"Conceivable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very indirect and long-distance advances. Cephas Cole, to the amazement of every one but his (constitutionally) exasperated mother, was "toning down" the ell of the family mansion, mitigating the lively yellow, and putting another fresh coat of paint on it, for no conceivable reason save that of pleasing the eye of a certain capricious, ungrateful young hussy, who would probably say, when her verdict was asked, that she didn't see any particular difference in it, one way ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the papers and looked them over. There was nothing special about them; they were merely standard release forms, absolving the staff and management of Desert Edge Sanatorium from every conceivable responsibility under any conceivable circumstances, as far as William Logan was concerned. Dr. Dowson gave Malone a look that said: "Very well, Mr. Malone; I will play Pilate and wash my hands of the matter— but you needn't think I like it." It was a lot ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... which they drew up, so that without effort she could have picked out the porter who would give the best service; the stranger in need of help, and he who would offer it; and the guard most likely to be useful if it were necessary to cheat the company—it was conceivable that cheating companies might sometimes be necessary in her ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... all about the room were unset precious stones of every conceivable description, which glittered and scintillated in the most wonderful way imaginable. Upon the floor, in rough, uncovered boxes, heaps of gold bracelets and brooches, gold rings and gold chains, gold ornaments and trinkets, and bits of miscellaneous jewellery were piled high in inextricable ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... merchant has full power to fix the price of the fish, and if he also fixes the price at which he sells his goods, and the fisherman has no other place where he can get credit for the supplies which are necessary for his existence, is it not conceivable that that state of matters might be abused?-It is conceivable, and there may be a few cases of that kind; but to speak of that as being the rule, is ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... crossed much country, where patience is always as useful as it is praiseworthy. Place the same patient man, if he happens to have been picked up alive, and eventually recovers, in the midst of a roaring rock-bound river, and suppose him (a thing we confess, in his case, not quite conceivable) to have hooked a twenty-pound salmon at the tail of the stream, just where it subsides into some vast, almost fathomless, and far-extended pool, and that the said salmon, being rather of a restless disposition, and moreover somewhat disquieted by feeling an unaccustomed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... Barbadoes. Just about enough humanity in the four to make one complete man. But with vigour enough, fire enough, heart enough—I daren't say soul enough—in their dismembered old trunks to make ten men apiece; born sea-rovers, true sons of Orry, their blood half brine. Well, is it not conceivable that in those earlier days of treasure seeking, when Elizabeth's English captains were spoiling the Spaniard in the Indies, Manx sailors were also there? If so, why might not Shakespeare, who must have ferreted out many a stranger creature, ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... certain degrees and a vote. He either intended that they should be thenceforth excluded or he did not. If not, then the argument against mixed education would hold for nothing: if he did, then he attempted what was impracticable, or, if not impracticable, preposterous and absurd. It is not conceivable that Catholic young men, of laudable ambition, would be deterred from entering the lists with their Protestant contemporaries where most honour was won by superior eminence, or that they would be swayed by a warning that a college course would be attended ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... as steel, and sometimes nearly seven feet long by fifteen inches in diameter at the base. Supposing one to exist ten times as large as any that had ever been captured, with its tusk proportionately powerful, it was conceivable that such a gigantic creature, moving at a great rate, could do all the damage that had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... man of scruples to dabble in politics. I had a great regard for poor Johnny, and I felt no confidence in the colonel treating him with any consideration. In fact, I would not have insured Johnny's life for the next week at any conceivable premium. Again I thought it unlikely that, if we succeeded, the President would survive his downfall. I had to repeat to myself all the story of his treachery to me, lashing myself into a fury against him, before I could bring myself to think with resignation of the ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... for her she felt slightly faint. He was in evening dress, the most impeccable evening dress conceivable, even to the pumps and the opera hat. He, too, looked a little shocked when he saw her. Doubtless he would have asked her to dine at Rector's first if she had been properly dressed. They both recovered sufficiently to go to "Hamlet," ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... certainly successful plan to deal with a future possible chance unless you cultivate your power of imagination by working out in advance every conceivable ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... the Jewish woman, the saddest conceivable in the ghetto, inspired the first of Gordon's satires. The poem is entitled "The Dot on the I", or, more literally, "The Hanger of the Yod" ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... or, if it did, how can the character of the instrument affect the general condition of a science? Besides, is not the science a growth from very ancient times? With great respect for the Earl of Rosse, is it conceivable that he, or any man, by one hour's working the tackle of his new instrument, can have carried any stunning revolutionary effect into the heart of a section so ancient in our mathematical physics? ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... intermixture of Roman mythology with the gloomy but modified superstition of Romanized Celts was not favorable to the simple character of German theology. The entire extirpation, thus brought about, of any conceivable system of religion, prepared the way for a true revelation. Within that little river territory, amid those obscure morasses of the Rhine and Scheld, three great forms of religion—the sanguinary superstition ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... literature, in which there will be expressed not only ideas about the world, but moods which will not be found expressed in national literatures at all. This literature might be the beginning of a solidarity in the world which is not now definitely conceivable. Such an extension of language, however, we should hardly expect to take place except in the course of development of practical relations which first stimulate the ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... at Waterloo; he is a second time deposed, surrenders to the British, and is placed in confinement at the island of St. Helena. Such is the outline of the eventful history presented to us; in the detail of which, however, there is almost every conceivable variety of statement; while the motives and conduct of the chief actor are involved in still greater doubt, and the subject of ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... be done? Every conceivable suggestion was made and discussed, but so far no definite ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... prospect of a good meal. The grain is boiled in cooking pots, if the tribe possess any, or, if they are wanting, in the hollow of a bamboo, for that marvellous jungle growth is used for almost every conceivable purpose by natives of the far interior. The fat new rice is sweet to eat. It differs as much from the parched and arid stuff you know in Europe, as does the creamy butter in a cool Devonshire dairy from ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... miles of country, with every variety of obstacle, having thrown up his lease for a thirty-per-cent reduction—a giving up that had been most unhandsomely accepted by his landlord—Timothy was most anxious to pay him off by doing every conceivable injury to the farm, than which nothing can be more promising than having a steeple-chase run over it. Scourgefield, therefore, readily agreed to let Viney and Watchorn do whatever they liked, on condition that he received ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... laying down the ornament with which she had been toying, she turned on me one of those rare smiles to which the King could refuse nothing; and wherein wit, tenderness, and gaiety were so happily blended that no conceivable beauty of feature, uninspired by sensibility, could vie with them. "Good friend, I have sinned," she said. "But I am a woman, and I love. Pardon me. As for your PROTEGEE, from this moment she is mine also. I will speak ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... contrasted with these nothing like abject poverty. The houses of working-folk are clean, each with its flower-garden, the children are neatly dressed, no squalor or look of discontent to be seen anywhere. Every hamlet has its beautiful spire, whilst the country is the fairest, richest conceivable; in the woods is seen every variety of fir and pine, mingled with the lighter foliage of chestnut and acacia, whilst every orchard has its walnut and mulberry trees, not to speak of pear and plum. ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... more silently or more swiftly than P. Sybarite, when he had closed the door, up the steps to Peter Kenny's rooms. Hardly a conceivable sound could be more circumspect than that which his knuckles drummed on the panels of Peter's door. And Peter earned a heartfelt, instant, and ungrudged blessing by ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... longer to her what material portion of her possessions and environment was due to her own efforts, or to his. Nothing that might be called hers could remain conceivable as hers unless he shared it. Their rights in each other included everything temporal and spiritual; everything of mind and matter alike. Of what consequence, then, might be the origin of possessions that could not exist for ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... him to do, and he lived in the steerage with the carpenter and sailmaker. He was certainly a character; could read and write extremely well; spoke good Spanish; had been all over Spanish America, and lived in every possible situation, and served in every conceivable capacity, though generally in that of confidential servant to some man of figure. I cultivated this man's acquaintance, and during the five weeks that he was with us,—for he remained on board until we arrived at San Diego,—I gained a greater knowledge of the state of political parties ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... higher order than those offered to them in so cheap and attractive a form by our enterprising publishers. Now, either their energies will be wasted in a desultory course of reading, by which they will gain only a superficial knowledge of almost every conceivable subject, or they must be furnished with the means, which they are so well prepared to use to advantage, of going to the bottom of whatever subject interests them, and having exhausted the wisdom of past generations, of adding to the stock ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... however, he came, running in a great hurry down to the shore, and, jumping aboard, he gave orders to make all sail, and taking the helm of the hooker, he turned her head to the sea, and soon the boat was cleaving the blue waters with a velocity seldom witnessed in so small a craft, and scarcely conceivable to those who have not seen the speed of ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... Park, on the 23d of June. She waited for it several hours, standing much of the time upon a camp-stool. As her Majesty appeared, accompanied by Prince Albert, the curiosity of the immense crowd "rose to such a pitch that every conceivable method was resorted to, to catch a glimpse of the field. Men climbed on each other's shoulders, gave 'fabulous prices' for chairs, boxes, and baskets, raised their wives and sweethearts high in the air, and so by degrees our view was quite ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... perpetually ravished by the Goths and Vandals of Letters—the merciless anti-copyright booksellers of America? Nay—they will pout at the insinuation, and stand upon the virtue which no one believes they possess. But assure them, dear Godfrey, that they are in no conceivable danger. Maga shall growl, and they shall fawn; but the republicans will not be repulsed by the honest frankness of the one nor propitiated by the hypocritical blandishments of the others. If they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... curious devices have been used or proposed. Of these was that of a man who wished to prepare a sort of bomb-shell, to be filled with cards or bills, which, on reaching a certain elevation above the city, would explode, and thus scatter these carrier doves of information in all conceivable directions. In that city, butchers, bakers, and fishmongers, receive quite an income from persons who wish their cards attached to the various commodities in which they deal. Thus, a person receiving a fish, a loaf, or a piece of meat, finds ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... bairns. We cannot sell our tobacco except to English merchants, and we cannot buy a horn spoon except it comes in an English ship. What's the result of that? You, as a merchant, can tell me fine. The English fix what price they like for our goods, and it's the lowest conceivable, and they make their own price for what they sell us, and that's as high as a Jew's. There's a fine profit there for the gentlemen-venturers of Bristol, but it's starvation and damnation ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... hold of our boat, obstinately refusing to let go, until we were forced to despatch them with our knives. We were now clear off, and making great way out to sea. The main body of the savages, upon reaching the broken canoe, set up the most tremendous yell of rage and disappointment conceivable. In truth, from everything I could see of these wretches, they appeared to be the most wicked, hypocritical, vindictive, bloodthirsty, and altogether fiendish race of men upon the face of the globe. It is clear we should have ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... take the place of the Spirit and of light. Pain was as intelligible as rapture. The terms of comparison were present in the conditions of human life and its various atmospheres of suffering and of intellect. Thus the most extraordinary traditions of hell and purgatory were quite naturally conceivable. ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... in the improvement of human nature; and not, we may believe, without some sub-conscious influence received directly or indirectly from Christianity. So again, with respect to Marcus, it is hardly conceivable that he, a prince so indulgent and popular, could have thwarted, and violently gainsaid, a primary impulse of the Roman populace, without some adequate motive; and none could be adequate which was not built upon some new and exalted views of human nature, with which ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... be so, the language travestied should not be too old. There would be nothing amusing, for example, in a burlesque imitation of Beowulf, because the Anglo-Saxon of the original is utterly strange to the modern reader. It is conceivable that quick-witted Athenians of the time of Aristophanes might find something quaint in Homer's Ionic dialect, akin to that quaintness which we find in Chaucer; but a Grecian of to-day would need to be very Attic indeed, to detect any provocation to mirth in the use of the genitive in-oio, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... It is conceivable that you might have been justified in coming forward boldly and straightforwardly and saying to ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... can see that such felicitous instinctive tempering together of the two great contradictory principles, love of effort and love of ease, has underlain every step of all healthy growth through all conceivable time. Nothing is worth looking at which is seen either too obviously or with too much difficulty. Nothing is worth doing or well done which is not done fairly easily, and some little deficiency of effort is more pardonable than any very perceptible excess; for virtue ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... him and his will. Therefore either he will not, or he cannot. If he will not, it must be because it would not be well to do so. If he cannot, then he would not if he could; else a better condition than God's is conceivable to the mind of God—a condition in which he could save the creatures whom he has made, better than he can save them. The truth is this: He wants to make us in his own image, choosing the good, ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... be in France, but in England, Rider Haggard, whose literary atrocities are more atrocious than his accounts of slaughter, receives the attention of leading journals and writes about the revival of Romance. As it is as difficult to write the worst as the best conceivable sentence, I take this one and place it for its greater glory in my ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... ancients actually regard the owl as a wise bird, or was the fashion of depicting it in the following of Minerva merely dictated by the presence of these birds on the Akropolis? It seems hardly conceivable that they could so have blundered as to call the owls that we know clever