"Unanswerable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unfinished, and the lower part of the towers transformed as Mr Paley has described. Thus we combine the rival theories. For Mr Poole[11] maintains that the point, up to which Benedict's work was carried, must mean the front we now see. One argument he advances appears unanswerable.[12] Of the two chroniclers, Swapham takes his history down to 1246; Abbot John ruled from 1249 to 1262. Both these writers therefore, beyond all question, were alive when the present front was finished. "Here are two people writing after the present west front ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... curiosity was awakened within me. The questions which the sight of this planet, so tantalizingly close, raised in my mind were numerous and unanswerable. ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... development, explicable on no other hypothesis than a heavenly origin, and from its rapid extension through great part of the Roman empire. But this argument—one, when confined within reasonable limits, of unanswerable force—becomes more feeble and disputable in proportion as it recedes from the birthplace, as it were, of the religion. The further Christianity advanced, the more causes purely human were enlisted in its favor; nor can it be ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... sternly like himself, 'It is not for you to say whether you will ever see Skye again; only God can know that.' He moved a little, restlessly, and answered slowly, 'Yess, that iss so, but—yess, it iss so.' Sometimes when we were asking one another that old familiar unanswerable question I would tell the story of the man from Skye and his answer to the problem. We were very glad to hear a few weeks later that he had been discharged as permanently unfit, and was by then in his loved ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... the largest returns. The Chinese in America are few in number, but they are scattered everywhere, as if God intended in them to put the spirit of our churches to a crucial test, and, where that test is endured, to give to his servants a prompt reward and an unanswerable confirmation of his promises and of ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... when we are wrong and nothing so hinders a testimony as to allow a wrong to go unrighted. When before our own households and with those who know us best, and by whose side we toil, in shop, or store, or office, or with those whom we employ, we keep ourselves unspotted from the world, we have an unanswerable argument for Christ and a testimony as regards the value of following Him ...
— The Personal Touch • J. Wilbur Chapman
... no answer, perhaps because it was unanswerable, even in a land where it was customary to kill the supposed wizard first and inquire as to his actual guilt afterwards, or not at all. Or perhaps he thought it politic to ignore the suggestion that he had been inspired by personal enmity. Only, ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... orator was the greatest of leaders. By the magic of his eloquence he changed the views of men and inspired them to deeds of valor. The fiery orations of a Demosthenes, of a Cicero; the thrilling words of a Peter the Hermit or a Savonarola; the unanswerable arguments of a Burke or a Webster, have more than once turned the course ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... policy towards the colonies was defended by Burke with splendid and unanswerable eloquence. He had been returned to the House of Commons for the pocket borough of Wendover, and his first speech (January 27, 1766) was felt to be the rising of a new light. For the space of a quarter of a century, from this time down to 1790, Burke was one of the chief guides and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... might give in; you might have a fall, and I know that I should feel obliged to stop, and I am in a hurry. If that reason does not strike you as a cogent one, I am sorry, for to me it appears unanswerable." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... for the necessity of a future state, in order that the justice of the Deity may be satisfied, Hume's argumentation appears unanswerable. For if the justice of God resembles what we mean by justice, the bestowal of infinite happiness for finite well-doing and infinite misery for finite ill-doing, it is in no sense just. And, if the justice of ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... household of a duke, waited behind our four chairs, to make their remarks on our style of eating in contrast with the polished performances at their late master's. But Mrs. Molasses had exactly four. The argument was unanswerable. Silence and sullenness reigned through the banquet; but on the retreat of the four gentlemen who did us the honour of attending, the whole tale of evil burst forth. What is the popularity of man? The whole family had already ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... explained Archie importantly, strutting ahead. "Ain't you glad I called for you, Uncle Duncan?" He dashed into the woods whooping and yelling, with Collie circling about him in noisy delight, and darted back again at short intervals to ask a dozen unanswerable questions. "What made the moon look so queer? And what was the moon made of, anyhow? Sandy said it was made of green cheese; but Don said if that was true they must have got a chunk of the moon to make Sandy's head. And Don ought to know, since he'd ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... awake. For the first time the young Tsar became aware of the heavy responsibility weighing on him, and was aghast. His thoughts no longer turned to the young Queen and to the happiness he had anticipated for that evening, but became centred on the unanswerable question which hung over him: "What was ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... one unanswerable question. But you must confess it is puzzling to those who thought of you ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... accept it as we should accept being swallowed by an earthquake; because we do not know the answer to an earthquake. The men from the desert do not know the answer to the snow, it seems to them unanswerable. But Christians fight with snow in a double sense; they fight with snow as they fight with snowballs. A Moslem left to himself would no more play with a snowball than make a toy of a thunderbolt. And this is really a type of the true problem that was raised by the very ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... to carp at the doings of distinguished men, however unexceptionable their conduct may be. Free levees were said to savor of an affectation of royal state. In a letter to his friend, Dr. Stewart, Washington thus puts to silence this calumny, with his usual good sense and unanswerable argument: ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... against Ferris' brutal treatment, announced the policy of a united resistance, a joint appeal to Hugh Worthington, and the demand of an Investigation Committee of Directors. "We will wait for Mr. Worthington's vindication," said Wade, in an unanswerable tone. ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... "have" than by our simple past tense; and that in this particular the A.V. is in scores of instances more correct than the R.V.; the present Translator has contended (with arguments which some of the best scholars in Britain and in America hold to be "unanswerable" and "indisputable") in a pamphlet On the Rendering into English of the Greek Aorist and Perfect. Even an outline of the argument cannot be given in ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth
... of Jack? Would she not finally give him a chance to ask forgiveness, or had she lost every trace of affection for him, as her letter seemed to imply? He walked the garden paths, with these and other unanswerable questions, and when he went to his lonely room at night, he held the lamp up to a bit of poetry that he had cut from a magazine and pinned to the looking-glass. If John Hathaway could be brought to the reading of ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... often that Lady Mariamne produced an unanswerable effect, but against this last sentence of hers John had absolutely nothing to say. He stared at her for a moment, and then he returned to his papers, shovelling them into the portfolio with vehemence. Fortunately, she did not herself see how potent was her argument. She went on diluting it till ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... greatest achievement of which our own age has to boast. Since the beginnings of Greek thought these difficulties have been known; in every age the finest intellects have vainly endeavoured to answer the apparently unanswerable questions that had been asked by Zeno the Eleatic. At last Georg Cantor has found the answer, and has conquered for the intellect a new and vast province which had been given over to Chaos and old Night. ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life. Whether Socrates got as much happiness out of life as Wesley is an unanswerable question; but a nation of Socrateses would be much safer and happier than a nation of Wesleys; and its individuals would be higher in the evolutionary scale. At all events it is in the Socratic man and not in the Wesleyan that our hope ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... however, I have been obliged to speak of this treatise of Mr. Garbett's, and desire also to recommend it as of much interest and utility in its statements of fact, it is impossible for me to pass altogether without notice, as if unanswerable, several passages in which the writer has objected to views stated in the "Seven Lamps." I should at any rate have noticed the passage quoted above, (Chap. 30th,) which runs counter to the spirit of all I have ever written, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... had made the remark many times, and always with the same satisfaction. Her daughter was content that the discussion should remain at this point; for the feeling that she had said something at once unpleasant and unanswerable made Mrs. Cross almost good humoured ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... of this statement, I must content myself for the present with referring to an able and (as it seems to me) unanswerable article on Marcion's Gospel by Mr Sanday, in the June [1875] number of the Fortnightly Review, in reply to the author of ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... Jesus, the strangely rare unselfishness even in money matters, and the winsome graciousness of spirit that marked, not only the inner circle, but these greatly increased crowds,—all this said one thing in clear unanswerable tones of unmistakable power, Christ is crowned.[4] For the sending down of the Holy Spirit was the act of the ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... I knew delivered the letters only once every three days, alleging, as unanswerable argument in his defence, that his brother's wife had ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... me that Croker asked him why the thing was called the Bride of Abydos? It is a cursed awkward question, being unanswerable. She is not a bride, only about to become one. I don't wonder at his finding out the Bull; but the detection ... is too late to do any good. I was a great fool to make it, and am ashamed of not being an Irishman."—Journal, December 6, 1813; Letters, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... Roque," he said, "you must allow I have listened very attentively to your prosing. I have had quite enough of your nonsense for this morning, so I beg you to close your arguments, unless you really wish that I should honor them with a most unanswerable reply." ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... CAPT. Sir Joseph, I cannot express to you my delight at the happy result of your eloquence. Your argument was unanswerable. SIR JOSEPH. Captain Corcoran, it is one of the happiest characteristics of this glorious country that official utterances are invariably regarded as unanswerable. [Exit SIR JOSEPH. CAPT. At last my fond hopes are to be crowned. My only daughter is to ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... unsanitary tenements is still permitted. Children work in "homes" on artificial flowers, finishing shoddy garments, sewing their very life's blood and that of the race into tawdry clothes and gewgaws that are the most unanswerable comments upon our vaunted "civilization." And to-day, we must not forget, the child-laborer of yesterday is becoming the father or the mother ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... success. Freedom was gained, although not without the sad loss of her two older children, whom she had to leave behind. Mother and father were again reunited in freedom, while two of their little boys were in slavery. What to do for them other than weep and pray, were questions unanswerable. For over forty years the mother's heart never knew what it was to be free from anxiety about her lost boys. But no tidings came in answer to her many prayers, until one of them, to the great astonishment of his relatives, turned up in Philadelphia, nearly fifty years ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... worship of number), was wearing to its close with reaction everywhere, and the Turk, the great type of reaction, stronger than ever in the saddle. The most civilised of the Christian nations overshadowed by the Crescent dared to attack it and was overwhelmed in a catastrophe that seemed as unanswerable as Hittin. In England Gladstone and Gladstonism were dead; and Mr. Kipling, a less mystical Carlyle, was expending a type of praise upon the British Army which would have been even more appropriate to the Prussian Army. The Prussian Army ruled Prussia; ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... of course, follow as a matter of course, follow necessarily; stand to reason; hold good, hold water. convince, persuade (belief) 484. Adj. demonstrating &c v., demonstrative, demonstrable; probative, unanswerable, conclusive; apodictic^, apodeictic^, apodeictical^; irresistible, irrefutable, irrefragable; necessary. categorical, decisive, crucial. demonstrated &c v.; proven; unconfuted^, unanswered, unrefuted^; evident &c 474. deducible, consequential, consectary^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... waited. "Your argument is unanswerable, Jacqueline," he said finally. "I own myself puzzled, but I believe ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... ridicule—any more had unsettled his faith in their existence than the submission of a sailor in a religious sense to his spiritual counsellor upon the false and fraudulent pleasures of luxury can ever disturb his remembrance of the virtues lodged in rum or tobacco. His own unconquerable, unanswerable experience, the blank realities of pleasure and pain, put to flight all arguments whatsoever that anchor only in his understanding. Pink used, in arguing the case with me, to admit that ghosts might be questionable realities ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... time. I've screwed out some more for all of us—quite a large sum this time. I put forward unanswerable arguments—the expense of your outfit—our responsibilities—our debts, and all sorts of things, and then got your grandfather to include everything in one check. It's for ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... responsible for the omission, and yet, at the back of his mind was a vague feeling of uneasiness which he was wholly unable to explain. Chevrial had impressed him, and yet one objection to that gentleman's misgivings seemed to him unanswerable: if the Vards had been changed from second-class to first with any ulterior object, the authorities in charge of the ship must be in the plot, and ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... caterpillar that clung to the edge of the illustrated paper and made futile circles in the air with the knob it called its head. Some one had forgotten to let down the ladder it expected, or perhaps it, too, was asking unanswerable questions of the sun. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... is unanswerable; and when the interests of modern times clash with those of the past, as, for example, in Egypt where a beneficial reservoir has destroyed the remains of early days, there can be no question that the recording of the threatened information ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... The question was unanswerable. Her story was as preposterous as her garments. But her garments were real enough. I looked long into her great innocent eyes. Yes, she was telling me the truth. She babbled on for a little. I gathered that her step-father, Hamdi Effendi, was a Turkish official. She had spent all her life in ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Brimmer's ancestors came over on the Mayflower, long before 1792, it doesn't seem so very impossible, if it comes to that," said Mrs. Brimmer, with her usual unanswerable naivete; "provided always that you are not joking, Mr. Crosby. One never knows ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... constitution of the United Provinces, and had opposed the Prince in every measure, which appeared to have such a tendency; but he asserted that he never had resorted to means which the laws or constitution of the Provinces did not warrant. His arguments were unanswerable; but Prince Maurice was determined on his ruin; and the Commissioners were wholly subservient to the prince's views: they accordingly passed unanimously a ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... La Vauvraye," was the unanswerable rejoinder. "I am telling you, more or less, what she ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... this view cannot be true; that thousands of men selected from the officers of our citizen-soldiery by the unanswerable certificate of disabling wounds and the added prestige of their commander's recommendation, a class of men in physical, intellectual and moral power and attainments far superior to the average of the American people—it may be said that such could ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... necessity. Take a glance for a moment at what goes on in Parliament in this non-whist age, and mark the consequences. Look in at an ordinary sitting of the House, and see how damaging to his party that unhappy man is, who will ask a question to-day which this day week would be unanswerable. What is that but "playing his card out of time"? See that other who rises to know if something be true; the unlucky "something" being the key-note to his party's politics which he has thus disclosed. What is ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... other cause for suspicion, I do not know; but it is quite certain that Haughton and Fisher were condemned solely on the ground of their answers on these occasions, and that no other evidence was brought against them. The government clearly preferred this evidence as the most direct and unanswerable, for in both those cases they might have produced other witnesses had they cared to ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... argument had been presented and received with every sign of triumph that the sacredness of the place made decorous, "thou knowest that I have no understanding of the Latin—was it unanswerable?" ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... by impulses that can enter into no calculation—drawn hither and thither by powers that can never be represented in your algebra. In one generation Christianity reduced Plato's republic to an absurdity. The printing-press has upset the unanswerable conclusions of Machiavelli." ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... increase. While brooding with feverish joy over the immediate past, her mind reached forward and existed in the appalling and fatal moment, for whose reality however her eagerness could scarcely wait, when she should see him once more. And it asked unanswerable questions about his surprising return from New York, and his pallor, and the tremor in his voice, and his swift departure. Suddenly she knew that she was planning to have the girls out of the house ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... a stock of travellers' tales, but not one of them was about Lord Byron. He had "sought for no staler subject than St. Ursula." His charges of "impiety," "lewdness," "profanation," and "pollution," had not been answered, and were unanswerable; and as to his being a "scribbler of all work," there were exceptions—works which he had not scribbled, the nefanda which disfigured the writings of Lord Byron. "Satanic school" ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... irresponsibility and high spirits of youth for its success, and I want to stop before (may I say 'before'?) the high spirits become mechanical and the irresponsibility a trick. Perhaps the fact that this collection is final will excuse its air of scrappiness. Odd Verses have crept in on the unanswerable plea that, if they didn't do it now, they never would; War Sketches protested that I shouldn't have a book at all if I left them out; an Early Article, omitted from three previous volumes, paraded for the fourth time with such a pathetic 'I suppose you don't want ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... weaken or obscure the general design; and finally, whether, if we decide to use it, we should do so grossly and notably, or in some conventional disguise: are questions of plastic style continually rearising. And the sphinx that patrols the highways of executive art has no more unanswerable ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sicknesses of our bodies, obscuring the plain and comparatively simple question of cure with the entirely opposed problem of punishment; a confusion and losing of the way that leads inevitably into a forest-tangle of difficulty and unanswerable questions. And this heritage of wrong-thinking has compassed our feet, binding them and throwing us down, as soon as we try to move on, always hindering reform from generation to generation, and, until that entanglement is broken through, by bringing into it the light of honest thinking, the ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... enough, and he felt it to be unanswerable. But if he obeyed conscience and published the mistake—good Heavens! what would happen to him? Already, three years ago, the Lord Proprietor had resumed the shipping dues which had made so welcome an addition to his income. On the strength of them he had made a too liberal allowance ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of appearances and his own confession, his past life had not been such as to place him without the pale of her just affections; and there were frequent moments when, remembering that the death of her father had removed the only being who could assert an unanswerable claim to the dictation of her actions, she thought that Clifford, hearing her hand was utterly at her own disposal, might again appear, and again urge a suit which he felt so few circumstances could induce her to deny. All this half-acknowledged yet earnest train of reasoning and hope vanished ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the family were to come to London, and he left orders with the ladies to say 'all that was proper', but the twelfth of August was to him an unanswerable reason ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... vision a picture of the years gone by? Who shall explain the apprehensiveness which came unbidden, causing known certainties to be forgotten because of the disquieting questionings which demanded an unanswerable reply. ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... prelate saw that Luther's reasoning was unanswerable, he lost all self-control, and in a rage cried out: "Retract! or I will send you to Rome, there to appear before the judges commissioned to take cognizance of your cause. I will excommunicate you and all your ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... management and influence is at the bottom of this evil; and till that influence is traced and rooted out, there is, in my view, no chance of safety. The tampering with the soldiers by conversation and handbills is another unanswerable proof of the system by which all this mischief moves forward; and the activity of Brest in the last accounts, seems to confirm, as far as such preparation can, their knowledge of, if not their participation in, ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... servant Eugene, who had been educated for a priest, and could talk pretty well, tried every species of argument, but without success; the soldier evidently had the best of it, and clenched the question with the most unanswerable argument—that we were quite at liberty to cross if we liked; but that he should fire into us as soon as we came into good view. There was therefore no help for it, and unwillingly enough, I returned to a khan, and crossed over early the following ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... daily, if she were to want him as a boarder for the remainder of the season. Although I had for years inveighed against the folly of cultivated people leaving the city to find residences, Helen's argument was unanswerable and I submitted. I did even more; I purchased a lovely bit of ground (though the deed stands in Tom's name for the present), and Tom has brought up several plans of cottage-houses, and every evening they are spread on the dining-room table, and ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... the amazing luminary emerge, as it were, from the earth like a bright and blameless soul from the grave, and sail clear, presently, and upward into untroubled space; a glory, serene, smiling, and unanswerable. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... and form, until the religion which was to be prized and saved is fast becoming a watery Unitarianism, and its adherents are allowing themselves, where permitted, to become completely assimilated. Reform Judaism which began as a compromise is ending as a surrender. The final and unanswerable objection to Reform Judaism as a solution is that the majority of Jews will not even in theory accept it. The devotion to race, religion, and separation is too strong. The Gentile in asking the Jew to assimilate is undoubtedly right; the ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... She might be happy, it was true, and make other people so, but her duty was not this, and a certainty that satisfaction and the blessing of God would not follow her into these reverenced and honored limits came to her distinctly. One by one the reasons for keeping on her chosen course grew more unanswerable than ever. She had not thought she should be called to resist this temptation, but since it had come she was glad she was strong enough to meet it. It would be no real love for another person, and ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... he skipped over true, sound English Churchmanship into a course of feeling and thought allied with and leading on to Rome. Even the hindrances which so long held him back can scarcely be said to have been indeed the logical force of the unanswerable credentials of the English Church. On the contrary they were rather personal impressions, feelings, and difficulties. His faithful, loving nature made him cling desperately to early hopes, friendships, and affections. Even to the end Thomas Scott never loses his hold ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... men and women reading, e.g., the fourteenth of St. John's Gospel say within themselves that if these are not the words of Jesus, a greater than Jesus is here; and they are right. The oft-quoted challenge of John Stuart Mill is as unanswerable to-day as ever it was. "It is of no use to say," he declares, "that Christ, as exhibited in the Gospels, is not historical, and that we know not how much of what is admirable has been super-added by the traditions of His followers.... Who among ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... undaunted by persecution, it has kept the law in the van of the fight; sustained it by reserves of humane reason; by appeals to national strength and welfare, and growth, and influence, and wealth; it disseminated the truth in churches, at the polls, in lyceums, by the press; it was unanswerable because its claim was founded in equity, and recognized in religion, and had ineradicable place in the great muniment of national being. It appealed to the individual conscience as well as to pride, patriotism, piety, and ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... was shrewd. It was an open, unanswerable reply to the unuttered threat which perhaps Hillyard might be prompted ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... books, or of other printed publications. Many years ago the English radical Charles Bradlaugh urged in a debate with a then prominent socialist that under socialism no literary expression of free thought would be practicable, and I cannot do more than accentuate his lucid and unanswerable arguments. The state, being controller of all the implements of production, a private press would be as illegal as the dies used by a forger. Nobody could issue a book, a newspaper, or even a leaflet, unless the use of a state press were allowed him by the state authorities, together ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... the first place, if formed part of the furniture of the room, and had always been there, so far as he knew—which, to the nun, whose life was founded on a series of unquestioned precedents, allowing of nothing arbitrary but the will of the Superior, appeared an unanswerable reason why it should always remain; and, in the next place, with the lack of sympathy that one sometimes remarks in unimaginative minds, she did not in the least understand the terror with which it inspired the child, but assured her, in her good-humoured way, that that was ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... been enough to shatter their nerve, and to Souvestre's exhortations that they should become martyrs in the noble cause, of the people against tyranny, in whatsoever guise it came, they answered with the unanswerable logic of caution. ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... colleague had consented to die—thanks to several successive attacks of extremely persuasive apoplexy—the last of which proved unanswerable. I had been very little acquainted with him during his lifetime; but it seems that I became his friend the moment he was dead, for our colleagues assured me in a most serious manner, with deeply sympathetic countenances, that I should act as one of the pall-bearers, ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... right after he was hangin' around here with the burglar tools?" inquired Andy, as if that was unanswerable. ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton
... question was unanswerable, and after a while Vane abruptly began to talk about their business in British Columbia. It passed the time; and he had resumed his usual manner when he pulled up where a stile path led across a strip ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... and unanswerable, the party scattered to improvise old castles of Ellangowan, and to squabble for what was to them the only wholly desirable part, that of Dirk Hatteraick. The combat between the smuggler and the exciseman was executed with particular zeal and spirit, Sir Toady ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... (studying the Declaration). Mr. Jefferson, I am delighted with your production. Your statements relative to the inalienable rights of men are unanswerable and to secure these rights, governments must be instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. This paragraph concerning negro slavery meets with my approval but I fear it will not meet with the approval of some of the ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... the importance of heavenly welfare far exceeded the importance of any conceivable earthly welfare. The fact was that they had no argument. If God took precedence of knowledge and of health, he took precedence of a peddling shop! That was unanswerable. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... me here if he wants his acquaintance with this man kept secret?" she asked herself; and the question seemed unanswerable. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... long chain was welded then. The whole truth of that weird document, so fantastical, so seemingly wild, so fearful, was made manifest; the dead man's words were vindicated, his every deduction was unanswerable. There on the great Atlantic waste, I had lived to see one of those terrible pictures which he had conceived in his long dreaming; and through all the excitement, above all the noise, I thought that I heard ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... and promptly placed with your memorial, before Congress. No further proof was required by the Committee on Patents, in the Senate, and your right to a renewal was fully established by an able and unanswerable report of that Committee, accompanied by a bill for a renewal. This report and bill were printed by order of the Senate, and were noticed as a part of the proceedings of Congress, by the press throughout the United States, and every ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... from the nurses, who find a half strangled baby needs much less watching. Besides his dirtyness is more perceptible in an open garment; he must be attended to more frequently. Indeed, custom is an unanswerable argument in some lands and among all classes ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... off at once to see Elspie, and found that she had no objection, whereupon, after some conversation, etcetera, with which we will not weary the reader, he sought out his friend Fred Jenkins, to whom he communicated the good news, and treated him to a good many unanswerable reasons why young people should not delay marriage when there was any reasonable prospect of their getting ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... shore, to seek comparative peace and freedom elsewhere. For it is useless to argue; it is foolish, even dangerous to grow angry. "Why should we give to you?" we asked one day in desperation of a particularly persistent woman. "Because," was the unabashed and impudent but unanswerable reply, "you have much, and I have nothing!" Driven by these human pests from the sunlit strand, we make our way through the busy piazza, where peasant women with piles of fruit and vegetables make a glowing mass of colour around the central fountain below St Andrew's statue, and proceed towards ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... On the one hand was this heart-breaking waiting while watching one's little hoard diminish from day to day and always the terrifying and unanswerable question: What is to be done when it is exhausted? On the other, a home and the prospect that she might be able in a measure to pay her way by helping her brother's wife. Nora's housewifely accomplishments ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... we saw the evidences of God's skill and wisdom in the adaptations of nature, fitting the organs of animals for hearing, walking, and eating, and especially in the structure of the human eye. This has long been owned by candid minds as an unanswerable argument, demonstrating the being of God by the works of his hands. But since that chapter was written a school of scientists has arisen, of whom Mr. Darwin is at present the most popular, claiming to be able to show how all the ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... distinguished, it will be found that practically they are often conjoined, since the same mind will often fluctuate between the two, and shift its ground by betaking itself alternately to the one or the other, according to the exigencies of the argument. Assail the Dogmatic Atheist with the unanswerable statement of John Foster, that it would require nothing less than Omniscience to warrant the denial of a God, and he will probably defer to it so far as to admit that he cannot prove his negative conclusion, but will add that he is not bound to do so, and that all that can ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... recognise that from Selwoode's new master there were no desirable pickings to be had such as the philanthropic crew had fattened on these four years past. So there came to them, one and all, urgent telegrams or insistent letters or some equally unanswerable demand for their presence elsewhere, such as are usually prevalent among our guests in very dull or ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... tobacco and banished it from her presence and from her abodes as far as she could, would have thought and said of the extent to which cigarette-smoking is indulged in now by women, is a question quite unanswerable. Yet Queen Victoria once received a present of pipes and tobacco. By the hands of Sir Richard Burton the Queen had sent a damask tent, a silver pipe, and two silver trays to the King of Dahomey. That potentate told Sir Richard that the tent was very handsome, ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... the better men gradually but surely slow down their gait to that of the poorest and least efficient. When a naturally energetic man works for a few days beside a lazy one, the logic of the situation is unanswerable: "Why should I work hard when that lazy fellow gets the same pay that I do and does ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... have been calmly transferred from the account of Shakespeare to the score of Middleton. And this, forsooth, the student of the future is to accept on the authority of men who bring to the support of their decision the unanswerable plea of years spent in the collation and examination of texts never hitherto explored and compared with such energy of learned labour. If this be the issue of learning and of industry, the most indolent and ignorant of ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... are not unanswerable, Mrs. Dinsmore. Your father could spare you, having several other daughters; I have but one, and can't spare her. Elsie's mother was not older when I married her, it is true, than Elsie is now, but was much more mature, and had neither ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... anything else on this earth. It is a combination that does combine. It cannot be sorted out again, even on the Day of Judgment. Two totally different people have become in the sense most sacred, frightful, and unanswerable, one flesh. If a golden-haired Scandinavian girl has married a very swarthy Jew, the Scandinavian side of the family may say till they are blue in the face that the baby has his mother's nose or his mother's eyes. They can never be certain the black-haired Bedouin ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... nods were becoming rather too mechanical, except when the old gentleman switched off on the argumentative track, as he frequently did. "What think you of that?" he would pause in his reading to inquire. "Isn't that logic? isn't that unanswerable?" In responding to which appeals nobody could have done better than my serious, my devoted, my ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... is manly and necessary to protest when wronged. But a subject class or race does but little for their amelioration when content with its denouncement. Injustice can be more effectually arraigned by others than the victim; his mere proclamation, however distinct and unanswerable, will be slow of fruition. A measure of relief comes from the humane sympathies of the philanthropist, but the inherent attraction of forces (less sympathetic, perhaps, though indispensable) for his real uplifting and protection will be in the ratio of his morality, learning, and wealth. ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... object of this verse is to show that the words uttered by Sulabha were unanswerable. To attain to Emancipation one must practise a life of Renunciation instead of continuing in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... gentlemen, that the prisoner was bound by every obligation to avoid the supposed necessity of firing, by leaping behind a house near which he stood at that moment. Had he been attacked with a club, or with stones, the argument would have been unanswerable, and I should feel myself compelled to give up the defence in despair. But surely I need not tell you, gentlemen, how wide is the difference between sticks or stones, and double-triggered, loaded rifles cocked at your breast!' The effect ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... consideration I think unanswerable, and have no doubt that it will continue to be so felt. In the case, therefore, of a Regency, all proposals of junction will instantly be negatived as inconsistent with our duty to the King. In the case of a demise, which there is to-day more reason to think probable ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... began to laugh. "Your argument, Jack," he said when he was able to control his speech, "is absolutely unanswerable. There is no answer possible on any count; but did ever man hear of such ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... on Christian Science enfilading its every position. Mr. Wyckoff's searching analysis of the pretensions, errors, follies, and non-sense of so-called Christian Science should prove as convincing as it is unanswerable. ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... Hilda had held frequent converse, and had listened with horror, but with a species of fascination which she could not resist, to his calm and unanswerable reasoning on the fallacy of the religion of Odin, and on the truth of that of Jesus Christ. At first she resolved to fly from the old man, as a dangerous enemy, who sought to seduce her from the paths of rectitude; but when she looked at his grave, sad face, and listened to the gentle and—she ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... to himself: "Not in my lifetime anyway." Would some intelligent life form develop to supplant man? Or would the planet revert to a primeval state of mindless innocence? He would never know and he didn't really care ... no point in speculating over unanswerable questions. ...
— The Most Sentimental Man • Evelyn E. Smith
... As a vessel of war requires a harbor, and usually a better harbor than a merchant-vessel, it strikes us the "expounders" would do well to give this thought a moment's attention. Behind it will be found the most unanswerable argument in favor of ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... conclusive. It looked so fair and unanswerable that I could not disguise from him that my fears had fled. I was immensely relieved. My fight oozed; I became as pliable as any of the brittle clay which he daily kneaded for each shaping with ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... of the Greeks was, indeed, far from strict. Logic never can be strict where books are scarce, and where information is conveyed orally. We are all aware how frequently fallacies, which, when set down on paper, are at once detected, pass for unanswerable arguments when dexterously and volubly urged in Parliament, at the bar, or in private conversation. The reason is evident. We cannot inspect them closely enough to perceive their inaccuracy. We cannot readily compare them with each ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
