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More "Impossibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who invariably marries a butterfly, if he can find one to make him miserable. He was exceedingly patient; but after the birth of little Broona, Adeline became so homesick and depressed and discontented that, although the journey was almost an impossibility at the time, Gerald took her back to her people, and left her with them, while he returned to his duties at Trinity College. Their life, I suppose, had been very unhappy for a year or two before this, and when he came home to Dublin without his children, he looked a sad and ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... experiment he had recently started. Realizing the importance of making known to this influential element the best that Christian civilization has to offer, but well aware of the difficulty, indeed, the impossibility, of meeting them through the ordinary channels of missionary effort, Mr. Davidson hit upon the idea of starting a social club where men of standing, Christian and non-Christian, European as well as Chinese, might mingle on an equal footing. ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... which, while the engagement was going on, I had sent out to look up fords. This means of getting out from the circumscribed plateau I did not wish to use, however, unless there was no alternative, for I wished to demonstrate to the Cavalry Corps the impossibility of the enemy's destroying or capturing so large a ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... the animal; and, what with the noise made by the crocodile itself, the screams and shouts of the party, the yelling of the various birds—for they, too, had taken up the cue—there was for some moments an utter impossibility of any voice being heard above the rest. It was, indeed, a scene of confusion. Don Pablo and his companions were running to and fro—Guapo was tumbling about where he had fallen—and the great lizard was writhing and flapping his tail, so that pots, pans, half-burnt faggots, and ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... he affirmed calmly. "I am living in exile because I have no friends, because friends have become an impossibility to me. I shall not tell you any more of my life because you are young and you would not believe me if I did. Some day," he added grimly, "you will ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was able to adhere to that resolve, but I solemnly declare it made him no less dreadful. Sometimes I tried to ignore him, but that was a sheer impossibility. Very often I flouted him and jeered at him, mocked him with his own unreality, and dared him to carry out his constant threat and strike. But all day and every day, and in all the many sleepless watches of my nights, he kept me company, and every hour the threatened blow ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... instance, we see before our eyes the whole process by which a real race has been transformed into an unreal impossibility, within a period of two centuries or so. Had the extinction (or modification by inter-marriage or by the processes of evolution) of those Yesso dwarfs taken place a thousand years earlier, the difficulty ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie
... buzz of comment. Mr. Hopper announced to Mr. Barbo, the book-keeper, that he should not be there after four o'clock. To be sure, times were more than dull. The Colonel that morning had read over some two dozen letters from Texas and the Southwest, telling of the impossibility of meeting certain obligations in the present state of the country. The Colonel had gone home to dinner with his brow furrowed. On the other hand, Mr. Hopper's equanimity was spoken of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Julian the Apostate (361-363) is important in the history of the Christian Church, in the first place, as indicating the slight hold which heathenism had retained as a system upon the bulk of the people and the impossibility of reviving it in any form in which it might compete with the Church. Julian attempted to inject into a purified heathenism those elements in the Christian Church which he was forced to admire. The result was a fantastic mixture of rites and ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... both English and Irish, and forbidding landowners to keep larger bands of armed men than were necessary for self-defence. But the Ersefied barons on whom he relied refused to obey the new laws; they renounced their allegiance and joined the rebellious Celtic tribes. Then the king, seeing the impossibility of carrying out his scheme for pacifying the whole of Ireland, was reduced to the expedient of dividing the country into two; leaving the larger part of it for the natives and degenerate English to misgovern as they pleased according to ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... would be the result of this. It appears to me that the inevitable consequence of the convergence of the particles towards the centre of gravity of such a nebulous mass would not only result in the formation of nucleus, but by reason of the physical impossibility that all the converging particles should arrive at the focus of convergence in directions perfectly radial and diametrically opposite to each other, however slight the degree of deviation from the absolute diametrically opposite direction in which the converging particles coalesce ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... necessity of learning foreign languages, which at our time of life would be difficult. During all our travels we have not been to Paris before, owing to the impossibility of finding a personally-conducted tour of ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... camp was a strong but rudely-erected log-house, that served the purpose of a council-chamber, and in this the prisoner, having been so bound as to render escape, unaided, a matter of impossibility, was left, while the warriors dispersed to their wigwams in search of refreshment and repose. A large fire burned in front of the council-hall, which gave forth so bright a glare, that any one leaving or entering its precincts could scarcely ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... be glorified, and, so to speak, annotated by religious ceremonies, becomes something to be hidden or decried. Ignored it may be. Decried it may be; but it will not be denied. That is a practical impossibility in the case of so powerful and so pervasive a fact as sex. We may disguise its expression, but only too often the disguise is the equivalent of undesirable ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... entirely dispersed, rushed towards the town. Few of them entered Quebec; they went down the heights of Abraham opposite the Intendant's Palace (past St. John's gate) directing their course to the hornwork, and following the borders of the River St. Charles. Seeing the impossibility of rallying our troops I determined myself to go down the hill at the windmill near the bake house [290] and from thence across over the meadows to the hornwork resolved not to approach Quebec from my apprehension ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... pay—that says everything! Ask them for money for an old servant!—What can you expect of men who pay a whole class so badly as they pay the Government legal officials?—who give thirty sous a day to the laborers on the works at Toulon, when it is a physical impossibility to live there and keep a family on less than forty sous?—who never think of the atrocity of giving salaries of six hundred francs, up to a thousand or twelve hundred perhaps, to clerks living in Paris; and who want to secure our places for themselves as soon as the pay rises to ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... plan for some sea expedition he had in view, and sent orders to Lord Anson to see the necessary arrangements taken immediately. Mr. Cleveland was sent from the Admiralty to remonstrate on the impossibility of obeying them. He found his lordship in the most excruciating pain, from one of the most severe fits of the gout he had ever experienced. "Impossible, sir," said he, "don't talk to me of impossibilities": and then, raising himself upon his legs, while the sweat stood in large drops upon his ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... the enstrangement between you and my father, but now I am wiser, I see the reason of it. I know how impossible it would be to combine the social duties of a man in your position with continued intimate relations with your old home. The impossibility of it even now hampers me, uncle, and I feel that it will be well for me to break away from the old surroundings if I am ever to make my way up the ladder of life. Your generous intentions towards me smooth this difficulty, and I can only thank you again, ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... Livy or the annalist whom he followed make this alteration? For an obvious reason: a person may ride from Rome to Alba in a couple of hours, so that the detention of the Alban ambassadors at Rome for thirty days, without their hearing what was going on in the mean time at Alba, was a matter of impossibility. Livy saw this, and therefore altered the formula. But the ancient poet was not concerned about such things, and without hesitation increased the distance in his imagination, and represented Rome ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... with laughter at the ludicrous incident, choking so that speech had become an utter impossibility. By this time the aroused guards began hurrying forward on a run down the passageway to rescue their imperilled comrade, yet, before the foremost succeeded in laying hands upon me, a newcomer, resplendent in glittering uniform, with an inflamed, almost ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... Providence she was refreshed by calls upon her of several abolitionists, among them a cotton manufacturer and his son, Quakers, with whom she had a long talk, not knowing their business. She discussed the use of slave-labor, and descanted on the impossibility of any man being clean-handed enough to work in the anti-slavery cause so long as he was making his fortune by dealing in slave-labor products. These two gentlemen afterwards became ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... No two persons, by any correct system of reckoning, could arrive at a result which would imply a physical impossibility; and it is needless to say that the concurrence of A.M. and P.M. at the same time and place would come under that designation. What ESTE should have said is, that both persons meeting {649} together on the same day, if it be reckoned ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... the way in which words forget, or under predisposing conditions might forget, the circumstances of their birth. Now if we could believe in any merely arbitrary words, standing in connexion with nothing but the mere lawless caprice of some inventor, the impossibility of tracing their derivation would be nothing strange. Indeed it would be lost labour to seek for the parentage of all words, when many probably had none. But there is no such thing; there is no word which is not, as the Spanish gentleman loves to call himself, an 'hidalgo,' ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... without food or shelter would be death to all, for there was no living creature there to be shot or trapped. On the other hand, to travel a hundred miles or so on foot—and without food, seemed an impossibility. Love, however, ignores the impossible! The two young men resolved on the attempt. They were pretty well aware of the extent of their physical powers. They would put them fairly to the test for once—even though for the last time! They prepared for the old man and his daughter a shelter in ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... depths of human suffering and call on death to end their woes. No pen can fully describe the horrors of that time. When summer and autumn crops had failed the rains were still withheld, and despair seized on all as they saw the impossibility of sowing the wheat ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... a sociological impossibility that a majority of an unorganized class should unite in concerted demand for a right, a duty, which they ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... Blackletter which still survives in the common German text of to-day. Thus, though a Gothic letter may not be a Blackletter, a Blackletter is always Gothic, because it is constructed upon Gothic lines. On the other hand, a Roman Blackletter would be an obvious impossibility. The very essential and fundamental quality of a Roman letter lies in the squareness or circularity of its ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... doubts except Sir W. Herschel, who simply denied that the two rings were divided into many, as Laplace's theory required. As time went on and the signs of many divisions were at times recognised, it was supposed that Laplace's reasoning had been justified; and despite the utter impossibility of the arrangement he had suggested, that arrangement was ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... fellow we found him), who had acquired a large fortune in the West-Indies, and was then going home, having embarked on board his whole property, as well as his wife and his only son, a youth of about seventeen. As soon as he discovered what we were, and the impossibility of escape from so fast a sailing vessel as the Revenge, he resolved to fight us to the last. Indeed, he had every thing to fight for; his whole property, his wife and his only child, his own liberty, and perhaps life, were all at stake, and he had ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... the mob quietly at work, while we amuse ourselves; and the necessity for this amusement is fastening on us as a feverous disease of parched throat and wandering eyes—senseless, dissolute, merciless. How literally that word Dis-Ease; the Negation and impossibility of Ease, expresses the entire moral state of our English Industry and ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... in the cash-box, after we have got out of debt. Then there was the sad necessity of writing letters in my husband's name to the rich people who were ready to employ him, telling them of the affliction that had overtaken him, and of the impossibility of his executing their orders for portraits for the next six months to come. And, lastly, there was the heart-breaking business for me to go through of giving our landlord warning, just as we had got comfortably settled in our new abode. If William could only have gone on with his work, we ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... impossibility for Dumont to believe that Scarborough could really be sincere in a course which was obviously unprofitable. Therefore he attached even more importance to Arabella's cordiality than did Gladys herself. And, when the Legislature adjourned ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... assistance. He has spoken to all the Ministers, collectively and individually, and has recommended the granting of my petition in the strongest manner, pointing out the terrible condition of the people at present who are without religious instruction of any kind, and the impossibility of exercising any species of government over a nation of atheists, which the Spaniards will very shortly become if left to themselves. Whether moved by his arguments or by a wish to oblige a person of so much importance as the British ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... Jack replied in a long speech, in which he pointed out the impossibility of our complying with the king's request under present circumstances, and the absolute necessity of our returning at some period or other to our native land to tell our people of the wonders we had seen in the great country of King Jambai. ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... saw with pleasure preparing himself for a journey which might dissipate his melancholy; scarcely had the comte's gentlest horse been saddled and brought to the door, than the father of Raoul felt his head become confused, his legs give way, and he clearly perceived the impossibility of going one step farther. He ordered himself to be carried into the sun; they laid him upon his bed of moss, where he passed a full hour before he could recover his spirits. Nothing could be more natural than this weakness after the inert repose ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... understand the impossibility of this division of his own being, but the more eagerly he did so the greater became ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... I did not understand then the impossibility, the great gulf fixed. I dreamed that good fortune might give me ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... not get the idea that he can still continue the uses of civilization. For the most part he will have to live pretty well as a Chinese the whole time, and he will find, as I found, that it is easy to give up a thing when you know the impossibility ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... He had a large amount of money in notes upon him, but this he managed to hand unnoticed to a civilian friend. As a prisoner he was taken to Washington. Being a first-class misdemeanant, he was allowed to patrol the streets, which, however, were closely watched, and it seemed an impossibility for him to pass the sentinels. But John had knocked about the world a good deal, and had had his wits sharpened, and by a "theatrical stratagem" he managed to evade the outposts and to make his escape. He stopped at a ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... Words such as 'mumble', 'sigh', and 'groan' are spoken in places where their referent might more naturally be used. It has been suggested that this usage derives from the impossibility of representing such noises on a comm link or in electronic mail (interestingly, the same sorts of constructions have been showing up with increasing frequency in comic strips). Another expression sometimes heard is "Complain!", meaning "I ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... am tough, you know, dried up and wiry. And I had a very strong motive. But you are different. You would never stand a hot season at Kurrumpore. I can't tell you what it is like there. At its worst it is unspeakable. I am very glad that Tommy realizes the impossibility of it. No, no! Stay here with me till I go down! I am always the first. And it will give me so much pleasure to ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... the full force of his words. To be filled with all the fullness of God would not be so wonderful, for it is an easy matter to fill a pint cup with all the fullness of the ocean, a single dip will do it. But it would be an impossibility indeed to fill a pint cup unto all the fullness of the ocean, until all the fullness that there is in the ocean is in that pint cup. But it is seemingly a more impossible task that the Holy Spirit undertakes to do for us, to fill us "unto all the fullness" of the infinite God, to fill ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... attached to this fact through the very insignificance and "impossibility" of that individual;—a lanky, red-haired youth, incapacitated for manual labor through lameness,—a clerk in a general store at the Cross Roads! He had never been the recipient of Judge Piper's hospitality; he had never visited the house ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... effected by outward means, or by the outward sufferings of Jesus Christ; and it is considered as putting men, in consequence of this forgiveness, into the capacity of salvation. The Quakers, however, attribute this redemption wholly to the love of God, and not to the impossibility of his forgiveness without a plenary satisfaction, or to the motive of heaping all his vengeance on the head of Jesus Christ, that he ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... whom I have shown them? Now, perhaps, is the time to revive the well-nigh withered hopes of those who, guided by more profound contemplations, have discovered the fallacy of the new observations, and demonstrated the utter impossibility of their existence. I do not know what to say in a case so surprising, so unlooked-for, and so novel. The shortness of the time, the unexpected nature of the event, the weakness of my understanding, and the fear of ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... in the end he was drawn on. She lay beyond, somewhere upon the shores of the lake. It was a scramble almost upon hands and knees. It looked as though it were an impossibility for men heavily laden ever to make their way to the top. He turned once to look back, and saw behind him the green sweep of the beautiful valley of Jaula—then mile upon mile of heavy timber which extended to where the lusty mountains began once more. He attacked the trail anew and at the end of ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Sarpi's Letters abound in useful information on this topic. Writing to French correspondents, he complains weekly of the impossibility even in Venice of obtaining books. See, for instance, Lettere, vol. i. pp. 286, 287, 360, vol. ii. p. 13. In one passage he says that the importation of books into Italy is impeded at Innsbruck, Trento, and throughout the Tyrolese frontiers (vol. i. p. 74). In another he warns his friends not ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... another time in Paris. It is a kind of foretaste of hell. There is no way to avoid it except by the method which you have now chosen. One must live secretly and cut himself utterly off from the human race, or life in Europe becomes an unbearable burden and work an impossibility. I learned something last night, and maybe it may reconcile me to go to Europe again sometime. I attended one of the astonishingly popular lectures of a man by the name of Stoddard, who exhibits interesting stereopticon ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... her and they took in this fact of her safety with no commotion; it was but one—and a lesser—among the many strange facts he had had to take in. And he forced himself to look squarely at what he had conceived to be the final impossibility as he asked: 'And—in other ways?—Could you have fallen in love with ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... generally being small affairs. Only in Puerto Plata (where extensive harbor improvements are now under way), Macoris and Santo Domingo can larger vessels approach the wharves. All the wharves were built under concessions from the government, which, in the impossibility to provide them itself on account of its perpetual lack of funds, was obliged to procure their construction by granting the right to collect a specified wharf tax, more or less onerous, for a period of years. The Santo ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... be very circumspect and silent—for all the mistakes made by others is in their favour; in fact, no good for them could come till Paris is old enough to be his own master—unless indeed they all returned under Henri V., but a Regency for Paris would be an impossibility.... ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... sudden wrench from the old Home, and such a very far from cheerful voyage, and all the anecdotes of the summer heat, the winter cold, the spring floods, the houses and the want of houses, the servants and the want of servants, the impossibility of getting anything, and the ruinous expense of it when got! which people pour into the ears of a new-comer just because it is a more sensational and entertaining (and quite as stereotyped) a subject of conversation as the weather and the crops. ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... certain things to be true. He has, however, known some and read of more who by their faith in the man conquered all anxiety, doubt, and fear, lived pure, and died in gladsome hope. On the other hand, it seems to him that the faith which was once easy has now become almost an impossibility. And what is it he is called upon to believe? One says one thing, another another. Much that is asserted is simply unworthy of belief, and the foundation of the whole has in his eyes something of the look of a cunningly devised ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... this, was dumbfounded. She had rested her defence of her mother and sister on the impossibility of any such visit being admitted. According to her lights the coming of Colonel Osborne, after all that had been said, would be like the coming of Lucifer himself. The Colonel was, to her imagination, a horrible roaring lion. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... for this woman a strange, inexpressible longing, combined with a conviction of the impossibility of attainment. This poignant contradiction returned to his mind again and again, notwithstanding every effort. He saw near to him, even within his reach, in close and tangible reality, the soul; and in the unattainable—in ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... political and social bearings of the reform are fully treated. Professor Commons rejects the Hare system in favour of the Free List system. He writes:—"The Hare system is advocated by those who, in a too doctrinaire fashion, wish to abolish political parties. They apparently do not realize the impossibility of acting in politics without large groupings of individuals." He makes a great step in advance of the disciples of Mr. Hare in recognizing that the proportional principle should be applied to parties, and not to individuals, and he even defines parties correctly as being ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... them may prove to be until you know what is inside the outer wrappings of casual appearances. To be sure, the old woman of the fairy tale, who turns out to be a fairy in disguise, is not often met with in real life, but neither is her approximate counterpart an impossibility. ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... did not want to be the aggressor, even on his own land, in spite of the determination he had reached for such a contingency as this. He recalled what Vesta had said about the impossibility of securing a conviction for cutting a fence. Surely if a man could not be held responsible for this act in the courts of the country, it would fare hard with one who might kill him in the commission of the outrage. Let him ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... Fe as suddenly and daringly as we had entered it, the very impossibility of risking such a journey again being our, greatest safeguard. Esmond Clarenden was doing the thing that couldn't be done, and ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... corn, are often the same. The occasions for those different sorts of labour returning with the different seasons of the year, it is impossible that one man should be constantly employed in any one of them. This impossibility of making so complete and entire a separation of all the different branches of labour employed in agriculture, is perhaps the reason why the improvement of the productive powers of labour, in this art, does not always keep pace with their improvement in ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... angry roar fell right over us. I felt myself swimming in deep water, with my mouth full and almost blinded. I heard Jerry's cry close to me. The dreadful thought occurred to me that we were both overboard, and the utter impossibility of lowering a boat to save us flashed across me. I shrieked out for help. A whirl—a confused sound of roaring, hissing waters—a sensation of battling and struggling with them—an eager desire to clutch at something,—are ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... residence on the western coast of Africa, and extending themselves eastwards, formed settlements in Arabia and Egypt, till the oppressions of Selim and Soliman, the Turkish emperors, interrupted their commerce, and obliged them to disperse along the coast of Abyssinia and eastern Africa. Besides the impossibility, chronologically, for the assigned causes having produced the supposed effect, there is no necessity for having recourse to this improbable hypothesis. From being best acquainted with their Moorish conquerors, the Spaniards and Portuguese ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... struck by the contrast between Jupiter and Mars; on the smaller planet the main topographical outlines are almost invariable, and it has been feasible to construct maps of the surface with tolerably accurate detail; a map of Jupiter is, however, an impossibility—the drawing of the planet which we make to-night will be different from the drawing of the same hemisphere made ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... same spirit as he has shown in his inquiry, but I may tell you that, being utterly convinced that Japan does not seek war with you, and that therefore no war is likely, my Government is not prepared to answer a question which they consider based upon an impossibility. If this war should come, the position of our country would depend entirely upon the rights of the dispute. As a corollary to that, I would mention two things. You read your ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... difficult—almost to impossibility—can always be accomplished. Write that upon your tables, for it is a valuable truth. And no cheer up, for I bring you letters from Clara and ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... notion which every one has learned in mechanics, as to the difference between stable and unstable equilibrium. The conceivable possibility of making an egg stand on its end is a practical impossibility, because nature does not like unstable equilibrium, and a body departs therefrom on the least disturbance; on the other hand, stable equilibrium is the position in which nature tends to place everything. A log of wood floating on a river might conceivably float ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... tense and excited inwardly, nineteen times out of twenty it is best for the teacher to apperceive the case as one of neural pathology rather than as one of moral culpability. So long as the inhibiting sense of impossibility remains in the child's mind, he will continue unable to get beyond the obstacle. The aim of the teacher should then be to make him simply forget. Drop the subject for the time, divert the mind to something else: then, leading the pupil back by some circuitous line of association, ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... taken care of and educated very much in the same way that the authorities here look after the inmates of a poor-house or penitentiary. Such a thing as a German railway conductor rising to be president of the road is an impossibility in Germany; and the list of self-made men is small indeed,—by that I mean men who have risen from ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... array in the midst of people all extensively got up, I began to be ill at ease; I asked myself if I were in my proper place, if I were properly dressed, and, after a few moments' disquietude, I answered yes, with an intrepidity which arose perhaps more from the impossibility of getting out of it than from the force of my arguments. After this little dialogue, I plucked up so much, that I should have been quite intrepid if there had been any need of it. But, whether it were the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the position I was taking; but you've given me a different viewpoint. Why James, think it over yourself in the light of what you just have told me. Nellie never has been a mother at all! Her heart is more barren than that of a woman to whom motherhood is physical impossibility, yet whose heart aches ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... different. I couldn't stand what you have; why, the sight of a dead man would unsettle me for months and, as for risking my life or attempting the life of a fellow creature—well, it would be a physical impossibility. I—I'd just turn tail. You are exceptional, though you may not know it; you're not normal. The majority of us, away back in the woodsheds of our minds, recognize ourselves as cowards, and I differ from the rest in that I'm ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... been the attraction; possibly only her aloofness, her pride, had kindled in him the determination to conquer. But that he had ever loved her, as she interpreted love, she now told herself was an utter impossibility. She even questioned in the bitterness of her disillusionment if Love, that True Romance to which she had offered sacrifice, were not also a myth, the piteous creation of a woman's fond imagination, a thing non-existent save in the realms of fancy, a dream-goal to which ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... was merely rejoicing in comfort after hardship, in pleasant society after loneliness. Even with the knowledge that it could not last, that beyond the near future lay a whole lifetime of complete solitude and that greatest of all miseries, the desire of an obvious impossibility—even with this she was happier than he; because she loved him and she saw him daily getting stronger; because their relative positions brought out the best and the least romantic part of a woman's love—the subtle maternity of it. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... freed herself gently from his clasp, saying, after her old habit of hiding emotion under a jest, something about the impossibility that the mistress of a household could idle away her time in this way. She made her husband's breakfast, and insisted on watching him ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... light and air, brightening and refreshing it as if he were healthy weather. There was no noise, no effort, no consciousness, in anything he did; but in everything an indescribable lightness, a seeming impossibility of doing anything else, or doing anything better, which was so graceful, so natural, and agreeable, that it overcomes me, even now, in ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... was, and what influences he brought to bear, I can't tell you, Jean. If he wants you to know, he'll tell you. It is his object to ruin me in your sight. He has the facts, and, I fear, the proofs, that make marriage between us almost an impossibility; at any rate I'm sure your father would shoot me before he would ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... Egyptians will weep for me, as one who knew their needs and considered their welfare like a father. A king who really knows his duties, finds it an easy and beautiful task to win the love of the people—an unthankful one to gain the applause of the great—almost an impossibility ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... us; but what gave us (I mean the captain and his crew) the greatest uneasiness was the sight of a very large ship within a mile of us, which presently saluted us with a gun, and now appeared to be a third-rate English man-of-war. Our captain declared the impossibility of either fighting or escaping, and accordingly struck without waiting for the broadside which was preparing for us, and which perhaps would have prevented me from the happiness I now enjoy." This occasioned Heartfree to change colour; his wife therefore ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... illness led Pitt to waver. For at the end of February he authorized Castlereagh to send to Cornwallis at Dublin a declaration intended to reassure the Irish Catholics. It pointed out that the majority of the Cabinet had resigned owing to the impossibility of carrying Catholic Emancipation at the present juncture. He (Pitt) still resolved to do his utmost for the success of that cause; and therefore begged them to refrain from any conduct which would prejudice it in the future. Cornwallis delivered this and another paper ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... it a matter of the greatest difficulty to investigate the picturesque characters of these lines of projection and escape, because, as presented to the eye, they are always modified by perspective; and it is almost a physical impossibility to get a true profile of any of the slopes, they round and melt so constantly into one another. Many of them, roughly measured, are nearly circular in tendency;[92] but I believe they are all portions of infinite curves either modified ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... those in front was Macintosh, for whom the wilful waste of a bullet was almost an impossibility, frugality and marksmanship combining to render the task painful to his feelings. He prided himself on his shooting, and did not like even to appear to make a miss. Not able to catch a glimpse of a foe where ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... authority to claim a created equality and unalienable right to be on a level with the white man in civil and social relations? No. To ask the first would be to ask a great evil; to claim the second is to demand a natural and moral impossibility. No. God tells him to seek none of these things. But he commands him to know the facts in his case as they are in the Bible, and have ever been, and ever will be in Providence:—that he is not ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... pleasant fortnight at Melvich. Mistress Macpherson was so motherly that "takkin' cauld" was reduced to a permanent impossibility. The other men at the inn proved to be very companionable fellows, quite different from the monsters of insolence that my anger had imagined in the moment of disappointment. The shooting party kept the table abundantly supplied with grouse and hares and highland ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... Sharp we see a face of refined goodness which makes the physiognomist distrust his art. From very early times Cromwell had styled Sharp "Sharp of that ilk." He was subtle, he had no fanaticism, he warned his brethren in 1660 of the impossibility of restoring their old authority and discipline. But when he accepted an archbishopric he sold his honour; his servility to Charles and Lauderdale was disgusting; fear made him cruel; his conduct at Mitchell's last trial is, at best, ambiguous; and the hatred ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness. Earlier in life, Hester had vainly imagined that she herself might be the destined prophetess, but had long since recognized the impossibility that any mission of divine and mysterious truth should be confided to a woman stained with sin, bowed down with shame, or even burdened with a life-long sorrow. The angel and apostle of the coming revelation must ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... The impossibility of taking the city by storm was now recognized by the leaders of the Greek forces. The Trojans, on their side, being less numerous than the enemy, dared not venture on a great battle in the open field; hence the war dragged on for ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... fortresses of France, the gains in the East and West Indies (they amounted to Pondicherry, Chandernagore, and Tobago, together with Miquelon and St. Pierre), the blow dealt to her navy at Toulon, and the impossibility of her continuing the recent prodigious exertions, were in turn duly emphasized. And on 21st January 1794, when Fox moved an amendment in favour of peace, the Prime Minister spoke even more strongly of the madness of coming to terms with the present rulers of ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... was satisfied, but precisely because he truly loved, and felt himself beloved; therefore did he also suffer from the impossibility of reconciling the exigencies of his heart with circumstances. In one of these beautiful letters, so full of simplicity ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... this book is given up, then, to the old stories of kingly rule checked and slowly superseded by aristocracy. And all the old attempts at revolution by popular insurrection are again retold, not only because of the witness they bear to the impossibility in England of achieving democracy by the violent overthrow of government, but because they also bear witness to the heroic resolution of the English people to take up arms and plunge into a sea of troubles rather ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... to his menaces, and the stern way in which she turned on him with menaces of her own, showed him plainly that, for the present at least, she was beyond his reach, and nothing which he might do could in any way affect her. Only one thing gave him hope, and that was the utter madness and impossibility of her design. He did not know what might have passed between her and Lord Chetwynde before, but he conjectured that she had been treated with insult great enough to inspire her with a thirst for vengeance. He now hoped that Lord Chetwynde, if he did recover, would regard her ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... clear myself of suspicion with regard to the letters; then, to excite the rage of the marshal to madness, by incessantly reminding him of the just grounds he has to hate you, and of the impossibility of being avenged upon you. This, joined to the other emotions of sorrow and anger, which ferment in the savage bosom of this man of bloodshed, tended to urge him on to the rash enterprise, which is the consequence and the punishment ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... and a few sentences of ordinary conversation. These are much mixed with English, and were, no doubt, such as might have been heard on the borders of Devon, for he probably did not penetrate very far, being doubtless deterred by the impossibility of obtaining drinkable beer—a circumstance which seems to have much exercised his mind in describing Cornwall. These numerals and sentences are, as far as is known, the earliest specimens of printed Cornish, earlier by a hundred and sixty-five years than Lhuyd’s Grammar, though ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... at the ingenuity of the man who could figure out how to overcome the seeming impossibility of accurate shooting from a car racing at high speed. Surely, he ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... anything like this one. He could see at least a week's hard, constant labor ahead of him—a week's work to be done in three days. There was no use trying; the time was too short; it was a physical impossibility to formulate an intelligent proposition in such a short length of time. Then to Mitchell's mind came the picture of a wretched, golden-haired girl clinging to the iron fence of the Pennsylvania depot. He gathered the rolls into ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... coarse bread with butter, and they themselves ate almost as much butter as bread. In talking of the French and the present times, their language was what most people would call Jacobinical. They spoke much of the oppressions endured by the Highlanders further up, of the absolute impossibility of their living in any comfort, and of the cruelty of laying so many restraints on emigration. Then they spoke with animation of the attachment of the clans to their lairds: 'The laird of this place, Glengyle, where ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... around the Moon. If it was the Projectile that had broken off the bowsprit of the Susquehanna, it could not certainly be the Projectile that Belfast had seen only the day previous doing the duty of a satellite. Did not the truth of one incident render the other an absolute impossibility? If Bloomsbury was right, was ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... give a faint idea of the excessive issue to state that the only difficulty was the impossibility of examination by the President and Cashier, and of their jointly signing the notes, which was made obligatory by the regulations; hence they asked power from Congress to grant this right to the Presidents ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... wish, that he had acted with more caution, discretion or prudence; but even a hankering wish of this sort is a weakness, although it may be an amiable and an excusable weakness. To wish at all for an impossibility, such as the recalling of time that is irretrievably gone by, must be a weakness. But, even if we could recall it, to assert that [—illegible—] is in perfect paradise ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... time thus afforded him to concentrate an overwhelming force against us in the vicinity of Tupelo and the utter hopelessness of saving our train or artillery in case of defeat, on account of the narrowness and general bad condition of the roads and the impossibility of procuring supplies of forage for the animals; all agreed with me in the probable consequences of defeat. Some thought our only safety lay in retracing our steps and abandoning the expedition. It was urged, however, (and with some propriety, too,) that ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... made quite impossible the domination of Germany in Europe or in the world, the leaders of Germany do not yet see or apprehend that impossibility. Hence, many earnest peace-seekers have to confess that they do not see any means whatever available for promoting peace in Europe now, or even procuring ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... still alive and yield the desultory few, but every mushroom that they yield is preying on their vitality, and after a time they too shall die and the bed be completely barren, for the mycelium is altogether dead, and without mycelium mushrooms are an impossibility. We can keep mushroom mycelium in active growth the year round, and year after year, providing we never let it bear mushrooms. This is done by taking the mycelium, just before it begins bearing, from one manure bed and plant it in another, and so on from bed to bed. At every fresh transplanting ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... men of business?—that you would actually degrade yourself into becoming a shareholder, or manager, or director, or whatever you please to term it, in a railway company?—you, Count Tristan de Gramont! The very proposal is a humiliation; to entertain it would be an absurdity—to consent, an impossibility. I repeat it, you have ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... nor murmur. It goes directly to work to fulfil the commands laid upon us, or to refrain from doing that which is forbidden. "Sir," said the Duke of Wellington to an officer of engineers, who urged the impossibility of executing his orders, "I did not ask your opinion. I gave you my orders, and I ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... slate, marble, etc—in fact, materials generally used for switchboard insulation. An examination of the insulating power of these substances has recently been made by B. O. Peirce (Electrical Review, 11th January 1895) with quite sufficient accuracy, having in view the impossibility of being certain beforehand as to the character of any particular sample. The tests were made by means of holes drilled in slabs of the material to be examined. These holes were three-eighths of an inch in diameter, ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... the final issue of the war and the impossibility of a return to the past, could not hesitate to meet half-way the proposals of the Emperor Alexander, who had given them, as a security for the future, the most formal assurance to maintain the former Constitution. In Sweden the king had ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... however, Constance's only trouble. Her conscience was already uneasy at the impossibility of getting to evensong on Christmas Day. She had been to an early Celebration without asking any questions, and had got back before Herbert had come down to breakfast, and very glad she was that she had done so, for she found that her mother ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... contrast to the often illusory conclusions of the reason, and of the value of induction; but he does not conceal from himself the fact that observation is merely the first step in the process of cognition, leaving the chief role for the understanding. This, supplementing the defect of experience—the impossibility of observing all cases—by its a priori concept of law and with its inferences overstepping the bounds of experience, first makes induction possible, brings the facts established into connection (their combination ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... counterfeited in every page; in which, images of voluptuousness are artfully blended with expressions of refined sentiment, and delicate emotion; and the grossest sensuality is exhibited in conjunction with the most gentle and generous affections. They who have not learned from experience, the impossibility of such an union, are apt to be captivated by its alluring exterior. They are seduced by their own ignorance and sensibility; and become familiar with the demon, for the sake of the radiant angel to whom he has been linked by the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... bothered, as that surgeon would assuredly feel bothered who, upon proceeding to dissect a subject, should find the subject retaliating as a dissector upon himself, especially if Joanna ever made the speech to them which occupies v. 354-391, bk. iii. It is a double impossibility: 1st, because a piracy from Tindal's "Christianity as old as the Creation"—a piracy a parte ante, and by three centuries; 2d, it is quite contrary to the evidence on Joanna's trial. Southey's "Joan" of A.D. 1796 (Cottle, Bristol) tells the doctors, ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... skull itself, and that had tossed the dry snow like dust against his eyes on his way from the railroad, had now fallen, and an incomparable quiet wrapped the solitude of the hills. A teasing sense of the impossibility of the scene, as far as his art was concerned, filled him full of a fond despair of rendering its feeling. He could give its light and color and form in a sufficiently vivid suggestion of the fact, but he could not make that pink flush seem to exhale, like a long breath, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... complicated organisation, the colossal expense needed to produce that sheet which is flung away at the close of each day. A blunder of the most trivial kind might throw everything out of gear; but stern discipline and ubiquitous precaution render the blunder almost an impossibility. Sometimes you may observe in a paper like the Times one column which bristles with typographical errors. All the slips are clustered in one place, and the reason is that the few minutes necessary for proper revision could not be spared. Good workmen are set ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... hour on the morning thereafter, my client called, and I soon discovered he was in a frame of mind by no means joyous. The disappointment he expressed at the continuance of his suit was evidently sincere. My explanation of the impossibility of preventing it, and the confident hope I held out that he would certainly get his divorce at the next term, evidently gave him little relief. He at length intimated a desire to have a confidential talk with me. I took ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... which penetrated me to the soul. I detailed, at some length, the reasons which induced me to the decision I had taken; I sketched also the nature of the very important motion about to be brought before the House, and deduced from that sketch the impossibility of conscientiously opposing Lord Dawton's party in the debate. I concluded with repeating the expressions my gratitude suggested, and after declining all interference with Lord Guloseton's votes, ventured to add, that had I interfered, it would have been in support of Dawton; not as a man, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... antecedent non-existence of consciousness does not admit of being proved, because consciousness itself does not prove it. And as we have shown that consciousness itself may be an object of consciousness, we have thereby disproved the alleged impossibility of antecedent non-existence being proved by other means. Herewith falls the assertion that the non-origination of ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... occurred the recollection of the impossibility of obtaining an interview with his fatally estranged mistress, and testing the influence over her affections, which he still flattered himself with possessing. Could he step beyond the limits of his prison, the world would be all sunshine; but here ...
— Other Tales and Sketches - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... It is in this marvelous power in men to do wrong (it is an old story, but none the less true for that),—it is in this power to do wrong—wrong or right, as it lies somehow with ourselves to choose—that the impossibility stands of forming scientific calculations of what men will do before the fact, or scientific explanations of what they have done after the fact. If men were consistently selfish, you might analyze their motives; if they were consistently noble, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... the shape of Reuben May, had been hastening events toward a disastrous climax, the course of circumstances in Polperro had not gone altogether smoothly. To Eve's vexation, because of the impossibility of speaking of her late encounter with Reuben May, she found on her return home that during her absence Mrs. Tucker had arrived, with the rare and unappreciated announcement that she had come to stop and have her tea with them. The example set by Mrs. Tucker was followed by an invitation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... though as the author of so many beautiful love-stories she was disappointing to most of these pilgrims, who had not expected to find a shy, stout, ruddy lady in a cap like a crumbled pyramid. She wrote about the affections and the impossibility of controlling them, but she talked of the price of pension and the convenience of an English chemist. She devoted much thought and many thousands of francs to the education of her daughter, who spent three years at a very superior school at Dresden, receiving wonderful instruction ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... be, as there doubtless are, conditions governing that revolution, as is the case with the atmosphere moving and revolving with the planet, but it is an absolute impossibility for Maxwell's equations relating to moving magnetic bodies to be carried to their logical conclusion, without affirming some such hypothesis as we have affirmed in relation to the cause ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... took its toll in money and men to make this home of Louis the Magnificent. "The King," wrote Madame de Sevigne on the twelfth of October, 1678, "wishes to go on Saturday to Versailles, but it seems that God does not wish it, by the impossibility of putting the buildings in a state to receive him, and by the great mortality among the workmen." But the work had continued, as the King commanded, and when he finally entered into possession of his new palace in 1682 with all his Court, thirty-six thousand men and ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... last offer has been made to Irish landlordism. The ultimate settlement of this question must now be reserved for the Parliament of Ireland, and meantime the people must take care to protect themselves and their children. In many parts of Ireland, I assert, rent is to-day an impossibility, and in every part of Ireland the rents demanded are exorbitant, and will not, and cannot, ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... Socialism; and so Thyrsis discussed the liberty and individuality of the hundred thousand wage-slaves of the Steel Trust. They sought to tangle him in discussions as to the desirability of competition, and the impossibility of escaping it; but Thyrsis would bring them back again and again to the central fact of exploitation, which was the one fact that counted. They insisted upon knowing how this, that, and the other thing would be done in the Cooperative ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... epidemic began to make fearful havoc; all classes and ages were assailed indiscriminately. Whole families were stricken down in a day, and not one member spared to aid the others. The exodus was only limited by impossibility; all who could abandoned their homes and sought safety in flight. These were the fortunate minority; and, as if resolved to wreak its fury on the remainder, the contagion spread into every quarter of the city. Not even physicians were spared; and those who escaped ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... enough: for so many wonderful little veins will start from those two trunks, that, given a boy who is courageous and honest, or who makes himself so, it would be almost an impossibility for him to turn out a bad, ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... fat,—she had never been loved by anyone in all her life, but,—in her palmy days,—she had loved. And the necessity of loving had apparently remained a part of her nature, otherwise it would have been a sheer impossibility for her to have selected so strange a fetish as Lady Wicketts for her adoration. Lady Wicketts did not, in any marked way, respond to Miss Fosby's tenderness,—she merely allowed herself to be worshipped, just ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... period sufficiently long for the formation of permanent habits of industry, and fixed principles of right; the constitutional unhealthiness of Indian children, terminating, as it has here in a few cases, in death; the all but impossibility of obtaining helpers for subordinate positions, such as teacher or servant, who regard the question of the evangelization of the Indian from any ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... was not enough that he should be forced by every consideration of honour and wisdom to hide his love for his master's daughter; when he took refuge in his art and tried to throw his whole life into it, he was stopped at the outset by the most impassable barriers of impossibility. The furious desire to create, which is the strength as well as the essence of genius, surged up and dashed itself to futile spray upon the face of the ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... we cleaned the slate sometimes arbitrarily, and began all over. It is better for everybody to accept certain inexact or unjust conditions rather than to disturb the whole fabric of human society by attempting to do exact justice, which, after all, is in itself a human impossibility. That is what our good people, reformers and anarchists alike, often fail to understand!... So these Clarks, I am afraid, will have to suffer for the carelessness of their ancestor in not leaving his address behind him when he left ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... yourself?—it is to save the life of a fellow-creature."—"Yes, take it; but stay with me, or, under the horrors I feel, I shall die in this cabin, and alone. I know we must perish, and why not die together?" I entreated her to support herself with all the fortitude she could collect, urged the impossibility of my keeping her company, as every moment called for my assistance; and assuring her there was no real danger, I hurried on deck with the blanket, and wrapped the poor wretch in its folds. I thought he would have ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... others, his equals, or his superiors. For the same reason, there are thrown into the Appendix a few indifferent verses to the poet's memory; which, while they show how much his loss was felt, point out, at the same time, the impossibility of supplying it. ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... passages in the Pentateuch. Lastly, he believed and taught that this Being was so different from all other beings, that He could not be expressed by the image of any visible thing; also, that He could not be looked upon, and that not so much from inherent impossibility as from human infirmity; further, that by reason of His power He was without equal and unique. Moses admitted, indeed, that there were beings (doubtless by the plan and command of the Lord) who acted as God's vicegerents—that is, beings to whom God had given the ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... with the grotesque carvings was still there; but the crowning figure had disappeared—the young goddess was gone. For she, of all that throng, had an idea in her head, and, after screaming it to every man within reach, only to discover the impossibility of making herself understood in that Babel, she was struggling to make her way toward the second warehouse, through the swaying jam of people. It was a difficult task, as the farther in she managed to go, the denser became the press and the more tightly she found the ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... the existence of God, connected with the reason, and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man, with his capacity of looking far backward and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... throbbing with populous towns, and resonant with the hum of industry, should be wiped out in the twinkling of an eye by a mighty, raging torrent, more consuming than fire and more violent than the earthquake. The suddenness of the blow and the impossibility of communicating with the scene add to the terror of the event. The sickening spectacle of ruin and death which will be revealed when the veil of darkness is lifted is left to conjecture. The imagination can scarcely picture the dread realities, and it would be difficult to overdraw the awful ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... Americans, which is the wonder and astonishment of true culture and dignity the world over. The large bill of fare held an array of dishes sufficient to feed an army, sidelined with prices which made reasonable expenditure a ridiculous impossibility—an order of soup at fifty cents or a dollar, with a dozen kinds to choose from; oysters in forty styles and at sixty cents the half-dozen; entrees, fish, and meats at prices which would house one over night in an average hotel. One dollar fifty and two dollars seemed to be the most common figures ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... to his former experiments will exhibit several fiery feats, pronounced by Mons. Chabert an IMPOSSIBILITY. He will give a COMPLETE explanation by illustrations of the PRINCIPLES of the EUROPEAN and the AMERICAN CHESS PLAYERS. He will also (unless prevented by indisposition) swallow a sufficient quantity of phosphorus, (presented by either chemist or druggist of this city) to ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... new; in a sense they mark progress. But the adulterations are the artificial accumulations of centuries of uncontrolled speculation. They are the necessary result of the old method and the warrant for its revision—they mark the impossibility of progress without the guiding and restraining hand of Law. The felt exhaustion of the former method, the want of corroboration for the old evidence, the protest of reason against the monstrous overgrowths which conceal the real lines of truth, ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... into it, Petrea would have placed herself on the coach-box and have driven them as well as anybody; nothing could be easier, she thought; but the accomplishing of the two first conditions was the difficulty, and in the present circumstances an impossibility, for our poor Petrea's arms and hands were not able to second her good-will and courage. The post-boy said that at about three-quarters of a mile (English) there lay a peasant's hut in the wood by the road side; but it was impossible to induce him to run there, ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... movements, a great part of the endolymph is hurled into the scala tympani, the organ of Corti in the scala vestibuli is fixed and its parts are rendered incapable of vibration. The condition of atrophy which is observable in the sense cells and in the nerve elements is probably due to the impossibility of functional activity; it is an atrophy caused by ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... touching an appeal being plainly an impossibility, an impromptu committee meeting was held in the Vernons' study, when the idea of an open-air melodrama was proposed, and carried with acclamation. A melodrama acted in the back garden, underneath Lavender's window, opened out prospects of amusement for the actors ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... any rate, were, as has been said, exceptionally strong; and the impossibility of remaining in a house filled with sorrowful memories rendered him doubly anxious to obtain a permanent home. "The house which I have for some time occupied," he writes to Lord Lonsdale, in January 1813, "is the Parsonage of Grasmere. It stands close by the churchyard, and I have found ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... well worth 100 pounds a year to any lover of Nature. A great drawback to town gardens, or gardens situated near crowded thoroughfares, is that the plants there grown are almost invariably smothered with dust: under such circumstances successful gardening becomes simply a matter of impossibility, as hardly any plants will thrive, or even live, under such conditions. A proper site is, therefore, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... in this plan," said Mr. Thornton, " one is the impossibility, or at least the difficulty, of growing clover on this land. The other point is, How much of that 120 pounds of nitrogen returned in the clover is taken from the soil itself? I remember you figured 86 ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... unfortunate. Five years ago he had become acquainted with a person with whom he would have esteemed it the highest felicity of his life to have entered into closer ties; but it was vain to think of it, being almost an impossibility! a chimera! and yet his feelings remained the same as the very first day he had seen her! He added, "that never before had he found such harmony! but no declaration had ever been made, not being able to prevail on himself to do so." This conversation took ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... came off, chained in pairs, and were marched, still singing, to a shed prepared for them, we could not keep back the tears. The overseer, a great strong man, cracking his "blacksnake" from time to time, to enforce authority, excited our strong indignation. All this is an impossibility now, thank God, but then it was a cruel, dreadful reality. Like cattle, they were penned for the night, and were to be kept there for a day or two, till another boat should take them to New Orleans to be sold for the cane brake and the cotton ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... scarcely, if at all, attainable with a Balloon of the usual description however powerfully invested with the means of motion; as any one will readily perceive who has ever noticed or experienced the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of guiding a tub afloat in the water, compared with the condition of a boat or other similarly constructed body, in the same element. The efficacy of this provision and its necessity will appear more forcibly when we observe that whenever the Balloon in the machine ...
— A Project for Flying - In Earnest at Last! • Robert Hardley
... refrangible. No doubt if this had been the case, a perfect telescope could have been produced by properly shaping the object glass. But when Newton had demonstrated that light was by no means so simple as had been supposed, it became obvious that a satisfactory refracting telescope was an impossibility when only a single object lens was employed, however carefully that lens might have been wrought. Such an objective might, no doubt, be made to conduct any one group of rays of a particular shade to the same focus, but the rays of other ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... o'clock in the evening, he came staggering down the wharf, rolled himself into the stern seats of the boat, and ordered us to shove off and pull towards the sloop. We represented to him that the night was dark and cloudy, and it would be next to an impossibility to find the sloop in the broad bay at that hour; that the attempt would be attended with risk, and consequently it would be wiser to wait until morning before we ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... untruths) to keep the mob quietly at work, while we amuse ourselves; and the necessity for this amusement is fastening on us as a feverous disease of parched throat and wandering eyes—senseless, dissolute, merciless. How literally that word Dis-Ease; the Negation and impossibility of Ease, expresses the entire moral state of our English Industry ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the impression prevalent in the middle of the nineteenth century that the colonies would sooner or later follow the example of the United States, and sever their connexion with the mother-country. It has no less clearly demonstrated the impossibility of maintaining a centralized government of the empire in Downing Street. The union or federation of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa has strengthened the claims of each of those imperial realms to be considered a nation, ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... unoffending when he refused; so indulgent and kind to those dependent on him; so generous, so faithful to his friends, so forgiving to his foes. This was his character under one phase: even his adherents sometimes blamed his easiness of temper; the impossibility in his nature to cherish the remembrance of a wrong, or even to be roused by an insult. But, whilst such were the amiable traits of his character, history has its lists of accusations against him for corruption ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... received that morning might slacken the preparations of the voyage, which their impatience and interest, persuaded them was not advanced with expedition; and so they held much discourse with the duke of the impossibility that his intelligence could be true, and that it was contrived by the artifice and dexterity of their enemies, in order to abate the warmth and zeal that was used for their relief, the arrival of which relief, those enemies had much reason to apprehend; and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... or gardens situated near crowded thoroughfares, is that the plants there grown are almost invariably smothered with dust: under such circumstances successful gardening becomes simply a matter of impossibility, as hardly any plants will thrive, or even live, under such conditions. A proper site is, therefore, a ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... and its exact significance. The dream hidden so closely in her heart: that there might yet be a reconciliation—the dream finally killed when she perceived that Ironsyde had fallen in love with Estelle Waldron—was no dream in her son's mind. What she knew was impossible, till now represented no impossibility to him. He actually declared it as a thing which, in his moral outlook, ought to be. Only so could the past be retrieved, or the future made endurable. But to that matter they did not immediately come. She dined at the farmer's table with Abel ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... children, weary of daily contact with irritable, unreliable and unassimilable aliens, sold or leased their farms in order to escape into a white neighborhood. I presume, Mr. Parker, that nobody can realize the impossibility of withstanding this yellow flood except those who have been overwhelmed by it. We humanitarians of a later day gaze with gentle sympathy upon the spectacle of a noble and primeval race like the Iroquois tribe of Indians dying before the advance of our Anglo-Saxon civilization, but ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... the cheerful physician, "Miss Angel (her own name is an impossibility, and does not belong to her) has really borne the operation wonderfully. Marvellously!" he repeated. "The constitution, you see, was originally good. There was a foundation to work upon; that means everything, in ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... behalf. Not a single bishop proceeded with his libel action against Lalage. Nor was I forced to buy any of them off by building even a small cathedral. I attribute our escape from their vengeance entirely to the Provost. His clear statement of the impossibility of obtaining damages by any legal process must have ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... to meet the daily unavoidable returning requisites of domestic life in all their varied ramifications, and relieve a famishing family from the jaws of penury and privation. By thus delivering me from an impending impossibility most prejudicial to my purse resources, you will confer on your humble servant a boon which will be always vivid on the tablet of my breast, never to be effaced until the period that I am sojurning on the stage of this sublunary world's theatre." The petition goes on to explain that all the unhappy ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... illusory conclusions of the reason, and of the value of induction; but he does not conceal from himself the fact that observation is merely the first step in the process of cognition, leaving the chief role for the understanding. This, supplementing the defect of experience—the impossibility of observing all cases—by its a priori concept of law and with its inferences overstepping the bounds of experience, first makes induction possible, brings the facts established into connection (their combination ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... to Albert's great joy; for the wily knight had foreseen the great difficulty, or rather impossibility, of prevailing upon Brian de Bois-Guilbert to take such an oath before the assembly, and had invented this excuse to escape the necessity of ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... 'An impossibility! a monstrous extravagance! a thing unheard of! mania! mania!' he muttered. 'You are aware, sir, that you have been doing your worst to destroy the settled arrangements of my family? What does it mean? In common reason you cannot indulge any legitimate hope ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... world! I am not set against her. Nothing in the world but her own emptiness and impossibility of being anything like ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... church as well as by the heretical parties, but, since the church had such a hold upon society, those who sought to reform the monasteries by returning to old beliefs and ancient customs were much more in favor than those who left the church and opposed her from the outside. The impossibility of substantial, internal reform had not yet come to be generally recognized. As time passed the conviction that it was of no use to attempt reforms from the inside gained ground; then the separatists multiplied, and the shedding of blood commenced. The world had to learn anew that it was futile to ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... her deck to our own? One had only to note the wild rush of the surges, their height, and the fierceness with which they broke as they swept down upon our own ship, and the headlong reeling and plunging of her as she met their assault, to realise the absolute impossibility of lowering a boat from her without involving the frail craft and her crew in instant destruction; and how otherwise were those poor, half-drowned wretches to be got at and saved. Something might perhaps be done by means of a hawser, if its end could by any means ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... their quotation of seventy-five francs. Mr. Elmer Roberts of the Associated Press and Mr. Hart O. Berg sat at our table. Both thought that the war would be much longer than at first expected and would depend upon how long Germany could exist, owing to the impossibility of obtaining food from abroad. "Eight months," said ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... your people must consider yourselves prisoners pending the arrival of the dispatches that I must send to the British Government. Yours, sir, was a daring and extremely hazardous plot, designed in extravagance and I may say in ignorance of the impossibility of its execution. The prisoner was too closely guarded and watched, and, as you have seen, it was quite impossible for your vessel to approach this island without being seized. I gather that you have been a naval officer in the service ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... proud domes and floating debts, the rank jimson weed nodded in the wind and the pumpkin pie of to-day still slumbered in the bosom of the future. What glorious facts have, under the benign influence of fostering centuries, been born of apparent impossibility. What giant certainties have grown through these years from the seeds of doubt and discouragement and ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... Grace Melbury, though he was by no means sure that she was so far committed to him. That the Idea had for once completely fulfilled itself in the objective substance—which he had hitherto deemed an impossibility—he was enchanted enough to fancy must be the case at last. It was not Grace who had passed, however, but several of the ordinary village girls in a group—some steadily walking, some in a mood of wild gayety. He quietly asked his landlady, who was also in the garden, what these girls were intending, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... students. When employed on this work he felt how far in arrear of the other branches of zoology was that which respects the class of fish, and saw how much difficulty had accumulated in it, as well from our ignorance of the anatomy of these animals, and the impossibility of determining with precision the laws of their comparative organization, as from the want of large collections, and perhaps also from the too artificial spirit which had hitherto prevailed in ichthyology. He employed his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... is very strong and general throughout the whole of this vast country, and it is only necessary to sound the tocsin to bring to its maintenance a phalanx equal to uphold its standard against the assaults of any enemies. The impossibility of the Northwestern States consenting that the mouth of the Mississippi should be held by a foreign power, is in itself a guarantee of the long existence of the present political ties. Then, the increasing ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... o'clock Weiss, abandoned by the retiring troops, had been a self-made prisoner there. His return to Sedan had become an impossibility, for the Bavarians, immediately upon the withdrawal of the French, had swarmed down from the park of Montivilliers and occupied the road. He was alone and defenseless, save for his musket and what few cartridges were left him, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... Charles," said Mr. Lorry, glancing at the House again, "you are to remember, that getting things out of Paris at this present time, no matter what things, is next to an impossibility. Papers and precious matters were this very day brought to us here (I speak in strict confidence; it is not business-like to whisper it, even to you), by the strangest bearers you can imagine, every one of whom had his head hanging on by a single hair as he passed the Barriers. At another ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... still there; but the crowning figure had disappeared—the young goddess was gone. For she, of all that throng, had an idea in her head, and, after screaming it to every man within reach, only to discover the impossibility of making herself understood in that Babel, she was struggling to make her way toward the second warehouse, through the swaying jam of people. It was a difficult task, as the farther in she managed to go, the denser became the press and the more tightly she found the people ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... being, transformed into a dress-circle. Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B., made his entree in a steam launch, and all the effects were highly realistic. The only hitch in the otherwise immensely successful representation was the impossibility of securing a moon for the ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... of the Dynasty, for the conversational dogmatist on the imperial scale becomes every year more and more an impossibility. If he is in intelligent company he will be almost sure to find some one who knows more about some of the subjects he generalizes upon than any wholesale thinker who handles knowledge by the cargo is like to know. I ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... wrested victory from every peril, in that blackness of utter darkness, he preserved the serene lucidity of his mind. He looked the stubborn facts calmly in the face, and when no military resource remained, when he recognised the impossibility of making another march or fighting another battle, he bowed his head in submission to that Power which makes and unmakes nations. The surrender of the fragments of the Army of Northern Virginia closed the imperishable ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... seemed to have moved the entire country in a singular manner. There remained in every one's mind a disquietude, a vague fear, a sensation of mysterious terror, springing not merely from the impossibility of discovering any trace of the assassin, but also and above all from that strange finding of the wooden shoes in front of La Roque's door the day after the crime. The certainty that the murderer had assisted at the investigation, that he was still, doubtless, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... no need to be alarmed, pretty Mollie," said the man, still speaking French. "I have given the coachman orders to rattle along through the streets. We can talk here at our leisure, and as long as we please. You must perceive the utter impossibility of conversation at a street corner and ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... soil fertility and in the production of food. To understand this evolution it must be recognized that mineral fertilizers so extensively employed in modern western agriculture, like the extensive use of mineral coal, had been a physical impossibility to all people alike until within very recent years. With this fact must be associated the very long unbroken life of these nations and the vast numbers their farmers have been compelled ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... he began to turn over in his mind the possibilities of the situation. How long would the creature be likely to hold him thus prisoner? Would it release him when at length it realised the impossibility of penetrating his armour? And, if so, how long was it likely to be ere the release came? Failing to make a meal of him, the thing would undoubtedly be obliged to go forth, sooner or later, to seek for ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... dividing the stone into plates, there is always a certain appearance of meanness and niggardliness in the procedure. It is necessary that the builder should justify himself from this suspicion; and prove that it is not in mere economy or poverty, but in the real impossibility of doing otherwise, that he has sheeted his walls so thinly with the precious film. Now the shaft is exactly the portion of the edifice in which it is fittest to recover his honor in this respect. For if blocks of jasper or porphyry be inserted in the walls, the spectator ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Impossibility.—One great difference between a wise man and a fool is, the former only wishes for what he may possibly obtain; the ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... about traveling into either future or past, which I have just demonstrated to you to be impossible—a practical impossibility in the one case and an absolute one ...
— The Worlds of If • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... boys, the secret did not give us any rest, and we were always discussing and plotting as to how we could discover it. We made at least a hundred various plans, but all failed. It was an impossibility to get into the tower, because of a heavy iron-barred oaken door. The windows were too high to be reached. We had to satisfy ourselves with throwing a well-aimed stone, which hit the room through the window. Such an achievement was somewhat of a success, for oftentimes we drove out an alarmed ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... causes some to abandon the ascent. Dr. Cheever has, in his Hill Difficulty, very happily described the energy that is needful to enable the pilgrim to make the ascent. He forcibly proves the utter impossibility of making the ascent by ceremonial observances, or while encumbered with worldly cares or pride in trinkets of gold and costly array. He reminds us of the solemn advice of Peter, 'be ye built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifice acceptable to God by Jesus ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... out of Virginia. We held then and we hold still, that our generals that day were sagacious and brave, and we think history may take their word for it that any effective pursuit, looking to the crossing of the Potomac, was a military impossibility. It is true that Stonewall Jackson, as history reminds us, was heard to exclaim while the surgeon was dressing his hand, 'Give me ten thousand fresh troops, and I will be in Washington to-morrow!' But there were not the ten thousand troops ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... And that they do become so, their appearance amply shows. The neglect to which the great mass of working-men's children are condemned leaves ineradicable traces and brings the enfeeblement of the whole race of workers with it. Add to this, the unsuitable clothing of this class, the impossibility of precautions against colds, the necessity of toiling so long as health permits, want made more dire when sickness appears, and the only too common lack of all medical assistance; and we have a rough idea of the sanitary condition of the English ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... hours, as if by enchantment—the rapid coming of the solemn night—the shadow of death always upon them, and yet so dim and faint, that objects the meanest and most trivial started from the gloom beyond, and forced themselves upon the view—the impossibility of holding the mind, even if they had been so disposed, to penitence and preparation, or of keeping it to any point while one hideous fascination tempted it away—these things were common to them all, and varied only in their ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... made to act as above, because the attack on the manganese ore requires a certain minimum concentration of the acid. Formerly, instead of free hydrochloric acid a mixture of common salt and sulphuric acid was sometimes employed, but this is never done on a manufacturing scale now. Owing to the impossibility of employing any metal in contact with the acid, the "chlorine stills,'' where the above reaction is carried out, must be made of acid-proof stones or "chemical'' stoneware. This process is very costly, as much of the acid and all of the manganese is wasted. Moreover ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... round a great boulder, and they were almost home! There it lay before them, a little below, an irregular, low, grey stone cottage, fitting itself to the ground as if fitting the ground to it had been an impossibility. It was not on a ravine; the slope went down, down, till it swept off into the stubble fields and cleared land below. There was the sound of a great waterfall in the distance; close by the house a little branch stream went bounding ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... once. What I was seen to take from the drawer, Bat, was the little silver box holding those papers; I rushed from the house meaning to go to my lawyer. And I was a half dozen blocks away when I came out of the state I was in, realized the hour and the impossibility of the whole situation, ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... credited with having asserted that a steam voyage across the Atlantic was "a physical impossibility," but in the work from which I took the liberty of copying his words he denies the charge, and says that what he did affirm was, that long sea voyages could not at that time be maintained with that regularity and certainty which are indispensable to commercial ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... Rachel left for Antwerp this evening, to meet her mother and sister, and I returned to my room, lonesome enough. Sunday I lunched with Mrs. Lucas and Mrs. McLaren. I had calls from three factory-women, who told a sad story of the impossibility of getting even a dollar ahead by the most ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... sheep upon the mountain, and the sheep upon the western farm, and the cattle on the upper barrows, scarcely one in ten was saved; do what we would for them, and this was not through any neglect (now that our wits were sharpened), but from the pure impossibility of finding them at all. That great snow never ceased a moment for three days and nights; and then when all the earth was filled, and the topmost hedges were unseen, and the trees broke down with weight (wherever the wind had not lightened them), a brilliant sun broke forth and ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... in the story to call forth such commendation from the cold-blooded English statesman? The book revealed, in a way fitted to carry conviction to every unprejudiced reader, the impossibility of uniting slavery with freedom under the same Government. Either all must be free or the mass subject to the few—or there is actual war. This principle is finely brought out in the predicament of the Quaker confronted by a fugitive with wife and child who ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... ruthless, while most of the native- born were either openly or secretly in sympathy with the revolution in the Orient. But Esteban dealt diplomatically with both factions and went on raising slaves and sugar to his own great profit. Owing to the impossibility of importing negroes, the market steadily improved, and Esteban reaped a handsome profit from those he had on hand, especially when his crop of young girls matured. His sugar-plantations prospered, too, and Pancho ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... a faint idea of the excessive issue to state that the only difficulty was the impossibility of examination by the President and Cashier, and of their jointly signing the notes, which was made obligatory by the regulations; hence they asked power from Congress to grant this right to the Presidents ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... h. The impossibility of distinguishing between mind and body. Neither in thought nor in experience can we separate them. They seem to act together; yet we feel that we are sometimes under the dominion of the one, sometimes ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... slept in bell-tents, fourteen men in each, packed tight as herrings in a barrel, our feet festooning the base of the central pole, our heads against the lower rim of the canvas covering. Movement was almost an impossibility; a leg drawn tight in a cramp disturbed the whole fabric of slumbering humanity; the man who turned round came in for a shower of maledictions. In short, fourteen men lying down in a bell-tent cannot agree for very long, and a bell-tent is not a ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... apparent impossibility of getting anything out of Dr. Quackenboss, except civility, and to the real difficulty of disappointing such very earnest good will, Fleda and Hugh did what older persons would not have done alighted and walked up ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Turks had disillusioned us as to the impossibility of crossing the waterless desert, and had actually crossed it with a considerable armed and organized force. They announced that what they had effected had been nothing more than a reconnaissance. In any case, ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... other pleasures, for which his age and his already enfeebled body were no longer suited. His health gave way. He felt it soon. The tardy return to favour which he had enjoyed made him regret life more. He perished slowly, regretting to have been brought to death's door by disgrace, and the impossibility of being restored by the unexpected opening of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... significance was attached to this fact through the very insignificance and "impossibility" of that individual;—a lanky, red-haired youth, incapacitated for manual labor through lameness,—a clerk in a general store at the Cross Roads! He had never been the recipient of Judge Piper's hospitality; he had never visited the house even with parcels; apparently his only interviews ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... the Western-educated classes as a common language, without which, indeed, Indian Nationalism could never have found expression, and such an assembly of Indians from all parts of India to discuss their common aspirations as the Indian National Congress itself would have been an impossibility? Great events, moreover, had been happening quite recently which tended to shake the Indians' belief in the irresistible superiority of Western civilisation even in its material aspects. The disaster inflicted upon an Italian army at Adowa in 1894 ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... IS AN IMPOSSIBILITY; and nothing is more precise than the declaration of the medical men. They affirm that your wife could not have ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the night and the impossibility of escape filled Bob with the most gloomy and distressing thoughts, which at first quite Overcame him. But at length other thoughts came, which were of a less distressing character. His mind once more reverted to the idea that he was held for ransom, and that for the present, at least, ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... of the differences of dialect in our early documents only dates from 1885, owing to the previous impossibility of obtaining access to these oldest texts. Before that date, it so happened that nearly all the manuscripts that had been printed or examined were in one and the same dialect, viz. the Southern (or Wessex). The language employed in these was (somewhat unhappily) named "Anglo-Saxon"; ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... inflexibility always possessed the air of the most perfect calmness of self-possession. "Can not may be a more civil phrase than will not, but the expressions are synonymous where there is no moral impossibility. But I am not a friend to doing business hastily; we will talk this matter ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... you to make both ends meet with the cut of ten per cent. I will make it five instead of ten per cent., although I shall actually lose by so doing unless business improves. I will, however, try it as long as possible. If the hard times continue, and it becomes a sheer impossibility for me to employ you on these terms without abandoning the plant altogether, I will approach you again, and trust that you will support me in any measures I am forced to take. And, on the contrary, should business improve, I promise ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... no purpose that the most eminent Compounders sent from London letter after letter filled with judicious counsel and earnest supplication. It was to no purpose that they demonstrated in the plainest manner the impossibility of establishing Popish ascendancy in a country where at least forty-nine fiftieths of the population and much more than forty-nine fiftieths of the wealth and the intelligence were Protestant. It was to no purpose that they informed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... this freak of fortune was felt to be all the more cruel on account of the impossibility of resenting it openly; but the delighted grandfather cared nothing for what the John Pontifexes might feel or not feel; he had wanted a grandson and he had got a grandson, and this should be enough for everybody; and, now that Mrs Theobald had taken to good ways, she might ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... distribution, there are one or two things of interest to the general reader. One of these was the fate of the Golden House, as it was called. Mrs. Mavick had hurried back to her town house, determined to save it at all hazard. The impossibility of this was, however, soon apparent even to her intrepid spirit. She would either sacrifice all else to save it, or—dark thoughts of ending it in a conflagration entered her mind. This was only her first temper. But to keep the house without a vast fortune to sustain ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... at least, manners and ideas are different from those of the upper-middle-class, or the middle-middle-class, to whichever it may be that our craft belongs. People will recollect Thackeray's remarks concerning the impossibility of getting to know the real domestic life of your French friends; whether his words are well founded or not, they illustrate the essential unknowability to the outsider of some of the great noble and even untitled county families of the land. ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... faculty of will, when we do not extend it beyond the objects we clearly know. And even although this truth could not be established by reasoning, the minds of all have been so impressed by nature as spontaneously to assent to whatever is clearly perceived, and to experience an impossibility to ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes
... ground his own colours, prepared his daily measure of wet plaster, and executed the whole series of frescoes with his own hand. Condivi and Vasari imply, indeed, that this was the case; but, beside the physical impossibility, the fact remains that certain portions are obviously executed by inferior masters. Vasari's anecdotes, moreover, contradict his own assertion regarding Michelangelo's singlehanded labour. He speaks about the caution which the master exercised to guard himself against any treason ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... those who feared her were also fond of her; the fear and the fondness being perhaps both heightened by what may be called the iridescence of her character—the play of various, nay, contrary tendencies. For Macbeth's rhetoric about the impossibility of being many opposite things in the same moment, referred to the clumsy necessities of action and not to the subtler possibilities of feeling. We cannot speak a loyal word and be meanly silent; we cannot kill and not kill in the same moment; ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... inexperienced person to conceive of the effect of even a light wind upon so small an object as a rifle-ball, when shot from the gun. The difficulty arises from the impossibility of taking in the idea of such rapid flight, or of the resistance produced by it, by comparison with anything within the limits of our experience. We may attain a conception of it, however, by trying to move a stick through the water. Moving it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... compel him, like a wild animal, to come and surrender himself into the hands of those who had his children. He felt most confidence in Nasica, and inquired for him, but as he was not present, after lamenting his fate, and reflecting on the impossibility of acting otherwise, he ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... acquainted with the difficulties under which his countrymen labored, and the impossibility of their facing, in the field, such a powerful army as formed the siege of Pavia, placed his only hopes of safety in his own vigilance and valor. The efforts of both were extraordinary, and in proportion ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... fight down fear and forget everything except that the ball must be hit. To some, this seems not a difficult matter, to many it comes only after the most determined effort and schooling of the nerves, while to a few it seems to be an utter impossibility. The instinct of self-preservation is such a controlling power with them that unconsciously they draw away from the ball, and, try as they will, they cannot stand up to the plate. The player who cannot overcome this feeling will never ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... than a horse, and such a machine as you mention could outspeed that horse. But, of course, such an engine is an utter impossibility." ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... it would have been an impossibility for them to wring from their mother her consent to let them try their luck in the city, for since their father's death, they had become her moral support. They felt ashamed to be loafing idly about the reservation until school opened again and have ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... must reap in sorrow and not in joy. There is no exception to the rule. A bramble bush can no more bear grapes, than a selfish and evil life can produce happiness. The one is a natural, and the other a spiritual, impossibility. ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... phenomena, are strikingly confirmatory of revelation; nothing strikes me more than that. Hume's argument against miracles (a strong argument) disappears before it, and Strauss's conclusions from a priori assertion of impossibility fall ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... a long silence prevailed in this ice-house; the gloomy tale of the burning of the ship, the loss of their precious brig, appeared so vividly before the minds of the castaways; they found themselves before an impossibility, and that was a return to England. They did not dare to look at one another, for fear of seeing on each other's faces blank despair. There was nothing to be heard save the hasty breathing ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... is by much the best medicine; it has quite cured my face and left me no pain but the impossibility of being in two places at once, which is no small sorrow, since one of them would be near you. But the boys [Lord Drumlanrig and Lord Charles Douglas] are too lean to travel as yet. Compassion being ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... his own power of attraction—or Barine's love—for with each passing week the cheerful serenity of her disposition gained fresh steadfastness and charm. He, too, had the same experience; it was long since he had felt so vigorous, untrammelled, and free from care. His sole regret was the impossibility of sharing the political life of the city at this critical period; and at times he felt some little anxiety concerning the fate and management of his property, though, even if his estates were confiscated, he would still retain a competence ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... been brought to consent to the necessary changes. Mr. Pelham has had as much difficulty to regulate the disposition of places. Numbers of lists of the hungry have been given in by their centurions of those, several Tories have refused to accept the proffered posts some, from an impossibility of being rechosen for their Jacobite counties. But upon the whole, it appears that their leaders have had very little influence with them; for not above four or five are come into place. The rest will stick to Opposition. Here is a list of the changes, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... with singular soothing power upon the heart which had come to a knowledge of its own weakness in these last tedious months; and as Nettie sat up-stairs with all the remorseful thoughts of nature in her softened heart, the impossibility of impressing her own emotions upon those around her struck her with a deeper sense of impatience, disappointment, and disgust than ever before. When she went softly into the darkened room where Susan lay in her gloomy bed, divided between wailings ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... I thought she did not mean to answer, but knowing doubtless from experience the impossibility of deceiving him, she answered with a cheerful assent, dropping her hand as she did so from before ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... together by Matthew and by the other evangelists. For example, Schott says, that the description of Christ's coming begins (Matt. 24:29) immediately after 'the tribulation,' &c., and that all before that belongs to the destruction of Jerusalem. But apart from the impossibility of regarding the 29th verse as the beginning of something entirely new, there are also in the passages which follow distinct references to the present generation (verse 34), and in the first part as ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... express how readily and gaily. He went into Mr. Barkis's room like light and air, brightening and refreshing it as if he were healthy weather. There was no noise, no effort, no consciousness, in anything he did; but in everything an indescribable lightness, a seeming impossibility of doing anything else, or doing anything better, which was so graceful, so natural, and agreeable, that it overcomes me, even ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... and her sister followed him. The wood was very thick, and grew more so as they advanced, but there was not much underbrush, and progress was not difficult. Several times a wild thought of flight came to Mrs. Willoughby, but was at once dispelled by a helpless sense of its utter impossibility. How could she persuade the impracticable Minnie, who seemed so free from all concern? or, if she could persuade her, how could she accomplish her desire? She would at once be pursued and surrounded, ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... the Rajah, and with the authority of his own government. 2. The aggravation of this act of the Amlah, by our present detention under the Dewan's authority. 3. The chance of collision, and the disastrous consequences of a war, for which they had no preparation of any kind. 4. The impossibility of the supreme government paying any attention to their letters so long as we were ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... guard against the wily woman who had lowered herself to this conspiracy; he would destroy the empire she had conquered over her son-in-law! Feeble natures, once warned, turn obstinate, and are never won again. At the first discussion of the contract she had reckoned on Paul's weakness, and on the impossibility he would feel of breaking off a marriage so far advanced. But now, she herself was far more tightly bound. Three months earlier Paul had no real obstacles to prevent the rupture; now, all Bordeaux knew that the notaries had smoothed the difficulties; the banns ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... progress was not to be undone. But the short truces, renewed from time to time, which he had as yet secured were insufficient for this purpose, for so long as war might break out in the coming year the king hands were tied. The impossibility of renouncing the claim to the French crown indeed made a formal peace impossible, but its ends might be secured by a lengthened truce, and it was with a view to this that Richard in 1396 wedded Isabella, the daughter of Charles the Sixth of France. The ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... as every reader of intelligence is competent to put an individual construction upon each, suited to circumstances; while the very wide inferences and applications which can be extracted from many of them, render the adapting of a brief and satisfactory note, in many cases, an impossibility. As it is, however, little merit is claimed for them; and if they are found to be of no aid in facilitating an interpretation, they will, at least, tend to relieve the monotonous or catalogue effect, so to speak, which is ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... said hands had been very busy. Now what lay before her was another thing. She could not consult her mother, and there was nobody else to consult; she must even make up her mind as to the line of duty the best way she might; and however the difficulty and even the impossibility of doing without anybody stared her in the face, it was constantly met by the greater impossibility of taking what she could not pay for. Dolly made up her mind on the negative view of the case; what she could being not clear, only what she could ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... taken some, she had no mind for more, plainly conceived it would be a breach of manners to set down the cup unfinished, and ordered her wedded retainer to dispose of what was left. 'I have swallowed all I can, I cannot swallow more, it is a physical impossibility,' he seemed to say; and his stern officer reiterated her commands with secret imperative signals. Luckless dog! but in mere humanity we came to the rescue and ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had been forced to clasp his arms around the neck of his frantic steed at the time, smiled at the impossibility of such a ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... accomplished that impossibility, to judge by the work you are at present engaged in. You must have changed your opinions since you ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... with appropriate gestures, intended to imitate the walk of the hero of the piece and his various features. The people in front turned their heads to look at the performance and take in the words. Not to laugh was almost an impossibility, but the dominie succeeded in doing the impossible, and frowned heavily. He felt that his unworthy friend was bringing disgrace upon the causes of poetry and pedestrianism. When her laughter subsided, Miss Halbert said: "There is one thing ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... face a bit, (and dispense with both), and have done. I'm not like the inmates in that mansion, who have, during the last few years, added so many items of expenditure, that it's, of course, a matter of impossibility for them to avoid loosening their purse strings. But they haven't, on the other hand, made any addition to their funds and landed property. During the course of the past year or two, they've had to make up many deficits. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... expressed a decided opinion that the model, when shown to him in wax, could not possibly be cast in bronze, Cellini was immediately stimulated by the predicted impossibility, not only to attempt, but to do it. He first made the clay model, baked it, and covered it with wax, which he shaped into the perfect form of a statue. Then coating the wax with a sort of earth, he baked the second covering, during ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... child would enjoy it. Marjorie's books and writing desk were on the table also, for she had studied mental philosophy and chemistry after she had copied her composition and written a long letter to her mother. Short letters were as truly an impossibility to Marjorie as short addresses are to some public speeches; still Marjorie always stopped when she found she had nothing to say. To her mother, school and Miss Prudence and Prue's sayings and doings ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... the heels of one of the crack goers of the city, amidst clouds of dust through which the rushing of other vehicles might be dimly made out, and startled by the wild cries used by the rival drivers, at once to encourage their horses and prove the impossibility of scaring them into breaking up, I thought it one of the most exciting things I had ever met; and on getting down at Cato's, involuntarily found myself ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... up between the two parties is one of the most amazing features of the conflict. For every page the Queen's secretaries wrote, John Knox was ready with ten to demonstrate her errors, her falsehood, the impossibility that any good could come from an idolater such as she. Other persons take part in the great wrangle, but he is clearly the scribe and moving spirit. He writes to her in his own person, in that of the Lord James, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... hands are about shoulder high and the club shaft is perpendicular, because it is at this time that the club begins to pull, and if it were not let out in the manner explained, the result would certainly be a half shot or very little more than that, for a full and perfect swing would be an impossibility. This relaxation of the palm also serves to give more freedom to the wrist at the top of the swing just when ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... and adulators, Dr. Toby also had his clan of sub-authors, delineated for us by a master hand in the pages of Humphry Clinker. To make Fielding the centre-piece of a group reflecting the literature of his day would be an artistic impossibility. It would be perfectly easy in the case of Smollett, who was descried by critics from afar as a Colossus bestriding the summit of the ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... rests untroubled in its mother's arms, and, without misgiving, sucks from her breast the milk so wonderfully provided for it, does the best and wisest thing conceivable. In obeying its instincts, it obeys the great good Author of its being, and lives. If—to suppose what is happily an impossibility—if the child should discard its instincts, and refuse to trust its mother, till it had logical proof of her trustworthiness; and, distrusting its natural cravings, should refuse to take the nutriment provided for it, till it could ascertain by chemical analysis and physiological ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... or hatred of the world. Yet if the Lady Macbeth of these scenes were really utterly inhuman, or a 'fiend-like queen,' as Malcolm calls her, the Lady Macbeth of the sleep-walking scene would be an impossibility. The one woman could never become the other. And in fact, if we look below the surface, there is evidence enough in the earlier scenes of preparation for the later. I do not mean that Lady Macbeth was naturally humane. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... understanding there had suddenly appeared a tiny crack. She felt the reasonableness as well as the tenderness with which Hugo spoke; she wanted nothing in the world but to do what he wanted. And yet it seemed somehow a physical impossibility for her now to say that she would unsettle and postpone it all,—something, say, as if Hugo had asked her to step back into last year or the year before. And she tried to make him understand this, saying—what seemed a ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... of the "funded thought'' is indubitably not easy. But its objective possibility with witness and accused is at least a fact. It is excluded only where it is most obviously necessary— in the case of the jury, and the impossibility in this case turns the institution of trial by jury into a Utopian dream. The presiding officer of a jury court is in the best instances acquainted with a few of the jurymen, but never so far as to have been entrusted with their "funded thought.'' Now and then, when a juryman asks a question, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... any expectation of finding that which he sought. It was bleak and barren, and precipitous in places, where the hills seemed to rise directly from the lake's edge. Nothing moved there, and a single glance told him that the land trail on that side was an impossibility. ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... thing's worrying me," Cabot told him, writing a receipt and exchanging it for Rand's check. "I've been trying to ignore it, but I simply can't. Do you really think Lane Fleming was murdered by somebody who wanted to see this merger consummated and who knew that that was an impossibility as long as ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... carry away the filth from the bedrooms, and it took two women an entire week all but one day, scrubbing all day long until their shoulders ached, to scrub the place clean. But they got it clean. They were the kind of women that did not give up even when a thing seemed an impossibility. This was the sort of thing they were up against continually. They could have no meetings that week because they had to scrub and make the place fit ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... been indicated in an earlier chapter. In so far as it comes into conflict with the law of conspicuous waste, the instinct of workmanship expresses itself not so much in insistence on substantial usefulness as in an abiding sense of the odiousness and aesthetic impossibility of what is obviously futile. Being of the nature of an instinctive affection, its guidance touches chiefly and immediately the obvious and apparent violations of its requirements. It is only less promptly and with less constraining force that it reaches ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... loved to connect with the person of a Sultan. A Mameluke Sultan is commonly meant; if any name is mentioned, it is the name of Saladin. Even the Osmanli Turks, whose destructive tendencies were no secret, gave the Italians only half a fright, and a peaceable accord with them was looked upon as no impossibility. ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... congregate together, and every supposable degree of communication must of necessity be constantly taking place amongst them, to distinguish a spreading epidemic from a contagious disease when it first breaks out, must obviously be a matter of impossibility; and upon this point the contagionists and their antagonists may rail for ever,—the one will see nothing but contagion, whether in the dead or the living body, and the other will refer every fresh case to atmospheric or terrestrial ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... therefore, to establish a perpetual Intercourse of Benefits amongst Mankind, their Maker would not fail to give them this generous Prepossession of Benevolence, if, as I have said, it were possible. And from whence can we go about to argue its Impossibility? Is it inconsistent with Self-Love? Are their Motions contrary? No more than the diurnal Rotation of the Earth is opposed to its Annual; or its Motion round its own Center, which may be improved as an Illustration of Self-Love, to that which whirls it about the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... that to Paul and Silas, concerning Bythinia; and, if we could, it would not warrant our sitting still and neglecting all the other parts of the world; for Paul and Silas, when forbidden to preach to those heathens, went elsewhere, and preached to others. Neither can we alledge a natural impossibility in the case. It has been said that we ought not to force our way, but to wait for the openings, and leadings of Providence; but it might with equal propriety be answered in this case, neither ought we to neglect embracing those openings in providence which daily present themselves to us. What ...
— An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens • William Carey
... 'Impossibility? You can only see the Uncreate in the Create—the Infinite in the Finite—the absolute good in that which is like the good. Does Tregarva pretend to more? He sees God in His own thoughts and consciousnesses, and in the events of the world around him, imaged in the mirror ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... injuries. In a moment I was on my feet again, and again I was impelled to climb,—only, however, again to come to grief. This time the demon, or whatever it was, that had entered into me, seeming to appreciate the impossibility of getting me to the top of that verandah, directed me to try another way. I mounted the steps leading to the front door, got on to the low parapet which was at one side, thence on to the sill of the adjacent window,—had I slipped then ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... the whole Declaration lay in the words alors et dans ce cas. If they be emphasized, they destroy the force of the document; for a union of all the monarchs was an impossibility, it being well known that England would not, and Sardinia, and Naples (probably also Spain) could not, take up arms. In fact, on that very evening Leopold wrote to Kaunitz that he had not in the least committed himself.—"Alors et dans ce cas is with me the law and the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... FRANK,—The enclosed is a copy of the letter which I send by this post to Mr. Brookes. And I make no disguise of the fact that it was written with the full intention of rendering your marriage an impossibility. It will no doubt appear to you a harsh and cruel letter; it will no doubt grieve you, madden you—in your rage you may call me a brute. The epithet will be unjust; but knowing very well indeed what love ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... she asked, turning up her face to show the impossibility of his gazing on it and holding such a ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... I at the seeming impossibility of getting "tone" on plaster, that I determined to try paper for the last cast or model; to this end I took lessons at a theatre in the art of "making (paper) faces," with the result that I now employ paper whenever ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... Others are spurred by vanity, like Madame de la Baudraye, who remained almost respectable in spite of her elopement with Lousteau. Some, again, are led astray by the love of fine clothes, and some by the impossibility of keeping a house going on obviously too narrow means. The stinginess of the State—or of Parliament—leads to many disasters ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... or the complete kind. Irregularity in the performance of the functions of the apparatus to which the fractured bone belongs is a necessary consequence of the existing lesion, and this is lameness. If the broken bone belongs to one of the extremities, the impossibility of the performance of its natural function in sustaining the weight of the body and contributing to the act of locomotion is usually complete, though the degree of disability will vary according to the kind of fracture and the bone which is injured. For example, a fracture ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... authority, cannot but acknowledge the indispensable obligation. But we need only look back to the Scripture proofs which have been lately adduced, to be convinced that the religious affections are therein inculcated on us, as a matter of high and serious obligation. Hence we may be assured that the impossibility stated by our Opponent does ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... word about the robbers you killed? That awful meeting again with my real daughter, in which I perforce must believe, is of itself enough to fever the very coldest feelings into madness; and need one marvel then at your talking of having encountered another impossibility, at your story about finding the dead Pietro come to life among the mountains, and not knowing him again, and about those almost farcical tricks of jugglery that were played you, all which you have related to us with the very same assurance? No, my good ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... address from a man who, whatever might be demanded of him in the fulfillment of his office, he believed could not be otherwise than his friend because, from the confidence reposed in him both by Bruce and himself, he must be fully aware of the impossibility of these allegations being true. But Wallace's astonishment was only for a moment; he now saw with an eye that pierced through the souls of the whole assembly, and, with collected firmness, he replied; "My witnesses are in the ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... steadily increasing efficiency, and it is highly probable that they will be repeated on a much larger scale before the war is over. Quite possibly, too, the Germans are developing an accessory force of large aeroplanes to co-operate in such an attack. The long coasts of Britain, the impossibility of their being fully equipped throughout their extent, except at a prohibitive cost of men and material, to resist air invaders, exposes the whole length of the island to considerable risk and annoyance from such ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... answered her, gayly, "it is an impossibility that I should ever marry one." And then there was a lull in the laughter and the snatches of song and conversation on the other side of the room; and while I was still gazing after my bracelet and into the chimney-place, where ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... would be kept waiting for her. The delays, however, were not all due to the old lady's irregular habits. Very often Letty would come up stairs with the information that the "bread ain't riz;" and as a Virginia breakfast without hot bread would be an impossibility, the meal would be postponed until the bread did conclude to rise, or until some substitute, such as ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... system, your contemporaries were certainly correct. They were in its very basis, and must needs become more and more maleficent as the business fabric grew in size and complexity. One of these causes was the lack of any common control of the different industries, and the consequent impossibility of their orderly and coordinate development. It inevitably resulted from this lack that they were continually getting out of step with one another and out of relation with ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... a note-book in the pocket in the other side, but the carriage in which I was driven about rushed on so over the rough ground and "corduroy roads" and hills and chasms, that I found it a matter of utter impossibility to get the pencil and the book out together, and, therefore, the facts I give about the "Exposition" may want verification, for my worthy guide kept firing them into me with the rapidity of a Maxim or ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... of this work was "The Sandy Foundation Shaken—or those ...Doctrines of one God subsisting in three distinct and separate persons; the impossibility of God's pardoning persons by an imputative refuted from the authority of scripture testimonies and right ...
— The Tryal of William Penn and William Mead • various
... remuneration. The danger was imminent; what could her ladyship do? The man must be disposed of, even at the sacrifice of truth; her ladyship gave the required promise (intending never to keep it,) you performed the service, and very properly, I own, come to receive your reward. Of course, you perceive the impossibility of a compliance with your wishes. No intrigue can exist between the patrician and the plebeian—you are low-born, she of the noblest blood of the kingdom. Are you so blind, man, that you cannot see—or ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
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