birds; and the alternative assumption that owlish intellect can have appreciably changed in the interval is even less acceptable. It is probable that too much significance need not be attached to such association between ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... so that I might be able to dismount and walk exposed to the gaze of men at any time or place, without my dress, or rather want of it, being made the subject of remark. I had a nice quiet horse, who allowed me to thoroughly test my invention by falling off his back in every conceivable direction, my husband being present to prevent my voluntary fall from degenerating into a "cropper." Mr. Tautz, the well-known breeches maker of Oxford Street, witnessed these acrobatic feats, and after we had all been perfectly convinced of the absolute safety ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... business with, and this great sum was immediately lost in its transit by stage. To any other young man in his situation, such a calamity would have been, for the moment, crushing; but this young man, indifferent to meum as to tuum, informs his brother that he can in no conceivable way replace the money, cannot therefore pay for the books he had bought, believes he is earning his daily bread, and as to the loss, he has "no uneasy sensations on that account." He concludes his letter with an ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... but from our own movement in an opposite direction; or, again, from our both moving in the first direction, the object more rapidly than ourselves; or, finally, from our both moving in an opposite direction to this, ourselves more rapidly than the object. There is thus always a variety of conceivable explanations, and the action of past experience and association shows itself very plainly in the determination of the direction of interpretation. Thus, it is our instinctive tendency to take apparent movement for real ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... were unjust and reactionary, and that the best interests of the State lay in uplifting every element of the people rather than selecting some one class for discouragement and degradation, and that the white race could hold its own, with the Negroes or against them, in any conceivable state of political equality. They listened to the colonel's quiet argument that no State could be freer or greater or more enlightened than the average of its citizenship, and that any restriction ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... machinations, and mismanagement of the capitalists, nothing could suit the latter worse than to be taken at their word and to have a commission appointed to take evidence on oath and to publicly inquire into the state of affairs; in fact to copy the Westminster inquiry. It is conceivable that the resolute refusal to investigate matters or to listen to complaints or explanations which the President had throughout maintained may have been the means of preserving a blissful faith in the strength ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... could by their bargain. The king wished to see La Valliere every moment of the day, while Madame, who was sensible of the king's annoyance ever since he had so entreated her, would not relinquish her revenge on La Valliere without a contest. She planted every conceivable difficulty in the king's path; he was, in fact, obliged, in order to get a glimpse of La Valliere, to be exceedingly devoted in his attentions to his sister-in-law, and this, indeed, was Madame's plan of policy. As she had chosen some one to second her efforts, ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... which successively analyzes and recomposes. For the supreme intelligence there is no time; what will be, is. Time and space are fragments of the infinite for the use of finite creatures. God permits them, that he may not be alone. They are the mode under which creatures are possible and conceivable. Let us add that they are also the Jacob's ladder of innumerable steps by which the creation reascends to its Creator, participates in being, tastes of life, perceives the absolute, and can adore the fathomless mystery of the infinite divinity. That is the other ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a thing, we must conceive it as existing out of relation to everything else. For if nothing beyond itself is necessary as a condition of its existence, it can exist separate from everything else; and its pure existence as the unconditioned is so separate. It must therefore be conceivable as the sole existence, having no plurality beyond itself; and as simple, having no plurality within itself. For if we cannot conceive it as existing apart from other things, we cannot conceive it as independent of them; and if we conceive it as a compound of parts, we have further ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... by tying a stone to the end of a string, and lodging it on the highest head; but this was not an easy process, as I was naturally anxious not to injure the delicate beauty which made that head one of the loveliest things conceivable; and each careful essay with the stone seemed to involve as much responsibility as taking a shot at a hostile wicket, in a crisis of the game, instead of returning the ball in the conventional manner. When at last it was ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... will desire that he should be injured, in the hope of recovering from the injury, nor long to be ill for the sake of getting well. For everyone will always endeavour to persist in his being, and to ward off pain as far as he can. If the contrary is conceivable, namely, that a man should desire to hate someone, in order that he might love him the more thereafter, he will always desire to hate him. For the strength of love is in proportion to the strength of the hatred, wherefore the man would ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... declared that Luther's theses were bound to commend themselves to all good men, almost without exception; that the present Papal domination was a plague to Christendom; the only question was whether tearing open the wound would do any good, and whether it was not conceivable that the matter could be carried ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... passed wore their raggedest coats for the evil day. They were scarecrows in a shanty town. . . . "To think," she marveled, "of coming two thousand miles, past mountains and cities, to get off here, and to plan to stay here! What conceivable reason for choosing this ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... grandiose that robbed it of any supreme claim in the annals or literature of murder. The document ended with an assurance that Michael would never die at the hands of his fellow man. He had repeated this assertion on several occasions and every conceivable precaution was taken to prevent evasion of his sentence—an issue to be ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... of the peasant, and no more curious sight can be imagined than the wide, uncovered market-place of some quaint old German town during a heavy shower, when every industrial covers himself or herself with the aegis of a portable tent, and a bright array of brass ferrules and canopies of all conceivable hues which cotton can be made to assume, without losing its one quality of "fast colour," flash ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... prove that the myopia is rather due to heredity? It would, by a process of exclusion, if every conceivable environmental factor had been measured and found wanting. That point in the investigation can never be reached, but a tremendously strong suspicion is at least justified. Now if the degree of resemblance ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... over and looked. Upon the page of folio, close to an illuminated capital, the black drop had flattened itself. Around the original sphere had been shed splashes of all conceivable shapes-rays, rockets, dotted lines, arrowheads, all the freakish impromptu of chaos. Next, the slope lending its aid, the channels had drained into one, and by this time a black rivulet was crawling downward ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... this moment he emerged into fame, or rather into notoriety; he thrust his head through the curtain of obscurity, as if he were a negro at a country fair, and with remarkable enthusiasm the whole critical fraternity proceeded to hurl every conceivable missile at him. It was well for him that his ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... as his agitation assumed a bolder form, it would provoke formidable demonstrations in England against Ministers and their policy; not a meeting could be got up to petition her Majesty for the dismissal of her Ministers! But it is quite conceivable that Mr O'Connell, in the course he was pursuing, forgot to consider the possibility of developing a power which might be too great for him, which would not be wielded by him, but carry him along with it. The following remarkable expressions fell from the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... method of handling the most contentious problem in British politics. A fine opportunity was offered to amateur constitution-mongers. Anyone was allowed to propound a scheme for the future government of Ireland, which, of course, was an encouragement to endless wide-ranging debate, with the least conceivable likelihood of arriving at definite decisions. Neither of the leaders of the two parties whose agreement was essential if the Convention was to have any result took the initiative in bringing forward proposals. Mr. Redmond was ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... ecstasy at this vision, so amazing that it seemed to have strayed into his existence from beyond the limits of the conceivable. It was impossible to guess her thoughts, to know her feelings, to understand her grief or her joy. But she knew all that was at the bottom of his heart. He had told her himself, impelled by a sudden thought, going to her in darkness, in ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... only in its immediate relation to Man, and the Human Being as the predetermined centre to which it was designed to converge. As the subject, however, of what are called the sublime emotions, he holds a different position; for the centre here is not himself, nor, indeed, can he approach it within conceivable distance: yet still he is drawn to it, though baffled for ever. Now the question is, Where, and in what bias, is this mysterious attraction? It must needs be in something having a clear affinity with us, ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... sight is not very good at a distance, and therefore when the gentleman first appeared in the walk, I was not quite clear whether he was a stranger to me or otherwise. He was an elderly gentleman, but came tripping along in the pleasantest manner conceivable, avoiding the garden-roller and the borders of the beds with inimitable dexterity, picking his way among the flower-pots, and smiling with unspeakable good humour. Before he was half-way up the walk he began to salute ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... throng and clash, and neatly equal the commentators in number. Yet possibly each one of these unriddlings, with no doubt a host of others, is conceivable: so that wisdom will dwell upon none of ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... the trained part of the senate, instinctively in the secret, is sure to follow them: provided the leaders, sensible of their situation, do not of themselves recede in time from their most declared opinions. This latter is generally the case. It will not be conceivable to any one who has not seen it, what pleasure is taken by the cabal in rendering these heads of office thoroughly contemptible and ridiculous. And when they are become so, they have then the best ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... by Englishmen as an emanation and a proof of the most grovelling malignity, not less despicably silly than shamelessly calumnious. The time of trial came; and what no one would have ventured to suggest as conceivable proved to be the actual and positive truth. There must have been some deep-lying reason for this,—some reason which remained latent below the surface as long as the United States were regarded as one integral community, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... garden behind the house there was no attempt to construct a Shakespearian plot, for, as she so rightly observed, Shakespeare, who loved flowers so well, would wish her to enjoy every conceivable horticultural treasure. But furniture played a prominent part in the place, and there were statues and sundials and stone-seats scattered about with almost too profuse a hand. Mottos also were in great ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... around upon the learned world he saw the great monster Confusion still unslain, and intended to found a Grand Universal College, which would consist of all the learned in Europe, would devote its attention to the pursuit of knowledge in every conceivable branch, and would arrange that knowledge in beautiful order and make the garden of wisdom a trim parterre. He was so sure that his system was right that he compared it to a great clock or mill, which had only to be set going to bring about the desired result. If his scheme ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... very glad you did not. What on earth put Lettice into your head? She has no conceivable interest in ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... nothing. He would see none of us. I sent tea and lemonade and ice and hot-water bags and every conceivable remedy to his rooms, but with no effect. Nor would he hear ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... stunned, breathless, half-strangled, bruised and beaten by he did not know what; everything, it seemed to him—dead and drowning bodies of men and cattle, boxes, furniture, spars, cotton-bales, pieces of the wreck of every conceivable kind and shape, trunks ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... class in the school, and was naively exultant that the vicar curiously happened to fix an hour when he must needs see Miss Leyburn going or coming on the same errand; he dropped into Burwood on any conceivable pretext, till Rose and Agnes lost all inconvenient respect for his cloth and Mrs. Leyburn sent him on errands; and he even insisted that Catherine and the vicar should make use of him and his pastoral services in one or two of the cases of sickness ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... descriptions. I begged him to tell me what was the general impression left on his mind. He answered, that he might now say he had seen and conversed with all classes of society, from the palace to the cottage, and including every conceivable shade of science and ignorance—but that he had never felt awed or abashed except in the presence of one man—the Duke of Wellington. I expressed some surprise. He said I ought not, for that the Duke of Wellington possessed every one mighty ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... the Isle of Desserts with a boat or with snow-shoes or with stilts or with anything except an airplane. Swimming to it was out of the question. Shouting and screaming to it was feasible, of course. Radio operations were conceivable. But reach it no one could. The adventurer would have been swallowed in mud. This safe isolation would continue for a couple of hours and then the playful water would come rippling in again spreading a glinting coverlet ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... empire of wagerers she knew; they wagered for and against every conceivable thing which had its dependence ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... Vedic age, as later, thought of the Manes living in stars, moon, sun, and air; and, if they were not good Manes but dead sinners, in the outer edge of the universe or under ground. In short, they are located in every conceivable place[17]. ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... wealthy. "If ever a woman was cherished she shall be! If ever a woman was happy she shall be!" And as for him, if he had done wrong to win her, he would more than compensate it afterward. In short, he had been for more than twenty years selling, buying, swapping, driving every conceivable earthly bargain—so now he ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... pretty wife had plenty of room for the comfortable indulgence of their dislike in the spacious old mansion. My lady had her own apartments, as we know—luxurious chambers, in which all conceivable elegancies had been gathered for the comfort of their occupant. Alicia had her own rooms in another part of the large house. She had her favorite mare, her Newfoundland dog, and her drawing materials, ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... unfavourable impression because some, not all of them, are stiff and regular. The others make an unfavourable impression because they are so laxly executed. For what conceivable purpose did the forger here resort to the aid of compasses, and elsewhere do nothing of the kind? Why should the artist, if an old resident of Dunbuie fort, not have compasses, like the Cairn-wight of ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... shaken this morning to find the Grass unaffected. Even wondered for a moment if it were conceivable that F would never find the right compound—that nothing could hurt the Grass. Had I been illadvised in not going more seriously into Burlet's ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... vertically, and is traversed in every direction by sudden crevices, almost glacier-like, narrow, with vertical walls of great depth, and infinite ramification. Smooth as the loess basin looks in a bird's-eye view, it is thus one of the most impracticable countries conceivable for military movements, and secures extraordinary value to fortresses in well-chosen sites, such as that of Tung-kwan mentioned in Note ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... is not a man to tell a lie.' That is all the evidence against Smerdyakov produced by these three persons, who are all deeply concerned in the prisoner's fate. And yet the theory of Smerdyakov's guilt has been noised about, has been and is still maintained. Is it credible? Is it conceivable?" ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... branches he saw a pale grey wall of mist against his windows. All excitement had gone from the atmosphere, leaving the dreary certainty that the mist would presently clear only to condense into a slow, persistent, autumn rain. It is conceivable that he would not have exchanged his waking dreams so quickly for more definite thoughts and speculations had his eyes rested upon the blue hills of the western skyline, for he was peculiarly susceptible to the moods of nature. There being now practically no outside world to lure ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... Sometimes a veil of mist of delicate green hue depended from the base of the crown, and swayed gently back and forth. As soon as the swaying motion commenced, the most gorgeous colors were revealed. Myriads of sparks, no larger than snow-flakes, swarmed across the delicate green curtain in every conceivable color and shade, but always of that vapory, vivid softness that is indescribable. The dancing colors resembled gems encased in a film ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... which such a man would do is conceivable enough. He stands out, both by his excellences and his defects, as the spokesman and ideal of all the unrest and unhealth of sensitive young men for many a year after. His unfulfilled prophecies only help to increase that unrest. Who shall blame either him for uttering those prophecies, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... desperately to his waist as he hastened down the bank? It was necessary to put the Lascar aside, gently and slowly, because it was necessary to save the boats, and, further, to demonstrate the extreme ease of the problem that looked so difficult. And then—but it was of no conceivable importance—a wirerope raced through his hand, burning it, the high bank disappeared, and with it all the slowly dispersing factors of the problem. He was sitting in the rainy darkness—sitting in a boat that spun like a top, and Peroo was ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... as too often with us plain men, staggered and deeply affronted by the illogical absurdity of human nature. "Was it conceivable," he thought, "that this traveller, presumably in his senses—" etc. (You are familiar with the tone and the style, being a plain man yourself.) And he gave way ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... Uneven dyeing seems to be an impossibility in this group of dyes, unless the cotton is dirty; no matter how the operations are carried on, level dyeing is the rule not the exception. An enormous variety of shades and tints can be obtained from these dyes, and they can be combined together in every conceivable manner and proportions. ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... has "our house" undergone since first dear Alice pictured it as a possibility to me! It has passed through every character, form, and style of architecture conceivable. From five rooms it has grown to fourteen. The reception parlor, chameleon-like, has changed color eight times. There have duly loomed up bewildering visions of a library, a drawing-room, a butler's pantry, a nursery, ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... earth of all the heavenly bodies, has always occupied the imagination of men. Many fanciful accounts have been written of voyages to the moon, of which the following story by Edgar Allan Poe is among the best. So wonderful has been the advance of science that it is conceivable that at some distant time in the future the inhabitants of this world may possibly be able to visit the beautiful body which ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... of Eternity without any conceivable beginning and conceivable end was so thoroughly realised by the Hindu sages that the chiefdom of Heaven itself was to them the concern of a moment. Nothing less than unchangeable felicity for all times was the object they pursued. All other ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... sit here and sew as go to bed and lie there. I shouldn't sleep," replied Maria, with the gentlest sadness conceivable. There was in it no shadow of complaining. Of late years all the fire of resistance had seemed to die out in the girl. She was unfailingly sweet, but nerveless. Often when she raised a hand it seemed as if she could not even let it fall, as if it must remain poised by some ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... "is a mistaken idea of responsibility, a needless sacrifice. I could never urge you into an injustice, a wrong; at last I have got above that; what I want is the most reasonable thing imaginable, the best, in every conceivable way, for yourself and—any other. You are harming, depriving, no one. You are taking nothing but your own, what has been yours, and only yours, from the first moment I saw, no—from my birth. What has ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... number or end, an essential imperfection attaches to history. In the study of it, all that a man learns never contributes to lessen that which he has still to learn. With any real science, a perfection of knowledge is, at any rate, conceivable. ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... period, would have offered no security for the early suppression of discontent, would have divided the people into the vanquishers and the vanquished, and would have envenomed hatred rather than have restored affection. Once established, no precise limit to their continuance was conceivable. They would have occasioned an incalculable and exhausting expense. Peaceful emigration to and from that portion of the country is one of the best means that can be thought of for the restoration of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... most prosperous. Around their borders rises the sullen murmur of threatening armies and hostile dynasties; but Belgium is free from menace, and their sunshine of peace is without a cloud. It is of course conceivable that in the great struggle which seems impending, the Belgian nation may suddenly vanish from the map, and become but a memory in the minds of a future generation; but their end, if it come, is likely to be in the nature of a euthanasia, and so far as they ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... his own generation were doubtless some who, with F. Tennyson again, believed him to be "a man of infinite learning, jest, and bonhomie, and a sterling heart that reverbs no hollowness," but who yet held "his school of poetry" to be "the most grotesque conceivable." This was the tone of the 'Fifties, when Tennyson's vogue was at its height. But with the 'Sixties there began to emerge a critical disposition to look beyond the trim pleasances of the Early Victorians to more daring romantic adventure in search of the truth that lies in beauty, and more fearless ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... CONCEIVE a God?—But let this mean Will to Truth unto you, that everything be transformed into the humanly conceivable, the humanly visible, the humanly sensible! Your own discernment shall ye ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... was an agent for brushes, and he opened his box and showed me the greatest assortment of big and little brushes: bristle brushes, broom brushes, yarn brushes, wire brushes, brushes for man and brushes for beast, brushes of every conceivable size and shape that ever I saw in all my life. He had out one of his especial pets—he called it his "leader"—and feeling it familiarly in his hand he instinctively began the jargon of well-handled and voice-worn phrases which went with that particular brush. It was just as ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... to money and accounts, his character and conduct present the same extraordinary mixture as is seen in everything else that concerns him. Money flows profusely upon valentines, gloves, books, and every sort of thing conceivable; yet he grudges the price of his wife's dress although it is a sum much smaller than the cost of his own. He allows her L30 for all expenses of the household, and she is immensely pleased, for the sum is much larger than she had expected. The gift to her of a necklace ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... escalloped margins, a deep band of buff lightly traced with black bordering them, and a pronounced point close the apex of the front pair. When it came to books, all they had to teach me were the names. I had captured and studied butterflies, big, little, and with every conceivable variety of marking, until it was seldom one was found whose least peculiarity was not familiar to me as my own face; ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... general art of combining melodies which gives harmony its deepest expression and musical texture its liveliest action. Nor is there any such line to separate polyphonic from non-polyphonic methods of accompanying melody; and Bach's Orgelbuechlein and Brahms's posthumous organ-chorales show every conceivable gradation between plain harmony or arpeggio and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... think how they do it!" she says, lost in admiration of a little slim hair lady bending over a miniature hair urn in the most lachrymose attitude conceivable. "But they have put her eye in wrongly: she looks as if she ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... and, if they bet an odd half-crown and never go beyond it, perhaps no one is much the worse. When the Duke of Portland allowed his tenantry to see St. Simon gallop five years ago at Newcastle, the pitmen and artisans thronged to look at the horse. There was no betting whatever, because no conceivable odds could have measured the difference between St. Simon and his opponent, yet when Archer let the multitude see how fast a horse could travel, and the great thoroughbred swept along like a flash, the excitement and enthusiasm rose to fever-pitch. Those ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... Williams, like Guyon, was an object of the insatiable jealousy of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, who gave him no support, and, in spite of the entreaties—and, at last, of the commands—of the English minister for foreign affairs, thwarted Colonel Williams in every conceivable way. Supported, however, by the decision, perseverance, and intelligence of Lord Clarendon, the English commissioner held his ground in spite of the coldness, and even opposition, of the ambassador, and was enabled to re-organize the dispersed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... upon clothing than I did. I do not know just how he disposed of his money, but he earned two hundred or three hundred a year as a writer, and he was invariably short of funds. I think it quite conceivable that he may have maintained some poor relation or relations, but in all the years of our acquaintance I never heard him mention a relative. He certainly ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... life isn't a conceivable thing to me without you; I mean that no considerations in the world have any force as against my desire to get you. Whatever your life has been, I subscribe to it. Listen! When I saw Bienville this morning he withdrew what ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... harshness of the place, its floods and precipices. An air of immense age possessed, above all, the vegetation around—a world of evergreen trees—the olives especially, older than how many generations of men's lives! fretted and twisted by the combining forces of [66] life and death, into every conceivable caprice of form. In the windless weather all seemed to be listening to the roar of the immemorial waterfall, plunging down so unassociably among these human habitations, and with a motion so unchanging from age to age as to count, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... of artificial swarming has been zealously advocated, which, if it could only be made to answer, would be, of all conceivable plans the most effectual, and as it would require the smallest amount of labor, experience, or skill, would be everywhere practiced. A number of hives must be put in connection with each other, so as to communicate by holes which ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... translated into English as "Bell Savage," considered the name was derived from that source. Alderman Sir W. P. Treloar, in his excellent little book on "Ludgate Hill," puts forth another idea. "As the inn," he says, "was the mansion of the Savage family, and near to Bailey or Ballium, it is at least conceivable that it would come to be known as the Bail or Bailey Savage Inn, and afterward the Old Bail or Bailey Inn." We prefer, however, to favour the Isabella Savage theory ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... nothing that Shelley's wife could do would have been satisfactory to him, for he was in love with another woman, and was never going to be contented again until he got back to her. If he had been still in love with his wife it is not easily conceivable that he would care much who nursed the baby, provided the baby was well nursed. Harriet's jealousy was assuredly voicing itself now, Shelley's conscience was assuredly nagging him, pestering him, persecuting him. Shelley needed excuses for his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... frequently and recently ploughed are those that lie most open, those which may be expected most easily to lead to results. The laws of our memory, as we find them, therefore are incidents of our associational constitution; and, when we are emancipated from the flesh, it is conceivable that they may no longer ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... not only to us," was the answer, "but, so far as we know, to all other intelligent beings of the universe except yourselves. Our positive knowledge extends only to our system of moons and planets and some of the nearer foreign systems, and it is conceivable that the remoter parts of the universe may harbor other blind races like your own; but it certainly seems unlikely that so strange and lamentable a spectacle should be duplicated. One such illustration of the extraordinary deprivations under which a rational existence may still ...
— The Blindman's World - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... superseded by the man with the upright eagle-feather, whom people now spoke of as Ho-to-kee-mat-sin, the Bat. The young women of the Chis-chis-chash threw approving glances after the Bat as he strode proudly about the camp. He was possessed of all desirable things conceivable to the red mind. Nothing that ever bestrode a horse was more exquisitely supple than the well-laid form of this young Indian man; his fame as a hunter was great, but the taking of the Absaroke scalp was transcendent. Still, it was not possible to realize any matrimonial hopes which he was led ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... he had been simple enough to give up smoking for Miss Rachel's sake. In the twinkling of an eye, he burst in on me with his cigar-case, and came out strong on the one everlasting subject, in his neat, witty, unbelieving, French way. "Give me a light, Betteredge. Is it conceivable that a man can have smoked as long as I have without discovering that there is a complete system for the treatment of women at the bottom of his cigar-case? Follow me carefully, and I will prove it in two words. You choose a cigar, you try it, and it disappoints you. What ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... no doubt, it may be tame enough—we cannot tell; but to those who mount an engine for the first time and drive through the crowded thoroughfares of London at a wild tearing gallop, it is probably the most exciting drive conceivable. It beats steeple-chasing. It feels like driving to destruction—so wild and so reckless is it. And yet it is not reckless in the strict sense of that word; for there is a stern need-be in the case. Every moment (not ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... then. Did they play chess as far away as Cuba? He said they all did. Was it conceivable that any man would make such a bargain as Snyth made? Wasn't the trick well known? Wasn't it in hundreds of books? And if he couldn't read books mustn't he have heard from sailors that it is the Devil's commonest dodge to get souls ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... she said indignantly. "Every one says that girls are always late, and you three, except Eileen, are usually later than the average late ones. Yet here you are. And every one says that men are always prompt, and Nolan is certainly worse than the average man in every conceivable way. But ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... no aptitude for it, he began to hate it. Often, when he should have been doing something that was given him, he wasted his time drawing little pictures on the office note-paper. He made sketches of Watson in every conceivable attitude, and Watson was impressed by his talent. It occurred to him to take the drawings home, and he came back next day with the ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... Thenceforth, lessons were a necessary form, gone through without heart or diligence. These were reserved for paste-board boxes, beplastered with rice and sealing-wax, for alum baskets, dressed dolls, and every conceivable trumpery; and the governess was ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... treatment of the Abbe Dergent, priest of Gelrode, near Louvain, is reported by a neutral witness, Father G., a student at Louvain. The German soldiers accused the Belgian priests of every conceivable crime; the Assistant-Priest of Sainte-Gertrude (Louvain), who was remonstrating with a soldier, received this reply: "We are Catholics too, but you are pigs and black devils." In Belgium about one hundred of the clergy were massacred. Note further that in this unfortunate country doctors were ...
— Their Crimes • Various
... monosyllables, each expressed by a different ideograph, each having a distinct significance, and each capable of combination and permutation with one or more of the others, by which combinations and permutations disyllabic and trisyllabic words are obtained representing every conceivable shade of meaning. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... give the correct weight of their tea and silk under penalty of forfeiture; as for calmly landing and shipping their goods without permits, this was now out of the question. Yet what could they do to circumvent these innovations? Nothing—but put every conceivable difficulty, large and small, ingenious and obvious, in the ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... that to expect any such weekly rhythm were absurd, seeing that our week—unlike the lunar month of the year—is a purely artificial and conventional period; while, on the other hand, it might be retorted that the existence of an induced weekly periodicity is quite conceivable, such periodicity being induced by the habitual difference between our occupation, or mode of life, on one or two days of the week and that on the remaining days. In such an inquiry, however, a priori argument is futile, as the question can be answered only by an induction ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... keenly, supporting, as it seemed to do, his idea that Coburn was in the power of the syndicate or one of its members. If, for example, one of these men, on the lookout for helpers in his conspiracy, had learned of the cashier's predicaments it was conceivable that he might have obtained his hold by advancing the money needed to square the matter in return for a signed confession of guilt. This was of course the merest guesswork, but it at least indicated to Willis a fresh line of inquiry in case ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... lying tied up on the deck. They had, with about fifty or sixty fowls, been presented to us by the natives, and as we should have given great offence by not accepting them, we had to endure their company for the present. Then all around us, stowed in every conceivable place, were bundles of young drinking coco-nuts, husked and unhusked, taking up a great deal of room, and weighing heavily, and three or four rolls of sleeping-mats, presented to Niabon, were wedged into the cabin. All this collection would have to be either got rid of entirely ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... It is conceivable that if a third man of any trade come along the character of business in Burunda may entirely change. But while there are but two of each, the chances are that any day the visitors may have the quiet monotony of the place broken up by ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... taking from us the power to trade freely in apart of your country, and striving to bring everything into confusion, which would be, in a word, preparing the way for the ruin of everything to the injury of your state. To this end your subjects have employed every conceivable artifice and all possible means which they thought could injure us. But all these efforts have been thwarted by your Majesty, assisted by your prudent council, who have given us the authority of your ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... is at all pretentious, should arrange a Vanity Room for the use of guests, in which there are full-length mirrors, a completely equipped dressing-table with every conceivable article to assist a lady in making her toilet, slipper-chairs and chairs to rest in, and a completely ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... dispirited that when the night came they would fly. There was so much at stake—Iris, wealth, love, happiness, life itself—all depended on his plighted word. Yet his savage enemy, a slayer of women, a human vampire soiled with every conceivable crime, was stalking back to safety with a certain dignified strut, calmly trusting to the white ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... disagreeable possibility had flashed into his mind. Was it conceivable that his wife had had herself rowed to the scene of the disaster? If she had done that, if her sister had allowed her to go alone, or accompanied maybe by one or other of the officers belonging to the submarine flotilla, then he told himself with ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Quincey was arrested somehow by that extraordinary transmigration of a Kalmuck horde across the face of Asia in 1771, which had also struck Gibbon; he inserted his hands into the vague chaos of Asiatic inconceivability enshrouding the transaction; and he tore out the connected and tolerably conceivable story which we now read. There is no such vivid version of any such historical episode in all Gibbon, and possibly nothing truer essentially, after all, to the substance of the facts as they ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... Every conceivable species of comedy and farce met the eye at every turn. Costumes the most remarkable, men the most varied and peculiar, and things the most incomprehensible and unexpected, presented themselves in endless succession. ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... been too suddenly sprung upon the masses. The autonomy granted to the provinces needs more control than the civil government originally intended, and ends in an appeal on almost every conceivable question being made to one man—the Gov.-General: this excessive concentration makes efficient administration too dependent on the abilities of one person. There are many who still think, and not without reason, that ten years of military rule would have been better for the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... anywhere in Babylonia. But on examination it is found that collections said to be from widely different places contain duplicates; while the same collection contains tablets dated at different cities and with dates a thousand years apart. It is conceivable that the records of important transactions, especially the transfers of land, were deposited by order in the archives at the capital, wherever that was for the time being. We may imagine that the archives at Sippara or Larsa were afterwards transferred ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... concluded might have lasted longer but for an unforeseen catastrophe which placed Babylon almost at the mercy of her rival. The Blamites had never abandoned their efforts to press in every conceivable way their claim to the Sebbeneh-su, the supremacy, which, prior to Kbammurabi, had been exercised by their ancestors over the whole of Mesopotamia; they swooped down on Karduniash with an impetuosity like that of the Assyrians, and probably with the same alternations ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... his own heir—and a young girl like that——? By Jove, I say, how dreadful!" he exclaimed, and, in fact, he would hardly believe such a thing conceivable until all the choice spirits in turn had assured him that there was practically ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... going forward to all this delight, I become an object of terror and loathing even before I die, and something that must be hidden out of sight as soon as possible after, what conceivable fate could be worse? That such a thing is possible proves this to be a dreadful and defective world, with all its sources of pleasure. Surely if there were a God he ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... Under no conceivable circumstances could she consent to regard her employer's wife as a substitute for her own hired assistant. There were other nurses though, to be got. Somewhere one could be found, no doubt, who'd ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Nelson should by every conceivable means adopt methods of declamation against the French, if by doing so he thought it would inspire the men whom he commanded with the same conquering spirit he himself possessed. His country was at war with the French, and he was merely ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... to him in his solitude. In the interminable watches of the night Jewdwine acknowledged himself a failure; and a failure for which there was no possible excuse. He had had every conceivable advantage that a man could have. He had been born free; free from all social disabilities; free from pecuniary embarrassment; free from the passions that beset ordinary men. And he had sold himself into slavery. He had opinions; he was packed full of opinions, valuable opinions; but he ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... city that human eye had ever rested upon. Just a brief glimpse of his immediate surroundings vouchsafed Bradley before he was whisked into the interior of one of the buildings; but in that momentary glance he saw strange piles of stone and wood and mud fashioned into buildings of all conceivable sizes and shapes, sometimes piled high on top of one another, sometimes standing alone in an open court-way, but usually crowded and jammed together, so that there were no streets or alleys between them other than a few ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... from the character imparted to it by writing detached weekly articles. The composing of these articles had been a pleasure; the writing of English history was to be his life-work, and no divided allegiance was conceivable to him. But we may indeed be thankful that he resisted the views of other friends who wished to drive him into copying German models. This class Green called 'Pragmatic Historians';[58] and, while acknowledging their solid contributions ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... myself. I was always at it. I'd try and guess—try and see—the number of the hymn which was on the paper in the vicar's hand before he gave it out, and I would bet with myself on it. I would bet with myself or with anybody available on any conceivable thing—the minutes late a train would be; the pints of milk a cow would give; the people who would be at a hunt breakfast; the babies that would be christened on a Sunday; the number of eyes in a peck of raw potatoes. I was out against the universe. But it wasn't serious at all—just ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the revolution went on, exhibiting more and more fully the incapacity of the king, the more were the intoxicated people tempted to exult over him, sometimes fiercely, and sometimes in mockery. It is not conceivable that they would have ventured upon some things that were said and done, if the king had been a man of spirit; for men of spirit command personal respect in their adversity. The great original quarrel with the king, it will be remembered, was on matters of finance,—about the ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... It is scarcely conceivable that this fourfold arrangement, not suggested by any natural grouping of the stars, should have come about by accident; it must have been intentional. For some reason, the equator, the colure, the zenith and the poles were all marked out by these serpentine ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... into their pleasantest sunshine. Technically, according to the fifth proposition of the sermon on Human Nature, very bad, no doubt. Practically, according to the fact before him, a very pretty piece of the Creator's handiwork, body and soul. Was it not a conceivable thing that the divine grace might show itself in different forms in a fresh young girl like Letitia, and in that poor thing he had visited yesterday, half-grown, half-colored, in bed for the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... sakes, anything like conflict between the two nations is not to be dreamed of; but, for the world's sake, an intimate alliance between them in the cause of peace would be the most blessed conceivable thing. There is every justification for such an alliance, not merely in the incalculable benefits that would result, but in the original kinship of the peoples, the permanent and fundamental sympathy ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... and invective more effectively used; his impeachment is as withering as his victory at the trial was complete. The authors of the "Vindications" had not only done what in them lay to ruin him in every conceivable way, public and private, but they had exposed themselves to his "Remarks," all-pungent as they were, by going into court and giving opinions founded upon "the most disgracefully deficient dissection ever made." The sore which ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... keeping a perfect silence, and the stillness was so profound that Decoud felt as if the slightest sound conceivable must travel unchecked and audible to the end of the world. What if Hirsch coughed or sneezed? To feel himself at the mercy of such an idiotic contingency was too exasperating to be looked upon with irony. Nostromo, too, seemed to be getting restless. Was it possible, he asked himself, that ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... sad failing). He imbibes freely—the current fashions of the hour amongst whites. If raffling, for instance, be held in honour as a method for expediting the sale of personal effects, the Indian will adapt the practice to the disposal of every conceivable chattel that he desires to get off ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... have forgotten the commotion made by the newspapers in connection with this case, nor how they jumped at the opportunity once more to accuse the police of carelessness and blundering. Was it conceivable that a pick-pocket could play the part of an inspector like that, in broad daylight and in a public place, and rob a respectable ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... and kindly gave me a long needle to stir up the beetle in my ear; but the insect had gone in so far, and the swelling and suppuration of the wounds had so imbedded him, that no instrument could have done any good. Khamis, like myself, was very anxious to complete his journey, and tried every conceivable means to entice his crew away, but he failed as signally as I did. On the mainland opposite to this, we see the western horn of these concavely-disposed mountains, which encircle the north of the lake, and from ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... objections urged against this. Sometimes, when the pressure is low and water is being drawn in the kitchen, if a faucet in the bath-room is opened, not only will no water come, but air is drawn into the pipe by the force of the running water below. A direct connection with a water-closet, it is conceivable, might allow filth to be drawn up into the water-pipe under certain conditions. The other objection is that the small pipe generally used in a house does not deliver water fast enough for ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... person could hardly fail to become convinced that, in the great majority of cases, the danger is of small practical consequence. The roots of the black walnut run deeply under ground and it is entirely conceivable that in deep soil they do not ordinarily come up to the shallower levels of the roots of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... thoughts and feelings without coming to any conclusion, any ease from racking suspense. In the mean time, on rolled the carriage, and Cockburn, according to his master's directions, got her over the ground with all conceivable speed. ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... came to her, the wildest idea conceivable, not one chance in a million of its succeeding, yet now, in the face of extinction, anything was worth trying. She had nothing to lose. Quick as lightning she seized the needle, squirted its contents on the floor back of the bed, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... them merely by a common obedience to an external law. All that man sees has to do with man. Worlds cannot be without an intermundane relationship. The community of the centre of all creation suggests an interradiating connection and dependence of the parts. Else a grander idea is conceivable than that which is already imbodied. The blank, which is only a forgotten life, lying behind the consciousness, and the misty splendour, which is an undeveloped life, lying before it, may be full of mysterious revelations of other connexions with the worlds around us, than those of science and ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... discussed, and the same unjust assertion put forth. A single quotation will be sufficient to illustrate the spirit prevailing upon this point. It is from a letter on the subject published in South Australian Register of the 1st August, 1840:—"It would be difficult to define what conceivable proprietary rights were ever enjoyed by the miserable savages of South Australia, who never cultivated an inch of the soil, and whose ideas of the value of its direct produce never extended beyond obtaining a sufficiency of pieces of white chalk and red ochre ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... mind, the first step towards this end is, to follow the fashion of our nation, so often, so VERY often, called practical, and leaving for a little an ideal scarce conceivable, to try to get people to bethink them of what we can best do with those makeshifts which we cannot get rid of ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... strange-looking running costumes of various designs could be seen diligently practicing at all manner of stunts, from sprinting, leaping hurdles, engaging in the high jump, with the aid of poles; throwing the hammer; and, in fact, every conceivable exercise that would be apt to come under the head of a genuine ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... have as yet shown no sign of skill in governing other peoples. Might is Right; and it is quite conceivable that they may acquire colonies by violence. If they want to keep them they will have to shut their own professors' books, and study the intimate history of the British Empire. We are old hands at the business; we have lost more colonies than ever they owned, and we begin to think that we have ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh |
