"Insurmountable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... possess a wonderful similarity of disposition. The Mandingoes, in particular, are a very gentle race, cheerful, inquisitive, credulous, simple, and fond of flattery. Perhaps the most prominent defect in their character, was that insurmountable propensity, which the reader must have observed to prevail in all classes, to steal from me the few effects I was possessed of. No complete justification can be offered for this conduct, because theft is a crime in their own estimation; and it must be observed that they ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... she had just made seemed to have changed her. By making it she felt as if, unwittingly, she had built up an insurmountable barrier between herself and youth. She had not know, perhaps, what she was doing, but now, suddenly, ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... years of the life of a man like myself is worth. Owning at the present moment about two hundred and fifty thousand francs, I want to raise myself to a fortune which may some day make me the equal of his Excellency. At this moment I feel within me the power to move mountains and vanquish insurmountable difficulties. What a lever is such a scene of bitter humiliation as I have just passed through! Whose blood has Oscar in his veins? His conduct has been that of a blockhead; up to this moment when I write to you, he has not said a word nor answered, even by a sign, the questions my wife ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... Dessauer also felt convinced that the topic was worth his while to set to music. His dismay was accordingly all the greater when Pillet rejected our plot on the ground that the staging would be too difficult, and that the second act especially would entail insurmountable obstacles for the ballet, which had to be given each time. In place of this Dessauer wished me to compose him an oratorio on 'Mary Magdalene.' As on the day that he expressed this wish he appeared to be suffering from ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... country district, where the difficulty of obtaining servants is at present insurmountable—the nearest "pictures" are twelve miles off—I have been much impressed and encouraged by two letters in recent issues of The Spectator. One describes a Bloomsbury grocer's cat that bought her own cat's-meat; another ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... secure their physical and industrial efficiency. If we adopt this course, then it must be the duty of the school authorities of the various districts to see that Evening Schools of various types suited to the needs of the various classes of students are duly provided, and that no insurmountable obstacles are placed in the way of those desirous and anxious to take advantage of the means of higher education. Further, it must become the duty of the employers of the country to see that the youth ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... accomplished writer, worthy of the most careful consideration. It comprises a brief but clear sketch of Darwin's views, followed by an enumeration of the leading difficulties in the way of their acceptance; difficulties which would appear to be insurmountable to Professor Kolliker, inasmuch as he proposes to replace Mr. Darwin's Theory by one which he terms the 'Theory of Heterogeneous Generation.' We shall proceed to consider first the destructive, and secondly, the constructive ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... only with decency, but cheerfulness, nor was his gaiety clouded, even by this disappointment, though he was, in a short time, reduced to the lowest degree of distress, and often wanted both lodging and food. At this time he gave another instance of the insurmountable obstinacy of his spirit. His cloaths were worn out, and he received notice, that at a coffee-house some cloaths and linen were left for him. The person who sent them did not, we believe, inform him to whom he was to be obliged, that he might spare ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... imperceptible but impermeable resistance by the very people who are bent on making the world pleasant to us. It is the very reverse of that dour opposition which a Lowland Scot or a North English peasant offers to familiarity; but it is hardly less insurmountable. The treatment, again, which Venetians of the lower class have received through centuries from their own nobility, makes attempts at fraternisation on the part of gentlemen unintelligible to them. The best way, here and elsewhere, of overcoming these ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... custom of stabbing, from motives of private resentment, is nearly at an end, since the church has ceased to afford an asylum to murderers. In other respects, the progress of improvement appears slow, and fettered by obstacles almost insurmountable, whose baneful influence will continue, until a more enlightened system of policy shall be adopted. From morning to night the ears of a stranger are greeted by the tinkling of the convent bells, and his ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... reads our Lord's parables, that some of them are chiefly occupied with the teaching of doctrine, and others with the reproof of prevailing sins; but when on the basis of these and other subordinate distinctions, you proceed to arrange them into separate classes, you are met and repelled by insurmountable difficulties. When Bauer, for example, has arranged them in three divisions, dogmatic, moral, and historic, he is compelled immediately to add another class called the mixed, as dogmatic-moral and dogmatic-historic, thereby proving that his logical classification ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... never even to look up. Then, having so begun with the dust, how do these ever come to raise their eyes to the hills? The keenest of us moral philosophers are but poor, mole-eyed creatures! One day, I trust, we shall laugh at many a difficulty that now seems insurmountable, but others will keep rising behind them. Lady Joan did not like ugly things, and so shrank from evil things. She was the less in danger from liberty, because of the disgust which certain tones and words of her father ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... 1st the command broke camp for home. As was learned afterwards, General Sully was then distant down the river 160 miles. His delay was no fault of his, as it was occasioned by insurmountable obstacles. The march home was a weary but uneventful one. The campaign of 1863 may be summed up as follows: The troops marched nearly 1,200 miles. They fought three well-contested battles. They drove from eight to ten thousand Indians out of the state, and across the Missouri river. ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... we fear, be thus irresistible, what remains but to acquiesce with silence, as in the other insurmountable distresses of humanity? It remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... us; that wandering reason is but an unfaithful guide, only capable of conducting us to perdition; and what is more, we are assured that what is folly in the eyes of man, is wisdom in the eyes of God, to whom nothing is impossible. Finally, in order to decide by a single word the most insurmountable difficulties which theology presents to us on all sides, they simply ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... name of the Government of the French Republic I tender my warmest and most sincere wishes that the Czecho-Slovak State may speedily become, through the common efforts of all the Allies and in close union with Poland and the Jugoslav State, an insurmountable barrier to Teutonic aggression and a factor for peace in a reconstituted Europe in accordance with the principles of justice ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... and satisfactory a confirmation is it to the sincere, humble Christian, and what an insurmountable barrier does it present to the infidel, to perceive, in the list of Christian believers, the exalted and venerable name of Newton! a man who must be acknowledged to be an ornament of human nature, when we consider the wide compass of his abilities, the great extent ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... brought his usual vigor and perseverance to bear on this second struggle. But by the conquest of Saxony he had attained his direct national object: the great flood of population from east to west came, and broke against the Gallo-Franco-Germanic dominion as against an insurmountable rampart. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... trail leading over the Monterey Coast Range. Concho was very tired, Concho was very dusty, Concho was very much disgusted. To Concho's mind there was but one relief for these insurmountable difficulties, and that lay in a leathern bottle slung over the machillas of his saddle. Concho raised the bottle to his lips, took a long draught, made a ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... would contrive in some way to make for ourselves a lamp, as we could never live in our cave in darkness; and here was a difficulty apparently even more insurmountable than the others,—as much so as appeared the making of a fire in the first instance,—for while we had a general idea that we might capture some seals, and get thus a good supply of oil, and that we might also get ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... at peace than at this moment. The more his heart felt that it was painful, the more his reason told him it was necessary that he should part from Grace Nugent. To his union with her there was an obstacle, which his prudence told him ought to be insurmountable; yet he felt that, during the few days he had been with her, the few hours he had been near her, he had, with his utmost power over himself, scarcely been master of his passion, or capable of concealing it from its object. It could not have ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... glacier, with its many tributaries extending far back into the snowy recesses of its fountains, made a magnificent display of its wealth, and I was strongly tempted to go and explore it at all hazards. But winter had come, and the freezing of its fiords was an insurmountable obstacle. I had, therefore, to be content for the present with sketching and studying its ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... fellow traveller, though at other times wont to avoid his society; for on this evening he purpost to disclose a secret to him and ask his advice. The timid, shy Emilius found so many difficulties, such insurmountable hinderances, in every affair he was engaged in, and in every event that befell him, that it almost seemed as if his destiny had been in an ironical mood when it threw him and Roderick together, Roderick being in all things the reverse of his friend. Fickle, flighty, always determined and fixt by ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... thought poor Paz, "to put an insurmountable barrier between us. Tell you good of Adam?" he said aloud. "I love him; you would not believe me; and I am incapable of telling you harm. My position is ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... this canon were high and insurmountable, and the whole valley although large was filled full of the game animals, so that their feet rumbled and rattled together like the sound of distant thunder, and their horns crackled like the sound of a ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... nest was lying on the ground, with two young Crows in it, with the feathers just beginning to appear. The other two, I suppose, had fallen over into the street. And thus ended one of the most persevering attempts on record to overcome a difficulty insurmountable from the first. The old birds thought it time now to stop operations, and frequented ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... continued he, fixing upon Cuchillo a glance which caused the latter to lower his head. "As to your threats, reserve them for people of your own kind; and never forget, that between my breast and your dagger there is an insurmountable barrier." ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... We behold a simple country girl forming the then astonishing project of going to Canada, in the hope of founding a city bearing the name of Mary, there to teach religion and morality to persons of her own sex. What seemingly insurmountable obstacles presented themselves to her view. She must undertake a voyage of many thousand leagues, must traverse immense and unknown seas, must expect to live in the wilds of primeval forests, exposed ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... bear not only the wealth of expedient which had hitherto distinguished him, but also an imperturbable tenacity, particularly in the Wilderness and on the march to the James, without which the almost insurmountable obstacles of that campaign could not have been overcome. During it and in the siege of Petersburg he met with many disappointments—on several occasions the shortcomings of generals, when at the point of success, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... the courts is to be brought face to face with the servants of the Trusts. Where is the Attorney-General who can successfully prosecute a Trust? The only one who was ever sincere in his attempt met an insurmountable barrier in the courts before which ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... then, by making roads to them, he encouraged the freed convicts to leave Sydney and form little communities inland. But his greatest achievement in the way of road-making was the highway across the Blue Mountains. This range had for years presented an insurmountable barrier. Many persons—including the intrepid Bass—had attempted to cross it, but in vain; the only one who succeeded even in penetrating far into that wild and rugged country was a gentleman called Caley, who stopped at the edge of an enormous ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... presume that some insurmountable difficulty, the fatigue, perhaps, or the disobedience, of the conquerors, prevented Claudius from completing in one day the destruction of the Goths. The war was diffused over the province of Maesia, Thrace, and Macedonia, and its operations drawn out into a variety ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... interrupted, "excuse me for interrupting you, but how has this been brought about? The obstacles you told me of on Saturday appeared even to me to be quite insurmountable; how has ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a letter addressed to him by the traveling medical attendant of Lady Berrick. After resting in Paris, the patient had continued her homeward journey as far as Boulogne. In her suffering condition, she was liable to sudden fits of caprice. An insurmountable horror of the Channel passage had got possession of her; she positively refused to be taken on board the steamboat. In this difficulty, the lady who held the post of her "companion" had ventured on a suggestion. Would Lady Berrick consent to ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... think calmly over what I have written. I would not have written on the subject even to you, till the matter was quite settled, if I had not thought that you ought to have full time to make up your mind. If you feel an insurmountable aversion to India, I will do all in my power to make your residence in England comfortable during my absence, and to enable you to confer instead of receiving benefits. But if my dear sister would consent to give ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... you. The approaching completion of the fossil fishes delivers me also from the fear that a too great ardor might cause you irreparable losses. You have shown not only what a talent like yours can accomplish, but also how a noble courage can triumph over seemingly insurmountable obstacles. ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... to join them, but speaking to them proved quite as much as ever an effort beyond my strength—offered, in close quarters, difficulties as insurmountable as before. This situation continued a month, and with new aggravations and particular notes, the note above all, sharper and sharper, of the small ironic consciousness on the part of my pupils. It was not, I am as sure today as I was sure ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... us. Skillfully had the Chief of the Hundred Valleys chosen his position. He had before him a river; behind him the town of Vannes; on the west the sea; on the east the forest of Merek: its border chopped down, offered insurmountable obstacles to the Roman cavalry; and with an eye to the Roman infantry, the best of Gaul's archers were scattered ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... to secure a husband in a young man of twenty-three, full of talent, who would always be an honor to his family and the neighborhood; at the same time the obstacles which her son's want of fortune and Mademoiselle Cormon's age presented to the marriage seemed to her almost insurmountable; she could think of nothing but patience as being able to vanquish them. Like du Bousquier, like the Chevalier de Valois, she had a policy of her own; she was on the watch for circumstances, awaiting ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... would be in that suzerainty no real infringement of the independence which the Free State has so happily enjoyed. It is premature to speculate now on the best form which a scheme for South African Confederation may take. All that need here be pointed out is that the obstacles now perceived are not insurmountable obstacles, but such as may be overcome by a close study of the conditions of the problem, and by reasonable concessions on the part of South African statesmen in ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... Russian Riessers applied themselves to their task, they met with insurmountable difficulties. When the Razswyet, which was edited by Osip (Joseph) Rabinovich, attempted to lay bare the inner wounds of Jewish life, it encountered the concerted opposition of all prominent Jews, who were of the opinion that an organ employing the ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... in many respects for the better, he still retained an insurmountable dread of wild beasts; till one day, as he was wandering through a wood alone, he was attacked by a large and fierce wolf, who, jumping out of a thicket, seized him by the neck with fury. Jowler would fain have run, but his enemy was too swift and violent ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... explain to Netta that the fee for the course might prove an insurmountable barrier. Gwen was always too proud to plead poverty, and hid her father's narrow circumstances from her schoolmates as well as ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... debate, expediency and self-interest ruled. The difficulty of reconciling the varied interests in a common measure seemed at times insurmountable. The South wanted a high duty upon sugars and a low duty upon coarse cloth. The New England delegates insisted upon ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... they were upon a plane too much inclined to admit of their playing with facility, or the water was too muddy to be received up the pipes; they were therefore abandoned. In the meantime, the attempts made to reach the miners by sounding or by the inclined well, seemed to present insurmountable difficulties. The distance to them was unknown; the sound of their blows on the roof, far from offering a certain criterion, or, at least, a probable one, seemed each time to excite fresh doubts; in short, the rock which it was necessary ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... follow down the creek to Clifty, and thence he might escape. But, traveling down to Clifty, he debated whether it was best to escape. To flee was to confess his guilt, to make himself an outlaw, to put an insurmountable barrier between himself and Hannah, whose terror-stricken and anxious face as she stood by the brook-willows haunted him now, and was an ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... it is their prime duty to cherish and diffuse,"—Miss Martineau. I quote this paragraph to contradict it. The American clergy are, in the mass, equal, if not superior, to any in the world: they have to struggle with difficulties almost insurmountable, (as I shall substantiate) and worthily do ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... by the old trader as a bitterly facetious way of indicating the absolute hopelessness of the case. Ian accepted it in that light, for he was well aware that Samuel Ravenshaw's firmness—or obstinacy—was insurmountable. He did not despair, however; true love never does that; but he felt tremendously cast down. Without a word or look of reproach he turned ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... brutal robbers and brutal slaves? If at any time, in any place, individuals have ameliorated, why shall not the whole mass ameliorate? If partial societies have made improvements, what shall hinder the improvement of society in general? And if the first obstacles are overcome, why should the others be insurmountable? ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... must suppose that the Deity formed an archetypal plan of certain structures, and that He determined to adhere to this plan through all the modifications which those structures exhibit. Now the difficulties in the way of this supposition are prodigious, if not quite insurmountable. In the first place, why is it that some structures are selected as typical and not others? Why should the vertebral skeleton, for instance, be tortured into every conceivable variety of modification in order to make it serviceable for as great a variety ...
— The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution • George John Romanes
... motherhood for her again. The tragedy of giving birth to a child—ah, she could not go through that a second time, at least under the same conditions. She could not bring herself to tell him about Vesta, but she must voice this insurmountable objection. ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... place and her husband's; to have a vivid experience of how they looked, spoke, and lived; to see them in spirit—in their morning good wishes, their noonday cares, their evening cheer, their nightly prayers? Was their union only apparent? were they severed by a dim, shapeless, insurmountable barrier, for ever together, yet for ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... month of June, 1917, the Provisional Government made distinct progress, considering the almost insurmountable obstacles inherent in such a situation as it had to face. From now on there was very little friction between the cabinet and the council; they worked together with comparative harmony. The fact that the radical ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... perhaps have missed, but Dora was absent by arrangement. Mr Milburn, as the fight went on, had shown himself so increasingly bitter, to the point of writing letters in the Mercury attacking Wallingham and the Liberal leaders of South Fox, that his daughter felt an insurmountable delicacy in attending even Lorne's "big meeting." Alfred Hesketh meant to have gone, but it was ten by the Milburns' drawing-room clock before he remembered. Miss Filkin actually did go, and brought home a great report of it. Miss Filkin would no more have missed a Minister than she would ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... dignity of their rank, and their fame in arms, all the grace and elegance of polite literature. But it is fatally true, that when the public taste is once corrupted, the mind which has been warped, seldom recovers its former tone. This difficulty was rendered still more insurmountable by the licentious spirit of our young men, and the popular applause, that encouraged the false taste of the times. I need not, in this company, call to mind the unbridled presumption, with which, as soon as genuine eloquence expired, the young ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... wellnigh circumnavigated the vast head. It seemed first of all to make straight for the ears on either side. Then, quite suddenly, finding these obstacles insurmountable, it dodged underneath them, and the scared observer could almost imagine its two ends meeting with a click somewhere in the wilderness at the back of that unseen ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... when the two standards come sharply together, and when both sides make an attempt at understanding and explanation. The difficulty of making clear one's own ethical standpoint is at times insurmountable. A woman who had bought and sold school books stolen from the school fund,—books which are all plainly marked with a red stamp,—came to Hull House one morning in great distress because she had been arrested, and begged ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... quality nor any you're like to carry; you've got nothing first-rate but brazenness, I'll be bound," said Mrs. Glegg, with a triumphant sense of her insurmountable sagacity. "Mr. Glegg, are you going ever to sit down to your tea? Tom, ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... yourselves that you must force it upon others? Ah, madam, America has led us far and high, but the West is for the West and the East is for the East. So far, on the road to progress they can march side by side. Further than that, the paths divide and are separated by insurmountable differences, because your country is ruled by the teachings of freedom which you cannot practise. We are governed by the will of our divine Emperor, and the spirit of our ancestors. And I pray the great Amida before my country is ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... mind; failing in this, he issued her a license (licentia stupri), ascertained the price she intended exacting for her favors, and entered her name in his roll. Once entered there, the name could never be removed, but must remain for all time an insurmountable bar to repentance and respectability. Failure to register was severely punished upon conviction, and this applied not only to the girl but to the pandar as well. The penalty was scourging, and frequently fine and exile. Notwithstanding this, however, the number of clandestine prostitutes at Rome ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... prayer-book—all eyes are turned towards the door, which opens not—the bride faints, for the bridegroom cometh not—he's not "i' the vein"—a something, as like nothing as possible, has given him a disgust that is insurmountable—he flings his happiness to the winds, though he never loved with more outrageous intensity than at the moment he discards his mistress; so he fights three duels with the two brothers and father. He wounds one of the young men dangerously, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... month. Speak, or I will leave you. I may be a fool who destroys his own happiness, I may be demanding something that is not for me to possess, it may be that an explanation will separate us and raise before me an insurmountable barrier, that it will render our tour, on which I have set my heart, impossible; whatever it may cost you and me, you shall speak or I will ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... the most favored antecedents and the most fortunate surroundings to rise above mediocrity in a great nation, it is surely a more remarkable achievement for a man of the very humblest origin possible to humanity in any country in any age of the world, in the face of obstacles seemingly insurmountable, to win high honors and rewards, to retain for more than a generation the respect of good men in many lands, and to be deemed worthy of enrolment among his country's great men. Such a man was Frederick Douglass, and the example of one who thus rose to eminence by sheer force of character ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... Accordingly I am ready to make in his name whatever stipulations may be just, and to bind him thereto as his ambassador, since I am doing it for his sake. On account of this desire, I beg your Lordship, in case this does not take place by reason of some insurmountable difficulty, to order given to me a testimonial of all these matters in such wise as will give them credit; for I intend to go therewith and present myself before ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... same substratum, and therefore the mixture not only of different sorts of mycelia, but also that different kinds of spores are sown. With some care and patience, these difficulties are in no way insurmountable, and they must at any rate be overcome; the organic continuity or non-continuity must be cleared up, unless the question respecting the course of development, and the series of forms of special kinds, be laid on one ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... expense of providing the necessary equipment for vocational education. This does not prevent the introduction of social teaching or a proper attention to culture, but courses in manual training and domestic science usually cost more than most school boards are willing to meet. This is not an insurmountable obstacle, for cheap appliances are in the market and better school boards can be elected when ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... difficulty would seem quite insurmountable when I assure you, that I have written for a certain Blacking Manufacturer above two hundred different productions on the subject of his unparalleled Jet, each containing fresh incident, and very probably fresh incident must yet ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... American women. The Spanish riding horse is a pacer rather than a trotter, and this cradle-like motion is certainly better suited to the Spanish women. Few, if any, of them aspire to follow the hounds, a ditch or a gate would present difficulties which would be truly insurmountable, and they never acquire the ease and grace in this exercise which are the mark of an ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... maddening! Lilly, can't you see what I haven't the words to tell you? For years—since that night at the Waldorf—I—I have been living for this moment. I realized it to-night as you read that play. Lilly, is what is between us insurmountable?" ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... added also his readiness to repair, in any way possible, the evil done. He spoke of his birth and position. Sir Franks, with a gentlemanly delicacy natural to all lovers of a smooth world, begged him to see the main and the insurmountable objection. Birth was to be desired, of course, and position, and so forth: but without money how can two young people marry? Evan's heart melted at this generous way of putting it. He said he saw it, he had no ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not, in any sense of the term, a superstitious man. But he felt, nevertheless, an insurmountable reluctance to remaining in the hotel. He decided on leaving Venice. To ask for another room would be, as he could plainly see, an offence in the eyes of the manager. To remove to another hotel, would be to openly abandon an establishment in the success of which he had ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... that no one had thought of this obstacle which was well nigh insurmountable? There was no way to assault it from the bottom of the valley, and it was impossible to scale the rocks ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... one of the above-described reservoirs would involve interstate complications, as the 300-foot contour in Ramapo Valley includes a considerable part of the State of New York. This obstacle was deemed insurmountable by the northern New Jersey flood commission, and that commission directed studies to a reservoir which at the time of maximum flood would not back water into New York State to a greater height than it ...
— The Passaic Flood of 1903 • Marshall Ora Leighton
... air, exercise, rest,—so far as these are not taken simply and in obedience to the natural instinct, there arise physical stones in the way, stones that form themselves into an apparently insurmountable wall. There is a stile over that wall, however, if we will but open our eyes to see it. This stile, carefully climbed, will enable us to step over the few stones on the other side, and follow the physical path ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... from the stage of action, who have not left in the history of their lives indelible marks of ambition or folly, which produced insurmountable reverses, and rendered the whole a mere caricature, that can be examined only with disgust and regret. Such pictures, however, are profitable, for "by others' faults wise ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... not till that vivid face and that piercing voice thrill her sight and her ear again that all misgiving vanishes. There is nothing in life that can compensate for long partings. There ought to be few or no insurmountable obstacles to the frequent meetings, however short, of those who love each other. No duties and no privileges can be of more importance than the preservation, in all their entireness, of domestic familiarity ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... country an army of 500,000 men who are closely assembled. It is impossible to feed a population of 60,000,000, even if funds and stores of food are unlimited. With the most perfect system of harbours, canals, railways, &c., the distribution of food for 60,000,000 people offers insurmountable obstacles. Plague is caused by infection, and may be stamped out by the observance of those sanitary rules which Indians refuse to observe. Cases of plague are not reported to the authorities, but are hidden from them, so that the sanctity of the home may not be defiled ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... as such an arrangement as this appears to be, practical difficulties, which it is said are insurmountable, stand in the way of its adoption, and the distilled water produced for Egypt is made in special apparatus, and various forms of condenser are employed, made under various patents. The principle involved is, however, in all cases the same. Steam is generated in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... social order" of the East, in which their abilities found no recognition. Whoever has deservedly failed in the older states is sure at least once in his life to think of redeeming his fortunes in California. Once on the Pacific slope the difficulties in the way of his return seem insurmountable. The dread of the winter's cold is in most cases a sufficient reason for never going back. Thus San Francisco, by force of circumstances, has become the hopper into which fall incompetents from all the world, and from which few ...
— California and the Californians • David Starr Jordan
... the trials and failures and struggles which these men have voluntarily encountered in order to gain their experience; have no knowledge of the sacrifices they have made, of the undaunted efforts they have put forth, of the faith they have exercised, that they might overcome the apparently insurmountable, and realize the Vision of their heart. They do not know the darkness and the heartaches; they only see the light and joy, and call it "luck". They do not see the long and arduous journey, but only behold the pleasant goal, and call it "good fortune," do not understand the process, but only perceive ...
— As a Man Thinketh • James Allen
... fathers' trades from generation to generation, and lived in their fathers' houses from one century to another; and there was all the individuality and the local tradition which never really hindered civilization, but were always an insurmountable ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... him who resides in a tirtha, restraining lust and subjugating wrath, in consequence of such residence. For the purpose of repairing to all the tirthas in the world, one should mentally think of those amongst them that are almost inaccessible or sojourns to which are attended with insurmountable difficulties. Sojourns to tirthas is productive of the merits of sacrifices. They are competent to cleanse everybody of sin. Fraught with great excellence, they are capable of leading to heaven. The subject is truly a great ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Chilian officers now began to propound schemes, each of which was promising enough—up to a certain point, at which somebody was certain to point out an insurmountable difficulty. One suggested a concerted attack by the entire Chilian squadron; but this was manifestly impossible, in face of the enormously powerful guns which the Peruvians could bring to bear. Another put forward the suggestion that an assault could be delivered in the rear of the town, by landing ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... should continue its functions. —Mr HAGERUP did not refer to these points in his reply partly because the difficulties of his agreeing on them with Mr BOSTROeM were not, according to his own account, so very insurmountable. ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... once, and almost as popular a preacher as Mark, and he did not underrate the difficulties. But it was his firm persuasion that, with tact and common-sense they were by no means insurmountable. What really distressed the old man was that perhaps Mark had been right in thinking that he personally could not surmount them. And it was Canon Nicholls's doing that he was not by this time a novice in a Carthusian ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... her entrance. She staggered down the road to the village. It seemed she made her way through a red dimness—that there was a congestion in her brain—that the distance to Mrs. Cass's cottage was insurmountable. But she got there, to stagger up the path, to hear the old woman's cry. Dizzy, faint, sick, with a blackness enveloping all she looked at, Helen felt herself led into the sitting-room and placed ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... might be termed), of this singular tree, would occupy a vantage-ground from which it would require strong odds to dislodge them, and the assailants, unless provided with fire-arms, or missile weapons, would labour under almost insurmountable difficulties. ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... too much. The conversation was getting beyond my depth. I had followed him in a vague and misty way thus far, but this Aydipodayan Ipopaya was an obstacle which I could not in any way surmount. I halted short, full in front of that insurmountable obstacle. So far from surmounting it, I couldn't even pretend to have the smallest idea what it was. I could not get over it, and therefore began to think of ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... edge of a considerable plateau, swept by Boer fire, and no advance could be made over its bare expanse save at a considerable loss. The infantry clung in a long fringe to the edge of the position, but for two hours no guns could be brought up to their support, as the steepness of the slope was insurmountable. It was all that the stormers could do to hold their ground, as they were enfiladed by a Vickers-Maxim, and exposed to showers of shrapnel as well as to an incessant rifle fire. Never were guns so welcome as those of the 82nd battery, brought by Major Connolly into the firing line. The ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was never so confident in himself as when he was fighting an apparently losing game; and the refusal of Mildred to come to him, a refusal based, as he supposed, on nothing but an insurmountable prejudice against doing what was not respectable, struck him as a stage in their relations rather than as the end of them. He did not attempt to see her until the close of the Easter Vacation. People ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... or human torture. Sometimes throughout a long period or a whole lifetime the path of existence is perpetually checked by what seem like insurmountable obstacles. Grief, pain, suffering, the loss of all that is beloved or valued, rise up before the terrified soul and check it at every turn. Who places those obstacles there? The reason shrinks at the childish dramatic picture which the religionists place before ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... itself to these unprecedented conditions, so as to enable me to pursue my studies at Radcliffe? I realize that the obstacles in the way of my receiving a college education are very great—to others they may seem insurmountable; but, dear Sir, a true soldier does not ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... of the human species which ought to set the question at rest for ever. This is the fact of maternity.... From this there arise, in the first place, physical impediments which, during the best part of the female life, are absolutely insurmountable, except at a sacrifice of almost everything that distinguishes the civilized human from the animal, or beastly, and savage state. As a secondary, yet inevitably resulting consequence, there come domestic and social ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... felt it a species of indelicacy to admit the impression of another so soon, or even at all. These objections would, in time, have been overcome, as her affections became more and more enlisted on behalf of Harland, had she admitted his addresses; but there was an impediment that Jane considered insurmountable to a ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... without the presence of Persian words, the presence of Persian ideas might be detected by careful analysis. No doubt this is a much more delicate process, yet, as we can discover Jewish and Christian ideas in the Koran, there ought to be no insurmountable difficulty in pointing out any Persian ingredients in Genesis, however disguised and assimilated. Only, before we look for such ideas, it is necessary to show the channel through which they could possibly have flowed either from the Avesta into Genesis, or from Genesis into the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... window." And he led the way to one of the large windows which stood open on the night. "You observe," he went on, "there is an iron ring in the upper masonry, and reeved through that, a very efficacious rope. Now, mark my words: if you should find your disinclination to my niece's person insurmountable, I shall have you hanged out of this window before sunrise. I shall only proceed to such an extremity with the greatest regret, you may believe me. For it is not at all your death that I desire, but my niece's establishment in life. At the same time, it must come to that if you prove ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... Mazarin. Two countries, the seats of civil liberty and of the Reformed Faith, had been preserved by his wisdom and courage from extreme perils. Holland he had delivered from foreign, and England from domestic foes. Obstacles apparently insurmountable had been interposed between him and the ends on which he was intent; and those obstacles his genius had turned into stepping stones. Under his dexterous management the hereditary enemies of his house had helped him to mount a throne; and the persecutors ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Beautifully as the size of the jaws could be explained as due to the increased use made of them by the "soldiers," or the enlarged brain as due to the mental activities of the workers, the fact of the infertility of these forms is an insurmountable obstacle to accepting such an explanation. Neither jaws nor brain can have been evolved on the ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... not a bogus Bunny you will know,'" I read, spreading the message out before me. "That is to say, she believes that if I am really myself I can surmount the insurmountable. Gad! I'll do it." And I set off hot-foot up Fifth Avenue, hoping to discover, or by cogitation in the balmy air of the spring-time afternoon, to conceive of some plan to relieve my necessities. But, somehow or other, it wouldn't come. There were no pockets about to be picked in the ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... doubt of it, my dear. But that is only the more reason for rising above all that. From the way some people speak of physical difficulties—I don't mean you, wife—you would think that they were not merely the inevitable which they are, but the insurmountable which they are not. That they are physical and not spiritual is not only a great consolation, but a strong argument for overcoming them. For all that is physical is put, or is in the process of being put, under the feet of the spiritual. Do not mistake me. I do not say you can make yourself ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... many, however, who were possessed of either her courage or her indiscretion. They all agreed, though, that Andrew Johnstone was the one insurmountable barrier to their hopes. Most of the other elders had been approached in a tentative way. Peter McNabb was a broad-minded man with such a passion for music that, though he looked askance at any innovation, yet he would have welcomed anything ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... which had ever been trodden by white men, and now, for the mere sake of adventure, he determined to go further still, and see if he could cross the great White Mountains, which had hitherto been considered an insurmountable barrier. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... terrific, insurmountable, if, as I have said, all things did not concur in rendering them of absolutely no account. There is no danger either for you or for me, if the constancy and intrepidity of your royal highness are equal to that perfection of resemblance to your brother which nature has bestowed ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... to the progress of science. With regard to such societies generally, this proposition is incapable of realization; every year sees a new society of this description; to annex many of these to government, would involve difficulties which, in the present state of politics, would be insurmountable. Who, for instance, would pay taxes for them? Another, and more reasonable, proposition is, that the government should establish and support one academy as a head and front of the others, accessible only to men of high distinction, who would be thus constituted the oligarchs of science. Of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... straw if we can avoid it, nor even the raw grain, but thrash it and winnow it, and grind it and bake it, we find it, after undergoing this process, not only very palatable, but a special dainty of its kind. But the husk is an insurmountable obstacle to those learned and educated gentlemen who judge of books entirely by the style and the grammar, or those who eat grain as it grows, like the cattle. Such men would reject all prological revelation; for there never was and probably never will ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... flanked on the left by impassable morasses, which finally lose themselves in the waters of the gulf of Mulia. A few narrow and difficult tracts traverse the ridge of Oeta; but these, though passable to a small body of infantry, present insurmountable obstacles to the advance of an army. To the pass of Thermopylae, in the spring of the year 280 B.C., the Brenn directed his march. Aware of its vital importance, the Athenians, Boeotians, Locrians, Phocians, and Megarians, who had formed a league against the northern ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... Latin of his, and teach his pupils the English language "thoroughly"— with much emphasis on the "thoroughly," but it is quite another thing for the schoolmaster to obey our magnificent directions. For the plain, simple, insurmountable fact is this, that no one knows how to teach English as in our vague way we critics imagine it taught; that no working schoolmaster alive can possibly give the thing the concentrated attention, the experimental ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... changed the original nature and habits of life of many animals. The dog, the companion of man, is the summit of human achievement in association with animals. Nevertheless, the barriers that separate the dog and his master are insurmountable. Even if "a candidate for humanity," the dog is forever debarred from any share in human tradition ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... history, with which if you were acquainted, it might alter your view of the case; but this is not the season for its disclosure, neither, I am bound to say, does the circumstance so materially alter the apparent posture of affairs as to remove all difficulty. On the contrary, it leaves an insurmountable obstacle ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... related; that ignorance of pure philosophy has caused to be taken for miraculous effects, and black magic, what is the simple effect of white magic, and the secrets of a philosophy hidden from the ignorant and common herd of men. Moreover, I confess that I see insurmountable difficulties in explaining the manner or properties of apparitions, whether we admit with several ancients that angels, demons, and disembodied souls have a sort of subtile transparent body of the nature of air, whether ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... Marquis de La Fayette in this city. This has been attended with a considerable, but a necessary delay. The principle that the King is the sole fountain of honor in this country opposed a barrier to our desires, which threatened to be insurmountable. No instance of a similar proposition from a foreign power, had occurred in their history. The admitting it in this case, is a singular proof of the King's friendly disposition towards the States of America, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... night, but after many careful inspections of his tutor's premises Saurin saw how this might be managed. There was a small back-yard into which the boys had access at any time; this was surrounded by a high wall with a chevaux de frise at the top, which might be considered insurmountable unless one were Jack Sheppard or the Count of Monte Christo. But there was a door at the bottom, seldom used, hardly ever, indeed, except when coals came in. Outside there was a cart track, and then open field. It was the simplest thing, a mere question of obtaining a key to ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... the children of God; but a considerable number, one-third perhaps, expressed conscientious difficulty in receiving her. The example of the Apostles in baptizing the first believers upon a profession of faith, was especially urged, which indeed would be an insurmountable difficulty, had not the truth been mingled with error for so long a time, so that it does not prove willful disobedience, if any one in our day should refuse to be baptized after believing. The Lord, however, gave us much help in ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller
... 'Parus' and I never asked an Englishman to marry me. You know what our feelings are," his companion as ardently pursued; "our convictions, our susceptibilities. We may be wrong, we may be hollow, we may be pretentious, we mayn't be able to say on what it all rests; but there we are, and the fact's insurmountable. It's simply impossible for us to live with vulgar people. It's a defect, no doubt; it's an immense inconvenience, and in the days we live in it's sadly against one's interest. But we're made like that and we ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... Mr. Dashwood—indifferent to his sister's disclaimers —proceeded to congratulate her on the prospect of a very respectable establishment in life, to insist that the objections to a prior attachment on her side were not insurmountable, and to inform her that the object of that attachment—Mr. Edward Ferrars—was likely to be married to Miss Morton, a peer's daughter, with thirty thousand pounds of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... regularly as possible to the troops on the line, generally in the face of apparently insurmountable transportation difficulties. Units of troops, even in the most inaccessible and out of the way places, were visited by Red Cross workers, occasionally at ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... difficulties. It would be strange if otherwise. A 'Revelation' that revealed nothing, not within the grasp of human reason!—no religation, no binding over again, as before said: but these difficulties are shadows, contrasted with the substantive, and insurmountable obstacles with which they contend who admit the 'Divine authority of Scripture', with the 'superlative excellence of Christ', and yet undertake to prove that these Scriptures teach, and that Christ taught, his own ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... middle of Aries, when that sphere was constructed, he infers, by calculations of their retrograde motion from their place then till the year A.D. 1690, that the expedition took place in 937 before Christ. To this, however, there seem to be insurmountable objections, which it is surprising did not occur to this great man. The chief star in Argo is only 37 degrees from the south pole; and the greatest part of the constellation is much nearer. The course of the Argonauts from Greece to Colchis, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... departure of his master before putting his plan into execution; foreseeing that, if the duke became aware of it, the enormous difficulties in the way would be from the first insurmountable. ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... the Little Corporal, without heeding their account of apparently insurmountable difficulties. England and Austria laughed in scorn at the idea of transporting across the Alps, where "no wheel had ever rolled, or by any possibility could roll," an army of sixty thousand men, with ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... was sixteen, he taught in one of the district schools in the neighborhood. He cherished a strong desire for a collegiate education, but was not at liberty to take any steps in that direction until he became of age. Want of means would have been with many int his circumstances an insurmountable obstacle,—not so with him. By the willing labor of his hands, he obtained in eight months the means of fitting for college at Meriden Academy, where he studied one year, and soon after leaving ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... in the first place, that the glaciation seems to have come long after the elevation. The difficulty does not seem to be insurmountable. The reduction of the atmospheric vapour would be a gradual process, beginning with the later part of the elevation and culminating long afterwards. The reduction of the carbon-dioxide would be even more gradual. It is impossible to say how long it would take these processes ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... are not to be solved, or only in one way. If her heart chance to come uppermost, they vanish. Thus Hester Prynne, whose heart had lost its regular and healthy throb, wandered without a clue in the dark labyrinth of mind; now turned aside by an insurmountable precipice; now starting back from a deep chasm. There was wild and ghastly scenery all around her, and a home and comfort nowhere. At times a fearful doubt strove to possess her soul, whether it were not better to send Pearl at once to Heaven, and go herself ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Another plan is to exhibit in chronological order, the entire text of the four gospels arranged in parallel columns, so far as two or more of them cover the same ground. The idea is very imposing, but the realization of it is beset with formidable if not insurmountable difficulties. It is certain that the evangelists do not always follow the exact order of time, and it is sometimes impossible to decide between the different arrangements of events in their records. In the four narratives of the events connected with the resurrection ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... gained for herself a husband who never deviated from a virtuous path as much as I; but the attachment formed was so strong that no misfortune seemed powerful enough to sever it. The barrier which seemed insurmountable, and which I had erected myself by early indiscretions and excesses, has given way, thanks to your superior medical knowledge and skillful treatment. Again I can hold up my head and say, "I am a man. I never fail to call the attention of my ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... of the country were almost insurmountable. The morass which comprised the Salmon River plain was in summer a bottomless ooze, over which nothing could be transported, yet in winter it became sheathed with a steel-hard armor against which ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... hardest of her life. The long dreary battle against insurmountable obstacles she had been able to bear with a stoical front, but the sickening alternations of emotions which now filled her days wore upon her until she was fairly suffocated. About mail time each day she became of an unendurable ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... full before Zillah's mind one galling yet undeniable truth, which showed her an insurmountable obstacle in the way of her plan. To one utterly unaccustomed to control of any kind, the thought added fresh rage, and she now sought refuge in thinking how she could best encounter her new enemy, Lord Chetwynde, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... though on the brink of starvation, to become bonnet to the thimble-man, an office, which, though profitable, is positively ungenteel. Ah! but some sticker-up for gentility will exclaim, "The hero did not refuse this office from an insurmountable dislike to its ungentility, but merely from a feeling of principle." Well! the writer is not fond of argument, and he will admit that such was the case; he admits that it was a love of principle, rather than an over-regard ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... expedients to get up a buffalo hunt upon a large scale, but the difficulty of procuring buffaloes was insurmountable. Austin, it is true, did suggest an inroad among the flock of sheep of a neighbouring farmer maintaining that the scampering of the sheep would very much resemble the flight of a herd of buffaloes; but this suggestion was given up, on the ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... "You had better give up. England has decided that you cannot be free." And her lawyers said: "Even with fresh evidence it would be foolish to re-open the fight. The action of the Queen's Proctor is so insurmountable." But the woman said to herself: "Though England has decided that I must be a slave, nevertheless I will be free." Meantime Lieutenant Lynch-Blosse, after endeavoring to blacken his wife's character in his regiment, and getting soundly thrashed ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... account in Genesis gives us no hint of any such miracle. Noah was to take the animals to him, and to take unto him of all food that is eaten; and, as Hugh Miller remarks, "the expedient of having recourse to supposititious miracle in order to get over a difficulty insurmountable on every natural principle, is not of the nature of an argument, but simply an evidence of the want of it. Argument is at an end when supposititious miracle is introduced." But, if a miracle was worked, it was not one, but ten thousand ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton
... means of a broad footpath that intersected the road only a few yards from the grotto. It was there she resolved to go for shelter. But to reach this path she must walk through the raging flood. She did not hesitate. Each moment of delay aggravated her peril, and might place some insurmountable barrier between her and her only chance of salvation. She lifted her skirts, fastened her child upon her back and bravely waded into ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... but, unfortunately, you have not that control over yourself. Your only safety, then, lies in the pledge. Take that, and you throw between yourself and danger an insurmountable barrier. You talk about freedom; and yet are a slave to the most debasing appetite. Get free from the influence of that eager, insatiable desire, and you are free, indeed. The perpetual total-abstinence pledge will be your declaration ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... these connections, and long after ideas have been formed, the sound-image of the word spoken by the mother, when it emerges in the center-for-sounds directly after the rise of a clear idea, is now repeated by the child accurately, or, in case it offers insurmountable difficulties of articulation for pronunciation, inaccurately. This fact of sound-imitation is fundamental. Beyond it we can not go. Especially must be noted here as essential that it appears to be an entirely indifferent matter ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... a small part of the therapeutic usefulness is secured during the hypnotic state itself. A pain may be removed, sleep be secured, an idea be inhibited, a movement be reenforced in cases where non-hypnotic suggestions would have found insurmountable obstacles. During the hypnosis we may also open the storehouse of memory and bring to light the ideas which disturbed the equilibrium of the suffering mind. Further in those most complex hysteric cases of dissociated personality, new memory connections may be formed during ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... would be an insurmountable obstacle to the success of estates. Even could managers be found to brave the danger, one season of sickness and death among the coolies would give the estate a name which would deprive it of ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... the belief that the labor of bringing into the town the enormous amount of earth required to supply such an immense number of closets, and the labor of removing the product at frequent intervals, would be so great as to constitute an insurmountable obstruction. ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... Grace Forbeach out of the reckoning, Joseph's Coat was my third novel in the order of writing and the second in order of publication. The second half of A Life's Atonement was written under difficulties which would have been absolutely insurmountable if it had not been for that spirit of camaraderie which distinguished the jolly little Bohemian set amongst whom I had fallen. One chum who lived over an undertaker's shop in Great Russell Street found me house-room, and I had a resource from which, for the space of some ten weeks, ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... would be." Still, unpleasantness seldom arrives in exactly the manner expected, and the unexpected is always the hardest to bear. Thus it was with me in this case; my situation seemed to contain insurmountable difficulties. I sought the basis for them in imperfect culture; and the cause of the disconnected nature of the culture I had been able to attain, lay, so I perceived, in the interruptions which marred my university career. Educator ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... to believe that Christopher would have called, had time favoured him to the utmost. Between himself and her there was that kind of division which is more insurmountable than enmity; for estrangements produced by good judgment will last when those of feeling break down in smiles. Not the lovers who part in passion, but the lovers who part in friendship, are those who most frequently ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... safely there as anywhere. Only come to the conclusion that a thing must be done, and it is half finished already. You have only to make up your mind that you will accomplish a design in spite of obstacles, and what you once thought to be insurmountable difficulties will prove mere straws in your path. But we are wasting time; I've determined you shall do it, and I hope you now know me well enough to be convinced that it is your best policy to be as obliging as possible. You had better go now, and be prepared ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... was a case of providing for the spiritual wants of over a quarter of a million souls. The dearth of priests, the difference of rite, the difficulty of language, and the great number of Ruthenians, created for the Church an almost insurmountable barrier which nothing short of a miracle could otherthrow [Transcriber's note: overthrow?]. This sudden and large influx of Catholics belonging to the Greek rite, into a Country where the Latin Church alone prevailed, constitutes ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... his bank account down to the irreducible minimum and borrowed on his securities up to the insurmountable maximum. It was a bad time for his children to tap him. But here they were—Jno. P., Jerry, and Julia—all very unctuous over the home-coming, and yet all of them evidently cherishing an ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... on account of the vicious habits of the criminal he is apt to transmit to his offspring a physical defect which will make it difficult for him to adapt himself to the conditions of the society in which he is placed. This difficulty becomes almost, though not quite, insurmountable when the environment is one in which the practice of vice and dishonesty is easier than that of ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... detection. He feared, indeed, the restraints which the unequivocal adoption of the profession would impose upon him, fettering somewhat the freedom of his intercourse with the young of both sexes, and, consequently, opposing an almost insurmountable barrier to the prevailing object which had brought him to the village. Whatever may have been the feelings or motives which governed him, they, at least, saved him from an act which would have grievously aggravated his already large ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... born coward's make and temperament would be an absolute and insurmountable bar to his ever essaying such a thing, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... disinherited—that he knew well enough; but neither he nor his Nina, as he called her, would have paused for this consideration. There were other difficulties, trivial in appearance, harassing, vexatious, insurmountable in reality, that yet seemed from day to day about to vanish; so they waited, and temporised, and hesitated, till the opportunity came of escaping together, and they availed themselves of it ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... practiced for years among Endbury ladies without having some knowledge of them and a corresponding readiness of mind in meeting the difficulties they declared insurmountable. "I'll buy you a white marseilles bedspread on our way back from the walk," ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... stood was the last of the ridges, for the elevation that lay directly across was a noble range of foothills, timbered, canyoned, apparently insurmountable for horses. Gray cliffs stood out of the green, crags of ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... done. But what had tried Joyce almost beyond endurance was to find that her greatest opposition came from the people she was trying to benefit. Often she found herself, through her builders, butting against a wall of human perversity and stupidity fairly insurmountable. ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... stronger than another on the basis of the immediate impression of feeling, but we cannot say how much stronger it is, nor with reason assert that it is twice or half as intense. Herbart's mathematical psychology was wrecked by this insurmountable difficulty. The demand for exactness which it raised, but which it was unable to satisfy with the means at its disposal, has recently been renewed, and has led to assured results in psycho-physics, which ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... it too—that settles it—not a word, mind; if it's sprung upon her at a few days' notice it may come off. If she has time to think she'll discover insurmountable difficulties. Strategy, my dear, ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... preliminary talk Mr. Blair read to Mr. Davis an elaborate paper containing his "suggestions." These covered a reference to slavery, "the cause of all our woes," saying it was doomed and hence no longer an insurmountable obstruction to pacification, adding that as the South proposed to use slaves to "conquer a peace," and to secure its independence, "their deliverance from bondage" must follow.(10) With slavery abolished, Mr. Blair suggested ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... detail as they passed the town. An attempt was made to retrieve the blunder. The sailors were sent to man the frigates anew and attack the squadron of Holmes. It was too late. Holmes was already too strong for them, and they were recalled. Yet the difficulties of the English still seemed insurmountable. Dysentery and fever broke out in their camps, the number of their effective men was greatly reduced, and the advancing season told them that their work must be done quickly, or ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... somewhat larger and more important mining village of Daiquiri, which, before the war, was the shipping-port of the Spanish-American Iron Company. There is no harbor, shelter for vessels, or safe anchorage at any of these places; but as the rampart, everywhere else, presents an almost insurmountable barrier, an invading force must either disembark in these notches, or go eastward to the Bay of Guantanamo and march forty miles to Santiago through the foot-hills. General Shafter, after inspecting the coast, decided to land in the notches occupied by the villages of Daiquiri and Siboney. ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... be useless for us to speak openly," said Romola, with the sort of exasperation that comes from using living muscle against some lifeless insurmountable resistance. "It was the sense of deception in you that changed me, and that has kept us apart. And it is not true that I changed first. You changed towards me the night you first wore that chain-armour. You had some secret from me—it ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... at two o'clock in the morning. You are obliged to eat in the French way, which is very disagreeable to an English palate; and, at Chalons, you must embark upon the Saone in a boat, which conveys you to Lyons, so that the two last days of your journey are by water. All these were insurmountable objections to me, who am in such a bad state of health, troubled with an asthmatic cough, spitting, slow fever, and restlessness, which demands a continual change of place, as well as free air, and room for motion. I was this day visited by two young gentlemen, sons of Mr. Guastaldi, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Moore of Louisiana (a magnificent body of educated colored men which afterwards became the First Louisiana National Guards of General Weitzel's brigade and the first colored regiment in the Federal Army), the feeling against negro troops was insurmountable until the last days of the struggle. Then no straw could be overlooked. When, in December, 1863, Major-General Patrick R. Cleburne, who commanded a division of Hardee's Corps of the Confederate Army of the Tennessee, sent in a paper in which ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... before a gun could be raised. They reached the same point. He was still before them, but his race was nearly run. Steep, slippery rocks, shelving down to the edges of a small, deep pool of water, the source of the stream, formed an apparently insurmountable barrier in that direction. Rooted—Heaven knows how!—in some reft or fissure of the rock, grew a wild ash, throwing out a few boughs over the solitary pool; this was all the support Luke could hope for, should he attempt to scale the rock. The rock was sheer—the pool deep—yet still ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... this does not amount to an offer; and the reason is, I think, sufficiently plain why the offer was not made: namely, that he had been staggered at what, I fear, is an insurmountable difficulty, with respect to the lead of the House of Commons. W. Pitt would certainly not hear of it, after his second peremptory refusal of the Treasury; T. Pitt as certainly not, after his refusal, ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... remain stationary; his development goes on, but more slowly than that of other children, he is behind them in the whole course of their progress, and his delay increasing every day, places at length an enormous distance between him and them—a distance which in fact becomes insurmountable. ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... that they were not in the place of vantage. The service she did to them was a greater service done to her country, by giving these quivering creatures of the baked land proof that a Christian Englishwoman could be companionable, tender, beneficently motherly with them, despite the reputed insurmountable barriers of alien race and religion. Sympathy was quick in her breast for all the diverse victims of mischance; a shade of it, that was not indulgence, but knowledge of the roots of evil, for malefactors and for the fool. Against the cruelty of despotic ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon |
