"Tenable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District may be based upon another equally tenable. We argue it from the fact, that slavery exists there now by an act of Congress. In the act of 16th July, 1790, Congress accepted portions of territory offered by the states of Maryland and Virginia, and enacted that the laws, as they then were, should continue ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... point I ventured to ask why he regarded the latter view as so much more tenable than the former. "There are several reasons," he replied, "which render the view I prefer to take all but certain. First, the impression was made by the left hand. Second, it is the impression of a closed hand, with the upper joints of the fingers undermost. Did you ever ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... not think this is tenable, for there is a long tract of bare hill-slope between the extremity of the Cingle and the conical fortified hill of Pain de Munition, and even if Marcellus were concealed whilst ascending this little lateral valley, he would emerge in full view of the barbarians for the last ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... explosions, the earth seemed to be shaken to its very centre;—It was afterwards discovered the enemy's position was no longer tenable, so they had fired some 300 tons of gunpowder, which had blown up all their vast forts and magazines. O! what a night: many of our poor fellows had been nearly buried in the debris, and burning mass: the whole of Sebastopol was in flames. The Russians were leaving it helter-skelter—a ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... more proposed that his fellow-labourer in Rome should settle in Munich, but with no avail; the King evidently had little cordiality for the artist, and so employed others on the plea, not wholly tenable, that Overbeck was better in oil than in fresco. Thus the large acreage of wall surfaces dedicated to Christian Art in the churches of Munich and the Cathedral of Spires fell into the hands of Cornelius, Hess, and Schraudolph. It is impossible not to regret that this grand sphere ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... and the men with the torches now advancing, cast them amidst the heaps of brushwood. In a few seconds the whole was in a blaze. The woodwork of the building soon caught fire, and it became evident to the besieged that the house would not long be tenable. Still, as long as any could remain on the front side, they continued ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the French they blew up several towers of the outer wall, and left the fortifications scarcely tenable. Since that time the military importance of the post is at an end. The garrison is a handful of invalid soldiers, whose principal duty is to guard some of the outer towers, which serve occasionally as a prison of state; and the governor, abandoning the lofty hill of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... graperies, gardeners have a prejudice against growing any other plants than the grapevines lest red spiders, thrips, or mealy bugs are introduced with the plants, but in the case of mushrooms no such grounds are tenable. As the vines have yielded their fruit by midsummer and ripened their wood early so as to be ready for starting into growth again in December or January, the grapery is kept cool and ventilated in the fall and early winter, but this need ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... murderer, acknowledging the harmfulness of his occupation, ought to be ashamed of it. The truth is just the contrary. People, whom fate and their sinful mistakes have placed in a given condition, form such views of life generally that they are enabled to consider their condition useful and morally tenable. In order, however, to maintain such views they instinctively cling to such circles in which the same views are held. We are surprised when we hear thieves boasting of their cleverness, or murderers boasting of their cruelty, but ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... murder it is, of course nobody knows anything with certainty. But in my judgment there is only one tenable theory of Will Whittaker's disappearance, and that is, that he was murdered and his body hidden. Mead is the only enemy he was known to have, and Mead had threatened to kill him. The evidence, while, of course, not conclusive, is shockingly ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... phenomenon to hang upon the facts clustering about his own profession, familiar to him, and about which it was natural for him to think. He promulgated theories about it that are all now absurd, however tenable then. His was an instance of how the fatuities of men in all the fields of science, faith or morals, have often led to results as extraordinary as they have been unexpected. That he died in poverty in 1798 is a mere human fact. That in this life he never knew is merely another. It is but a part ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... unconsciously offended her by what he had written. He had no copy of the letter and could not recall a single phrase which could have displeased her, but he feared lest something might have crept into it which she might misinterpret. But this idea was too absurd to be tenable for long, and the conviction grew upon him that she must be ill or in some great trouble. He was ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... have been tenable, though highly improbable, if you had been an innocent young maid, but he knew perfectly well that your novitiate was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... could they? Compared with this question, the riddle of the Sphinx was simple, the supposition that they were going to batter coast-walls in the S. Pacific being hardly now tenable. The Boodah finally came to rest some miles North of lat. 50 deg. and East of long. 20 deg.: and there—just on the northern rim of the Gulf Stream where it divides, part toward Ireland, and part toward Africa—she remained, precisely in the middle of the trade- route between Europe and ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... the Heads of Virginia on the 9th of July, and found there the Richmond, Guadaloupe, Fowey, and Vulcan fire-ship. It had been for some time seen that the town of Portsmouth was not a tenable post. The neighbourhood, especially in the summer season, was unhealthy, and ships of any size could not get up sufficiently near it to assist in its defence. The commanders-in-chief had accordingly resolved to evacuate it, and to occupy York Town, ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... passionately to fling herself upon it. It was the strangest cooperation without a word or a sign to show it conscious—a playing together for stakes that could not be admitted, a thing to hang upon breathless. It was there between them—the tenable ground of what they were to each other: they occupied it with almost an equal eye upon the tide that threatened, while I from my mainland tower also made an anguished calculation of the chances. I think in spite of the menace, they found real beatitudes; so keenly did they ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... whose haunts he knows. There was much talk concerning what should be done, how to protect my honour's person, and to postpone commencing a defence which must make Ahab desperate, before we can ascertain that the grounds are really tenable. This much I think I can see, that the trustees will rather pay the debt than break off the trust and go into a sequestration. They are clearly right for themselves, and I believe for me also. Whether it is in human possibility that I can clear off these ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... am in possession of a respectable body of facts that I do not know how to explain except on the theory that I am dealing with some invisible intelligence. I hold that as the only tenable theory I am ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... suggested[*] that the naturalism of Tell-el-Amarna owes some of its inspiration to the influence of the fugitives who brought with them from Crete the traditions of the great art of Knossos. Such a suggestion is no longer so improbable as it seemed to be in 1901, when it was still a tenable theory that the new development of Egyptian art was due to Mesopotamian influence, and came from Mitanni with Queen Tyi, the wife of Amenhotep III. Now that it is certain that Tyi was no Mitannian, but a native Egyptian, that door is closed, ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... more meritorious towards our civic commonweal, the more you, High-honored Gentlemen [of the Catholic persuasion], accept, with all frankness of colleague-love and amity, me and the Evangelical brother Raths now introduced by Royal grace and power; and make the new position generously tenable and available to us;—and thereby bind with us the more firmly the band of peace and colleague-unity, for helping up this dear, and for some years greatly ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... gourd. From there we could see the missing two, lingering at the dooryard gate, in the bright moonlight. As we finished drinking, "Gentlemen," murmured Harry, "I fear our position is too exposed to be tenable." ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... desire the defenders of Carrigadrohid to surrender. The first attack on Clonmel took place on the 9th of May, and O'Neill determined to resist with the energy of despair, and the full knowledge of the demon vengeance with which the Puritans repaid such deeds of valour. When the place was no longer tenable, he withdrew his troops under cover of darkness; and the English General found next morning that he had been outwitted, and that nothing remained for his vengeance but the ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... made logical and tenable only on the assumption that such evolved conditions, insuring cross-fertilization, were of distinct advantage to the flower in the competitive struggle for existence, and that all cross-fertilized flowers were thus the final result of ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... to be done when daylight made concerted movements possible, was to contract the perimeter of defence, so as to make it more tenable by the number of troops available. The original garrison was now augmented by the arrival of the Guides, horse and foot. It was with considerable reluctance that Colonel Meiklejohn, who had himself been wounded by a sword-cut, decided on abandoning what was known as the North ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... and the French Republic. Mr. Gallatin asked if a declaration of war could not be moved as an amendment, but the speaker, Mr. Dayton, made no reply. Mr. Gallatin objected that Congress could not declare a state of facts by a legislative act. But this view, if tenable then, has long since been abandoned. In witness of which it is only necessary to name the celebrated resolution of the Congress of 1865 with regard to the recognition of a monarchy in Mexico. July 6 the House went into committee of the whole on the state of the Union to consider a bill sent ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... were utterly inadequate to the solution of the problem. This scrutiny consisted in searching for the ground of "contradiction"[571] with regard to each opinion founded on sensation, and showing that opposite views were equally tenable. It inquired on what ground these opinions were maintained, and what consequences flowed therefrom, and it showed that the grounds upon which "opinion" was founded, and the conclusions which were drawn from it, were contradictory, and consequently ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... It is not tenable, therefore, in theory, that the increase of capital produces, or tends to produce, a general decline of money prices. Neither is it true that any general decline of prices, as capital increased, has ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... that it is perpetually giving out heat without apparently becoming cooler. At first blush this seemed to contradict the great physical law of the conservation of energy, but physicists were soon agreed that a less revolutionary explanation of the phenomenon is perfectly tenable. The giving off of heat is indeed only an additional evidence of the dissipation of energy to which the radio-active atom is subjected. And no one now believes that radio-activity can persist indefinitely without actually ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... stuffing. The hostility displayed by the blacks compelled Mr. McKinlay and his party to fire upon them. The mystery attached to the remains here spoken of has yet to be cleared up. The idea at first entertained that they were those of Gray is not tenable. A glance at the map will show that Gray died and was buried far away to ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... the hair-dresser seemed to find in that very dependence his best happiness, and to have built up a factitious self-respect from the very ruin of true dignity. His position was the antipodes of Balder's, yet, if results were evidence, it was tenable and ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... a loss to account for his invitation to Green Fancy under the circumstances. The confident attitude of those responsible for Miss Cameron's detention evidently was based upon conditions which rendered their position tenable. Their disregard for the consequences that might reasonably be expected to result from this visit was puzzling in the extreme. He could arrive at no other conclusion than that their hospitality ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... Katherine's sorrows, but the unselfish action of another woman went to make Julius March's position at Brockhurst tenable. A few days after Ormiston's momentous interview with his sister, news came of Mrs. St. Quentin's death. She had passed hence peacefully in her sleep. Knowledge of the facts of poor, little Dickie ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Xerxes learned, from a Greek traitor, of a secret path over the mountains, by which he was able to throw a force of twenty thousand men into the rear of the brave defenders of the pass. Leonidas, seeing that his post was no longer tenable, now dismissed all his allies that desired to retire, and retained only three hundred fellow-Spartans, with some Thespians and Thebans—in all about one thousand men. He would have saved two of his kinsmen, by sending them ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... whole he, a southern overseer, pronounced himself decidedly in favour of free labour, upon grounds of expediency. Having at the beginning of our conversation declined discussing the moral aspect of slavery, evidently not thinking that position tenable, I thought I had every right to consider Mr. ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... tradition mean the preservation of type. If there were no force of heredity or tradition, there could be no system or classification of natural or of societal forms; the creation hypothesis would be the only tenable one, for there could be no basis for a theory of descent. If there were no variation, all of nature and all human institutions would show a monotony as of the desert sand. Heredity and tradition allow respectively of the accumulation of organic or societal variations through repeated selection, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Ammar. Well, we arrived safely at our various camps of Drean, Nech Meya, and Amman Berda. We made a little detour to visit Ghelma. I had curiosity to see it, as formerly it was an important city. I must say that a more tenable position I never beheld. But I tire ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... to still the dull, constant throbbing that brought to his mental agony the added torment of physical pain. For these three days now he had fought with mind and body and soul against the one conclusion that was tenable—the conclusion which to-night, robbing him of every hope in life, bringing a grief and anguish greater than he could bear, cold logic was finally forcing him to accept. She would have known the torment of anxiety in which he lived, and if her plans had only been delayed or checked, if it had ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... answer," said Charles, who saw by Bateman's manner how the truth lay. "Does any one Bishop hold it? did any one Bishop ever hold it? has it ever been formally admitted as tenable by any one Bishop? is it a view got up to meet existing difficulties, or has ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... party," says Professor Nanson of Melbourne, "is to find the popular mind by the issue of a number of contests between the 'ins' and the 'outs.' But owing to the multiplicity of political issues, this theory is now no more tenable than is the theory that every question can be answered by a plain 'yes' or 'no.' ... We require a system capable of finding the mind of the people on more than one issue. With such a system all the difficulties caused at present by the existence of three parties ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... provocation, she was of the same mind. She had no words to express her scorn for a man who is false to his obligations, nor for the petty frauds and deceits which had made the position of those two tenable. As for Dan, he was beneath contempt; but—"I shall succeed!" The words sprang to her lips triumphantly. "Let him wallow with his own kind in congenial mire as much as he likes. No wonder he suspects me! But ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Burns a niche among Scotland's saints, others would give him rank as one of her religious teachers. This claim, if not so absurd as the other, is hardly more tenable. The religion described by Burns in The Cotter's Saturday Night is, it should be remembered, his father's faith, not his own. The fundamental truths of natural religion, faith in God and in immortality, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... of the degree in which she might expect to cultivate such discernment in the general mind of polite travelers; nor have I less admired her aptitude in collation of essentially illustrative facts, so as to bring the history of a very widely contemplative range of art into tenable compass and very graceful and serviceable form. Her reading, indeed, has been, with respect to many very interesting periods of religious workmanship, much more extensive than my own; and when I consented to edit the volume ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... convict me of larceny, and send me to the penitentiary. But, having a vast deal more sense than the District Attorney, he saw that the idea that I had carried off these negroes to sell them again for my own profit was not tenable. It was plain enough that my intention was to help them to escape. The judge therefore, who did not lack ingenuity, went to work to twist the law so as, if possible, to bring my case within it. Even he did not venture to say that merely to assist slaves to escape ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... the preceding analysis serves to prove that Q. P. one, as the second move of Black, is not a tenable defence; since, play as he can afterwards, if the best moves are adopted by the first player, he will always have a very insecure or a very ...
— The Blue Book of Chess - Teaching the Rudiments of the Game, and Giving an Analysis - of All the Recognized Openings • Howard Staunton and "Modern Authorities"
... they were likely to be aided by the masters through facilities for cash earnings, price concessions and honest accounting of instalments, notwithstanding the lack of legal requirements in the premises. Loria's explanation of the "central phenomenon" is therefore hardly tenable. ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... conditions, but indirectly, by denying him the necessary books and leisure, keeps his mind ignorant of larger thoughts; and that hence springs this overwhelming concern about diet, and hence the bald view of existence professed by Mackay. Had this been an English peasant the conclusion would be tenable. But Mackay had most of the elements of a liberal education. He had skirted metaphysical and mathematical studies. He had a thoughtful hold of what he knew, which would be exceptional among bankers. He had been brought up in the midst of hot-house piety, and told, with incongruous pride, the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tin basin amongst six to wash in. It was funnier still when they attempted to lie down on their mattresses. A bag stuffed with hay is so round that it is very difficult to keep upon it without rolling off, and there was much pommelling and flattening before the beds were at all tenable. At last everyone was settled, the lights were out, and the campers, rolled in their blankets, tried to compose themselves ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... timely withdrawal from the royal presence. But now that he was driven to answer, he answered well. When any case came before him, he said he would act as it became a judge to act. Coke was at once dismissed from the Council, and a provision which made the judicial office tenable at the king's pleasure, but which had long fallen into disuse, was revived to humble the common law in the person of its chief officer. In November 1616, on the continuance of his resistance, he was deprived of his ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... cease entirely to be a subject for amusement. The physical chemists of the present day are very ready to admit that the old teaching of the absolute independence of something over seventy elements is no longer tenable, except as a working hypothesis. The doctrine of "matter and form," taught for so many centuries by the scholastic philosophers, which proclaimed that all matter is composed of two principles, an underlying material substratum, and a dynamic or informing principle, has now more acknowledged verisimilitude, ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... ditch that surrounded the earth-work. The cannonading during the day was so furious that the fort was often almost reduced to ruins, but in the night the destruction was repaired. A fleet of gunboats joined the land batteries in bombarding the fort, and at last succeeded in making it no longer tenable. Guns had been dismounted, the bomb-proof had been destroyed, and the sides of the earth-work were full of breaches where the huge ten-inch ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... example, where the limestone-forming seas produced an abundance of corals, crinoidea, and shell-fish. Admitting for a moment a re-origination of species after a cataclysm, as has been surmised by some geologists, though the hypothesis is always becoming less and less tenable, it harmonizes with nothing so well as the idea of a creation by law. The more solitary commencements of species, which would have been the most inconceivably paltry exercise for an immediately creative power, are sufficiently worthy of one ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... family found a safe asylum when the manor house on the Croton was no longer tenable. In March, 1777, General McDougal posted his advance guard here when the British took possession of Peekskill. Eighty of his men, under Lieutenant-Colonel Willet, receiving permission to attack some two hundred of the British that had taken possession of a ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... may note that there is a queer fallacy to the effect that materialistic fatalism is in some way favourable to mercy, to the abolition of cruel punishments or punishments of any kind. This is startlingly the reverse of the truth. It is quite tenable that the doctrine of necessity makes no difference at all; that it leaves the flogger flogging and the kind friend exhorting as before. But obviously if it stops either of them it stops the kind exhortation. That the sins are inevitable does not prevent punishment; if it prevents ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... of whom we have already expressed the only tenable opinion. The task he set himself was to record the contemporary events of his native town—the stronghold of the blood-dripping Baglioni. He enlivened it by every scrap of scandalous gossip that reached him, however alien to his avowed task. The authenticity ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... cargoes were unloaded. For some centuries she enjoyed this privilege, and then in 1618 Rotterdam began to resent it so acutely as to take to arms, and the financial prosperity of the town, which would be tenable only by the maintenance of a fleet, steadily crumbled. To-day she is contented enough, but the cellars of Wyn Straat, once stored with the juices of Rhenish vineyards, are empty. The Staple ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... the east of the Tatra range—and the passes through the Carpathians at this point were few and well known. By process of elimination, Renwick had at last assured himself that his first theory was tenable, for Selim had confirmed it. A hundred conjectures flashed into the Englishman's mind as he trudged onward, to be one by one dismissed and relegated to the limbo of uncertainty. But assuming that Selim had told the truth, Renwick had found the trail, and would follow ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... awful burden. It seems to be forgetful of the fact that these millions have been taken from the public tax funds for education, and that the law of political economy which recognizes the land owner as the one who really pays the taxes is not tenable. It would be just as reasonable for the relatively few land owners of Manhattan to complain that they had to stand the financial burden of the education of the thousands and thousands of children whose parents pay rent for tenements and flats. Let the millions of producing and consuming ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... men as the preliminary to the resumption of the offensive. The attack commenced on the following morning, and promised to prove of an arduous nature; but by a skillful flank movement Major Gordon carried two stockades in person, and rendered the whole place no longer tenable. The rebels evacuated their position and retreated, closely pursued by the imperialists. The villagers, who had suffered from their exactions, rose upon them, and very few rebels escaped. The pursuit was continued ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... those who believe that, at present, there is no evidence whatever for saying, that mankind sprang originally from any more than a single pair; I must say, that I cannot see any good ground whatever, or even any tenable sort of evidence, for believing that there is more than one species of Man. Nevertheless, as you know, just as there are numbers of varieties in animals, so there are remarkable varieties of men. I speak not ...
— The Conditions Of Existence As Affecting The Perpetuation Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley
... general recognition. By such broad traits we must still be guided in our judgment to-day. All the characteristic qualities of Crispinus, which we shall explain farther on, prove that Gifford's idea about Crispinus being John Marston is not tenable. ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... the officers' quarters were being prepared, and the barracks as well; while plans were made to strengthen the fort, dig ditch, form glacis, and generally make the place tenable against a possible enemy. ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... partiality and prejudice, we will at once state that we believe it possible for a man to be singular in his manner and quaint in his mode of phrasing, and yet to utter an opinion in some one direction which, if neither novel nor interesting, nor even tenable, shall yet have the one redeeming merit of representing a conceivable point of view. But when a man begins by stating that he belongs to the Democrats and then claims as his own the views of his political opponents, winding up by demanding the sympathy and support of ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... said the barrister. "I must, at any price, get out of this position; it is no longer tenable. You talk about your pamphlet; I am not in a fit condition to finish it. You, who have been a man of gallantry, you must know the dominion that women, fatal creatures! exercise over our ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... restore Clayton to a more normal state of mind during the next few days. One of them undoubtedly was the Valentine situation. Beside Audrey's predicament and Chris's wretched endeavor to get away and yet prove himself a man, his own position seemed, if not comfortable, at least tenable. He would have described it, had he been a man to put such a thing into words, as that "he and Natalie didn't ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... exercise; and it is only in common with other talents that it produces effects which may be fully enjoyed in solitude. The idea which the raconteur has either failed to entertain clearly, or has sacrificed in its expression to his national love of point, is doubtless the very tenable one that the higher order of music is the most thoroughly estimated when we are exclusively alone. The proposition in this form will be admitted at once by those who love the lyre for its own sake and for its spiritual uses. But there is one pleasure still within the ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... to England from such a destruction of the balance of power; her position as mediator was only tenable so long as neither Francis nor Charles had the complete mastery. War on the Emperor was, no doubt, out of the question, but that was no reason for war on France. Prudence counselled England to make herself strong, to develop ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... admitted. 'You are an ingenious theorist, but I happen to know that Prince Eugen always has his wine opened in his own presence. No doubt it would be opened by Hans. Therefore the wine theory is not tenable, my friend.' ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... the only one of the revolutionary committee who had remained with the mob, not with any purpose to restore or preserve order, but because he found the company and the occasion entirely congenial. He had had no opportunity, at least no tenable excuse, to kill or maim a negro since the termination of his contract with the state for convicts, and this occasion had awakened a dormant appetite for these diversions. We are all puppets in the hands of Fate, and seldom see the strings that move us. McBane had lived ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... I conceded grudgingly, 'your second, of course, are tenable. Perhaps you have an idea where ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... ruin being clearly, either in action or in prospect, universal. There must be a new world, if there is to be any world at all! That human things in our Europe can ever return to the old sorry routine, and proceed with any steadiness or continuance there; this small hope is not now a tenable one. These days of universal death must be days of universal new-birth, if the ruin is not to be total and final! It is a Time to make the dullest man consider; and ask himself, Whence he came? Whither he is bound?—A ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... translated from Oxford. He was a strong supporter of King James II., but afterwards took the oath of allegiance to William and Mary. He was noted for his charity and munificence, and left large sums to the poor, and in scholarships tenable by ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... marsh became more tenable. The smallest song birds from the woods flitted along the ditches; there were days, too, when the desolate prairie became ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... the vocal cords, and that the entire vocal tract situated above the vocal cords is concerned merely with augmenting the tone and determining its timbre or quality. Let us examine this theory and ascertain how tenable it is. ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... the notion tenable of any special improbability applying to this particular pretension. For centuries has England enjoyed—1st, civil liberty; 2d, the Protestant faith. Now in those two advantages are laid the grounds, the very necessities, a priori, of a superior morality. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... superficial resemblance into thinking two unrelated key-syllables identical. Let us consider two sets of words. The first, which is related to the tain group (see below), has a key-syllable that means holding: tenant, tenement, tenure, tenet, tenor, tenable, tenacious, contents, contentment, lieutenant, maintenance, sustenance, countenance, appurtenance, detention, retentive, pertinacity, pertinent, continent, abstinence, continuous, retinue. The second has a key-syllable that means stretching: tend, tender, tendon, tendril, tendency, extend, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... rather than believed, the immortality of the soul; yet we have no evidence of their ever having, by the finest process of ratiocination, so thoroughly convinced themselves as to introduce it generally as a tenable thesis on the portico. A beautiful thread of implicit belief and fervent hope, of after life, assimilating to the hunting-ground of our own American Indians, and though sensuous still, a step far in advance of the black void ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... warnings by the omen birds, and receives and answers the prayers carried to him by the souls of the fowls and pigs. It might be thought that this conception of a beneficent Supreme Being has been borrowed directly or indirectly from the Malays. But we do not think that this view is tenable in face of the fact that, while the conception is a living belief among the Madangs, a Kenyah tribe that inhabits a district in the remotest interior and has had no intercourse with Malays, the Ibans, who have had far more intercourse ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... figure; but generally they seemed to think that he did not want a desirable animal. In most cases, the pony-horse pronounced sentence upon himself by some gross and ridiculous blemish; but sometimes my friend failed to hit upon any tenable excuse for refusing him. In such an event, he would say, with an air of easy and candid comradery, "Well, now, what's the matter with him?" And then the dealer, passing his hand down one of the pony-horse's fore-legs, would respond, with an upward glance of searching inquiry at my friend, ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... prime nobility, elected by the students in convocation; and he holds the office for life. He is the chief magistrate in the government of the University. The Chancellor of Cambridge is also elected from among the prime nobility. The office is biennial, or tenable for such a length of time beyond two years as the tacit consent of the University may choose to ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... out of his reading, a plausible system which on demand he could set forth with fluency. The tone of current apologetics taught him that, by men even of cultivated intellect, such a position as he was now sketching was deemed tenable; yet to himself it sounded so futile, so nugatory, that he had to harden his forehead as he spoke. Trial more severe to his conscience lay in the perceptible solicitude with which Mr Warricombe weighed these disingenuous arguments. It was a hateful thing to practise such deception ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... Law, translated by Burnouf, and the Sutras which Burnouf translated from the Divyavadana. But what Burnouf considers as the distinguishing mark of a Vaipulya Sutra, viz. the occurrence of Bodhisattvas, as followers of the Buddha Sakyamuni, would no longer seem to be tenable ("Les presence des Bodhisattuvas ou leur absence interesse done le fonds meme des livres ou on la remarque, et il est bien evident que ce seul point trace une ligno de demarcation profonde entre les Sutras ordinaires et les Sutras developpes." Burnouf. Introduction, p. 112.), ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... mortification. It is said this distinction in character is owing to the different estimation of principles and morals in the two nations. The solidity and purity of our ethics and religious creeds may have given a superior tone to our moral feeling; but has that man a tenable ground to value himself on either, whose respect to sacred things grows out of a respect to himself: on the other hand, is not humility the very foundation of the real Christian? For our part, we should be glad to see this national reserve lessened, if not done entirely away; we ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... Paul Jones had riches and influence in Virginia after the death of his brother, but the claim is not tenable according to an exhaustive review of his book in the Virginia Historical Magazine. In the face of the present exhibit, and in the view of the fact that Jones himself spoke of living for two years in Virginia on fifty pounds, ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... made use of the noise of their departure to establish himself in a tenable position under the widest crack in the floor. Now he held himself motionless, ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... and it is to be hoped that the office of President of the Board of Works will hereafter be one subjected to severe but not to vexatious scrutiny, and at the same time carefully guarded against political influence, and only rendered tenable with honour by the capacity of the person selected to fill it and of his subordinates. Canada is, as I have written two former volumes to prove, a magnificent country. I doubt very much if Nature has created a finer country on the ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... diseases to particles having a certain life of their own, and which are capable of being transmitted from one living being to another, exactly as the yeast plant is capable of being transmitted from one tumbler of saccharine substance to another. And that is a perfectly tenable hypothesis, one which in the present state of medicine ought to be absolutely exhausted and shown not to be true, until we take to others which have less analogy in their favour. And there are some diseases most assuredly in which it turns out to be perfectly ...
— Yeast • Thomas H. Huxley
... the geologists and volcanists are equally unable to agree in all details concerning this form of the earth's ailment. After all theories relating to the cause of volcanoes have been considered, the one that is most tenable and is sustained by the largest number of scientific men is that which traces volcanic effects back to the old accepted cause of internal fires in the center of the earth. Only in this way can the molten streams of lava emitted ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... certain number of gems.[1194] The origin of the name is uncertain. Gesenius would connect it at once with the Egyptian Neith (Nit), and with the Syrian Anaitis or Tanaitis;[1195] but the double identification is scarcely tenable, since Anaitis was, in Egypt, not Neith, but Anta.[1196] The subject is very obscure, and requires ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... life and having its own laws of growth and development, the aggregation being dominated and kept working towards a definite end only by a certain harmony among these units, or by the superaddition of a controlling apparatus, such as a nervous system, this conception ceased to be tenable. The cell lives for its own sake, as well as for the sake of the whole organism; and the cells, which float in the blood, live at its expense, and profoundly modify it, are almost as much independent organisms as the Torulae ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... so much of a sense of decency regarding the ancient traditions as to exempt the liberty of scientific teaching from the indignity of that preventive censure which in those days rendered repressive legislation superfluous. In their search for some tenable and tangible criterion of the scientific character of any publication, the men of that time, it is true, hit upon a somewhat absurd one in making the test a test of bulk—books of more than twenty forms were exempt from censure. But ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... He states, that the first of his ancestors, who came to this country, was Rudra Sen, the son of Chandra Sen, Raja of Chitaur, descended of Ratna Sen, first Chauhan chief of that city; but I think that this account is not tenable, and Samar Bahadur, the brother of Rana Bahadur, gives one totally different, and, in my opinion, more probable. He says, that Ratna Sen, instead of being the first Raja of Chitaur, was the last of these princes; and ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... sufficiently like "the meaning of a lady's dress, &c." Cobbett despised andsoforths, for their lack of meaning; and I find none in this one, unless it be, "of tinsel and of fustian." This gloss therefore I wholly disapprove, judging the position more tenable, to deny, if we consequently must, that either a phrase or a participle, as such, can consistently govern the possessive case. For whatever word or term gives rise to the direct relation of property, and is rightly made to govern the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... spacious; but there was, and still is, a fort which commands the entrance. Whoever held l'Aiguillette was master of every ship in the docks and of every gun in the arsenal. On December 18, at midnight, during a violent storm, the French attacked and carried the fort. Toulon was no longer tenable. Hastily, but imperfectly, the English destroyed the French ships they could not at once take away, leaving the materials for the Egyptian expedition, and as fast as possible evacuated the harbour, under the fire of the captured fort. The fortunes of Bonaparte began with that ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... tenable position seems to be this:—Human beings, in their best and soberest moods, looking before and after, weighing all the consequences of actions, are generally disposed to regard Happiness, to some beings or others, as the proper end of all endeavours. The mother is not ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... adhesion to the normal type, still does not entirely adhere to it or maintain its primary character throughout. The theory that we have in the second Gospel one of the primitive Synoptic documents is not tenable. ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... hypothesis about Mohammed, that he was a scheming impostor, a falsehood incarnate, that his religion is a mere mass of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be no longer tenable to any one. ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... of the body is mechanical, and that thought, as exercised by us, has its correlative in the physics of the brain, I think the position of the 'Materialist' is stated, as far as that position is a tenable one. I think the materialist will be able finally to maintain this position against all attacks; but I do not think, in the present condition of the human mind, that he can pass beyond this position. I do not ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... programme Lieut.-Col. Booker proceeded to carry out his orders. On the other hand, it was nearly 8 o 'clock before Col. Peacocke left Chippawa, which threw the whole programme out of joint by nearly two hours. Various excuses were made for the delay, but some of them were not very tenable. The regulars had had a good night's rest, and the volunteers (who were all on the ground at Chippawa before 4.30 a.m.) were eager and willing to proceed. Why he did not leave Chippawa by at least 6 o'clock (in the cool hours of the morning) is not sufficiently clear. A pilot ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... myself, 'there is an end to coquetry, it is beaten on all sides; it is gone, never to return. She has seen that the affair is a little too deep for that, and the field not tenable. She will erect barriers in order to defend herself and will no longer attack.' Thus we pass from the period of amiable smiles, sweet glances, and half-avowals to that of severity and prudery, while waiting for the remorse and despair of the denouement. I ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Rocks had hitherto been considered tenable only by frigates during the winter; on which service three or four were annually employed; but which, like the Channel fleet, occasionally took refuge in Torbay. It had been, however, resolved upon by Earl St. Vincent to form an advanced squadron of six ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... as were the opinions of those who had succeeded in wrenching away a part of the old Empire under a plea of being oppressed. They claimed only the natural and sacred right of acting upon their honest convictions; and surely no one will pretend to say that their position was not as just and tenable, or that it was less honourable than that of those who had rebelled. I am not going to say that there was no cause of complaint on the part of those who threw down the gage of war. The truth about that matter has been conceded long ago. ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... and shameful scene to be witnessed in the House of Commons at such a moment. It would have been so even if the contention of the Nationalists had been reasonably tenable. But it was not. They maintained that only an Irish Parliament had the right to enforce conscription in Ireland. But at the beginning of the war they had accepted the proviso that it should run its course before Home Rule came into operation. And even ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... store of honey, things of a surety would have gone badly with it. The assaulted one, feeling herself bled to death by that ravenous kiss, would have protested with much wriggling of body and grinding of mandibles. The position would have ceased to be tenable and the intruder would have perished. But at this hour all danger has disappeared. Enclosed in its silken tent, the larva is seized with the lethargy that precedes the metamorphosis. Its condition is not death, but neither is it life. It is an intermediary condition; it is almost the latent ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... out of nothing by a personal God—is no longer regarded as tenable by intelligent individuals, though miracle and special providence are often included in accounting for the vicissitudes of life, just as the so-called scientist superficially and flippantly uses the word "coincidence," as ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... such a very bad letter, but it was a deplorably unwise one. When had Colonel Bellairs ever indited a wise one! But he made his precarious position even less tenable by ignoring the fact that Lord Lossiemouth's fortunes had altered, by asserting that he had had it in his mind to write to this effect the previous Christmas but had not had time. When Colonel Bellairs concocted that sentence he had felt, not without pride, that it covered the ground of his fifteen ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... reseat herself; and in pale attention she listened for the reply of the affrighted Euphemia, who, half assured that her whim of creating a mutual passion in the breast of Thaddeus was no longer tenable, without either shame or remorse she exclaimed, "Indeed, Mr. Somerset, you are right; I never should have thought of Mr. Constantine if he had not teased me every time he came with his ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... writing in his magazine, at the end of November, 1907: "The tradition which many hold that the condition of poverty is ordinarily and as a matter of course to be explained by personal faults of the poor themselves is no longer tenable. Strong drink and vice are abnormal, unnatural and essentially unattractive ways of spending surplus income." Dr. Devine very frankly and bravely admits that poverty is an unnecessary evil, "a shocking, ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... on that country that "in some places all powers both executive and judicial were delegated for a fixed period to natives by the sovereign. This institution was styled Thalavettiparothiam or authority obtained by decapitation. . . . It was an office tenable for five years during which its bearer was invested with supreme despotic powers within his jurisdiction. On the expiry of the five years the man's head was cut off and thrown up in the air amongst a large concourse of villagers, each of whom vied with the other in trying to catch it in its course ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... rest its flank on a wood, a village, or other cover for an enemy, till it has been occupied by our own troops. If compelled to do so, it should send out patrols to reconnoitre and observe. Its position is no longer tenable from the moment the enemy appears within ...
— A Treatise on the Tactical Use of the Three Arms: Infantry, Artillery, and Cavalry • Francis J. Lippitt
... failed to breed with certain males, with whom it was particularly desired to match them. A change in the constitution of the female may sometimes have occurred before she was put to the second male; but in other cases this explanation is hardly tenable, for a female, known not to be barren, has been unsuccessfully paired seven or eight times with the same male likewise known to be perfectly fertile. With cart-mares, which sometimes will not breed with stallions of pure blood, but subsequently ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... take the trouble, and have the faith, to explore and test God, to try experiments upon God, to know what he can do and what he will do. It is only in Jesus that the Love of God (in the New Testament sense), is tenable at all. It is evanescent apart from Jesus; it rests on the assurance of his words, his work, his personality. A vague diffused "love of God" for everything in general and nothing in particular, we saw to be a quite different thing from the personal attachment, with which, according ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... origin of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill has been a much discussed subject among historians in recent years. The older view that Douglas was simply playing into the hands of the "slavepower" by sacrificing Kansas, is no longer tenable. This point has been elaborated by Allen Johnson in his study of Douglas ("Stephen A. Douglas: a Study in American Politics"). In his "Repeal of the Missouri Compromise", P.O. Ray contends that the legislation of 1854 originated in ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... benefits enjoyed in this regard by the Jewish race to the soberness of their lives. This position is, however, not altogether tenable, if by that we mean abstemiousness; they are extremely temperate, but not abstemious. Tissot, Cornaro, Lessius, Hufeland, Humphry, Sir Henry Thompson, as well as the older Greek and Roman authorities, all are agreed that an abstemious life is the one that is most conducive to ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... of Congreve was not tenable; whatever glosses he might use for the defence or palliation of single passages, the general tenour and tendency of his plays must always be condemned. It is acknowledged, with universal conviction, that the perusal ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... imposter. This plea was given up when a more plausible one was thought to be found; but I cannot compliment your Excellency upon this alteration in your position, for the first, although false, is the more tenable ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... situation even the best skill of Washington was likely only to qualify defeat. He was advised to destroy New York and retire to positions more tenable. But even if he had so desired, Congress, his master, would not permit him to burn the city, and he had to make plans to defend it. Brooklyn Heights so commanded New York that enemy cannon planted there would make the city ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... both for her desertion of his business and her criminal folly in abandoning it so as to help mend the shattered bodies of fools and knaves who, by joining the forces of militarism, had betrayed the Sacred Cause of the International Solidarity of Labour. His first ground for complaint was scarcely tenable; with his dwindling business the post of clerk had dwindled into a sinecure. To sit all day at the receipt of imaginary custom is not a part fitted for a sane and healthy young human being. Still, from Gedge's point of view her defection ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... from him of the Spirit which he has despised. God will not take shelter behind such a jugglery of logic or metaphysics. He is neither schoolman nor theologian, but our Father in heaven. He knows that that in him would be the same unforgivingness for which he refuses to forgive man. The only tenable ground for supporting such a doctrine is, that God cannot do more; that Satan has overcome; and that Jesus, amongst his own brothers and sisters in the image of God, has been less strong than the adversary, ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... natural that the tie of vassalage should be imposed on every important official; and natural also to regard his office as a benefice, tenable for life or during good behaviour. At an early date we find cases of conquered princes—a Duke of Aquitaine, a Duke of Bavaria, a King of Denmark—who take the vassal's oath and agree to hold their former dominions as a beneficium. So again a member of the royal house does homage and ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... of the first of living critics has declared of Paradise Lost that it is a poem in which every artifice of invention, is consciously employed, not a single fact being, for an instant, conceived as tenable by any living faith. (Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies, p. 138). On the contrary, we shall not rightly apprehend either the poetry or the character of the poet until we feel that throughout Paradise Lost, as in Paradise Regained and ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... sacred ash tree in the Scandinavian Mysteries. Dr. Oliver propounds the theory that it is the analogue of the theological ladder in the Masonic Mysteries. But it is doubtful whether this theory is tenable. ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... recounted the particulars of his visit to Ballingarry, and its results. He agreed in the propriety of going a second time to meet Mr. O'Brien, and urging upon him the necessity of some decisive course. The startling events of the two preceding days too clearly proved that his position was not tenable, and that whatever might be resolved on, it was indispensable to remove from Ballingarry. It was then night, and we were all sorely taxed by long riding and want of rest. Not one of us was able to mount, so we placed hay in ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... they make a living if the flag never comes down? Are they always on their way to lunch, even late at night? Are they always out of petrol? I can understand and admire the independence that follows upon overwork; but when was their overwork done? The only tenable theory that I have evolved is that Lord NORTHCLIFFE (whose concurrent rise to absolutism is another phenomenon of my absence) has engaged them all to patrol the streets ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... much longer. Captain Scott continued to issue his commands with coolness and decision, and they were promptly obeyed by both officers and men. About four o'clock in the morning, the quarter-deck being no longer tenable, all the crew were obliged to betake themselves to the main and mizen chains. They had already suffered severely from the cold, but they had now to endure it in greater intensity. In their exposed situation the waves frequently washed entirely over them, and their limbs were so benumbed with ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... modern thinkers, as they have followed that of St. John and the Greek Fathers, that God is as truly conceived of as being within us, as external to us. His Throne is in the heart of man, as truly as it is at the centre of the universe. No view of God is tenable at the present day which regards Him as outside His own creation. His Personality is not exclusive, but inclusive of all things and all persons, while yet it transcends them. And as He includes us within Himself, as in God "we ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... the most varied, the most erroneous opinions have been expressed with regard to the famous individual commonly known as Bluebeard. None, perhaps, was less tenable than that which made of this gentleman a personification of the Sun. For this is what a certain school of comparative mythology set itself to do, some forty years ago. It informed the world that the seven wives ...
— The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard - 1920 • Anatole France
... hypothesis seemed the more tenable, when, after a thorough search, we found no pocketbook and less than a dollar ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of Selfishness; but more recently in the Greatest Happiness principle.' But Mr. Mill, to whom Mr. Darwin refers, has expressly shown that the Greatest Happiness principle is a STANDARD, and not a FOUNDATION, and that its validity as a standard of right and wrong action is just as tenable by one who believes the moral sense to be innate, as by one who holds that it is acquired. He says distinctly that the social feelings of mankind form 'the natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian morality.' So far from holding the Greatest ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Comte de Chemant, and her grandmother was a Montmorency. M. le Prince de Tingry, in the presence of the Queen, used to call her cousin. The ancient household of the Kings of France had prerogatives acknowledged in the state. Many of the offices were tenable only by those of noble blood, and were sold at from 40,000 to 300,000 franca. A collection of edicts of the Kings in favour of the prerogatives and right of precedence of the persons holding office in the royal household is ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... the left, whither he had ridden to see how affairs were looking, he was surprised, raising his eyes to the Calvary, to see it was unoccupied; there was not a zouave to be seen there, they had abandoned the plateau that was no longer tenable by reason of the terrific fire from the batteries at Fleigneux. With a despairing presentiment of impending disaster he was spurring as fast as he could to the right, when he encountered Dumont's division, flying in disorder, broken and tangled in inextricable ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... northern side is inaccessible: a boat cannot find a nook or cove into which it may slip for landing or shelter. But there is one harbor upon the southern side, and the Buccaneers took possession of this, and gradually fortified it to make a place tenable against the anticipated assaults of the Spaniards. The soil was thin, but it nourished great trees which seemed to grow from the rocks; water was scarce; the hogs were numerous, smaller and more delicate than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... to say, my lud," returned Mr. Balais, after a hurried conversation with the little attorney, "that my client is not in a position to dispute the evidence just adduced. He prefers to throw himself upon the mercy of the court, on the ground—a very tenable one, I think—of his youth and," he was going to add "inexperience," but, under the circumstances, he thought it better not—"of his extreme youth, my lud; my unhappy client is barely ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... what follows shows the vanity that obsesses young authors. It did not even present itself to me as a tenable theory that the book might have been left behind on purpose, as being of no further use to the owner. It only occurred to me that, if I did not act swiftly, the poor girl would suffer a loss beside which the loss of a purse ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... themselves to find the sepulchre of Christ. But being in a civilization which does believe in this dogma of fact for facts' sake, we do not see the full frenzy of those who kill themselves to find the North Pole. I am not speaking of a tenable ultimate utility which is true both of the Crusades and the polar explorations. I mean merely that we do see the superficial and aesthetic singularity, the startling quality, about the idea of men crossing a continent with armies to conquer the place where a man died. ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... of the transformation from sea to plain is not fully understood. The most tenable theory yet advanced is that the bedrock is an alkaline deposit, left by the waters in a gradually widening and deepening margin. On this the prairie wind sifted its accumulation of dust, and the rain washed down its quota from the bank above. In the ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... deluging the little pier broke with a heavy, thunderous noise, and sent a tremendous shower of broken water over the canvas of the rough tent, nearly driving it flat, and proving that the position where Mr Dallas lay would not be tenable ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... surprise and incredulity were genuine. He was drinking less,—much less; and it was said that he had severed certain ties that need not again be definitely mentioned. The theory of religious regeneration not being tenable, it was naturally supposed that he had fallen in love; the identity of the unknown lady becoming a fruitful subject of speculation among the feminine portion of society. The announcement of the marriage of Hambleton Durrett would be news of the first magnitude, to be ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... head slowly. "Mr. Sutherland is not the man to make any misstatements or allow himself to be misinformed. All I have to say is, if those attorneys are retained in the case, it certainly looks as though our opponent must have some tenable ground in support of his claim. I am inclined to think they will make us a hard fight, but I am confident that we will win in the end. The main point is this: we must be prepared to meet them on whatever ground they may take, and, after hearing their ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... been all very well without the icy cold that assailed my legs, and I saw nothing in reach to cover me. I said to myself, "Captain, the position is not tenable," when at length I perceived on the couch—One sometimes is childishly ashamed, but I really dared not, and I waited for a long minute struggling between a sense of the ridiculous and the cold which ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... by which he both intimidated that people, and produced an irreparable breach between them and the English.[*] That prince immediately attacked Reole, where the earl of Richmond himself commanded; and as the place seemed not tenable, the English general drew his troops to the water side, with an intention of embarking with the greater part of the army. The enraged Gascons fell upon his rear, and at the same time opened their gates to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... me not strict enough in my morals, but that position is hardly tenable. There are many kinds of lying which I do not approve. I do not like an injurious lie, except when it injures somebody else; and I do not like the lie of bravado, nor the lie of virtuous ecstasy; the latter was affected by Bryant, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... extreme, and the unsuspecting security of the Americans was still great; but Gen. Duportail, a French officer of engineers, having arrived in town before the communication was closed with the country, declared, that the works of the besieged were not tenable, and might have been stormed ten days before. This disclosed his true situation, and induced Gen. Lincoln to listen to a capitulation, which was proposed to him on the 8th of May. From that until the 10th, the negociation ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... objections are still less tenable. If a true sense of family ties exists, the owner of property will not fail to make a will, which is an extremely simple process under the present law. If such ties are weak, they are assuredly not strengthened by the ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... reported to have remonstrated; but in view of the recent occurrence there could be no reply to the foreign retort, "You must secure our people." The custom-house, within the concession, was garrisoned, making a fortification very tenable against any enemy likely to be brought against it; while round it was thrown up a light earth-work, to which the seamen and marines dispersed in the concession could retire in case of need. But behind all, invulnerable, stood the ships, deterred from aggression ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... from the wing of the palace situated farthest to the north, announcing that the walls had fallen, and that the fire was spreading with frightful rapidity; and seeing at last that his position was no longer tenable, the Emperor admitted that it was time to leave, and repaired to the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the following remarks: A conclusion has premises, facts or doctrines from proof or authority, and mode of inference. There may be invention or {34} falsehood of premise, with good logic; and there may be tenable premise, followed by bad logic; and there may be both false premise and bad logic. The Roman system has such a powerful manufactory of premises, that bad logic is little wanted; there is comparatively little of it. The doctrine-forge of the Roman Church is one glorious compound ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... trustees for establishing the colony of Georgia, by a particular scheme of good management, painfully conducted by the gentleman engaged here in that charitable enterprise, has put that small part of the colony, which he has not yet been able to establish, in a tenable condition, against the Spaniards of Florida which lie to the southward; yet the back exposition of those colonies to the vast number of French and Indians which border on the westward, must, in case of a war, ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... portion of it, went off to some other place, concealed three gems out of the thirty-nine, with such skill that nobody can find them, and then returned with the other thirty-six into the room in which he exposed himself to the greatest danger of being discovered. I ask you now, is such a theory tenable?" ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... tenable," said Mr. Stone. "But it is restful. The wind is everywhere and nowhere, and nothing can be hidden from it. When I have missed that little girl, I have tried, in a sense, to become the wind; but I have ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy |
