"Impossibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... right way. Those yearnings are not given us, that they may fall back and wither the fountain from which they spring. But the question is, do we seek for happiness in the right way? Do we not rather ask for an impossibility, when we ask for permanent bliss, before we have laid a foundation in our souls for it? You wish to take this life too easy by far, my son; rouse up all your strength, look around you with the keenness of a resolved spirit, and seek to ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... I look sickly?' she asked, turning up her face to show the impossibility of his gazing on it and holding such a belief for ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... mortal terror seized him. What was to be his fate? To regain the top of the cliff by his own exertions was an impossibility. ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... she might perceive his heart was broken and be sorry. He closed loftily by saying: "You advise me, my dear Arethusa—allow me to call you thus for the last time—to find a heart worthier and better. It was unkind in you to urge upon me an impossibility. None but Napoleon ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... noble cause. They saw clearly enough the sacrifices they would be required to make, and the calamities which would overwhelm the land. But these were nothing to the triumph of their cause. Of this final triumph none of the great leaders of the Revolution doubted. They felt the impossibility of subduing a nation determined to be free, by such forces as England could send across the ocean. Battles might be lost, like those of William the Silent, but if the Dutch could overflow their dikes, the Americans, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... SCRUPLES" illustrates this personal religion in an opposite manner. It is the expression of a tender and very simple religious feeling, saddened by the obscurity which surrounds its object, and still more by the impossibility of proving to other minds that this object is a real one. It is described as the devotion to an unseen friend, known only by his letters and reported deeds, but whom one loves as by instinct, believes in without testimony, and trusts to as accepting the allegiance of the smaller being, ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... being erected in the days of Ramman-nirari III., and the terms in which the god is addressed might lead one to believe that an attempt was made to concentrate the cult in Assyria on him.[134] This, however, was an impossibility. As long as Assyria continued to play the role of the subduer of nations, Ashur—the god of war par excellence—necessarily retained his position at the head of the Assyrian pantheon. The popularity of Nabu, which continued to the end of the Assyrian empire, and gained a fresh ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... with the labors of the Quakers and their works—with Fox, Penn, and especially the work of Dymond (published in 1827)—showed me not only that the impossibility of reconciling Christianity with force and war had been recognized long, long ago, but that this irreconcilability had been long ago proved so clearly and so indubitably that one could only wonder ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... the Iliad and the Odyssey, is an aesthetic judgment. It is, however, by no means affirmed against the poet of these epics that he was merely the imaginary being of an aesthetic impossibility, which can be the opinion of only very few philologists indeed. The majority contend that a single individual was responsible for the general design of a poem such as the Iliad, and further that this individual was Homer. The first part of this contention may be admitted; but, in accordance ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... she left him had been a season of ecstatic joy mingled with deep depression, as she alternately meditated upon the fact of a great love, or faced its impossibility. ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... most refined and subtle torture to men who had made up their minds for the worst, and who, by God's strengthening gracs, had already become, as it were, dead to the world. It rendered the execution of the remaining men almost an impossibility. Maguire notoriously was innocent even of complicity in the rescue—the verdict of the sworn jury, concurred in by the "learned judge," to the contrary notwithstanding. But Shore was avowedly a full participator in the ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... hands, who were listening closely to Homos, and one of them sang out to the professor: "Can't you wait and let the first man finish?" and another yelled: "Put him out!" and then they all laughed with a humorous perception of the impossibility of literally executing ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... soul—he knew that he had acted in a base, cruel, cowardly manner, and that the knowledge of this act of his must prevent him, not only from finding fault with any one else, but even from looking straight into other people's eyes; not to mention the impossibility of considering himself a splendid, noble, high-minded fellow, as he did and had to do to go on living his life boldly and merrily. There was only one solution of the problem—i.e., not to think about it. He succeeded in doing so. The life he was now entering upon, the new surroundings, ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... that the excellent men who adopted this plan, were fearful of allowing the natives to acquire a facility of communicating with the vicious part of the white population; but had they taken a more enlarged view, and considered the absolute impossibility of preventing a certain amount of intercourse—had they had more confidence in the better part of their own race, and reflected on the immense advantage which the inquisitive savage would derive from being enabled to put questions to men who could enlighten him by their answers, they would more ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... as if to intensify that remorse by showing still more clearly the impossibility of atonement, it flashed on him that he who loved Ida was not the one to atone for an offence of which he would be incapable, which had been committed by one who despised her love. Justice was a meaningless word, and amends were never possible, nor can men ever make ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... Besides the impossibility of getting at the average and prevailing mental tone of a distant section of life, there is a special difficulty in determining the degree of happiness of the past, arising from the fact that our memory for pleasures and for pains may not be equally good. Most people, perhaps, can recall the enjoyments ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... unconnected words, she explained to them the cause of her terror, and implored them to set off immediately in search of her husband. It was in vain they told her of the uselessness of going at that time—of the impossibility of following a trail in the dark. She said she would go herself: she felt sure of finding him; and, at last, they were obliged to use force to prevent her ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... spoke decisively after an hour or more of futile endeavors to start the motor with the little fluid they could spare from the water kegs. But even without the leaky radiator it would have been an impossibility to cool the cylinders with the small quantity they were ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... "Miss Angel (her own name is an impossibility, and does not belong to her) has really borne the operation wonderfully. Marvellously!" he repeated. "The constitution, you see, was originally good. There was a foundation to work upon; that means ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... catch Josiah Crabtree was not easy. The former teacher of Putnam Hall was thoroughly alarmed, and once having taken to the woods, he plunged in deeper and deeper, until to find him would have been almost an impossibility. Indeed, he completely lost himself, and when the boys had left the vicinity he found himself unable to locate the road again, and so had to remain in the cold and damp woods all night, much to his discomfort. He could not keep warm, and sat chattering ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... character of the population. It is astonishing what distances were traveled by the bold men who followed the mining stampedes all over the wilderness of the upper Rockies, in spite of the unspeakable hardships of a region where travel at its best was rude, and travel at its worst well-nigh an impossibility. The West was first peopled by wanderers, nomads, even in its mountain regions, which usually attach their population to themselves and cut off the disposition to roam. This nomad nature of the adventurers made law almost an impossible thing. ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... smoking-room at many a Rabelaisian story and capped it with another, who hated mock modesty, was all for honest openness between man and woman—stood in guilty embarrassment before his own wife's face of innocence. It would have been a sheer impossibility for him to ask her where and how she spent a certain evening last winter; Sibyl, now as ever, was his ideal of chaste womanhood. He scorned himself for what he had yet ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... disposed to do you that favor," replied Baba Mustapha, "I assure you I cannot. I was taken to a certain place, whence I was led blindfold to the house, and afterward brought back in the same manner. You see, therefore, the impossibility of ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... under due captaincy? This is really the question of questions; on the answer to which turns, among other things, the fate of all Governments, constitutional and other,—the possibility of their continuing to exist, or the impossibility. Captainless, uncommanded, these wretched outcast "soldiers," since they cannot starve, must needs become banditti, street-barricaders,—destroyers of every Government that cannot put them under captains, and send them upon enterprises, and in short render life human to them. ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... you may have done," he cried, enthusiastically, "let me help you all I can, you will not ask an impossibility I know." ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... Finance Minister or other notability, although there was no arrogance in his manner, it might be noticed that the instinctive consciousness of his own millions never left him. He had a naturally honorable disposition, which showed itself in every line, and made any cringing an impossibility. The guests praised everything, especially the costly refreshments handed by the ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... side, he acknowledged he embraced the wrong one, upon Falstaff's principle, that since the King wanted men and the rebels soldiers, it were worse shame to be idle in such a stirring world, than to embrace the worst side, were it as black as rebellion could make it. The impossibility of his being neutral in such a debate, Rob seems to lay down as an undeniable proposition. At the same time, while he acknowledges having been forced into an unnatural rebellion against King George, he pleads that he not only avoided acting offensively against ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the same enjoyment. Or, could anything be more conclusive than that one of the most prominent men in the public life of our state still turns to his favorite "Oliver Optic" books for pleasurable relief when the cares of the day have made rest seem almost an impossibility? ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... Mr. Grey said she should not have allowed Pauline to go out in those thin shoes, and charged her not to permit it another time—but never interfered himself—thus throwing all the responsibility, or rather impossibility, of making Pauline mind, upon his wife, who indeed always got all Pauline's scoldings; for though Mr. Grey might find fault when Pauline was absent, one bright smile and brilliant glance from Pauline present, was sure to ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... explained that to make one eat who thought the darling of his heart like to die, was a sheer impossibility for the cleverest of women; and on this deep truth Lucy reflected, with her eyes wide at the candle. She wanted one to pour her feelings out to. She slid her hand from under the bedclothes, and took Mrs. Berry's, and kissed it. The good creature required no further avowal of her secret, but ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not every genius an impossibility until he appear?" This is singularly true of Gustavus Adolphus. It was the last thing for contemporaries to conjecture that the deliverer of Germany, and the great hero of the Thirty Years' War, would have arisen in the ice-bound regions of northern Europe. No great character ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... and the rewards and honours dispensed there are bestowed in proportion to the industry and good conduct of those who receive them. If the offences of freshmen outside the walls be unvisited by the university from wariness in the offenders, or the impossibility of controlling them, they are certain to meet with a just estimation of their demerit here; and, as before noticed, this is perhaps the best mode of repressing them. The assistance derived by the industrious student from the university ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... it is an utter impossibility for a treaty-making power to impose a permanent disability on the government for all coming time, which, in the very nature and necessity of the case, may not be outgrown and set aside by the laws of national progression, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... brother, and had left behind him a vast reputation among all that were acquainted with him. They reflected also on the covetous temper of the leading men of the senate, and what great errors they had been guilty of when the senate had the government formerly; they also considered the impossibility of such an undertaking, as also what dangers they should be in, if the government should come to a single person, and that such a one should possess it as they had no hand in advancing, and not to Claudius, who would take it ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... is confronted with a threefold impossibility as he contemplates his heavenly responsibility. First: The heavenly position demands a manner of life that is beyond any human possibility. Second: The enemy is stronger than he, and can thwart every resolution. ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... deux Citoyennes et un Citoyen qui vous demandent." ["Sir, here are two female citizens and one male citizen enquiring for you."] When Monsieur appeared, he apologized with an air of graciousness for the impossibility he had been under of getting my friend's affairs arranged—protested he was accable [Oppressed..]—that he had scarcely an instant at his own disposal—that enfin the responsibility of people in office was so terrible, and the fatigue ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... he was standing over me, counting my pulse. 'I have startled you,' he said. 'A difficulty unforeseen—the impossibility of obtaining a certain drug in its full purity—has forced me to resort to London unprepared. I regret that I should have shown myself once more without those poor attractions which are much, perhaps, to you, but to me are no more considerable than rain that falls into the sea. Youth ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... they discussed for the hundredth time the impossibility of getting five florins; they could not save that sum in six months. "There is nothing to be done unless Herr Dahn would lend it to us," suggested Stephan. "We could pay him by degrees, and he is so rich that I dare say he would ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... prudence in that.—Yes, there must be no impertinent eyes peeping into bales and packages. Well, I see, Master Seadrift, the impossibility of immediately coming to an understanding; and therefore I will quit thy vessel, for truly a merchant of reputation should have no unnecessary connexion ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... attraction which drew her towards the young girl in spite of this repugnance. She began to look with new feelings on the contradictions in her moral nature,—the longing for sympathy, as shown by her wishing for Helen's company, and the impossibility of passing beyond the cold circle of isolation within which she had her being. The fearful truth of that instinctive feeling of hers, that there was something not human looking out of Elsie's eyes, came upon her with a sudden flash of penetrating conviction. There were two warring ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... child, with a child's appreciation of a very considerable industrial triumph. Old engineers, one of them an assistant on his own staff, had shaken their heads and declared that the running of a standard gauge railroad over Plug Pass was a sheer impossibility. Yet he ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... results in individual work gives opportunity for impressing upon the pupil, in the first place, the necessity for more accurate observation and, secondly, the impossibility of reaching a correct general conclusion without having studied a large number of examples. The development of critical and judicious minds, which may result from carefully observing many examples and generalizing from these observations, is vastly more ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... as men congregate together, and every supposable degree of communication must of necessity be constantly taking place amongst them, to distinguish a spreading epidemic from a contagious disease when it first breaks out, must obviously be a matter of impossibility; and upon this point the contagionists and their antagonists may rail for ever,—the one will see nothing but contagion, whether in the dead or the living body, and the other will refer every fresh case to ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... Toorkisth[a]n passes which renders a faithful description tedious, from its monotony and the necessary repetition of similar characteristic features; yet the reader will hardly fail to draw important conclusions from the immense difficulty and almost practical impossibility that a modern army of considerable numbers, with all its incumbrances, through such a country, with any hope of its retaining its efficiency or even a tithe of its original numerical strength, will encounter. And when we consider that the passes of Toorkisth[a]n embrace ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... every drop of spray which came on board froze, and I've seen the whole deck, and every spar and rope one mass of ice, so that there was no getting the ropes to run through the sheaves of the blocks, and as to furling sails, which were mere sheets of ice, that was next to an impossibility. I warn you, if you don't like what we have got now, you'll like still less what is coming. There are some heavy snow-clouds driving up, and we shall have a ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... herself and be a loyal and happy wife to this clutching, hard-breathing little man who had got her, and it was the insatiable excesses of his demands quite as much as any outer influence that made her realize the impossibility ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... coexisting, flame, with its properties and uses, became more immediately apparent. Still, as no previous idea was conceived of this latent principle, and consequently no search made, no endeavours exerted, to bring it to light, I see not the impossibility a priori of its remaining almost as long concealed from mankind as the properties of the loadstone or ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... Old Testament as in Morgan, and the New as in Chubb; the aim of each being constructive as well as destructive; to point out the absolute sufficiency of natural religion and of the moral sense as religious guides, and the impossibility of accepting as obligatory that which adds to or contradicts them; and accordingly they point out the elements in Christianity which they consider can be ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... up for another. One we were very near falling aboard of, and, if it had happened, this circumstance would never have been related.[4] These difficulties, together with the improbability of finding land farther south, and the impossibility of exploring it, on account of the ice, if we should find any, determined me to get more to the north. At the time we last tacked, we were in the longitude of 159 deg. 20' W., and in the latitude of 66 deg. 0' S. Several penguins were seen on some of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... an artistic sense it is not necessary to think that the world is good. It is enough to believe that there is no impossibility of its being made so. If the flight of imaginative thought may be allowed to rise superior to many moralities current amongst mankind, a novelist who would think himself of a superior essence to other men would miss the first ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... of it. He is convinced that the want of specific acknowledgment will only be felt by those who have no idea of the labour and difficulty attendant on the hurried management of such a work, and of the impossibility of sometimes giving an explanation, when there really is one which would quite satisfy the writer, for the delay or non-insertion of his communication. Correspondents in such cases have no reason, and if they understood an editor's position they would feel that ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 2, November 10 1849 • Various
... But it was some weeks before he gently enough told me his suspicions, and they were answered by a burst of tears, and a passionate denial, which set them at rest forever. But I had not courage to tell him what was the matter with me. A sacred modesty, as well as a sense of the impossibility of explaining my emotions, held me back. I had a half-dread, too, to confess the whole truth, of his ridiculing a fancy, to say the least, so utterly impracticable; and my only confidant was a picture in the National Gallery, in one of the faces of which I had discovered some ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... sermon, and with all his congregation following him, hurried down to the water-side to receive the distinguished guest. She promised to take Candace out some day to see Whitehall,—the house which he built on the island, and in which he lived for some years, till the impossibility of carrying out his scheme for Bermuda drove him back again to Ireland; and also the rocky shelf still called "Bishop Berkeley's Rock," where he is said to have composed the ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... economists that the virtual impossibility of effectively cordinating the tax laws of the various states renders it imperative that all interstate corporations be taxed solely by the Federal government. In such a case the Federal government would be taxing interstate corporations ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... she not only went after the chair reluctantly, but also, when she as usual seated herself with her knitting work on her little bench at his side she sighed deeply. Her father did not observe her dejection, perhaps he considered it an impossibility for his precious jewel to sigh when ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... The impossibility of accepting the first suggestion throws us necessarily back on the only other supposition that remains;—the sower in the parable must represent the earthen vessel to which the ministry of the Gospel has been entrusted,—the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... doubtful whether I ever saw a Chinaman laugh. A theatrical representation by natives, one might think, would have set my mind at ease on this point; but it did not. Indeed, a new difficulty presented itself—the impossibility of determining whether the performance was a tragedy or farce. I thought I detected the low comedian in an active youth who turned two somersaults, and knocked everybody down on entering the stage. But, unfortunately, even this classic resemblance ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... spot near the gate where I could be seen, then hurried home, almost crying for the poor Ls., and Pasha—such a sweet girl, probably at that moment being nationalized—condemning all and everything and especially the impossibility of helping my unfortunate friends. All was frozen inside of me, due to the cold and this fear of a ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... is fully alive to the possibility that the methods of modern naval warfare, particularly in the use of submarines for both defensive and offensive operations, may make the former means of maintaining a blockade a physical impossibility, it feels that it can be urged with great force that there should be also some limit to "the radius of activity," and especially so if this action by the belligerents can be construed to be a blockade. It would certainly create a serious state of affairs if, for example, an American vessel ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... probable, however, that it was from pure ill-temper that they refused to sell me any plants, an unwillingness to see us do well, not from any apprehension of an overstocking of the market; as long experience must have taught them, equally with the market-woman, that that was a comparative impossibility. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... the way to thy greatness: here shall no one steal after thee! Thy foot itself hath effaced the path behind thee, and over it standeth written: Impossibility. ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... that for the last ten years I have found it an absolute impossibility to get along on seventy-five thousand dollars a year, even living without apparent extravagance. I do not run a yacht or keep hunters or polo ponies. My wife does not appear to be particularly lavish and ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... wiring; the sickening knowledge that any moment a trail of bullets may spring without warning at you—and if ONE machine-gun shot gets you, another FIVE will be somewhere in your body before you reach the turf. It appears an impossibility to carry on alive in such an undertaking from night to night; but still you DO IT. It ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... curiosity. She looked upon Mrs. Somers as an English oddity, as a lusus naturae; and she alternately asked Emilie to account for these strange appearances, or shrugged up her shoulders, and submitted to the impossibility of a Frenchwoman's ever understanding ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... the effect that, while retaining the parts for three Minenwerfen in his new Battle Symphony, he has been obliged to re-score one movement in which four "Big Berthas" were prominently engaged, owing to the impossibility of securing any of these instruments since the Armistice. He has, however, with admirable resource substituted parts for four influenza microbes. There are no French horns in the score, but by way of showing a conciliatory spirit to the British army of occupation he has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... hesitate to whisper their doubts as to its practicability, one well-known local gentleman being reported to have gone as far as publicly to undertake to eat the first engine which ever crossed that formidable gulf. But engineers and craftsmen set to work with a will, and before long what had appeared an impossibility was rapidly taking shape as an actuality. Eight hundred yards in length, the greater portion was constructed on timber piles, over 500 in number, in 113 spans, driven into the sand. The navigable channel, at ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... incline to think that Shakspeare intended Helen to address the leaden messengers by means of a very hyperbolic figure: "wound the still-piecing air that sings with piercing" is a consistent whole. If, as A. E. B. rightly says, to wound the air is an impossibility, it is equally impossible that the air should utter any sound expressive of sensibility. The fact of course is, that the cannon-balls cleave the air, and that by so cleaving it a shrill noise is produced. The cause and effect may, however, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 187, May 28, 1853 • Various
... face of these facts it is idle to oppose a universal artificial language on the score of impossibility or inadequacy. The theoretical pronunciation difficulty completely crumbled away before the ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... passages, there are many also which convey what the poet desired to represent—the aspirations of a mind so heroic as almost to surmount the bonds of society and even the very laws of the universe, leaving us often in doubt whether the vehemence of the wish does not even disguise the impossibility of its accomplishment. ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... official encouragement, I think that the sociological answer is evident. Any understanding of the fundamental structure of society should make equally obvious the imprudence of attempting hasty transformations, and the impossibility of effecting them. For the present, at least, the religious question in Japan is a question of social integrity; and any efforts to precipitate the natural course of change can result only in provoking reaction and ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... and support on the unstable wave; He will not demand of you the endurance of providences, and trials, and temptations you are unable to cope with; He will not ask you to draw water if the well is too deep, or withdraw the stone if too heavy. But neither, at the same time, will He admit as an impossibility that which, as a free and responsible agent, it is in your power to avert. He will not regard as your misfortune what is your crime. "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... so she might, and that may have been her petticoat we saw." But in another moment she saw the impossibility of this, for she added: "But I saw her petticoat, and it was a brown silk one. She showed it when she lifted her skirt to get at her purse. I ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... a waiter's wife—which would seem equivalent to being any other man's widow—whose application for an engagement in Mr Dombey's service had been favourably considered, on account of the apparent impossibility of her having any followers, or anyone to follow; and who, from within a day or two of Paul's sharp weaning, had been engaged as his nurse. Mrs Wickam was a meek woman, of a fair complexion, with her eyebrows always elevated, and her head always drooping; ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... the impression prevalent in the middle of the nineteenth century that the colonies would sooner or later follow the example of the United States, and sever their connexion with the mother-country. It has no less clearly demonstrated the impossibility of maintaining a centralized government of the empire in Downing Street. The union or federation of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa has strengthened the claims of each of those imperial realms to be ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... of Solitude. The Poet here represents the supreme Being, as making an Essay of his own Work, and putting to the tryal that reasoning Faculty, with which he had endued his Creature. Adam urges, in this Divine Colloquy, the Impossibility of his being happy, tho he was the Inhabitant of Paradise, and Lord of the whole Creation, without the Conversation and Society of some rational Creature, who should partake those Blessings with him. This Dialogue, which is supported chiefly ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... ship nor boat. The lake was not frozen sufficiently to bear her; neither was it open, nor low enough that she could wade through it; and across it she must go if she would find her child! Then she lay down to drink up the lake, and that was an impossibility for a human being, but the afflicted mother thought that a miracle ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... driven back with considerable loss. The failure of this attempt damped their resolution, and some of the less courageous even murmured against an exploit beset with difficulties, which it appeared next to an impossibility to surmount. ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... friends in the school, every one of whom regarded him as a genius, and who loved him also for his own sake; they only waited for him to compose in order to perform under his direction, and they would fain have kept him amongst them; but they knew his longings, and they realised the impossibility of retaining so gifted a composer within the compass of their ranks. Schubert loved them too, and though he went out from their midst to seek a wider field for his genius, he never forgot that he was one of them, and as composition after composition ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... iron, and saw her torn stocking,—her bruised ankle, and began to cry pitifully, out of strange compassion with herself. They feared, then, that even in that cell she would find a way to escape. Why, the utter, ridiculous impossibility of the thing convinced her of her own innocence, and ignorance of all supernatural power; and the heavy iron brought her strangely round from the delusions that seemed to be gathering ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... mean. I don't feel that we really need the marriage service, since God has already joined us together. And it is not through our own wills, somehow, but through his. Divorce would not only be a crime against the spirit, it would be an impossibility while we feel as we do. But if love should cease, then God himself would have divorced us, punished us by taking away a priceless gift of which we were not worthy. He would have shut the gates of Eden in our faces because we had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... once, but on his account far more than on my own; for while I flattered myself that my heart was untouched save by the emotion of a warm friendship, I could not dismiss the conviction that his feeling for me was rapidly approaching the point at which friendship becomes an impossibility. I must go, and immediately. It was foolish and culpable of me to have stayed so long. A girl in the first blush of maidenhood might excuse herself on the score of not recognizing the signs of a more than Platonic interest, but for me such an ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... disposition of the natives, the sailors had been inattentive to the keeping the boats afloat; some misunderstanding having happened between some of the seamen and the natives, an insult had been offered by one or other, which was resented by the opposite party; a quarrel ensued, and the impossibility of moving the boats, exposed the officers and crews to the rage of the multitude, who attacked them with clubs and showers of stones, and would inevitably have massacred the whole, if there had not been a small boat at hand, which picked up ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... Beethoven's and Weber's orchestras. Tannhaeuser is more manly in its fiber. But the style, the mixture of styles; the lack of organic unity, the blustering orchestration, and the execrable voice-killing vocal writing! The Ring is an amorphous impossibility. That is now critically admitted. It ruins voices, managers, the public purse, and our patience. Its stories are indecent, blasphemous, silly, absurd, trivial, tiresome. To talk of the Ring and Beethoven's symphonies is to put wind and wisdom ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... promised them by their mother. Why? Because, in brief, he is a philosopher, and recognizes that what is to be is to be, and that it is easier to dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes (to adopt an elegant and well-seasoned exemplar of impossibility) than to check the progress of ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... was still at the pawn-broker's; no one would have such an odd jewel, and the ticket was home in the bureau drawer. Well, he must have it; she might starve in the attempt. Such a thing as going to him and telling him that he might redeem it was an impossibility. That good, straight-backed, stiff-necked Creole blood would have risen in all its strength and choked her. No; as a present had the quaint Roman circlet been placed upon her finger, as a present should it ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... and those who get through the seasoning, which is the fatal period, are either compelled to become labourers in the fields for any one who will provide them with food; or else succeed in exciting the compassion of their friends at home, by their dismal accounts of the impossibility of earning a livelihood in a ruined and worthless colony; and having thus obtained money enough to enable them to return to England, they hasten to throw themselves and their sorrows into the arms of their ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... importance of what he has to do—the goading conviction that it must be done—the dreadful combination in his mind of both the necessity and the incapacity—the despair of crowding the concerns of an age into a moment—the impossibility of beginning a repentance which should have been completed—of setting about a peace which should have been concluded—of suing for a pardon which should have been obtained—all these complicated concerns intolerably augment the sufferings of ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... by stratagem, with one or two attendants, and imprisoned for several years. But he was always treated with kindness, and was finally released, without having received the slightest injury. He was intrusted, when sent away, with a message to the Russian government, setting forth the impossibility of any ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... only by Cypros, who, when Eva would have inquired the cause of all this mysterious cruelty and startling contrast to the dispositions which had preceded it, only shook her head and pressed her finger to her lip, to signify the impossibility of her ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... precious to be given either to remonstrance or lamentation. Miss Jacky could only give an angry look, and Miss Grizzy a sorrowful one, as they hurried away to the carriage, uttering exclamations of despair at the lateness of the hour, and the impossibility that anybody could have time to dress after getting ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... sovereign sees but one path—honor and duty. What is one human heart to a hundred thousand? A grain of sand. Herr, let mine be broken; I shall not murmur. Alas! to be a princess, a puppet in this tinsel show of kings and queens! It is my word and the King's will which have made my happiness an impossibility. Though I love you, I wish never to see you again. I shall be wife but in name, yet I may not have a lover. I am not a woman of the court. I am proud of my honor, though the man who is to ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... on this plain, approaching the spur which closes the trap, when they were fired on. Ross went forward to reconnoitre the ground, and at once saw the impossibility of driving the enemy out with his small force, and therefore ordered Jones to go back and hold the entrance of the defile to enable them to escape. On the first shot being fired, the coolies had chucked their loads and bolted, as likely as not helping to man the ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... the mental powers and the approach of imbecility. In this condition was the young man when he came under our care. We felt strongly impressed from our first examination of the case that it was one of sexual abuse; but we were assured by his friends in the most emphatic manner that such was an impossibility. It was claimed that the most scrupulous care had been bestowed upon him, and that he had been so closely watched that it was impossible that he should have been guilty of so gross a vice. His friends were disposed to attribute his sad condition ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... made it mandatory for the road overseer to plant nut trees along the right of way all over the state; but like many meritorious bills, it was pigeon-holed until the next meeting of the legislature. It seemed an impossibility to resurrect this and an exceptionally ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... little expect to meet with during that period. The member insists upon the vast variety of theological opinions which prevailed in different nations and ages; the endless inextricable controversies maintained by the several sects; the impossibility that any man, much less the people, could ever know, much less examine, the tenets and principles of every sect; the necessity of ignorance and a suspense of judgment with regard to all those objects of dispute: and, upon the whole, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... a government depending on the liberal party to live independently of him. I also hinted at injurious effects which the substitution of Palmerston for Lord Aberdeen would produce on foreign Powers at this critical moment, but dwelt chiefly on the impossibility of his having a majority. In this Lord Lansdowne ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... any of the members of the series, be any weaker than it was in the case of A and D? Whoever contends that it would be, should likewise maintain that the origination of individuals by generation is incompatible with design, or an impossibility in Nature. We might all have confidently thought the latter, antecedently to experience of the fact of reproduction. Let our experience teach ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... the rowdyism of a frontier town, the rudeness of frontier society, the discouragement of early bankruptcy, and the fluctuations of popular politics, he rose to the championship of Union and freedom when the two seemed utterly an impossibility; never lost his faith when both seemed hopeless, and was suddenly snatched from earth when both were secured. He was the least pretentious of men, and when, with the speed of electricity, it flashed ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... disadvantage was the pre-conceived notion that the German Government would keep its word with regard to the violation of Belgian neutrality. If this had been observed, it would have been almost a strategical impossibility to turn the Allied left flank. The attack in force was expected to be made in the Lorraine area. Consequently, when it became evident that the main German effort was to be launched through Belgium, ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... attempts that were made with professional soldiers to conquer the land of the Chukches were without result, less however, perhaps, on account of the armed opposition which the Chukches made than from the nature of the country and the impossibility of even a small body of troops supporting themselves. The following may be quoted as examples of these campaigns which throw light upon the former disposition and mode of ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... inexpensive device to see the special problems of fleet tactics more clearly than he could have done by observing battles on board of any ships; for his attention in the ships would have been distracted by the exciting events occurring, by the noise and danger, and by the impossibility of seeing the whole because of the nearness of some of the parts. The amazing result was that he formed a clearer concept of naval tactics than any admiral of his time, finally overcame the natural prejudice of the ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... to associate the Church with the people's interests, and so enable it to regain, through the application of true evangelical doctrine, its former influence over the masses, which it might then draw to closer relations with the monarchy. Whether it was that the Abbe Dutheil recognized the impossibility of enlightening the court of Rome and the higher clergy on this point, or that he had consented to sacrifice his own opinions to those of his superiors, it is certain that he remained within the limits of the ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... say, travel in Space beyond the speed of light had not been accomplished; they believed such a feat an impossibility imposed by a condescending Nature that could be challenged too far. And they therefore knew no way of reaching beyond the planets of Ihelos and Thrayx for the food and resources that became so sorely depleted as both planets became, at length, ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... argument dignified woman, who was made the equal of man. The same argument applies to the impossibility of war. You cannot think of God fighting against God. The Quaker had no sentimental idea of suffering; but he believed that you cannot take life, in which ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... it. Marjorie's books and writing desk were on the table also, for she had studied mental philosophy and chemistry after she had copied her composition and written a long letter to her mother. Short letters were as truly an impossibility to Marjorie as short addresses are to some public speeches; still Marjorie always stopped when she found she had nothing to say. To her mother, school and Miss Prudence and Prue's sayings and doings were an ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... are more or less objections to the use of the ordinary spring pistons, owing to the changing tension of the springs, the necessity of frequent adjustment, and the impossibility of the packing rings adapting themselves to the varying pressures of the steam on the piston. A number of attempts have been made to produce a self packing or steam expanding piston, which will act always with ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... excusable, and he must have great strength of mind to refuse what the poor devils whose cases he wins by his devotion offer him. He is indignant at the way other lawyers speculate on the possibility or impossibility of poor creatures, unjustly sued, paying for the costs of their defence. Oh! he'll succeed in the end. I shouldn't be surprised to see that fellow in some very brilliant position; he has tenacity, honesty, and courage. He ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... going to propose that he should execute this business without my brother's knowledge, but instantly perceived the impossibility of that. My father had for some years devolved on his son the management of all his affairs, and habit had made him no longer qualified to act for himself. Frank's opinion of what was proper to be done was infallible, and absolute ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... half-an-hour, for Madame Bernard showed no disposition to leave the room again, and he felt the difficulty of keeping up an indifferent conversation in her presence, as well as the impossibility of talking freely to Angela of what was uppermost in her thoughts and his own. It was true that the governess knew all about it, and there are excellent women of that sort whose presence does not always hinder lovers from discussing their future; ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... grief for the loss of family, and the overthrow of the domestic habitation. Amidst so many aspects of death, and the apprehension even of approaching judgment, the suspicion that friends were yet alive under the ruins was the most excruciating affliction, since the impossibility of assisting them rendered their death—(miserable and terrible consolation)—a matter of preference and of hope. Fathers and husbands were seen wandering amidst the ruins that covered the objects of their ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... days, the chief need of men, for themselves and for their fellows, is a likeness to God in the impossibility of lying; and the chief longing of the community is for such confidence of men in one another as will give them assurance that they will not lie one to another. There was never yet a lie uttered which did not bring more ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull |
