"Insuperable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mutual love, must be a part of the scene that he encounters at first. He has escaped from the heartlessness of courts, to encounter the vulgarity of the mob; he has secured solitude, but it is a lonely, a deserted solitude. Amid the abundance of nature, he cannot, from petty, but insuperable obstacles, procure, for a long time, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... of carrying out these changes, as there are in introducing all new systems. You have to meet the doubts and suspicions of those who are unacquainted with them, the opposition of interested parties, and the general feeling which influences all men to let well enough alone. But that there are no insuperable obstacles in the way is evident from the fact that this system has already been partially applied on a railway doing a very large business, the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore, under the able superintendence of S. M. Felton, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... he had no great opinion of Hubert. He thought he detected in him a carelessness and want of principle that would make him hesitate to trust his daughter to him, even if the insuperable barrier of religion were surmounted. Mr. Norris liked a man to be consistent and zealous for his creed, even if that creed were dark and superstitious—and this zeal seemed to him lamentably lacking in Hubert. More than ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... simple, wholesome, untroubled nature appealed to her—and yet this very ingenuousness, this ready confidence, made her own life and daily habit seem the more forbidding. She understood now the insuperable barrier which had been raised between herself and the careless ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... of growth; from occasional reversions to old and long-lost characters; from the crossing of breeds, when more than one had been formed; but, above all, from unconscious selection carried on during many generations, there is no insuperable difficulty, to the best of my judgment, in believing that all the breeds have descended from some one parent-source. Can any single species be named from which we may reasonably suppose that all are descended? The Gallus bankiva apparently ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... majority. A lovely little family trio consisting of a boy and two tiny girls was much admired and the mother openly envied. Several of the mothers present said they often wished that Joan or Tommy had a brother or sister. As few of the children mentioned were over five, the difficulty did not seem insuperable, but opinions were unanimous among the ladies that it was 'too late to start the nursery again'; 'it was no good unless the two could grow up together, five years was too great a gap,' and so on. ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... in the biography of Dryden. It has been suggested that the writer was Southerne, but it is impossible to make things tally. As Dryden certainly had paid his court to the great by 1670, if not by 1665, there is the almost insuperable difficulty of supposing that the writer could have associated with Dryden in parties of pleasure seventy-five years before date—a difficulty all the more difficult in that he only claims to be in ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... The social gulf that set their lives apart was all too wide to be spanned but by a miracle of love requited; and he had too much humility and naivete of soul to presume that such a thing could ever come to pass. And even if it should, there remained the insuperable barrier of her fortune, in the face of which the pretensions of a penniless adventurer could ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... is that by no means can we measure the humidity, or indeed the precipitation or evaporation. I have just been discussing with Simpson the insuperable difficulties that stand in the way of experiment in this direction, since cold air can only hold the smallest quantities of moisture, and saturation covers an extremely small range ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... This may, however, happen, and the fish may be occasionally injured where there is much fall lost, and a strong stream running from a wheel constituted in the old way with open float boards. But the objections to such a plan on the part of the manufacturers will be insuperable, in fact, the accumulation of sticks and leaves in the autumn, and ice in the winter, will be so great at the grating in the tail-goit, that the wheels will be thrown into back water and the works stopped, and all this loss ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... were it only because many of the enemy have visibly lost faith in their own cause. The Coalition, in which professed Liberals were prepared to sacrifice something of Free Trade to colleagues who were pledged in the past to destroy it, has quailed before the insuperable practical difficulties which arise the moment the scheme of destruction is sought to ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... is the curse of every proud spirit, and turns even the sweets of life to ashes in the mouth, had him in bitter bondage. He lashed himself with it, reminding himself constantly of his origin and his environment, and magnifying these into insuperable barriers which would for ever stand blankly in his way. Although common-sense told him that there was no other course open to Gladys than to accept the kindness offered her by the lawyer and his wife, and though in his inmost better ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... eggs, and all kinds of fruit to the consumers of Europe, and especially of England and its metropolis. I did not see it, any more than the people to whom I talked. I still thought that for meat and all perishable commodities the distance was an insuperable obstacle, and that, except for live stock from America, or canned meat from Australia, the United Kingdom would continue self-supporting ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... completely empiric and egotistical manner in which nations have understood and applied the right of sovereign independence in their outward dealings, has, up to the present time, been the almost insuperable obstacle to the universal establishment of a rule of justice which governs, in a permanent and uniform manner, the concourse of interests; each state following one of its own modeling, in accordance with the power it holds and the ambitions it is ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... integrity of China depends upon it; and the present war is not foreign to it. Perhaps this book, in spite of many shortcomings, will not fail to convince some thoughtful persons that the constitution of Far-Eastern society presents insuperable obstacles to the propaganda of Western religion, as hitherto conducted; that these obstacles now demand, more than at any previous epoch, the most careful and humane consideration; and that the further needless maintenance ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... lead them. As one of the owners of the ships hired by government, his attention was naturally rather directed to the destruction than to the capture of the large Turkish men-of-war; and it is probable that he considered the total want of discipline among the Hydriotes as presenting insuperable difficulties to the execution of the plan, and as likely to render the Turkish frigate, even if captured, utterly useless to the Greeks, who would doubtless have allowed her to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... that Wakefield had a population of about fifteen thousand. He could not know how venerable an estimate this was, for Wakefield was still fifteen thousand—now and forever, fifteen thousand and insuperable. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... many, many difficulties to undergo; I fear they will be insuperable," observed Mrs Northcote. She said this not to deter me, but because she was considering how I could possibly perform the work. "You will, in the first place, require large funds to carry out the search efficiently. The first difficulty will be to provide them; for, though ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... probably there would not have been the same insuperable difficulty, a sovereign lady holding high military office as a matter of course; but we have thrown aside some noble traditions, and America never ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... imagination. The objection that the poem has lost much of its value because we are compelled to imagine where our elders believed is of little weight in a case like this, where our lack of belief is not brought home to us until insuperable difficulties are placed in the way of our imagination. Where Milton was freest, there we follow him most gladly; where he wrote in fetters, as notably in some of the scenes transacted in Heaven, our imagination, not our belief, is ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... absence. On the next morning he received it back with a very few words written across it. "It can't be done," were the few words which Sir Raffle Buffle had written across the note from his private secretary. Here was a difficulty which Johnny had not anticipated, and which seemed to be insuperable. Sir Raffle would not have answered him in that strain if he had not been very ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... that date. A company was formed in 1863 to work the Lundy granite-quarries, and it was intended to use this stone in the building of the Thames Embankment; but the difficulty of shipment from so inaccessible a spot proving insuperable, the enterprise ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... Professor rail as he may, David Hume's theory of causation will suffer no harm, and his contrast of human architecture, which is mechanism, with natural architecture, which is growth, will still form an insuperable obstacle to that "natural theology" which, as Garth Wilkinson says with grim humor, seeks to elicit, or rather "construct," "a scientific abstraction answering to the concrete figure of the Vulcan of the Greeks—that is to ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife"—not wives—"and they shall be one flesh." And again, "They twain shall be one flesh." What God has directly commanded, and what he merely suffers men to do without imposing insuperable restraints upon them, ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... reciting to the nation he had founded the story of its deliverance, repeating the laws established for its welfare, and warning it against the dangers awaiting it in the future. Such a view was attended with many difficulties, not insuperable, however, to the critical knowledge of earlier generations. Its real place in the history of Israel appears to ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... myself on it, seized it as one would seize a thief, as one would seize a wife about to run away; but it pursued its irresistible course, and despite my efforts and despite my anger, I could not even retard its pace. As I was resisting in desperation that insuperable force, I was thrown to the ground in my struggle with it. It then rolled me over, trailed me along the gravel, and the rest of my furniture which followed it, began to march over me, tramping on my legs and injuring them. When I loosed my hold, other articles passed over ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... sensible of the happiness they enjoy in His Majesty's accession to the throne, are obliged, by all the duties of gratitude, to adore that Providence which has so signally interposed in our behalf, by clearing a way to the Protestant succession through such difficulties as seemed insuperable—Swift. I wish he had told us any ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... fashionable people congregate. In point of fact, through the potent influence of their more or less wealthy protector, they possess the open sesame to all places where admittance is not secured by vouchers, and in many instances those apparently insuperable barriers fall before their ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... descending to the north-coast, but it was left optional with me to fall back on Moreton Bay if I should be forced to the eastward. Whether I performed the task thus assigned to me or wavered in the accomplishment of it; whether I fell short of my duty, or yielded only to insuperable difficulties, the world will be enabled to judge. That I found no fine country is to be regretted; however, I was not sent to find a fine country, but to solve a geographical problem. I trust I am not presumptuous in saying that, from a geographical point of view, ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... The difficulty is indeed increased ten thousandfold, when the neglect of parents has suffered even careless habits on this point to be contracted. The difficulties, however, though great, are not insuperable to those who seek the freely-offered grace of God to help them in the conflict. The resistance to temptation, the self-control, will indeed be more difficult when the effort begins later in life; but the victory will be also the more glorious, and the general effects on the ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... enlargement of our ideas. With the theological difficulty science would not care to deal at all, were she not urged to do so by the denunciations of divines; and when, so urged, she touches that difficulty, she is quickly told that the difficulty is insuperable, and not long after that it has no existence, and (on both accounts) that it should have been left alone. But with the difficulty arising from the widening of our ideas respecting space and time, science may claim ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... water will probably prevent its being occupied, except in a very partial manner, for many years; and I fear that the high sand ridges, twenty to forty feet, and in some cases more than sixty feet above the level of the river banks, will form almost insuperable barriers in the way of any one who may attempt to conduct water from the river by means of canals. It appears to me, from the information that I have been able to obtain, that the difficulties with which settlers have here to ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... God's assistance is, they had experienced in abundance of trials; and those such as were more terrible than war, for that is only against men; but these were against famine and thirst, things indeed that are in their own nature insuperable; as also against mountains, and that sea which afforded them no way for escaping; yet had all these difficulties been conquered by God's gracious kindness to them. So he exhorted them to be courageous at this time, and ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... respect to the survey, the mass of workable material was enormous. There was no lack of sulphur, and the speculation promised to be a remunerative one. Eventually, however, it was found that the obstacles were insuperable, and the scheme had to be abandoned. However, the trip had completed the cure commenced by Camoens, and at the end of it everybody said "he looked at least ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... laws of all well-regulated states have taken care to enforce this duty: though providence has done it more effectually than any laws, by implanting in the breast of every parent that natural [Greek: storge], or insuperable degree of affection, which not even the deformity of person or mind, not even the wickedness, ingratitude, and rebellion of children, can ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... Arabs of the "golden age," did the Polish Jews resemble their brethren in faith in the Orient at Saadia's time or in the Spain of Gabirol and Maimonides. Isolation and clannishness were inevitable in view of the character of the Christian environment and the almost insuperable barriers raised between the classes of Polish society. But it was this exclusiveness that gave peculiar stability and completeness to the life of the Jew as an individual and as a member of Jewish society, and it was the same exclusiveness that afforded ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... part of our readers may cast it aside in chagrin and disappointment. "Such an event," may they say, "we were not prepared to expect.—After so many, and such various trials of heart; after innumerable difficulties surmounted; almost invincible objects overcome, and insuperable barriers removed—after attending the hero and heroine of your tale through the diversified scenes of anxiety, suspense, hope, disappointment, expectation, joy, sorrow, anticipated bliss, sudden ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... effect, which the subsequent slavery in the colonies must produce. For by your inhuman treatment of the unfortunate Africans there, you create the same insuperable impediments to a conversion. For how must they detest the very name of Christians, when you Christians are deformed by so many and dreadful vices? How must they detest that system of religion, which appears ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... Cardillac alone who, active in wickedness, sought for his victims and found them throughout the entire city. And it was because he acted alone that he was enabled to carry on his operations with so much security, and from the same cause arose the insuperable difficulty of getting a clue to the murderer. But let me go on with my story; the sequel will explain to you the secrets of the most atrocious but at the same time of the most ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... way had turned out for the best. She dreaded being banished to Hampstead. It had threatened insuperable obstacles in the way of her love and her ambition. She had felt that she was going into exile. But all was now smooth. Her scruples about keeping her promise to Vane vanished. If only her visit to Mr. Rich proved successful, her ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... failed to realize her situation? Or was it that tragedy had put on its comic mask, and laughed at death? The truth is simple. Her faith had triumphed over what seemed to be insuperable obstacles; and she was with Philip, for better or for worse. A miracle had been wrought; and miracles are not meaningless, or idle, or without purpose. It was a feeling perhaps unknown to man, who is merely a reasoning creature, much given to material consideration ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... said, Not so, Lord: Forgive now this people their sin; or if thou wilt not, blot me also out of the book of the living. O admirable charity! O insuperable perfection! The servant speaks freely to his Lord: He beseeches him either to forgive the people, or to destroy ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... children at a sufficiently early age. At the period usually assigned for their entrance, they have not only acquired many evil habits, but their affections have become so thoroughly perverted, as to offer great, and, in some cases, insuperable obstacles to the corrective efforts of their teachers. Each child brings into the school some portion of acquired evil, making, when united, a formidable aggregate, and affording every facility for mutual contamination. ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... monotony. He saw the grey stone walls, the iron doors; the flagging of the "yard" bare of grass or trees—the cell, narrow, bald, cheerless; the prison garb, the prison fare, and round all the grim granite of insuperable barriers, shutting out the world, shutting in the man with outcasts, with the pariah dogs of society, thieves, murderers, men below the beasts, lost to all decency, drugged with opium, utter reprobates. To this, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... entire responsibility of this office to yourself," answered the sculptor. "I do not pretend to be the guide and counsellor whom Donatello needs; for, to mention no other obstacle, I am a man, and between man and man there is always an insuperable gulf. They can never quite grasp each other's hands; and therefore man never derives any intimate help, any heart sustenance, from his brother man, but from woman—his mother, his sister, or his wife. Be Donatello's friend at need, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... vain hope. On closer examination the supposed stile proved to be only part of a fence. The meadow was surrounded by a quickset hedge, so thick as to be an insuperable barrier. ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... said that the Clouds were very wealthy. That Leslie was especially so. That when she was of age she would have a vast inheritance. There had been no sign of great wealth or ostentation in their living but if that were so then there was an insuperable wall between him ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... deciphered. And as, after all, Leonardo's handwriting runs backwards just as all Oriental character runs backwards—that is to say from right to left—the difficulty of reading direct from the writing is not insuperable. This obvious peculiarity in the writing is not, however, by any means the only obstacle in the way of mastering the text. Leonardo made use of an orthography peculiar to himself; he had a fashion of amalgamating ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... the patient; for in some families only one or two individuals shall suffer from it, whilst the rest receive it with impunity. In the spring of the year 1776, I was desired to visit Mrs. H——, of S—— Park, who had repeatedly been attacked with painful colics, and had suffered much from insuperable costiveness; I suspected lead to be the cause of her complaints, but was unable to trace by what means it was taken. She was relieved by the usual methods; but, a few months afterwards, I was desired to see ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... And perhaps nothing will tend to lift the whole subject of paternity in the popular mind to the plane where it belongs, as will this love and knowledge, when it is bred in the child from his early years. Many difficulties in handling this subject that become insuperable might never even exist if the knowledge of fatherhood, if love and respect for it and for the father as the giver of life, were bred into the boy at an early age. Moreover a certain shyness, which often ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... apart. She was the daughter of a prosperous farmer—a rich man, as riches are reckoned in Ireland. He was a clerk in a lawyer's office, and poorly paid. But he might have earned more. She would gladly have given up anything. And the objections of parents in such cases are not insuperable. But between these two there was something more. Denis Ryan was a revolutionary patriot. Mary Drennan's parents were proud of another loyalty. They hated what Denis loved. The two loyalties were strong and irreconcilable, like the loyalties of the South and ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... world is now blessed, the abundance of capital in the money market, the present low rate of interest, and the difficulty of finding investments, are all favorable to the raising of the necessary funds; the immense strides which science has made in overcoming natural difficulties, once deemed insuperable, add to the means of accomplishment, while the growing importance of British Colonies in and about New Zealand, the inevitable impulse that recent events must give to the China trade,[2] and the efforts of all maritime nations to make ...
— A Succinct View of the Importance and Practicability of Forming a Ship Canal across the Isthmus of Panama • H. R. Hill
... live as if the opposite were true. Wealth possessed, and not trusted in, but used aright, may become a help towards eternal life; but wealth as commonly regarded and employed by its possessors, and as looked longingly after by others, is a real, and in many cases an insuperable, obstacle to entering the strait gate. As soon drive a camel, humps and load and all, through 'a needle's eye,' as get a man who trusts in the uncertainty of riches squeezed through that portal. No communities need this lesson more than ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... been said, did not begin with the conviction in which it ended. It began and long continued with the belief that though England was wrong, Rome was not right; that though the Roman argument seemed more and more unanswerable, there were insuperable difficulties of certain fact which made the Roman conclusion incredible; that there was so much good and truth in England, with all its defects and faults, which was unaccountable and unintelligible on ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... end of Gaul the sea interposed a barrier which the Romans found annoying. In the state of seamanship in those ages a head-wind was an insuperable obstacle. As long as the wind blew the wrong way there was nothing to do but wait for the wind to change. High winds made navigation altogether impossible. Between storms and head-winds, on more than half the ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... seal of Pompeius! The instinct of the partisan and politician conquered every infirmity. He broke the wax, untied the thread, and opened. The letters were in cipher, and at first sight illegible. But this did not present any insuperable difficulty. Most classic ciphers were sufficiently simple to be solved without very much trouble. Drusus knew that in all Caesar's correspondence a cipher had been used which consisted merely of substituting ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... which, being formed in pieces, and afterwards put together, might be the means of our deliverance. They greedily grasped at the prospect; but cooler reflection pointed out difficulties innumerable: some of them started objections which they thought insuperable, and these I ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... to engage the Emperor and the kings of Christendom to lay aside all their quarrels, and combine their forces for the recovery once for all of the Holy Land. Difficulties without number, which proved insuperable, prevented the realization of this scheme. Among these was the objection raised by the Teutonic Knights, that while the Hospitalers and Templars had but one object in view—the recovery of Palestine, their order had to maintain its conquests in the North of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... progress of civilisation and thought has impressed this amazing idea on the general mind. It is no matter-of-course conception. The difficulties attending it were long insuperable to the deepest thought as well as to popular belief; and the triumph of the modern and Christian idea of God is the result not merely of the eager forwardness of faith, but of the patient and inquiring waiting of reason. ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... accidents of environment, are not insuperable; they can be neutralised by force of will, by character. ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... Weatherboard, but perhaps even more stupendous. So early in the day the gulf was filled with a thin blue haze, which, although destroying the general effect of the view added to the apparent depth at which the forest was stretched out beneath our feet. These valleys, which so long presented an insuperable barrier to the attempts of the most enterprising of the colonists to reach the interior, are most remarkable. Great arm-like bays, expanding at their upper ends, often branch from the main valleys and penetrate the sandstone platform; on the other hand, the platform often sends promontories into ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... his during the early years of our acquaintance that indicated a departure from the faith in which he had been reared. That his extreme views upon religious subjects, and his manner, exceedingly offensive at times, of expressing them, formed an insuperable barrier to his political advancement, cannot be doubted. But for his unbelief, what political honors might have awaited him cannot certainly be known. But recalling the questions then under discussion, the ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... Prime Minister could not say at once what steps would be taken to arm and equip the Volunteers. Mr. Asquith's reply emphasized the great difficulty which stood in the way. "I do not say," he added, "that it is insuperable." The first part was the voice of Lord Kitchener; the second, the voice of the Government which had sent the ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... to its entire numerical strength at the commencement of the campaign, and, notwithstanding its own heavy losses and the reinforcements received by the enemy, still presented an impregnable front to its opponent, and constituted and insuperable barrier to ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... you a very different story," he said, "and one which at the moment seems to present insuperable difficulties. I can only show you that I care for you by bringing trouble into your life—which ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... information has a charm of its own, and entices the reader into the consideration of subjects apparently abstruse. He is earned on from page to page without any great mental effort, and finds himself rapidly mastering difficulties which he had been accustomed to regard as insuperable. ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... is met by insuperable objections. It excludes some essential elements of the case, confines itself to a wholly empirical view; and consequently the relentless solution it announces applies only to a mutilated problem. To assert the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... fighting their way back to their native valleys, yet the cruel banishment of the French Protestants, and the removal of so many of their gifted and devoted leaders, was a very heavy calamity. It placed almost insuperable difficulties in the way of their reorganization. Furthermore, they were greatly harassed by the imposition of taxes far beyond their means, and most unjustly levied only on the Protestants. Very dishonourable attempts were also made to seduce their children from the profession ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... that difficulties well-nigh insuperable lay between me and the safe possession of the beautiful little vessel. She lay in a most un-get-at-able position at the further end of the hold, stowed in so confined and narrow a space that it was impossible to think of fitting ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... trial, in obedience to no form, but influenced by their own conscientiousness. Such of them as were insincere would be true to no obligation imposed by conventionality. Untrue to their convictions, they could not be faithful to their words. And finally—an argument which appears unanswerable and insuperable—Mr. John O'Connell and his immediate followers had so solemnly abjured, denounced and cursed the principles of the great majority with whom they were asked to league, that they could not comply without such a debasement of character as to compel the scorn of all men, not only to themselves, but ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... "One insuperable objection to such a reciprocity arises from the nature of our government, as a confederation, since there is no identity in our own criminal jurisprudence: but a chief reason is the exceedingly artificial condition of your society, which is the very ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... equally idle to speak of pain as a form of discipline. Professor Sorley says that if the pain in the world can be turned to the increase of goodness, then its existence offers no insuperable objection to "the ethical view of reality." So Dr. Martineau says that suffering is "the moral discipline" through which our nature arrives at its "true elevation." It is needless to multiply quotations; such statements are the commonplaces of theistic controversy, and almost any book ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... by bone are, at least at present, an insuperable obstacle to skiagraphing the soft translucent organs of the body which are enclosed within a more or less complete bony case, as the rays will be intercepted by the bones. Efforts, therefore, to skiagraph the heart, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... iron Genius not disdain The gentle Power that haunts the myrtle plain, There might the love-sick Maiden sit, and chide Th' insuperable rocks and severing tide, There watch at eve her Lover's sun-gilt sail Approaching, and upbraid the tardy gale, There list at midnight, till is heard no more, Below, the echo of his parting oar, There hang in fear, when growls the frozen stream, [v] To ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... prevention of truck in other trades cannot be advantageously applied to fishing. Most of the merchants are averse to short pays, and I cannot say that the fishermen themselves are in general desirous to have them introduced. I endeavoured to ascertain from the witnesses examined whether there is any insuperable obstacle to the introduction ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... revolutionary one but the logical step in the evolution of our government. I believe thoroughly in democracy, the extension of the franchise to all men, for all have a right to a voice in the making of the laws that govern them, and no nation has a right to place before any of its people an insuperable barrier to self-government. We would make no outcry against an educational standard, the necessary age limit, a certain term of residence in any place—in fact there is no regulation women would ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... light literature. Once I met her at the Academy soiree, where you meet people you thought were dead, and she vouchsafed the information, as if she owed it to me in candour, that Leolin had been obliged to recognise insuperable difficulties in the question of FORM, he was so fastidious; so that she had now arrived at a definite understanding with him (it was such a comfort) that SHE would do the form if he would bring home the substance. That was now his position—he foraged ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... before going. He was certain that, looking for the ketch and unexpectedly finding the bay empty, she would suffer a pang, if only of loneliness. In the short while that he had been there she had come to depend on him for companionship, for relief from the insuperable monotony of her surroundings; for, perhaps, still more. He wondered what that more might contain. He thought of Millie at the present moment, probably lying awake, steeped in dread. His flight now assumed ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... natural difference, leading to confusion of thought, and very possibly to that instinct of contradiction of which I was speaking? A great deal of time is lost in profitless conversation, and a good deal of ill temper frequently caused, by not considering these organic and practically insuperable conditions. In dealing with them, acquiescence is the best of palliations ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... proved to be such insuperable difficulties in the way of establishing their rightful ownership that the Home Government very kindly undertook the charge of them until the man who could satisfactorily prove his right to them should put in an appearance. It was a marvellously curious circumstance, however, ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... the inconveniencies of both, and was himself so discouraged, on a review of them, that he was ready, as he says, to throw up his pen. My chief cares, dear Sir, on this head, are three: 1st, The difficulty which, as I said, Mr. Locke makes almost insuperable, to find a qualified tutor. 2ndly, The necessity there is, according to Mr. Locke, of keeping the youth out of the company of the meaner servants, who may set him bad examples. And, 3rdly, Those still greater difficulties which will arise from the ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... have thus returned any service I may have rendered you. I have been wrong, I confess, to permit the intimacy which has existed between you and all the members of my family; but I tell you at once that I have an insuperable objection to any one of my daughters marrying a man whose family is unknown to me. For yourself I shall always entertain the truest regard, and I must beg you to receive this answer as final. Though Mrs Leslie and I shall regret the loss of your ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston
... Alfieri! And may we not draw a moral from the story of his life as faintly and imperfectly shadowed forth in the preceding sketch? Does it not show us how we may overcome obstacles deemed by us insuperable, and how we may seek to become something better than what we are? The poet's name will go down to future ages as the idol of his countrymen; may the beneficial effect produced by a mind like his upon the character and aspirations of the world ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... respectful distance, and spent what remained of the day in carefully reconnoitring the fort, which seemed only too strong. In conjunction with Leyderdorp, the head-quarters of Valdez, a mile and a half distant on the right, and within a mile of the city, it seemed so insuperable an impediment that Boisot wrote in despondent tone to the Prince of Orange. He announced his intention of carrying the fort, if it were possible, on the following morning, but if obliged to retreat, he observed, with something like despair, that there would be nothing ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... me the justice to own that I have not said a word to impeach his friendship to you. But I must set him aside as a man capable of transacting this business. It is not de son ressort, and I know that he has difficulties to combat with, if he undertakes it, which are insuperable. Now, when I talk of men of business, I will explain myself. I mean three for example: Mr. Wallis, if ever you consult him, Mr. Gregg, and Lavie. I would also seriously apply to my Lord Gower for ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... presentations of consciousness; he obtains a direct intuition of an originant, causative, and independent self-existence. He will have attained in short to the knowledge of a noumenon, and of the only knowable noumenon. The barrier, elsewhere insuperable between the subject and object, is broken down; that which knows becomes identified with that which is; and in the consciousness of will the consciousness also of a self, as something independent of and superior to its own modifications, ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... prolixity for men to wear their hair long and to ... ruffle their heads in excesses of this kind," but in later years, with many another wearied antagonist of this abomination, added hopelessly—"the lust is insuperable." Tobacco was fulminated against with equal energy, but no decree of court could stamp out the beloved vice. Winthrop yielded to it, but afterward renounced it, and the ministers compared its smoke to the smoke ascending from the bottomless pit, but no denunciation could effectually ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... on the Eastern edge of Bellenglise. Eventually, however, the village was cleared and we got to our next starting-point, the "Brown Line," with our right on the canal, at 11.30 a.m. This was only ten minutes after our scheduled time which, considering the almost insuperable difficulties caused by the fog, must be considered excellent. It meant, of course, that our barrage, which advanced again at 11.20 a.m. (five-and-a-half hours after Zero) was slightly ahead of us, but that ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... materials that compose the present volume came into my hands. The difficulty of reading many of the manuscripts, obscured by innumerable erasures, corrections, interlineations, and marginal insertions, would perhaps have been insuperable to any person less conversant in the manuscripts of Mr. Burke than myself. To this difficulty succeeded that of selecting from several detached papers, written upon the same subject and the same topics, such ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... co-operative creamery, for instance, is organized on the basis of a product—butter; the Grange is organized on the basis of manhood—and each man may have his crop or stock specialty. This difficulty, though grave, is not, perhaps, insuperable, and will tend to disappear as membership enlarges. But it is only fair to state that, so far, the Grange has not been able to devise any successful plan for co-operative selling, ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... black, or the progeny of white mothers—a fact showing that whatever deterioration may be the consequence of this alloyage, is incurred by the Colored race. Where such a proportion of the mixed race exists, it may reasonably be inferred that the barriers to license are not more insuperable among those of the same color. That corruption of morals progresses with greater admixture of races, and that the product of vice stimulates the propensity to immorality, is as evident to observation as it is ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... proposition—again with a lengthened perturbation of the eyelids. "It would be possible to suggest a variety of objections, if one were of a sophistical turn of mind," he said at last, smilingly reflective. "Yet I see no really insuperable obstacle in the path." He thought upon it further, and went on with an enquiring upward glance directed suddenly at Thorpe: "Is there likely to be any very unpleasant hubbub in the press—when it is known that the ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... of prime ministers, and still more that of women, Louis XIV. had an insuperable antipathy. It must therefore have cost him much to renounce the flattering hope of seeing his grandson make practical application of the lofty instructions in which his personal royalty reflected itself with so much splendour; but such a prince as he knew but too well that a political idea is ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... the river upwards from the sea, and the want of wood for forming an establishment, would prove insuperable objections to rendering the collection of copper at this part worthy of ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... a still graver and quite insuperable distinction between the parallactic path and the aberrational path. Let us, for simplicity, think of a star situated near the pole of the ecliptic, and thus appearing to revolve annually in a circle, whether we regard either the phenomenon of parallax or of aberration. ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... away. Garth was prompt with his permission. There was a possibility that it was merely a pretext to deprive them of the horse; but his heart leaped at the chance of getting Rina out of the way for an hour. It was all he needed to complete his plan; and it had seemed an insuperable bar. If she turned the horse out, he would come back anyway; for Cy was the town-bred horse, always waiting anxiously about camp for his vanished stable; and Garth had further trained him to stick to the outfit, with judicious presents of salt ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... she not begun to learn that neither must the excesses of individuals be attributed to their party, nor those of his party taken as embodying the mind of every one who belongs to it. At the same time the old insuperable difficulty returned; how could Richard belong to ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... knee. "I could make a way for myself, a good way, without all this fever, with a woman like you to hold me straight. I know what I can do." A forlorn smile wrinkled his face not unpleasantly. "But there are two insuperable obstacles. The Workers wouldn't let me—and the woman wouldn't have me. . . . That's why I grow ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... innumerable cases arise, in which a man the most just is obliged, in some imperfect sense, to connive at injustice; his chance experience must convince him that injustice is continually going on; and yet, in any attempt to intercept it or to check it, he is met and baffled by the insuperable obstacles of household necessities. Dr. S. therefore surrendered himself, as under a coercion that was none of his creating, to a passive acquiescence and a blindness that soothed his constitutional indolence; and he reconciled his feelings to a tyranny which he tolerated, under some self-flattering ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... a mistaken principle of usefulness, one insuperable objection to all these machines, is the difficulty of conveying them with the necessary celerity, and the impossibility of packing them on the engine in such a manner that it may be worked without their being taken off, as it seems to me that every description ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... of material particles, but is in the deepest sense a divine effluence. According to Mr. Spencer, the divine energy which is manifested throughout the knowable universe is the same energy that wells up in us as consciousness. Speaking for myself, I can see no insuperable difficulty in the notion that at some period in the evolution of Humanity this divine spark may have acquired sufficient concentration and steadiness to survive the wreck of material forms and endure forever. Such a crowning wonder ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... to understand this, it must be considered, that, while immersed in water, and under insuperable compression, the vegetable, oily, and resinous substances, would appear to be unalterable by heat; and it is only in proportion as certain chemical separations take place, that these inflammable bodies are changed in their substance ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... the Euphrates, Nineveh on the Tigris, Thebes on the Nile, Rome on the Tiber; but Jerusalem had nothing but a fountain or two, and a well or two, and a little trickle and an intermittent stream. The water supply to-day is, and always has been, a great difficulty, and an insuperable barrier to the city's ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... decease of my wife it is my will and desire, that all the slaves which I hold in my own right shall receive their freedom—To emancipate them during her life, would tho earnestly wished by me, be attended with such insuperable difficulties, on account of their intermixture by marriages with the Dower negroes as to excite the most painful sensations—if not disagreeable consequences from the latter while both descriptions are in the occupancy of the same proprietor, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... are accustomed to think of those who are not Christians as their inferiors; but the conviction which possesses them, that they have what others have not, is obviously not open to the temptation which nationalism presents. According to their own faith, there is no insuperable gulf between themselves and the rest of mankind; there is not a being in the whole world but is invited by their religion to occupy the same position as themselves, and, did he come, would stand on their very level, as if he had ever been there. Such accessions to their body they continually ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... this. She did not quite understand why she was to be so banished, and thought much on the subject. She had submitted herself to Frank's advice when first she had begun to fear that her troubles would be insuperable. Her troubles were now disappearing; and, as for Frank,—what was Frank to her, that she should obey him? Nevertheless, her trunks were being already packed, and she knew that she must go. He was to accompany her on her journey, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... to change in general the rough path of life, the hopeful attempt to get a creative "improvement," which I have already discussed. The wish to die sometimes occurs. Further the obstacles that stand in the way of the full erotic life in the external world, in so far as they are insuperable or are not overcome on account of laziness, lead to autoerotism. (That this is found even in early childhood is for the mechanism of the impulses, a side-issue. The scheme just given is not to be regarded ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... may all recognize under the semblance of the enchanted country and the adventurous knight, a poetic vision of life: with its conflicts, contradictions, and mockeries; its difficulties which give way when they seem most insuperable; its successes which look like failures, and its failures which look like success. The thing we may not do is to imagine that an intended lesson is conveyed ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... priceless, cannot, will not, be surrendered to slavery. Its suppression is asked for, as I have said, to give peace and security to slaveholders. Sir, that thing cannot be done. God has interposed an insuperable obstacle to any such result. "There can be no peace, saith my God, to the wicked." Suppose it were possible to put down this discussion, what would it avail the guilty slaveholder, pillowed as he is upon heaving bosoms of ruined ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... I grant, but not an insuperable one. My uncle married an English lady, a Protestant, and they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... youth, however, of the girl workers is not in itself the chief or the most, insuperable difficulty. If these girls were boys we might look forward to their growing up in the trade, gaining experience and becoming ever more valuable elements in the union membership. But after a few years the larger percentage of the girls marry and are lost to the union ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... much of it as seemed to me needful has been utilized in this book. The account of the bringing home of Weber's remains to Dresden from London has a perennial interest. We know how Wagner idolized his mighty predecessor, and can imagine the ardour with which he threw himself into this work. Seemingly insuperable obstacles, most of them placed in the way through the native stupidity and perversity of German and English officialdom, had to be overridden, and Wagner triumphed. The speech delivered on the occasion of the re-interment is characteristic—exceptionally ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... of great campaigns and wars, and become splendid in the eyes of all mankind; sometimes, as in this case, they have only deserved to succeed, and to be splendid in the eyes of judges. How get these masses of enemies lured away, so that you could try such a thing? There lay the difficulty; insuperable altogether, except by the most fine and appropriate treatment. Of a truth, it required a connected series of the wisest measures and most secret artifices of war;—and withal, that you should throw over them such a veil as ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... corresponding sense of solidarity in Undine; and little Paul's rootlessness, his lack of all local and linear ties, made them (for all the charm he exercised) regard him with something of the shyness of pious Christians toward an elfin child. But though mother and child gave them a sense of insuperable strangeness, it plainly never occurred to them that both would not be gradually subdued to the customs of Saint Desert. Dynasties had fallen, institutions changed, manners and morals, alas, deplorably declined; but as far back as memory went, the ladies of the ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... of the utter impossibility of peace except under a common government, and at once an illustration of the import of what has just been stated, and the suggestion of a new and insuperable difficulty, let it be remembered that this great mountain region, throughout its general course, is more loyal to the Union than any other portion of the slave States. It is the mountain counties of Maryland that have ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... thought as an example, that the restraints upon the sex were insuperable only to those who think them so, or who noisily strive to break them. She had taken a course of her own, and no man stood in her way. Many of her acts had been unusual, but excited no uproar. Few helped, but none checked her; and the many ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... immigrants of earlier days. They wanted a parliament, public schools, and many other things new to the country; and they were the sort of people who had a right to have them. The problem of defence was always a vexed one with the inadequate military forces at hand and the insuperable difficulties concerning the militia. The British still held the Western forts pending the settlement of the frontier and the execution of the treaty of peace in full. This naturally annoyed the American government ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... power of my soul is subjected to the most odious despotism, insulted, and condemned to the most humiliating privations. And I, who would give my life for her a thousand times over,—I can do nothing for her. Money raises between us such an insuperable obstacle, that my love is actually an offence. To hear from her, I am driven to accept accomplices. If I obtain from her a few moments of conversation, I run the risk of compromising ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... this course an almost insuperable objection presents itself at first seeming. Seeing that, the true cause of doubt and unbelief in the uncritical, is to be sought for proximately in the decay of a popular consensus in favour of belief, and ultimately in the disagreements and negations of those who lead and form public opinion, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... generous. I set to work with zeal to study anew, and I considered myself bound in honor not to make farther advances with the daughter until I should feel satisfied with my proficiency with the law. It was all in vain. I had an insuperable repugnance to the study; my mind would not take hold of it; or rather, by long despondency had become for the time incapable of any application. I was in a wretched state of doubt and self-distrust. I tried to finish the work which ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... we to explain the appearance of so strange a visitant in a universe which is dominated by the "struggle for existence"? The intellectual difficulty of atheism is so insuperable that we hear of it no more from men of science. I think Mr. Spencer's speculations have given it the coup de grace. But difficult as is the question of the origin of the cosmos, far more so is that of conscience. ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... the most insuperable difficulties before the world at the present time is the lack of any central authority to which may be referred those matters of general and vital concern that affect the peoples of more than one nation. The peoples feel this lack. They are aware of the fact that industry, ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... This supposed insuperable difficulty was first advanced in an article in the North British Review in 1867, and much attention has been attracted to it by the acknowledgment of Mr. Darwin that it proved to him that "single variations," or what are usually termed "sports," ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... which makes up our population is a serious obstacle (but not an insuperable one) in the way of courtesy, but there is another even greater. The first is America's problem. The ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... weight. But I beg you to consider, monsieur, that if I did not submit them to you, I might be suspected of leading your tenderness to overlook obstacles which the world, and more especially your mother, regard as insuperable. ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... as well as by your letter, that the difficulties still exist about your ceremonial at Ratisbon; should they, from pride and folly, prove insuperable, and obstruct your real business, there is one expedient which may perhaps remove difficulties, and which I have often known practiced; but which I believe our people know here nothing of; it is, to have the character ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... traversed by some small vessel, and is rightly considered as that which it will be most difficult for a vessel to double during the whole North-East Passage; but our vessel, equipped with all modern appliances, ought not to find insuperable difficulties in doubling this point, and if that can be accomplished, we will probably have pretty open water towards Behring's Straits, which ought to be reached before the end of September. From Behring Strait the course will be shaped for some Asiatic port and then onwards ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... was one thing that miserable muleteer-boy ought to have known better than another, it was the insuperable objection entertained by the Provencal peasant to any thing like trespass on his territory (the touchiness of the proprietaire bears generally an inverse ratio to the extent of his possessions); yet, to make a short cut of about two hundred ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... to decide as a juryman, or a jurywoman, rights of property or rights of life, whilst her baby is "mewling and puking" in solitary confinement at home. There are other considerations more important, and one of them to my mind is insuperable. I speak now respecting women as a sex. I believe that they are better than men, but I do not believe they are adapted to the political work of this world. I do not believe that the Great Intelligence ever intended them to invade the sphere of work given ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... first of the family of whom I have any knowledge, was tenant of a small farm in Aberdeenshire, on the borders of Buchan.[1] He was also engaged in trade, and, though it is stated that smuggler would be too harsh a name to apply to him, he had no insuperable objection to dealing in contraband articles. He was considered to belong to the respectable class, and gave his sons a good education. He had nine children by his wife, Mary Brown. Seven of these were sons, and were ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... we are to divide equally both as to quantity and quality the divisional line then would fall south of the Kennebec. If the want of the consent of Maine is the obstacle to such an adjustment, we trust it will always remain an insuperable one. Indeed, we protest against the application to us of such a rule as manifestly ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... probability be obtained in time to reach Washington before the necessary adjournment of Congress by the Constitution. The reasons given by the ministry for refusing to convoke the Chambers at an earlier period were afterwards shewn not to be insuperable by their actual convocation on the first of December under a special call for domestic purposes, which fact, however, did not become known to this Government until after the commencement of the last ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... even to see him when he had come, but had sent Mr. Greenwood to reject him scornfully; as the Marchioness had treated him as below contempt; as even his own friend Lord Hampstead had declared that the difficulties would be insuperable, this sudden cessation of all impediments did seem to be delightfully miraculous. Assent on the part of Lord and Lady Persiflage would, he understood, be quite as serviceable as that of Lord and Lady Kingsbury. Something had occurred which, in the eyes of all the family, had lifted him ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... is raised, or supplies are thrown in, it will become necessary very shortly to evacuate the place. I see no prospect of the former, and there are many great, if not insuperable obstacles in the way of the latter. You are, therefore, requested to inform me with as little delay as possible, as to the condition of your troops and their ability to make the marches and undergo the fatigues necessary to ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... Earth, their rates of motion were quite inconceivable. Even in the case of the Sun the motion represents over twenty-five million miles per hour, and the apparent motion of the Stars is thousands of times faster than Light travels. These insuperable difficulties were not swept away until, by the advance of Knowledge, the falsity of Conception, based only upon appearance, was made manifest, and it was seen that it was the Earth which revolved and not the Stars. Even then, owing ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... one could not help, so terrible a disgrace, an insuperable barrier to elevation, and was it mean and small in him to accept his education from a man on whom he had no claim? Possibly; and if so, the state of things should not continue. He would go to Arthur Tracy, thank him for all he had done, and tell him he could ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... train the tale of the Englishman who came face to face with such a crisis. Having removed most of his garments, he came to that point where the ingenuity of human nature seemed to fail. He pondered it. The matter seemed insuperable. And he began to wonder if.... He put his head through his curtains and shouted along the crowded—and mixed—green ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... native instincts may be subordinated to the will of man. Although the degree of the difficulty which will be encountered in taming many wild forms may be far greater than that which has been met in those which we have domesticated, there is no reason whatever to believe that in any case it will be insuperable. ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... at the same time secured to him. To fortify the weak against the invasion of the strong, to suppress spoliation and fraud, the necessity was felt of establishing between possessors permanent lines of division, insuperable obstacles. Every year saw the people multiply, and the cupidity of the husbandman increase: it was thought best to put a bridle on ambition by setting boundaries which ambition would in vain attempt to overstep. Thus the soil came to be appropriated through need of the equality which is essential ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... for the first time in the English tongue, in Christ Church Cathedral. As a reward for his energy in introducing the reform in general, and the liturgy in particular, Edward VI. annexed the primacy of all Ireland to the see of Dublin by Act of Parliament. There was one insuperable obstacle, however, in the way of using the English tongue, which was simply that the people did not understand it. Even the descendants of the Anglo-Norman were more familiar with the Celtic dialect, and some attempt was made at ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... subsided and Anthony began to exercise a measure of reason. He was in love—he cried it passionately to himself. The things that a week before would have seemed insuperable obstacles, his limited income, his desire to be irresponsible and independent, had in this forty hours become the merest chaff before the wind of his infatuation. If he did not marry her his life would be a feeble parody on his own adolescence. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald |
