"Tenable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... years. He fancied he had discovered the principle of life. He made the 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 ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... 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 or ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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
... 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 by volcanoes be ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... is possible that all the chemical elements may be combinations of different quantities of one primal element. Certain facts make this supposition tenable; and some chemists expect that the supposition will be proved to be correct. If the hypothetical primal element should be isolated, we should have fulfilled the aim of alchemy, and gained the One Thing; but the fulfilment would not be that ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... has at times been very faint, so as barely to be visible. The persistence of this object for so many years leads me to infer that the formerly accepted theory, that the phenomena seen on the surface of the planet are atmospheric, is no longer tenable. The statement so often made in text-books, that in the course of a few days or months the whole aspect of the planet may be changed, is obviously erroneous. The oval white spots on the southern hemisphere of the planet, nine degrees south of the equator, have been ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... the success of the American cause. To others came the bitterness of separation from parents, when they were sent across the sea to unknown relatives; while again some faint manuscript record tells of a motherless child brought from a comfortable home, no longer tenable, to whatever quarters could be found within the British lines. Fortunately, children usually adapt themselves easily to changed conditions, and in the novelty and excitement of the life around them, it is probable they soon ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... At this instant cries came 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 Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... 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 fallen, Town ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... sorry 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
... will remember it, and show the marks of it for months, as the day we had our heads cropped. By evening there was hardly one poll in the Seventh tenable by anybody's grip. Most sat in the shade and were shorn by a barber. A few were honored with a clip by the artist hand of the petit caporal of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... 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, ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... I honestly confess that I, for my part, attach but secondary importance to controversial defences of the faith. No doubt they have their office; they may confirm a waverer, they may establish a believer, they may show onlookers that the Christian position is tenable; they may, in some rare cases of transcendent power, prevent a heresy from spreading and from descending to another generation. But oftenest they are barren of result, and where they do their work, it ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... dispatch book, containing most detailed information as to his strength, dispositions, and designs; referring to the reinforcements he expected, and disclosing his belief that the line of the Rappahannock was no longer tenable. But the enterprise had an indirect it upon the enemy's calculations, which was not without bearing on the campaign. Pope believed that Stuart's advance on Catlett's Station had been made in connection with Jackson's attempt to cross at Sulphur Springs; and the retreat of the ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... change in the explanation will make it tenable. Quite possibly the white deposits may be due to something like hoar-frost condensed from slightly moist air, without the actual production of snow. This would produce the effect that we see. Even ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... the pursuit of evidence of Supernatural Being is not, so far as he is aware, fixed."—"The power of reason is yet a growth. To deny its power absolutely would be hazardous; and in the case of a speculative question, not to admit that the opposite views may in some sense be tenable, is to assume your own infallibility,—a piece of arrogance the public always punish by disbelieving you when you are in the right."[258] Accordingly the thesis which Mr. Holyoake undertook to maintain in public discussion ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... this country is very small, and were it possible to collect it in time to oppose any serious attempt upon Quebec, the only tenable post, the number would of itself be insufficient to ensure a ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... even at the North, scarcely willing to save the Union at the expense of the slave interest upon which its success depended, shattered and crippled by the civil war and its results, has at last yielded to the inexorable logic of events, abandoned a position no longer tenable, and taken its "new departure" with an abolitionist as its candidate. As a friend of the long-oppressed colored man, and for the sake of the peace and prosperity of the country, I rejoice at this action of the Democratic party. The underlying ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... like those made under Joseph's direction, places of resort during excessive overflows of the Nile; and many other uses have been suggested for them. But none of these ideas are found on close examination to be tenable as representing the sole purpose of the pyramids, and few of them have strong claims to be regarded as presenting even a chief object of these remarkable structures. The significant and perplexing history of the three oldest pyramids—the Great Pyramid of Cheops, Shofo, or Suphis, the pyramid ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... turn for classicism. And, once more, if we must have a formula, it would be best to say that the philosophy of the century was the product, first of scepticism applied to old beliefs which were no longer easily tenable, and then of scepticism, extended to old institutions that were ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 8: France in the Eighteenth Century • John Morley
... another, in its criminal legislation, in its whole national policy, in its relation to education, and more or less in every great department of life. In his view, therefore, the ordinary cry for disestablishment was not the recognition of a tenable and consistent principle, but an attempt to arrange a temporary compromise which could only work under special conditions, and must break up whenever men's minds were really stirred. However reluctant they may be, they will have to answer the question, Is this religion true or not? and to ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... than the manner in which the different troops relieved each other during this part of the day. When the French squadrons advanced, ours met them as boldly. When the ground became no longer tenable, we broke and fell back, and the bayonets of the infantry arrested their progress. If the cavalry pressed heavily upon the squares, ours came up to the relief, and as they were beaten back, the artillery opened upon them with an ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... in December, 1914, by a considerable achievement, for he won the coveted Brakenbury Scholarship in History and Modern Languages at Balliol College, Oxford. This scholarship, worth L80 per annum, is tenable for four years; to it subsequently Dulwich College added an exhibition of the annual value of L20. He was the first Balliol scholar in history from Dulwich. Not at all confident that he had won the Brakenbury, he went up to Oxford a second time, while the result of ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... refuting itself. That nothing is right but what is of preponderating utility; that whatever is of preponderating utility is right; these are propositions perfectly intelligible, indeed, but which will be found to be tenable only on condition that the very same things may be both right and wrong. The confusion, thrice confounded, inseparable from the substitution of such novel definitions for those which had previously been universally in vogue, is but the smaller of two evils which must thence ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... it, will be the second in which he has put my life in hazard, and I believe him, therefore, not too good for any attempt of this evil nature. But why may I not defend myself from the assassins? I can make these logs tenable till daylight from all their assaults, and then I should receive succor from the villagers without question. You see, too, I have arms which may ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... 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 found ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... River, near Lake Huron, and near the Red River[198] Gillman thinks that the Michigan trepanations, which bad been made with clumsy tools, were simply holes for hanging up skulls as trophies, as is still customary amongst the Dyaks of Borneo; but this seems scarcely a tenable hypothesis, for as a rule the skeletons lying in their last home are complete. Quite recently were discovered, beneath a tumulus near Rock River, eight skeletons, the skull of one of which bore a circular perforation made during life, ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... now offered by contemporaneous speculators, and showed they 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 untrue.[572] "They," the Dialecticians, "examined ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... developing a constructive view of Judaism, whereby it might be enabled to withstand the shock of modernism; nevertheless, he does not deserve the treatment accorded him because of his alleged attitude towards creeds. His position as to the relation of creeds to Judaism is the only tenable one. He maintains that creeds can only be of two kinds; either they oppose reason, and should therefore find no place in Judaism, or are so self-evident that they are not confined to Judaism. This does not mean that to be a Jew one can believe whatever he likes, or not believe at ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... of 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 ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... especial stress on all that appears to be connected with homosexuality; he is apt to remember those instances only in which his conduct exhibited girlish characteristics, and to forget all instances of an opposite kind. Finally, we have to take into consideration the various interpretations which are tenable of occurrences during childhood. An adult homosexual who as a child once did some needlework for a joke, sees in this later a characteristic of effemination. A girl who, for lack of companions of her own sex, was accustomed to join ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... salmon of other rivers, until it is time for them to return to fresh water. Considering the certainty with which the salmon of any particular river return again to the stream of their birth, the latter theory seems the more tenable ...
— New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th Century • Various
... murder, if 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, ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... a part of general education and is included under that genus. What is general education? For a long time education was defined in terms of intellect, but that ground is no longer tenable. Spencer said: "Education is the preparation for complete living." Modern educators reject this as an inadequate statement of education. Education does not merely prepare for something in the future. It endeavors ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... sun shone and there was not a cloud in the sky; but nothing definite, nothing which could give hope to the distracted mother or do more than divide the attention of the police between two different but equally tenable theories. Then came the cablegram from Mr. Ocumpaugh, which threw amateur as well as professional detectives into the field. Among the latter was myself; which naturally brings me back once more to my ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... theory of water erosion tenable it is assumed that the Colorado river started in its incipiency like any other river. After a time the river bed began to rise and was gradually pushed up more and more by some unknown subterranean force as the water cut deeper and ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... originality and 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
... understanding 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 of ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... smoke and spirits, to them? Not one-thousandth part as bad as the detestable mosquitoes on the shores of the Barbuda lagoon, they agreed. So some occupied the bunks—regular ovens—others the lockers, and Tom took possession of the cabin-table, the least stifling spot, but tenable only—and that by no human being but a midshipman—in moderate weather. Old Higson took the first watch. Timmins, the master's-assistant was far too eloquent just then to be trusted, and Norris was to have the middle watch. He at all ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... however, 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
... spread indignation in Hungary at my selection for the post was owing to a pamphlet I had written some years previously, in which I certainly had attacked the Magyar policy somewhat vehemently. I maintained the standpoint that a policy of suppression of the nations was not tenable in the long run, and that no future was in store for Hungary unless she definitely abolished that policy and allowed the nations equal rights. This pamphlet gave serious displeasure in Budapest, and representatives in the Hungarian ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... 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. The enactments of the Home ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... familiar as the Pons Asinorum; and neither of the two champions had need to feel ruffled in temper by the discussion. The real struggle began only at this point; for until this point was reached, both positions were about equally tenable. Abelard had hitherto rested quietly on the defensive, but William's last thrust obliged him to strike in his turn, and he drew himself up for what, five hundred years later, was called the "Coup ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... of the enemy. Burbridge and Stoneman had their headquarters on a little knoll near the centre of our line, where they could see the fighting. The Confederate right, in swinging around, had covered this hill and it was no longer tenable. A lieutenant, in reporting to General Burbridge on this knoll, had been shot by a Confederate rifleman through the head and fell dead at the General's feet. Orderlies, horses and men were being shot down, and I begged General Burbridge to retire. He asked me if there were no ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... like flowers upon a dunghill. That theory will not hold water; and even those who will not accept the testimony have long since confessed that it will not. But the Apostle, in my context, seems to think that that is the only tenable alternative to the other theory that the witnesses were veracious, and I am disposed to believe that he is right. He says, 'If Christ be not risen, then, are we' the utterly impossible thing of 'false witnesses to God,' devout perjurers, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... sense of movement of the lips and tongue. Mach ("Analysis of the Sensations") says: "The supposition that the processes in the larynx during singing have had something to do with the formation of the tonal series I noticed in one of my earlier publications, but did not find it tenable. Singing is connected in too extrinsic and accidental a manner with hearing to bear out such an hypothesis. I can hear and imagine tones far beyond the range of my own voice. In listening to an orchestral performance with ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... 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 those of San Domingo; the sugar-cane ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... 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
... until the world learned of his death was he anything but alive to the world. By the same token, was he not alive? And by the same token, here on the Elsinore, has not the land-world ceased? May not the pupil of one's eye be, not merely the centre of the world, but the world itself? Truly, it is tenable that the world exists only in consciousness. "The world is my idea," said Schopenhauer. Said Jules de Gaultier, "The world is my invention." His dogma was that imagination created the Real. Ah, me, I know that the practical Miss ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... the same time, but that the Bowl Barrow was the earliest, followed by the Bell, and that the Disc is the latest form of all. From construction, if for no other reason, this hypothesis seems perfectly tenable. ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... anybody. Yet I find him 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, loathsome excrescence on the body politic, an intolerable evil which should come to ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... actually is still a Church for him; that this extant Church, which he long took for an extinct shadow, is not such, but a substance; upon which he can anchor himself amid the storms of fate;—and he does so, even taking orders in it, I think. Such could by no means seem to me the true or tenable solution. Here clearly, struggling amid the tumults, was a lovable young fellow-soul; who had by no means yet got to land; but of whom much might be hoped, if he ever did. Some of the delineations are highly pictorial, flooded with a deep ruddy effulgence; betokening much wealth, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... war, you have made wager of battle with him: it is he to die, or else you. Reconciliation is problematic; may be possible, or, far more likely, is impossible. It is now pretty generally admitted that the Parliament, having vanquished Charles First, had no way of making any tenable arrangement with him. The large Presbyterian party, apprehensive now of the Independents, were most anxious to do so; anxious indeed as for their own existence; but it could not be. The unhappy Charles, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... processes. She would not exasperate me so deeply if I could be certain of her springs of action. Is she old, is she rheumatic, is she lazy, is she hungry? Sometimes I think she means well, and is only ignorant and dull; but this hypothesis grows less and less tenable as I know her better. Sometimes I conclude that she does not understand me; that the difference in nationality may trouble her. If an Englishman cannot understand an American woman all at once, why should ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... divisible divorce, as developed by Justice Douglas in Estin v. Estin, 334 U.S. 541 (1948), has not become the prevailing standard for determining the enforceability of foreign divorce decrees. If such be the case, it may be tenable to assert that an ex parte divorce, founded upon acquisition of domicile by one spouse in the State which granted it, is effective to destroy the marital status of both parties in the State of domiciliary ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... its 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 ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... 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 side and the proof they set up, ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... laws, is thoroughly congruous with the facts, and because its assumption serves to connect and harmonize these into one probable and consistent whole. Can the derivative hypothesis be maintained and carried out into a system on similar grounds? If so, however unproved, it would appear to be a tenable hypothesis, which is all that its author ought now to claim. Such hypotheses as from the conditions of the case can neither be proved nor disproved by direct evidence or experiment are to be tested only indirectly, and therefore imperfectly, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... sufficient so to reason from as to convince the thousands, ready and willing to gainsay them: and Locke's utter annihilation of poor ridiculous well-intentioned Filmer, makes one wary, of taking up and defending a position so little tenable, as, for instance, Adam's primary grant for the foundation of absolute monarchy, or of attempting to nullify natural freedom by the dubious succession of patriarchal power. At the same time, (competency for so great a task being conceded—no small supposition, by the way,) much ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... 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 which float ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... however, were not permitted to remain long in peaceable possession of their most recent conquest; for on the 3rd of June, a considerable French armament arrived off Point a Pitre. Fort Fleur d'Epee was taken by storm, and the place not being tenable after this loss, the British crossed over to Basseterre. Several prisoners were taken by the French, and amongst them were some of the Carolina Corps, for in the return of that corps for February, 1795, dated March 1st, there is the following note: ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... assumption tenable that no other penalty makes so strong an impression or is so pre-eminently exemplary? Bentham thus answers the question: 'It appears to me that the contemplation of perpetual imprisonment, accompanied with hard labour and occasional solitary ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... 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. ——'s ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... 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 ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... persons the analysis of conduct, on which the whole doctrine of liberty rests, seems metaphysical and arbitrary. They are reluctant to admit there are any self-regarding acts at all. This reluctance implies a perfectly tenable proposition, a proposition which has been maintained by nearly all religious bodies in the world's history in their non-latitudinarian stages. To distinguish the self-regarding from the other parts of conduct, strikes them ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... 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 ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... contradictory: "The complete contradiction that exists in the homoousios carried in its train a whole army of contradictions which increased as thought advanced," says Harnack. Yes, so it was, and so it had to be. And he adds: "Dogma took leave for ever of clear thinking and tenable concepts, and habituated itself to the contra-rational." In truth, it drew closer to life, which is contra-rational and opposed to clear thinking. Not only are judgements of ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... been 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, and we must suppose either that Egyptian ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... highest prelates in the Church did basely and in secret; also he loved, where they only lusted; and he has been proclaimed therefore by them—and too foolishly believed by us—to have been a shameful person. Of his true life, and the colors given to it, we will try to learn something tenable, before we end our ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... has put the question to me. I can only answer, that no one can be more devotedly attached to the King than I myself,—that I am very partial to his merits and blind to his defects;—and that, in short, I would be the last man in the world to give up his cause where it was tenable. Nevertheless, I must confess, that if all his grandfather of Navarre's morals have not descended to him, this poor King has somehow inherited a share of the specks that were thought to dim the lustre of that great Prince—that Charles is a little soft-hearted, or so, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... color to his olive cheeks. His handsome eyes turned uneasily aside. A girl's pique perhaps, at the situation, her last defiance of his power,—but for all his reassurance there was something deeper in that look, something tenable, accusing, which went into ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... invites Congress to take this manly attitude. After stating, with great frankness, in his able message, his theory—which, however, is found to be impracticable, and which, I believe, very few now consider tenable—he refers the whole matter to the judgment of Congress. If Congress should fail firmly and wisely to discharge that high duty, it is not the fault ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... theory—everything made 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 though ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... general ground, the 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 ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the Army of the Ohio entered Allatoona on June 1st, and reported the gorge a place he could hold against a superior force. [Footnote: Id., p. 379.] General Johnston was so well persuaded that his position was no longer tenable that he issued the same day a confidential order directing a withdrawal, but recalled it late in the day in view of the changes evidently going on at our extreme right, and so remained a few days ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... courage. In Switzerland and England the reformers considered themselves as fulfilling this message of the Apocalyptic angel. Elliot says, "They seized on this very prophecy for application; and, for the first time, upon grounds of evidence sound and tenable, concluded on the fact of progress having been made up to it, in the evolution of the great mundane drama, and on their own chronological place being already far advanced under the sixth trumpet, and in near expectancy of the seventh trumpet, of the ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... siege of Malta seems almost an insult; these gallant knights and soldiers were only so in comparison with their leader. Twice during the siege of St, Elmo did the garrison send to La Valette and represent that the place was no longer tenable; but Garcia de Toledo, Viceroy of Sicily for Philip of Spain, was writing specious letters instead of sending reinforcements, and every moment gained was of importance. Coldly did La Valette remind the Knights of their vows to the Order, and when renewed assurances came that it was only a matter ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... 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 long life. There ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... the 6th/7th August, another landing was effected at Suvla Bay. But the new plan was no more successful than the old. Within a couple of days this force also had settled down to a war of positions. Winter was approaching; our positions on the peninsula would then become no longer tenable. No progress could be made, and at length it was decided to evacuate. The Suvla Bay force was withdrawn first; and the evacuation of the main body of troops was completed on the 20th December. The withdrawal was carried out with the same brilliance ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... it," 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 ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... which was in her blood, for which she was no more responsible than she was for the colour of her hair or the vivid blue of her eyes; she seemed so forlorn—such a child, in the midst of all this decadent grandeur. She was being so ruthlessly sacrificed for ideals that were no longer tenable, that had ceased to be tenable five and twenty years ago when this chateau and these lands were overrun by a savage and vengeful mob, who were loudly demanding the right to live in happiness, in comfort, and in freedom. That right had been denied to them through the past centuries ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... on the 2nd of July, when learning that Lima was no longer tenable from want of provisions, and that an intention existed on the part of the Viceroy to abandon it, I forebore to make any hostile demonstration which might interfere with such decision, and withdrew to a distance from the port, awaiting the result, which could not be far distant, as the people ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... town, was wounded and taken prisoner while leading a sortie, and on the night of December 16-17 the enemy forced the line of defence and planted their batteries in commanding positions. Neither the harbour nor the town was tenable any longer, and orders were given for the embarkation of the troops. Of the twenty-seven French ships of the line in the harbour, nine, together with smaller vessels, were burnt by British seamen under Sir Sidney Smith, in spite of a furious bombardment from ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... 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 was a grievance; but that she could throw in her lot ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... 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
... denial. Cornelius again in 1833, when the new Basilica of St. Boniface needed decoration, once 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. ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... inspiration can be made to fit the facts which a careful study of the writings themselves bring before us. These writings are not inspired in the sense which we have commonly given to that word. The verbal theory of inspiration was only tenable while they were supposed to be the work of a single author. To such a composite literature no such theory will apply. "To make this claim," says Professor Ladd, "and yet accept the best ascertained results of criticism, would compel us to take such positions as the following: ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... even St. Julien, exposed to fire from right and left, was no longer tenable in the fact of overwhelming numerical superiority. The Third Brigade was therefore ordered to retreat further south, selling every yard of ground as dearly as it had done since 5 o'clock on Thursday. But it was found impossible, ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... to take chances. Already he had run his original shoestring to fifteen thousand dollars cash in hand. It scarcely seemed possible. It gave him a startling vision of the profits in the salmon industry, and it was not a tenable theory that men who had controlled such a source of profits would sit idle while he undermined their monopoly. Nevertheless he had made that much money in four months. He had at his back a hundred fishermen ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... cervical canal, blocks up that passage, but is washed away each month by the menstrual discharge. Under ordinary conditions this obstruction must seriously interfere with the entrance of the spermatozoa into the cavity of the uterus, and renders the former theory, recently revived by Bossi, quite tenable, that impregnation is most likely to occur just ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... 