"Conceivably" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Americans, it might have been said, could scarcely be so foolish as deliberately to renounce their spiritual birthright, or let it drift little by little away from them. But, on the other hand, virulent and inveterate political enmity, had it arisen, might quite conceivably have led the Americans to make it a point of honour to differentiate their speech from ours, as many Norwegians are at this moment making it a point of honour to differentiate their language from the Danish, which was until of late years the ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... no mistaking his meaning. He thought she had come there to see him,—ay, conceivably had planned this very situation! She started. It was like a slap in the face. Then she breathed once more, and realised that she had not drawn a breath since he entered the room. Her life had been standing still, ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... doing so. The stories of demons, and probably the murder of inquisitive people who tried to pry into what was going on, created such a dread of the place that those in the secret would come and go without the slightest difficulty. Conceivably, young men may from time to time have gone out for a year into the world and brought back wives with them, or girls may have been sent by the people in league with them outside, and obtained husbands, which ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... character of his principal theme, the author apparently sought to improve it by deepening its intensity. The result of this was to add more of weakness than of strength. Incidents that might have been effectively dramatic become melodramatic; the conceivably probable is sometimes strained into the obviously improbable. The agreeable finish to the minor love-story of Calverley and Miss Ffrench does not remove the general savour of sordidness which the reader ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... savage and isolated a tribe may be, it is impossible to prove that there has been no contact of that tribe with the outside civilized world. Conquest is not necessary to the introduction of a story or belief. The crew of a Portuguese trading-vessel with a genial narrator on board might conceivably be a much more successful transmitting-medium than a thousand praos full of brown warriors come to stay. Clearly the problem of analyzing and tracing the story-literature of the Christianized tribes differs only in degree from that connected with the Pagan tribes. In this volume I have ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... choose to make one of its rare displays of economy in a matter where a few thousand dollars saved means, in case our army should have anything to do, not only the utterly needless and useless loss of thousands of lives, but an enormous decrease of military efficiency, and might, conceivably, make all the difference between ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... eyebrows. I flushed, hurried out of the train and to my apartment where I fell into my chair, shocked and shaking. No doubt the body was that of Rumplestein. The poor little man! What did this mean? Could his story conceivably ...
— "To Invade New York...." • Irwin Lewis
... poor flute ought to be set adrift just because swelled cheeks weren't becoming to Pallas! The long and short of it is that he wants me to interfere, and convince Propertius of his public duty. That public duty may conceivably take the form of writing poetry is beyond ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... trouble of further consideration of the matter; and it is for this reason that I mention the practical difficulty first. I now find that I shall almost certainly be obliged to be out of England (and Scotland) for about three or four months, or conceivably a little more, beginning about the middle of January. I do not know what preliminary formalities would be demanded of me as a candidate, or when the demand for them would arise. But I was so strongly impressed with the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... produced a similar structural result. But no attempt is made to show any direct causal connection between the use of a bill to cut or tear flesh and the development of a tooth on the mandible. Such use might conceivably strengthen the bill or increase its size, but not cause a special tooth-like outgrowth which was not present in the ancestral thrush-like forms of the butcher-bird. On the other hand, it is clear that any variations of the bill tending towards a hook or tooth would give the possessor ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... self-governing democracy—it still seems, as it seemed to the men of 1893, impossible to agree to any "in and out" arrangement. Under such a plan the Government might possess a majority on Imperial or English affairs, while it could be out-voted on Irish affairs. Although such a situation might conceivably work for a time, it might come to a sudden deadlock in a moment of emergency. It seems best, therefore, that the 42 Irish members at Westminster should possess full voting powers. If any Liberal dreads the prospect of having 42 Irish members still possibly ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... the parallel instance of Robin et Marion. There the very form of the pastourelle was in a manner dramatic—it wanted little adjustment to be quite so; and though the coda of the rustic merry-making is rather artless, it is conceivably admissible. Here we are not far out of Chaos as far as dramatic arrangement goes. Adam's announced desertion of his wife and intended journey to Paris lead to nothing: the episodes or scenes of the doctor and the monk are connected with ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... (including Lord Crewe, Sir Edward Grey, Lord Morley, Mr. Lloyd George, and Lord Harcourt) attended regularly. The function of this committee was to consider strategical difficulties with which the nation might conceivably find itself confronted, and to work out the solutions. It was a committee the members of which were selected and summoned by the Prime Minister, to whom it was advisory. He determined the subjects to be investigated. Secrecy was of course essential, ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... the kids had fixed the place up pretty nicely. The unused warehouse had practically been made over into an apartment. There were chairs, beds, tables and everything else in the line of furnishings for which the kids could conceivably have any use. There were even some floor lamps scattered around, but they weren't plugged in. Malone guessed that a job would have to be done on the warehouse wiring to get the floor lamps in operation, and the kids just hadn't got around ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... continuing this article, and if I had, I have nothing of interest to say. No one's literary career can have been smoother or more unchequered than mine. I have published all my books at my own expense, and paid for them in due course. What can be conceivably more unromantic? For some years I had a little literary grievance against the authorities of the British Museum because they would insist on saying in their catalogue that I had published three sermons on ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... the parentheses all the connectives that might conceivably be used, and underscore the one which you consider to ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... boat's length of keel-mark, and it is just up above high-water mark. This craft, which appears to have been a small rowing-boat, was run ashore at high tide, or very near it, and run out again very quickly. It might conceivably have come in and been caught up by the sea. But Sholto was stolen between a quarter past eight and half-past nine, when the tide was well on the way out. If Sholto went out to sea it was not in ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... possible to suggest some fairly plausible motives which might conceivably have induced Grimm to blacken Rousseau's character, the case of Diderot presents difficulties which are quite insurmountable. Mrs. Macdonald asserts that Diderot was jealous of Rousseau. Why? Because he was tired ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... the Old Man of the Mountain, Aztec ruins, redwood forests, orange groves and at the end of the vista—like a statue at the end of a garden walk—she imagined a great democratic institution of learning where one might conceivably be prepared to solve some of those problems which life seems to take such deep delight in presenting to us, with the grim command, "Not one step farther shall you go until you have ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... Daisy; and—a promise to a dying person is a very solemn thing—I promised that I would do all that lay in my power so that Daisy should not know. Till yesterday I thought that promise would never come up. But it has. Daisy must not conceivably marry him. Also, she must not know why. There ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... of God is only possible by means of experience, in other words, by a process of reasoning based on observation, it will follow that such a knowledge may conceivably be acquired either by the way of inward or of outward experience; in other words, it may be attained either by reflecting on the processes of our own minds or by observing the processes of external nature. ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... stigma which is deserved by the drunkard and the thief. So difficult is it to arrange for this proposed valuation of a man's moral qualities that it has been proposed to get rid of all stigma by making it the right and duty of every one to take a pension. That might conceivably alter the praise, but it would surely not alter the praiseworthiness. It must be wrong in me to take money from my neighbours when I don't want it; and, if wrong, it surely ought to be disgraceful. And this seems to indicate the real point. We may aim at altering the facts, at making them more ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... was striving, in abstruse research, to live in forgetfulness of the loss. Little more, that is to say, than a twelvemonth after the composition of the second part of Christabel the impulse which gave birth to it had passed away for ever. Opium-taking had doubtless begun by this time—may conceivably indeed have begun nearly a year before—and the mere mood of the poem, the temporary phase of feeling which directed his mind inwards into deeper reflections on its permanent state, is no doubt strongly suggestive, ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... the patient's favour are obtained from examinations into the relative consecutiveness and consistency of thought in the individual examined, when the whole tendency of that thought is towards an end conceivably approvable by a majority of men. A great many philosophers and thinkers have accordingly been pronounced insane at one period of history and have been held up as models of sanity at another. The most immediately destructive consequences of individual reasoning on a limited scale, murder and ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... change, and the strongest forces in the country are the industrial, and the strongest leaders are the financiers. What the financiers and industrial managers most want is efficient, docile labor. The German system of education, in spite of the fact that we are different, might conceivably have that effect on the youth of this country. Under the pressure of industrial rivalry after the war, under the pressure of an imperial industrial policy, it may be that the people of the country will yield to the introduction of a scheme of education which it has been proved ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... the stricter sense of a preternatural enlightenment of the mind, it might conceivably be either by way of a real accretion of knowledge—an addition to the contents of the mind—or else by way of manipulating contents already there, as we ourselves do by reminiscence, by rumination, comparison, analysis, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... Religieuse, for all its drawbacks, is almost a great, and might conceivably have been a very great book. Madame d'Holbach is credited by Diderot's own generosity with having suggested its crowning mot,[381] and her influence may have been in other ways good by governing the force and fire, so often wasted or ill-directed, of Diderot's ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... frightful," I bleated. "Harris, this might conceivably be read by a real pilot. Heaven forbid, of course! And he'd simply hate this scout 'bus with the engine ahead to change into a 'pusher' two-seater in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... is commonly believed to be of earlier origin than his flat-coated relative, and he is of less pure descent. He probably owes ancestral tribute to the Poodle. Such a cross may conceivably have been resorted to by the early Retriever breeders, and there was little to lose from a merely sporting point of view from this alien introduction, for the Poodle is well known to be by nature, if not by systematic training, an excellent water dog, capable ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... ring was not in the serviette drawer of the sideboard. Renewed search was equally sterile.... At one moment Mrs. Maldon thought that she herself had seen the serviette and ring on the table early in the evening; but at the next she thought she had not. Conceivably Mr. Batchgrew had taken them in mistake. Yes, assuredly, he had taken them in mistake—somehow! And yet it was inconceivable that he had taken a serviette and ring in mistake. In mistake for ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... test. [Footnote: 'There is no distinction of meaning so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice.... It appears, then, that the rule for attaining the [highest] grade of clearness of apprehension is as follows: Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.' Charles S. Peirce: 'How to make our Ideas clear,' in Popular Science Monthly, New York, January, 1878, p. 293.] This is why metaphysical ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... object in respect to its bare quality and conformation" does not, of course, give the needed information, for objective beauty, of the character of this conformation or form. But yet, it might be said that the content of beauty might conceivably be deduced from the psychological conditions of absorption. In the same way, Santayana's "Beauty as objectified pleasure," or pleasure as the quality of a thing, is neither a determination of objective ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... should a camel attendant dare to know anything about them? Perhaps they were merely amusing themselves and each other by trying on all their gladdest clothes. There might be girls who would think this a good way to kill time in a storm. Yes, conceivably there might be such girls, just as there might be sea serpents; but, though Peter Rolls was too shy to have learned much about the female of his species, the explanation did not appeal to ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... then, with the characteristics of a man accustomed to face possibilities, to confront contingencies and emergencies beforehand, he saw himself face to face with a temptation. Should the emergency he contemplated arise, was there not a simple solution of it? She was quick-witted, she might quite conceivably guess at the existence of some riddle. Would not the tiniest hint suffice for her? The merest possible ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... physique unfitted him for that sort of delinquency. As the person of Hermann's niece exhaled the profound physical charm of feminine form, so her adorer's big frame embodied to my senses the hard, straight masculinity that would conceivably kill but would not condescend to cheat. The thing was obvious. I might just as well have suspected the girl of a curvature of the spine. And I perceived that the sun was about ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... the disciples, and then estimate the calm and calming power of that matter-of-fact and simple greeting. It bears upon its very front the mark of truth. Would anybody have imagined the scene so? There have been one or two great poets who might conceivably have risen to the height of putting such words under such circumstances into the mouths of creatures of their own imagination. Analogous instances of the utmost simplicity of expression in moments of intense feeling may be quoted from Aschylus or Shakespeare, and are regarded ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... sculpture. In the statues of most of the saints and popes it could not be more baroque; they swagger in their niches or over their tombs in an excess of decadent taste for which the most bigoted agnostic, however Protestant he may be, must generously grieve. It is not conceivably the taste of the church or the faith; it is the taste of the wicked world, now withered and wasted to powerlessness, which overruled both for evil in art from its evil life. The saints and the popes are, aesthetically, lamentable enough; but the allegories ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... moderately versed in the affairs of the Near East, could never have so unceremoniously dislocated Novibazar from its accustomed corner of the map. It was an answer which the Salvation Army captain might conceivably have made—and I made it. The circumstantial evidence connecting the Salvationist with the crime was overwhelmingly convincing, and I had inextricably identified myself with the Salvationist. And thus it comes to pass that in ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... to reject pusillanimous compromise in the sphere of execution, and to appeal to the peoples of the world to help him to carry it out, the last phase of his policy would have been worthy of the first, and might conceivably have inaugurated the triumph of the ideas which the indolent and the men of little faith rejected as incapable of realization. To this hardy course, which would have challenged the approbation of all that is best in the world, there was an alternative: Mr. Wilson might have confessed that his ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... impaired a little, of a truth, by this fact that their next encounter was rather markedly not to depend upon her. Yet this fact in turn would be accounted for by the need of more preliminaries. One of the things he conceivably should gain on Thursday at Lancaster Gate would be a further view of ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... high and progressive level of material welfare which capitalism has called into being, be chary to raze the existing economic system to the ground on the chance of building up a better one in its place. A reshuffling of the cards, which a revolution means, might conceivably yield him a better card, but then again it might make the entire stack worthless by destroying the stakes for which the game is played. But the revolution might not even succeed in the first round; then the ensuing reaction would probably ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... indifference made her feel safe. She wasn't really safe with Billy. His goodness might disarm her any minute, his sadness might conceivably move her to a tender weakness. But for McClane she would never have any personal feeling, never any fiery affection, any exalted devotion. Neither need she be afraid of any profound betrayal. Small betrayals perhaps, superficial disasters to her vanity, while his egoism rode over it in triumph. ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... sympatrically. Many groups of Hyla in this area (for example, the Hyla boans and Hyla marmorata groups) are equally as arboreal in their habits as are the species of Agalychnis in Central America. Conceivably, competition within this array of tree frogs resulted in selection for modification of the extremities, thereby bringing about a different mode of climbing in Phyllomedusa. The walking gait already ...
— The Genera of Phyllomedusine Frogs (Anura Hylidae) • William E. Duellman
... teeth. But whether in anger towards her discarded lover, or the black dress, she would have found it difficult to declare. Again uncertainty held her, suspicion of circumstance, and, in a degree, of herself. The lady's-maid, imperturbable, just conceivably impertinent, in manner, had risen ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... as coldly as I could wish. Evidently I was producing a thoroughly bad impression. At the same time nobody broke into whispered German, or made any comment that could conceivably be taken for a pass-word. I thought I would try ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... is, and how it came into existence. We are entitled to ask why the artificial stimulus, or the entry of the spermatozoon, produces the effects which it is claimed to produce instead of any one of some score of other effects which it might conceivably have produced. Above all we are entitled to ask why there are any effects, or even why there is any ovum or any spermatozoon or curious physiological investigator, to give the artificial stimulus. Until some light is thrown upon these things we are still within the system, or merely hovering ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... upon to replace it if it disappeared. There are, therefore, 18 Letters of Life and 18 Mirrors, which constituted two distinct Unities.'] Considering that Mirza Yaḥya was regarded as a 'return' of Ḳuddus, some preferment may conceivably have found its way to him. It was no contemptible distinction to be a member of the Second Unity, i.e. to be one of those who reflected the excellences of the older 'Letters of the Living.' As a member of the Second Unity and the accepted reflexion ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... us suppose for a moment (impossible supposition!) that mankind could conceivably divest itself of 'these foolish ideas about love and the tastes of young people,' and could hand over the choice of partners for life to a committee of anthropologists, presided over by Sir George Campbell. Would the committee ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... of our mathematical astronomy would not exist. Our calendar would still be in all essential respects as it is now; our year with the solstices and equinoxes as its cardinal points. The texture of our poetry might conceivably be the poorer without its star spangles; our philosophy, for the want of a nebular hypothesis. These would be the main differences. Yet, to those who indulge in speculative dreaming, how much smaller life would be with a sun and a moon and a blue beyond for the only visible, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... for a Titan's smoke, grew a trifle larger and somewhat irregular. Carving had conceivably injured Mr. Poynter's hearing, ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... fitted him very well, and a dark-blue shirt, which had a gay lacing of red cord in front, and a pair of suspenders that were a vivid green. On his head he wore a Chinese straw helmet; which was as ugly as anything could conceivably be, but he was as proud of it as he was of his green suspenders. In summer he wore no coat at all, and even in pretty cold weather he left his vest on his wagon seat, not being able to bring himself to the point of covering up the red and green ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... Colorado by the enthusiasm of her youthful brother, and there plunged (against her will) into the warfare of mountaineers and miners, a turbulence which her beloved brother would insist on sharing. Such a girl might conceivably find herself in the storm center of a contest such as that which had taken place on Bull Hill ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... to discover the exact number. You see, there must be a limit to the five-figure numbers having the peculiarity observed by the simpleton. And these are further limited by the fact that, as Mrs. Wadey states, the number began with the figure 1. We have therefore to find these numbers. It may conceivably happen that there is only one such number, in which case the thing is solved. But even if there are several cases, the owner of the actual car ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... extension comes back in the form of that area. Again, a very eminent mathematician and physicist—the late Clerk Maxwell—has declared that impenetrability is not essential to our notions of matter, and that two atoms may conceivably occupy the same space. I am loth to dispute any dictum of a philosopher as remarkable for the subtlety of his intellect as for his vast knowledge; but the assertion that one and the same point or area of space can have different (conceivably ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... opinion to the contrary, no man in such a position and with such a temperament ever gets something without claiming more—and more than he can conceivably or possibly get. Startled and pleased at first by the salutation which Lord Maxwell and his companion had bestowed upon him, Richard Boyce had passed his afternoon in resenting and brooding over the cold civility of ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... did not propose to submit the whole of my manhood to the trial. I was merely asserting my right to speak of certain things which, if one chose to exaggerate their importance by a too narrow and exclusive consideration of them, I might conceivably be thought to ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... came to rest in the Archives of the Court Theatre. The Court Theatre, standing in Sloane Square near the Tube station, is definitely outside the London theatre area, but as the scene of productions by the Stage Society, it is kept in the running. However, it might conceivably be the last port of call for ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... followed this with earnest attention, 'we are forced back on two other possibilities, which I had not thought worth much consideration until this moment. Accepting what you say, he might still conceivably have killed in self-defence; or he might have ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... introduce the King as the guest of the tanner; Hobs and his surroundings, Grudgen and Goodfellow, are presented with a comic and cordial fidelity which the painter of Falstaff's "villeggiatura," the creator of Shallow, Silence, and Davy, might justly and conceivably have approved. It is rather in the more serious or ambitious parts that we find now and then a pre-Shakespearean immaturity of manner. The recurrent burden of a jingling couplet in the cajoleries of the procuress Mrs. Blague is a survival from the most primitive and ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... utterly at a loss. He had no idea what had taken Varney up the road to Stanhope's that afternoon, much less of any shock that could conceivably have come to him. But he set himself to find out. By the next morning, partly through inquiry, partly through patching two and two together, he had worked out a theory. Guesswork, of course, was rather dangerous in a delicate matter such as this; ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... because the old lady had lately quarrelled with her own relatives, and never now asked any of her stuffy provincial cousins to share the dulness of Castle Gaverick and of the house in Brook Street. If she did not leave her money to Chris Gaverick, there was not, conceivably, anyone else to ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... conceivably might have happened—all things are possible—and being ingeniously related would somehow have answered a need in the human soul that the logic of events be constantly and conclusively demonstrated in the lives of individual men ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... the fortunate party is inclined to audacity and the unfortunate to moderate behavior, and accordingly, the timid party is wont to show temperance and the audacious intemperance. This was to be noted to an especial degree in that case." [Footnote: This may conceivably relate to Masinissa's marrying Sophoniba without authorization.] (Suidas ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... sir," said Mr. Balmy, interrupting him with great warmth, "he spoke of his father in heaven as endowed with attributes far exceeding any that can be conceivably ascribed to the air-god. The power of the air-god does not extend beyond our ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... such (still supposing that it is a scheme) as present remarkable evidences of design. These methods are, broadly speaking, miracles, prophecy and the results of the teaching, &c., upon mankind. Now one may show that no better methods could conceivably have been designed for the purpose of latter-day evidence, combined with moral and religious teaching throughout. The mere fact of it being so largely incorporated with secular history renders the Christian religion unique: so to speak, the ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... subsequent will duly executed is a revocation of a prior will, and it makes no difference whether an heir ever actually takes under it or not; the only question is whether one might conceivably have done so. Accordingly, whether the person instituted declines to be heir, or dies in the lifetime of the testator, or after his death but before accepting the inheritance, or is excluded by failure of the condition under which he was instituted—in all the cases the testator dies intestate; ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... Conceivably they might have developed inquiring minds. But this would have run against their strongest instincts. The ant is knowing and wise; but he doesn't know enough to take a vacation. The worshipper of energy is too physically energetic to see that he ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... her departure there was a certain difficulty, for Lulu developed a resolution to have her parents visit her at Saserkopee. Perhaps she wished to show them in what state she now lived; or it may conceivably be that, in her refined and determined manner, she was fond of her parents. She kissed them repeatedly and was gone with much waving of a handkerchief and yelps of "Now don't forget—you're you're to visit me—be sure and write—Harry, don't stick your ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... be called irreligious, as it would have to be called in Mr. Tylor's "minimum definition". Almost certainly, no race in this stage of belief in nothing but unconditioned but not expressly spiritual beings is extant. Yet such a belief may conceivably have existed before men had developed the theory of spirits at all, and such a belief, in creative and moral unconditioned beings, not alleged to be spiritual, could not be excluded from a definition ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... of tricks, walk in here with a shaky passport and no permit, with no knowledge of the natives outside of two paragraphs of inaccuracies in the Explorer's Guide, and even then you're not content to come in and sell something legitimate, something the natives might conceivably be able to use. No, nothing so simple for you. You have to pull your usual high-pressure stuff. And this time, buddy, ...
— Letter of the Law • Alan Edward Nourse
... practical purposes is the same as community of blood. To talk of "the Latin race" is in strictness absurd. We know that the so-called race is simply made up of those nations which adopted the Latin language. The Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic races may conceivably have been formed by a like artificial process. But the presumption is the other way; and if such a process ever took place, it took place long before history began. The Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic races come before ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... insurrectos. You could see it all there in the pictures—tobacco plants and the insurrectos—everything. They made no rash promises, just admitted straight out that the enterprise might realise 400 per cent. or might conceivably make less. There ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... taken for Dryfoos, so different from any attitude the peremptory old man would have conceivably taken for himself, made March smile. "Oh no. I fancy the boot is on the other leg. I suspect I've said some things your father can't overlook, Conrad." He called the young man by his Christian name partly to distinguish him from his father, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the irrationalities and puzzles which the absolute gives rise to, and from which the finite God remains free, are due to the fact that the absolute has nothing, absolutely nothing, outside of itself. The finite God whom I contrast with it may conceivably have almost nothing outside of himself; he may already have triumphed over and absorbed all but the minutest fraction of the universe; but that fraction, however small, reduces him to the status of a relative being, and in principle the universe is saved ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... inestimable privilege of supplying him with coffee at odd moments, under threat of the bastinado if the stuff were not suitably sweet and hot. The only money that ever changed hands in that connection was when the tax-gatherer came down on Yussuf for an extra levy, because of the added trade that conceivably might be expected to accrue through the advertisement obtained by serving such an exalted customer. The tax-gatherer also threatened the bastinado; and as the man who likes that punishment, or who could soften the heart of a Turkish ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... pennies, which you were concealing to save him from a police prosecution for coining, the tradesman may even be so wayward as to institute a police prosecution himself. Now this is not in any way an exaggeration of the way in which you have knocked the bottom out of any case you may ever conceivably have had in such matters as the sinking of the Lusitania. With my own eyes I have seen the following explanations, apparently proceeding from your pen, (i) that the ship was a troop-ship carrying soldiers from Canada; (ii) that if it wasn't, ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... I will not believe you when you tell me what I know to be untrue. I will not believe you when you say that you did not all set forth under my authority and out of my house. The other three may conceivably have told the truth; but this last man has certainly lied. Therefore I will kill him." And with that the old and gentle king ran at the man with uplifted sword; but he was arrested by the roar of happy laughter, which told the world that there is, after all, ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... afflicted with a delusion. He is punished for false pretences, because his assertion is credible and therefore misleading. Just so, the claim to divinity made by Jesus was to the High Priest, who looked forward to the coming of a Messiah, one that might conceivably have been true, and might therefore have misled the people in a very dangerous way. That was why he treated Jesus as an imposter and a blasphemer where we should have treated him as ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... for a moment. Finally he wrote, "Actually my writing may not be as serious as the title implies. Misunderstandings conceivably arise over titles. Instead of The Rise and Fall of the Western Plainsman, how about changing it to Those ...
— Droozle • Frank Banta
... upon Royal proclamations under the authority of the Council. Injunctions were issued for the destruction of "abused" images which term was liberally interpreted so as to cover stained glass, paintings, and carvings which might conceivably be regarded as objects of idolatry—that is to say, become in themselves objects of worship instead of being recognised as mere symbols: a process which unless conducted with the most studied moderation and caution was absolutely certain to give the ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... into logical coaches and letting yourself be carried away in them." I think this was provoked by a very undergraduate essay arguing that Truth, as actually realised, was uninteresting, while the possible forms of Falsehood, as conceivably realisable in other circumstances, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... thinks that though design is present everywhere, the irresistible evidence of it is to be found not in the laws of nature but in the collocations, i.e., in the part of nature in which it is impossible to trace any law. A few properties of dead matter might, he thinks, conceivably account for the regular and invariable succession of effects and causes; but that the different kinds of matter have been so placed as to promote beneficent ends, is what he regards as the proof of a Divine Providence. Mr. Baden Powell, in his Essay entitled "Philosophy of Creation," ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... pepper-plaster to the gum the light fell on his face, and I recognised Mr. Emanuel Pyecroft, late second-class petty officer of H.M.S. Archimandrite, an unforgettable man, met a year before under Tom Wessel's roof in Plymouth. It occurred to me that when a petty officer takes to spurs he may conceivably meditate desertion. For that reason I, though a taxpayer, made no sign. Indeed, it was Mr. Pyecroft, following me out of the shop, who said hollowly: "What might ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... kinds of social reform, one of which might conceivably free us at last while the other would certainly enslave us forever, are exhibited in an easy working model in the two efforts that have been made for the soldiers' wives—I mean the effort to increase their allowance and the effort to curtail ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... seems to give the moderns an excellent opinion of themselves. But suppose the men of the thirteenth century could turn the tables upon us, and, from their point of view, pass their judgment upon the daily life of the conventuals of St. James's, who are, after all, only survivals, but just conceivably not quite survivals of the fittest; would the monks of old find all things quite up to the highest ideal, or would they hide their heads in shame and confusion of face compelled to acknowledge that the new is in all things so much ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... volunteering, and instead he went and was duly sworn and entrusted with the badge of a special constable. The duties of a special constable were chiefly not to understand what was going on in the military sphere, and to do what he was told in the way of watching and warding conceivably vulnerable points. He had also to be available in the event of civil disorder. Mr. Britling was provided with a truncheon and sent out to guard various culverts, bridges, and fords in the hilly country to the north-westward of Matching's Easy. It was never very clear to him what he would do if ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... who runs across it, looks for diamonds, though he may find none. But he who hunts for them on the rock-ribbed hills of New Hampshire or the sea-sands of Florida is doing a foolish thing—although even there he may conceivably pick up one that ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... recent than the Waterloo year, and he at least had heard no whisper of the story. It lay outside the purpose of his inquiry, and he judiciously omitted it from his report. But the time is past when its publication might conceivably have been injurious; and with some alterations in the names—to carry out the disguise of the Regiment—it is here given. The reader will understand that I use the IPSISSIMA ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... as a light-week out in space. No ship with a crippled drive could possibly be helped unless it got to a specified refuge world where it could be found. No ship which had reached a refuge planet could conceivably ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... conceivable!" laughed his brother. "And now suppose that I had a confidential man—a secretary, we'll say—and I paid him twenty thousand a year, and he saw chances to make a hundred thousand in an hour—don't you think he might conceivably try it?" ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... present security at the price of ultimate danger. And if they had been as weak as the King of Greece, as subservient as the King of Bulgaria, they would have had to reckon with a very different people from the Bulgars and the Greeks—a nation that might quite conceivably have turned Italy into a republic and ranged her beside her Latin sister on the north in the world struggle. The path of peace was in no way the path of prudence for the House ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... Mrs. Eastham to pursue her theory. It was plain that she regarded the Italian as a man who might conceivably be the murderer of his wife's brother. This was enough for ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... said the Frenchman, "what else may I conceivably do? We are some miles from your home, most beautiful lady,—can you ride those four long miles alone? in this night so dangerous? Can I leave you here alone in this so tall forest? He, surely not. I am desolated, ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... position which this young man occupies, and it is not made any easier for him, I imagine, by the knowledge that, should he make a false step, should he arouse the enmity of certain of the powerful factions which surround him, the fate of his predecessor and namesake, King Alexander, might quite conceivably befall him. ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... site of Boston or in the streets of Paris—had laid the foundations of his faith and his courage on the Susquehanna, for example! In any one of these contingencies there might have been a more prosperous Acadia. New England might conceivably have become Nouvelle France, and New York City might be bearing to-day the name of ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... had spoken to everybody and when he at last was introduced, sprang to his feet and came forward, beaming so intently from behind his spectacles that Gregory, fearing that he might, conceivably, be about to kiss him, made an involuntary gesture of withdrawal. But Herr Lippheim, all unaware, grasped his hand the more vigorously. "Our little Karen's husband!" "Unserer kleinen Karen's Mann!" he uttered in a deeply ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the orchard again, he worked feverishly, possessed by a pleasant thrill of excitement, somewhat similar to that conceivably enlivening the humdrum existence of Captain Kidd. Dick was far from surprised when his spade struck something hard, and, his hands trembling with eagerness, he lifted out a tin box of the kind commonly used ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... horses, to the Army. We began the War with twenty-five thousand horses, and we finished it with considerably more than a million, to say nothing of the mules, who diffused an air of cynical amusement over the military proceedings in which they were compelled to bear a part. This may conceivably be one more proof in Mr. WELLS'S eyes of our incurable stupidity. But those who have watched the work of our armies at close quarters will be the last to agree with him. Captain GALTREY in fact proves his case. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... this present lecture, whatever its intellectual worth to you, has a certain physical value to me, which is, conceivably, expressible by the number of grains of protoplasm and other bodily substance wasted in maintaining my vital processes during its delivery. My peau de chagrin will be distinctly smaller at the end of the discourse than it ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... interval of readjustment in the centers of eye-muscle sensation the way is closed to oncoming discharges from the color-centers; but it is certain that any such discharge, during this complicated process of readjustment, would take the localization-centres by surprise, as it were, and might conceivably result in untoward eye-movements highly prejudicial to the safety of the individual as a whole. The much more probable ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... been privileged with some intimate glances into the greatest of those peculiarly American institutions, the big departmental stores. Materially it is an immense building, containing all things that any upper-middle-class person could conceivably want. Such a store includes even Art, with the same bland omnipotence. If you wander into the vast auditorium, it is equal chances whether you hear a work of Beethoven, Victor Herbert, Schonberg, or Mr Hirsch. If you are 'artistic,' you ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... of the meaning and folly of what he heard. And his awakening had not been natural! Was that an old man's senile superstition, too, or had it any truth in it? Feeling in the dark corners of his memory, he presently came on something that might conceivably be an impression of some such stimulating effect. It dawned upon him that he had happened upon a lucky encounter, that at last he might learn something of the new age. The old man wheezed a while and spat, and then ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... do not speak to me. I implore you to withhold your opinion. I am not strong enough to bear it. I could never have believed it. Is this a play? Is this in any sense of the word, Art? Is it agreeable? Can it conceivably do good to any human being? Is it delicate? Do such people really exist? Excuse me, gentlemen: I speak from a wounded heart. There are private reasons for my discomposure. This play implies obscure, unjust, unkind reproaches and menaces to all of ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... guest than either Lady Ambermere or the Guru; surely Olga Bracely was enough to set this particular garden-party on the giddiest of pinnacles. And an awful consequence lurked as a possibility if she attempted to force her Guru not to immune himself in solitude and quiet, which was that conceivably he might choose to go back to the pit whence he was digged, namely the house of poor Daisy Quantock. The thought was intolerable, for with him in her house, she had seen herself as dispenser of Eastern Mysteries, and ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... man involved closely in the practical management of a saw log may conceivably possess scant leisure to correlate the scattered efforts of such divergent activities. The cross cutters and swampers may get ahead of the fellers and have to wait in idleness until the latter have ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... however, is equally incapable of being proved by an appeal to experience. Experience might conceivably confirm the inductive principle as regards the cases that have been already examined; but as regards unexamined cases, it is the inductive principle alone that can justify any inference from what has been examined to what has not been examined. All ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... theory of the "Origin of Species," much as I value that which is known as the Darwinian theory. That the doctrine of natural selection presupposes evolution is quite true; but it is not true that evolution necessarily implies natural selection. In fact, evolution might conceivably have taken place without the development of groups ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... "I don't want to pile up the agony. Besides," she added, with an obvious effort, "I must be honest. I—I know I have given you reason to think meanly of me—vilely! But, don't you see, Mark, I—I have done with all that. I was never so anxious to make the best of myself. Not that it can conceivably matter." ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... for any mother to receive the news that her son is in love with any woman and wants to marry her. Mrs. Dyckman must learn that her adored child had transferred his loyalty to a foreigner, a girl she had never seen, could not conceivably have selected, and could never approve. Even the Prodigal Son, when he went home, did not bring a wife with him. Ten to one if he had brought one she would have got no veal—or if she got it she would not have ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... someone who is, we will suppose, an avenger, someone from outside. This avenger, for some reason which I confess I am still at a loss to explain, took the dead man's wedding ring. The vendetta might conceivably date back to the man's first marriage, and the ring be taken for ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... yielded a surer return than the tilling of the soil. The pasture lands of Sicily were indeed large, but they had not yet dwarfed the agriculture of the island. The labour of the fields was in the hands of a vast horde of Asiatics, large numbers of whom may conceivably have been shipped from Carthage across the narrow sea, when that great centre of the plantation system had been laid low and the fair estates of the Punic nobles had been seized and broken up by their conquerors.[265] In the history of the great Sicilian outbreaks Syrians ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... been adults, and had Mike the Angel behaved the way he did, he might conceivably have died that night. As it was, the kids ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... road. A windmill or two, the inevitable irrigation canals with their little sluices, and an occasional tree alone broke the monotony of the scene. But away to the right Robin noticed a clump of trees which, he surmised, might conceivably enclose ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... unity of Germany, as recognized in 1871, to be regarded as an accident, the creation of one man, promoted, for that matter ungrudgingly, to the rank of the "greatest European statesman," but whose work, being that of an individual, and therefore accidental, might quite conceivably be eventually undone. Sybel's theory, being official and Bismarckian, puts forth in truth the French conception, and is, as a matter of fact, the very opposite ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... remark about belief,—well, there might or might not be something in that; perhaps there was something in it. One instant he admired it, and the next he judged it glib and superficial. Moreover, he had conceivably absorbed it from a book. But even if it were an original epigrammatic pearl—was that an adequate reason for her following him to an empty house at dead of night? Of course, an overwhelming passion might justify such behaviour! He could recall cases in literature... ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... minor matters, by the properest logic, devolved therefore upon Maggie, in whose chords and whose province they more naturally lay. Not less naturally, by the same token, they included the repair, at the hands of the latter young woman, of every stitch conceivably dropped by Charlotte in Eaton Square. This was homely work, but that was just what made it Maggie's. Bearing in mind dear Amerigo, who was so much of her own great mundane feather, and whom the homeliness in question didn't, no doubt, quite equally provide for—that ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... Canada and South America, British fools who dream about Africa and the East; aggressionists in the blood, people who can no more let nations live in peace than kleptomaniacs can keep their hands in their own pockets. But quite conceivably there are honest monarchs and sane foreign ministers very ready to snatch at the chance of swamping the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... that the English soldiers, thoughtless though they may be, would not stoop to this sort of purposeless outrage. I do not like to accuse the colonial troops as a whole either, although I suspect that some of them, some whose own homes had been destroyed by the enemy, might conceivably have taken vengeance in kind. It is thought by many whose opinion is valuable that the Kaffirs were here, as in Natal, responsible for much of the damage; and that is a view which one would willingly take, for it would acquit English-speaking troops of a miserable ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... to perceive time intervals; {439} and to distinguish an interval of a second from one of a second and a quarter. How in the world can any one perceive time? Time is no force that could conceivably act as a stimulus to a sense organ. It must be some change or process that is the stimulus and that serves as the indication of duration. Most likely, it is some muscular or internal bodily change, ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... then, that the supposition "I asserts" necessarily leads to "A asserts, but E does not". And this is the first of the various views that may conceivably be held. ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... obtained permission to see them, and I've compared everything carefully. I repudiate the possibility of forgery. No sign of genuineness is wanting; there are details, down to the very postmarks, that no forger could have invented. Besides, whose interest could it conceivably have been? A labor of unspeakable difficulty, and all for what advantage? There are so many letters, ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... serious case, well and ably put, and the evidence embodied in it is very disquieting. Here at any rate is a book which makes the native agitation intelligible and may conceivably have an influence on future events in South Africa — and at home, for by no legal fiction can the Imperial power dissociate itself from responsibility for ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... of wheat or corn and of the American demand for English manufactures compels a new ratio of trade (expressed in prices). It is conceivable that trading fewer goods with a larger gain on each trade would give a larger total of gain to the favored nation. Thus, foreigners may conceivably be compelled to pay a part of the tariff duties to enjoy the favored market. This is but a special case of the monopoly principle; the government by law artificially limits the supply of goods offered by ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... Bay. The data were too meager and the base line too short for this long projection, and the indicated source of the diamonds can be regarded as the merest speculation. However, with the finding of additional diamonds in the drift, as seems very likely, the refinement of this method might conceivably bring results ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... The words might conceivably be taken to represent a very natural filial anxiety, but the voice was reminiscent of the consolation of Job. Mr. Walkingshaw had always been able to inspire his children with a respect so profound that it was a little difficult at times to distinguish it from awe. Even Andrew ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... I hung about irresolute, wondering how long an embassy of that sort would take, and whether Fyne on coming out would consent to be communicative. I feared he would be shocked at finding me there, would consider my conduct incorrect, conceivably treat me with contempt. I walked off a few paces. Perhaps it would be possible to read something on Fyne's face as he came out; and, if necessary, I could always eclipse myself discreetly through ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... plans of men. I may perhaps mention here that very recently I had come an ugly cropper in certain business enterprises. Sitting now surrounded by all the circumstances of wealth, there is a luxury in admitting my extremity. I can admit, even, that to a certain extent my disasters were conceivably of my own making. It may be there are directions in which I have some capacity, but the conduct of business operations is not among these. But in those days I was young, and my youth among other objectionable forms took that of a pride in my capacity for affairs. I am young still in years, but ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... disliked him it could not be merely on account of the Simla story, even though the old maid might conceivably have given her a jaundiced account. The Duchess knew nothing of Aileen, and was little influenced, so far as he had observed her, by considerations of abstract justice or propriety, affecting persons whom she ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... episodic; others are rather to be described as abridgments of epic than as separate epic scenes. But neither in the one case nor in the other is there to be found the kind of poetry that is required by the hypothesis of composite epic. There are short epics that might conceivably have served as the framework, or the ground-plan, of a more elaborate work, containing, like the Lay of Helgi or the Lay of Brynhild, incidents enough and hints of character enough for a history fully worked out, as large ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... upon that which an eighteenth century portrait would conceivably possess, should witchcraft ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... of 1882-84. In these Municipalities even more than in the higher Councils the new educated Indian comes to the front. According to the roll of voters, it is property that enjoys the municipal franchise; emphatically so, for a wealthy citizen of Calcutta might conceivably cast three hundred votes for his Municipality throughout the twenty-five wards of the city; but they are English-speaking Indians in all cases who are returned as members. Politically, this is the ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... sentries on the ground and snoopers in the air. Like Paul Meillard, Luis Gofredo was a worrier and a pessimist. Everything happened for the worst in this worst of all possible galaxies, and if anything could conceivably go wrong, it infallibly would. That was probably why he was still alive and had never had ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... that Sir Simon was still unusually agitated from the scene he had recently passed through, to say nothing of the vague foreboding caused by the knowledge that Mr. Learned Bore might conceivably do anything within the next few days. There is a possibility that his hand trembled; whatever may have been the cause, as Sir Simon lifted the little Dick Whittington from the table, he let it fall. As it crashed upon the hard polished floor it broke into a dozen pieces, and the merry ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... ourselves, nor is it possible for us to think seriously of anything so unlike ourselves as to consist either of soul without body, or body without soul. Unmattered condition, therefore, is as inconceivable by us as unconditioned matter; and we must hold that all body with which we can be conceivably concerned is more or less ensouled, and all soul, in like manner, more or less embodied. Strike either body or soul— that is to say, effect either a physical or a mental change, and the harmonics of the other sound. So long ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... shame, and remorse, and vexation. Miss Smith-Waters could hardly be expected to understand that if Herminia had thought her conduct in the faintest degree wrong, or indeed anything but the highest and best for humanity, she could never conceivably have allowed even that loving heart of hers to hurry her into it. For Herminia's devotion to principle was not less but far greater than Miss Smith-Waters's own; only, as it happened, the principles ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... like ourselves can apprehend it, only in and through flesh can it be made manifest to us at all. The flesh and the shop will return no matter with how many pitchforks we expel them, for we cannot conceivably expel them thoroughly; therefore it is better not to be too hard upon them. And yet this same flesh cloaks genius at the very time that it reveals it. It seems as though the flesh must have been on and must have gone clean off before genius can be discerned, and also that ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... to leave it and go somewhere else. In the same spirit the Turk talks quite pleasantly of leaving Constantinople some day, he will go over to Asia and found another capital. One can hardly imagine Englishmen speaking like that of London, but they might conceivably speak so of Calcutta.... The Turk is a conqueror and nothing else. The history of the Turk is a catalogue of battles. His contributions to art, literature, science and religion, are practically nil. Their desire has not been to instruct, to improve, hardly even to govern, but simply ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... the barbaric with the civilised beliefs and experiences about a region so dimly understood, and so fertile in potent influences. Here the topic will be examined rather by the method of anthropology than of psychology. We may conceivably have something to learn (as has been the case before) from the rough observations and hasty inferences of ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... would have dictated such a careful respect for private rights and such a deference to native traditions as might conceivably have weakened the determination of the Belgians to resist to the death those who had violated their national independence. But Prussia is incapable of such a policy. In any territory which she occupies, whether temporarily or permanently, ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... The editor quite conceivably agreed with him. He returned the manuscript with a rejection slip. Anthony sent it off elsewhere and began another story. The second one was called "The Little Open Doors"; it was written in three days. It concerned the occult: an estranged couple were brought ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... desired to organize the Maori as a community dwelling apart from the Pakeha on ample and carefully secured territories. Had the Maori race numbered 500,000 instead of 50,000, and been capable of uniting under him for any purpose whatever, he might conceivably have established a counterpart to Basutoland. But the scanty dwindling tribes could not be welded together. New Zealand was, as she is, the land of jealousies, local and personal. It would seem as though every change of wind brought fresh rivalry and division. The Waikato chiefs ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... aspiration, however universal, is likely to prove quite ineffective. Of course, it is possible to suggest that the Hague Tribunal is conceivably the germ of such an overriding direction and supreme court as the peace of the world demands, but in reality the Hague Tribunal is a mere legal automatic machine. It does nothing unless you set it in motion. It has no initiative. It does not even protest against the most obvious ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... do but follow? Her foot was well on his neck; and it occurred to him as he rummaged miserably among canisters that if the creature should take it into her head to marry him he might conceivably have to let her do it. As it was it was he and not Annalise who took the kettle out to the pump to fill it, and her face while he was doing it would have rejoiced her parents or other persons to whom she was presumably dear, it was wide with so enormous a satisfaction. ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim |
