it. Standing firm on your colour prejudice and official traditions, you expect the others to agree with you. It's an indefensible policy." He turned to the Hudson's Bay agent. "You ought to know something about the matter. On the whole, the Hudson's Bay treat the Indians well; there was a starving lad you picked up suffering from snow-blindness near Jack-pine river and sent ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... Mary. "It was the hardest task of all. Of you, Jacob, I have to ask forgiveness for depriving you of your early and truest friend—yes, and for much more. Of you, sir," addressing the Dominie, "for my conduct towards you, which was cruel and indefensible—will you forgive me?" ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... neighbor,—to rob a miser and distribute his goods,—to marry Rochester, while his insane wife is living, (for Jane Eyre,)—to put to death an imbecile and uncomfortable grandmother, (for a Feegeean,)—these are actions which are indefensible, though the balance of public advantages might seem greatly in their favor. It is probable that at this moment a great good would be done to this nation and to the world by the death of Jefferson Davis; yet the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Cathedral was, beyond doubt, the last portion of the original design to be carried out, for among its details the ball-flower, a typical feature of the decorated style, frequently occurs. The governing idea of its facade is indefensible. Not merely because in common with Wells, Lincoln, and other churches, it does not emphasize the construction of the nave and aisles, and hides them by a screen, but because the screen itself poses as an integral part of the building. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... baseless and indefensible critical assertion. It is evidently to be ascribed to the fact that the metre of the ancient ballads is employed in both plays. But my tone is quite different from Hertz's; the language of my play has a different ring; a light summer breeze plays over the rhythm of my ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... those national achievements which men justify to themselves as a patriotic feat, or, it may be, a necessity of empire, and it is not classified among punishable offences at all. And then it is necessary to remember that many things that are indefensible when only a few do them, seem to become, by an extraordinary method of reasoning, regarded as allowable when so many people do them that a spurious public opinion and a decadent fashion is born, which shelters them and prevents the light of an unbiassed ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... position to offer any effectual resistance. The fort was weak and indefensible. The English inhabitants consisted only of a hundred civilians, and two hundred soldiers. Governor Morse endeavoured to obtain, from the nawab, the protection which he had before granted to Dupleix, a demand which the nawab at ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... another name than his own, because he was parted from his wife, because he left England practically penniless to earn an honest living—no one had shown it was not—was the last resort of legal desperation. It was an indefensible thing to endeavour to create prejudice against a man because of his own evidence given with great frankness. Not one single word of evidence had the defence brought to discredit Crozier, save by Crozier's own word of mouth; and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... chief merchandise. The streets were paved, but the pavements were of large irregular stones, and unevenly laid. Few houses were new, and, excepting St. John's Church, the public edifices were mean. All these have been swept away by the recent conflagration, a waste of property indefensible on any military principles. The buildings might have furnished winter-quarters for our troops, but in that climate they were not necessary for that purpose, perhaps not desirable, or, if required, could be easily replaced by temporary habitations constructed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... in crowded House thought of these miserable men. HARCOURT made his speech; GORST demonstrated that Motion was indefensible, being both too late and too soon; the Mouse came and went amid a spasm of thrilled interest; GLADSTONE delivered oration in dinner-hour; PARNELL fired up at midnight; House divided, and SPEAKER left the Chair. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... as a wise man when he moved the capital of Israel from Shechem, an indefensible site, commanded by overhanging mountains and approached by two easy vales, to Shomron, the "watch-hill" which stands in the centre of the broad ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... truth, revealed by the insight of Gall. One of the results of this great discovery may at times underlie the plural use of the important word intellect when applied to one individual. If so, it were still indefensible. It has, we suspect, a much less philosophic origin, and proceeds from the unsafe practice of overcharging the verbal gun in order to make more noise in the ear of the listener. The plural is correctly used when we speak of two or ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... actors even resort to blandishments of costume to give their parts a special emphasis. Our leading ladies are more richly clad than the minor members of their companies. Even the great Mansfield resorted in his performance of Brutus to the indefensible expedient of changing his costume act by act and dressing always in exquisite and subtle colors, while the other Romans, Cassius included, wore the same togas of unaffected white throughout the play. This was a ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... is obtained, a new and (to us) horrible animal appears upon the scene—the Head Hunter. Again and again we have reasoned with our boys against this bestial practice; but reason and (upon this one point) even ridicule are vain. They admit it to be indefensible; they allege its imperative necessity. One young man, who had seen his father take a head in the late war, spoke of the scene with shuddering revolt, and yet said he must go and do likewise himself in the war which was to come. How else could a man ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pleasant obstacles. Out of any homely and trivial object he could drag reels of exaggeration, like a conjurer. Nothing could be more shy and impersonal than poor Arthur's photography. Yet the preposterous Smith was seen assisting him eagerly through sunny morning hours, and an indefensible sequence described as "Moral Photography" began to unroll about the boarding-house. It was only a version of the old photographer's joke which produces the same figure twice on one plate, making a man play chess with himself, dine with himself, and ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... favoured the proletariat. A crime against the Republic was indefensible, but one against the individual was dealt with, with all the paraphernalia of an elaborate administration of justice. There were citizen judges and citizen advocates, and the rabble, who crowded in to listen to the trials, acted ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... because of its immediate effect upon the temper of the time, food was very scarce and prices had risen to indefensible heights. The army was short of shoes. In the newspapers, as winter came on, were to be found touching descriptions of Lee's soldiers standing barefoot in the snow. A flippant comment of Benjamin's, that the shoes had probably been traded for whiskey, did not tend to improve matters. Even though ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... prodigal sons. His proposal to Lincoln to seek a quarrel with four European nations, who had done us no harm, in order to arouse a feeling of Americanism in the Confederate States, was an outgrowth of this conviction. It was an indefensible proposition, akin to that which prompted Bismarck to make use of France as an anvil on which to hammer and weld Germany together, but it was not an unpatriotic one, since it was bottomed on a desire to preserve ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... provided for on the principle of making it as disagreeable as possible for yourself, in order to deter you from again accepting the hospitality of the rates,—and of course in defence of this a good deal can be said by the Political Economist. But what seems utterly indefensible is the careful precautions which are taken to render it impossible for the unemployed Casual to resume promptly after his night's rest the search for work. Under the existing regulations, if you are compelled to seek refuge on Monday ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... good faith and should destroy on the high seas an American vessel or the lives of American citizens, it would be difficult for the Government of the United States to view the act in any other light than as an indefensible violation of neutral rights, which it would be very hard, indeed, to reconcile with the friendly relations now happily ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... provided good cause is shown why it should be so accepted; but that it should be accepted as a matter of understanding—as a statement making the order of the universe comprehensible—is a quite indefensible position."'[31] ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... found indefensible has been your handling of the border slave states of Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri. You have not yet declared the slaves free in these states, the only ones in which you actually have the power to ...
— A Man of the People - A Drama of Abraham Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... practically useless, and for this reason no one bothered about them. No provision appears to have been made for the supply of such necessities of trench warfare by the Home Authorities. This appears to be indefensible, as I believe very early in the operations their provision was specially asked for by G.H.Q. The absolute failure to supply such articles of vital necessity eventually led to the French C.-in-C. at Helles lending the British two demizel trench mortars and large quantities of ammunition. These ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... social, moral, and political. In the Virginia constitutional convention—of 1829 there were men who had the wisdom to perceive and the firmness to declare that slavery was not only incompatible with the honor and prosperity of the state, but wholly indefensible on any grounds which could be consistently taken by a republican people. In the debate on the same subject in the legislature in 1832, universal and impartial democracy found utterance from eloquent lips. We might say ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... kingdom of Upper Italy under Charles Albert, to which every other consideration is to be sacrificed, and Lord Normanby's alteration of the terms certainly serve that purpose well; but it is quite independent of the question of mediation, and the only thing in the whole proceeding which is indefensible in principle. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... indefensible—it follows the line of least resistance, and sacrifices the spirit to the flesh. Materially, it is fraught with grave danger to the home and to our national existence. It is proposed to disseminate a knowledge of contraceptive methods throughout the overcrowded homes ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... but might well seem to the king as capricious as those of Fairyland.' The tremendously suggestive thing of the whole story of Becket is that Henry II submitted to being thrashed at Becket's tomb. It was like 'Cecil Rhodes submitting to be horsewhipped by a Boer as an apology for some indefensible death incidental to the Jameson Raid.' Undoubtedly Chesterton has got at the kernel of the story that made an Archbishop a saint (a rare occurrence) and an English king a sportsman (a ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... despatch of Jan. 22,/Feb. 1, 1686, and from the expressions of the Pere d'Orleans (Histoire des Revolutions d'Angleterre, liv. xi.), it is clear that rigid Catholics thought the King's conduct indefensible.] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... it from a trait of character to the dignity of a point of view. The established law of self-sacrifice which had guided her mother's life was not only personally distasteful to her—it was morally indefensible. She was engaged not in illustrating precepts of conduct, but in realizing her independence; and this realization of herself appeared to her as the supreme and peculiar obligation of her being. Though she was less fine than Jenny, who in her studious way was a ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... my stand absolutely, where every progressive ought to take his stand, on the proposition that private monopoly is indefensible and intolerable. And there I will fight my battle. And I know how to fight it. Everybody who has even read the newspapers knows the means by which these men built up their power and created these monopolies. Any decently equipped lawyer can suggest to you statutes by which ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... Ministry and Parliament was fixed and irreversible; that there was only resistance to the execution of this policy on the one hand, and submission, which must end in abject slavery, on the other. If the American Revolution be morally indefensible, then not only are all wars indefensible, but all human governments, the wisest and the ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... acts in all recorded history, including the awful massacres of the Albigenses by Simon de Montfort and the Abbot Arnold, more indefensible than this wholesale murder by Moses of several thousand people who had trusted him, and whom he had entrusted to the care of his own brother, who participated in their crime, supposing that they had committed any crime saving the crime of tiring ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... whatever may tend to justify, however slightly, is eagerly seized upon and proclaimed. There is scarcely an evil practice for which the doer may not raise up or create reasons in justification, and plausible arguments may be made to gloss over the most detestable and indefensible crimes. ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... of Lynch Law, and I must leave my readers to form their own conclusions. That it has occasionally been beneficial, in the peculiar state of the communities in which it has been practised, must be admitted; but it is equally certain that it is in itself indefensible, and that but too often, not only the punishment is much too severe for the offence, but what is still more to be deprecated, the innocent do occasionally suffer with ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... him? Not any of the things which the ignorant or vulgar bystander expected of him—that he was certain. But still her claim had wearied him; and he had brushed it aside. His sulkiness about the book had been odious, indefensible. And yet—perhaps from another point of view—it had not been a bad thing for either of them. It had broken through habits which had become, ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... outstripped our sources of revenue that we have come to look on an annual deficit as a normal and defensible thing. I think it is indefensible. I think it is going to have a bad effect on our attendance and our morals if the members have to look forward to what amounts to a good big assessment at every convention. A deficit is not inevitable. The secretary-treasurer ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... the very diction of which is soft and effeminate, as if intended to relax the vigour of the reader's mind." This last denunciation of the patriarch, however, is somewhat too sweeping and indiscriminate, since, though some passages are certainly indefensible, they appear rather as interpolations, and are in no manner connected with the main thread of the story, the general tendency of which is throughout innocent and moral; and whatever may be said of these blemishes, it must be allowed that the pages of Achilles ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... boy Oliver would or could do when he grows up," he exclaimed fiercely—his eyes flashing, "which would shut him out of his home and his dear mother's care. The duel is a relic of barbarism and should be no longer tolerated; it is mob law, really, and indefensible, with two persons defying the statutes instead of a thousand. But Rutter is the last man in the world to take the stand he has, and I sincerely regret his action. There are many bitter days ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... stating her demands, and on the following day informed all the European powers of her attitude. The neutral Press of the world and an unusually large section of the German Press, immediately pronounced Austria's position to be indefensible and untenable. The German Government, in spite of these facts, gave its official and unreserved support to Austria's attitude on July 26th. After eight weeks of war (on September 25th), Austria officially declared that she had never ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... Before passing judgment on the conduct of British officers and men in the capital, the reader should recall the equally indefensible outrages committed by American troops under General Dearborn in 1813, when the Houses of Parliament and other public buildings at York (Toronto) were pillaged and burned. See Kingsford's "History of Canada," VIII, pp. ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... infringement upon private rights almost unexampled in any other part of our civil economy. That sole beneficial result, for the sake of which some legislators were willing to sanction a wrong otherwise admitted to be indefensible, is so little protected and secured to the public, that it is first of all placed at the mercy of an agent in London, whose negligence or indifference may defeat the provision altogether, (I know a publisher of a splendid botanical work, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... seventeen-year-old girl, two hundred miles from home, in a den like that, with a baby two weeks old, may be justice, but I call it brutality! Our Government can pay its expenses without that kind of revenue." The whole bundle of Roman candles was popping now. Inconsequent, wholly illogical, utterly indefensible explosions. But only my ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... government possible. At present the majority of Parliament obey certain leaders; what those leaders propose they support, what those leaders reject they reject. An old Secretary of the Treasury used to say, "This is a bad case, an indefensible case. We must apply our majority to this question." That secretary lived fifty years ago, before the Reform Bill, when majorities were very blind, and very "applicable". Nowadays, the power of leaders over their followers is strictly and wisely limited: they can take ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... maintain a wrong cause, and to support paradoxical opinions to the satisfaction of a common auditory, than to establish a doubtful truth by solid and conclusive arguments. When men find that something can be said in favor of what, on the very proposal, they have thought utterly indefensible, they grow doubtful of their own reason; they are thrown into a sort of pleasing surprise; they run along with the speaker, charmed and captivated to find such a plentiful harvest of reasoning, where all seemed barren and unpromising. This is the fairy land of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of sight of land on those high seas of spelling reform in which so many strong swimmers have toiled vainly. To some the situation is exhilarating; as for me, I give one bubbling cry and sink. The compromise at which I have arrived is indefensible, and I have no thought of trying to defend it. As I have stuck for the most part to the proper spelling, I append a table of some common vowel sounds which no one need consult; and just to prove that I belong to my age and have in me the stuff ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... improve his indefensible position. He reformed his centre by the simple expedient of suppressing it. Apia was evacuated. The two flanks, Mulinuu and Matautu, were still held and fortified, Mulinuu (as I have said) to the isthmus, Matautu on a line from the bayside to the little river Fuisa. The centre was represented ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sympathy and participation in it. The various foreign publications, whether they received their inspirations from Mr. Gutzlaff or not matters little, differed on most points, but were agreed on this, that the trade in opium was morally indefensible, and that we were bound, not only by our own interests, but in virtue of the common obligations of humanity, to cease to hold all connection with it. Those who had surrendered their stores of opium at the request ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... me, Carlton," said Charles; "and I am happy to have the sanction of Mr. Vincent. Did political party make men rebels, then would political party be indefensible; so is religious, if it ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... began to occupy me. It seemed to me in the highest degree indefensible of Him to interfere every time I sought for a place, and to upset the whole thing, while all the time I was but imploring enough for ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... is indefensible!" Tula snapped. "With the promised return of the Masters there must and will be changes. Didn't any ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... several nouns, they often employ the connected verb in the singular number, and vice versa. They were inclined to make construction conform to the sense, rather than to the letter. It is not certain that their usage, in this particular, is wholly indefensible. Cicero, in his fifth oration against Verres, couples rem with futurum. This was looked upon by some editors as an error, and they altered the text accordingly; but Aulus Gelius, in his "Attic Nights," maintains that it is the true reading, and, in ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... contest. If I remember it correctly, it was a mere diplomatic squabble, in which the British ministers, with the politic generosity which they are in the habit of showing towards their official subordinates, had tried to browbeat us for the purpose of sustaining an ambassador in an indefensible proceeding; and the American Government (for God had not denied us an administration of statesmen then) had retaliated with stanch courage and exquisite skill, putting inevitably a cruel mortification upon their opponents, but indulging them ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... logic or demand of justice could change Judge Hunt's will. We were convicted before we had a hearing and the trial was a mere farce." Some time afterwards Judge Selden wrote her: "I regard the ruling of the judge, and also his refusal to submit the case to the jury, as utterly indefensible." Scarcely a newspaper in the country sustained Judge Hunt's action. The Canandaigua Times thus expressed the general sentiment in an editorial, soon ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... If it had been found impracticable to have devised models of a more perfect structure, the enlightened friends to liberty would have been obliged to abandon the cause of that species of government as indefensible. The science of politics, however, like most other sciences, has received great improvement. The efficacy of various principles is now well understood, which were either not known at all, or imperfectly known to the ancients. The regular distribution of power into ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... much indignation. In vain I urged that her ladyship desiring to be considered absent from London, her grandson was bound to keep her secret. "Keep her secret, yes! Tell me lies, no!" cries out the Colonel. Sir Barnes's conduct was in fact indefensible, though not altogether unusual—the worst deduction to be drawn from it, in my opinion, was, that Clive's chance with the young lady was but a poor one, and that Sir Barnes Newcome, inclined to keep his uncle in good-humour, would therefore give ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... against my things being touched. Any search you deemed necessary could be undertaken at Liverpool by the Customs officers in the usual way. I consider that this entrance into my stateroom on the high seas, and this arbitrary resolve of yours to acquaint yourself with the nature of my belongings is indefensible and a ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... though frightened at the reality of Reform, still adhered to its phrases; it was inclined, as practical England, to maintain existing institutions; but, as theoretical England, it was suspicious that they were indefensible. ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... rising, "my conduct is indefensible, but I am going to my room, and, on my way, will keep ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... that the judgment on things is always on character, and that the last testing principle is, "See—not what manner of stones, but what manner of men." While we deplore the forces that destroyed, we have also to deplore the indefensible lives of the monks which at their last stage stirred ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... probable but almost certain. And all now that seems wanting to harmonize science with revelation is, on the one hand, the re-examination of the Scripture texts on which are based the principia from which deductions are made, and which we call theology; and, on the other hand, the rejection of indefensible statements which are at war with both science and consciousness, except in those matters which claim special supernatural agency, which we can neither prove nor disprove by reason; for supernaturalism claims to transcend the realm of reason altogether in what relates to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... weakness may be raised in power. Curious indeed that in this life, brief and precariously enjoyed, men should so set their hearts on building a permanence in words: something to stand, in the lovely stability of ink and leaden types, as our speech out of silence to those who follow on. Indefensible absurdity, and yet the secret and impassioned ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... afraid, for thy sake, to let her know how very earnest I had been: but assured her that I had been her zealous friend; and that my motives were founded upon a merit, that, I believed, was never equaled: that, however indefensible Mr. Lovelace was, he had always done justice to her virtue: that to a full conviction of her untainted honour it was owing that he so earnestly desired to call so inestimable a jewel his—and was proceeding, when she ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... adapt themselves to every phase of sentiment, and sound every note in the scale of felicity. Some defects are to be acknowledged, but they sink into insignificance when measured by the magnitude of his achievement. Sudden transitions, elliptical expressions, mixed metaphors, indefensible verbal quibbles, and fantastic conceits at times create an atmosphere of obscurity. The student is perplexed, too, by obsolete words and by some hopelessly corrupt readings. But when the whole of Shakespeare's ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... your back, gazing at the sky; nor did you get up and let your men see you, until Marcus Agrippa had forced the enemies' ships to sheer off." Others imputed to him both a saying and an action which were indefensible; for, upon the loss of his fleets by storm, he is reported to have said: "I will conquer in spite of Neptune;" and at the next Circensian games, he would not suffer the statue of that God to be carried in procession as usual. Indeed he scarcely ever ran more ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... must have been eminently welcome. But The Task has merits of a more universal and enduring kind. Its author himself says of it:—"If the work cannot boast a regular plan (in which respect, however, I do not think it altogether indefensible), it may yet boast, that the reflections are naturally suggested always by the preceding passage, and that, except the fifth book, which is rather of a political aspect, the whole has one tendency, to discountenance the modern enthusiasm after a London life, ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... through the other swing-door cut the speaker short. 'Good Shabbos,' said the shameless sinner. 'Ah, Mr. Gabriel, that was a very fine sermon.' He stroked his beard. 'I quite agree with you. To dig down a public wall is indefensible. Nobody has the right to make more than a private hole in it, where it blocks out his own prospect. So please do not bracket me with Mr. Levy again. Good Shabbos!' And, waving his hand pleasantly, he left ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... features of the Catholic system of thought, we miss the key to that ecclesiastical statesmanship which dominates the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The programme of the great Popes, from Gregory VII to Boniface VIII, must appear a tissue of absurdities, of preposterous ambitions and indefensible actions, unless it is studied in relation to a theology as far remote from primitive Christianity as from the cults and ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... do not sit totally mute, as of a thing not worth my answer. But such as look upon this kind of behaviour of mine as too haughty a confidence, have as little kindness for me as they who interpret the weakness of an indefensible cause; namely, the great folks, towards whom want of submission is the great fault, harsh towards all justice that knows and feels itself, and is not submissive humble, and suppliant; I have often knocked my head against this pillar. So it is that at what then befell me, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... his genius for perusing the heart which was not in perfect harmony with him through the series of responsive movements to his own, informed him of a something in her character that might have suggested to Mrs Mountstuart Jenkinson her indefensible, absurd "rogue in porcelain". Idea there was none in that phrase; yet, if you looked on Clara as a delicately inimitable porcelain beauty, the suspicion of a delicately inimitable ripple over her features ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Habeas Corpus Act. But from acts of confiscation and acts of attainder lawgivers are bound, by every obligation of morality, systematically to refrain. In the same manner ought the British legislature to refrain from taxing the American colonies. The Stamp Act was indefensible, not because it was beyond the constitutional competence of Parliament, but because it was unjust and impolitic, sterile of revenue, and fertile of discontents. These sound doctrines were adopted by Lord Rockingham and his colleagues, and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... aunt, I did not defend his conduct, supposing him guilty," said Juliet, with quiet dignity; "for if that be really the case such conduct is indefensible. I only hoped ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... hypothesis is only possible by reason of the insufficient definition given to the mind. If it be recognised that the mind has an incomplete existence and is only realised by its incarnation in matter, the figure which is the basis of parallelism becomes indefensible. There is no longer on the one hand the physical, and on the other the mental, but on one side the physical and the mental combined, and on the other the same combination; which amounts to saying that the two faces to a reality, ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... still more artless. His brother lawyers replied that the charge was easily to be deduced from the sentence, because a man who breaks up the foundation of the State makes the country indefensible, and therefore invites the enemy to invade it. And this Barneveld had done, who had turned the Union, religion, alliances, and finances upside down ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and purple Coan robes you are not dressable; Unhappily for you, the public records are accessible. Where is your charm, and where your bloom and gait so firm and sensible, That drew my love from Cinara,—a lapse most indefensible? ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field |