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, amid (p. 190) sore trials of heart, he no doubt clung ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... a secret letter to Bombay, directing the Government to take possession of the Island of Karak, [Footnote: A small island in the Persian Gulf to the north-west of Bushire.] and of any other tenable point to seal the Euphrates, in the event of the Russians ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... scheme was ultimately carried into effect, imparts to this act of usurpation a character of violence still more to be regretted. The originally-alleged provocation, the affair of the Derya-Dowlut, is not for a moment tenable as warranting such extreme measures:—since not only was the participation of the parties on whom the whole responsibility was thrown, at all events extremely venial; but satisfaction had been given, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... other hand the rock does not differ essentially in hardness from that in the regions below, and hence the theory that all the adjacent land was once as high as the summit of the mountain, and was subsequently worn away by the action of water and weather, is hardly tenable. The gneiss of this region is not especially rich in other mineral contents. Some fine specimens of mica have however been obtained from the summit of Wachusett. The only other extraneous mineral found ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... Loth, speak as if the external environment of daily life, the furniture and decorations and architecture of our houses, or the clothes and buckles and brooches of our dress, bore no relation to the feelings and sentiments of those that used them. That is not a tenable proposition. The external fabric of life is not a negligible quantity but a real factor. On the one hand, it is hardly credible that an unromanized folk should adopt so much of Roman things as the British did, and yet remain uninfluenced. And ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... the Guevara theory is no longer tenable; and in consequence the whole situation is reversed, and we approach the problem from the natural side, the side from which it should have been approached from the first—that is from the English and not ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... houses, especially early 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 ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... 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 think he is entitled to say that ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... murderer: but I have never heard that it was the opinion of any savage Scythian, that, if he kills a brother villain, he is, ipso facto, absolved of all his own offences. The Tartarian doctrine is the most tenable opinion. The murderers of Robespierre, besides what they are entitled to by being engaged in the same tontine of infamy, are his representatives, have inherited all his murderous qualities in addition to their own private ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... think a single objection which is made to woman suffrage is tenable. No one will contend but that women have sufficient ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... a unanimous outcry on the part of the besieged for a capitulation. It was obvious that, with the walls shot to ruins as they had been, the place was no longer tenable against Maurice's superior forces. A trumpet was sent to the prince before the dawn of day, and on the 10th of June, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... which renews for us the woes of the house of Tantalus so awfully as this of the Cenci, and it cannot fail to be of absorbing interest, especially to those unfamiliar with its ghastly details. Whether the theory which Guerrazzi assumes in order to render probable the innocence of the Cenci be tenable or not we shall not stop to discuss; it is enough that it serves to heighten the romance and complicate the plot in a very ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... private secretary, and submit the following testimonials in my favour for your consideration. I am twenty-five years of age, a Master of Arts of the University of Edinburgh, and a member of the Free Church of Scotland. At the University I succeeded in carrying a bursary of 14l. 10s. per annum, tenable for four years. I was first medallist in the class of Logic and Metaphysics, thirteenth prizeman in Mathematics, and had a certificate of merit in the class of Natural Philosophy, as will be ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... to converse with different classes, especially young men, on subjects of highest moment to the individual and to the state. By a method of quiet cross-examination, the "Socratic irony," he made them aware of their lack of clear ideas and tenable, consistent opinions, and endeavored to guide them aright. The soul and its moral improvement was his principal subject. He asserted Theism and the spiritual nature and obligations of religion, without ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... earnestness and energy. Bucquoi and Dampierre, with two armies, fell upon the Bohemian territories, which they treated as a hostile country. But the imperial generals found the march to Prague more difficult than they had expected. Every pass, every position that was the least tenable, must be opened by the sword, and resistance increased at each fresh step they took, for the outrages of their troops, chiefly consisting of Hungarians and Walloons, drove their friends to revolt and their enemies to despair. But even now that his troops had penetrated into Bohemia, the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... 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
... tumult without soon warned the authorities that what advantage the mayor may have obtained in the contest with the mob was only temporary and that their position was momentarily becoming more perilous and less tenable. It was impossible to say to what extreme of violence a multitude so infuriated would not go to get their prey. It seemed to the now thoroughly alarmed mayor that the mob might in their frenzy attack ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... assault, I shall he compelled to do what I did at Jaffa, where the garrison was put to the sword. It is the sad law of war. I desire that the necessity for such a frightful act should he spared to me, as well as to the brave Austrian nation. The place is not tenable." ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... 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 ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... 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 merely ...
— The Conditions Of Existence As Affecting The Perpetuation Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley
... 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 ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... of faith in one's self," she had said to Bertha's mother once, and now, in the face of this 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! ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... accordance with local conditions, and in this respect comparing very favorably with the cable systems then so much in favor for heavy traffic. All the arguments that could be urged in support of this ingenious system are tenable and logical at the present moment; but the trolley had its way except on a few lines where the conduit-and-shoe method was adopted; and in the intervening years the volume of traffic created and ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... considerably through the accumulation of funds, which the commercial character of that great city had caused to be neglected. At that time, I believe each exhibition yielded about forty guineas a- year, and was legally tenable for seven successive years. Now, to me this would have offered a most seasonable advantage, had it been resorted to some two years earlier. My small patrimonial inheritance gave to me, as it did to each of my four brothers, exactly one hundred and fifty pounds a-year: and to each of my sisters exactly ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... do? What 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 ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... a liar? Come an' look 'ow I've posted my men.' You bet I looked. The young demon trotted by my stirrup and showed me his whole army (twenty of 'em) laid out under cover as nicely as you please round a cowhouse in a hollow. He kept on shouting: 'I've drew Alf into there. 'Is persition ain't tenable. Say it ain't tenable, Guard!' I rode round the position, and Alf with his army came out of his cowhouse an' sat on the roof and protested like a—like a Militia Colonel; but the facts were in favour of my friend and I umpired ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... produced solely by the vibration of 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 origin of the evolutionistic method to the influence of natural science. The view is tenable that theology led the way. Probably this is a case of alternate and reciprocal debt. Quite certainly the evolutionist method in theology, in Christian history and in the estimate of scripture, has received vast ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... may be exaggerating; but his position is after all fairly tenable. It may at least be looked at, before entering on the following brief resume of the leading facts in Goldsmith's life, if only to restore our equanimity. For, naturally, it is not pleasant to think that any previous generation, however neglectful of the claims of literary persons (as compared ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... not perfect, was good—that present progress made for good, and the best western civilization had thus far attained was probably about all men of the future could look forward to so far as happiness was concerned. These views, however, were no longer tenable if our arts, philosophies and scientific attainments fail to civilize and refine us. Clearly, modern man's conception of ethical progress was as deficient in certain respects as that of the great historic civilizations. The secret of right living had not ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... the Seminary," he writes, "for the purpose of exposing the impropriety of it. I do not think any professor ever quoted the statement, without adding that it is untenable. The Andover argument was ——"[5] He adds the proper controversial language, which, it seems, went solidly out of my head. Tenable or untenable, my memory ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... his temple, as though 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 ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... 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 ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... 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 manifested itself in fact. The only things observed to fall in price with ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... remark, looks extremely liberal as it appears in the Act; for the scholarships are to be tenable at any University. The Irish Unionist members, knowing quite well how it would be worked, opposed the clause; and as usual were denounced as bigots and fanatics. It is needless to add that as soon as the Act ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... dispositions, but a common interest. If you apprehend that on a concession you shall be pushed by metaphysical process to the extreme lines, and argued out of your whole authority, my advice is this: when you have recovered your old, your strong, your tenable position, then face about,—stop short,—do nothing more,—reason not at all,—oppose the ancient policy and practice of the empire as a rampart against the speculations of innovators on both sides of the question,—and you ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and I bowed from the room and stepped out to the water-bucket and 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
... conscientious. While admitting the beauty of the idea, they point to the fact that they themselves no longer believe in it, or practise it. To their minds, it has become no more than the survival of a superstition, which is no longer tenable. Under such circumstances, they can see no justification for imposing it upon the credulity of ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... can't very well play two widely different parts at once," Batley rejoined, smiling. "Your interfering Canadian friend would describe your attitude as sitting upon the fence. It's an uncomfortable position, one that's not often tenable for any length of time. Hadn't you better make up your mind as to which side you'll ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... that John 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, the story of his wealth cannot be credited. ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... different batons and fragments of batons represented in this book differ in the number of holes bored through them. It is thought that the number of holes indicated the rank of the owner. Although many theories are given regarding the use of batons, the one which seems most tenable to the author is that which views them as marks of distinction and instruments used in magical ceremonies and in ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... season—four months—paying twelve pounds for the whole term, and hoping to be able to stay till the end of October. The living is cheaper than even at Florence, so that there has been no extravagance in coming here. In fact, Florence is scarcely tenable during the summer from the excessive heat by day and night, even if there were no particular motive for leaving it. We have taken a sort of eagle's nest in this place, the highest house of the highest of the three villages which are called the Bagni di Lucca, and which lie at the heart of ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... defender in Napier, who dwells on the advantages of getting the French at once out of Portugal, and thus providing a sure base for the operations in Spain. Seeing, however, that Junot's men were demoralized by defeat, and that the nearest succouring force was in Navarre, these excuses seem scarcely tenable, except on the ground that, with such commanders as Burrard and Dalrymple, it was certainly desirable to get the French ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... two theories already in the field. At first sight that of brandy smuggling seemed tenable enough, and he turned his attention to the steps by which the two young men had tried to test it. At the loading end their observations were admittedly worthless, but at Ferriby they seemed to have made a satisfactory investigation. Unless ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... 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 ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... 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. ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... the arrangement of observations into the perilous regions of metaphysics. Most scientific men return quickly, repelled and perhaps a little scared by the baffling confusion of that windy region of thought where no rules of logic seem incontrovertible, no conclusions tenable, and no discussions profitable. Huxley, however, not only entered into metaphysical questions with enthusiasm, but gave a great deal of time to the study of some of the great metaphysical writers. His views ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... Because most of the European biblical critics of the present day (the learned annotator on Michaelis' Introduction to the New Testament, Dr. Marsh, among others) frankly acknowledge it not to be tenable; and 2. Because it can be proved not to be so from the New Testament itself. For example, when John represents (Jo. xix. 28,) Jesus upon the cross saying, "'I thirst' that the scripture might be fulfilled," doth he not plainly represent Jesus as fulfilling a prophecy ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... 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 ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that early in the month of March Mr. Davis and General Lee had a consultation about the situation of affairs in and about and Petersburg, and they both agreed places were no longer tenable for them, and that they must get away as soon as possible. They, too, were waiting for dry roads, or a condition of the roads which would make it possible ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... centre of their souls. But some think that it is not only very desirable, but altogether indispensable—that any other course is an unwarrantable substitution of human wisdom for the explicit direction of the all-wise God. The reader must judge whether this position is tenable ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... incomprehensible. We may always be quite sure that no set of ideas ever produced this resounding effect on opinion, unless they contained something which the social or spiritual condition of the men whom they inflamed made true for the time, and true in an urgent sense. Is it not tenable that the state of certain savage tribes is more normal, offers a better balance between desire and opportunity, between faculty and performance, than the permanent state of large classes in western countries, the broken ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... in connection with the question under reply that "An English F.T.S." should know that the "Adepts" of the Good Law reject gravity as at present explained. They deny that the so-called "impact theory" is the only one that is tenable in the gravitation hypothesis. They say, that if all efforts made by the physicists to connect it with ether, in order to explain electric and magnetic distance-action have hitherto proved complete failures, it is again due to the race ignorance of the ultimate states of matter in Nature, and, ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... 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 ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper |
